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I think it's because they're focusing on bespoke rules rather than universal rules.

The only reason deepstrike isn't in the rulebook is they can claim, firstly, that the rules are short and easy to get into, and secondly that every codex and unit has a set of bespoke rules tailored/themed specifically to your faction.

This is also why they add a new layer of rules to every faction with each publication. Faction rules, subfaction rules, purity rules, etc etc.

It's all part of the same design philosophy of minimalist core rules for maximum bespoke faction rules.

Putting deep strike in the core rules would do absolutely nothing to reduce complexity.

Calling all those rules deep strike and giving them the exact same wording in every book... that would help, irrespective of whether they also put it into the core rules or not.

Same goes for all the the other totally-not-USR like FNP, scout, infiltrate, bodyguard, melta, get's hot...

Oh, and while you are at it, keyword "fights first" and "fights last". MtG solved that very problem over two decades ago FFS.

I think part of the design switch to bespoke rules was to make it easier to reign in specific issues rsther than nerfing a USR and causing massive swings in game balance in an effort to correct a problem.

And I don't hate that idea as we've seen them make changes to some bespoke rules to correct problems, but some rules are so universal that they likely didn't need to be bespoke despite that design philosophy.

Basically I feel in 10th they should come back part way and bring back some of the USRs to simplify the game in a way that makes it eaiser to manage for the players.

Tyel wrote:

I'm not sure really. The outcome range on say a unit which hits on 3s rerolling 1s and wounds on 3s rerolling 1s for some low save chance is going to be fairly tight.

You can then skew the stats so said unit "reliably" does about 25% of its points as damage - or 65%.

I don't think 40k has a problem because its too random. Clubs aren't (in my experience anyway) full of people exclaiming "Yahtzee" as they score 20+ 6s on say 25 dice.
The issue is on perfectly average dice the result is "I kill about 40-50% worth of points of your stuff as the unit I used". And an even slightly above average set of dice starts to just kill everything.

You make this sound simple, but it's really, *really* not.
First off, it's not accounting for platform. A Space Marine has two wounds, T4, and a 3+ save. An Imperial Guard veteran has one wound, T3, and a 5+ save.

They can both hit on 3+ and carry a Meltagun, Plasmagun, or Flamer.

The former costs 23 points with a flamer, the latter, 11 (and a half). How do you balance the power of a unit to reliably deals 25% of its points, when the other factors of that unit aren't taken into account?

Let's add on another factor - target. A Meltagun firing at a Grot is only ever going to kill 5pts of model, no matter how expensive or cheap the platform. If the meltagun is being fired at a Rhino, the points work out differently than if it's being fired at an Exorcist - despite both being a T7 mini with roughly the number of wounds.

So, let's use our example from above.
In one, a Veteran with a Meltagun is firing at an exorcist at half range. In the other, a Space Marine with a Meltagun is firing at a Rhino, also at half range. (For fairness, it's a Sisters of Battle Rhino.) The Veteran will, on average, deal a wound about 36% of the time, and when they do, the Veteran will cause 5.5 wounds - Half of the Exorcist's wounds, so 87.5 points of damage. Doing the math, this Veteran is dealing 32 points worth of damage with that shot! That's incredible - almost exactly twice its point value!

Now, the Space Marine fires. The Space Marine will, on average, deal a wound about 36% of the time, and when he does, the Space Marine will cause 5.5 wounds - Half of the Rhino's wounds, so 40 points of damage. Doing the math, this Space Marine is dealing 14 points of damage with that shot - still a very impressive 50% of its points value with shooting, but nowhere near the mathematical effectiveness of the Veteran.

Of course it's more complicated than even my example here - you can't take a single space marine, you have to bring a squad. But a squad could mean 'four ablative bodies and one heavy weapon' or it could mean 'a heavy weapon on literally every model in the squad'. Doing the latter means you'll be doing a lot more damage *per point*, but you'll also be TAKING a lot more damage per point.

And, the nature of 40k tournaments being what they are, everyone is taking as many units as they can that fall into that latter camp - highly efficient at dealing damage, and damn the durability. After all, your opponent is bringing glass cannons, so you're going to take heavy losses anyways, so why not build your list to punch them in the nose even harder if you get the first turn? Plus, tournaments are time limited, and ITC tournaments especially have been built so that you are rewarded for tabling your opponent as quickly as possible, since tabling your opponent meant you scored maximum victory points for every remaining turn, and if you wanted to win the tournament you needed maximum victory points. (I don't know if ITC rules are still like this, as I haven't played any ITC 9th edition Tournaments.) Hordes and tanky armies couldn't win tournaments, because tanking meant slowplay, and slowplay meant not getting all your secondary objectives.

