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Karol wrote:
GW or w40k will "die" when my generation is 30+, the old timers of today are gone, and suddenly GW finds out that there is too few w40k players to support the sales even if a starting army costs 4k$.

Dude I started over 30 years ago. It will be fine.

I think we need to differentiate between:

1. Staggered Codex release.
2. Staggered Codex development.

The former is totally fine and makes sense for having product to bring to market over a long term period.

The latter actively makes the game worse.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
It explains a lot of things, not the least of which is the general discourse on these boards.

You just flat out attacked everyone at the board as lead-eaters. How nice of you.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
GW or w40k will "die" when my generation is 30+, the old timers of today are gone, and suddenly GW finds out that there is too few w40k players to support the sales even if a starting army costs 4k$.

Dude I started over 30 years ago. It will be fine.

I am sure many people with many things over the ages thought so. But what I see is that, clearly the game is moving its focus from younger people to older people being the main consumers of the hobby. w40k is popular, but as an activity has more and more things to compete in the same price range. There seem to be fewer younger people playing, and the new players are not really new players, but people that played when they were teens and now returned to the game. Such a progression means that in 20+ years there will be fewer base w40k players to support the company, then there is now.

People said that 20+ years ago.

The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
People said that 20+ years ago.

The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.

Exactly. When I was a teen in 2001 or 2002, and deep into the hobby since a couple of years, I had the exact same feelings Karol have now. I though the game was focussing towards younger people back then.

40k will likely be much different in 2040, but I'm sure GW will still be around and healthy.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
People said that 20+ years ago.

The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.

I have seen pictures from games in stores in the 90s or early 2000s, they seemed to be full of people my age or younger. Stores don't look like that anymore. Adds, army construction, the basic entry army non of those things is build for someone who is 13-15y old. 2-3 squads, 1-2 vehicles and 1-2 heros is a game a teen can play. Starting with 9+ of anything is not. The focus on large kits, on nostalgia only someone playing 10 or even 20+ years ago, those are things that GW does. Which clearly point at the fact that they do seem to think their buyers are older. The complication in the game systems, not impossible to learn when you are a teen, but to be honest boring. Who wants to go through 4 multiple steps of overlaping rules that could have just been changed to unit X wounds on +2 and hits on +2 this turn.

And you can easily check it. Take older rules from older editions and ask someone who is my age or younger, if they would rather play those or something like 9th ed ad mecha.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think we need to differentiate between:

1. Staggered Codex release.
2. Staggered Codex development.

The former is totally fine and makes sense for having product to bring to market over a long term period.

The latter actively makes the game worse.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
It explains a lot of things, not the least of which is the general discourse on these boards.

You just flat out attacked everyone at the board as lead-eaters. How nice of you.

The problem is that developing and testing (because just writing and not testing won't change a thing) 24? separate codices at the same time before releasing them is just not practical for any company to do. If your only dealing with 4-5 armies you can do that but not with 20+.

Nor is there even a reason to assume it actually would change anything. They don't have 20 senior rules writers so its not going to be 20 codexes designed at the same time, they would be written 1-2 at a time just like now, so what actually does change by not releasing them? Do they stop getting new idea's and refining them over the course of writing and internal testing? If they are done do they go back and start over to update all the old books with old, unrefined, idea's before then releasing them after what? 3+ years of cooking?

No matter if you write them all before releasing or as you release, the fundamental problem is not when they are being written, but the lack of consistency. GW needs a solid baseline and formula that every codex derives from and keeps everything at a roughly equal level and actually stick to that foundation for an entire edition.

Even if you were to get 24 senior rules writers and wrote every codex at the exact same time you would get the same swings you do now as different writers do different things and solve questions in different ways.

What matters is the baseline, not the timeframe.

it is possible, and other companies have done it with less money and personal than GW

the main problem why GW cannot do it, is that they always introduce fundamental changes in the core rules, which makes any previous testing/design worthless

if 10th would use the same core rules as 9th, and you get a basic design sheet what the factions should be able to do, it would be no problem to have all factions written and tested on release, give out balance updates for the not released books to bring them in line and keep releasing

with 11th, you would have the balanced game and can do the new model release stuff to keep going


and it looks like that this was already the plan with 9th, but they made the mistake to change to new faction rules on release to bring them in line with the existing ones instead of updating the old ones
which screwed the whole thing over and the mid-edition design shift did the rest

Karol wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
People said that 20+ years ago.

