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 Sim-Life wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
Regardign the phrase "if they made 40k properly it could be played on planet bowling ball", this is a nonsensical standpoint. It's along the same lines as "If the computer security was designed properly then it wouldn't matter if my password is "password"".

Cover and line of sight blocking is a needed part of the game to reduce lethality, deny targets, and so on. It's part of the game, as much as charging into close combat is. planet bowling ball will always favour the long ranged guns, because if it didn't, then cover would make them overpriced.

Line of sight and blocking isn't exclusive to terrain. You can have models block other models or give models LoS like in Warmahordes where all models have a 180 degree line of sight and can block LoS to models directly behind them.

The range of guns again is a separate problem. 40k already has a problem with the range of guns being universally too long and boards being too small. Again to point at Warmahordes it solves this by having gun ranges being very short. If I remember rightly "long range" in Warmahordes is 14" or so (this is the range of a rifle on a sniper themed model).

Again as Voss said it might not be FUN but it should be playable.

I 100% agree that 40k has outgrown its boards. I think we should see ranges and movement cut by 1/3, to make the board feel like it is 1/3 bigger.

You can block units with other units, but then that grinds to a halt when the enemy uses their anti-tank first to blow up the tank you're hiding behind, then destroys what you've been hiding.


40k does work on planet bowling ball, but as you said, it's not fun - because nobody can hide from anyone, there's no tactical decisions, it's just whoever shoots first with their big guns will win. I remember this from when I was young and staring out with oldcrons, and we had basically 0 scenery - 2 of those old ruin corners, and some trees which always fell over. that was it, there was no hiding except behind your big models. The only things which could screen was the monolith and the landraider, because AV14 was king. Whilst the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia may disagree, those days were less fun than these days because the long range guns of the Chaos always won against the amost-universal 24" range of the oldcrons (plus they disappeared at 25% so the games usually ended abruptly).

Honestly half the game is the terrain - because it's unknown, so you can't build your tactics perfectly. If you know you're playing on planet bowling ball, then you make half your army built to kill tanks, and half your army built to kill infantry, and do it all at long range, and you've probably won, because your tactics can be employed perfectly. It's not fun, but it works.

The game is in the best place I can ever remember and I've been playing since rogue trader.

There are many ways to play; Crusade, Matched play, Tempest of war.

The competitive scene isn't perfect, everyone knows Tyranids and CWE need to be hit with the nerf bat, but that's a question of when not if.

If you look at tournaments there is actually a lot of diversity outside of the problem factions.

The armour of contempt change was superb.

I also play Orks and our codex does have some issues with the amount of -1 to hit in the game on a faction that already hits on 5+ and we don't hit as hard in combat as we should,
there are some competitive options though, look at the mortal wounds / bomb squig build that just finished well at Washington State GT.

I think Orks will get some help, GW have demonstrated that they are trying to balance with regular updates.

For that reason alone the game is the best it's ever been.

Pickled_egg wrote:

The armour of contempt change was superb.

It's awful. They just keep roiding up Space Marines and leave xenos units with former parity in the dust.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Pickled_egg wrote:

The armour of contempt change was superb.

It's awful. They just keep roiding up Space Marines and leave xenos units with former parity in the dust.

Weird how even Necrons are still performing better than Space Marines, even after the AoC buff.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Pickled_egg wrote:

The armour of contempt change was superb.

It's awful. They just keep roiding up Space Marines and leave xenos units with former parity in the dust.

What dust, through out the entire span of 9th marines were at the top for a few weeks at the very start of the edition, and for a similar split second for the BT and GK books. Compare that to how long Harlequins were top army in 9th or DE, how can you even say that xeno armies are being left in the dust, when they are the ones who are generaly better the marines. And I am talking all marines taken as one group. Because if we were to be really pendantic and compare how well IF have done to lets say all the different eldar factions, it would look a lot more grim.

 JEREMSTER wrote:
I've been playing off and on since 2000 I even played the Vegas tournament back in 2017.
I've always been decent, I don't always play min/maxed lists but play I play the objectives well and usually keep things competitive.

