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Twin-Linked should have been a general re-roll, to hit and to wound/anti-tank

and it makes sense to use it that way by how 3rd Edition is designed

for the historical reference, TL weapons were never used to get more shots out, as high ROF weapons against infantry were better used as singles to cover larger areas than to get more shots into a narrow path
the WW2 MG with 700-1200 shots per minute, against infantry, using 2 TL ones to have 2400 shots in the same area would not have made a difference

but those weapons were used on hard to hit targets like airplanes or fast moving vehicles, so that the chance to inflict critical damage if you hit, was higher

so yes, having a TL Heavy Bolter not being able to kill more infantry but just being better at hitting stuff makes sense for 3rd


to remove it as the games changes from the core up make sense as well
the problem was just that outside the core nothing else was changed and were are going to reach 10th Edition when the last units have their profiles adopted to 8th Edi Core rules

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I mean, yeah. It's an abstraction. It's not firing exactly 3 shots every time anymore than regular Squaddies are firing 1 shot at a time.

Who honestly would think that?

You have no idea how many players I've talked to who assume the ground scale, time scale, and combat mechanics are meant to be taken literally.

I've seen more than one discussion about the lack of load-bearing equipment on Marine or Guard models justified by the idea that they're only firing about ten shots at most during a battle anyways.

Actually the way a twin linked weapon should work is:

- Re-Rolls to hit and takes best result
- Re-Rolls to wound and takes best result
- Re-Rolls to damage and takes best result
- Target re-rolls armor and takes worst result.

Thats now a twin linked weapon should work to represent the amount of shots landing on the target.

 catbarf wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I mean, yeah. It's an abstraction. It's not firing exactly 3 shots every time anymore than regular Squaddies are firing 1 shot at a time.

Who honestly would think that?

You have no idea how many players I've talked to who assume the ground scale, time scale, and combat mechanics are meant to be taken literally.

I've seen more than one discussion about the lack of load-bearing equipment on Marine or Guard models justified by the idea that they're only firing about ten shots at most during a battle anyways.

It's hard to keep the megathreads straight, but I believe this very thread contains negative commentary about "tanks being able to fire behind themselves" in the last two editions.

Thank you for restating the subtext of my post, H.B.M.C. -- a valuable and generous service, performed by a proficient understander. The game is abstractions all the way down, meaning that a twin-linked weapon firing twice as many shots as the non-twin-linked version of that weapon is one of many valid ways to design that weapon.

I'll be ok with it just not being Upkeep: The Wargame. It may be as silly and as it is, but "boring" and "tedious" are dealbreakers.

Cyel wrote:
I'll be ok with it just not being Upkeep: The Wargame. It may be as silly and as it is, but "boring" and "tedious" are dealbreakers.

But keeping track of multiple rules (both army wide and unit specific) that change every turn is what makes a game strategic and deep.

Honestly, I’m totally fine with loads of dice and even rerolls if they still just balance it out. In 8th a shoota boyz mob with more dakka, double shoot, and their reroll ones were pretty balanced, it’s more the insanely high quality weapons that start to get annoying. Dice can be fun to roll.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I'll be ok with it just not being Upkeep: The Wargame. It may be as silly and as it is, but "boring" and "tedious" are dealbreakers.

But keeping track of multiple rules (both army wide and unit specific) that change every turn is what makes a game strategic and deep.

I could tolerate having the layers and layers of rules not present on a datasheet if the default missions didn't also come with multiple secondaries I need to keep track of and strategems/cp...

 Altruizine wrote:
It's hard to keep the megathreads straight, but I believe this very thread contains negative commentary about "tanks being able to fire behind themselves" in the last two editions.

Thank you for restating the subtext of my post, H.B.M.C. -- a valuable and generous service, performed by a proficient understander. The game is abstractions all the way down, meaning that a twin-linked weapon firing twice as many shots as the non-twin-linked version of that weapon is one of many valid ways to design that weapon.

I don't mind abstraction at all. I like abstracting out the things that I don't really care about for a given scale of play, and modeling the things that do matter. In an RPG I may care about how exactly many bursts of fire I put out and how much ammo that consumes. In a skirmish game I may care about tank facing. In a mass-battle game I'm okay with a unit's position being a single marker and a zone of control.