The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.

I have seen pictures from games in stores in the 90s or early 2000s, they seemed to be full of people my age or younger. Stores don't look like that anymore. Adds, army construction, the basic entry army non of those things is build for someone who is 13-15y old. 2-3 squads, 1-2 vehicles and 1-2 heros is a game a teen can play. Starting with 9+ of anything is not. The focus on large kits, on nostalgia only someone playing 10 or even 20+ years ago, those are things that GW does. Which clearly point at the fact that they do seem to think their buyers are older. The complication in the game systems, not impossible to learn when you are a teen, but to be honest boring. Who wants to go through 4 multiple steps of overlaping rules that could have just been changed to unit X wounds on +2 and hits on +2 this turn.

And you can easily check it. Take older rules from older editions and ask someone who is my age or younger, if they would rather play those or something like 9th ed ad mecha.

All those kids bought units one at a time and played with what they had in their houses with friends. Magically you don't need 2000 points to play.

I think Killteam 2.0 is supposed to be the entry level game.

Removed. No, just no.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Removed. No, just no.

Literally who?

When I started the hobby at the age of 14 I had 20€ per month that I spent on the hobby. I would buy a blister for 10€ in one month, a Set with 24 plastic models (Lotr) for 20€ the next month and something for 30€ the month after that. By the age of 17 I had 3 pretty large Lotr armies ready to play.

Middle class Kids in Germany today get about 40-50€ per month (that's what my pupils say), even with GWs high prices they can do the same I did back then. One plastic Box per month will get you a playable army pretty fast.
The real problem are the expensive books in 40K, because once you finished your first army the edition has changed.

 Manchild 1984 wrote:
I think Killteam 2.0 is supposed to be the entry level game.

Nothing says "entry level" like replacing basic measurements with counter-intuitive shapes on a proprietary measuring device.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Removed. No, just no.

Lolwut?

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
When I started the hobby at the age of 14 I had 20€ per month that I spent on the hobby. I would buy a blister for 10€ in one month, a Set with 24 plastic models (Lotr) for 20€ the next month and something for 30€ the month after that. By the age of 17 I had 3 pretty large Lotr armies ready to play.

Middle class Kids in Germany today get about 40-50€ per month (that's what my pupils say), even with GWs high prices they can do the same I did back then. One plastic Box per month will get you a playable army pretty fast.
The real problem are the expensive books in 40K, because once you finished your first army the edition has changed.

this means by the time they buy their 9th or 6th something , the army maybe low tier or nerfed heavily. Even more elite armies that use fewer models. 6 boxs of power armoured dudes, 4 NDK kits, maybe a box of termintors. That is a year of saving up, to get an army that can play normal games. Only in a year you may get the jump from 9th to 10th ed. If you started to build your army at the end of 8th, and started buying paladins/termintor boxs and then 4 months later you found out that in 9th anything in terminator armour is bad, you just lost those 4 months of hobby progress. And this is a low number of units elite faction we are talking about. It gets much worse when you try something more vehicle heavy, like orks, or swarmy.

Karol wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
When I started the hobby at the age of 14 I had 20€ per month that I spent on the hobby. I would buy a blister for 10€ in one month, a Set with 24 plastic models (Lotr) for 20€ the next month and something for 30€ the month after that. By the age of 17 I had 3 pretty large Lotr armies ready to play.

Middle class Kids in Germany today get about 40-50€ per month (that's what my pupils say), even with GWs high prices they can do the same I did back then. One plastic Box per month will get you a playable army pretty fast.
The real problem are the expensive books in 40K, because once you finished your first army the edition has changed.

this means by the time they buy their 9th or 6th something , the army maybe low tier or nerfed heavily. Even more elite armies that use fewer models. 6 boxs of power armoured dudes, 4 NDK kits, maybe a box of termintors. That is a year of saving up, to get an army that can play normal games. Only in a year you may get the jump from 9th to 10th ed. If you started to build your army at the end of 8th, and started buying paladins/termintor boxs and then 4 months later you found out that in 9th anything in terminator armour is bad, you just lost those 4 months of hobby progress. And this is a low number of units elite faction we are talking about. It gets much worse when you try something more vehicle heavy, like orks, or swarmy.

