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 JNAProductions wrote:
You do realize that people can have multiple desires, right?

I want 40k to be balanced.
I also want 40k to have customization, and lots of it.

I understand that these are, if not mutually exclusive, still hard to get together. But that doesn’t invalidate desires.

Balance and differently efficient choices to min-max within are indeed mutually exclusive on a very fundamental level. There is literally no way to balance a desire for the things to be imbalanced in the first place. Competitive players of 40k don't simply want choices to exist - they want those choices to be meaningful - some better than others. That is the whole point of "list building as a skill". And without enough of this "skill" there is literally nothing preventing a "less skilled" player to build a crap army and then cry that the game is imbalanced. C.P. gets rid of this fundamental flaw. Yes, in doing so it gets rid of player agency during pre-game setup, but at the same time vastly increases player agency at game time. Don't worry, GW will never put this as the default mode, but it is so much more than "marketing BS". This is actually the most informed game design decision GW has ever made and a step towards making 40k an actual e-sport.

Playerbase "only" has to accept what it always struggled to understand - there is, has been, and always will be more than one way to play 40k.

But he didn't say "differently efficient choices to min-max within".

Did you ever forget that aside from list-building being a "skill", list building is also "fun"?

nou wrote:
Playerbase "only" has to accept what it always struggled to understand - there is, has been, and always will be more than one way to play 40k.

Has that ever been in question? The difference is we didn't need GW to codify it with some goofy marketing speak tied to box-army releases.

nou wrote:
Balance and differently efficient choices to min-max within are indeed mutually exclusive on a very fundamental level. There is literally no way to balance a desire for the things to be imbalanced in the first place. Competitive players of 40k don't simply want choices to exist - they want those choices to be meaningful - some better than others. That is the whole point of "list building as a skill". And without enough of this "skill" there is literally nothing preventing a "less skilled" player to build a crap army and then cry that the game is imbalanced. C.P. gets rid of this fundamental flaw. Yes, in doing so it gets rid of player agency during pre-game setup, but at the same time vastly increases player agency at game time. Don't worry, GW will never put this as the default mode, but it is so much more than "marketing BS". This is actually the most informed game design decision GW has ever made and a step towards making 40k an actual e-sport.

Playerbase "only" has to accept what it always struggled to understand - there is, has been, and always will be more than one way to play 40k.

You're making up your own definitions and then telling us they're mutually exclusive.

I like Chain of Command's army-building system, where you pick a predefined platoon (whose contents are fixed) which then confers a number of support assets that you can choose from. It's a pretty balanced system and it still gives you some freedom to configure your force for the mission in question, which lets you pick assets to suit your preferences and is fun. Not particularly complicated.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
marine privilege

That's not a thing. Don't try to make that a thing.

Oh it's definitely a thing. More attention, more releases, often taking things that other factions pioneered and just making it betterererer.

The observation is pretty clear. HH exists but is also a "No xenos allowed" affair.


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nou wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:Everything identical? That doesn't sound fun at all...

Insectum7 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Everything identical? That doesn't sound fun at all...

but it sounds balanced, and the real rest then becomes how good a general you are, not how good your list building "skill" is...

Sounds terrible. Building lists is incredibly engaging.

Oh, but you will still very much be able to play freeform 40K. GW went all in and removed virtually all restrictions from listbuilding - this is now as close as possible to the dreaded 7th ed unbound as rule of three allows. Remember how everybody ridiculed unbound as devoid of any understanding of game design and balance? It is the only way of list building now and anyone is free to turn his min-max game to 11 or build the niche army he always dreamt of. But in doing so he now will have to accept, that freedom comes at a cost of being vastly less balanced than fixed lists format.

So if C.P. ever grows mainstream, everybody will have to show their true colours. That is IMO the greatest reveal about 10th to date - taking the skeleton of fake strive for balance out of the closet and puting it on display.

I don't understand this post. C. P. Is what?

My basic reaction-Meh

It already looks like garbage-

.command points and stratagems...yep still there, just toned down a bit- that is a big non-starter.
.vehicles still are not vehicles-non starter\
.alternating weapon performance for the same weapon based on the unit carrying it...biomorphing nids makes sense. a bolter none at all.

Wee they brought back USRs the one thing they did right.


I have better editions and other better games to play.
9th is effectively dead at me store and has been for a while, Battle Tech however is huge as is FOW, Infinity among others.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
While I will happily celebrate the death knell of Stratagems, I'm unclear as to why fewer relics is being made out to be a positive thing.

Given how much wargear has been stripped out, relics are one of the few avenues of customisation available to many characters. Why would I want that reduced even more?