The only way to completely prevent units dealing mass amounts of damage very quickly is to either remove glass cannon units from the game entirely, or to buff durability to the point where it overwhelms the glass cannons. However, buffing durability can quickly lead to the opposite problem which we saw in 7th edition - units that are so durable that they're effectively not worth attacking at all. (And in some cases, immortal, as with the 2++ rerolleable invuln horde that Tzeentch could put out, or Iron Hands Smashfether with 2+3++ rerollable 2++ feel no pain.) (Early 8th edition also had this problem, with conscripts being so cheap for their staying power that you could just spam the board with them and your opponent couldn't do anything to kill them.)

GW could definitely do a better job at this, but it's also not nearly as simple as you suggest. I also think GW has decided that 'killing things' is more fun than 'not killing things', and so have decided that if they're going to have an inevitable skew in the results, they may as well skew the results towards damage.

Killing things would be easier if there were less dice rolled across fewer dice roll steps.

2-roll-resolutions are fine. The rest imo is clutter.

I wish we had 2-roll resolution, with maybe a 3rd for special rules.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
maybe a 3rd for special rules.

SOMEBODY GET THIS HOTHEAD OUTTA HERE

Waaaghpower wrote:

GW could definitely do a better job at this, but it's also not nearly as simple as you suggest. I also think GW has decided that 'killing things' is more fun than 'not killing things', and so have decided that if they're going to have an inevitable skew in the results, they may as well skew the results towards damage.

This is a long post- but I disagree on how you are defining tournament armies. I don't think they do take units which are "highly efficient at dealing damage - and damn the durability."
To my mind modern Competitive lists combine damage with relatively good resilience. Custodes for instance can hardly be considered a pushover. I don't think Crusher Stampede or Tau are especially Glasscannon either. What makes them potent is not only their incredible damage output, but also that you can push the defensive stats up to give you a chance of weather some firepower (while mitigating what you can through movement etc). Or, for more MSU toolbox style lists, each individual component isn't worth that much, and you trust terrain will keep things safe (although with the amount of ignoring LOS shooting in Tau lists, that is getting harder) while you exchange up.

As for the comparison. I see your point on the Marine with a melta versus the Guardsman with a melta. But this is still a function of how much glass you put in your rules.
If we ignore the rule of 3, and everyone was running massed Devastators - then yeah, I can see why the game would be incredibly lethal. But as said, they aren't - either in competitive games, or usually in casual ones. The issue is that random troop A with chapter tactic B using faction special rule C next to character with relic D using stratagems E and F = statistical expectation of high damage/points against random troop G. This isn't about shooting a tank with an anti-tank weapon. Its about regular dudes with rifles or axes expecting to annihilate other regular dudes with rifles or axes.

Its the fact that if you put two armies about 12" from each other on planet bowling ball, the player going first would most likely utterly destroy the other on turn 1.

And because their damage is partly a function of all those elements - A, B, C, D, E and F - I think stripping things back wouldn't be all that difficult.

For example - no more rerolls to hit. No more rerolls to wound. Nothing stops you getting lucky - and in some games you will. But it would happen a lot less often, and this would reduce the number of blowouts (or the degree to which the game is about playing cat and mouse with terrain). Tone down stratagems (which GW seems to be going two steps forward, three steps back on). Don't throw out things like "yeah, everything gets +1 AP for some turns cos we need a purity 9th edition bonus" as if this is a token increase in output, rather than statistically being a major one vs many factions. Hits can stop exploding into multiple hits, or dealing additional mortal wounds etc etc.

Whether players would like this or not is debatable. After all it increases the impact of a "good" shooting phase if this is unusual - and makes it more probable you'll have a horrible one where nothing works. Good players would be more likely to crash out of tournaments early due to dice. I think in 8th playing against massed Plaguebearers that just absorbed all your attacks wasn't very fun. But just because stacked defensive bonuses can be an issue doesn't change the above. You wouldn't need to stack minuses to hit, minuses to damage, invuls and FNPs etc to being vaguely survivable if all those offensive buffs above were not there.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
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.......

