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 Dolnikan wrote:

Breton wrote:

 KingGarland wrote:

Breton wrote:

And with the new Objective Controlled stuff it may not be as hard as it was. I suspect ObSec/ObCon is as messed up as always with 5 Grots beating 4 Intercessors, but we'll see.

I suspect that Grots will be OC 1 regardless of them being troops. Still means three would beat one Intercessor though.

That's getting into the range of believable.

WIth Two grots vs one Intercessor, its like trying to outrun the bear jokes i.e. "I don't have to outrun the bear, I have to outrun you.". With three there's a gang up on him potential.

Controlling objectives is generally weird under both the current and the future rules (as far as we can tell). If one player has 10 blue space marines at the objective and the other 11 spiky ones, you wouldn't expect either of them to have control over the objective but rather that it's currently contested. In the given example of three (or two) grots and a space marine I don't think any of them would realistically be in control of the objective.

Naturally, it wouldn't work on game terms of you could just deny objectives to your opponent by constantly throwing the last remnants of a unit at the objective so there has to be some sort of compromise. I personally think that it would be best if there was some kind of contested status in between either side controlling it, probably based on outnumbering the other side two to one or something.

That sort of exists already - since you can't do actions while engaged. Even if the one side controls the objective, the mission rules or secondaries (if they're still a thing) may give an additional bonus for being able to do some sort of action on it while you're there.

Tsagualsa wrote:It could be as simple as continuing the logic of the current wound 'chart' one step further and have triple-toughness+ strength values auto-wound and one-third-toughness- weapons never wound; that would mean that the most ubiquitous smallarm would end up useless against T 9/10 (depending on the exakt wording) and T 12/13 respectively, and that seems a desireable cutoff for many reasons. In practice it would mean that unboosted lasguns cap out at light vehicles and skimmers, while bolters can threaten anything up to IFVs and light tanks.

Plus at the other end of the scale, it would be nice for weapons like lascannons and meltaguns to auto-wound Guardsmen and the like.

But I'm not holding my breath for it. The wording on Critical Wounds (that you always wound on a 6) implies that the wound table is staying the same.

Dolnikan wrote:Controlling objectives is generally weird under both the current and the future rules (as far as we can tell). If one player has 10 blue space marines at the objective and the other 11 spiky ones, you wouldn't expect either of them to have control over the objective but rather that it's currently contested. In the given example of three (or two) grots and a space marine I don't think any of them would realistically be in control of the objective.

Naturally, it wouldn't work on game terms of you could just deny objectives to your opponent by constantly throwing the last remnants of a unit at the objective so there has to be some sort of compromise. I personally think that it would be best if there was some kind of contested status in between either side controlling it, probably based on outnumbering the other side two to one or something.

It would be pretty easy to say you only control an objective if you have double the OC on it than your opponent. Otherwise it's contested and nobody has it. Random models wouldn't be able to deny control of the objective against any moderately-sized unit, but being outnumbered by one Grot wouldn't decide the battle.

I find the somewhat ballyhooed new mechanic of control a bit silly. Does any unit really 'control' an objective if the enemy is also parked next to it? I'd say no.

I can see why GW wants some kind of tie-breaking function but it seems there are much more important things to emphasize in a war game. I get it; it's trying to clarify new ground. It just seems more like solving a problem of it's own creation.

 amanita wrote:
I find the somewhat ballyhooed new mechanic of control a bit silly. Does any unit really 'control' an objective if the enemy is also parked next to it? I'd say no.

I can see why GW wants some kind of tie-breaking function but it seems there are much more important things to emphasize in a war game. I get it; it's trying to clarify new ground. It just seems more like solving a problem of it's own creation.

There literally aren't more important things to emphasize? The objective is the point of the battle. Who controls the objective decides who wins the battle. Is literally the entire reason you're at the table at all.

What's 'more important to emphasize'? Wang size?

 amanita wrote:
I find the somewhat ballyhooed new mechanic of control a bit silly. Does any unit really 'control' an objective if the enemy is also parked next to it? I'd say no.

