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I thought index-era was pretty fun - but this was undoubtedly partly the novelty after the issues of 7th.

Once people started to optimise their lists and abuse the various issues (i.e. certain overpowered units, soup so you could take them in almost any army, no rule of 3 so you could spam them, and first turn deep strike) it quickly deteriorated.

Dudeface wrote:

 Slayer6 wrote:
My most enjoyable experience in the last 20 years was during the first six months of 8E when we all had an Index to work with... Everyone's rules came out at the same time, and there was no 'Flavor of the Month'...

There most certainly was and not all index rules were made equal. It was also incredibly bland imo.

I'd still take a continuation of that paradigm over 9th era codexes.

Indexes don't have to be "bland", either. There's no reason that faction/ subfaction rules need to be: 1 page of special rules + 2 pages of stratagems + 1 page of relics + 1 page of Warlord traits. Most could be done in a page or less.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Slayer6 wrote:
My most enjoyable experience in the last 20 years was during the first six months of 8E when we all had an Index to work with... Everyone's rules came out at the same time, and there was no 'Flavor of the Month'...

There most certainly was and not all index rules were made equal. It was also incredibly bland imo.

I'd still take a continuation of that paradigm over 9th era codexes.

That paradigm is what created Legends. No thank you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Indexes don't have to be "bland", either. There's no reason that faction/ subfaction rules need to be: 1 page of special rules + 2 pages of stratagems + 1 page of relics + 1 page of Warlord traits. Most could be done in a page or less.

Hence why I believe the Marine codex being 200 pages + 10 supplements is absolute insanity. It needs consolidation of Marine profiles, rules, Warlord Traits, and Relics. Why couldn't 12 Warlord Traits total just cover everyone's needs, ya know?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Slayer6 wrote:
My most enjoyable experience in the last 20 years was during the first six months of 8E when we all had an Index to work with... Everyone's rules came out at the same time, and there was no 'Flavor of the Month'...

There most certainly was and not all index rules were made equal. It was also incredibly bland imo.

I'd still take a continuation of that paradigm over 9th era codexes.

That paradigm is what created Legends. No thank you.

Seems unrelated, tbh.

GW's NMNR policy is what created Legends. Doesn't matter if the rules are in Indexes or Codexes.

 PaddyMick wrote:
Hard reset with better, more wargame-like rules please. Pay Rick Preistly £1million to write them. Don't mind keeping the codex system though, as long as it's planned better.

The Codex system exists, unfortunately, as I understand, because it's good business for players to have to buy a new 'dex every few years. Even with almost no experience, it's obviously a problem, because it's the method by which GW drives sales via constant OP dexes, and this creates an imbalanced and ever-shifting game-state, as well as leading to a constant stats-inflation, because no easy course-correction can be made. (what's the point of every attack in the game having AP?) The "obvious" solution, which I've read on here several times, would be to have datasheets updated a few times per year, and posted online. Army books could still be made, but would consist of background, information for painting and customizing (various insignia, and such), quick painting guides, scenarios and optional rules, and showcase galleries. Maybe crusade info, though I wouldn't trust that to go long without needing errata. I doubt this will happen.

For the rules, it's strange that there's so much complexity where it isn't needed at all, but grossly oversimplified where it is needed. Stratagems and command points are the biggest offender, and should be gotten rid of entirely. All the subfaction bonuses are also a major hassle. If people like them, make it an optional points buy-in. The areas where more complexity are needed are:

- Vehicles behaving nothing like vehicles, with no firing arcs (this is the worst) and being big bags of hit points.
- The almost total lack of command & control and morale rules. The combat attrition system is absurd.

Alternating activation would also be an immediate improvement. Other issues are more a matter of personal preference (too much lethality, tables too small with not enough room/time to maneuver, too much emphasis on big models, and hard time limits)

Basically, I should be playing 3rd-6th edition.

 0beron wrote:
- Vehicles behaving nothing like vehicles, with no firing arcs (this is the worst) and being big bags of hit points.

That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

 0beron wrote:
- The almost total lack of command & control and morale rules. The combat attrition system is absurd.

The "morale" rules are the second thing in the game I'd change, right after redefining what a horde is to 11+ models, not 6+.

