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 Strg Alt wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

I didin't it is fantastic and a great part of the game, should have never been removed.....but then 8th ed on isn't really 40K it is some kind of quasi MTG hybrid game with miniatures not really a war game anymore.

People absolutely argued about armour facing.

“Oh, you’re 2 degrees off that’s still the 14 front armour.”
‘No, that’s clearly the side armour.’
“It’s definitely the front, you draw the 90 degree line from here.”
‘Should I get my protractor out?’
“How about we roll off? 1-3 is side, 4-6 is front.”

It got even worse when more and more factions had vehicles that weren’t literal boxes on tracks.

This happens when immature people play tabletop games. Better for those types to spend their time with something else.

I've found that agaist those players I can just try extra hard avoid those potential conflicts. Like make extra sure my maneuvering results in clear angle distinctions, or just math out proof that they're moving their models a little too fast to be legal. And then after you win they don't want to play you anymore. Problem solved!

Tbh my fix is usually just try and play well adjusted people lol. Like when I first got into the game with a couple friends as 11 year olds we’d do this constantly, but now at 19, I’m not dealing with a 25+ year old who acts like I did as a 6th grader…

The sad reality is that playing the guy who argued incessantly about scatter dice, template partials and armour facings sucks just as much today as it did back then.

Even an ironclad ruleset has too many ambiguities you won't be able to resolve decisively while you're at the table. They'll always be something else to argue about, don't you worry.

 Ventus wrote:
The sad reality is that playing the guy who argued incessantly about scatter dice, template partials and armour facings sucks just as much today as it did back then.

Even an ironclad ruleset has too many ambiguities you won't be able to resolve decisively while you're at the table. They'll always be something else to argue about, don't you worry.

A good opponent is always important, but GW acquired an unfortunate habit of playing rules lawyer against themselves. I recall back in 3rd, the orks could put booster rockets on their vehicles that added d6 inches to the move. To use them, the ork player declared how far it was going to move, and then rolled for the rockets.

Some players took the obvious cheat of declaring their movement to be zero and then firing the rockets, which meant the vehicle could fire all weapons as if stationary, but still move! Instead of stomping on the obvious absurdity of this, GW dug into their books and came up with a ruling that up to 3 inches could be "free" but more than that counted as moving.

(Of course, if you painted the model red, it was d6+1, but I digress.)

So yes, having a reasonable person to play with is important, but when the designers are telling you how to exploit their rules, it gets to be tough sledding.

The 4th ed book has a similar rule but only for the storm boyz they move 12" +1d6 the number you roll if it comes up a 1 then one of the packs blows up killing a boy. silly and very orky indeed!

The rule of thumb for our group when a questionable rule interpretation comes up, is that if you feel it gives you an unfair advantage don't use it that way. We go back to the old 3rd/4th ed guidelines of "the game should be fun for both players". Winning or losing matters much less for most people as long as both players had a good game. the close calls are some of the best games.

After 20+ years just with 40K you inevitably run into those types of players who make themselves un-welcome because of their behavior or attitude.

We had one very active tournament scene player who was caught blatantly cheating multiple times in different game systems, as well as abusing the store prize support, along with skewing tournaments he was involved in operating for his friend group.

Needless to say, not only is he not welcome by the gamers at our store he also alienated the store owner.

No community needs toxic players like that.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

I didin't it is fantastic and a great part of the game, should have never been removed.....but then 8th ed on isn't really 40K it is some kind of quasi MTG hybrid game with miniatures not really a war game anymore.

People absolutely argued about armour facing.

“Oh, you’re 2 degrees off that’s still the 14 front armour.”
‘No, that’s clearly the side armour.’
“It’s definitely the front, you draw the 90 degree line from here.”
‘Should I get my protractor out?’
“How about we roll off? 1-3 is side, 4-6 is front.”

It got even worse when more and more factions had vehicles that weren’t literal boxes on tracks.

This happens when immature people play tabletop games. Better for those types to spend their time with something else.

I've found that many of them will eventually grow out of it.
Those that do? They can play with the rest of us & have fun.
Those who don't? They can go play on those tables over there & argue with each other as long as they like.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

I didin't it is fantastic and a great part of the game, should have never been removed.....but then 8th ed on isn't really 40K it is some kind of quasi MTG hybrid game with miniatures not really a war game anymore.

