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PenitentJake wrote:

 catbarf wrote:


If I'm not supposed to know the capabilities of the enemy, that should be a by-design part of the game, not a result of the game being too damn complicated to remember all the rules.

I think it very much is by design.

Then it is objectively bad design.

Another factor in "strats vs fog of war" is that in fog of war your opponent is still playing by the same rules. You know exactly what the capabilities of his units are, just not how he's using them.

Strats are different, strats inherently change what a unit is.
"Oh you thought you were out of charge range? Surprise, I can actually run faster than an aircraft"
"Oh you thought these were weak peashooters? Surprise, they're actually most of the way to anti-tank guns".

As for cover, it's really difficult to implement and I'm not a fan of either system. In fact, I'm not sure of a good way to implement cover to 40k.
To-hit modifiers? Only works when armies have fairly consistent to hit requirements. But you have entire armies of BS5, which will get entirely screwed by even a -1 to hit and entire armies of BS2 or 3, which won't care that much about a measly -1. So that would be a poor system.
Invulnerable saves? (Eg old 40k) now cover is either absolutely useless or absolutely critical, depending on how good your armour and the incoming fire is.
Armour modifiers (eg current 40), same as to-hit modifiers armour sways so heavily it's impossible to find a good average. I do like that high penetration weapons can punch through cover better than small arms though, that feels realistic. And that ignores-cover can be useful even on lower AP weapons.

For something like Horus heresy, where armies are more similar, I would prefer to-hit modifiers.
For 40k, I think Invulnerable saves is the only practicable option, although it's not a good option.

 catbarf wrote:


If you want to simulate that, put it in the game. It's utter nonsense if a tribe of backwoods feral Orks who have never seen an outsider somehow has perfect intelligence on the invasion force (because their player knows the game inside and out), while the Space Marine force, veterans of a thousand battles, has no idea what the Orks are capable of (because the player is new to the game).

I can put it this way: to me it's utter nonsense that a player that is new to the game is supposed to lead veterans of a thousand battle if we're going down to the realism route. His SM would just be rookies. All SM had to be rookies at some point, right? The feral orks might have got shamans to read enemies's mind or even predict the future and get perfect knowledge of the upcoming battle, instead . All very fluffy and realistic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:


You're confusing realism with simulation. Reductio ad absurdum also.

Not me. I vastly prefer abstraction over realism. Simulation and realism comes together. There's no simulation without realism, that's the whole point of simulation. That's why I can't consider a wargame a simulation of war and I hope no one sugggests (or desires) otherwise. We can have some realism without turning the game into a simulation though. I just think that some mechanics don't add any realism, they're simply liked by some players who justify their tastes behind realism, when it's actually immersion at most.

I'm going to jump in here again to make a point about false dichotomies; there's a big difference between realism (the property of accurately simulating reality) and verisimilitude (the property of seeming to simulate reality). Trying to make 40k accurately simulate reality is a fool's errand; it's not reality, it's over-the-top sci-fi with chainsaw swords and space wizards. The problem 40k has, from a verisimilitude standpoint, is that there are a lot of things about the game and the setting that aren't consistent with the rules. For example: There are tanks in 40k. They're big, chunky, armored, probably take a lot of resources to put together in-setting. But they're also incredibly squishy and die very quickly in the game. So that raises the question of why the tanks exist at all? They're almost universally armed with a boatload of weapons you could get on other platforms, and even when they have their own heavier weapons they're often outperformed by massed infantry weapons. They die as fast as or faster than infantry. They're a little faster than infantry, but not so fast as actual fast units. If you look at just how they function in the game there's no reason for there to be tanks at all, and yet they exist in the setting, which is where verisimilitude starts to be a problem. It's not about whether it's realistic or not, it's about whether the rules seem to represent the lore.

As an oldcron player, I fondly remember the time when the Monolith was the biggest and toughest thing in the game, seeing one was rare, but they were terrifying.

The Landraider and variants being the next toughest, about double the frequency as Monoliths.

I miss that era.

I could see things getting rebalanced and having the lower point/PL brackets be something like the old Movie Marines, but for everyone.

 catbarf wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 amanita wrote:
Do people realize that rerolling to hit and wound is often better than simply two shots?