A full restart like when 8th rolled out would be major feels-bad for World Eaters/Astra Militarum players. Honestly I felt bad for all the GSC/Traitor Legions players at the end of 7th whose books were only valid for like 5 months before the whole thing was wiped.

That being said, in a lot of ways it was nice to reset to a more or less even playing field, although that's a bit misleading as some factions were stronger than others, even in the indexes. It's simply impossible to balance a game with as many factions and units as 40k perfectly. LotR works so well because so many of the troops and heroes are fairly similar, despite different stats. You don't have the huge variety of different types of units as you do in 40k. Now one thing that it would be possible to do when 10th rolls around is get rid of all the excess bloat. Basically restrict all the armies to just what's in their codexes; no White Dwarfs, campaign books, or anything. You wouldn't have to nuke the game like the 7th-8th transition. It's somewhat encouraging to see them releasing a new series of campaign books that are narrative-only; it gives nice new content for narrative players but doesn't add yet more bloat for all the tournament players to have to learn and that could possibly break the game yet again by introducing some busted rules interaction. For new tournament content, they already produce the tournament season books, and have switched to points updates being digital (yay!). That stuff isn't bloat, but rather keeping the meta from becoming too stale.

TL;DR: I want to see the current rules and books be continued into 10th, but with all the extra supplement crap taken out behind the shed and put out of its misery. It would also be nice to not see each new book be more busted than the last, but that's a fool's hope (this is GW we're talking about after all, they want to make every buck they possibly can from it).

Broadly speaking I'd like more of the same. Crusade is fun. Competitive balance has never been better.

Just bring back USR's for common rules like deep strike and infiltrate, and do something about the ridiculous number of useless stratagems. The best idea I've seen is to make players choose 5-6 stratagems to have available during the game while leaving the rest out. This reduces the mental load for your opponent and helps prevent gotchas.

Besides these two major pain points, 9e has largely been great. Most recent codexes have been excellent. Knights/chaos knights, chaos space marines, custodes, tyranids, and eldar all got books with fun mechanics and lots of depth. Give us more books like those and I'll be happy.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

Yeah, when small-arms fire brings down a Predator or Fire Prism, the question is always: "Why would anyone bother building armored vehicles in this universe?"

 0beron wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

Yeah, when small-arms fire brings down a Predator or Fire Prism, the question is always: "Why would anyone bother building armored vehicles in this universe?"

They're not mathematically doing it in droves. The vehicle would have to have like 2 wounds left.

You'd literally fix the problem just by giving vehicles (and monsters) just a couple of additional wounds.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 0beron wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

Yeah, when small-arms fire brings down a Predator or Fire Prism, the question is always: "Why would anyone bother building armored vehicles in this universe?"

They're not mathematically doing it in droves. The vehicle would have to have like 2 wounds left.

You'd literally fix the problem just by giving vehicles (and monsters) just a couple of additional wounds.

How would that "fix it"? You'd still be able to strip off those last couple of wounds. You'd just have to remove a couple more before you did it.

 0beron wrote:
Even with almost no experience, it's obviously a problem, because it's the method by which GW drives sales via constant OP dexes, and this creates an imbalanced and ever-shifting game-state, as well as leading to a constant stats-inflation, because no easy course-correction can be made. (what's the point of every attack in the game having AP?) The "obvious" solution, which I've read on here several times, would be to have datasheets updated a few times per year, and posted online.

If the stats fit the fluff they don't need to be updated once a year. AP-1 is like a light vehicle weapon, and there is no reason it should apply to Flayed One scissor claws. It's not that course corrections need to be made, it's that designers forgot the course entirely. AP-1 was supposed to replace AP4 weapons. GW could have removed Drukhari blade artists (+1 AP on wound rolls of 6) as the very first nerf to them, but they didn't, because everything has to be good against Space Marines because they are popular, except Space Marines aren't meant to be weak to everything so now they need Armour of Contempt and all the things that deserve to be a good against Space Marines are less good than they are supposed to be.

For the rules, it's strange that there's so much complexity where it isn't needed at all, but grossly oversimplified where it is needed. Stratagems and command points are the biggest offender, and should be gotten rid of entirely. All the subfaction bonuses are also a major hassle. If people like them, make it an optional points buy-in.

The problem with a pts buy-in is that it'd take forever to balance, it is easier for GW to just let it be unbalanced and say it's intentional.