What I don't like is inconsistent abstraction, and 40K is pretty bad in that regard. If a system cares about the individual placement of every single trooper for determining range and line of sight, then I expect that the positioning and facing of a tank matter too. And for the individual placement of troopers to continue to matter when we get to determining casualties, while we're at it.

Having twinned weapon mounts represented by re-rolls as an abstraction is fine with me. I actually quite like the idea of allowing it to re-roll both hits and wounds/armor-pen. But when that mechanic exists alongside counting up the exact number of lasguns remaining in a squad to determine its fire output, or every last gun barrel on a Repulsor getting its own discrete weapon profile, it feels like inconsistent levels of abstraction.

 catbarf wrote:

I don't mind abstraction at all. I like abstracting out the things that I don't really care about for a given scale of play, and modeling the things that do matter. In an RPG I may care about how many bursts of fire I put out. In a skirmish game I may care about tank facing. In a mass-battle game I'm okay with position being a single marker and a zone of control.

What I don't like is inconsistent abstraction, and 40K is pretty bad in that regard. If a system cares about the individual placement of every single trooper for determining range and line of sight, then I expect that the positioning and facing of a tank to matter too. And for the individual placement of troopers to continue to matter when we get to determining casualties, while we're at it.

Were vehicle facings to return we'd still have inconsistency, since there was never any accounting for non-vehicle models' facings. Shouldn't getting shot in the back have more acute morale penalties? Aren't most body armour designs more effective in the front?

I would go the other direction, and make the position of individual trooper models matter in fewer ways.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I'll be ok with it just not being Upkeep: The Wargame. It may be as silly and as it is, but "boring" and "tedious" are dealbreakers.

But keeping track of multiple rules (both army wide and unit specific) that change every turn is what makes a game strategic and deep.

I don't mean rules (although in GW games they hardly make their games strategic and deep, their amount gives an illusion of complexity but resulting gamestates are still simplistic and shallow.) but upkeep. Resolution and obligatory stuff takes ages, gameplay (decisions) - moments.

3rd Edi was designed as a wargame with the basic factions in mind and was consistent with its rules

it got problems with as soon as the rules needed to be outside the designed box to feel different and people tried to fix the problems with adding different rules that put in another layer

remember that there was an issue with "height", as it was hard capped and a model height 3 on a hill with height 3 was not able to see over another model height 3 that was not on the hill in 4th, that was solves by true line of sight, that you go down and look via the gun barrel of you could see something

and with 8th we got the problem that there is a Skirmish level core, with RPG level details in army lists, to play a mass battle game
this just cannot work and causes all kind of problems

but it also triggers all kind of players and you get the RPG, Skirmish and Mass Battle players on the same table who accept the problems because this is the game everyone plays

 Altruizine wrote:
Shouldn't getting shot in the back have more acute morale penalties? Aren't most body armour designs more effective in the front?

In many 'large skirmish' games it's assumed that infantry can quickly reposition to take cover against threats in any particular direction, but getting flanked is a major problem. So, it's typical to not worry about individual model facing, but have penalties to use of cover (eg no save bonus) when a unit is hit from multiple angles. And something like a simple -1 to saves taken against crossfire (to represent less effective armor use) wouldn't be unreasonable either. You won't find me opposing rules that make maneuver and positioning more relevant than raw mathhammer firepower, but...

 Altruizine wrote:
I would go the other direction, and make the position of individual trooper models matter in fewer ways.

...I also completely agree with this, just because of the scale 40K currently operates at. Tracking the position of every model and vehicle when an 'army' is 30 guys and a tank is fine. Having to worry about the individual positioning of every trooper when I have 100+ models on the battlefield is downright tedious. Same reason I don't miss blast templates, even though I'm okay with them in concept- they're just not right for this scale of game.

Frankly, one of my favorite things about Apocalypse is how the rules were written around the use of movement trays. Pushing trays of models around the table, and having units abstractly occupy buildings rather than having to be positioned in firing points, tremendously speeds up the game.

And again, my issue is really inconsistency. Currently when you shoot in 40K, it matters exactly which of your models have line of sight and which ones are in range of the target. But then when the target takes casualties, it doesn't matter at all which models are visible to or in range of the firing unit. How does that make sense?

 catbarf wrote:

...I also completely agree with this, just because of the scale 40K currently operates at. Tracking the position of every model and vehicle when an 'army' is 30 guys and a tank is fine. Having to worry about the individual positioning of every trooper when I have 100+ models on the battlefield is downright tedious. Same reason I don't miss blast templates, even though I'm okay with them in concept- they're just not right for this scale of game.