I agree with the problem of edition change, but for beginners the competitive scene is usually of no concern, so balance issues aren't as relevant to the majority as they are to you. Instead the normal way to start with the hobby is playing some small games or some narrative scenarios, put some models on the table and throw some dice. I've read it was a different experience for you, but I think you are a very special case .

I am not talking about comeptitive sceen. I know that the argument that people play "what they like" is being brought forth over and over again, but even by looking what gets sold out on both GW and non GW online stores or the multiple versions of ebay, it clearly seems like people tend to buy the good stuff. The actual tournament rankers, who want to win tournaments, are only early 20s or late teens, if they have a dad or older brother playing. There is no way anyone can keep up with a 2-3 month army rotation even on a 100 euro monthly pocket money.

And narrative is definitly not the basic game played. the closest to the standard way to play for starting player vs other starting players, is what ever they have points for, matched played, no objectives, we play till one army dies.

I think if you were going to try to design the game for all of the factions at once you would do a salami slicing tactic. So:

Release 1 - 4 Books for Space Marines, Imperium, Chaos, Xenos covering all the datasheets but with few special rules for now. Think 8th edition indexes or the 8th edition Daemons codex which never got the memo about adding special rules to the datasheets in the codex.
Release 2 - 4 Books adding in super doctrines for the factions.
Release 3 - 4 Books adding in chapter tactics for the factions.
etc.
etc.
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for troops.
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for elites.
or
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for infiltrating units. (This might help GW realise that some factions have no units of this kind and make them go "huh this does seem a bit unfair").
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for MBTs.

In theory this would mean everyone would have the same amount of rules at the same time and everyones elites or heavy supports or MBTs (whichever slot they are in) have similar rules to each other, e.g. no more one faction gets d6 shots that do d6 damage while the other faction gets 3 d3+3 shots.

It would also mean you could at some point slate a release like:
Release 14 - 4 Books altering the chapter tactics for the factions now we know that morale based chapter tactics are awful.
Release 15 - 4 Books altering the secondary objectives now we know that do a psychic action 3 times get 4 VP per turn is a bit too good.

Of course, GW being GW, I'm sure they would find several ways to make this a terribly implemented idea.

 Jidmah wrote:
Points can fix some problems but not all of them. I don't know enough about the current guard army to tell.

Point drops would certainly help Guard, but it doesn't fix their output or durability sadly.

For example, in terms of durability and firepower Leman Russ tanks (not Tank Commanders) are incredibly similar to Dunecrawlers. So Leman Russes should cost around:

- Vanquisher: 110 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Eradicator and Exterminator: 115 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Executioner: 120 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Battle Tank: 125 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Demolisher and Punisher: 130 points (including hull heavy bolter)

That's anywhere from a 20 - 35 point drop. The sad thing is, even at those point levels they're unlikely to be good. Dunecrawlers aren't a meta vehicle right now either.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:


I agree with the problem of edition change, but for beginners the competitive scene is usually of no concern, so balance issues aren't as relevant to the majority as they are to you. Instead the normal way to start with the hobby is playing some small games or some narrative scenarios, put some models on the table and throw some dice. I've read it was a different experience for you, but I think you are a very special case .

As a kid of 12-15 it took me 3 years to buy, assemble and paint a 1500 points force of orks. Basic stuff with a bit of everything, nothing close to a competitive list.

I don't get why kids have to demand EVERYTHING NOW these days. Get your beloved kits, learn the basics of the hobby, enjoy the hobby, play with pals. After years into the hobby, maybe, start looking at competitive play. I think every beginners, not just kids, should have this kind of mentality to last in this hobby.

Karol wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
People said that 20+ years ago.

The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.