People absolutely argued about armour facing.

“Oh, you’re 2 degrees off that’s still the 14 front armour.”
‘No, that’s clearly the side armour.’
“It’s definitely the front, you draw the 90 degree line from here.”
‘Should I get my protractor out?’
“How about we roll off? 1-3 is side, 4-6 is front.”

It got even worse when more and more factions had vehicles that weren’t literal boxes on tracks.

This happens when immature people play tabletop games. Better for those types to spend their time with something else.

It's immature to determine how a vehicle is going to be shot? So you just let your opponent decide even if it's not correct?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

It's immature to determine how a vehicle is going to be shot? So you just let your opponent decide even if it's not correct?

A lot of disputes can be resolved before the fact by asking questions at setup and as the game unfolds. For example, if a vehicle isn't boxy, ask the opponent which angles count as flank. I've dealt with rules lawyers and if you engage from the get-go on stuff like that, things go a lot smoother.

"So, I see you've placed your vehicle. Where do you consider the flanks to be? Where would one need to be to get the rear armor?"

I admit that there is more than a little bit of gamesmanship in these questions because your opponent will immediately begin to wonder how you could possibly move forces into position to achieve those angles, but that's all part of the psychology of the game.

Just in case the mods kill the image...

https://www.amazon.com/Military-Protractor-for-Land-Navigation/dp/B0865TT893/ref=asc_df_B0865TT893/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459536722279&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5788565695415419932&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1017161&hvtargid=pla-961356158568&psc=1


This is an easy template tool to establish angles and facings during gaming. It is also one of DOZENS of items that can easily establish angles. We used to have an 8 pointed star that had the X and Y axes painted green with the diagonal axes painted red. Line up and laser point from there.


This is such a non-issue. Anyone arguing that this doesn't have an easy fix is simply trying to game the game or create false problems to denounce the way armor was originally handled.

It isn't an issue unless you want to make it one.

I still play 40K with armor values and we never have arguments about facing.

Nearly every miniature wargame out there with a bit of simulation have armor facing with very few exceptions.

.BattleTech, warmachine, flames of war etc...

There are a few exceptions like infinity and DUST that have a fixed armor value or armor class with a wound system. GW is the only one i know of that "streamlined" 40K effectively making vehicles monstrous creatures with toughness and wounds that could be wounded by every weapon in the game.

For some it's less about a legitimate problem with the rule and more about a strawman to shame people who LIKE the rule. Been that way for a while. Same place the "2D6 inch consolidation" fallacy from 3rd Ed. denouncers comes from...

Glorious days.

 aphyon wrote:
It isn't an issue unless you want to make it one.

I still play 40K with armor values and we never have arguments about facing.

Yes, there were points where the rules got bent and broken, but vehicle facing wasn't one of them in my experience.

I also agree that there are some oddball urban legends about older versions of the game that don't stand up to scrutiny. On another forum, we had a 2nd ed. thread and people wandered in trashing it by claiming things that simply weren't true. If you go to the 2nd ed. post linked in my sig, much of the rules "fixes" are simply clarifications of things people got wrong.

To be sure, some of those trashing it were suspected GW staff trying to get people to play the current edition. In the backwash of 3rd as it was moving to 4th, there was a movement to go 'retro' (which I did), and so GW openly disparaged 2nd as unplayable. It was fascinating to watch.

 morganfreeman wrote:
I remember back when you'd never see special characters. They had point limitations (usually "army must be over X number of points, but a few were under) to keep them out of most games, and while they were often-times good a codex wasn't designed around taking them.

It's super annoying how Abaddon, Girly-Man, Ghazzy, and any number of super-duper-uber-extra-special characters seem to be on every battlefield where their respective army shows up.

Exactly this. Seeing Abaddon in every single Chaos list is pretty boring at this stage. Named characters are cool but our group always preferred making your own character and developing their own history and stories and thats how we always played. I think the only time when we agreed to use special characters was when the Armaggeddon codex came out.

I have only ever run 3 named characters in all the 8 armies i built for 40K in normal scale.