*Cries in Imperial Guard...

Well the thing is, the way GW writes the rules, there always going to be book which are empowered with books which are writen with this quarter or half year of power abilities, and those books will do good. If on top of that they can play soliter, like have secondaries they score no matter what,mass ignore LoS, be able to ignore melee or shoting, those armies will rise to the top. And then there is points. If points are, on top of all that, writen by a person who wanted to create a specific army list we end up with something like liquifire DE lists, 5NDKs, crusher stampede, suit spam tau lists etc.

At best what one can do is to have 4-5 armies with most models bought for each one and hope that in a given edition one of those armies ends up being on top. And you just play the fun lists, and those that have bad rules and are unfun to play sit in the box and wait for next edition.

Of course this does create a slight problem for new players, who may not be able to start playing the game by buying 4-5 armies with 3000pts each. But most w40k players seem to be dudes in their 30s or late 20s anyway, so maybe GW thinks it is less of a problem. The "noobs" can buy in to their expensive patrol box+expansion to it, get burned or get lucky and play a few months. As in the end it does not matter, as long as they put down the initial money investment.

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.

there is not really restricted information but the problem with 9th is that a lot of power and especially feel bad gotcha moments don't come from the armylist, but from stratagems.

If you don't know specific armies have specific but important stratagems you get screwed and you can't really ask for information about something you don't know exists.

If you don't know about Custodes Tanglefoot you don't know to ask if they have a way to reduce your charge distance.
If you don't know about GSC you won't know to check if your opponent can't make a unit standing completely in the open (almost) untargetable outside of 12".

That is where the frustration from other players comes from. Back in ye old day all you had to worry about was a stat profile for a unit and maybe 1 or 2 special rules. You could meet an army for the first time and by just checking their unit/weapon profiles have a general idea of what to look out for. Nowadays so much power is 'hidden' in (sub) faction traits, relics, warlord traits and stratagems that its a lot lot more difficult for a 'casual' player to know what to expect from his opponent.

 Ordana wrote:

. . .
That is where the frustration from other players comes from. Back in ye old day all you had to worry about was a stat profile for a unit and maybe 1 or 2 special rules. You could meet an army for the first time and by just checking their unit/weapon profiles have a general idea of what to look out for. Nowadays so much power is 'hidden' in (sub) faction traits, relics, warlord traits and stratagems that its a lot lot more difficult for a 'casual' player to know what to expect from his opponent.

^+1 Upvote for this. Most unit capabilities were extremely navigable back in the day, and the few exceptions were easy to remember.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

. . .
That is where the frustration from other players comes from. Back in ye old day all you had to worry about was a stat profile for a unit and maybe 1 or 2 special rules. You could meet an army for the first time and by just checking their unit/weapon profiles have a general idea of what to look out for. Nowadays so much power is 'hidden' in (sub) faction traits, relics, warlord traits and stratagems that its a lot lot more difficult for a 'casual' player to know what to expect from his opponent.

^+1 Upvote for this. Most unit capabilities were extremely navigable back in the day, and the few exceptions were easy to remember.

It definitely feels like an unexpected side effect of the bespoke rules approach.

Karol wrote:


At best what one can do is to have 4-5 armies with most models bought for each one and hope that in a given edition one of those armies ends up being on top. And you just play the fun lists, and those that have bad rules and are unfun to play sit in the box and wait for next edition.

I definitely agree on the multiple armies. I prefer to have many 25PL Crusades going at the same time; these forces can play as individual forces in small games, but they can combine with other 25PL forces for larger battles. This is more versatile than having ONE BIG ARMY. And everything about 9th ed's design, from the detachment system, to game size to crusade, is designed to support this approach.

The fact that the 2k Matched format is most popular gets in the way of this approach. When I just read the BRB, it is absolutely crystal clear to me that the designers wanted people to learn the game in stages- playing open BEFORE trying to figure out things like points, detachments, terrain rules etc. It's equally clear to me that the designers wanted a system where you could start playing with just a few units. and that your army should grow as you paint and play.

Karol wrote:

Of course this does create a slight problem for new players, who may not be able to start playing the game by buying 4-5 armies with 3000pts each. But most w40k players seem to be dudes in their 30s or late 20s anyway, so maybe GW thinks it is less of a problem. The "noobs" can buy in to their expensive patrol box+expansion to it, get burned or get lucky and play a few months. As in the end it does not matter, as long as they put down the initial money investment.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. I get that you may be in an environment where you don't have a lot of control over the types of game that you get to play, but the 2k Matched format is such a tiny piece of what the edition is that those who never get to break that paradigm really don't have any sense about what the game as a whole was designed to do.