After running a couple combinations of numbers I find this hard to believe. Am I missing something?

6+ to-hit and to-wound.

With 2 shots, you get 18 rounds of firing for one wound.
With 1 shot, rerolling hits and wounds, you need around 11.

Now, if that's 5+/6+, then it's 9 rounds of firing 2 shots for one wound, or 6 for 1 shot rerolling.

So under EXTREME circumstances, yes, you can actually do better than doubling your shots based on rerolls. Such as Guardsmen shooting Lasguns at a T6+ model through Dense Cover. Except Lasguns aren't Twinlinked.

It doesn't have to be extreme at all.

A 4+ roll has a 50% chance of success. A 4+ roll with a reroll has a 75% chance of success.

Two shots, hitting on 4+ and wounding on 4+, average 0.5 wounds.

One shot, hitting on 4+ with rerolls and wounding on 4+ with rerolls, averages 0.75 * 0.75 = 0.5625 wounds average.

So even if you're succeeding on 4s, it's better to get full rerolls than to double your shots.

Oh yeah look at that! How interesting. (I used a wrong base number for my math)

The same isn't true for 3+s it seems. Funky.

You can consider rerolls as an extra attack if you fail.
In that light it's perhaps a little more obvious that when your chances to fail are very high, you get a lot of bonus attacks.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm going to jump in here again to make a point about false dichotomies; there's a big difference between realism (the property of accurately simulating reality) and verisimilitude (the property of seeming to simulate reality). Trying to make 40k accurately simulate reality is a fool's errand; it's not reality, it's over-the-top sci-fi with chainsaw swords and space wizards. The problem 40k has, from a verisimilitude standpoint, is that there are a lot of things about the game and the setting that aren't consistent with the rules. For example: There are tanks in 40k. They're big, chunky, armored, probably take a lot of resources to put together in-setting. But they're also incredibly squishy and die very quickly in the game. So that raises the question of why the tanks exist at all? They're almost universally armed with a boatload of weapons you could get on other platforms, and even when they have their own heavier weapons they're often outperformed by massed infantry weapons. They die as fast as or faster than infantry. They're a little faster than infantry, but not so fast as actual fast units. If you look at just how they function in the game there's no reason for there to be tanks at all, and yet they exist in the setting, which is where verisimilitude starts to be a problem. It's not about whether it's realistic or not, it's about whether the rules seem to represent the lore.

Well to the point about tanks, at least in 2nd edition tanks were MUCH faster than infantry (A Land Raider could move maybe 20" a turn, a Space Marine maxxed 8" when Running). Could seal occupants againts things like gas attacks, and usually had Targeters on their weapons for better accuracy, and were completely immune to small arms.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blndmage wrote:
As an oldcron player, I fondly remember the time when the Monolith was the biggest and toughest thing in the game, seeing one was rare, but they were terrifying.

The Landraider and variants being the next toughest, about double the frequency as Monoliths.

I miss that area.

I could see things getting rebalanced and having the lower point/PL brackets be something like the old Movie Marines, but for everyone.

The Superheavy before Superheavies. Old school Monolith is best Monolith.

 Blackie wrote:
I can put it this way: to me it's utter nonsense that a player that is new to the game is supposed to lead veterans of a thousand battle if we're going down to the realism route. His SM would just be rookies. All SM had to be rookies at some point, right? The feral orks might have got shamans to read enemies's mind or even predict the future and get perfect knowledge of the upcoming battle, instead . All very fluffy and realistic.

Are you trolling? That's an asinine take. How about we make Astartes players take tren, because you can't have biologically modified super soldiers unless you, yourself, have augmented athletic performance. It's an idiotic idea.

Like you're so firmly in Dunning-Kruger territory with game design I'm not sure it's worth the effort to try to explain things to you...

 Blndmage wrote:
As an oldcron player, I fondly remember the time when the Monolith was the biggest and toughest thing in the game, seeing one was rare, but they were terrifying.

The Landraider and variants being the next toughest, about double the frequency as Monoliths.

I miss that area.

I could see things getting rebalanced and having the lower point/PL brackets be something like the old Movie Marines, but for everyone.

