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gungo wrote:
This is utter nonsense...

No, it's how the game functions. Giving your characters/units/vehicles additional or upgraded or new equipment increases their utility or their power, and thus is paid for with points (unless its a lateral shift) to represent that.

gungo wrote:
... extra bits and bobbles is almost always going to be worse then just having more bodies

Now who's talking utter nonsense...

The reason why a Lascannon in a Guard squad should cost points, is because a Guard squad with a Lascannon is better than a Guard squad without one. A Guard squad with a Vox has access to more abilities - situational as they may be - and thus should pay for them. If you don't have to pay for them, then they're not options. You just take the max amount of "free stuff" because there's simply no reason not to. This is why Power Level is a bad system, because you can have a unit with maximum tricked out wargear/weapons/options and have it cost the exact same PL as a bare bones unit that hasn't taken a single upgrade. Why GW decided to spread this disease to the points system (Guard Infantry, Plague Marines, etc.) is beyond me.

This isn't a new concept by any stretch of the imagination.

Garrac wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Free weapons, like Hammer of the Emperor, is another example of abandoning even the pretence of writing a proper set of rules.

I figured we reached that point when GW started refusing to credit it's writers and artists.

This gets me crazy. In any other medium not crediting the authors would get global animosity and strikes verywhere. We should held GW more responsible for this donkey-cave move.

IIRC it wasn't because "feth the writers", but because they were consistently getting flooded with death threats.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If you don't have to pay for them, then they're not options.

I think that's supposedly the whole point: the free things are not meant to be optional to have, they are optional to not have. And since downgrades are kinda silly (Infantry Squad starts with Vox included, but then have the option to remove the Vox for, like, -5 points... that would be really weird) the second-best is to have these not!options for free.

I'm with BHNC--free 'options' are just standard equipment with extra wording. Obviously we are free to have our dudes show up and not use their gear, or show up with half the points, or whatever. The explicit point of Matched play is that everyone is showing up on a similar playing field and giving away notable increases in effectiveness for free is not that.

I think it is fine for stuff like voxes and banners and such to be free. They're flavourful, but in the past it usually was more optimal to save the points and not have them.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

gungo wrote:
This is utter nonsense...

No, it's how the game functions. Giving your characters/units/vehicles additional or upgraded or new equipment increases their utility or their power, and thus is paid for with points (unless its a lateral shift) to represent that.

gungo wrote:
... extra bits and bobbles is almost always going to be worse then just having more bodies

Now who's talking utter nonsense...

The reason why a Lascannon in a Guard squad should cost points, is because a Guard squad with a Lascannon is better than a Guard squad without one. A Guard squad with a Vox has access to more abilities - situational as they may be - and thus should pay for them. If you don't have to pay for them, then they're not options. You just take the max amount of "free stuff" because there's simply no reason not to. This is why Power Level is a bad system, because you can have a unit with maximum tricked out wargear/weapons/options and have it cost the exact same PL as a bare bones unit that hasn't taken a single upgrade. Why GW decided to spread this disease to the points system (Guard Infantry, Plague Marines, etc.) is beyond me.

This isn't a new concept by any stretch of the imagination.

Why did they implement Power Level? Easy question, easy answer:

Gamers have become too lazy/stupid to use a calculator in order to write a proper list. So not only the rules have been dumbed down but also the process of creating an army just to lure a larger demographic into the hobby.

If you think about it, communication gear would be standard in any army that's not stuck in the pre-industrial era. So Voxcasters being "free" sort of makes sense.

What is a head scratcher would be stuff like plasma guns being free. You mean to tell me that one has the same level of accessibility to a rare and hard to make piece of military hardware as a ho-hum grenade launcher? Really?

That's certainly one way to think about it...

But it's not like people using battlescribe are playing Power Levels lol


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 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
If you think about it, communication gear would be standard in any army that's not stuck in the pre-industrial era. So Voxcasters being "free" sort of makes sense.

