Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.

It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.

Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls.

If I wanted to read that kind of nonsense, I would go to reddit. I always put up with your ridiculous takes because of sheer entertainment value but at this point it's an easy choice to add to ignore list.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I'd prefer less people in the game if it meant it were a more quality game. Keeping in mind even if you cut the entire player base in half you'd STILL easily find a game in any state barring Alaska

I feel like it's worth pointing out that the larger the player base, the more likely that player base is to enjoy the sort of game you're looking for. Want to play a series of narrative games with thematic armies? You're more likely to find a partner in a group of 10 than a group of 5. Want to play cutthroat competitive games against players with a high level of skill? The more players you have, the higher the number of players that will take an interest in that style of play and increase their skill level through experience.

Saying that better game balance/design = a smaller player base seems false, but also there are merits to a larger player base even if we did assume that using PL instead of points made the game more approachable or whatever.

Yeah, but that is only true if the community is really big. Such a split can work to create two paralel communities if a town or city has 50+ players. If the the town or city has 20 or 30 players, then trying to cut it up in to a matched play, open/narrative group and people that play tournament will not generate the results.

 Tyran wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.

It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.

Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.

The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.

ERJAK wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.

It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.

Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.

The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.

And also the rules stupidty that was Jaws of the Wolf World.

Make an initiative test for all models in a line and immediately die with no saves of any kind allowed if failed, and there were entire armies with universally low initiative stats.

It’s funny because all the data back then showed 55% winrate grey knights, even if that’s like cherry picked 60% is better than what we’re reaching now.

nou wrote:
Where did you got those two orders of magnitude from? I wrote about one. There are cases of weapons/rules however, that swing down to 0 value, the old poison against an armoured company for example, or highwire against an all infantry list.

And the meta will change with any wide enough change (with the caveat, that „wide enough” means affect enough players, not enough units). That is the whole point of the „meta is a dynamic system and as such follows chaotic math, not simple algebrae” argument.

Two orders of magnitude is a small step from at least an order of magnitude. If you meant 1000%-2000% you should have said a factor of 10 instead of an order of magnitude.

I don't know why you think that just because there are humans involved math becomes useless, you can model how consumers will react to price changes in goods and services. GW just needs to make sensible math and meta-based changes and gradually improve the game instead of nerfing Ogryn when Bullgryn are meta and Ogryn are garbage.

Your laspistol vs bolt pistol example is a good one though, but for the exact opposite reason you wrote. I think everyone will agree, that upgrading a single character to bolt pistol doesn’t influence the outcome of the game anyhow. But if you upgrade a large enough squad from las to bolt, it will have an impact. So, a treshold exists, a minimal number of points spent on las to bolt upgrades, that becomes influential. That threshold is the adequate granularity for the system, and for 40k it is somewhere between 20 and 50pts. This gives a workable granularity between 40 and 100 units. Current real granularity of 400 units is still an overkill, and perceived granularity of 2000 units is a meaninglessly inflated one. 200 units gives enough room for micromanagent on model level and it looks like GW is aiming at something between 200 and 400 real units for future editions.

The problem isn't that you win by taking a free bolt pistol, the problem is you're forcing people to rip their minis apart for advantage every time you're removing the points incentive to take the lesser option. Whether a bolt pistol is free or 5 pts or 1 deci-pt is going change from edition to edition, so people will have to rip their models apart regularly. 200 deci-pts lets slip a bunch of free upgrades that people will be forced to take because the system will be too rough to account for these little things, which could add up to a meaningful difference in overall list effectiveness. In addition, you'll have to design around the system by forcing units like Necron Warriors to only switch out all their RF guns for Assault guns (instead of replacing any number) and only include additional Brimstone Horrors in batches of 5 so your balancing system can keep up.

I don't see a real downside to 20x increase in costs and game size, that way you also have 10k, 20k and 40k games. Most of the time units and options would have a cost that ends with 00 or 50 but that'd be fine, at the very least we should have half-points. Not having models that cost less than 5 points is already a problem that has lead to a huge and unloreful creep in the damage output and durability of cheap units like Gretchin and Conscripts and Brimstones really struggle. Laspistols would have to see a similar creep in output to match bolt pistols if you only had 200 deci-pts to move around and wanted both options to be viable.

