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 catbarf wrote:


My wife lost interest in 40K entirely on account of how much you need to remember. Unit stats are bad enough but at least you can reference those as needed; having to remember all her stratagems and when they're relevant is another matter entirely.

The people who really do struggle to keep up with the avalanche of raw numerical and syntactical data that 40K dumps on them aren't posting to DakkaDakka and they probably aren't playing 40K at all.

That happens to a lot of people. When they go through the need multiple books to play, good army starts at over 800$. When you start explaing the fight phase, they just drop out, specially when you start going in to how other armies can modify it. Seen a 30+ year old dude go through 1000pts game and an explanation what harlis do in engagment phase and he just packed his models and went home. the new rule set is a good rule set tournament players, who like complexity, and who can levarage the ability to deal with it over other players. But I ain't mad about this one peculiar thing from GW design team. They get info from two sources, wierd in house players, who play the game like never I have ever seen play it and playtesters who are tournament players. So they end up like gaming companies, that make games based on the info they get from rank one pvpers and race for world 1st players, and soon they start making games not for the majority of players but for a super small minority.

 catbarf wrote:


My wife lost interest in 40K entirely on account of how much you need to remember. Unit stats are bad enough but at least you can reference those as needed; having to remember all her stratagems and when they're relevant is another matter entirely.

The people who really do struggle to keep up with the avalanche of raw numerical and syntactical data that 40K dumps on them aren't posting to DakkaDakka and they probably aren't playing 40K at all.

had the same thing happen to me, my SO loves the concept but actually playing the game is too taxing. Introduced her to OnePageRules and now we're playing weekly games at her request.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

Don't the A from the scything talons stack? Because nothing in the codex doesn't say they don't and each time GW decided that a pair of +1A weapons don't give +2 it had to be errated, so a fex running around with maxed out talons should have more attacks then just 6.

yeah, i mentionned it in one of my following comments (i forgot talons gave extra attacks since i dont play the faction and i think i played against it like 3 times)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

Seen a 30+ year old dude go through 1000pts game and an explanation what harlis do in engagment phase and he just packed his models and went home.

i agree with your overall statement but what makes harlequins particularly complex in combat? theyre pretty straightforward no?

 Insectum7 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Firstborn (true) Chaplains can have Powerfists.

Primaris Chaplains have the Pimp Cane Crozius. I consider that more important.

Well it better be good because ITS ALL THEY CAN GET.

Shame it doesn't have different stats to represent how pimping he is. Come on GW I know you're reading this!

It only gets a buff during the Canitcle of "Where's my money?"

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

i agree with your overall statement but what makes harlequins particularly complex in combat? theyre pretty straightforward no?

now I was just seeing the game from the side, as I was playing a table further, at our store. The guy had a DG army of the you should not play with it kind. PMs & rhinos and the harlis player devastated his tanks turn one. he set up in the middle with a block of PMs and 2 rhinos. The harlis charged the rhinos and then heroiced in to his squads. And then the eldar player started to explain to him how his dudes bounce from the rhinos in to the PMs in to the DG. There was multiple rules mentioned, multiple stratagems used with the obligatory, point at part of the codex saying , see I can do that, only to flip to another rule to explain why he can do something else. Even if the eldar dude cheated I don't think it would have mattered. Mind you I have seen people leave the game turn 1-2. The very same day I got, more or less tabled, by tau end of his turn 2, start of my 2ed turn. But there is a difference between losing, but still staying at the store to play one more game or chatting with people. I don't do the second, but I know other people do. This dude just said, something kin to aha, asked how much dmg the eldar will do to him next turn. Got the anwser . I will probably table you. So he paid for the game, packed his stuff and went home. That was one not happy about the game guy, if I ever saw one. And he is twice my age.

Karol wrote:

They get info from two sources, wierd in house players, who play the game like never I have ever seen play it and playtesters who are tournament players. So they end up like gaming companies, that make games based on the info they get from rank one pvpers and race for world 1st players, and soon they start making games not for the majority of players but for a super small minority.

