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To be honest, one would expect tournaments to provide BRB and Mission Packs.

And of course in casual play pretty much everyone uses Wahapedia and Battlescribe.

It’s just that wahapedia+lore wikis provide a better service than the codex.

Toofast wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:


Good thing the new book is out. Still need BRB, Dex and Mission Pack though, so I feel you.

That's why I've been liking Infinity so much lately. I take my models and my phone, which I already have on me anyway. No books to carry around.

also the fact that player skill actually matters in infinity



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
OPR also has IGoUGo in use with AA

i don't think you understand what Igougo/aa is when it comes to wargames

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Toofast wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:


Good thing the new book is out. Still need BRB, Dex and Mission Pack though, so I feel you.

That's why I've been liking Infinity so much lately. I take my models and my phone, which I already have on me anyway. No books to carry around.

also the fact that player skill actually matters in infinity



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
OPR also has IGoUGo in use with AA

i don't think you understand what Igougo/aa is when it comes to wargames

Player skill matters in basically every game. If it's more complex than chutes and ladders, player skill matters.

ERJAK wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Toofast wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:


Good thing the new book is out. Still need BRB, Dex and Mission Pack though, so I feel you.

That's why I've been liking Infinity so much lately. I take my models and my phone, which I already have on me anyway. No books to carry around.

also the fact that player skill actually matters in infinity



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
OPR also has IGoUGo in use with AA

i don't think you understand what Igougo/aa is when it comes to wargames

Player skill matters in basically every game. If it's more complex than chutes and ladders, player skill matters.

In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules

In Infinity, you'll probably lose your first 10 games until you understand the tactics in it.

I'm not saying 40k has absolutely no skill required, just that compared to infinity it doesnt.

It can be nearly irrelevant depending on matchup. I keep telling this anecdote because it's such a perfect example: players winning decent sized tournaments with Custodes that didn't know basic rules like heroic intervention even existed. That would be impossible in Infinity even if you had the best faction and list possible for a mission. A new player will get his ass kicked by an experienced player in Infinity because player skill is the primary deciding factor in who wins, not dice or matchup.

That is true. I had a guy whose brother played w40k. His first game was a 2000pts event game, he had pice of paper that told him what to do, and his list was pre nerf flock Inari with dark reaper spam. Dude won the event for new players. Playing a writen guide.

 aphyon wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.

you mean like chess?

but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than

please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past

I think you are massively overestimating the number of viable tournament lists in previous editions.

Agreed. It's a flawed premise. There's nothing to back up that there were 'more viable lists'. There's actually more anecdotes on this site that suggest the opposite. Most talk about any edition 3rd through 7th generally revolves around 2-5 factions being the be all end all of those eras.

Just noticed this one-

Please elaborate. i own the best version (IMHO) of every codex from 3rd-7th (including all the FW books) save GSCs, deathwatch and imperial knights (regulars at the store have those as well if need be)including all the index astartes books and the chapter approved army lists. ALL factions were viable and fun to play with the right codex (most from 3rd and 4th).

locarno24 wrote:3.5 was both - yes, narrative legion-specific customisation options was great.


But it also had "yeah, you get aspiring champions free and all their wargear cones off a cheaper list despite them being as powerful as most people's hqs if you give them daenonic stuff" and the infiltrate-and-counts-as-cavalry daemon Prince who could charge turn 1 and wouldn't discernable slow down for a terminator assault squad.

Plus the iron warriors able to take more artillery tanks than a guard army.

Uh...a single vindicator and a single basilisk? unless you are counting a defiler as an artillery tank?

I play against a regular that has that list, it is good, but it is not overpowered.

Your argument here boils down to 'if you cherry pick hard enough, every army was good at some point' (provided you play with friends locally). Which is a doozy, as far as arguments go. Especially considering a 4th ed book being really, really good didn't help that faction in 3rd.

In any given era of 40k, there were a handful of top tier armies with a handful of top tier lists, right up until another top tier army/list comes out OR an edition change happens.