Because GW makes their changes by swings of a giant pendulum and paradigm shifts. In 8th it was "bespoke bespoke bespoke!". For 10th it's "everything on one page". So we get to suffer having reduced relics on top of virtually no options. And you think what's about to happen to Relics is bad? Imagine what's about to happen to Chaos Legions, Craftworlds, Orky Klanz and everything else that isn't a Loyalist Space Marine.

Fun™!

 alextroy wrote:
If unit rules are free...

Rules are not going to be free. The Indices will be free, because they're invalidating every Codex in the game and want to garner some good will rather than make everyone buy 4 different Index books all over again. But make no mistake, once those are done and dusted, so is the free ride. Codices will begin to appear as normal, hardback and expensive as ever.

I'd even bet that the "free rules" will be incomplete, missing vital things like army construction rules, scenarios and even terrain rules. So, sure, you can technically play the game with the free rules, but if you want all the rules, better get that wallet out!

Bingo. it is the rebuy all your books time again, and how long do you think it will take them to destroy USRs again with bloat via 7th ed?

This is a glaring issue because GW has expanded the game space so much with so many factions bloat is nearly inevitable to try and differentiate the various armies now in the game.

Gadzilla666 wrote: *looks at 10th edition article*

Yeeeehhhh .......you guys have fun with this. Personally, I'm so glad that I switched to HH.

To bad they already destroyed HH with 2.0 it doesn't even look close to what Alan created.

The observation is pretty clear. HH exists but is also a "No xenos allowed" affair.

Officially true....however thats more of what the players want to do.....HH 1.0 is fully compatible with 7th ed codexes for armies that were and could have been encountered in the HH era. minus a few newer named characters I.E. eldar, dark eldar, ORKs, necrons

Not sure why there is all this preemptive hate for the 10th edition version of Combat Patrol.

Is it a case of the game designers and the marketing team getting together to make a product? Yes.

Is that a bad thing? No.

The point is to make an easy way into the game for new players and provide an easy way for older players to expand their army choices. Yes, it is about making GW more money. But either GW makes money or GW disappears and takes the game with them.

The question is will it provide a way to grow the player base and provide a nice alternative to the sandbox that is higher points levels of 40K? If yes on either points, good job design team. If they manage to do both, bully to GW.

It's because we're not buying it.

GW can talk a good game, but they've yet to design one.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's because we're not buying it.

GW can talk a good game, but they've yet to design one.

Not true. The LotR stuff is pretty damned good.

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's because we're not buying it.

GW can talk a good game, but they've yet to design one.

Not true. The LotR stuff is pretty damned good.

LotR is a solid narrative game, but I find it breaks down pretty fast when people start taking it too seriously in much the same way as 40k does (e.g. there are "normal, baseline humans/orcs", but nobody ever plays normal baseline humans/orcs so you find lists tailored to dealing with elves, dwarves, Morannon Orcs, etc. in the same way that Space Marines are supposed to be special but are also the most popular thing and it has weird effects on the meta). In my experience of playing both GW and non-GW games with people of varying levels of competitiveness the overwhelming impression I get is that GW just isn't that good at playing their own games; they work fine under ideal conditions, but you find edge cases the designers didn't think of pretty fast if you go off the beaten track, whereas if you go off the beaten track in, say, Infinity or Crisis Protocol the game still works to the point that I'd be staggered if I could come up with a game situation that they hadn't seen in playtest.

Disclaimer: This is my impression, not a statement of absolute fact.

Siegfriedfr wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
While I will happily celebrate the death knell of Stratagems, I'm unclear as to why fewer relics is being made out to be a positive thing.

Given how much wargear has been stripped out, relics are one of the few avenues of customisation available to many characters. Why would I want that reduced even more?

It's part of the bloat that has been plagging the game since Psychic Awakening.

There comes a breaking point where too many options turn the game into pure math-hammer. 3 relics in index , expanded in codex, would be alright from my pow.

There really aren't a lot of Relics though. Granted there's obvious duds (why take the Spartean, right?) but overall there's not a lot of redundancy and niches get filled. Mostly the problem is making all relics cost the same. That's fixed with either point costs or letting characters take up to two Relics (my personal fix).

 alextroy wrote:
But either GW makes money or GW disappears and takes the game with them.

no, the game will stay
that is the main advantage of selling physical books with all the rules, no matter what happens with the company, you already have the game at home and no one can take it away from you

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

nou wrote:
Playerbase "only" has to accept what it always struggled to understand - there is, has been, and always will be more than one way to play 40k.