ERJAK wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.

It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.

Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.

The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.

Tyran wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.

It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.

Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.

The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.

And also the rules stupidty that was Jaws of the Wolf World.

Make an initiative test for all models in a line and immediately die with no saves of any kind allowed if failed, and there were entire armies with universally low initiative stats.

The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.

The 5th ed IG book is great, it lost the doctrines of the previous book, but that was the only downside. many of the kits from FW showed up in this codex. it allowed so many great thematic build ideas aside from the tournament cliché lists.

JOWW wasn't nearly as scary as most people make it out to be. it was VERY situational, in fact i hardly ever saw it used. although Njal was the best psyker in the imperium being literally storm from the X-men.

Our group uses quite a few 4th and 3rd ed codexes in our 5th ed games. the only 5th codexes i think we use are
.space wolves
.blood angels
.necrons
.imperial guard
.dark eldar
.space marines (although some players prefer the trait system from the 4th ed codex)

We have had no issues mixing them together in the 5th ed rules.

Trying not to be too much of a broken record, 5th edition was really frustrating as an eldar player. Our troops were squishy, and our good anti-tank was limited to a handful of units. So it felt like you had to keep your troops cheap and hidden in tanks all game, and you had to build your lists around taking a bunch of fire dragons, wraith guard, or a seer council deathstar.

That said, GK were never that big a problem for me in 5th. Maybe because their low model count made them really susceptible to fire dragons, banshees, and bladestorming dire avengers. I definitely preferred facing them over Space Wolves with their Njal + Runic Weapon + Wolf Tail Talisman power denial and las-plas razorback spam.

The 5th edition dark eldar 'dex was fun. Man I miss those juicy pain tokens.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Trying not to be too much of a broken record, 5th edition was really frustrating as an eldar player. Our troops were squishy, and our good anti-tank was limited to a handful of units. So it felt like you had to keep your troops cheap and hidden in tanks all game, and you had to build your lists around taking a bunch of fire dragons, wraith guard, or a seer council deathstar.

That said, GK were never that big a problem for me in 5th. Maybe because their low model count made them really susceptible to fire dragons, banshees, and bladestorming dire avengers. I definitely preferred facing them over Space Wolves with their Njal + Runic Weapon + Wolf Tail Talisman power denial and las-plas razorback spam.

The 5th edition dark eldar 'dex was fun. Man I miss those juicy pain tokens.

The most common list i fought in 5th for eldar was the FW corsair list one of the regulars played...it was very strong in 5th between hornets, warp hunters etc...

However we find the 4th ed eldar codex to be far superior to the 5th ed dex for regular eldar, as it allows all the craft world themed builds.

Aside from wraith guard/lords, eldar were always squishy they were just very fast and very specialized as one would expect from their lore.

I used TTS to run a game with the 4th ed eldar list VS a 5th ed blood angles list just a few weeks ago. iyanden of course since it was my favorite craftworld-

 aphyon wrote:

The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.

The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.

The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.

Yes it had inquisition stuff in it, but the layout and presentation was all about the grey knights as the focus of the book, expanding them to stupid levels. not just a part of the inquisitions chamber militant.

In doing so. the original demon hunters book was more focused on presenting the ordo malleus organization that could if it wanted to use grey knights. however it did not need to. as it could ally with any imperial force.

 aphyon wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.

The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.

Yes it had inquisition stuff in it, but the layout and presentation was all about the grey knights as the focus of the book, expanding them to stupid levels. not just a part of the inquisitions chamber militant.

In doing so. the original demon hunters book was more focused on presenting the ordo malleus organization that could if it wanted to use grey knights. however it did not need to. as it could ally with any imperial force.

I mean Deathwatch is the militant arm of the Ordo Xenos and Sisters of Battle the Ordo Hereticus, but they do stuff outside of just being under the Inquisition, even back in Codex Daemon Hunters they were a separate force that worked with the Inquisition, not solely under it.