The areas where more complexity are needed are:

- Vehicles behaving nothing like vehicles, with no firing arcs (this is the worst) and being big bags of hit points.
- The almost total lack of command & control and morale rules. The combat attrition system is absurd.

Why should a vehicle have firing arcs but not heavy infantry or monsters? Firing arcs felt bad to me since many Xenos vehicles were designed to look cool instead of being designed to play within the parameters of firing arcs so many weapons went to waste, while the Imperium vehicles were designed in ways they usually got to leverage most of their guns.

Stratagems are meant to simulate command & control, there being so many of them could be an indication that GW thinks it's important. Combat Attrition is better than Sweeping Advance, but I don't love it.

See, I would support a return of the old wound table if I wasn't sure that people will demand that my monsters be nerfed to the worthless T6 Sv 3+ 4-6 wounds they had in 5th.

I like being T8 Sv2+ 15-17 wounds.

Adding a few extra wounds is just escalation, as now you've made the things that should be killing them less effective, meaning they have to get a boost, and on and on it goes...

 vict0988 wrote:

If the stats fit the fluff they don't need to be updated once a year. AP-1 is like a light vehicle weapon, and there is no reason it should apply to Flayed One scissor claws. It's not that course corrections need to be made, it's that designers forgot the course entirely. AP-1 was supposed to replace AP4 weapons. GW could have removed Drukhari blade artists (+1 AP on wound rolls of 6) as the very first nerf to them, but they didn't, because everything has to be good against Space Marines because they are popular, except Space Marines aren't meant to be weak to everything so now they need Armour of Contempt and all the things that deserve to be a good against Space Marines are less good than they are supposed to be.

I agree. Ideally they would never need updating. I also intend this more as small points adjustments for things that are either rarely used, or auto-includes. Not constant stat-changing.
I was trying to avoid the Space Marine issue, because that's going to invite a whole different discussion... but I think the game would be much healthier if they weren't shown favoritism and made the "default army," but this isn't really the thread for it. (although I do think there are ways to make Marines have a better matchup against a meta set against them). (I also think that they definitely should be a very low model count army, but that so should Eldar and Necrons).

 vict0988 wrote:

The problem with a pts buy-in is that it'd take forever to balance, it is easier for GW to just let it be unbalanced and say it's intentional.

If the subfac modifiers are very modest (i.e., more so than they are currently), I think a balanced state could be reached through gradual points adjustments.

Why should a vehicle have firing arcs but not heavy infantry or monsters? Firing arcs felt bad to me since many Xenos vehicles were designed to look cool instead of being designed to play within the parameters of firing arcs so many weapons went to waste, while the Imperium vehicles were designed in ways they usually got to leverage most of their guns.

Stratagems are meant to simulate command & control, there being so many of them could be an indication that GW thinks it's important. Combat Attrition is better than Sweeping Advance, but I don't love it.

An infantry squad or a monster (and to an extent, a bipedal walker) would have much greater situational awareness and ability to re-orient itself than a vehicle. Non-rectangular vehicles can still have reference points on their hull from which arcs are determined. I'm not opposed to rules for monster/infantry facings and firing arcs, though more for things like gaining advantages for firing at something from multiple directions. This would be a more radical implementation, so I'll avoid it for now. In short, being able to shoot "whatever, wherever" just feels completely wrong, like we may as well be playing make-believe with toys.

I understand stratagems are there for c&c*, but the execution of it is just pages and pages of text to read and keep track of, plus the peripheral physical component of cards, and tracking command points, and... it's just a mess. Completely inelegant design. Instead of combat attrition, you could just have units that take certain damage have to make a leadership test, and if they fail, they receive a penalty or fail to activate or something. (I'd also like to implement non-lethal damage, effectively suppression, but again, too much, too soon)

*and to add an extra component the GW can charge you for.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 0beron wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

Yeah, when small-arms fire brings down a Predator or Fire Prism, the question is always: "Why would anyone bother building armored vehicles in this universe?"

They're not mathematically doing it in droves. The vehicle would have to have like 2 wounds left.

You'd literally fix the problem just by giving vehicles (and monsters) just a couple of additional wounds.

How would that "fix it"? You'd still be able to strip off those last couple of wounds. You'd just have to remove a couple more before you did it.