What is a head scratcher would be stuff like plasma guns being free. You mean to tell me that one has the same level of accessibility to a rare and hard to make piece of military hardware as a ho-hum grenade launcher? Really?

Easy answer: they're issued wargear as needed.

The guard release seems to be fraught with the same issues ultimately as the CSM one, but I think there's a lot more disagreement within the guard ranks ot seems. Different people all seem to want and think different things rather than being able to comprehensively say "this bad".

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
If you think about it, communication gear would be standard in any army that's not stuck in the pre-industrial era. So Voxcasters being "free" sort of makes sense.

What is a head scratcher would be stuff like plasma guns being free. You mean to tell me that one has the same level of accessibility to a rare and hard to make piece of military hardware as a ho-hum grenade launcher? Really?

Apologies for being behind on the leaks again, but are they doing that? Plasma, Melta, grenade launchers, etc, "free" in the same way that they are for the Traitor Guardsmen squad?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

gungo wrote:
This is utter nonsense...

No, it's how the game functions. Giving your characters/units/vehicles additional or upgraded or new equipment increases their utility or their power, and thus is paid for with points (unless its a lateral shift) to represent that.

gungo wrote:
... extra bits and bobbles is almost always going to be worse then just having more bodies

Now who's talking utter nonsense...

The reason why a Lascannon in a Guard squad should cost points, is because a Guard squad with a Lascannon is better than a Guard squad without one. A Guard squad with a Vox has access to more abilities - situational as they may be - and thus should pay for them. If you don't have to pay for them, then they're not options. You just take the max amount of "free stuff" because there's simply no reason not to. This is why Power Level is a bad system, because you can have a unit with maximum tricked out wargear/weapons/options and have it cost the exact same PL as a bare bones unit that hasn't taken a single upgrade. Why GW decided to spread this disease to the points system (Guard Infantry, Plague Marines, etc.) is beyond me.

This isn't a new concept by any stretch of the imagination.

You seem to not comprehend the point. I’m not saying a lascannon can’t have points nice strawman… I literally said.. “putting points on everything isn’t some form of holy grail form of balance.. not everything needs points. ” you are standing on this everything needs points nonsense like they need points to be balanced.. I assure you they don’t… it’s just your myopic view on balance. A vox is currently useful and yet not worth spending any points on because it’s entirely situational.

There’s a whole subsection for bickering about game mechanics… side spats regarding personal feelings on game design aren’t exactly relevant to news and rumours.

The issue with Voxes is an overaching issue, GW has a hard time making things other than guns useful and then assigning them a correct point level.

A simple fix would be to bake it into the cost of every squad (which means we'd all have some converting to do!) and say a vox set allows a squad to do (let's say) receive orders from an officer from anywhere on the board as long as Mr. Vox is alive.

Or if that's too much, make it 24", or line or sight, or something.

One less detail to keep track off.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
The issue with Voxes is an overaching issue, GW has a hard time making things other than guns useful and then assigning them a correct point level.

A simple fix would be to bake it into the cost of every squad (which means we'd all have some converting to do!) and say a vox set allows a squad to do (let's say) receive orders from an officer from anywhere on the board as long as Mr. Vox is alive.

Or if that's too much, make it 24", or line or sight, or something.

One less detail to keep track off.

There is a master vox leak that’s board wide, there is the fire on my position strat leak that’s awesome and only 1 cp for krieg… all of which are great but the problem is situational isn’t really Min/max with points or the best setup.. a wpn is almost always useful unless the entire squad is removed an infantry unit with a vox may never receive an order. What’s the point value in that? there is a +1 to hit artillery ability that uses a vox spotter too. There is so many cool little bits added to using a vox that’s awesome and yet it still isn’t worth 5pts per squad. These wargear should be free as it greatly improves the army as a whole without being a choice between this and an entire infantry squad.

gungo wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
The issue with Voxes is an overaching issue, GW has a hard time making things other than guns useful and then assigning them a correct point level.