I just played my first game in 2022 playing my mechanized Ork list against my brothers new eldar list. I've played his army a hundred times before with space wolves/death guard/tau and orks, so I thought I had a pretty good feel for it.

But NO.
It wasn't even fun. My orks needed 6's to hit anything. His Eldar all hit me on 2+ and his Wasps(I think) toasted my battle wagon with only 3 hits.
I felt absolutely helpless with no chance of even keeping up on objective scoring.
I remember the old days of busted eldar with wave serpent spam and mass scatter lasers, that was broken, and this was 10x worse.
What gives?

To the OP - that sounds way off. Next time you play, Ask your opponent to detail why everything is hitting on 2s.

Recently faced a Drukhari player who was claiming everything hit on 2s. Did not want to dive into his Codex too much, but the guy at the next table noticed he was just citing the names of rules that did not apply to the units as he claimed. Turned out my opponent was just making stuff up to win.

The thing about 9th edition - some factions have dense rulesets that are difficult to understand if you don't personally play them. Any time there's a lot of complexity, expect someone to use it for their advantage.

Karol wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Pickled_egg wrote:

The armour of contempt change was superb.

It's awful. They just keep roiding up Space Marines and leave xenos units with former parity in the dust.

What dust, through out the entire span of 9th marines were at the top for a few weeks at the very start of the edition, and for a similar split second for the BT and GK books. Compare that to how long Harlequins were top army in 9th or DE, how can you even say that xeno armies are being left in the dust, when they are the ones who are generaly better the marines. And I am talking all marines taken as one group. Because if we were to be really pendantic and compare how well IF have done to lets say all the different eldar factions, it would look a lot more grim.

My concern is not army win rates, but individual models vs individual models. In a fight between an equal number of Space Marines and (pick xenos unit), Space Marines have continuously inflated over the years. Back in the day, 5 Space Marines vs 5 Dire Avengers was a roughly equal match. Right now Space Marines just roflstomp them. This is a gakky situation, imo.

From my expiriance the basic eldar stuff was never a DA warrior. Marines or even meq problem, is that they actually have to try to play with stuff that has meq stats and meq points costs. Most xeno armies may have their ork boys, guants , DA etc but those are not the army maker. For the short time where orks were really good, the basic ork was a buggy. At the end of 8th when Inari were still okey vs 2.0 marines, and deadly against everything else, the basic eldar was a plane. The tyranid under crusher stamped was a monster, and it stayed like that under the codex or rather got agravated as now more monsters are very good and very undercosted.

And it goes on and like this. It is very rare then the actual basic units with the basic stats of a faction become the work horse of a faction. Ad mecha had that, although one does have to say that the flyers, dragoons etc helped a lot. Knights have it too, but even for custodes the basic mook is a dude on a jetbike. For GK the basic GK was a NDK or an interceptor, which I guess is the closest one can get to a regular meq stat line being good. BT pulll it off too, although in their case a marine point cost combined with a blanket inv buff from the high marshel had bit impact too.

So in the end, if the basic ork or eldar was on pair with a marine, and everything else in those armies was beating marines by a mile in point efficiency, resiliance or , and sometimes and, fire power playing marines would be a bit like playing necron right now. Only with ctan.

Karol, how do you think the following should compare to a Tac Marine or an Intercessor, on a one-to-one, model-to-model basis?

Necron Warrior
Tyranid Warrior
Dire Avenger (or other aspects, if you like)
Ork Boy
Ork Nob

Karol wrote:
From my expiriance the basic eldar stuff was never a DA warrior. Marines or even meq problem, is that they actually have to try to play with stuff that has meq stats and meq points costs. Most xeno armies may have their ork boys, guants , DA etc but those are not the army maker. For the short time where orks were really good, the basic ork was a buggy. At the end of 8th when Inari were still okey vs 2.0 marines, and deadly against everything else, the basic eldar was a plane. The tyranid under crusher stamped was a monster, and it stayed like that under the codex or rather got agravated as now more monsters are very good and very undercosted.