The lasgun wielders will die before the tank does.

Let's say you have 2 chapter tactics, one that lets you do a 6" pre-game move on your entire army and ObSec on your entire army and another chapter tactic that gives you a 6" pre-game move and +1 to charge. How do you cost those, is it A/B pts for Flayed Ones and C/D pts for Necron Warriors or is it a flat number X/Y pts for the entire list? Is A=B and C=D?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Adding a few extra wounds is just escalation, as now you've made the things that should be killing them less effective, meaning they have to get a boost, and on and on it goes...

Or they could just... kill them less? Seems a fine solution to the constant cries of lethality creep.

Racerguy180 wrote:
A shift to everyone back to index and work from there with a more reasonable stat spread/interaction.

I like how they did that with 8th and it took them exactly 1 edition to throw the baby out with the bathwater, stomp all over it, then go a completely opposite direction.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

That paradigm is what created Legends. No thank you.

That would be because of NMNR, not indexes lol

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Hence why I believe the Marine codex being 200 pages + 10 supplements is absolute insanity. It needs consolidation of Marine profiles, rules, Warlord Traits, and Relics. Why couldn't 12 Warlord Traits total just cover everyone's needs, ya know?

why can't 6 warlord traits be enough?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 0beron wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

Yeah, when small-arms fire brings down a Predator or Fire Prism, the question is always: "Why would anyone bother building armored vehicles in this universe?"

They're not mathematically doing it in droves. The vehicle would have to have like 2 wounds left.

You'd literally fix the problem just by giving vehicles (and monsters) just a couple of additional wounds.

Just straight-up double the wounds of every vehicles.
Give land raider equivalents a 1+ save
predator equivalent a 2+
land speeders equivalents a 3+

make any anti-tank weapon do a flat amount of damage instead of D6. If a Lascannon/Melta can penetrate a tank, it should also be able to vaporize some elite infantry



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

Why should a vehicle have firing arcs but not heavy infantry or monsters?

because infantry can easily rotate their bodies quickly, for a tank to be able to shoot its turret + hull + sponsons guns, it means it has to be doing a 360 spin....

 vict0988 wrote:


Firing arcs felt bad to me since many Xenos vehicles were designed to look cool instead of being designed to play within the parameters of firing arcs so many weapons went to waste, while the Imperium vehicles were designed in ways they usually got to leverage most of their guns.

fixed by adding a small diagram on the side of their datasheet (same as facings)

 vict0988 wrote:


Stratagems are meant to simulate command & control, there being so many of them could be an indication that GW thinks it's important. Combat Attrition is better than Sweeping Advance, but I don't love it.

Stratagems are cancer, i've been playing OPR and its so much more enjoyable, i'm not drained after a game of looking in the book/wahapedia to make sure i'm not forgetting a strat


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:
Let's say you have 2 chapter tactics, one that lets you do a 6" pre-game move on your entire army and ObSec on your entire army and another chapter tactic that gives you a 6" pre-game move and +1 to charge. How do you cost those, is it A/B pts for Flayed Ones and C/D pts for Necron Warriors or is it a flat number X/Y pts for the entire list? Is A=B and C=D?

Controversial take but : You just don't need chapter tactics....

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

That would be because of NMNR, not indexes lol

And NMNR is much older than 8th Ed. It started in 6th IIRC as result of the Chapterhouse fiasco, and because of that it isn't going away.

because infantry can easily rotate their bodies quickly, for a tank to be able to shoot its turret + hull + sponsons guns, it means it has to be doing a 360 spin....

That still leaves the middle point of monsters and walkers, in which some of them are infantry shaped and others do need to rotate their whole body (e.g. Exocrine).

Controversial take but : You just don't need chapter tactics....

We don't need them, but there is no denying that most want them.

honestly if they could just declutter the rules that would be great less stratagems, less rerolls, more roll the dice, accept the results and move to the next unit. I do hope having primary and faction secondaries they make balance a good bit easier.

 vict0988 wrote:

Why should a vehicle have firing arcs but not heavy infantry or monsters? Firing arcs felt bad to me since many Xenos vehicles were designed to look cool instead of being designed to play within the parameters of firing arcs so many weapons went to waste, while the Imperium vehicles were designed in ways they usually got to leverage most of their guns.