I can see why GW wants some kind of tie-breaking function but it seems there are much more important things to emphasize in a war game. I get it; it's trying to clarify new ground. It just seems more like solving a problem of it's own creation.

It is pretty odd, I agree. It seems to encourage massive scrums of models mashing into each other. It's a sharp contrast over earlier forms of missions that had objective control as being "cleared of opposition" from wither a radius from a point or just table quarters at the end of the game. I think the current model is largely there because of progressive scoring?

 Insectum7 wrote:
It is pretty odd, I agree. It seems to encourage massive scrums of models mashing into each other. It's a sharp contrast over earlier forms of missions that had objective control as being "cleared of opposition" from wither a radius from a point or just table quarters at the end of the game. I think the current model is largely there because of progressive scoring?

Think of it this way - if control requires all or nothing then what stops someone from denying you control by just throwing small units thereby making it impossible to score?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It is pretty odd, I agree. It seems to encourage massive scrums of models mashing into each other. It's a sharp contrast over earlier forms of missions that had objective control as being "cleared of opposition" from wither a radius from a point or just table quarters at the end of the game. I think the current model is largely there because of progressive scoring?

Think of it this way - if control requires all or nothing then what stops someone from denying you control by just throwing small units thereby making it impossible to score?

Nothing? Just like in real life?

"Sir, the area is secure, you can send forward the Rear Area-" (explosion, gun fire, enemy screaming)
"Doesn't sound like it!"
"Oh they have a lower-" (chainsword revving, grots screeching) "-lower OC than us" (meltagun chooms)
"Ah, Roger that, sending forward the women and children!"

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It is pretty odd, I agree. It seems to encourage massive scrums of models mashing into each other. It's a sharp contrast over earlier forms of missions that had objective control as being "cleared of opposition" from wither a radius from a point or just table quarters at the end of the game. I think the current model is largely there because of progressive scoring?

Think of it this way - if control requires all or nothing then what stops someone from denying you control by just throwing small units thereby making it impossible to score?

I understand the gameplay reason. The logic remains a bit odd though. How much control do you really have if there are roving bands of enemy forces nearby.

Back when it was table quarters, scoring happened at the end of a 6 turn game where many units had been destroyed or driven off (as Broken troops did not count for scoring). The 'real world' interpretation of that makes more sense. The battle has been fought, and either one side is a clear victor or they aren't. Current version says has you constantly tally points while models are still in the heat of combat. Just feels weird.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It is pretty odd, I agree. It seems to encourage massive scrums of models mashing into each other. It's a sharp contrast over earlier forms of missions that had objective control as being "cleared of opposition" from wither a radius from a point or just table quarters at the end of the game. I think the current model is largely there because of progressive scoring?

Think of it this way - if control requires all or nothing then what stops someone from denying you control by just throwing small units thereby making it impossible to score?

Nothing? Just like in real life?

"Sir, the area is secure, you can send forward the Rear Area-" (explosion, gun fire, enemy screaming)
"Doesn't sound like it!"
"Oh they have a lower-" (chainsword revving, grots screeching) "-lower OC than us" (meltagun chooms)
"Ah, Roger that, sending forward the women and children!"

Right, well, another nail in the coffin for realism being suitable for good gameplay.

I understand the gameplay reason. The logic remains a bit odd though. How much control do you really have if there are roving bands of enemy forces nearby.

Back when it was table quarters, scoring happened at the end of a 6 turn game where many units had been destroyed or driven off (as Broken troops did not count for scoring). The 'real world' interpretation of that makes more sense. The battle has been fought, and either one side is a clear victor or they aren't. Current version says has you constantly tally points while models are still in the heat of combat. Just feels weird.

There's a number of ways you could look at it.

Your final game score is a representation of how well you held the line or if you pushed territory. Similar to how you see stats for Euro Football where they measure how much time you were in the opponents field and time controlling the ball. In an imaginary world were the game is tied you could conceivably say the team with the greatest overall control was the victor.