I have seen pictures from games in stores in the 90s or early 2000s, they seemed to be full of people my age or younger. Stores don't look like that anymore. Adds, army construction, the basic entry army non of those things is build for someone who is 13-15y old. 2-3 squads, 1-2 vehicles and 1-2 heros is a game a teen can play. Starting with 9+ of anything is not. The focus on large kits, on nostalgia only someone playing 10 or even 20+ years ago, those are things that GW does. Which clearly point at the fact that they do seem to think their buyers are older. The complication in the game systems, not impossible to learn when you are a teen, but to be honest boring. Who wants to go through 4 multiple steps of overlaping rules that could have just been changed to unit X wounds on +2 and hits on +2 this turn.

And you can easily check it. Take older rules from older editions and ask someone who is my age or younger, if they would rather play those or something like 9th ed ad mecha.

Babe, I’ve been playing since 2nd. Tell me those rules were simple and you’re clearly trolling. But let’s not get into that trap discussion as it’s been done to death in other threads.

Honestly Karol, we know you play in an ultratoxic meta but you’ve extrapolated your personal opinions and presented them as fact. That’s not how the world works.

EightFoldPath wrote:
I think if you were going to try to design the game for all of the factions at once you would do a salami slicing tactic. So:

Release 1 - 4 Books for Space Marines, Imperium, Chaos, Xenos covering all the datasheets but with few special rules for now. Think 8th edition indexes or the 8th edition Daemons codex which never got the memo about adding special rules to the datasheets in the codex.
Release 2 - 4 Books adding in super doctrines for the factions.
Release 3 - 4 Books adding in chapter tactics for the factions.
etc.
etc.
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for troops.
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for elites.
or
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for infiltrating units. (This might help GW realise that some factions have no units of this kind and make them go "huh this does seem a bit unfair").
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for MBTs.

In theory this would mean everyone would have the same amount of rules at the same time and everyones elites or heavy supports or MBTs (whichever slot they are in) have similar rules to each other, e.g. no more one faction gets d6 shots that do d6 damage while the other faction gets 3 d3+3 shots.

It would also mean you could at some point slate a release like:
Release 14 - 4 Books altering the chapter tactics for the factions now we know that morale based chapter tactics are awful.
Release 15 - 4 Books altering the secondary objectives now we know that do a psychic action 3 times get 4 VP per turn is a bit too good.

Of course, GW being GW, I'm sure they would find several ways to make this a terribly implemented idea.

That is a way of doing it, and I think similar to what Warmachine has done in the distant past?
Certainly easier when you only have 5 factions rather then 24 but you probably could make it work if you wanted to.

Ofcourse GW would complain that releasing 4 factions books at once cuts into their profits compared to selling you 1 book every month.

 Blackie wrote:

I don't get why kids have to demand EVERYTHING NOW these days. Get your beloved kits, learn the basics of the hobby, enjoy the hobby, play with pals. After years into the hobby, maybe, start looking at competitive play. I think every beginners, not just kids, should have this kind of mentality to last in this hobby.

Because if you start playing lets say with people at school, you may wake up at the start of a new edition, 3 years later, and suddenly no one plays the game anymore. Or you have 3-4 people playing it. And that is if you really are super casual, focused on painting etc. If you just want to play the game, then most armies are very lucky, if they stay relevant for over a year. Some armies, don't even get a relevant phase every edition.

I think GW's problem on the long rollout is both mathhammer creep - and feature creep. The TL/DR of this post is "Tyranids are busted for crushing me yesterday, also Tzaangors suck".

For example the Maleceptor is arguably not new. It obviously existed in the 8th codex, and IIRC had sort of similarish rules of doing mortals on successful casts. But it was much, much weaker so people didn't use it.
Now however, 170 points buys you a model which is T8, 3+/4++ and potentially has an aura (after a psychic action) for -1S for ranged attacks on units in 6 inches. Which, if your main heavy weapon is S8, is kind of a blow (and transhuman helps if you have some silly double digit strength weapons). This would be a potential question mark on its own merits - although if the damage output wasn't there you might not care. But it then gets the ability to throw out 15-20+ mortal wounds in a turn. Obviously this requires various features in your list and CP to fuel stratagems etc - but this is not remotely normal. In another book, I think this model could be 250-270 points. Its clearly not in a "woops, we need to add 10 points so its borderline whether you'd bring one or not" category. If it wants to be 170 points, it needs all those rules that allow it to be absurdly tough and absurdly lethal stripped away (some of which are on the datasheet, and some are from the army synergy).