And it goes on and like this. It is very rare then the actual basic units with the basic stats of a faction become the work horse of a faction. Ad mecha had that, although one does have to say that the flyers, dragoons etc helped a lot. Knights have it too, but even for custodes the basic mook is a dude on a jetbike. For GK the basic GK was a NDK or an interceptor, which I guess is the closest one can get to a regular meq stat line being good. BT pulll it off too, although in their case a marine point cost combined with a blanket inv buff from the high marshel had bit impact too.

So in the end, if the basic ork or eldar was on pair with a marine, and everything else in those armies was beating marines by a mile in point efficiency, resiliance or , and sometimes and, fire power playing marines would be a bit like playing necron right now. Only with ctan.

If your experience is that the "basic Eldar is a plane", then there are other balance issues to be addressed. And there are ways to address it without shoving a factions main "battle line" units further and further down the stack either.

AoC is a shameful buff. I say this as a Marine player. Marines are encroaching on Tyranid Warrior territorry now, which is just disgusting, and I make no mention of Heavy Intercessors either.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Karol, how do you think the following should compare to a Tac Marine or an Intercessor, on a one-to-one, model-to-model basis?

Necron Warrior
Tyranid Warrior
Dire Avenger (or other aspects, if you like)
Ork Boy
Ork Nob

Not intended for me, I know, but:

Necron warriors should be like 1.5 ish marines
Tyranid warriors should be like 2.5
Aspects should be like .7 (if they’re not doing what they’re good at) to like 2 (doing what they’re good at) {I don’t know eldar very much, so block of salt there}
Ork boyz should be able to crack a marine with two boyz to every marine in melee, shoota boyz are never going to make sense, let’s be honest.
Ork nobz should be beastly mini bosses that can krump a whole 5 man squad.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Karol, how do you think the following should compare to a Tac Marine or an Intercessor, on a one-to-one, model-to-model basis?

Necron Warrior
Tyranid Warrior
Dire Avenger (or other aspects, if you like)
Ork Boy
Ork Nob

Not intended for me, I know, but:

Necron warriors should be like 1.5 ish marines
Tyranid warriors should be like 2.5
Aspects should be like .7 (if they’re not doing what they’re good at) to like 2 (doing what they’re good at) {I don’t know eldar very much, so block of salt there}
Ork boyz should be able to crack a marine with two boyz to every marine in melee, shoota boyz are never going to make sense, let’s be honest.
Ork nobz should be beastly mini bosses that can krump a whole 5 man squad.

^Those are decent numbers to me.

ccs wrote:


Then don't be TFG & bring clowns.

Nah dude, I like clowns and it's the army I have the most of right now. I have a few orks but not really a full army and the codex sucks and is unfun, so I'm not going to build them until the army changes.

tneva82 wrote:
Funny thing is...wars don't generally irl be decided by who kills most stuff. So why you insist 40k has to?

See: Vietnam and Afghanistan...

 JNAProductions wrote:
Karol, how do you think the following should compare to a Tac Marine or an Intercessor, on a one-to-one, model-to-model basis?

Necron Warrior
Tyranid Warrior
Dire Avenger (or other aspects, if you like)
Ork Boy
Ork Nob

My take would be by breaking down Shooting (S), Close Combat (C), Defense (D) and Move (M) on a scale of 1-10:

Tactical/Intercessor: S: 5, C: 5, D, 6, M: 5 Cost: 1
Necron Warrior S: 5, C: 3, D, 5, M: 4 Cost: 0.5-0.6
Necron Immortal S: 7, C: 5, D, 6, M: 4 Cost: 1.25-1.5
Ork Boy S: 2, C: 5, D, 4, M: 5 Cost: 0.5
Ork Nob S: 3, C: 6, D, 4, M: 5 Cost 0.75
Tyranid Warrior S: 5, C: 7, D, 6, M: 6 Cost: 1.5
Guardsman S: 3, C: 2, D, 2, M: 4 Cost: 0.3333
Custodian Guard S: 6, C: 7, D, 7, M: 6 Cost: 2

These stats roughly being based (and not enough consideration given) on datasheet stats, weapon options, strats, etc. With Close-Combat being separated from Move (which greatly adjusts Close Combat power by dictating who hits first). Move being more than base movement, but considering Advance and Charge bonuses. And finally, rough Cost being a ballpark relation between the number of units purchased for roughly the cost of a Tactical/Intercessor. All numbers listed should be considered to have a tolerance of +/- 2 at least.