Frankly, one of my favorite things about Apocalypse is how the rules were written around the use of movement trays. Pushing trays of models around the table, and having units abstractly occupy buildings rather than having to be positioned in firing points, tremendously speeds up the game.

I, too, would love the game to move in that direction. It would also help address the semi-invisible issue of the meta self-selecting towards low model count armies (because of the greater physical and mental burdens inherent in making and executing plays with large model count armies). Ideally, those burdens would be experienced more on a unit count basis than a model count basis (ie. 5 units of Custodes aren't significantly less cumbersome to play with than 5 units of Hormagaunts).

Of course, a lot of peoples' reaction to that seems to be "we'd just be turning models into glorified tokens that could be replaced by cardboard!" And to that, my response is the astronaut meme -- always has been, friends.

LostTemplar wrote:
Actually the way a twin linked weapon should work is:

- Re-Rolls to hit and takes best result
- Re-Rolls to wound and takes best result
- Re-Rolls to damage and takes best result
- Target re-rolls armor and takes worst result.

Thats now a twin linked weapon should work to represent the amount of shots landing on the target.

Why re-roll instead of just rolling two dice and take the best result when rolling to-hit and rolling to-wou d (and rolling damage when applicable)?

Practicality, I’d imagine.

Some TL weapons have 6 shots-better to roll 6 dice, then reroll, instead of 2 dice, then repeat five more times.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Practicality, I’d imagine.

Some TL weapons have 6 shots-better to roll 6 dice, then reroll, instead of 2 dice, then repeat five more times.

Fair. I usually just think of weapons like the lascannon that tend to be low volume of fire.

 Altruizine wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

I don't mind abstraction at all. I like abstracting out the things that I don't really care about for a given scale of play, and modeling the things that do matter. In an RPG I may care about how many bursts of fire I put out. In a skirmish game I may care about tank facing. In a mass-battle game I'm okay with position being a single marker and a zone of control.

What I don't like is inconsistent abstraction, and 40K is pretty bad in that regard. If a system cares about the individual placement of every single trooper for determining range and line of sight, then I expect that the positioning and facing of a tank to matter too. And for the individual placement of troopers to continue to matter when we get to determining casualties, while we're at it.

Were vehicle facings to return we'd still have inconsistency, since there was never any accounting for non-vehicle models' facings. Shouldn't getting shot in the back have more acute morale penalties? Aren't most body armour designs more effective in the front?

I would go the other direction, and make the position of individual trooper models matter in fewer ways.

Maybe this was not always true about model facings. Maybe RT had something like that for infantry. I recall though for example crossfire maybe in third meant if falling back through an enemy unit’s potential firelane, the fleeing unit would be wiped out. So incentivised getting behind enemy units then concentrating fire to force them to break.not exactly like facings but direction or orientation I guess mattered, and that made sense. I do not like the way that vehicles are represented in current editions. I liked facings, also I liked templates and misfires and scatter and so on. I do not like that the game has both shrunken tables and enlarged models and sized of massed forces at the same time. I preferred smaller games with fewer models on larger tables that took a few hours to play through. I do not like the wham bam whombo combo playstyle of current editions. But, that is just me, anyways I would go a hard 180 from making position of Indy troops less meaningful.

So this thread got me looking back on older editions and I think I found something specific that I think it was a mistake for GW remove this from the rules, not because it talks about talking things out, but because it talks about the intent being for both players to try and make the experience enjoyable for both players. Losing this removes that expectation an opens the game to a fair amount of pushing the game towards being about winning over everything else.



I don't know, maybe it's just me but I think when they removed it they removed a core part that made 40k, well, 40k.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So this thread got me looking back on older editions and I think I found something specific that I think it was a mistake for GW remove this from the rules, not because it talks about talking things out, but because it talks about the intent being for both players to try and make the experience enjoyable for both players. Losing this removes that expectation an opens the game to a fair amount of pushing the game towards being about winning over everything else.



I don't know, maybe it's just me but I think when they removed it they removed a core part that made 40k, well, 40k.