Has that ever been in question? The difference is we didn't need GW to codify it with some goofy marketing speak tied to box-army releases.

well, in this case it is simply GW doing the copy&paste what everyone else is doing

Faction Starter Boxes that are all the same price and contain all the same amount of points are on the list what people wants for ~20 years now but GW never got it right. One problem often being that there were not enough standard units for regular army lists. Think it was in 7th were instead of changing the boxes, GW changed to rules to add special formations so you could play with the box without buying anything else (and some of them being so powerful that they found their way into regular 2k lists)

Everyone else is doing them, for easy entry into the game and a cheap start for the models. Pre-Made Army lists are a thing simply because this is aimed for new people who don't know anything and just want to start playing

by now it was a GW thing that a Faction Starter meant you cannot play a simple intro game against each other because the amount of points per box were very different, there were not enough troop/standard units and/or the power level was off

so they try this again, copy&paste what others do without understanding why they are doing it

Please do not spam the forum.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's because we're not buying it.

GW can talk a good game, but they've yet to design one.

Not true. The LotR stuff is pretty damned good.

LotR is a solid narrative game, but I find it breaks down pretty fast when people start taking it too seriously in much the same way as 40k does (e.g. there are "normal, baseline humans/orcs", but nobody ever plays normal baseline humans/orcs so you find lists tailored to dealing with elves, dwarves, Morannon Orcs, etc. in the same way that Space Marines are supposed to be special but are also the most popular thing and it has weird effects on the meta). In my experience of playing both GW and non-GW games with people of varying levels of competitiveness the overwhelming impression I get is that GW just isn't that good at playing their own games; they work fine under ideal conditions, but you find edge cases the designers didn't think of pretty fast if you go off the beaten track, whereas if you go off the beaten track in, say, Infinity or Crisis Protocol the game still works to the point that I'd be staggered if I could come up with a game situation that they hadn't seen in playtest.

Disclaimer: This is my impression, not a statement of absolute fact.

Nothing you said refutes my claim & experience that the LotR stuff IS a pretty good game.

It's also not news that if you play with people who take things too seriously/intend to break a game that you'll have a poor time. Doesn't matter what game.
Heck, I know someone who can (probably) ruin Crisis Protocol for you.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Everything identical? That doesn't sound fun at all...

If players want balance that's what it needs be. One box that is balanced.

The moment you want freedom of army list building you admit you don't want balanced game. "somewhat in the same star system to balance" level rather.

But people want to mathhammer the broken army. Even when it's kindergarden level. People need to be able to tell them they somehow outsmarted others.

of course, there are only 2 options as balance cannot exist otherwise

PS: and we don't even know if those boxes are "balanced"
just because GW says so does not mean anything

but hey, lets claim that balance without pre-made lists is impossible to feed the GW narrative that they don't need to invest anything into their rules because making them better is impossible anyway

ccs wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Disclaimer: This is my impression, not a statement of absolute fact.

Nothing you said refutes my claim & experience that the LotR stuff IS a pretty good game.

And neither of you seem to understand that it was a quippy line, and not something that truly requires a great depth of explanation or exploration.

This is why you shouldn't explain jokes, folks.

tneva82 wrote:
The moment you want freedom of army list building you admit you don't want balanced game.

I don't believe that's true at all and I'd ask you back up your statement so that it is more than assertion that we should take on faith alone.

You've just made a bad generation made from poor observations to draw flawed conclusions.

 kodos wrote:
well, in this case it is simply GW doing the copy&paste what everyone else is doing

And, right from the outset, they're doing it in the typical GW way: Ass backwards. They're starting with the boxes, and building the rules around that. It's just doomed from the outset.

 kodos wrote:
Faction Starter Boxes that are all the same price and contain all the same amount of points are on the list what people wants for ~20 years now but GW never got it right.

I'd like to believe that when other companies released their faction starter boxes that they took the time to curate them. GW, on the other hand, I'm more than certain, is just one department saying "See these boxes we already sell? Make that a game!".

 Insectum7 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
marine privilege

That's not a thing. Don't try to make that a thing.

Oh it's definitely a thing. More attention, more releases, often taking things that other factions pioneered and just making it betterererer.

The observation is pretty clear. HH exists but is also a "No xenos allowed" affair.

?

Afaik and i talked to Gad, he isn't opposed to Xenos in 30k, regardless of fan dexes or count as Milita/ ruinstorm or official. Indeed he and many others wish GW would get on with it to diversify the faction pool more than it is in 30k.

He (and me) is just more in favour of indeepth rules and mechanically better interactions than what 40k offers. And i am also of the opinion that the new datasheet doesn't look enticing one bit.