I've never seen Land Raiders ran EVER since I've been playing in 3rd

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
As an oldcron player, I fondly remember the time when the Monolith was the biggest and toughest thing in the game, seeing one was rare, but they were terrifying.

The Landraider and variants being the next toughest, about double the frequency as Monoliths.

I miss that area.

I could see things getting rebalanced and having the lower point/PL brackets be something like the old Movie Marines, but for everyone.

I've never seen Land Raiders ran EVER since I've been playing in 3rd

The Crusader was popular with some Templar players, but honestly none of the variants really ever saw mass adoption.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
As an oldcron player, I fondly remember the time when the Monolith was the biggest and toughest thing in the game, seeing one was rare, but they were terrifying.

The Landraider and variants being the next toughest, about double the frequency as Monoliths.

I miss that area.

I could see things getting rebalanced and having the lower point/PL brackets be something like the old Movie Marines, but for everyone.

I've never seen Land Raiders ran EVER since I've been playing in 3rd

The Crusader was popular with some Templar players, but honestly none of the variants really ever saw mass adoption.

You never saw the mass Vulkan He’Stan and a trio of Redeemers in 5th? Cause I did several times.

Been playing since 2nd and saw loads of Land Raiders in 3rd when the kit came out and beyond.

Re premeasuring, CCS said it well I think.
Aminita also and blind mage, sim. In accord.

My orks rush into the ruined square covered in thick smoke, fluttering pieces of trash and bits of exploded banners floating over the craters, and spot some shadowy movement in the rubble in two different areas. They decide to first use their range finding Morker-lights to discover that more of the unit’s sluggas are in range of the firewarrior team on the left than on the right. Then, they all decide to fire at that unit in concert. Glorious…re roll ones, and using my Vengeance of Gork strat paying 3 cp, they are now able to fire also at the firewarriors on the right. … yeay. Some talented orks.

Or..

My orks move into the ruined square, see movement, and to be sure to get as many shots as possible, advance as far as possible toward what appears to be nearest while trying to keep in cover as well as possible. They fire their sluggas into that unit at their earliest and best opportunity, X are within range. Minus to hit for obscuring terrain including smoke and ruins… Rolling…

For me, I like something closer to the second scenario.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Superheavy before Superheavies. Old school Monolith is best Monolith.

Imperial Armour Super Heavy rules predate the 3rd Ed Necron Codex by 2 years.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Superheavy before Superheavies. Old school Monolith is best Monolith.

Imperial Armour Super Heavy rules predate the 3rd Ed Necron Codex by 2 years.

Well ok. . . "Mainline" 40K Superheavy. I mean, I played the Armorcast Reaver Titan back in 2nd and I got a White Dwarf with a paper pattern for a Baneblade from Rogue Trader too Monolith was in-codex and pickup-game/tourney usable. Superheavies weren't really mainstreamed into 40K until 6th iirc.

Well GW have given us a very simple solution to making vehicles better in game.

Flood tourneys with vehicle heavy lists then they will have to patch them when they place poorly.


No downside whatsoever.......

 jeff white wrote:
Re premeasuring, CCS said it well I think.
Aminita also and blind mage, sim. In accord.

My orks rush into the ruined square covered in thick smoke, fluttering pieces of trash and bits of exploded banners floating over the craters, and spot some shadowy movement in the rubble in two different areas. They decide to first use their range finding Morker-lights to discover that more of the unit’s sluggas are in range of the firewarrior team on the left than on the right. Then, they all decide to fire at that unit in concert. Glorious…re roll ones, and using my Vengeance of Gork strat paying 3 cp, they are now able to fire also at the firewarriors on the right. … yeay. Some talented orks.

Or..

My orks move into the ruined square, see movement, and to be sure to get as many shots as possible, advance as far as possible toward what appears to be nearest while trying to keep in cover as well as possible. They fire their sluggas into that unit at their earliest and best opportunity, X are within range. Minus to hit for obscuring terrain including smoke and ruins… Rolling…

For me, I like something closer to the second scenario.

I feel like it's important to point out that orks work like the second scenario currently, and not like the first one...