I mean yeah, its like when people say removing complicated or rules that left a lot up to interpretation made it so people argued less. Which in reality it did gak all, because anyone worth playing with would just pretty much invoke that rule right there and we settled it with a die role and moved on.

I dunno, making special characters legal without opponent's consent seems like a far more impactful "removed rule" change than the above.

Also, wasn't The Most Important Rule still around during some pretty tournament-vicious editions?

The Most Important Rule of All was also the Most Ignored Rule Of All for a lot of people.

 Altruizine wrote:
I dunno, making special characters legal without opponent's consent seems like a far more impactful "removed rule" change than the above.

Also, wasn't The Most Important Rule still around during some pretty tournament-vicious editions?

In terms of balance you're probably right, but in terms of stated intent of how the game should be approached? I feel like removing this sort of intent and no longer saying "we want you to focus on both sides having fun" it changes the tone of how the community as a whole sees the game, even if some people ignore it.

Not sure why people think GW removed that rule?

They should change its name to "The Most Ignored Rule" so it better conveys how some players view it.

I haven't had occasion to ever approach using it for quite some time. It definitely was more necessary when we didn't get FAQs for years.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Not sure why people think GW removed that rule?

Did you not read the whole thing I shared? Because it was a lot more than "roll off on it". It covered designer intent (play should be fun for all involved), validated house rules and made it clear that rules are not intended to be binding but rather a framework.

That's more than just "roll off on it" (which was only one way mentioned to resolve disputes during the game but was not presented as the only way).

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Not sure why people think GW removed that rule?

Did you not read the whole thing I shared? Because it was a lot more than "roll off on it". It covered designer intent (play should be fun for all involved), validated house rules and made it clear that rules are not intended to be binding but rather a framework.

That's more than just "roll off on it" (which was only one way mentioned to resolve disputes during the game but was not presented as the only way).

The only thing the current one doesn't explicitly state is the term house rule, which I guess I just don't find necessary -- personally, anyway. Maybe that's just my brain liking an authoritative ruleset.

The problem is that there's a lot of people who think it's unfun when their opponent uses superior listbuilding and gameplay skills to beat them.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Not sure why people think GW removed that rule?

Did you not read the whole thing I shared? Because it was a lot more than "roll off on it". It covered designer intent (play should be fun for all involved), validated house rules and made it clear that rules are not intended to be binding but rather a framework.

That's more than just "roll off on it" (which was only one way mentioned to resolve disputes during the game but was not presented as the only way).

The only thing the current one doesn't explicitly state is the term house rule, which I guess I just don't find necessary -- personally, anyway. Maybe that's just my brain liking an authoritative ruleset.

Still ignoring the whole "intent of the game" thing I talked about. Or is the concept of playing a game that's fun for both sides of the table just sliding right past you like a person's eyes off of a Somebody Else's Problem Field?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hecaton wrote:
The problem is that there's a lot of people who think it's unfun when their opponent uses superior listbuilding and gameplay skills to beat them.

Almost as if two people with different expectations for the game should be able to communicate their expectations and then draw up ideas how to have a fun game that doesn't involve the most hyper-tooled lists in existance...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Since there is some confusion apparently: the "most important rule" I posted and the point I was trying to make was NOT about rolling off to settle rules disputes.

It was about the creators clearly stating an intent for the game, formally recognizing house rules as a valid way to play and stating in clear language that the rules are not binding and that one does not need to follow them perfectly to be playing "correctly".

The entire point was that by removing such language the tone of the game as presented to the player is different. Especially to new players who may have never seen such language used in the ruleset and not know that the game they're playing was built on being able to compromise in order to try and work with their opponent to enjoy the game outside of a strict box of the "correct" way to play the game.

Basically the tone of the rules without that intent spelled out and without that permissive language to go outside of GW's specific box if you want to tailor things more changes the way people look at the game. Just consider how for a few pages now we've discussed the rigid "competitive first" mindset that has taken hold in a number of communities where even the idea of doing something outside of the strict framework GW lays out is "wrong".

I get that there are folks who likely ignored that box, but that's okay. You can enjoy GW's sandbox exactly how they give it to you. Some people might be butting heads with the game though because they don't know they can tailor their experience beyond what GW has given them and I feel it's something important for the tone of the game that was lost.