Special note: I personally like the idea of Necrons having a Troop choice notably weaker than marines (Warriors) to overwhelm in a horde style army. While, at the same time, having a noticeably stronger Troop choice (Immortals) than marines to allow a Necron player to have a hyper-Elite army that demonstrates the technologically superior undead robots. Thus allowing previous lore and more of a sci-fi undead horde style of play to be possible.

Imo the brilliance of the 3rd ed Necron codex was that it found a way to encourage a horde of elite Warriors, while still providing a way to defeat it through Phase Out. Amazingly cool design.

Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Karol, how do you think the following should compare to a Tac Marine or an Intercessor, on a one-to-one, model-to-model basis?

Necron Warrior
Tyranid Warrior
Dire Avenger (or other aspects, if you like)
Ork Boy
Ork Nob

My take would be by breaking down Shooting (S), Close Combat (C), Defense (D) and Move (M) on a scale of 1-10:

Tactical/Intercessor: S: 5, C: 5, D, 6, M: 5 Cost: 1
Necron Warrior S: 5, C: 3, D, 5, M: 4 Cost: 0.5-0.6
Necron Immortal S: 7, C: 5, D, 6, M: 4 Cost: 1.25-1.5
Ork Boy S: 2, C: 5, D, 4, M: 5 Cost: 0.5
Ork Nob S: 3, C: 6, D, 4, M: 5 Cost 0.75
Tyranid Warrior S: 5, C: 7, D, 6, M: 6 Cost: 1.5
Guardsman S: 3, C: 2, D, 2, M: 4 Cost: 0.3333
Custodian Guard S: 6, C: 7, D, 7, M: 6 Cost: 2

These stats roughly being based (and not enough consideration given) on datasheet stats, weapon options, strats, etc. With Close-Combat being separated from Move (which greatly adjusts Close Combat power by dictating who hits first). Move being more than base movement, but considering Advance and Charge bonuses. And finally, rough Cost being a ballpark relation between the number of units purchased for roughly the cost of a Tactical/Intercessor. All numbers listed should be considered to have a tolerance of +/- 2 at least.

Special note: I personally like the idea of Necrons having a Troop choice notably weaker than marines (Warriors) to overwhelm in a horde style army. While, at the same time, having a noticeably stronger Troop choice (Immortals) than marines to allow a Necron player to have a hyper-Elite army that demonstrates the technologically superior undead robots. Thus allowing previous lore and more of a sci-fi undead horde style of play to be possible.

I agree with most of this list, but I would make Custodes Guardians just straight 6's. And cost 3. They aren't all SCs and they are swinging some really powerful weapons in CC. Their gear makes them up from 2.5.

Also, I don't know Nid's at all. Why should a Tyranid Warrior cost MORE than a Space marine? Aren't they still 1 wound, and worse BS/WS?

Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Karol, how do you think the following should compare to a Tac Marine or an Intercessor, on a one-to-one, model-to-model basis?

Necron Warrior
Tyranid Warrior
Dire Avenger (or other aspects, if you like)
Ork Boy
Ork Nob

My take would be by breaking down Shooting (S), Close Combat (C), Defense (D) and Move (M) on a scale of 1-10:

Tactical/Intercessor: S: 5, C: 5, D, 6, M: 5 Cost: 1
Necron Warrior S: 5, C: 3, D, 5, M: 4 Cost: 0.5-0.6
Necron Immortal S: 7, C: 5, D, 6, M: 4 Cost: 1.25-1.5
Ork Boy S: 2, C: 5, D, 4, M: 5 Cost: 0.5
Ork Nob S: 3, C: 6, D, 4, M: 5 Cost 0.75
Tyranid Warrior S: 5, C: 7, D, 6, M: 6 Cost: 1.5
Guardsman S: 3, C: 2, D, 2, M: 4 Cost: 0.3333
Custodian Guard S: 6, C: 7, D, 7, M: 6 Cost: 2