7th is the easiest example. Launch of 7th, daemons were the be all end all, due to the way their 6th rules translated to 7th. Necrons come out and decurion had 3 months of being right there with Chaos Daemons until Eldar ripped every army in the game a new butthole. Space marines then dropped with Gladius and Centurion Star and the Big Three of Daemons, Eldar, and Space Marines ate every other faction alive. There's not that many stats from this era but I would bet money that Eldar had an 90%+ winrate on release and that Orkz through Blood Angels were sitting in the 20s at best.

Tau came out and Triptide wing was a thing for a while, but it never cracked that top 3. Same with the admech list with the free wargear. This continued on until bark bark star became a thing, though that still falls under the umbrella of 'marines'.

THEN Angels of Death and CSM Angels of Death(forgot what it was called) came out with the most busted psychic powers ever, and it became pretty much 'Cabal Star' vs 'Marine Deathstar' until the Magnus book gave Chaos unlimited free pink horrors and it just became Chaos vs Chaos. Nobody really remembers that era because the game was so garbage only like 8 people played it.

Most editions didn't get as bad as 7th, but they all had their problems. Ask a daemon player what his gameplan was against GK in 5th, and I would bet money his answer would be something along the lines of 'don't even waste time unpacking your models.'

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

i don't think you understand what Igougo/aa is when it comes to wargames

Don't say wargames if you mean 40k

And I am aware that 40k uses it to describe their turn system introduced in 3rd edition, but the game changed since 3rd and people using IGoUGo because they are used to it

But IGoUGo is not the opposite of Alternating Unit Activation or Alternating Phases

For wargames, the term is mostly used to describe if the active player finish his actions before the opponent can do something, independent on how long this action is (a turn, a phase, a unit)

LaSalle 2nd Edition is a good example for a game that uses interruptions instead (and therefore has no turns at all)

40k has a mix of different systems with the disadvantages of most but not building on the advantages of any, and this causes the problems
Hence switching from alternating turn to alternating activation would fix nothing without changing how player interaction works

Toofast wrote:
It can be nearly irrelevant depending on matchup. I keep telling this anecdote because it's such a perfect example: players winning decent sized tournaments with Custodes that didn't know basic rules like heroic intervention even existed. That would be impossible in Infinity even if you had the best faction and list possible for a mission. A new player will get his ass kicked by an experienced player in Infinity because player skill is the primary deciding factor in who wins, not dice or matchup.

Those anecdotes exist alongside people playing copy-paste netlists and getting stomped into the ground.

I'm not saying that player skill doesn't matter more in other games, Marvel Crisis Protocol, for example, has only a very specific handful of scenarios where the matchup is the main deciding factor (attrition skew list vs board control skew list in double board control mission. Vice Versa).

I'm saying that people like to pretend list is 100% the determining factor and it just isn't. List is way more important than it probably should be, but that importance is heavily inflated by people who use going against 'OP cheese' to scapegoat their own poor performance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

i don't think you understand what Igougo/aa is when it comes to wargames

Don't say wargames if you mean 40k

And I am aware that 40k uses it to describe their turn system introduced in 3rd edition, but the game changed since 3rd and people using IGoUGo because they are used to it

But IGoUGo is not the opposite of Alternating Unit Activation or Alternating Phases

For wargames, the term is mostly used to describe if the active player finish his actions before the opponent can do something, independent on how long this action is (a turn, a phase, a unit)

LaSalle 2nd Edition is a good example for a game that uses interruptions instead (and therefore has no turns at all)

40k has a mix of different systems with the disadvantages of most but not building on the advantages of any, and this causes the problems
Hence switching from alternating turn to alternating activation would fix nothing without changing how player interaction works

It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules

[x] doubt

Toofast wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:


Good thing the new book is out. Still need BRB, Dex and Mission Pack though, so I feel you.

That's why I've been liking Infinity so much lately. I take my models and my phone, which I already have on me anyway. No books to carry around.

You should like infinity more than 40k because you need a small case, carrying 10 models rather than an army. A lot of players already bring just the models and the phone in order to play 40k. Others just photcopy the rules they are going to use, in order to travel lighter and avoid damage on the (very expensive) books. I've done this since 5th edition. No books to carry around either way.