Huh?

Imperial vehicles are famous for sponsons that engage on entirely different sides of the vehicle, making the vehicle only capable of bringing tbeir firepower to bear on a target if it's directly in front of the vehicle, and they give it low side armor after forcing it to point in certain directions. Then there's xenos vehicles such as the Eldar Falcon/Wave Serpent which have 90% of their firepower in the turret, and decent side armor. That seems better than the Imperial template.

 vict0988 wrote:
Let's say you have 2 chapter tactics, one that lets you do a 6" pre-game move on your entire army and ObSec on your entire army and another chapter tactic that gives you a 6" pre-game move and +1 to charge. How do you cost those, is it A/B pts for Flayed Ones and C/D pts for Necron Warriors or is it a flat number X/Y pts for the entire list? Is A=B and C=D?

Assuming you absolutely must have sub-faction traits, the correct approach is to make them all roughly equal in power level while enabling different types of play within the established styles of the army. In this instance, you don't create the ObSec/Pre-Game move combo in the first place because it is clearly vastly superior to every other combination in the book.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 0beron wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

Yeah, when small-arms fire brings down a Predator or Fire Prism, the question is always: "Why would anyone bother building armored vehicles in this universe?"

They're not mathematically doing it in droves. The vehicle would have to have like 2 wounds left.

You'd literally fix the problem just by giving vehicles (and monsters) just a couple of additional wounds.

The problem isn't that they're doing it in droves. Or rarely. It's that it's happening at all in the 1st place.
And you literally fix it by making it not possible. If the weapon isn't of x str or better, it has zero chance to cause damage. Problem solved.

ccs wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 0beron wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That anything can kill, regardless of the type of weapon it is.

Yeah, when small-arms fire brings down a Predator or Fire Prism, the question is always: "Why would anyone bother building armored vehicles in this universe?"

They're not mathematically doing it in droves. The vehicle would have to have like 2 wounds left.

You'd literally fix the problem just by giving vehicles (and monsters) just a couple of additional wounds.

The problem isn't that they're doing it in droves. Or rarely. It's that it's happening at all in the 1st place.
And you literally fix it by making it not possible. If the weapon isn't of x str or better, it has zero chance to cause damage. Problem solved.

And we go back to "enjoy not having enough mathematical units/weapons to kill my list". Better to let the lil guys have a chance at interacting rather than just being meatbags to sit on objectives while getting chewed up by any heavy armour.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Why should a vehicle have firing arcs but not heavy infantry or monsters?

because infantry can easily rotate their bodies quickly, for a tank to be able to shoot its turret + hull + sponsons guns, it means it has to be doing a 360 spin....

Which spins faster, Drukhari Venom or Space Marine Centurion? I don't have tanks, I have alien warmachines of doom, I don't want them just to be bad tanks or terrible monsters.

Stratagems are cancer, i've been playing OPR and its so much more enjoyable, i'm not drained after a game of looking in the book/wahapedia to make sure i'm not forgetting a strat.

I think it's just a bad implementation.

why can't 6 warlord traits be enough?

With more WL traits you can have something for everyone. It's really not a big deal whether you have 3 or 18. You pick the one you like and then your opponent can explain the one they picked at the start of the game. The problem with WL traits right now to me isn't that there are too many, it's that there is no difference between a lot of them and there is no reason why some factions don't get access to a fun WL trait. With 18 you can cover pretty much everything, you can't have a Flayed One WL trait or a Reanimation Protocols WL trait but those can just be Relics.

 vict0988 wrote:

Which spins faster, Drukhari Venom or Space Marine Centurion? I don't have tanks, I have alien warmachines of doom, I don't want them just to be bad tanks or terrible monsters.

If the Venom is hovering at a standstill, maybe the Venom. But actually aligning a target with hull-mounted weapons is much more difficult than with a weapon you're holding. The pintle weapon should be able to fire in a wider arc (though it should still be difficult for a turret gunner on a moving vehicle to hit a target), but it would be impossible to fire backwards. None of this makes them "bad tanks," it just means they need to be maneuvered with some consideration rather than treated like vehicle-shaped infantry.

There are also benefits vehicles- Dark Eldar vehicles especially- could receive, such as defensive bonuses for rapid movement.