The "circles" are a loose representation of some important part of the battlefield be it vantage, archeotech, terrain, etc. Quarters represent that struggle better, but when you're given a whole table quarter for an objective it becomes more about bodies and shooting than it does about physically taking territory. An objective gives a more concise measurement and increases the tension on the field.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Right, well, another nail in the coffin for realism being suitable for good gameplay.

Pffft. Happy to disagree with this one!

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Right, well, another nail in the coffin for realism being suitable for good gameplay.

Pffft. Happy to disagree with this one!

Sorry - I shouldn't make that sound like no game would be suitable for such rules. It has it's place, but not in a game where people are concerned about balance as well as having the diversity of armies.

In WW2 games - chefs kiss.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It is pretty odd, I agree. It seems to encourage massive scrums of models mashing into each other. It's a sharp contrast over earlier forms of missions that had objective control as being "cleared of opposition" from wither a radius from a point or just table quarters at the end of the game. I think the current model is largely there because of progressive scoring?

Think of it this way - if control requires all or nothing then what stops someone from denying you control by just throwing small units thereby making it impossible to score?

If this was about a more serious ruleset then it would be a multi-layer action/reaction and suppression mechanic that allows the holding unit to incapacitate approaching small units, so the enemy has to use good maneuvering and their own action/reaction/suppression tricks to first incapacitate the holding unit then take the objective by storm. So despite it being all-or-nothing you can have a massive number of different situations generated by player interaction on the battlefield.

That would be cool, but probably a bit too heavy for 40K sized battles.

It should be noted that breaking a unit does affect it's ability to hold objectives. How much and how easily is still unknown.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Right, well, another nail in the coffin for realism being suitable for good gameplay.

Pffft. Happy to disagree with this one!

Sorry - I shouldn't make that sound like no game would be suitable for such rules. It has it's place, but not in a game where people are concerned about balance as well as having the diversity of armies.

Happy to agree to disagree with that as well!

 catbarf wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:It could be as simple as continuing the logic of the current wound 'chart' one step further and have triple-toughness+ strength values auto-wound and one-third-toughness- weapons never wound; that would mean that the most ubiquitous smallarm would end up useless against T 9/10 (depending on the exakt wording) and T 12/13 respectively, and that seems a desireable cutoff for many reasons. In practice it would mean that unboosted lasguns cap out at light vehicles and skimmers, while bolters can threaten anything up to IFVs and light tanks.

Plus at the other end of the scale, it would be nice for weapons like lascannons and meltaguns to auto-wound Guardsmen and the like.

But I'm not holding my breath for it. The wording on Critical Wounds (that you always wound on a 6) implies that the wound table is staying the same.

It would be nice if certain high Strength weapons, low number of attack weapons could auto wounds. A simple weapon ability that lets you auto-wound any target whose Toughness is half your Strength would have worked well in 8th or 9th, but if 10th is expanding Strength and Toughness another solution would be needed to avoid antitank weapons being pointed at infantry all day.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:It could be as simple as continuing the logic of the current wound 'chart' one step further and have triple-toughness+ strength values auto-wound and one-third-toughness- weapons never wound; that would mean that the most ubiquitous smallarm would end up useless against T 9/10 (depending on the exakt wording) and T 12/13 respectively, and that seems a desireable cutoff for many reasons. In practice it would mean that unboosted lasguns cap out at light vehicles and skimmers, while bolters can threaten anything up to IFVs and light tanks.

Plus at the other end of the scale, it would be nice for weapons like lascannons and meltaguns to auto-wound Guardsmen and the like.

But I'm not holding my breath for it. The wording on Critical Wounds (that you always wound on a 6) implies that the wound table is staying the same.

It would be nice if certain high Strength weapons, low number of attack weapons could auto wounds. A simple weapon ability that lets you auto-wound any target whose Toughness is half your Strength would have worked well in 8th or 9th, but if 10th is expanding Strength and Toughness another solution would be needed to avoid antitank weapons turn pointed at infantry all day.