 Jidmah wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules

[x] doubt

Well it depends on the army. If the regular is an IG player and the noob has custodes or the new tyranids. Then the new player may get the idea that games end by tabling the opponent.

ERJAK wrote:
It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'

this could be handled with an Action/Reaction system, like in Starship Troopers, were every action within a certain range will trigger a reaction (which depends on the unit), but I doubt GW would get this right or think about but would just put it on top the current rules rather than doing a re-work from scratch (even with an index like reset we would see some armies needing to wait 2 Editions until they get the necessary reactions)

 kodos wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'

this could be handled with an Action/Reaction system, like in Starship Troopers, were every action within a certain range will trigger a reaction (which depends on the unit), but I doubt GW would get this right or think about but would just put it on top the current rules rather than doing a re-work from scratch (even with an index like reset we would see some armies needing to wait 2 Editions until they get the necessary reactions)

Or stagger activations such that both sides finish activations at the same time. If one side A has 10 and the other side B has 3 units, then A plays three times evenly distributed but free to choose on which of the three moves he will move four units. B will move one unit per activation, three times…

Or just allow the player with less activations to pass on their turn unless they have an equal number of activations to their opponent remaining.

I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.

I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.

15 on 12... I don't see the problem.

It gives weaker chaffe type armies an advantage in that they can out maneuver the more elite smaller forces, but to me thats how it should play out anyway and gives you a reason to not just cherry pick all of the super elite special forces all the time.

However I am also for triggered reactions as said above.

I will never play a pure IGOUGO game like how 40k and sigmar are structured again because sitting through an entire turn doing nothing but removing models is not a fun time, military sandbox style OR just funsies game-game.

I have played several versions of alt activation that I enjoyed.

Battletech is one. Lord of the Rings / Middle Earth another. I like Bolt Action and I like Warlords of Nowhere. I also liked fantasy Conquest's system. Fantasy Conquest's system people do complain that the chaffe armies are not fair because they have more activations but again - I never saw anything too grotesque in that game where I thought it made a huge difference other than as a balancer to not always take super elite small armies.

None of them are perfect, but IMO for my taste all were several steps above the current 40k and sigmar turn structures.

 Jidmah wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules

[x] doubt

its happened in the past (albeit anecdotally).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ERJAK wrote:


It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'

which is still an improvement over regular 40k since in a theoretical 50 units vs 5 units scenario, you would currently get to activate with 50 in a row instead of a few alternations then 45 in a row.

You can also add a concept of delaying activations if you have less units than the opponent. (OPR does that with their Knights equivalent since lets be honest, the only faction that would reasonably have 5 activations is them)

Karol wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules

[x] doubt

Well it depends on the army. If the regular is an IG player and the noob has custodes or the new tyranids. Then the new player may get the idea that games end by tabling the opponent.

Maybe if we were still playing the older missions / editions. gak doesn't work like it used to.

 auticus wrote:
I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.

I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.

15 on 12... I don't see the problem.

50 on 5 might be pushing it, but something like IG vs Knights could easily be 20-25 vs. 5 or 6.

 Dysartes wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.

I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.

15 on 12... I don't see the problem.

50 on 5 might be pushing it, but something like IG vs Knights could easily be 20-25 vs. 5 or 6.

When taking Titan Lords you may buy units
from other armies or build an army made of
only Titan Lords models. If you do that then
you may choose to pass your turn to your
opponent without activating a unit as long as
he has more non-activated units than you do.

this is how OPR deals with this

I still think the AA/IGOUGO debate is a sideshow that distracts us from the real issues.

Switching GW's games to AA wouldn't suddenly fix their problems, and I don't necessarily agree that it would make them better games either. The problems with GW's games are far deeper and more all-encompassing than simply the turn structure.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I still think the AA/IGOUGO debate is a sideshow that distracts us from the real issues.

Switching GW's games to AA wouldn't suddenly fix their problems, and I don't necessarily agree that it would make them better games either. The problems with GW's games are far deeper and more all-encompassing than simply the turn structure.