That the pick-up game mentality sees full blown 2k optimized armies as the starting point is the great tragedy of 9th. I feel that by the time you arrive at a 2k Optimized army, you've already missed out on so much of what the designers put into this game. Working with multiple 25PL sized forces gives you an opportunity to think about how you want to grow your army- it prevents you from getting stuck with a 2k point force that has a play style that you end up discovering you don't like. And since some of those 25PL forces can combine into larger armies, you are actually working on building armies of multiple scales at the same time. So for example, if I buy a new model for a 25PL Coven Crusade, that is also making my "Drukhari" army stronger.

I know that to some Dakkanaughts, saying stuff like this often sounds to them like I'm telling them they play wrong, or that I'm trying to tell them how to play. It's certainly not my intention to do that, but I see how it might come across that way. But I literally cannot read the BRB and not see this design philosophy expressed on every page, despite the "But it's game night at the FLGS, so bring your best 2k list or GTFO" mentality that seems to dominate the forums, the public play spaces and the zeitgeist of the player base.

Tyel wrote:

This is a long post- but I disagree on how you are defining tournament armies. I don't think they do take units which are "highly efficient at dealing damage - and damn the durability."
To my mind modern Competitive lists combine damage with relatively good resilience. Custodes for instance can hardly be considered a pushover. I don't think Crusher Stampede or Tau are especially Glasscannon either. What makes them potent is not only their incredible damage output, but also that you can push the defensive stats up to give you a chance of weather some firepower (while mitigating what you can through movement etc). Or, for more MSU toolbox style lists, each individual component isn't worth that much, and you trust terrain will keep things safe (although with the amount of ignoring LOS shooting in Tau lists, that is getting harder) while you exchange up.

Fair enough, I was oversimplifying and also relying on my memory of 8th edition tournaments. You're right - it's not that every unit on the board is made of paper, but I think it is fair to say that the armies that are doing well durability-wise are doing so without needing to invest a lot of points just into their durability.
Either they have mobility and map control, giving them the ability to move through LoS blocking cover with (relative) safety, which also increases DPS by getting the weapons where they need to go,

Or they have saturation, denying enemies good ways to use their weapons. Custodes are a good example of this - everything in their army has a similar profile that falls into a narrow niche. The most points-efficient weapons are going to be D3 with S5-7 and 2-3 AP... which is a pretty narrow cross section of weaponry. D2 is suboptimal, but is the most common for anti-heavy-infantry shots in that strength range, most weapons with higher strength are going to do so much damage that it's wasted on overkill, (IE firing a Lascannon into an infantry squad,) and they have a stratagem to make their most valuable unit resistant to the kind of fire that might be most threatening. And meanwhile, lasguns and bolters and true anti-tank guns are all either dealing minimal damage or exceedingly overpriced for the wounds they're putting out. (And if you show up to a tournament with a list that's exclusively built to put the hurt on Custodes... you're going to get kicked up and down the board by armies that aren't custodes, since most other armies don't spam the board with 3W T5 2+4++ models.) Either way, they're not paying for durability, they're getting an advantage by rendering half their enemy's shots useless.

As for the comparison. I see your point on the Marine with a melta versus the Guardsman with a melta. But this is still a function of how much glass you put in your rules.
If we ignore the rule of 3, and everyone was running massed Devastators - then yeah, I can see why the game would be incredibly lethal. But as said, they aren't - either in competitive games, or usually in casual ones. The issue is that random troop A with chapter tactic B using faction special rule C next to character with relic D using stratagems E and F = statistical expectation of high damage/points against random troop G. This isn't about shooting a tank with an anti-tank weapon. Its about regular dudes with rifles or axes expecting to annihilate other regular dudes with rifles or axes.

Its the fact that if you put two armies about 12" from each other on planet bowling ball, the player going first would most likely utterly destroy the other on turn 1.

I don't think Devastators are necessarily an ideal choice for comparing high DPS, since Devastators aren't necessarily the option in the Space Marine codex that brings the best high-efficiency damage. (Though, it's worth mentioning that Primaris units are all a sort of Devestator squad, since they all take the same high powered weapon.)