 ClockworkZion wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
As an oldcron player, I fondly remember the time when the Monolith was the biggest and toughest thing in the game, seeing one was rare, but they were terrifying.

The Landraider and variants being the next toughest, about double the frequency as Monoliths.

I miss that area.

I could see things getting rebalanced and having the lower point/PL brackets be something like the old Movie Marines, but for everyone.

I've never seen Land Raiders ran EVER since I've been playing in 3rd

The Crusader was popular with some Templar players, but honestly none of the variants really ever saw mass adoption.

The reason for this was the following vehicle rule since 3rd:

"You move, you suck."

Only vehicles which could somehow work around this limitation were of use.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
As an oldcron player, I fondly remember the time when the Monolith was the biggest and toughest thing in the game, seeing one was rare, but they were terrifying.

The Landraider and variants being the next toughest, about double the frequency as Monoliths.

I miss that area.

I could see things getting rebalanced and having the lower point/PL brackets be something like the old Movie Marines, but for everyone.

I've never seen Land Raiders ran EVER since I've been playing in 3rd

The Crusader was popular with some Templar players, but honestly none of the variants really ever saw mass adoption.

The reason for this was the following vehicle rule since 3rd:

"You move, you suck."

Only vehicles which could somehow work around this limitation were of use.

The Land Raider had Machine Spirit though, actually making it one of the few vehicles which could move and still fire at full/high effect.

Normal rules said if you moved you could only fire 1 weapon accurately. PotMS let that be 2. A Landraider had 3-4 major weapons.

I saw Landraiders semi-regularly. Although at that time we were all kids/newbies just bumbling along running what was cool.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Normal rules said if you moved you could only fire 1 weapon accurately. PotMS let that be 2. A Landraider had 3-4 major weapons.

I saw Landraiders semi-regularly. Although at that time we were all kids/newbies just bumbling along running what was cool.

The memory can is a little rusty, but for at least a while the LR could fire the Heavy Bolter as well because it was only S5 and counted as a "defensive weapon". The Crusader on the other hand could fire the Hurricane Bolters because they were S4, and then fire the Assault Cannon and Multimelta as the Heavy Weapons they were.

One of my favorite lists of 3rd had two LRs in it. I certainly incorporated them into a few lists in each edition, but it was increasingly rare 5th onward since LOS blocking terrain got more rare.

Had a joke list in 4th that had four of 'em!

Yep, S5 is defensive weapons so LRs could do 2 S6+ heavy guns on the move and split fire Thanks to POTMS. you paid for it though at a 250-point starting cost without upgrades.

 Jidmah wrote:

Spoiler:

 jeff white wrote:
Re premeasuring, CCS said it well I think.
Aminita also and blind mage, sim. In accord.

My orks rush into the ruined square covered in thick smoke, fluttering pieces of trash and bits of exploded banners floating over the craters, and spot some shadowy movement in the rubble in two different areas. They decide to first use their range finding Morker-lights to discover that more of the unit’s sluggas are in range of the firewarrior team on the left than on the right. Then, they all decide to fire at that unit in concert. Glorious…re roll ones, and using my Vengeance of Gork strat paying 3 cp, they are now able to fire also at the firewarriors on the right. … yeay. Some talented orks.

Or..

My orks move into the ruined square, see movement, and to be sure to get as many shots as possible, advance as far as possible toward what appears to be nearest while trying to keep in cover as well as possible. They fire their sluggas into that unit at their earliest and best opportunity, X are within range. Minus to hit for obscuring terrain including smoke and ruins… Rolling…

For me, I like something closer to the second scenario.

I feel like it's important to point out that

orks work like the second scenario currently, and not like the first one...

I should have made more clear that the first scene implies pre measuring (Morker lights) while the second does not.

Now I want some looted markerlights for my Orks!

 Blackie wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
If you want to simulate that, put it in the game. It's utter nonsense if a tribe of backwoods feral Orks who have never seen an outsider somehow has perfect intelligence on the invasion force (because their player knows the game inside and out), while the Space Marine force, veterans of a thousand battles, has no idea what the Orks are capable of (because the player is new to the game).