A simple fix would be to bake it into the cost of every squad (which means we'd all have some converting to do!) and say a vox set allows a squad to do (let's say) receive orders from an officer from anywhere on the board as long as Mr. Vox is alive.

Or if that's too much, make it 24", or line or sight, or something.

One less detail to keep track off.

There is a master vox leak that’s board wide, there is the fire on my position strat leak that’s awesome and only 1 cp for krieg… all of which are great but the problem is situational isn’t really Min/max with points or the best setup.. a wpn is almost always useful unless the entire squad is removed an infantry unit with a vox may never receive an order. What’s the point value in that? there is a +1 to hit artillery ability that uses a vox spotter too. There is so many cool little bits added to using a vox that’s awesome and yet it still isn’t worth 5pts per squad. These wargear should be free as it greatly improves the army as a whole without being a choice between this and an entire infantry squad.

It doesn't have to be 5pts per squad..? Could be 1pt, for example, which means you could get 5 for the former cost.

gungo wrote:
A vox is currently useful and yet not worth spending any points on because it’s entirely situational.

That's inherently a contradiction. If a vox is useful then it has a non-zero point cost that accurately represents its value. It can only not be worth spending any points on if it adds no value to an army. And the fact that a vox isn't worth it at the point cost GW set in some previous book (under completely different rules) doesn't mean it's some ineffable rule that the point system can't cope with, it just means that GW made a mistake in setting its point cost in the past. The answer is to figure out the correct point cost, not to flip the table and declare that everything is free.

And yes, this applies to PL and pseudo-PL in general. It's profoundly stupid design and GW needs to let go of their ego, admit it was a mistake, and get rid of it.


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Dudeface wrote:
The guard release seems to be fraught with the same issues ultimately as the CSM one, but I think there's a lot more disagreement within the guard ranks ot seems. Different people all seem to want and think different things rather than being able to comprehensively say "this bad".

I don't think it's all that divided, not on the key issues. There are a tiny handful of people defending "no model no rules" (some of whom have a history of defending everything GW does) and a few people yelling "POSITIVE VIBES ONLY" but the majority of the community is opposed to NMNR restrictions, free upgrades, etc. The stuff that's getting more debate is the stuff where there's genuine room for disagreement, stuff that isn't really related to the CSM debacle.

And there's a number of people dumping on everything no matter what while slinging gak at anyone who isn't chicken littling

 Kanluwen wrote:
And there's a number of people dumping on everything no matter what while slinging gak at anyone who isn't chicken littling

Thank you for demonstrating my point nicely.

FWIW I'm looking forward to the army box coming out and hoping I can reserve a copy.

In terms of the points for gear - over the years I've argued it both ways. I don't think a Vox can meaningfully have a points value - and so its probably easier to just say this is a standard special rule all guard squads get. Unclear who loses out on this.

Special weapons are a bit different - mainly because we'll all tend to think say a Plasma gun or melta gun is better than a grenade launcher, and a lascannon is better than an autocannon etc. But equally I can see GW arguing there just isn't really a "fair" price for a flamer, grenade launcher, autocannon etc that makes it an interesting choice. Having them be 2-3 points less or something is an artificial distinction that isn't adding much to the game.

 AtoMaki wrote:

Keel wrote:

Voss wrote:
Its been the standard since... 2nd? 3rd?
The time to complain about fluffyness was nearly 30 years ago- seems completely irrelevant to the codex at hand.

Funnily enough the Forge World lists (Krieg, Elysians, unsure about LatD) used to be very stingy with the special weapons in command squads.

The DKoK Command Squads were limited to 2 specials (in any combination) but the Elysians had no restrictions at all. To the point where the Elysian Company Command Squad could take 4 Ground Scanner things too as they were in the special weapons section.