That said, even assuming units with all the buffs, generally there are plenty of units in 40k that don't deal the sorts of damage you're talking about. Five tactical Marines with Imperial Fists, a captain to buff them, and doctrine to improve their rapid fire AP, are still only going to put about two wounds on another squad of tactical marines. Not every unit in the game is able to tear apart its rivals - but options that *aren't* capable of such are seen as weak and not taken in tournament lists.

And because their damage is partly a function of all those elements - A, B, C, D, E and F - I think stripping things back wouldn't be all that difficult.

For example - no more rerolls to hit. No more rerolls to wound. Nothing stops you getting lucky - and in some games you will. But it would happen a lot less often, and this would reduce the number of blowouts (or the degree to which the game is about playing cat and mouse with terrain). Tone down stratagems (which GW seems to be going two steps forward, three steps back on). Don't throw out things like "yeah, everything gets +1 AP for some turns cos we need a purity 9th edition bonus" as if this is a token increase in output, rather than statistically being a major one vs many factions. Hits can stop exploding into multiple hits, or dealing additional mortal wounds etc etc.

I agree that many of the buffs could be toned down, but I am curious what you would suggest Captains, Lieutenants, etc., could be used for if they can't give buffs anymore. In older editions, HQ units were primarily just used as overpowered beatsticks, rolling around in deathstars to unload their attacks on whoever they could get close to. I don't really want to go back to that.
Leadership buffs are useless on most armies, and flat bonuses to hit or wound quickly become redundant, as well as being harder to scale - rerolls of 1s is less powerful than a flat +1 to hit for any ballistic skill except 2+, where a +1 to hit becomes useless anyways.

Also, at least in theory, damage buffs and auras increase tactical play. You have to be more careful about model placement and movement when you're trying to keep all your buffs intact. If you drop all buffs, you drop many layers of potential tactical play. I don't think the issue is the presence of these buffs, or even that they can be stacked, but rather that certain comboes are just too cheap for how much utility they offer.

Waaaghpower wrote:
I agree that many of the buffs could be toned down, but I am curious what you would suggest Captains, Lieutenants, etc., could be used for if they can't give buffs anymore. In older editions, HQ units were primarily just used as overpowered beatsticks, rolling around in deathstars to unload their attacks on whoever they could get close to. I don't really want to go back to that.

In Age of Sigmar, characters give you access to command abilities (stratagems) associated with that character and are needed in order to use command abilities on nearby units. It considerably reduces the number of stratagems, makes the characters you choose to take more impactful to how your army functions, and makes characters feel like they're commanding, inspiring, or leading troops rather than either just acting as beatsticks or boringly passive damage bonuses.

 Jidmah wrote:
Putting deep strike in the core rules would do absolutely nothing to reduce complexity.

Calling all those rules deep strike and giving them the exact same wording in every book... that would help, irrespective of whether they also put it into the core rules or not.

Same goes for all the the other totally-not-USR like FNP, scout, infiltrate, bodyguard, melta, get's hot...

Oh, and while you are at it, keyword "fights first" and "fights last". MtG solved that very problem over two decades ago FFS.

Except if they were in rulebook they would be all the same. Bespoke everywhere just ensures they will not be same universally all the time. That's the point of universal rules. Be consistent. Bespoke is by definition meant to be non-universal. Non-consistent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
I agree that many of the buffs could be toned down, but I am curious what you would suggest Captains, Lieutenants, etc., could be used for if they can't give buffs anymore. In older editions, HQ units were primarily just used as overpowered beatsticks, rolling around in deathstars to unload their attacks on whoever they could get close to. I don't really want to go back to that.

In Age of Sigmar, characters give you access to command abilities (stratagems) associated with that character and are needed in order to use command abilities on nearby units. It considerably reduces the number of stratagems, makes the characters you choose to take more impactful to how your army functions, and makes characters feel like they're commanding, inspiring, or leading troops rather than either just acting as beatsticks or boringly passive damage bonuses.

That was old edition. Those CA's are being removed in the new books replaced by abilities, often targeted, which might be once per game.

Not sure is there even one actual command ability on characters in new books.

In older editions, HQ units were primarily just used as overpowered beatsticks, rolling around in deathstars to unload their attacks on whoever they could get close to. I don't really want to go back to that.

As somebody who still plays the older editions, I am going to call BS on that one.