.master of the ravenwing land speeder (3.5 mini dex...technically he didn't have a name, but it was a unique vehicle).
.Azrael that i still use with my general dark angels leading a deathwing command squad
.brey'arth ashmantle dreadnought character for the salamanders.....cause he is a dreadnought.

the rest have all been my own creation.

I ran and still run Captain Cortez whenever I'm allowed.

Memnoch wrote:


Exactly this. Seeing Abaddon in every single Chaos list is pretty boring at this stage. Named characters are cool but our group always preferred making your own character and developing their own history and stories and thats how we always played. I think the only time when we agreed to use special characters was when the Armaggeddon codex came out.

I don't own any of the special figures and can't recall ever using them in a game. I always thought of them as examples of how a character should be built with some unique features.

I do have some "special characters" but they are unique to me. For example, the commander of the Third Company is Captain Whirlingdeath and his brother, Father Francis Whirlingdeath, is the Chaplain.

The fun of having an open-ended game like 40k (as opposed to historicals) is the ability to have a particular figure be a particular character. Buying one off the shelf seems lazy and boring.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
I don't own any of the special figures and can't recall ever using them in a game. I always thought of them as examples of how a character should be built with some unique features.

They could be somewhat critical 'back in the day' for certain factions - Belial-wing and Sammael-wing for example were the only way to field those particular units as troops for Dark Angels, whereas other books allowed you to use generic replacements.

A.T. wrote:
They could be somewhat critical 'back in the day' for certain factions - Belial-wing and Sammael-wing for example were the only way to field those particular units as troops for Dark Angels, whereas other books allowed you to use generic replacements.

Ah, that was another reason. The only armies I collected in "real time" were Ultramarines and I just started Imperial Guard when 3rd came out. Ultramarines were about as bland as they come, which I liked.

Characters are generally optimized for melee and I ran very shooty armies, so the points other people put into characters gave me more tactical squads, razorbacks and dreadnoughts.

Since going back to 2nd (and having collected every army of that edition), I now use tooled-up characters, but they have their own backstories going back 20 years at this point. Much more fun than having the 500th incarnation of Ahriman or something.

 aphyon wrote:
master of the ravenwing land speeder (3.5 mini dex...technically he didn't have a name, but it was a unique vehicle).

Technically, he did have a name if you read the fluff in the book(it was Gideon and the model was specifically meant to represent him), but GW being GW in 3rd, they mentioned at some point they didn't name the unit entry so you could rep any past or future Master of the Ravenwing.

I was able to stay away from special characters until 5th or the ed, I think. In 4th ed every Captain had Rites of Battle, which gave the Captain's Ld to every friendly Marine on the table. In 5th for some reason they dropped that and the only model to get it was UM Sicarius. So he became more tempting. But 6th ed was the real clincher, as Warlor Traits became random(!). God I hated that. Taking a named character meant that your Warlord Trait was fixed. So Sicarius showed up very game for a few years.

As soon as 8th hit though, back to ye olde generic CaptainGuy.

A.T. wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
I don't own any of the special figures and can't recall ever using them in a game. I always thought of them as examples of how a character should be built with some unique features.

They could be somewhat critical 'back in the day' for certain factions - Belial-wing and Sammael-wing for example were the only way to field those particular units as troops for Dark Angels, whereas other books allowed you to use generic replacements.

It was much nicer in the 3.5 codex. any member of the inner circle could lead a deathwing army. so you got all the named characters as well as your generic captains, chaplains, and librarians. there was no limited named character unlock.

And even better DW terminator squads could be 10 strong.

 Just Tony wrote:

This is such a non-issue. Anyone arguing that this doesn't have an easy fix is simply trying to game the game or create false problems to denounce the way armor was originally handled.

I agree that armour facing was nowhere near the top of the pile of problematic rules, and was quite easily fixable if noone was a dick about it.