Someone may have made this point, but the most confusing bit of the post was trying to work out what the months after December were...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.

The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.

Yes it had inquisition stuff in it, but the layout and presentation was all about the grey knights as the focus of the book, expanding them to stupid levels. not just a part of the inquisitions chamber militant.

In doing so. the original demon hunters book was more focused on presenting the ordo malleus organization that could if it wanted to use grey knights. however it did not need to. as it could ally with any imperial force.

I mean Deathwatch is the militant arm of the Ordo Xenos and Sisters of Battle the Ordo Hereticus, but they do stuff outside of just being under the Inquisition, even back in Codex Daemon Hunters they were a separate force that worked with the Inquisition, not solely under it.

It is a great shame that the DeathWatch/SoB/Grey knights book didn't have entries for inquisitors to lead/accompany their forces.

Also It saddens me we don't have a completed Imperial agents series in WD only some of it. For me a completed one would cover Assassins, Inquisitors, Inquisitorial stormtroopers and Miltia...

Wyldhunt wrote:
The 5th edition dark eldar 'dex was fun. Man I miss those juicy pain tokens.

Ah, I loved that book so much.

It's sad looking back and seeing just how much has been stripped out of Dark Eldar over the years.

I think War of the Spider has the current rules for Assassins, Octarius I the current rules for Inquisition and Octarius II the current rules for Rogue Traders (Including Crusade content).

What I miss are the custom henchman that used to be available in the "x Hunter" books of 3rd ed.

Regarding those Hunter books- I loved them, but the fact that GW hit the reset button on the edition before they got to "alien hunters" leaves that era feeling less complete for me than the current era. My hiatus from the game didn't officially begin until part way through 5th... But if I'm being honest, it really started when 3rd ended- GW and I were already on shaky ground because they had killed GSC, but Witch Hunters were enough to keep me around. Then they blew that edition up before we got our 3rd Ordo and they took Sisters into a fifteen year downward spiral.

Every once in a while somebody will make the comment that one or another of the chambers militant was never meant to be a stand alone faction, or they shouldn't be a faction. I think the only people who are qualified to talk about who was meant to be a stand alone faction are the game designers- and even they would be unlikely to have such an oversimplified, binary, either or approach. They'd probably say something like:

"At various points within the History of the Imperium of Man, the power various threats aligned against humanity will wax and wane. During the peaks in power, it is common for the Inquisition to assume control of their Chambers Militant for extended periods of time. While those powers are at low ebb, these Chambers Militant can be redirected to provide support to other Imperial forces as needed."

Because it is true- Even in the Hunter dexes it was absolutely possible to run stand alone sister or GK. I actually did it- I had a 1500 pt sister army and a 1500 pt Hereticus army; both followed the rules for the FOC, and the two armies could unite in times of great need. In most of our games, one or the other was sufficient. This is why I love the detachment system as much as I do- in a sense, I've been using it since before there were rules for it.

I still think there is hope for the Inquisition. Interrogator is a good sign, as is the store anniversary model for this year, as is the Eisenhorn series on the horizon. The WH+ Loremasters episode about the Inquisition really restored my faith that GW might still get it right.

Among other things, the episode mentioned each of the Chambers Militant by name when speaking of their respective Ordos, though it did stop short of using the term Chamber Militant. It also talked about Interrogators as if they were a unit choice, and it clarified that there is still a distinction between Inquisitors and Inquisitor Lords even if the current rules do not reflect this.

The great tragedy of the Inquisition is that just a handful of small changes could make Inquisitorial detachments more viable- what we have is a solid foundation. Add Interrogator as a unit, create a costed power-up to make an Inquisitor into an Inquisitor Lord, change the unit size of Acolytes to 10 and make them troops, add vehicles, Priests, Engineseers and Servitors and you've improved the Inquisition by leaps and bounds.

Have the Lord Upgrade unlock a rule called Chamber Militant, which allows the Lord's Inquisition detachment to be exempted from breaking purity rules for Inquisition and Chamber units, as well as allowing the Lord to bestow his quarry power on one Militant unit within range like an aura. So easy I could do it in a weekend.