This is really observant and probably going to fly under the radar for this thread.

That happens to a lot of people. When they go through the need multiple books to play, good army starts at over 800$. When you start explaing the fight phase, they just drop out, specially when you start going in to how other armies can modify it. Seen a 30+ year old dude go through 1000pts game and an explanation what harlis do in engagment phase and he just packed his models and went home.

+1

This is why our group all went back to playing 5th ed and are having fun doing so. standardized rules across the entire game in the form of comparatively few (22) USRs, fixed rules for unit movement by type etc... doesn't leave us digging through 3 or 5 supplemental books to find out what to do.

If i want that kind of detail/crunch in a game i will play one with a much lower model count like classic battletech with 4-5 minis, or infinity with an average of one squad of 10, or even warmachine where we usually have around 20 models on average or sometimes less. with all these games every bit of info you need to play the units are right on the unit data sheet. so even there there is no digging needed for rules clarifications.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Karol wrote:

They get info from two sources, wierd in house players, who play the game like never I have ever seen play it and playtesters who are tournament players. So they end up like gaming companies, that make games based on the info they get from rank one pvpers and race for world 1st players, and soon they start making games not for the majority of players but for a super small minority.

This is really observant and probably going to fly under the radar for this thread.

I mean you gotta balance for the top but I'm guessing that these playtesters are feeding GW biased info, given what happened with Custodes.

Hecaton wrote:
I mean you gotta balance for the top but I'm guessing that these playtesters are feeding GW biased info, given what happened with Custodes.

I thought we had some (possibly false) claims on this?

Ultimately if playtesters were told to play Custodes, Tau, GSC, CWE & Harlequins and now Tyranids together - then things are probably not a million miles away. (I mean GSC probably drew the short straw of that round but... its not dreadful exactly). CSM might be in the same pool.

But the idea these books were written with the same mentality as say Necrons is clearly nonsense.

Karol wrote:

They get info from two sources, wierd in house players, who play the game like never I have ever seen play it and playtesters who are tournament players. So they end up like gaming companies, that make games based on the info they get from rank one pvpers and race for world 1st players, and soon they start making games not for the majority of players but for a super small minority.

Nope.

cvtuttle wrote:I run The Independent Characters Podcast - arguably one of the largest Podcasts for Warhammer 40k out there. Our focus is playing the game in a variety of ways, but in particular we focus on narrative and campaign play. As a result I received an invite and put together a team of play testers now called The Infinity Circuit (check the front of your codex and other books in the credits page).

Our focus for play testing is different that the folks from The Mournival (the matched play testers - again, check the opening pages of your codexes). We focus on ensuring the rules represent the flavor of the lore. Meaning - we give feedback to make sure that units that are described one way - feel like they play that way on the table.

Games Workshop isn't really accepting play testers who are volunteering. They are looking for folks who are heavily invested in the game, the lore, and the community and then tapping them as they see fit. I'll be honest, it's not a lot of fun. It's actually quite a bit of work and we find ourselves pushing to find time to play test before deadlines.

GW rewrites rules and stats in the middle of receiving feedback from competitive playtesters and sometimes starts playtesting after they start printing. It's a flustercluck.

But even then, a unit FEELING like it plays right is very vauge and very subjective.

 vict0988 wrote:

GW rewrites rules and stats in the middle of receiving feedback from competitive playtesters and sometimes starts playtesting after they start printing. It's a flustercluck.