I agree with much of this. I think autowounding when you get to certain S vs. T levels should be a given. It never felt right that a Lascannon or MultiMelta could simply roll a 1 and fail to wound a target like a Guardsmean that was actually struck by it with the Hit roll. Plus it reduces rolling, even if in just a small way.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Happy to agree to disagree with that as well!

Certainly. I just don't know how you design a system that allows stuff like one-shot kills of tanks to be balanced.

Bolt Action is balanced if the people playing communicate beforehand. There's tons of units - especially bigger tanks - that you won't see competitively. Instead it will be flamethrowers and body armor.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
There's a number of ways you could look at it.

Your final game score is a representation of how well you held the line or if you pushed territory. Similar to how you see stats for Euro Football where they measure how much time you were in the opponents field and time controlling the ball. In an imaginary world were the game is tied you could conceivably say the team with the greatest overall control was the victor.

The "circles" are a loose representation of some important part of the battlefield be it vantage, archeotech, terrain, etc. Quarters represent that struggle better, but when you're given a whole table quarter for an objective it becomes more about bodies and shooting than it does about physically taking territory. An objective gives a more concise measurement and increases the tension on the field.

Not gonna lie, the football analogy makes it sound absurd- your force got nearly wiped out and holds none of the territory that was being fought over, but you earned style points by holding it for the first four turns so you win? Really?

Progressive scoring seems reasonable to me for time-critical objectives (hold the AA guns, download the data, extract the prisoner, whatever) but for raw territory control it makes no sense. Accepting it as a gameplay abstraction is better than trying to justify it.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
It would be nice if certain high Strength weapons, low number of attack weapons could auto wounds. A simple weapon ability that lets you auto-wound any target whose Toughness is half your Strength would have worked well in 8th or 9th, but if 10th is expanding Strength and Toughness another solution would be needed to avoid antitank weapons turn pointed at infantry all day.

Why is this necessary?

Is killing a guardsman or marine with a lascannon that important?

This sort of falls into the 'feels good' category, but not so much on necessary mechanics to make the game play better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
Not gonna lie, the football analogy makes it sound absurd- your force got nearly wiped out and holds none of the territory that was being fought over, but you earned style points by holding it for the first four turns so you win? Really?

Progressive scoring seems reasonable to me for time-critical objectives (hold the AA guns, download the data, extract the prisoner, whatever) but for raw territory control it makes no sense. Accepting it as a gameplay abstraction is better than trying to justify it.

You can choose whatever head cannon is necessary to justify how points are scored. I don't particularly care about the specific details as to why I am scoring points. I care about the tactical method(s) used to score.

Your existence on the battlefield could just be to delay the enemy force as long as possible to allow for some other part of the battlefield to score a major victory.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Your existence on the battlefield could just be to delay the enemy force as long as possible to allow for some other part of the battlefield to score a major victory.

If your mission is to hold the line for as long as possible, why would seizing territory, getting killed nearly to a man, and losing it all again be better than successfully defending your deployment zone with only minor casualties?

Again, I don't really mind abstractions for the sake of gameplay, but your justifications aren't making any sense.

Because you're willing to sit around and split hairs when ultimately I really just don't care. I'd rather mentally engage in playing the game instead of making sure what I am doing has some real world related effect.

If they wanted to make missions more realistic, or at least increase their verisimilitude, they could do something like:

Each match has a maximum score of 12.

0 - 4 points are scored based on how many points worth of your army's models remain on the board at the end of the game.

4 - >80%
3 - >60%
2 - >40%
1 - > 20%
0 - <20%

0 - 4 points are scored for holding primary objectives or completing primary tasks. Score one point for each turn you held more objectives than your opponent or completed a primary task.

0 - 4 points are scored for secondary objectives. See your army's data slate for how these points are scored.

Now you get points based on how many of your men survived the mission, how well you did what the top brass wanted you to do, and how well you achieved what local command wanted you to do.

It might even be possible to tweak these percentages so, as an example, Guard might only score 3 points for survival but might earn 5 points for primary objectives. If we're feeling brave, perhaps Khorne or DE might flip that entirely and score based on how few points the enemy has on the table at the end of the game.