Now, if you look back at the different FAQ articles of the time, it's easy to see which areas of the general rule landscape were problematic and where people either found it difficult to follow the rules or the rules had actual ambiguities:

- template placement and other template-related stuff
- unit cohesion, especially combined with line-of-sight or cover issues, disembarking etc.
- line-of-sight shenanigans
- close combat, especially how attacks/kills 'spilled over', who could attack whom and so on

Tsagualsa wrote:
Now, if you look back at the different FAQ articles of the time, it's easy to see which areas of the general rule landscape were problematic and where people either found it difficult to follow the rules or the rules had actual ambiguities:

- template placement and other template-related stuff
- unit cohesion, especially combined with line-of-sight or cover issues, disembarking etc.
- line-of-sight shenanigans
- close combat, especially how attacks/kills 'spilled over', who could attack whom and so on

True, and a lot of that had to do with attempts to great abstractions that just didn't work well in a figure-to-figure system. I think GW had to decide if they were going to go with symbolic miniatures or literal ones, and their failure to pick and option and stick with it created most of their problems (the rest being army/unit balance).

Playing Orkz back in 5th and 6th, and Sweeping Advances were the bane of my existence.

Those damn Marines.

I could wax nostalgia for hours about flamer templates, blast markers, scatter dice, armour facings, etc., but in the end, the game is better without them.

My experience is that, for previous editions, most issues with such things only arose from gakkers who would get salty when they couldn't steamroll you or completive players who took things way to fething serious. I guess some things just never change.

Memnoch wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
I remember back when you'd never see special characters. They had point limitations (usually "army must be over X number of points, but a few were under) to keep them out of most games, and while they were often-times good a codex wasn't designed around taking them.

It's super annoying how Abaddon, Girly-Man, Ghazzy, and any number of super-duper-uber-extra-special characters seem to be on every battlefield where their respective army shows up.

Exactly this. Seeing Abaddon in every single Chaos list is pretty boring at this stage. Named characters are cool but our group always preferred making your own character and developing their own history and stories and thats how we always played. I think the only time when we agreed to use special characters was when the Armaggeddon codex came out.

Is that not the fault of GW for writing rules to make a character become autoinclude?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Memnoch wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
I remember back when you'd never see special characters. They had point limitations (usually "army must be over X number of points, but a few were under) to keep them out of most games, and while they were often-times good a codex wasn't designed around taking them.

It's super annoying how Abaddon, Girly-Man, Ghazzy, and any number of super-duper-uber-extra-special characters seem to be on every battlefield where their respective army shows up.

Exactly this. Seeing Abaddon in every single Chaos list is pretty boring at this stage. Named characters are cool but our group always preferred making your own character and developing their own history and stories and thats how we always played. I think the only time when we agreed to use special characters was when the Armaggeddon codex came out.

Is that not the fault of GW for writing rules to make a character become autoinclude?

Clearly it's the fault of the customer/players for liking to play with the cool models they've bought & spent all that time painting.
How dare they!

ccs wrote:

Clearly it's the fault of the customer/players for liking to play with the cool models they've bought & spent all that time painting.
How dare they!

But of course that's not what people were saying, was it? People who had a play style in one edition were subsequently compelled to take a special character in order to maintain it. When the next edition rolled around and they didn't, they stopped using them.

I mean, let's be honest: GW realized that instead of just catering to the artisanal crowd and fluff addicts, they could push special characters out into the mainstream by centering key game mechanics on them to the point that taking a specific army type required a special character to function well.

That's pretty lame.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

ccs wrote:

Clearly it's the fault of the customer/players for liking to play with the cool models they've bought & spent all that time painting.
How dare they!

But of course that's not what people were saying, was it? People who had a play style in one edition were subsequently compelled to take a special character in order to maintain it. When the next edition rolled around and they didn't, they stopped using them.

I mean, let's be honest: GW realized that instead of just catering to the artisanal crowd and fluff addicts, they could push special characters out into the mainstream by centering key game mechanics on them to the point that taking a specific army type required a special character to function well.

That's pretty lame.

How dare GW write rules that inspire one to buy/use <model>!
But it's still the fault of the players for choosing to play with whatever it is. They could choose something else....
Oh, wait, no it's not. Not in either case. GWs not at fault for writing rules to make sales. And the other guy isn't under any generic obligation to use/not use some unit. (maybe in some sort of league or campaign, but not for pick up games or especially tournaments)

In all seriousness though? It's just someone complaining about how others build their armies. If it wasn't some named character they'd just be complaining about always seeing _____.