These stats roughly being based (and not enough consideration given) on datasheet stats, weapon options, strats, etc. With Close-Combat being separated from Move (which greatly adjusts Close Combat power by dictating who hits first). Move being more than base movement, but considering Advance and Charge bonuses. And finally, rough Cost being a ballpark relation between the number of units purchased for roughly the cost of a Tactical/Intercessor. All numbers listed should be considered to have a tolerance of +/- 2 at least.

Special note: I personally like the idea of Necrons having a Troop choice notably weaker than marines (Warriors) to overwhelm in a horde style army. While, at the same time, having a noticeably stronger Troop choice (Immortals) than marines to allow a Necron player to have a hyper-Elite army that demonstrates the technologically superior undead robots. Thus allowing previous lore and more of a sci-fi undead horde style of play to be possible.

With orks at that, ugh. You don’t really get this do you?

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo the brilliance of the 3rd ed Necron codex was that it found a way to encourage a horde of elite Warriors, while still providing a way to defeat it through Phase Out. Amazingly cool design.

Back when they had good ideas. Sigh.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Also, I don't know Nid's at all. Why should a Tyranid Warrior cost MORE than a Space marine? Aren't they still 1 wound, and worse BS/WS?

Tyranid Warriors are 3w models. Maybe you're confusing them with Termagants/Hormagaunts?

Karol wrote:

 Blackie wrote:


Of course if two players only have 2000 points each of miniatures and one brings orks while the other one brings harlequins chances to have a good time are pretty low.

how many teens do you think start the game by buying 6000pts of any army, or multiple armies at 2000pts? This is some avarge player is a 30+ year old returning to the game after X years, while having a few armies stashed already and another few bought or ordered from ebay.

I started orks at 12 . Took me 3-4 years to get a "complete" army. In the meanwhile I played against people my age, proxying regularly. I see no shame in that. I don't think a kid that age should be a regular at stores playing WYSIWYG competitive games against 30+ old dudes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hecaton wrote:


No it wasn't. It's another rule to remember, a symptom of their inflated weapon stats, and tells Ork and Necron players that they're losers for buying those factions and wanting to have fun.

As an ork player I praised the AoC rule. I think it's fair to boost some armies that needed a buff. Of course now those armies don't need to be more killy to compensate the AoC effect in mirror matches, but unfortunately SM players are already complaining, especially about their bolters (even if some of them, among the most common ones, are functionally AP-2).

tneva82 wrote:
Funny thing is...wars don't generally irl be decided by who kills most stuff. So why you insist 40k has to?

Simply because 40k is not about wars, but about small engagements

and squad or platoon level skirmish battles with equal sized forces, without strategic support or with a larger force moving around, were decided by the one who killed the other first
wars are won by things 40k does not even try to cover, even the strategic assets to win battles are not covered by the rules/scenarios

and we are not even talking about that 40k does not try to simulate anything from real live but tries to be a game to entertain people
nothing the game is doing is going is related to "in real live"

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Karol, how do you think the following should compare to a Tac Marine or an Intercessor, on a one-to-one, model-to-model basis?

Necron Warrior
Tyranid Warrior
Dire Avenger (or other aspects, if you like)
Ork Boy
Ork Nob

Not intended for me, I know, but:

Necron warriors should be like 1.5 ish marines
Tyranid warriors should be like 2.5
Aspects should be like .7 (if they’re not doing what they’re good at) to like 2 (doing what they’re good at) {I don’t know eldar very much, so block of salt there}
Ork boyz should be able to crack a marine with two boyz to every marine in melee, shoota boyz are never going to make sense, let’s be honest.
Ork nobz should be beastly mini bosses that can krump a whole 5 man squad.

^Those are decent numbers to me.