Then create crusade content for each of the three Ordos and you're golden. That would take a bit longer, but once you had a done for one Ordo, it would get easier to build something for the remaining Ordos.

Even as a pure crusade force would be great...

Wyldhunt wrote:
Trying not to be too much of a broken record, 5th edition was really frustrating as an eldar player. Our troops were squishy, and our good anti-tank was limited to a handful of units. So it felt like you had to keep your troops cheap and hidden in tanks all game, and you had to build your lists around taking a bunch of fire dragons, wraith guard, or a seer council deathstar.

Well, I'm the other broken record because, as we've discussed before, 5th ed 40k with 4th ed Eldar codex was peak 40k for me. I think our different experiences in 5th come down to the fact that you were experienced and I was not. I did not play Eldar in 4th so I started from scratch in 5th with no models and more importantly no old habits or favorite list types. This meant I was able to grow into a footdar style army naturally and without reservations.

It wasn't perfect by any stretch. Every list had to have Eldrad to cast Fortune twice and guide once. Fortuned guardians with conceal warlocks were actually quite durable in the mech meta back then. Many units just weren't suited to the 5th environment. I was never able to incorporate Banshees or Scorpions effectively, for example.

Compared to what came before and after, Eldar was quite limited in 5th. For those who enjoyed them in 4th, 5th must have been a big letdown, but for guys like me who simply didn't know any better it was a great time.

Probably the only time other than post nerf 8th and early 9th they weren't oppressive. I envy you starting them then.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
It’s funny because all the data back then showed 55% winrate grey knights, even if that’s like cherry picked 60% is better than what we’re reaching now.

That's the thing about army selection rates. If everyone plays GK then the win rate is 50%. Is the game then balanced?

In the Ard Boyz I played back then it was over 80% GK.

aphyon wrote:The most common list i fought in 5th for eldar was the FW corsair list one of the regulars played...it was very strong in 5th between hornets, warp hunters etc...

Alas! I was only vaguely aware of the Forge World stuff until late 5th or maybe 6th edition. And I definitely didn't have the budget for it at the time.

However we find the 4th ed eldar codex to be far superior to the 5th ed dex for regular eldar, as it allows all the craft world themed builds.

I used TTS to run a game with the 4th ed eldar list VS a 5th ed blood angles list just a few weeks ago. iyanden of course since it was my favorite craftworld-

Think you mean 3rd and 4th, but yeah. I've always wished I'd been in the hobby the old Craftworlds book was a thing. Ranger disruption tables and oldschool seer councils sound like a blast. Glad to hear you had fun dusting off the old content.

Think you mean 3rd and 4th, but yeah. I've always wished I'd been in the hobby the old Craftworlds book was a thing. Ranger disruption tables and oldschool seer councils sound like a blast. Glad to hear you had fun dusting off the old content.

I think you might be a bit confused

This is the 3rd ed codex-



This is the 4th ed one we like to use-

^Yes the latter is much more interesting to use, and fixes a few oversights to the 3rd ed one, such as a nerf to Starcannons, and upgrading to Dark Reaper armor to 3+ rather than 4+.

Karol wrote:
Yeah, but that is only true if the community is really big. Such a split can work to create two paralel communities if a town or city has 50+ players. If the the town or city has 20 or 30 players, then trying to cut it up in to a matched play, open/narrative group and people that play tournament will not generate the results.

Yeah, because people can't enjoy multiple game modes. It's verboten, eh?

ERJAK wrote:
The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.

People still repeat this ridiculous 4chan nonsense?

GK book was easily beatable by virtually any 5th edition book if you turned your brain on and played to GK weaknesses, not their strengths (I would know, I repeatedly beaten my ""OP"" army with stuff my opponents brought when they claimed they have no chance after reading salt online and I offered them reverse play, LOL). Even weakest book of 5th edition, SM, could deal with GK easily enough unless all you had were C-tier units.