As I said wierd ways practically no one plays and tournament play. GW is a game where even the simplest design questions can not be awsered, and probably never will. But it is clear that you have a book like DE or Custodes or even the pre nerf GK , someone cleary fist build a list, in case of some books one list per entire codex, and the work on it was done. DE were so perfect in how they fitted in to 2000pts , even regarding secondaries they could take, that there is no way it was writen like that at random. There is clearly armies that the studio, or someone at the studio likes to play, and there for has a vision and it should play, and then there is armies where they just add the new models or model, and are done with it. Without any indepth vision on how it should work, specially post nerfs. DE were write so well, same way Inari were, that by the time the nerfs to them came, people have already moved to a different style of build and the nerfs not only didn't effect them, but actually buffed them back again to spot number 1.

 Sim-Life wrote:
But even then, a unit FEELING like it plays right is very vauge and very subjective.

And strangely only comes from people already 'very invested' in the game. Ie, likely to agree with GW. Even if they're not, it sounds very conflict-of-interest.

It is hard to not be invested in to w40k when an regular army cots 800$ or more. When something costs two of your parents monthly salaries, it becomes a very serious thing, you feel very invested in. And any nerfs to how the army works or plays is often expiriance as a personal attack from GW on the person who bought the army.

I think that Carl Tuttle thinks that he is more invested than most, and if anyone has ever listened to his pov on his Indy characters podcast, it is pretty clear where his sentiments lie… I recall him often simply discounting any voices critical of GW’s corporate direction. He is a company man, and a cop or similar iirc so an authority with authority and a fan thereof. Definitely, Voss got this one dead right.

Yeeehhh.....I checked, and both "The Mournival" and the "Infinity Circuit" are in the credits for the Imperial Armour Compendium. And if the "Infinity Circuit" thinks that the rules for the Chaos units in there represent the "flavor of the lore" for Chaos, then they're probably a bunch of Imperial/Xenos players. They're just copy-pastes of the loyalist units in the same book, with "Chaos" and "Hellforged" written here and there. Where's my Machine Malifica? Where's my Legacies of Ruin? Where's my Butcher Cannons?

 jeff white wrote:
I think that Carl Tuttle thinks that he is more invested than most, and if anyone has ever listened to his pov on his Indy characters podcast, it is pretty clear where his sentiments lie… I recall him often simply discounting any voices critical of GW’s corporate direction. He is a company man, and a cop or similar iirc so an authority with authority and a fan thereof. Definitely, Voss got this one dead right.

Who is he exactly? Is he a playtester? Not the same as the Jesus freak, I'm sure...

I remember play-testing for Fantasy Flight Games, mostly with their Deathwatch product line, but also lots of others.

Our feedback had them shelve entire book sections and rethink entire products. Hell they even asked me once where I think the product line should go moving forward. I doubt anything the GW play-testers have done comes even close to that.

Thread has possibly run its course - but I thought I'd try and resurrect it rather than starting "what now 2: electric voidweaver".

I think one of the reasons GW get things wrong, is that even what are arguably the best, most invested players seem oblivious to what will be good. I.E 3 weeks or so ago we had this article on Eldar: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-codex-aeldari-competitive-roundtable/

And the collective view on the book seemed to be "quite toned down really, bordering on nothing to see here". From the position today though CWE+Harlequins seem to clearly be Custodes/Tau level, if not superior. We had some people here mention that Harlequins looked busted - see Salt Donkey in this thread in late February:

Salt donkey wrote:
However, Harlequins look absurd. Light in particular gives me custodes vibes with their needing 4+ to be hit at over 12 inches away (which can be 6 inches and allow no re-rolls with certain buffs). All their units also got cheaper and better as well. And the only real nerfs they got where losing charges after double move power and only 2 fusion pistols per squad. I bet they compete better than craftworlds with custodes and Tau. Additionally, I also think they make drukhari viable again due being a “free” add.

and so it would seem to have proven. I think 4 rounds into Adepticon and 7 of the undefeated 16 lists are from this book.

This isn't really to pick on the goonhammer guys. Calculating how power levels will interact is famously difficult across all game systems. Perhaps because its a very different skillset and way of thinking to just being really good at games. But it leaves me wondering how you get a more balanced 40k.