Agree, sounds good to me as well, though traditionally shoota boyz should be 2 = 1 bolter marine, but with worse range.

 kodos wrote:
and squad or platoon level skirmish battles with equal sized forces, without strategic support or with a larger force moving around, were decided by the one who killed the other first

I'd've gone with "he who breaks the opponent's morale first, wins" in that sort of situation, which doesn't imply killing the entire OPFOR - nor even the majority of them, depending on the quality of troops on both sides.

yes, with a situation were moral as in "runs away if too much gak happens" this would be true
but in 40k this is not a thing as each army has the possibility to avoid "moral"

40k is were 2 troops/platoons meet were breaking the moral is not the option because the soldiers don't have one
this happened in real live as well, were no one gives up until all are dead or they are ordered to retreat
on a larger scale this might look different in 40k as well, but a troop Space Marines fighting a troop Tyranid Warriors, there is no breaking the moral

on a large scale were it would be important to interrupt command structures, and "moral" would be affected by this (Tyranids as well as Marines), yes
but 40k still focus on single soldier vs single soldier combat in the rules, so this level of moral does not exist

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
GW needs to read this.

No they don´t. They release products for whales and not gamers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
In Infinity, I don't have to forge the narrative. ITS missions, meaning missions used in tournaments, are what many people here would consider narrative missions.

There's one where you have to rescue civilians, where killing them loses you points, and you need specialists who can grab them.
There's a mission where frostbyte will kill any troops in the exclusion zones if they aren't Heavy Infantry, in a Mech suit, or are a robot, and you can use hackers to turn off heating devices to kill them.
You can do missions with High Value Targets, who you need to capture and bring into your zone, or rescue from the enemy, all while trying to do your secondaries.

I know these wouldn't work as well in 40k, but this proves that they can do missions where I don't have to forge the narrative. They have amazing models in a universe I love, but they can't provide me a good narrative unless I do it myself?

4th 40K had a pretty good selection of scenarios. However in the grim future are no civilians to be found cuz Gee-Dubs never released models for them. Later on people almost exclusively played either "Kill ´em all", "Occupy board quarters" or "Sit X turns at objective token to earn X pts."

 catbarf wrote:
Unit was pretty explicitly talking about narrative campaigns, not every casual pick-up game of 40K.

It didn't seem obvious at all considering they were criticising everything anyone brought up.

I tend to agree that for a narrative campaign, the Crusade system of coming back with the same forces every week, all resurrected and back to full health after being killed to a man last week, is weird. It also completely kills the idea that a 2000pt battle is just the pivotal part of a larger battlefield; the contrivance that explains why a character like Abaddon or Guilliman only ever seems to have a few dozen dudes in tow.

For a campaign, I would prefer a system that suggests I actually have an army at my disposal, fighting over a defined area of terrain, with asymmetric battles being possible depending on how forces are arrayed. There would have to be concessions to what I actually have in my collection, and a little bit of contrivance might still be needed ('no no, this isn't the Baneblade from last week, this is a totally different one that has never been seen in the same room'), but it wouldn't have to be too complicated. White Dwarf used to have campaigns like this.

To me it feels very much like Crusade is escalation-league gameplay first and narrative support second- which it seems is what Unit is criticizing.

Except we've already established that casualties doesn't mean death. Unless you explicitly decide for that to be the case, every single removed model could simply be made combat ineffective and retreated during or after the battle. It's also up to you to decide the time frame between your games. So far the only person who has made it seem bad is Unit who has seemingly insisted that every single casualty is a death and that the IRL time between games is also the in-universe time.
As for the bit about 2k games, that's also a you decision especially since Crusade isn't meant to be exclusively played at 2k points. In fact, 40k isn't meant to be exclusively played at 2k points. In each Crusade book, there are 6 missions for each game size leading to 24 missions overall. The Crusade Roster can be set to any Power level as well, so you could very well say everyone has a 100 Power limit but then play Combat Patrol games for a month. Crusade is only an escalation system if you choose to make it an escalation system. Blaming GW because you haven't read the rules is just stupid. If you only look at the missions of course you are going to miss the Crusade rules themselves. Crusade is very good for adding simple narrative triggers that the individual player can work to their story.