I can put it this way: to me it's utter nonsense that a player that is new to the game is supposed to lead veterans of a thousand battle if we're going down to the realism route. His SM would just be rookies. All SM had to be rookies at some point, right? The feral orks might have got shamans to read enemies's mind or even predict the future and get perfect knowledge of the upcoming battle, instead . All very fluffy and realistic.

I'm playing as the force commander, not the intelligence section. If my otherwise competent troops are commanded to do boneheaded things because I'm not a good commander, that's on me. If I make a mistake because I can't reasonably be expected to remember that one of the approximately 1,374 Stratagems, special rules, subfaction abilities, WLTs, relics, Armies of Renown, and other assorted bs is about to be situationally relevant- under a ruleset that assumes I have access to this information- that's on the designers.

I could make up some in-universe explanation for how a new player forgetting to do the Psychic Phase after moving actually represents their psykers losing focus on a chaotic battlefield- but the designers clearly don't consider periodically misremembering the turn sequence to be an intended part of the game.

Also: It's clear that the rules assume perfect information, because there are no rules governing it to begin with. There are no rules against me stopping play after every phase and consulting both my codex and yours to see what rules are relevant. No rules about whether I'm allowed to have my own copy of your codex, so that I can refer to it for the information I need. No rules about what information I'm allowed to ask about your army, or what about your list or capabilities can be concealed in play, or how much you have to reveal and what you can conceal when you are challenged on a rule. Rules and lists are both implicitly considered public to both players.

There aren't even community standards for restricted information; if anything, there's a general convention that if I ask 'hey do you have any relevant stratagems on this unit' in casual play you give me an honest answer, because again, we're playing under the assumption that we all have complete access to information if our personal knowledge of the rules isn't perfect.

You're wrong there- much of it isn't implicit or assumed. The rules insist you MUST provide a copy of the army roster for the opponent to read through, at least in matched play (page 280 under muster armies, right before 3. Determine mission), any pre-battle strats must be used and noted before sharing. Page 251 has an itemized list of what must be on the army roster. At least at the roster step, everything is an open book to both players, nothing about the army list can be concealed. Explicitly, not implicitly.

Similarly, both players can measure distances whenever they want- absolutely perfect information.

The idea that there is such a thing as restricted information in current 40k is dubious at best, and if it exists at all, it would be one player actively lying about strats and codex rules, which doesn't seem likely or reasonable.

Its standard around here to go so far as to tell your opponent how many points your list offers for Secondaries. We certainly tell our opponent about Stratagems/psychic powers/faction traits. For an example, at a tourney last week I had my Plasma Inceptors in deep strike. My opponent was generous enough to inform me that he had the ability to shoot units that arrive within 18". We quickly talked through each other's weird and wonderful rules before game. Playing against a faction for the first time can be an adventure, but its a game after all.

I would rather have flavour and get surprised every now and then than have a bland game. Flames of War removed the flavour in the V3 to V4 transition, as did Epic when they went to 3rd Ed. Neither system was improved by it.

Voss wrote:
You're wrong there- much of it isn't implicit or assumed. The rules insist you MUST provide a copy of the army roster for the opponent to read through, at least in matched play (page 280 under muster armies, right before 3. Determine mission), any pre-battle strats must be used and noted before sharing. Page 251 has an itemized list of what must be on the army roster. At least at the roster step, everything is an open book to both players, nothing about the army list can be concealed. Explicitly, not implicitly.

Similarly, both players can measure distances whenever they want- absolutely perfect information.

The idea that there is such a thing as restricted information in current 40k is dubious at best, and if it exists at all, it would be one player actively lying about strats and codex rules, which doesn't seem likely or reasonable.

The rules go even further and call out specific instances of when you should hide information from your opponent (such as the use of GSC blips, or when rules have you note something like terrain secretly) as well, this pointing to the game being built around sharing information of the game state at all times.

The more tournamenty a ruleset... the less surprises can occur.

 auticus wrote:
The more tournamenty a ruleset... the less surprises can occur.

Yup. Honestly I don't mind GW designing the core of the game around the idea people having all the info. The issue is more than they didn't design the arm rules around the same philosophy. Makes me wonder if we're looking at a 5th edition again where the core rules were largely done by someone who leaves the company while the remaining team works on the codexes because the design philosophy feels different.