Hellebore wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
*looks at 10th edition article*

Yeeeehhhh .......you guys have fun with this. Personally, I'm so glad that I switched to HH.

This post right here is perhaps one of the greatest examples of marine privilege in 40k...

Suuurreeee........total privilege caused from playing Night Lords for 21 years. What with all of our 0 special characters and units in 40k. Massive "privilege", right there.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
marine privilege

That's not a thing. Don't try to make that a thing.

Oh it's definitely a thing. More attention, more releases, often taking things that other factions pioneered and just making it betterererer.

The observation is pretty clear. HH exists but is also a "No xenos allowed" affair.

?

Afaik and i talked to Gad, he isn't opposed to Xenos in 30k, regardless of fan dexes or count as Milita/ ruinstorm or official. Indeed he and many others wish GW would get on with it to diversify the faction pool more than it is in 30k.

He (and me) is just more in favour of indeepth rules and mechanically better interactions than what 40k offers. And i am also of the opinion that the new datasheet doesn't look enticing one bit.

Ayup. I absolutely can't wait for Xenos rules for 30k. Official or fan created. It's all about the core rules for me. And I want as many players, playing as many factions, involved as possible. It's just more fun, IMO.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And, right from the outset, they're doing it in the typical GW way: Ass backwards. They're starting with the boxes, and building the rules around that. It's just doomed from the outset.
[....]I'd like to believe that when other companies released their faction starter boxes that they took the time to curate them. GW, on the other hand, I'm more than certain, is just one department saying "See these boxes we already sell? Make that a game!".

yeah, they see what sells for others and make the same with the least amount of investment
and simple looking at the preview pictures I would say that they are everything but balanced, at least what non-40k players understand by that term (might be still better than the regular game)

GW wants something similar to the SAGA 4 point Starter Armies, or the Kings of War Ambush sets, so lets see of it works "this time"

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
GW, on the other hand, I'm more than certain, is just one department saying "See these boxes we already sell? Make that a game!".

I mean, yep, that’s exactly what will have happened. Product first is and always has been GW’s way.

I am disappointed they're not doing more to make 500 point games more interesting WITHOUT tying it to the box. Like it should be a variation of the original Combat Patrol/40k in 40 Minutes/Lunchhammer concept with restrictions and such to reel things in. Similar I guess to the boarding actions but playing mostly like a regular game. So maybe things like no more than 1 vehicle (excluding transports) or dreadnought (or equivalent), and so on.

However I stand by what I said before: making the combat patrol style locked in means it can, in theory, be as balanced as GW could do since there's very few options. The counter argument is about freedom, and while this is true, it proves that competitive players don't actually want balance. They want "system mastery" to let them show their "skill" in picking the best options. Yes, list building is fun. But it's also unbalanced no matter what, even if GW could balance it.

I'm still super skeptical about basically making Unbound the default for army building. Kind of shocked people praised that when unbound was panned in 7th as being ridiculous. It will be interesting to see if the competitive subset adds restrictions since we all know that will quickly take over as the main way people play no matter what the default actually is.

 kodos wrote:
of course, there are only 2 options as balance cannot exist otherwise

PS: and we don't even know if those boxes are "balanced"
just because GW says so does not mean anything

but hey, lets claim that balance without pre-made lists is impossible to feed the GW narrative that they don't need to invest anything into their rules because making them better is impossible anyway

It is impossible...

Or yeah how you are going to account lascannon being more expensive than heavy bolter if you then face all infantry force You can't claim lascannon is worth same points whether you face tank or grot...

If you want real balance rather than close enough approximation you have to have fixed list. That's just kindergarden level obvious fact.

Wayniac wrote:
I'm still super skeptical about basically making Unbound the default for army building. Kind of shocked people praised that when unbound was panned in 7th as being ridiculous. It will be interesting to see if the competitive subset adds restrictions since we all know that will quickly take over as the main way people play no matter what the default actually is.

I think the issue is that the game has been quasi-unbound for a long time.
"I want a lot of heavy support options."
"Okay I'll take a patrol and a Spearhead detachment".
I've now got 8 Heavy Support slots - and 4 slots for everything else. Okay I had to take an extra HQ and troops choice - but its not exactly a massive burden.

The Arks of Omen detachment is arguably a bit more restrictive - but I'm not sure it makes a huge difference. Is an army composed of say 9-10 fast attack or 9-10 heavy support units obviously broken versus one with 6 of these and a mix of other units? If say HS choices were better point for point perhaps - but I'm not sure they are these days. Once you move beyond a mindset that these units are where a list's "power" should come from, there's no obvious reason for the restriction.