The army had literally no ++ saves, little long range shooting, no anti-chaff melee, few and usually light vehicles, freeing your AT weapons to target their elite units, was slow, weak to anti-psychic mechanisms, had low volume of attacks (and little S8+) per points, etc, etc, GK book was epitome of good rules writing that gave both players both strengths and weaknesses to exploit. Of course, 4chan morons whined because of author (and the fact they tried to charge tactical squad into all-falchion purifier squad then cried OP) but the fact it's still repeated as gospel is just sad...

 Tyran wrote:
And also the rules stupidty that was Jaws of the Wolf World.

JotWW was A) Space Wolves power, not GK B) it was Phil Kelly's book so of course it had broken/stupid mechanics. Still, the fact that worst thing people can say about 5th is the fact there were a handful of problematic stuff in two books written by two worst GW authors (*cough* Cruddace *cough*) says volumes. Especially seeing SW, instead of being SM+ like today, also had lots of weaknesses you could exploit (lack of a lot of SM units and other units they typically don't use being priced higher, offering you openings and counterplays, unlike modern books).

GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter

Nonsense. Not only they operate that way in 99% of their fluff, but if anything, it's the 'chamber militant' gak of all three Ordos from 3rd edition that was breaking the fluff into a pretzel and 5th edition went back to roots of both armies. Also, 5th edition GK book was so well written you could have done the inane 'chamber militant' stuff if you wished, but you could also play multiple viable pure GK armies. This is the thing I miss about 5th the most, most books had 3-5 ways of making viable, completely different armies, as opposed to one, maybe two viable builds most books of past 4 editions sport...

That's a good point, Irbis... after 5th you saw a lot of unification of what a specific army could do... but a diversification of what detachments could comprise your army.

As that "diversity" waned with 9th, I think it may be exposing how "one trick" a lot of the books have become. Granted, I didn't like the blending of different armies just because of how horribly it treated certain factions in favor of others that didn't need any more bonuses.

I don't have a firm stance on the matter, just thought pointing out the timing of inner-army variance coinciding with allying with external forces was of interest.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Once again, very happy for you that you got so much fun out of that edition. 5th was actually my first edition, so I was neither experienced nor committed to a build at the time. I just kept running into parking lots and finding BS 4+ troops with 5+ saves and no anti-tank guns (outside of the warlock's singing spear which couldn't split fire) made for a rough time. Dire Avengers definitely outperformed the other troops for me, but they still lacked AT. And once you start fielding 5th edition dire avengers, it's really hard to resist the urge to just run DAVU skimmers.

Ok. I knew you had run skimmers so I had assumed that came from 4th. I couldn't bring myself to go that route because I thought the serpents were just too expensive. I played BA (4th ed WD codex) before and I thought the 50 point Razorbacks were already expensive. So I used Rangers, Guardians, and Avengers on foot. 5th edition cover rules made it viable. Antitank came from Wraithlords and sometimes War Walkers. Avatar was always part of the mix. Spiders were great at tackling the Razorbacks and Rhinos.

Oh man. I forgot about the Eldrad + Yriel power couple. I did use counts-as Eldrad sometimes, but knowing I was running the "cheesy" auto-take character made me itchy. Definitely miss those always-on warlock powers, though I'm pretty okay with warlocks now that they aren't prone to exploding and killing their friends. Banshees actually worked pretty well for me back in 5th. They weren't an especially competitive choice, but Doom + power swords was sooooo satisfying. Plus, you normally didn't regret taking them when you happened to be facing marines. (And everyone ends up facing marines.)

I felt a little bad about leaning on Eldrad so hard, but he was necessary. I never ran Yriel or any other Autarch. I just couldn't fit him in. I needed the Avatar for the fearless bubble. I had great fun, but it was really quite limited in what you could do. I always wanted to run 2 serpents with Banshees, but I never got to it before 6th ed dropped.

Speaking of 5th ed GK I used to table Draigowing with Sisters. Turns out GK don't like Instant Death from massed meltas.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Speaking of 5th ed GK I used to table Draigowing with Sisters. Turns out GK don't like Instant Death from massed meltas.

Draigowing was T5.