You can make gameplay and reality meet closer to the middle if you're willing to make scoring a little bit more complex and recognize that getting tabled should hurt your score.

See, demanding that the objective be clear of enemy is fine in a vacuum, but given they are currently trying to dial back the lethality of game and increase unit staying power in 10th (or at least, this is a stated intention, we'll see how successful they are), then your likely to run into a position where neither side manages to convincingly control the mid board objectives for almost the whole game. The final victory ends up riding on the results of a fight phase between two intercessors and one pissed off ork boy, who are all thats left of a 5 turn winnowing melee thats ground on indecisively the whole game. To continue the football analogy, its like every game going down to a penalty shoot-out: its fine every so often as the nail biting clincher to a hard fought draw, but you dont want it EVERY game.

If you switch form progressive primary scoring to end game control only, then that incentivises 4 turns of hiding and desultory skirmishing until the final turn, when EVERYONE rushes forward to try and claim the objectives at the last second to claim victory.

If you want forces to come forward and fight in the centre of the table, then progressive scoring or something similar, that incentives both armies to push out of thier deployment zones is required to make that happen.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Happy to agree to disagree with that as well!

Certainly. I just don't know how you design a system that allows stuff like one-shot kills of tanks to be balanced.

Bolt Action is balanced if the people playing communicate beforehand. There's tons of units - especially bigger tanks - that you won't see competitively. Instead it will be flamethrowers and body armor.

How about you try Chain of Command, where the forces aren't determined (outside of your core platoon) until after the scenario is drawn, and there are many player decisions to make about how to interact with something besides just "kill it or not".

Need to capture an objective in CoC? Well, the enemy Jump Off Points represent his front line, and you will have to capture them in order to get through to the objective without smacking straight into them unprepared. But they are placed by your opponent - with some say from you based on how your patrols advanced - so it will be a hard ask. Typically, though, the attacker has plenty of support available...

Will you go for a small support bombardment, pinning the enemy down while you try to make progress? Hopefully your supporting guns don't get retasked by higher at a bad time!

Bring light mortars perhaps - under your direct control, but somewhat ineffective... except to deploy smoke. Got a formidable enemy strong point? Blind and bypass, if you can't direct assault.

Bringing armor? Good luck! Just know with so much support available, your opponent may have planned for this, so you need to protect your investment from ambushes by enemy infantry with satchel charges, man-portable AT weapons, anti-tank guns, etc. And you better hope they didn't put a minefield that forces your tank into a swamp!

You could just go for fire superiority, with lots of machine-guns providing covering fire to make his life difficult, while you advance with a small team or scout car to probe for weaknesses and force him out into your supporting bullet hoses...

Use your tools well though, your enemy may have less but he has the same choices, if not more!

Daedalus81 wrote:Because you're willing to sit around and split hairs when ultimately I really just don't care. I'd rather mentally engage in playing the game instead of making sure what I am doing has some real world related effect.

Does it matter what the game is to you? Could you mentally engage with MTG or MCP or bolt action?

This sounds very much like "don't get the reason to play the game in the way of actually playing the game!" Which is a bit cart wagging the horse.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

xerxeskingofking wrote:
See, demanding that the objective be clear of enemy is fine in a vacuum, but given they are currently trying to dial back the lethality of game and increase unit staying power in 10th (or at least, this is a stated intention, we'll see how successful they are), then your likely to run into a position where neither side manages to convincingly control the mid board objectives for almost the whole game.

If only there were ways you could interact with the enemy other than KILL them, then this contradiction wouldn't exist...

Heck, gw might even be doing this with the broken condition, we will see how it pans out.

I'm kind of excited Nids are getting attention in 10th.

It's actually more likely to bring women into the game than any focus on representation of female characters in Imperium factions.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Because you're willing to sit around and split hairs when ultimately I really just don't care. I'd rather mentally engage in playing the game instead of making sure what I am doing has some real world related effect.