I'm not hooked in closely enough to Adepticon, but I'm not convinced the Craftworlds section is too good. They could be, but I'm not sure the data's there yet.

Harlequins on the other hand... I didn't think they'd dominate as they have, I figured the loss of fusion spam and S4 in melee would hurt more, but clearly I was wrong.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
I'm not hooked in closely enough to Adepticon, but I'm not convinced the Craftworlds section is too good. They could be, but I'm not sure the data's there yet.

Harlequins on the other hand... I didn't think they'd dominate as they have, I figured the loss of fusion spam and S4 in melee would hurt more, but clearly I was wrong.

voidweavers more than make up for fusion spam being gone. Theyre so hard to kill or little "fragile" boats.

Oh and you can't hide against a harlequins

Tyel wrote:
Thread has possibly run its course - but I thought I'd try and resurrect it rather than starting "what now 2: electric voidweaver".

I think one of the reasons GW get things wrong, is that even what are arguably the best, most invested players seem oblivious to what will be good. I.E 3 weeks or so ago we had this article on Eldar: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-codex-aeldari-competitive-roundtable/

And the collective view on the book seemed to be "quite toned down really, bordering on nothing to see here". From the position today though CWE+Harlequins seem to clearly be Custodes/Tau level, if not superior. We had some people here mention that Harlequins looked busted - see Salt Donkey in this thread in late February:

Salt donkey wrote:
However, Harlequins look absurd. Light in particular gives me custodes vibes with their needing 4+ to be hit at over 12 inches away (which can be 6 inches and allow no re-rolls with certain buffs). All their units also got cheaper and better as well. And the only real nerfs they got where losing charges after double move power and only 2 fusion pistols per squad. I bet they compete better than craftworlds with custodes and Tau. Additionally, I also think they make drukhari viable again due being a “free” add.

and so it would seem to have proven. I think 4 rounds into Adepticon and 7 of the undefeated 16 lists are from this book.

This isn't really to pick on the goonhammer guys. Calculating how power levels will interact is famously difficult across all game systems. Perhaps because its a very different skillset and way of thinking to just being really good at games. But it leaves me wondering how you get a more balanced 40k.

Yea I haven't bothered much since it's pretty clear this is going to be whack-a-mole for a while yet. By the time Nids are out and in the field for a couple weeks we'll almost be at the dataslate - perhaps Knights not being too far from that timeline as well.

Just....so many effin' books so fast.

I am very curious to hear people's experiences playing Harlies and what else makes them over the top. It is just the durability? Where are they pushing the most damage? I don't have the book and I haven't had the "opportunity" to play them yet.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
voidweavers more than make up for fusion spam being gone. Theyre so hard to kill or little "fragile" boats.

Oh and you can't hide against a harlequins

So it's that stupid haywire profile pushing all their damage? I felt my stomach drop when I saw that.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Yea I haven't bothered much since it's pretty clear this is going to be whack-a-mole for a while yet. By the time Nids are out and in the field for a couple weeks we'll almost be at the dataslate - perhaps Knights not being too far from that timeline as well.

Just....so many effin' books so fast.

I am very curious to hear people's experiences playing Harlies and what else makes them over the top. It is just the durability? Where are they pushing the most damage? I don't have the book and I haven't had the "opportunity" to play them yet.

its their mobility and durability mostly (and the fact everything is undercosted too). Voidweavers are absolutely insane long range firepower, troupes are so cheap that even trading 1 for 1 feels bad.

If they happen to play dark and you're on a melee-centric army, its pretty much non-interactive

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

its their mobility and durability mostly (and the fact everything is undercosted too). Voidweavers are absolutely insane long range firepower, troupes are so cheap that even trading 1 for 1 feels bad.

If they happen to play dark and you're on a melee-centric army, its pretty much non-interactive

Thanks for the insight. So now all we have to do is wait for GW to FAQ CORE into Troupes.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

its their mobility and durability mostly (and the fact everything is undercosted too). Voidweavers are absolutely insane long range firepower, troupes are so cheap that even trading 1 for 1 feels bad.