The D-99 list, yes, but in the "normal" Drop Troops list command squads could take just one special weapon.

grenade launcher and flamer are free, plasma and melta 5 pts each...everything else free...problem solved?

Tyel wrote:
FWIW I'm looking forward to the army box coming out and hoping I can reserve a copy.

In terms of the points for gear - over the years I've argued it both ways. I don't think a Vox can meaningfully have a points value - and so its probably easier to just say this is a standard special rule all guard squads get. Unclear who loses out on this.

Special weapons are a bit different - mainly because we'll all tend to think say a Plasma gun or melta gun is better than a grenade launcher, and a lascannon is better than an autocannon etc. But equally I can see GW arguing there just isn't really a "fair" price for a flamer, grenade launcher, autocannon etc that makes it an interesting choice. Having them be 2-3 points less or something is an artificial distinction that isn't adding much to the game.

Then GW needs to write better rules. You could give pinning effects for something like the Autocannon and Grenade Launcher to make them more interesting, for example.

Twoshoes23 wrote:
grenade launcher and flamer are free, plasma and melta 5 pts each...everything else free...problem solved?

That's a bit difficult with the current codex design, as things like special weapons have a fixed point cost. Back then in 3rd edition (first) codex you had the option to have 4 special weapons in a CS, but you had to pay the double price compared to a normal infantery squad. There were other examples where weapons had a hefty price increase when you had more than one in a squad as either the squad was far more effective and/or it was too sure that they got their job done.

Tyel wrote:
I don't think a Vox can meaningfully have a points value - and so its probably easier to just say this is a standard special rule all guard squads get.

Why can't it have a point value? It clearly provides non-zero benefit so why can't that benefit be quantified like any other upgrade?

But equally I can see GW arguing there just isn't really a "fair" price for a flamer, grenade launcher, autocannon etc that makes it an interesting choice.

GW can argue that but they'd obviously fail. There's clearly a fair price for those weapons, the only reason there's a problem is that GW keeps making plasma too cheap and leaving no room for other options. And this pseudo-PL nonsense only makes the problem worse, by removing even the possibility that you might consider other options instead of the free plasma gun.


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 Dryaktylus wrote:
That's a bit difficult with the current codex design, as things like special weapons have a fixed point cost.

Huh? In 9th each unit has its own prices for upgrades, there are no more flat prices for a weapon/upgrade across an entire army. And we even have the Tau with an example of increasing costs per weapon for additional copies of the same weapon.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Why did they implement Power Level? Easy question, easy answer:

Gamers have become too lazy/stupid to use a calculator in order to write a proper list. So not only the rules have been dumbed down but also the process of creating an army just to lure a larger demographic into the hobby.

Nah.
GW introduced Power Levels because they initially planned to remove balance entirely like in 1st ed. Age of Sigmar; but when that launched disastrously, they had to bodge a point system back in to 40k before 8th ed. launched.

That now the sheep are content to pay for points updates in addition to codexes is just a happy by-product.

Removing Points Values for things transforms them from upgrades to options. The problem GW then has to address is ways to make those options roughly equal.

Removing the cost for a Vox Caster in a squad means there is no reason to not take a Vox Caster. It becomes an expected option. So just take it and enjoy the limited benefits it provides.

On the other hand, making the option to take a Meltagun, Plasmagun, Grenade Launcher, or Flamer is more difficult. The current rules make the first two clearly superior to the last two. The rules need to be adjusted in such a way that the option more equivalent between the 4. Forcing diversity in choice (you can take 2, but no duplicates) helps reduce the issue, but they still need to do something to keep the Metla-Plasma choice from being clearly superior to the GL-Flamer choice.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
That now the sheep are content to pay for points updates in addition to codexes is just a happy by-product.

Point updates are free.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 alextroy wrote:
Removing the cost for a Vox Caster in a squad means there is no reason to not take a Vox Caster. It becomes an expected option. So just take it and enjoy the limited benefits it provides.

Then why even have it as an option? Having a fake "option" that only a clueless newbie would ever take is very poor design.