And people don't want real w40k. 20 allarus terminators should be able to drop 300 veteran csm. a demi company of marines should be a problem to handle for an IG regiment. Orks and Tyranids should not exist in forced under a few hundred models, unless it is something like Dread Mobs or Carnifex swarms. Demons , once they get a hold of a space should have infinite respawn, and vice versa GK should make the smaller ones start to lose connection to the real world just by being in eye sight of a demon.

Just like sports are sudo fights and sudo wars, and people can enjoy them. So should wargames be enjoyable to play and realism, especialy in fantasy or sci fi, being a far off Nth style goal to achive, by the game designers.

Karol wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Because you're willing to sit around and split hairs when ultimately I really just don't care. I'd rather mentally engage in playing the game instead of making sure what I am doing has some real world related effect.

And people don't want real w40k. 20 allarus terminators should be able to drop 300 veteran csm. a demi company of marines should be a problem to handle for an IG regiment. Orks and Tyranids should not exist in forced under a few hundred models, unless it is something like Dread Mobs or Carnifex swarms. Demons , once they get a hold of a space should have infinite respawn, and vice versa GK should make the smaller ones start to lose connection to the real world just by being in eye sight of a demon.

Something like that is better for the RTS genre. Have you played Dawn of War: Dark Crusade or Dawn of War 2 by chance?

No, I did not play those.

The game we play, but in general any game. Should do two things, make us want to play it. And reasons for that maybe many, but I think people cover this under the fun aspect. And then keep some sort of faction, identity.

Now, I know there are people who say, they want to play their X as everything. But if something is everything it most often is nothing. So if BA are about those funky jump pack units of various types, there should be lists or at least a list that allows it. If someone wants to play harlequins, then he shouldn't be made to first pick up 1000pts of CWE or DE.
Greenwave, tyranid swarms, tyranid monster mash etc all should exist, and they should be fun to play.

A person who spends a lot of cash on the models and then has to paint them, or pay more cash to do it for him, should not be faced with the risk of finding out that, because they decided to pick X, they just wasted time and money. This is not PoE, the re-grinding of an army doesn't take one or two weeks.

And if all of this means that a Death Jester is not soloing an IG army worth 2500pts, then I am willing to accept that sacrifice at the altar of the game being fun to more people then those that one to play with a Death Jester.

One might say that including absurdly powerful things is a mistake.

Imagine a WWII game where one side could run the OSS and the other side could play Pacific Islanders, and the scenario is a tank battle...

[Grognard]back in my day,[/grognard] they kept the Custodes out of the wargame, precisely because of these issues

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Does it matter what the game is to you? Could you mentally engage with MTG or MCP or bolt action?

This sounds very much like "don't get the reason to play the game in the way of actually playing the game!" Which is a bit cart wagging the horse.

I play Bolt Action regularly. It's the game I play when I'm being less serious. I play with a Tiger, because it's fun. That tank is otherwise pretty meh.

The reason to play the game is to have fun. Having fun takes many shapes. Some people like maneuvering to hit a tank in the side and score a well deserved explode result. I could play Infinity, but I like the lore and models of 40K and I hate the overbaked rules of Infinity. Conversely, one can play any old edition of 40K if they're after rear armor pens.

The problem arises when people are incapable of divorcing themselves from old editions and their other desires. e.g. Lethality is too high, but power fists should hurt tanks a lot

Either you want a balanced game or you don't.

A system with one shot kills and end of game scoring is inherently more difficult to balance. It can be done -- if you want to reduce 80 to 90% of 40Ks units, reduce the model count as well, lock down upgrades and unit sizes, etc.

It certainly behooves people to talk about WW2 games where tanks are all rectangles, guns are basically the same, and nothing is taller than 12'. Trying to differentiate a Kar98 from a Garand would make the game more difficult to play, right? 40K doesn't have these luxuries unless you want to turn termagants into 'guardsmen, but ugly', CSM into Marines ( but like really this time ), and daemons, but like umm...I guess just remove daemons. And Eldar tanks. And a bunch of other stuff.