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novembermike wrote:
Single shot versions create memory problems. It's not that bad when a vehicle has a single shot thing like a seeker missile but if you have 27 guys with combi-weapons and you need to keep track of whether the guy that shot his flamer died this fight phase or didn't it gets weird.

I think this is just like it is, because it's simpler overall.

Sternguard with combi-flamer are very different than Sternguard with combi-melta. This creates an issue on measuring the value of that unit across games.

Why not just adjust the points accordingly? Because points don't always convey the problem at hand and often there isn't enough granularity to accomplish that. Even still you can wind up making glass cannons or OP units.

What if instead Sternguard had a really interesting ability that made them way more interesting than "combi-melta sterngaurd" or "combi-flamer sternguard"? Look at Intercessors. Their boltgun is super cool. It allows for interesting tactical flexibility. The same could happen here - especially if they bring back an actual special ammo ability.

Siegfriedfr wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Given how much bloat was a complaint? Yes, probably.

I don't think people are complaining there being too many options of wargear to personalise your characters.

The fact we had pages of "options", and only a few were relevant, that's called bloat, so yes we do complain about it.

I'd also argue that after 9 editions of GW being unable to balance those options against each other that the system never supported said balance to begin with.

Which is why I say that the options belonged to the Dungeons and Dragons version of Warhammer, whereas the new game appears to be more of a wargame.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I would say that eliminating four different combi weapons for a single character, and just balancing it against a storm bolter is a pretty elegant way to have fewer options, but more choice.

Making things simpler is sometimes going to mean that one of a codexes literally dozens of characters will go from having five weapon options to two. I think we'll surive.

How is it more choice?

At the risk of putting words in his mouth, if your choices are between 1 good item and 4 bad items, you don't really have a choice. Better to have 2 equally good things to choose between.

And that is what you are seeing here. The Stormbolter is better than the Combi-weapon until you start shooting at high Toughness and/or Good Save Infantry. It has the benefit of more attacks, but the Combi-weapon does Mortal Wounds to Infantry on a Wound Roll of 4+ (Anti-Infanty 4+, Devastating Wounds). So a Stormbolter is twice as effective as a Combi-Weapon into Guardsmen, which the Combi-weapon is over 3 times as effective as a Stormbolter into Terminators. Funnily enough, they are roughly equal into a Space Marine (T4, Sv 3+).

Yeah, and I could imagine that for sternguard the SIBolter would be a long range option and the combis would be short ranged. On sergeants it might be about the choice between a combi-gun and a hand flamer or plasma pistol. Those all become real choices rather than just combi-plas > combi-pistol.

 alextroy wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I would say that eliminating four different combi weapons for a single character, and just balancing it against a storm bolter is a pretty elegant way to have fewer options, but more choice.

Making things simpler is sometimes going to mean that one of a codexes literally dozens of characters will go from having five weapon options to two. I think we'll surive.

How is it more choice?

At the risk of putting words in his mouth, if your choices are between 1 good item and 4 bad items, you don't really have a choice. Better to have 2 equally good things to choose between.

And that is what you are seeing here. The Stormbolter is better than the Combi-weapon until you start shooting at high Toughness and/or Good Save Infantry. It has the benefit of more attacks, but the Combi-weapon does Mortal Wounds to Infantry on a Wound Roll of 4+ (Anti-Infanty 4+, Devastating Wounds). So a Stormbolter is twice as effective as a Combi-Weapon into Guardsmen, which the Combi-weapon is over 3 times as effective as a Stormbolter into Terminators. Funnily enough, they are roughly equal into a Space Marine (T4, Sv 3+).

Hmm. Interesting. It actually seems relatively compelling. I think I would go Combi all the time personally, but then again hordes could be a real thing now...

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

 alextroy wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I would say that eliminating four different combi weapons for a single character, and just balancing it against a storm bolter is a pretty elegant way to have fewer options, but more choice.

Making things simpler is sometimes going to mean that one of a codexes literally dozens of characters will go from having five weapon options to two. I think we'll surive.

How is it more choice?

At the risk of putting words in his mouth, if your choices are between 1 good item and 4 bad items, you don't really have a choice. Better to have 2 equally good things to choose between.