I'd go even further; we have no evidence such a change would make things better but a great deal of evidence it would make things worse.

Switching GW games to AA would certainly not fix their problems, which are always about horrible balance. AA doesn't fix horrible balance. It changes how the game is played.

It would however alleviate standing around for 45 minutes doing nothing but removing models, which for some of us is a massive negative play experience.

 auticus wrote:
I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.

I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.

15 on 12... I don't see the problem.

It gives weaker chaffe type armies an advantage in that they can out maneuver the more elite smaller forces, but to me thats how it should play out anyway and gives you a reason to not just cherry pick all of the super elite special forces all the time.

However I am also for triggered reactions as said above.

I will never play a pure IGOUGO game like how 40k and sigmar are structured again because sitting through an entire turn doing nothing but removing models is not a fun time, military sandbox style OR just funsies game-game.

I have played several versions of alt activation that I enjoyed.

Battletech is one. Lord of the Rings / Middle Earth another. I like Bolt Action and I like Warlords of Nowhere. I also liked fantasy Conquest's system. Fantasy Conquest's system people do complain that the chaffe armies are not fair because they have more activations but again - I never saw anything too grotesque in that game where I thought it made a huge difference other than as a balancer to not always take super elite small armies.

None of them are perfect, but IMO for my taste all were several steps above the current 40k and sigmar turn structures.

I prefer the DUST system for AA. every unit gets 2 actions per activation they can be any combination of movement/attack action/special action in any order or the same one twice. they also include an interrupt reaction mechanic that could possibly happen on a dice roll within a set distance.

Infinity doesn't use pure AA, it relies on every model getting a single reaction to any model it observes activating, that occurs simultaneously.

Your argument here boils down to 'if you cherry pick hard enough, every army was good at some point' (provided you play with friends locally). Which is a doozy, as far as arguments go. Especially considering a 4th ed book being really, really good didn't help that faction in 3rd.

In any given era of 40k, there were a handful of top tier armies with a handful of top tier lists, right up until another top tier army/list comes out OR an edition change happens.

As a matter of fact that is exactly what our group does. we play core 5th ed rules but any codex of your choice is allowed from 3rd-7th. so we do get all the best (most lore accurate and flavorful codex) choices for recreational play. all of those editions are very cross compatible as well as the fact that many codexes existed for years across multiple editions given GWs release model.

Quite a few other people here on DAKKA actually found that it works quite well for an enjoyable 40K experience having come to the same place that our group has been at the FLGS for years.
shout out to Mezmorki's prohammer project and his prohammer steam labs mod for TTS.




The last game i played on TT was a 7th ed admech list against a 4th ed dark eldar list and it was a blast. same goes for the one i played on TTS pitting a different version of the 7th ed admech list VS a 5th ed blood angles list.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Maybe if we were still playing the older missions / editions. gak doesn't work like it used to.

How new does the new player have to be? first game in life, probably will not have a 2000pts army, and with the balance , or rather lack of it, at lower points then 2000, I don't think we can count those games as real. Does he have to not know the rules, his own, core rules and his opponents ? then what happens isn't a game, because he would have to be told what to do. But if he knows the rules, has 2000pts, played the list or at least watched something on how to play it etc then the difference of power between lists is so big, that expiriance won't cover for it. When the other army is old orks and your opponent blows up your army from outside of the board, then no amounts of expiriance are going to help you win the game. Now you may lose less, suprise the new player with some slingshot trick etc but that is all. If it end of turn 1 and your noob opponents ad mecha just blew up half your army, then the game is done, bar some wierd dice roll action. And the new rule set doesn't change much, specially when the newer books have secondaries or even primaris that auto complet. Specially the faction ones.

Oh to bust out the 3rd edition Nids now that I actually know how wargaming works...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Oh to bust out the 3rd edition Nids now that I actually know how wargaming works...

3rd Ed 'Nids weren't all that great. 'Shoot the Good Big Ones' was a massive handicap.

Tyranids only have 2 good codexes. 4th edition codex, which has issues under 5th Ed rules.

And the 9th edition codex.

2nd Ed was fun.