On the other hand, making the option to take a Meltagun, Plasmagun, Grenade Launcher, or Flamer is more difficult. The current rules make the first two clearly superior to the last two. The rules need to be adjusted in such a way that the option more equivalent between the 4. Forcing diversity in choice (you can take 2, but no duplicates) helps reduce the issue, but they still need to do something to keep the Metla-Plasma choice from being clearly superior to the GL-Flamer choice.

It's easy to keep plasma/melta from being clearly superior to flamer/GL: use the existing point system instead of this idiotic pseudo-PL nonsense GW keeps pushing. The problem only exists at all because GW insists on doubling down on their PL mistake and making all upgrades built into the unit cost.

And forced diversity has nothing to do with balance. Unit options are set by what is on the sprue, not by what makes a balanced unit, and some of those sprues weren't even made during the current edition.

They used to just make Meltas and Plasmas more expensive as a way of balancing that choice. Points are not the great leveller, but they're a damned sight better than "It's all free! WHEEE!!!!!!!".

And Decimus is right, this change has nothing to do with "diversity in choice". It's NM/NR. Remember that the Catachans are being saddled with a limit of 2 Flamers, 'cause the sprue has 1 flamer and you get 2 sprues in a box. Brood Brothers were once stuck with the option of Flamers or Grenade Launchers only, 'cause that's what was on the Cadian sprue. It's got nothing to do with balance, diversity of weapon choices, or anything else. It's just NM/NR. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 AtoMaki wrote:
I think that's supposedly the whole point: the free things are not meant to be optional to have, they are optional to not have. And since downgrades are kinda silly (Infantry Squad starts with Vox included, but then have the option to remove the Vox for, like, -5 points... that would be really weird) the second-best is to have these not!options for free.

Then they should be baked into the cost of the squad, and not something that's optional to take.

gungo wrote:
You seem to not comprehend the point.

Quite the opposite here, I'm afraid.

gungo wrote:
I’m not saying a lascannon can’t have points nice strawman

It's not a strawman. Lascannons are currently free in Guard Squads. It's an existing problem. It's literally part of the rules right now.

gungo wrote:
I literally said.. “putting points on everything isn’t some form of holy grail form of balance.. not everything needs points. ” you are standing on this everything needs points nonsense like they need points to be balanced.. I assure you they don’t… it’s just your myopic view on balance. A vox is currently useful and yet not worth spending any points on because it’s entirely situational.

And I didn't say anything about a "holy grail of balance", so now who's putting words into someone's mouth?

Options that increase the utility of a unit should cost points. This is a 2 + 2 = 4 situation. If your abilities are greater by taking this object, it should cost points. It doesn't matter if it's "situational". When that ever mattered? Some weapons are situational. You could find yourself with a whole bunch of flamers and be up against Knights or something where they're basically useless, but you should still pay points for them.

If something is so worthless that it shouldn't cost anything then:

1. You make it worthwhile.
2. You make it a default piece of equipment (ie. "A Guard Squad consists of 1 Sergeant and 9 Guardsmen. The Sergeant is armed with a Laspistol and Chainsword, and the Guardsmen have Lasguns. One Guardsmen has a Vox-Caster."). It shouldn't be an option.

Twoshoes23 wrote:
grenade launcher and flamer are free, plasma and melta 5 pts each...everything else free...problem solved?

No. Why would a Flamer or GL be free? How does that make any sense. They're better than Lasguns. Theya re an upgrade.

Totally agree with H.B.M.C. in this debate.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No. Why would a Flamer or GL be free? How does that make any sense. They're better than Lasguns. Theya re an upgrade.

You would have to make the argument that, like how SWS/HWS used to work (start with a lasgun, must replace with the heavy/special weapon), the special weapon upgrade is mandatory and just part of the unit. But there's no reason for that to be the case, other than GW being too lazy to write proper rules and taking away options.