Yes captains/chapter masters could be beat sticks but the big thing they gave your army was table wide or unit LD buffs for you know being a leader.

The true beat sticks are chaplains attached to a good assault unit. the entire point of them as an HQ is to beat things in melee

My favorite is always the master of the forge. a true ranged support HQ. he keeps your units protected or repaired and he also can bring along a big cannon as well as some personal fire support servitors.

Librarians are very situational depending on the powers you choose. they are not exceptionally good in CC but have toys like the force weapon in a pinch. conversely, they can be a transport, fire support or unit buffing HQ. As a salamander's player my favorite libby loadout is gate (24" instant deep strike for the character and the unit he is with) and the avenger (S5/ap3 psychic flamethrower).

Kind of like an expensive rhino that goes really fast and carries a heavy weapon which is not a heavy weapon, that also ignores cover.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

. . .
That is where the frustration from other players comes from. Back in ye old day all you had to worry about was a stat profile for a unit and maybe 1 or 2 special rules. You could meet an army for the first time and by just checking their unit/weapon profiles have a general idea of what to look out for. Nowadays so much power is 'hidden' in (sub) faction traits, relics, warlord traits and stratagems that its a lot lot more difficult for a 'casual' player to know what to expect from his opponent.

^+1 Upvote for this. Most unit capabilities were extremely navigable back in the day, and the few exceptions were easy to remember.

It definitely feels like an unexpected side effect of the bespoke rules approach.

Unexpected?

 jeff white wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

. . .
That is where the frustration from other players comes from. Back in ye old day all you had to worry about was a stat profile for a unit and maybe 1 or 2 special rules. You could meet an army for the first time and by just checking their unit/weapon profiles have a general idea of what to look out for. Nowadays so much power is 'hidden' in (sub) faction traits, relics, warlord traits and stratagems that its a lot lot more difficult for a 'casual' player to know what to expect from his opponent.

^+1 Upvote for this. Most unit capabilities were extremely navigable back in the day, and the few exceptions were easy to remember.

It definitely feels like an unexpected side effect of the bespoke rules approach.

Unexpected?

Do you really think the GW rules team has the foresight to predict how bloated the game would become by lumping more and more rules on it? Or do you think they just write rules with no consideration for how things will interact or how pointlessly convoluted everything will become?

I don't think they even have hindsight honestly. They have systems in place to improve the game but never leverage them. Look at the Core rule. Totally unnecessary if they put even the slightest bit of thought into the system, instead Cruddace just welded an extra lever onto the shambling mechanical mess and said "this one randomly turns off some of its legs, that should stop it from breaking stuff when it moves" and patted himself on the back.

 Sim-Life wrote:
I don't think they even have hindsight honestly. They have systems in place to improve the game but never leverage them. Look at the Core rule. Totally unnecessary if they put even the slightest bit of thought into the system, instead Cruddace just welded an extra lever onto the shambling mechanical mess and said "this one randomly turns off some of its legs, that should stop it from breaking stuff when it moves" and patted himself on the back.

Cruddace just seems like a bad influence honestly.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Do you really think the GW rules team has the foresight to predict how bloated the game would become by lumping more and more rules on it? Or do you think they just write rules with no consideration for how things will interact or how pointlessly convoluted everything will become?

Both.

Not learning from your mistakes combined with having the same guys in charge for decades is generally not a good combination.

True. I mean what arguments could anyone bring forth in favour of a change. The people in charge will always say, we are growing, we are cutting costs, we are selling more and more each year. why change anything about a formula that works.

Yeah, any argument would need an entire "and this will increase profits by X%".

Better rules would attract more players. Pretty much everyone I know majorly into non-40k games are "40k refugees".

Although you need to contrast that with lessened sales from the churn and burn that the player base puts up with.

Net negative all around then.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Better rules would attract more players. Pretty much everyone I know majorly into non-40k games are "40k refugees".

Although you need to contrast that with lessened sales from the churn and burn that the player base puts up with.

Net negative all around then.

Agree fully. Locally WHC rose when 40k was in a slump, and more recently One Page Rules has caught on though I wants to gripe a bit that thhe reasons it caught on (shorter games and no stratagems mainly) were things I have tried to help my local group fix over a year ago but they are so fixated on 2k GT being the "correct" way to play and even complaining that narrative wasn't "balanced" (it's literally about telling a good story, balance it something you should work with your opponent to create an maintain!) that it took a whole seperate game system to get them to finally adopt changes I mentiomed we could make over a year ago.