You've then got Encircle the Prey. Which isn't I guess a mathhammer concern but is frankly broken given how 40k works. And I'm sure when it gets the inevitable nerf (idk, 3 CP, can only be used once a game) it will still be broken. In a game all about exchanges (whether you like it or not) - being able to get a full turn out of a fairly expensive model, only to then go "and now its off the board so I can just do my damage again next turn" is crazy. It should not exist. Context of Tyranids relative to everything else could I guess leave this overpowered or rubbish - but still. Its just a problem for game design. Do you take a hammer to every Tyranid unit that can benefit from this rule to keep it in the game?

To switch to Eldar, its a similar sort of feeling for Baharroth (and to a degree all Eldar movement rules). Arguably the ability to teleport models around is not new. Da Jump exists. Cult of Duplicity's Sorcerous Facade (I think?) exists. But this ability to essentially play out your whole turn, through to combat etc and then go "nope, I'm going to a completely different part of the board, to either be safe so I can do this again - or more likely claim/deny you victory points" is ludicrous. I guess if Baharroth was 500 points he'd be an auto-lose so points could theoretically find a solution - but it seems easier if this sort of thing just wasn't in the game to begin with.

I've been thinking about this sort of feature creep due to the trailered Tzaangor focused army of renown. I know most Thousand Sons players want Tzaangors like a hole in the head (despite GW insisting you get some with every purchase) - but the concept is interesting to me. A few months back we had Daed ask why Ork Boyz can't play a bit like Wracks in a Thin City build. And so I'm left thinking - why couldn't Tzaangor do the same (and why havn't they so far)?

The answer obviously is because Tzaangor suck. But they suck at 7 points in numerous levels compared with OP superhuman now just sleeping 8 point Wracks.
The first issue is that they do a bit less damage. 2 WS4+ S4 AP-1 attacks, versus 2 WS3+ (2+ from turn 3) poison 4+ AP-1 attacks, where 6s to wound are at -2. And wracks can upgrade a champion to 6 attacks at AP-2, AP-3 on 6s. Wracks can also bring a gun if they want.
The second is defence. Tzaangors with T4 5++ feels like an okay profile. But its worse than T4/6++/5+++ into T4/5++/5+++ from turn 4 onwards. And possibly quasi-transhuman if you take Prophets of Flesh (probably the way to go these days?). You can also take Haemoxytes (although whether its worth it can be debated.)
Thirdly - and perhaps more importantly - they are slow. Wracks are 1" faster base (which Tzaangor can sort of match by bringing a 10 point horn) - but get advance and charge from turn 2 onwards. A free 6" move at the start of a game for Tzaangor may go someway to compensate this - but its probably not enough From turn 2 Wracks are fairly reliably charging 18-19"~ across the table (and if you roll high on that initial advance, further). On a sort of similar basis, Tzaangor are covering just 15" - and on a failed charge get nowhere. In terms of positioning, wracks are just better.
Last - but by no means least - there are a range of stratagems you can use to help wracks. Rerolls to hit. Rerolls to wound. Fall back and charge. Get an extra 7" of movement if you have a gun but want some bodies on a currently uncontested objective so you wouldn't be able to charge. Some of these are expensive (i.e. 2CP to make poison work on vehicles) - but if you want it, you can. Tzaangor get a 2CP stratagem to reroll hits, which isn't great. The AoR will presumably bring more stratagems - but will they really make up the difference? What would you need, 2 CP, all Tzaangor units can now advance and charge?

Now I guess the counter argument would be "well, sure Tzaangor are worse than wracks. But Exalted Sorcerers contribute quite a bit more than Haemonculi are expecting to do". Which is fair. But it sort of points to how if a unit has bad functionality, its very hard to make it competitive, unless the mathhammer were to be so ludicrously in its favour (and as we see above, the mathhammer favours the Wracks as well). Again, you'd expect the AoR to have more as yet unrevealed rules which further help Tzaangor - but right now, its not obvious what they could be given the limitations covered above. If Wracks aren't cutting it, Tzaangor definitely won't. (And its why its hard to easily fix Boyz etc as well.)