I don't really think anything on the whole Combat Patrol business. Its GW probably thinking (not unreasonably) that a lot of new players begin by getting a combat patrol box. And their friends also get combat patrol boxes. So a game system that better facilitates playing them together makes sense. I doubt it will have anything like perfect balance - but it might be closer than playing them into each other at the moment.

tneva82 wrote:

It is impossible...

Or yeah how you are going to account lascannon being more expensive than heavy bolter if you then face all infantry force You can't claim lascannon is worth same points whether you face tank or grot...

if you want the play the white knight you can do better than that
you just missed the chance that GW should balance the meta by adjusting the price of the models so that no one can ever bring a pure infantry force or a pure tank army

but I guess in your world you pay different for a spoon or a table knife depending on what you order?
so a restaurant should charge 1€ for a spoon of you order a Steak and 100€ for the spoon because you ordered a Soup?

otherwise, how would the restaurant make up the value of a knife or spoon if they don't know what you are going to order
might even be that the need to bring both to the table and have equal stock of both ready to use, what a stupid idea totally impossible

Tyel wrote:
think the issue is that the game has been quasi-unbound for a long time.
"I want a lot of heavy support options."
"Okay I'll take a patrol and a Spearhead detachment".
I've now got 8 Heavy Support slots - and 4 slots for everything else. Okay I had to take an extra HQ and troops choice - but its not exactly a massive burden.

I've been saying that the FOC was pointless from the moment you could use CP just to buy more slots, so yeah, this change GW are making doesn't seem to mean a whole hell of a lot from a practicality standpoint.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
marine privilege

That's not a thing. Don't try to make that a thing.

I'll define my terms:

Privilege (in the context of choosing factions in 40k) is where you are supplied with continual units, upgrades and options, updates to existing models while other factions still use 25 year old models and have less unit choices than one faction has models for its lieutenant unit. It's where different colour schemes for a faction are given whole chunks of production, books and units. It's where an entire separate game exists with extensive resources just to provide a playground for those factions and yet they still take up most of the bandwidth for the core game.

In this context, choosing space marines when playing 40k grants you a massive privilege in how accessible the game is, how much support and variety you are afforded, the sheer range of options available and an expectation of endless material support.

To choose any other faction is to deliberately hobble yourself in terms of model options, content, game opportunities or even just the basic expectation of 25 year old models being replaced when marines have released an entire game with plastic support.

In a social game where people ostensibly choose their own faction as part of a gaming community, marine players are so beyond privileged it's crazy.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
*looks at 10th edition article*

Yeeeehhhh .......you guys have fun with this. Personally, I'm so glad that I switched to HH.

This post right here is perhaps one of the greatest examples of marine privilege in 40k...

Or Guard
Or Ademch
Or Imperial/Chaos Knights
Or Custodes
Or Demons

HH isnt purely about Marines (tho it does skew heavily towards imperium/Chaos, so i feel for Xenos players)


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
marine privilege

That's not a thing. Don't try to make that a thing.

also this


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

The moment you want freedom of army list building you admit you don't want balanced game. "somewhat in the same star system to balance" level rather.

This is such a gak take, idk where that sentiment comes from.....

In a perfect world, i should be able to bring litterally any list and still feel like i can accomplish something in game, now i know that won't ever be true (good luck winning with only grot hordes). But the reality is that GW should make any list written by someone with basic game knowledge work.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
GW, on the other hand, I'm more than certain, is just one department saying "See these boxes we already sell? Make that a game!".

I mean, yep, that’s exactly what will have happened. Product first is and always has been GW’s way.

Here's the thing with CP - it will be it's own ecosystem. For those boxes to remain balanced they have to ignore every balance tweak that happens outside of it. That's why they have their own datasheets. It is entirely self contained.

These are 'products they already sell' that they deliberately designed and wrote rules for to function in that context. Just because people saw them come out before 10th was announced doesn't mean they were ad-hoc repurposed. In fact them making the box changes to be ready in advance of the release would be the correct thing to do.

Whether not they'll be successful is a different thing, but the cynicism is off the charts.

I mean, they’re value/9th detachment-fit boxes, retrofitted into a new game mode. The game mode may well work and be fun but the origins are very clear here.

Wayniac wrote:
I'm still super skeptical about basically making Unbound the default for army building. Kind of shocked people praised that when unbound was panned in 7th as being ridiculous. It will be interesting to see if the competitive subset adds restrictions since we all know that will quickly take over as the main way people play no matter what the default actually is.

It's quite likely that 'matched play' will not be so loose, but I can only guess on how they'll accomplish that.