Yes it still frustrates me that people can be that regimented in how they approach the game.

Anyways, my rant about my local meta aside, 40k does need streamlined rules. I won't say simplier because 40k used to get compared to checkers by members of the WFB community (who compared their game to chess) and people on this site claim 40k is too "simple". The rules definitely need streamlining though as we have too many layers thst you have too parse through and keep track of actively and it slows the game down. I still stand by the current stratagem system often ends up being less like playing with a small hand of cards you can use creatively and more like playing from an entite deck you have to regularly flip through to check if you have the appropriate counter-play option available for every move your opponent makes.

And I think I see where some of this is coming from. The 40k team seems to have been trying to reward player choice for a while now by creating rules that reward lore friendly army builds and playstyle. This is often done with faction bonuses and between that and the way durability is layered in the game it feels like the push is to also create a mechanic incentive for greater internal list diversity by telling players that no single weapon is going to work against every threat so they need a toolbox of options to better allow them to fight as many different foes as possible, while also throwing a few rock, paper, scissors mechanics in likely to ensure that everyone has at least one hard counter match up for competetive so steamrolling every other faction is less prevelant there.

And I won't claim they nailed it, just that, to me, this is what it looks like they are trying to do. And iy's kind of piling up in a way that has a lot of people vocal about how much they don't like hoe the game plays.

And I get that GW is trying to use restrictions less than they used to because players want a wide array of options, plus it's good for the company if more people can buy a wider array of units, but if they push is towards a highlander style of list design where spam is discouraged, then restrictions should definitely come back. Likewise, if promoting fluff based army builds is a goal then maybe the incentive shouldn't be a large amount of buff and super doctrine like effects but better use of the core keyword with units that fit the particular theme gain core (and all units that aren't troops don't innately have it).

I know these changes don't work in 9th without a massive edition reset, but they are changes that they could use in 10th that would do a lot to flatten the buff stacking nonsense that has made the game unfun for so many people.

 aphyon wrote:

In older editions, HQ units were primarily just used as overpowered beatsticks, rolling around in deathstars to unload their attacks on whoever they could get close to. I don't really want to go back to that.

As somebody who still plays the older editions, I am going to call BS on that one.

Yes captains/chapter masters could be beat sticks but the big thing they gave your army was table wide or unit LD buffs for you know being a leader.

Yeah, LD buffs, the thing that over half the armies in the game didn't care about. Here I'm defining "Beat stick" as any character whose primary purpose was damage output - for simplicity. So a Chapter Master with a Thunder Hammer is a beatstick, but so is a Big Mek with a Shokk Attack Gun.

Something like a Chaplain, meanwhile, is deadly in combat but was taken primarily to buff his unit, so I'm counting that as 'Support'. Psykers, who provided both buffs and damage, fall into a weird middle ground.

That said, the majority of HQs I played against were either beatsticks, support characters attached to a deathstar to buff to beatstick, or psykers spamming Prescience.

The true beat sticks are chaplains attached to a good assault unit. the entire point of them as an HQ is to beat things in melee

That was never true. Chaplains were decent in melee but served to buff their unit as much as to provide damage themselves. Unless you're defining "Beatstick" as "Anyone who provides a melee buff"... but I've never heard the term used that way.

Whether we're talking about the various flavors of Smashfather beatsticks you could build in the five main Marine codices, Sisters with their beatstick canonness, CSM and Daemons with flying circuses, beatstick lords, and beatstick greater daemons, Orks with Beatstick Warbosses, Tyranids with their own flying circuses, Tau spamming their crisis suit HQs, nobody in my area played Eldar so I don't know much about what they had. Even when these units had some level of buffing ability, (for example, the Warboss giving a Waaagh!,) it was secondary to their use as a source of dps.

But yeah. I feel perfectly confident saying that most HQ choices, for the majority of armies, were taken for use as beatsticks when in tournament play.

The one thing I'm definitely not missing is the USRs in which only one model having one was enough to buff the entire unit.

I would like if (a trimmed) implementation of USRs came back, but Independent Character needs to stay dead.

Honestly I'd argue IC should come back as a rule to eliminate bodyguard jank, but they lose the character keyword while inside a unit and all buffs are auras from their model specifically.