So basically what I'm saying is that GW should write all the books with a common acceptable functionality. The mathhammer of something being WS3+ and something else being WS4+ can be debated and calculated. But its much harder to put a points cost to "I can do X+Y, and you can't". If you are going to start breaking your core rules, every faction sort of needs to be able to break the core rules. Otherwise you will inevitably end up with haves and have nots.

And when this feature creep is combined with mathhammer creep - you get extreme amounts of imbalance and consequent faction dominance of the competitive scene I think the game has experienced in recent months.

Anyone find it funny how a lot of the Big changes to 9th from 8th ended up being completely useless? No one even bothers with Blast weapons now, because no one uses more than 5 models in a unit. No one bothers with the new leadership system because it never comes up.

The new board sizes, base missions, and major game play changes from 8th were mostly a wash.

It's funny to me because GW took a look at the problems of 8th, and thought, this must be the fault of the game! Lets invent a new rule that prevents issues with big cannons being used (Which was never an issue in 8th, it was giant stompy dakka boats and silly rule interactions with fly) Now MSU is the name of the game, and all that work down the pipe.

 Blackie wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:


I agree with the problem of edition change, but for beginners the competitive scene is usually of no concern, so balance issues aren't as relevant to the majority as they are to you. Instead the normal way to start with the hobby is playing some small games or some narrative scenarios, put some models on the table and throw some dice. I've read it was a different experience for you, but I think you are a very special case .

As a kid of 12-15 it took me 3 years to buy, assemble and paint a 1500 points force of orks. Basic stuff with a bit of everything, nothing close to a competitive list.

I don't get why kids have to demand EVERYTHING NOW these days. Get your beloved kits, learn the basics of the hobby, enjoy the hobby, play with pals. After years into the hobby, maybe, start looking at competitive play. I think every beginners, not just kids, should have this kind of mentality to last in this hobby.

Kids love competing publically now. Why do you think DotA2, LoL, Fortnite, Overwatch, PUBG etc are all so popular and rankings and leaderboards etc are such an important part of those things? The future of 40k and its audience is not in the thematic fluffbunny crowd, its with the people who demand multiplayer in video games so they can try to show off that they're better than other people. I'm waiting for the inevitable day that GW somehow manages to make a public leaderboard for 40k games. (Arguably it already exists and is called Daedalus81)

I wouldn't compare videogames to this hobby. Kids get a console and a videogame and they're ready to go, while it takes much longer to be ready to go if you start collecting an army. That's a significant difference and I'm not sure those who love competing in such videogames are the primary target for GW.

Also, in something like 40k it's universally known that it's typically the best list that wins the game, much more than players. Those who want to show off wouldn't tolerate to get their results diminished thanks to that notion. I still believe that in this hobby such WAAC and overly competitive people are the exception, not the norm.

If GW really wants to target those people they have to design a game in which all that matters is skill. And I'm pretty sure they'll never gonna do that.

 Sim-Life wrote:


Kids love competing publically now. Why do you think DotA2, LoL, Fortnite, Overwatch, PUBG etc are all so popular and rankings and leaderboards etc are such an important part of those things? The future of 40k and its audience is not in the thematic fluffbunny crowd, its with the people who demand multiplayer in video games so they can try to show off that they're better than other people. I'm waiting for the inevitable day that GW somehow manages to make a public leaderboard for 40k games. (Arguably it already exists and is called Daedalus81)

One of the things that made people dislike the battlefield 2042 was the fact that it didn't have leaderboards, scoreboards, best squad etc. Most of the games, and I mean those played socially by regular gamers and not paid sportlike players, have seson passes and stores so you can show others what you achived. It is not even that important how good you are at the game, although of course it is better to be good then bad, but what skins you have is your seson pass normal or premium, and it always shows on your character. You not just want, but have to have store mounts, LE skins or gear. Not sure if it is the same in other countries but default skin is used as an insult here. A few months ago people at my sisters school were in total uproar, that the skin they bought don't show for other people. There were people who stopped playing because of that, because they didn't want to be branded a someone who can't afford skins.