Edit: And maybe it's not fair to criticize Crusade as being unsuited for campaigns; maybe that's not the intent to begin with, and it's really just meant to spice up playing against the same people with the same forces, and that's fine. Maybe the mission design where objectives are abstract tokens that give you abstract points for standing next to them work really well for tournament play and aren't intended to be narratively-focused, and that's fine. But I do think it is then fair to point out that those systems aren't narratively-focused, and explaining gameplay outcomes narratively requires post-hoc rationalization of the gameplay rather than the gameplay being designed to convey a narrative to begin with.

This goes back to the point I made earlier regarding the scale of 40k. Abstract objectives work better since the players can decide what they are. A marker is just a marker unless it represents something else. One of my Deathwatch Agendas is to recover Xenotech, so in our game, we used one of the mini Necron pylons to represent a cache of technology I had to recover. For a game with a Doomsday device, we used an uprighted Deathstrike missile. Leaving it to the player to decide means people aren't shoehorned into one specific type of scenario where a T'au army and an Ork army have to recover Imperial escape pods or Imperial terminals like in the past.

To the OP: No, it's not unplayable. There are bad matchups, which you can avoid with care, but you need a decent sense of the game rules and meta.

I know how you feel, though. My most recent game was my Ork Speed Mob vs Harlequins (post nerf), which was one of the worst games of 40K I've ever experienced. Harlequins got turn 1, quickly moved up to destroy half my army, and my shooting and charges on my turn 1 only managed to kill a single model, while I suffered more losses in CC. The game was over turn 1, and I would have been wiped turn 2. In retrospect, there was little I could have done better, except get turn 1. Orks are simply not in a good place right now, lacking resilience while being toothless against Aeldari of all flavors. Unless you want to wait for a balance patch, the only way to fix this is getting your opponents to adjust their lists.

 kodos wrote:
yes, with a situation were moral as in "runs away if too much gak happens" this would be true
but in 40k this is not a thing as each army has the possibility to avoid "moral"

40k is were 2 troops/platoons meet were breaking the moral is not the option because the soldiers don't have one
this happened in real live as well, were no one gives up until all are dead or they are ordered to retreat
on a larger scale this might look different in 40k as well, but a troop Space Marines fighting a troop Tyranid Warriors, there is no breaking the moral

on a large scale were it would be important to interrupt command structures, and "moral" would be affected by this (Tyranids as well as Marines), yes
but 40k still focus on single soldier vs single soldier combat in the rules, so this level of moral does not exist

Morale USED to be a pretty effective thing in 40k. Many faction had ways to mitigate it, but even Space Marines could be run off the board in earlier editions. Leveraging morale was a very viable thing to do in a number of circumstances.

To OP:

The game is very playable if your metric for fun isn't that you must go to LVO/Adepticon and place in the top 10. There are some armies that are a bit like climbing a cliff(Tyranids at this point), but overall a fun game can be had most of the time. If anything it depends on the player you face whether the game is fun or not.

The 6s to hit for you and their 2+ to hit sounds weird. Hard to comment on that unless there is more information.

 Gert wrote:
Except we've already established that casualties doesn't mean death. Unless you explicitly decide for that to be the case, every single removed model could simply be made combat ineffective and retreated during or after the battle. It's also up to you to decide the time frame between your games.

Every single poor Guardsman who got eaten by the Haruspex when it wiped out their unit was merely wounded, played dead, and retreated once the big bug was gone? The desperate last stand of Marines on an objective, surrounded by a mob of Boyz, killed to a man, actually got teleported out at the last second? The irreplaceable centuries-old Baneblade variant, whose technology for manufacture is gone forever, that got blown off the board by a Volcano Cannon actually just popped a fuse, scooted off the battlefield unseen, and can be repaired just in time for the next battle?

I mean, yeah, you certainly don't need to convince me that most casualties in war aren't fatalities. But the implicit idea that none of your casualties represent actual losses, so that your Crusade force can come back next time exactly as it was (with new battle scars and abilities), is like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon.