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Not Online!!! wrote:
And why do you think D2 has become the norm for a lot of weapons?

Surely it has nothing to do with moving a whole army up the wound bracket, that would not lead to any issues at all right? Especially one of the most commons that also has a brother faction and outnumbers other factions played massively.
/S

Never disputed that. Just saying that 2 wound Marines can be done and they can feel right offensively and defensively. That is not just grey theory, I went and done it.

GW upping the damage for everbody and their dog might not solely based on 2w Marines. Everything got more lethal in this edition, not just classic anti-Marine weapons.

 catbarf wrote:

Melee needs to be decisive, and the game having such high lethality that units are wiped out altogether before they get to swing back is problematic. There is no contradiction there. The problem can be resolved by making melee decisive through mechanics other than raw lethality. The same goes for shooting, to a lesser degree, where the middle ground between an attack doing nothing and an attack killing a unit is too narrow.

I disagree, somewhat.

Sure standard troops shouldn't be instantly wiping each other, but if a heavy melee unit like a Carnifex walked all the way across the table to reach melee, it should kill whatever it hits unless it is another heavy melee unit. It is even more true for glass melee units like Genestealers, Slaanesh or the whole Witch side of DE that really need to kill whatever they touch or will get mauled even by basic troops.

 catbarf wrote:

Also, tri-pointing can die in a fire. A mass-battle game with 100+ models on the table having you micro-positioning individual models down to the millimeter (before rolling all attacks in aggregate, when it suddenly remembers it's not a skirmish game) is garbage. There is skill in it- more grade-school than grandmaster, since you can learn to tri-point optimally in about fifteen minutes- but it's a clunky, time-consuming, unintended, and all-around poor mechanic for what 40K is trying to be. Save the fiddly micromanagement for Kill Team.

+1 to this. It's a mechanic that 40k should very much do without.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Also, tri-pointing can die in a fire. A mass-battle game with 100+ models on the table having you micro-positioning individual models down to the millimeter (before rolling all attacks in aggregate, when it suddenly remembers it's not a skirmish game) is garbage. There is skill in it- more grade-school than grandmaster, since you can learn to tri-point optimally in about fifteen minutes- but it's a clunky, time-consuming, unintended, and all-around poor mechanic for what 40K is trying to be. Save the fiddly micromanagement for Kill Team.

+1 to this. It's a mechanic that 40k should very much do without.

Model positioning as a whole should matter less. Unit positioning should matter more

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Model positioning as a whole should matter less. Unit positioning should matter more

Unless it's vehicle armor facings

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Model positioning as a whole should matter less. Unit positioning should matter more

Unless it's vehicle armor facings

well for a vehicle Model and Unit positioning is usually the same thing :p (unless we're talking about squadable vehicles)

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Model positioning as a whole should matter less. Unit positioning should matter more

Unless it's vehicle armor facings

well for a vehicle Model and Unit positioning is usually the same thing :p (unless we're talking about squadable vehicles)

Ahh, touché good sir!!

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Model positioning as a whole should matter less. Unit positioning should matter more

Unless it's vehicle armor facings

well for a vehicle Model and Unit positioning is usually the same thing :p (unless we're talking about squadable vehicles)

To be fair, Genestealer Cults have a mechanic with positioning that could've been a universal thing for all armies. The bonuses are bit much for a D6 setup though unless you're willing to be open to no cap on modifiers again.

 Tyran wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Melee needs to be decisive, and the game having such high lethality that units are wiped out altogether before they get to swing back is problematic. There is no contradiction there. The problem can be resolved by making melee decisive through mechanics other than raw lethality. The same goes for shooting, to a lesser degree, where the middle ground between an attack doing nothing and an attack killing a unit is too narrow.

I disagree, somewhat.

Sure standard troops shouldn't be instantly wiping each other, but if a heavy melee unit like a Carnifex walked all the way across the table to reach melee, it should kill whatever it hits unless it is another heavy melee unit. It is even more true for glass melee units like Genestealers, Slaanesh or the whole Witch side of DE that really need to kill whatever they touch or will get mauled even by basic troops.

Well, there are a bunch of other compounding factors to that.

The need for melee specialists to kill whatever they hit instantaneously is largely a product of high lethality. If your unit arriving from DS is likely to get shot off the board immediately, or if your footslogging melee troops will struggle to get into contact, you need your guys to kill their own value's worth in one go to have any realistic chance of them being 'worth it'. There's also the fact that you don't get locked in melee anymore, so if you don't take out the enemy on the charge, they may just walk out of combat and expose you to shooting. Scale back shooting lethality and make it harder to get out of melee, and then it might be okay if a melee unit expects significantly less than a 100% return.

The change in how WS works means that two elite units meeting each other tends to be more lethal than it would have been even with otherwise identical statlines in prior editions, and melee specialists are more vulnerable to non-specialists. Having compared WS (even if it was overly flat before- HH2.0 has improved this a lot) allows for damage output to scale based on the relative value of the combatants. Even if a melee specialist doesn't completely wipe out a shooting specialist in one turn, if they're not taking much damage in return, that's fine.

And the other factor is that if melee could be decisive via morale effects, then it wouldn't be necessary to have a statline capable of wiping out a whole unit in one round to achieve the desired effect of taking that unit out of the fight. In prior editions melee specialists didn't necessarily output all that much more raw damage than shooting specialists, but because of how morale was handled in melee could produce significantly more decisive effects, either wiping out the enemy or forcing them to flee. Getting into melee was risky, but rewarding.

I agree that melee specialists should be powerful because they are obviously harder to get into contact, and should be able to inflict heavy damage to non-melee troops. What I don't like seeing is a fight between melee specialists (or characters) often being this harsh binary where one side gets wiped out and the other takes minimal damage, based entirely on who got the charge, because Purestrains currently kill an average of 108% of their own value in Berserkers (seriously, that's the actual number).

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Model positioning as a whole should matter less. Unit positioning should matter more

Unless it's vehicle armor facings

well for a vehicle Model and Unit positioning is usually the same thing :p (unless we're talking about squadable vehicles)

To be fair, Genestealer Cults have a mechanic with positioning that could've been a universal thing for all armies. The bonuses are bit much for a D6 setup though unless you're willing to be open to no cap on modifiers again.

Yeah, the crossfire rule was something I looked at and immediately wished was just part of the game. Carve out an exception to the normal no-modifier-stacking if need be.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I would be curious to see a couple of pros really take the screws to an older edition and see what happens.

If by "pros" you mean tournament players, I'd rather they didn't. The tournament scene already has a disproportionate amount of influence over 40k as it is. I hate to ever see it expanded.

Not in like a burn it to the ground sort of thing, but just to see if our understanding of the game now vs then would change.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I would be curious to see a couple of pros really take the screws to an older edition and see what happens.

If by "pros" you mean tournament players, I'd rather they didn't. The tournament scene already has a disproportionate amount of influence over 40k as it is. I hate to ever see it expanded.

Not in like a burn it to the ground sort of thing, but just to see if our understanding of the game now vs then would change.

That seems pretty straightforward as a thought exercise.

1- Many would straight up fail without the current game's lethality crutch to burn through everything.

2- The rest would adapt to the 'best in slot' units that were available at the time. Each edition was a mostly solved system at its point of relevance. There aren't any magical advances in 'playing games' or 'tournament play' that would make that any different.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

To be fair, Genestealer Cults have a mechanic with positioning that could've been a universal thing for all armies. The bonuses are bit much for a D6 setup though unless you're willing to be open to no cap on modifiers again.

modifiers were fixed when they made 6's always hit
and nerfed aircrafts 25 times

if theyre dead set on keeping the cap, it should be +1/-1 per player (so no more "free" advancing if youre gonna shoot a unit that has -1 to hit anyway)

 catbarf wrote:
The need for melee specialists to kill whatever they hit instantaneously is largely a product of high lethality. If your unit arriving from DS is likely to get shot off the board immediately, or if your footslogging melee troops will struggle to get into contact, you need your guys to kill their own value's worth in one go to have any realistic chance of them being 'worth it'. There's also the fact that you don't get locked in melee anymore, so if you don't take out the enemy on the charge, they may just walk out of combat and expose you to shooting. Scale back shooting lethality and make it harder to get out of melee, and then it might be okay if a melee unit expects significantly less than a 100% return.

I don't think that works.

Dedicated melee units have a lot going against them and as such when they reach combat they need to do something for the effort. You certainly could reduce shooting a bit, but then they'd get shot with more stuff and the table isn't in a state where everything has a good target, so, those melee units up front as considerably exposed to more.

Conversely in older editions it wasn't really a big deal to walk backwards, either so the 6" move for everything made it easier to kite. The current missions have disincentive to leaving the objective, which gives melee a chance to make an impact.

You would probably find that on a bowling ball Intercessors with no upgrades beat Genestealers all day long. With terrain, objectives, and abilities the pendulum would shift.

And to me a proper melee unit needs to be scary enough for you to want to delete it. Otherwise if you know it's just going to wind up in a protracted combat why bother? Just focus on more dangerous things.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Dedicated melee units have a lot going against them and as such when they reach combat they need to do something for the effort.

Once upon a time, shooting units expecting 10-20% return was pretty standard. In that context, a melee unit that expects a 30-60% return (be it raw lethality, or a combination of direct lethality + morale effects) is already outperforming shooting units by a factor of three and more directly relevant for objective-grabbing in midfield.

In 9th Ed, we have melee units with no force-multipliers often exceeding 100% return just on their base profile. That's nuts.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Conversely in older editions it wasn't really a big deal to walk backwards, either so the 6" move for everything made it easier to kite. The current missions have disincentive to leaving the objective, which gives melee a chance to make an impact.

I thought you just said two pages back that in older editions, you basically couldn't move and shoot at all?

But yes, I am actually a fan of mission design that encourages both players to participate in the middle of the table and am not suggesting a return to camping at the edge of your deployment zone only to sally forth on turn 5 when the enemy is dead.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

To be fair, Genestealer Cults have a mechanic with positioning that could've been a universal thing for all armies. The bonuses are bit much for a D6 setup though unless you're willing to be open to no cap on modifiers again.

modifiers were fixed when they made 6's always hit
and nerfed aircrafts 25 times

if theyre dead set on keeping the cap, it should be +1/-1 per player (so no more "free" advancing if youre gonna shoot a unit that has -1 to hit anyway)

I completely agree with the the first two parts, but I think the player should be allowed to stack their buffs more than once. Everyone says it leads to deathstar units, but aren't deathstars the only units you're stacking stuff on to begin with?
MAYBE +2/-2 is where I'd negotiate.

 catbarf wrote:

Once upon a time, shooting units expecting 10-20% return was pretty standard. In that context, a melee unit that expects a 30-60% return (be it raw lethality, or a combination of direct lethality + morale effects) is already outperforming shooting units by a factor of three and more directly relevant for objective-grabbing in midfield.

You might need to specify because to be honest I cannot recall such time. Definitely before 5th ed in which AP2 pie plates and spamable force weapons made 100%+ returns pretty damn easy.

Dudeface wrote:


Because they died too easily due to the proliferation of AP:

How many players were taking high AP weapons to deal with Orkz? How about Harlequins? How about IG? how about Eldar? How about Nidz?

Its almost like there isn't a good benefit to taking high AP on weapons against most factions... almost like people are list tailoring to play against a high armor army or armies that make up a majority of the game... weird.

To put it bluntly again, Marines and their statline are the MOST POPULAR in the game and as such when people build lists they do so with the express intent of killing Marines. As a wonderful example of this, how many times do you see people doing general mathhammer and use anything besides a SM as the metric?

a_typical_hero wrote:

GW upping the damage for everbody and their dog might not solely based on 2w Marines. Everything got more lethal in this edition, not just classic anti-Marine weapons.

Marines got a 2nd wound and almost immediately Heavy Bolters went to D2. When 9th started the go to Sisters list that won some GTs was spamming Heavy bolters. As far as "Everything got more lethal in this edition" Ready for this?

7th Edition, 1w Marines vs a Big Shoota. 3 shots, 1 hit, 0.66 wounds 0.22dmg A Big shoota at Max range takes 5 turns to kill 1 Marine.
9th Edition, 2w Marines vs a Big Shoota (Out of/In Dakka Range) 3/5 shots, 1/1.66 hits, 1/1.11 wounds 0.22/0.37dmg. A big shoota at 19+ range takes 9 turns to kill 1 Marine. At HALF RANGE it takes 5.4 turns to kill 1 Marine. I could do the math for regular shootas and choppas as well but its similarly bad. Not everything got deadlier thats for sure (Specifically against those squishy Marines that SM players complain about a lot)

Dudeface wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

From experience with my own rules I can say that Marines with 2 wounds baseline work pretty well, but you have to be quite restrictive with damage 2 weapons and up. They need to be rare and/or expensive. Even having modifiying AP on most weapons is no issue then. Everything is too cheap right now in 9th edition, units and equipment.

And why do you think D2 has become the norm for a lot of weapons?

Surely it has nothing to do with moving a whole army up the wound bracket, that would not lead to any issues at all right?
/S

Maybe it shouldn't push up the normal?

Well when the "normal" IE most common opponent/statline is T4 3+ its going to, i'll bring you back to my other comment, convince more people to switch to other factions that don't worship Da emprah or Chaos gods. Until I go to a tournament where most of my opponents AREN'T wearing power armor i'll continue to list tailor against that statline because its common sense.

Dudeface wrote:
Maybe a faction getting 2 wounds as a defensive profile should be allowed to use it without everyone else being given reasonably spammable solutions making it trivial?

You have to realize how that reads right? "My faction got a buff, nobody should be allowed to beat us now!". You can keep complaining about the arms race until you are blue in the face, your faction is the most popular in the game and therefore will be tailored against, you are the measuring stick, sorry.

SemperMortis wrote:
You have to realize how that reads right? "My faction got a buff, nobody should be allowed to beat us now!". You can keep complaining about the arms race until you are blue in the face, your faction is the most popular in the game and therefore will be tailored against, you are the measuring stick, sorry.

This. If you want marines to be elite you need marines to stop being the most common faction, otherwise by definition they're average and the entire rest of the game will be evaluated by how well it performs against marines. If W2 is the basic infantry profile then D2 will be the basic weapon profile.

No to all the above, you're right people don't spam high ap weapons into orks, they do it because there's no reason not to. D2 ap-2/3 weapons are so accessible and high rate of fire often, which combined with the morale/horde rules, means there's no need for horde killing. Conveniently the ork T5 buff is handily cancelled out or ignored by, you guessed it, marine killing weapons.

Marines being common is one thing but a lack of viable playstyles for their foils is the real issue. If hordes were viable people would have to build lists differently for example. But they don't, the game supports pounding plasma/melta etc out every orifice in such high quantities it no longer matters.

 catbarf wrote:


I thought you just said two pages back that in older editions, you basically couldn't move and shoot at all?

Vehicles and ummm...what's the keyword...that pondering movement thing. I also seem to recall Eldar doing some crap. And tau's crap.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:


I thought you just said two pages back that in older editions, you basically couldn't move and shoot at all?

Vehicles and ummm...what's the keyword...that pondering movement thing. I also seem to recall Eldar doing some crap. And tau's crap.

Relentless. Or Slow and Purposeful.

Slow and purposeful being the weaker of the two due to the downside of always counting as moving through cover. And back in the day that meant a movement value of D6.

Lead to meganobz occasionally moving at a brisk 1"

 JNAProductions wrote:
Relentless. Or Slow and Purposeful.

There it is. Damn brain.

Dudeface wrote:
If hordes were viable people would have to build lists differently for example.

Only if marines stop dominating the meta. Orks gaining a viable horde build doesn't change list building very much if 75% of your games are against marines (and spiky marines, gold marines, etc). Beating marines will still be the dominant consideration in list building. You'll still put most of your choices into anti-MEQ, and even the few anti-horde choices you take will need to be at least reasonably good against marines.

Dudeface wrote:
If hordes were viable...

To do that GW first has to define a horde as something higher than 6+ models.

Right now the start of "anti-horde" rules, like blast markers, starts at 6 models. That means that some basic squads - not even horde units - just count as being a "horde" despite just being a regular squad. A 10-man Tactical Squad/Sisters of Battle Squad/Fire Warrior unit/etc. should never be considered a "horde" as far as rules mechanics are concerned.

I've said before that any number they pick will be arbitrary, whether it's 15 models or 20 models or whatever, but I think that game mechanics that impact massed infantry should only come into effect from at least 11 or higher, because so many 100% non-horde units in the game cap out at 10 models (some even start and are stuck at that amount).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
If hordes were viable...

To do that GW first has to define a horde as something higher than 6+ models.

Right now the start of "anti-horde" rules, like blast markers, starts at 6 models. That means that some basic squads - not even horde units - just count as being a "horde" despite just being a regular squad. A 10-man Tactical Squad/Sisters of Battle Squad/Fire Warrior unit/etc. should never be considered a "horde" as far as rules mechanics are concerned.

I've said before that any number they pick will be arbitrary, whether it's 15 models or 20 models or whatever, but I think that game mechanics that impact massed infantry should only come into effect from at least 11 or higher, because so many 100% non-horde units in the game cap out at 10 models (some even start and are stuck at that amount).

For Blast, I think what would've been better is this:

1-5 Models, no special minimum
6-10, minimum of 2 on each d6 rolled
11-15, minimum of 3 on each d6
16-20, minimum of 4 on each d6
21-25, minimum of 5 on each d6
26+, maximum shots

And for d3, it'd be 1-10 no minimum, 11-20 min 2, 21+ max shots.

That does technically start at 6 models, but it's an increase from 3.5 to 3.67 shots for each d6.
It would ALSO work based on the number of dice rolled, so nothing like a Wyvern gaining no benefit from targeting a 10-man squad and then suddenly jumping to 24 shots against an 11-man squad.

You could even do it via the Keywords system (something GW never really takes advantage of) and have 'Horde' simply be a keyword.

Less gamey that way (ie. take a unit of 19 boyz to avoid a jump in anti-horde rules).

Yes, that doesn't scale, but to make it scale you'd need to make... dare I say it... a special rule that one might call "universal" that covers what a horde is and defines rules interactions.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You could even do it via the Keywords system (something GW never really takes advantage of) and have 'Horde' simply be a keyword.

Less gamey that way (ie. take a unit of 19 boyz to avoid a jump in anti-horde rules).

I think it'd be kinda weird to have 3 Boys and a Nob count as a Horde, while 10 MEQ don't.

Certainly when dealing with Blast weapons, at least.

Edit: That being said, what kind of rules would you tie to that Keyword?

Dudeface wrote:
No to all the above, you're right people don't spam high ap weapons into orks, they do it because there's no reason not to. D2 ap-2/3 weapons are so accessible and high rate of fire often, which combined with the morale/horde rules, means there's no need for horde killing. Conveniently the ork T5 buff is handily cancelled out or ignored by, you guessed it, marine killing weapons.

Marines being common is one thing but a lack of viable playstyles for their foils is the real issue. If hordes were viable people would have to build lists differently for example. But they don't, the game supports pounding plasma/melta etc out every orifice in such high quantities it no longer matters.

Let me think of all the high RoF weapons I have that at least D2 and AP-2+.....umm....hmmm......still thinking....i mean...maybe kopta rokkits? 2D3 shots at S8Ap-2 3dmg....but an average of 1.3 hits a turn isn't exactly "High rate of fire". Maybe for some other factions but definitely not Orkz.

I have to yet again point out the obvious to you because you seem to want to ignore it. SM are the yard stick by which we measure how effective things are because they are the most common faction in the game. Literally the last Major GT in Best Coast Pairings is "Glass City GT" lets count how many Power Armor factions there are (excluding SoB and Custards but including all Chaos sub factions barring demons). 17.

Only 65 participants in the event and 17 were power armor. if you include SoB and Custards its another 6-8. If you include LoV which are almost Marines as well (including AoC ) its pushing another 5-7. You are talking almost half the damn tournament being flooded with power armor of one sort or another. Christ, why would you ever take a HRoF weapon that wasn't geared towards AP or D2? most of the game these days is inundated with units that are weak against that weapon type. Thats honestly why orkz usually do ok even when their units are under powered point for point compared to Marines, we don't care about losing cheap bodies, we don't mind if you target our troops choice with a melta.

Again your biggest enemy is your own success and its going to remain that way for a LONG LONG time, so if you don't like it, switch factions because there literally isn't a scenario where you are going to be happy and for the game to be healthy.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
If hordes were viable...

To do that GW first has to define a horde as something higher than 6+ models.

Right now the start of "anti-horde" rules, like blast markers, starts at 6 models. That means that some basic squads - not even horde units - just count as being a "horde" despite just being a regular squad. A 10-man Tactical Squad/Sisters of Battle Squad/Fire Warrior unit/etc. should never be considered a "horde" as far as rules mechanics are concerned.

I've said before that any number they pick will be arbitrary, whether it's 15 models or 20 models or whatever, but I think that game mechanics that impact massed infantry should only come into effect from at least 11 or higher, because so many 100% non-horde units in the game cap out at 10 models (some even start and are stuck at that amount).

Yea honestly it's a big reason why plasma inceptors will murder anything that dares to have 6+ models.

Though I still feel like 6+ models should feel the effects of blast so the problem is more the weapon for me.

Maybe like +1 attack for 6, 2 for 11, and 3 for 21.

I didn't do the math on that - just a rough thought.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:


1-5 Models, no special minimum
6-10, minimum of 2 on each d6 rolled
11-15, minimum of 3 on each d6
16-20, minimum of 4 on each d6
21-25, minimum of 5 on each d6
26+, maximum shots

And for d3, it'd be 1-10 no minimum, 11-20 min 2, 21+ max shots.

That does technically start at 6 models, but it's an increase from 3.5 to 3.67 shots for each d6.
It would ALSO work based on the number of dice rolled, so nothing like a Wyvern gaining no benefit from targeting a 10-man squad and then suddenly jumping to 24 shots against an 11-man squad.

Or that!