If they happen to play dark and you're on a melee-centric army, its pretty much non-interactive

Thanks for the insight. So now all we have to do is wait for GW to FAQ CORE into Troupes.

well most people play it with them having core otherwise the codex just doesnt function

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Yea I haven't bothered much since it's pretty clear this is going to be whack-a-mole for a while yet. By the time Nids are out and in the field for a couple weeks we'll almost be at the dataslate - perhaps Knights not being too far from that timeline as well.

Just....so many effin' books so fast.

I am very curious to hear people's experiences playing Harlies and what else makes them over the top. It is just the durability? Where are they pushing the most damage? I don't have the book and I haven't had the "opportunity" to play them yet.

Voidweavers push out insane levels of dmg against vehicles and elite infantry.
They have a 70pt character (Death Jester) who has effectively a 6 hit sniper rifle that ignores Look out Sir and is AP-2 2dmg Its also shuriken so if you roll a 6 to wound its AP-4
They have their shadowseers who for 100pts is a Psyker level 2 who will always use Mirror of Minds which averages 3mortal wounds a turn and with bad rolls can go up to 9.

Everything is mounted in transports or is a vehicle which means everything is -1 to hit, if that same shadowseer is out of his vehicle they are also -1 to wound. The entire army has a 4+ invuln save

And of course the #1 problem. They are Harlequins and therefore they don't have to follow "rules". Move, advance, shoot, charge, fall back from combat, repeat. Charge into combat, hit and then jump in a vehicle before getting hit back etc etc etc.

Honestly, its just an exercise in frustration to play against them because they have strats or rules that let them violate core rules on a regular basis.

Mirror Of Minds is capped at 6 MW, isn't it?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Mirror Of Minds is capped at 6 MW, isn't it?

Yes but it inflicts D3 first and then is capped at 6 from the rolls. Could be up for FAQ but I could see it going either way.

Note: Mirror of Minds does not average 3 wounds, and it also casts on a 7, so you should say "if it casts, it averages X wounds" where X is 2 (avg of d3) + 21/36 (likelihood of winning/tying the roll off). So if cast, Mirror of Minds averages ~2.6 MW.

...but given that it casts on a 7, I don't get how this is a boogieman at all.

ETA: Ugh I'm wrong and didn't account for the telescoping damage from multiple wins of the dice roll-off. It is actually a little more than 3 MW. I still don't get how that's that crazy degenerate when compared to smite though. If you're going to complain about OP stuff in that book, I don't think that's a great example.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Note: Mirror of Minds does not average 3 wounds, and it also casts on a 7, so you should say "if it casts, it averages X wounds" where X is 2 (avg of d3) + 21/36 (likelihood of winning/tying the roll off). So if cast, Mirror of Minds averages ~2.6 MW.

...but given that it casts on a 7, I don't get how this is a boogieman at all.

ETA: Ugh I'm wrong and didn't account for the telescoping damage from multiple wins of the dice roll-off. It is actually a little more than 3 MW. I still don't get how that's that crazy degenerate when compared to smite though. If you're going to complain about OP stuff in that book, I don't think that's a great example.

Why? because its 100pts for a Psyker lvl 2 who has a pistol, D3 Mortal wound grenade Launcher, 5 wounds, 4+ invuln and a host of special rules including an aura which gives -1 to wound to harlequins within 6' of him. ...which includes himself.

I can take a weirdboy for 70pts who gets a 6+ save, no ranged weapon and is significantly slower...and hes Psyker lvl 1. And no, the "Waaagh! Energy" rule does not give him Psyker 2 because ork infantry units are so terrible they never benefit from it.

As far as compared to smite...Smite casts on a 5 and does D3 mortal wounds. So i averages 2. And again, its a Psyker lvl 2 so it can do both