Tyel wrote:

Now I guess the counter argument would be "well, sure Tzaangor are worse than wracks. But Exalted Sorcerers contribute quite a bit more than Haemonculi are expecting to do". Which is fair. But it sort of points to how if a unit has bad functionality, its very hard to make it competitive, unless the mathhammer were to be so ludicrously in its favour (and as we see above, the mathhammer favours the Wracks as well). Again, you'd expect the AoR to have more as yet unrevealed rules which further help Tzaangor - but right now, its not obvious what they could be given the limitations covered above. If Wracks aren't cutting it, Tzaangor definitely won't. (And its why its hard to easily fix Boyz etc as well.)

Just on this point, I think this is a problem with a lot of units that rely on force-multipliers in the form of psykers or the like. I don't know whether such units are intentionally made to be bad for their points ("because they'll have psyker support") or whether they just wind up being bad because GW span a roulette wheel to determine their cost. Either way, the issue is that you're almost always better off using your force-multiplier on a unit that's actually good to begin with. That is, it's usually more efficient to make an already good unit great than it is to make a poor unit merely okay.

In fact, I remember this coming up a lot in earlier editions with units like Howling Banshees. It was frequently pointed out that Banshees were a lot better with support in the form of Doom. The counter was that almost everything could benefit from Doom support - so why would you specifically include a unit that needed it to avoid sucking, rather than a unit that could still perform its role without it (that way you're not screwed if you lose your psyker, if the power gets denied, if you need it for a different target etc.).

I don't know if the use of CORE was intended to solve this problem but I'd argue that it certainly hasn't. Maybe if we instead had psychic powers only work on CRAP units.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Anyone find it funny how a lot of the Big changes to 9th from 8th ended up being completely useless? No one even bothers with Blast weapons now, because no one uses more than 5 models in a unit. No one bothers with the new leadership system because it never comes up.

The new board sizes, base missions, and major game play changes from 8th were mostly a wash.

It's funny to me because GW took a look at the problems of 8th, and thought, this must be the fault of the game! Lets invent a new rule that prevents issues with big cannons being used (Which was never an issue in 8th, it was giant stompy dakka boats and silly rule interactions with fly) Now MSU is the name of the game, and all that work down the pipe.

I mean, I look at an awful lot of the changes 9th brought and scratch my head as to what problems they were supposed to be fixing. e.g.:

- Stratagems still exist and they're every bit as pointlessly padded as they were before.

- Auras also still exist, despite adding nothing to the game.

- The already-bloated faction rules now also have loyalty rules, despite the new detachment system already heavily favouring loyal armies via CP.

- They spent the whole of 9th tweaking point costs, only to throw it all away and instead adopt Power Level Lite.

- What was the main problem with LoS? Er... we could have Guilliman hiding behind a dude 1/20th his size. Or weird situations wherein Old One Eye and a CCB can both hide behind infantry, yet virtually identical counterparts (Carnifexes and Annihilation Barges, respectively) can't. Okay, so let's leave all of that in place and instead just say that characters have to be really, really, really close to units to be untergetable.

- What's the problem with the leadership system? Well, it just functions as another way to kill models rather than pinning or suppressing models or causing them to flee. So clearly the solution is to still have it kill models but split it into two phases for no reason whatsoever.

- Blast and Template weapons were too random and unreliable. So we'll fix this by giving blast weapons either a minimum number of hits (with no regard to the number of dice rolled - meaning 3d3 blast weapons get no benefit) or even the maximum number of hits, based on extremely arbitrary definitions of 'Horde'. And you'll give this bonus to template weapons too, right?
And you'll give this bonus to template weapons too, right?
...

Wouldn't it be cool, which doesn't mean good, if Ld did stuff like make units shot less or worse, be unable to recive aura bonus, stratagems or army specific order like buff. Suffered too many loses, you can't concentrate enough to cast psychic powers etc

There could even be weapons that aren't very much damaging, specially to more armoured stuff, but which slow stuff down or make stuff like jetbikes(hit by grav weapons) half its movement. Some stuff could have a +X Stack rule, so if you get hit by one mortar it is different then being shelled by 9 or more.