And that is what you are seeing here. The Stormbolter is better than the Combi-weapon until you start shooting at high Toughness and/or Good Save Infantry. It has the benefit of more attacks, but the Combi-weapon does Mortal Wounds to Infantry on a Wound Roll of 4+ (Anti-Infanty 4+, Devastating Wounds). So a Stormbolter is twice as effective as a Combi-Weapon into Guardsmen, which the Combi-weapon is over 3 times as effective as a Stormbolter into Terminators. Funnily enough, they are roughly equal into a Space Marine (T4, Sv 3+).

Hmm. Interesting. It actually seems relatively compelling. I think I would go Combi all the time personally, but then again hordes could be a real thing now...

Probably the better choice if your targets are always Infantry with a decent mix of MEQ or better. But what if your opponent uses lots of Monsters, Calvary, or of hordes of light Infantry? The Stormbolter is then clearly better with better BS and higher rate of fire.

Definitely a choice to be carefully pondered.

Dudeface wrote:
I think it's likely relevant that the bulk of people upset by this, I'd wager are because they added in combi melta or whatever to maximise the efficiency or purpose of a designated unit. Termicide squads, sternguard out of pods etc.

As long as my Chaos Chosen get to keep all thier combis.....
I recently built 2 full Chosen squads, each sporting the max # of combis allowed.

 alextroy wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I would say that eliminating four different combi weapons for a single character, and just balancing it against a storm bolter is a pretty elegant way to have fewer options, but more choice.

Making things simpler is sometimes going to mean that one of a codexes literally dozens of characters will go from having five weapon options to two. I think we'll surive.

How is it more choice?

At the risk of putting words in his mouth, if your choices are between 1 good item and 4 bad items, you don't really have a choice. Better to have 2 equally good things to choose between.

And that is what you are seeing here. The Stormbolter is better than the Combi-weapon until you start shooting at high Toughness and/or Good Save Infantry. It has the benefit of more attacks, but the Combi-weapon does Mortal Wounds to Infantry on a Wound Roll of 4+ (Anti-Infanty 4+, Devastating Wounds). So a Stormbolter is twice as effective as a Combi-Weapon into Guardsmen, which the Combi-weapon is over 3 times as effective as a Stormbolter into Terminators. Funnily enough, they are roughly equal into a Space Marine (T4, Sv 3+).

You COULD argue that . . .

But I'd counter with the fact that there were at least 3 compelling choices before, Storm Bolter, Combi-Plas, and Combi-Melta. So for me it's a flat reduction of choice. Also, one could have increased the choice simply by making the other options better (combi-grav and flamer).

So overall it's just a big dissapointment.

A very interesting point regarding hordes. You're not gonna lose them all in one turn if the enemy kills 15 models and you don't have morale mitigation. Your opponent will be able to hold an objective with as little as one model though, the unit will be more flimsy or weaker due to no stratagem access. And falling back being worse is interesting too.

novembermike wrote:
Yeah, and I could imagine that for sternguard the SIBolter would be a long range option and the combis would be short ranged. On sergeants it might be about the choice between a combi-gun and a hand flamer or plasma pistol. Those all become real choices rather than just combi-plas > combi-pistol.

The ONLY reason it's not a choice right now is because GW, in their idiocy, removed the points costs for the upgrades! I ran the base Sternguard Squad with pure SI bolters faily often when it was the "cheap" version of the unit.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

novembermike wrote:
Single shot versions create memory problems. It's not that bad when a vehicle has a single shot thing like a seeker missile but if you have 27 guys with combi-weapons and you need to keep track of whether the guy that shot his flamer died this fight phase or didn't it gets weird.

I think this is just like it is, because it's simpler overall.

Sternguard with combi-flamer are very different than Sternguard with combi-melta. This creates an issue on measuring the value of that unit across games.

Why not just adjust the points accordingly? Because points don't always convey the problem at hand and often there isn't enough granularity to accomplish that. Even still you can wind up making glass cannons or OP units.

Ah yes, the good ol' "what if you don't run into the best target? What if GW didn't balance points? Best scrap everything" argument.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Ah yes, the good ol' "what if you don't run into the best target? What if GW didn't balance points? Best scrap everything" argument.

Trying to make it sound easy doesn't make it easy.

cody.d. wrote:
A very interesting point regarding hordes. You're not gonna lose them all in one turn if the enemy kills 15 models and you don't have morale mitigation. Your opponent will be able to hold an objective with as little as one model though, the unit will be more flimsy or weaker due to no stratagem access. And falling back being worse is interesting too.

True. If large squad sizes stop being a liability (morale changes and maybe blast changes?) and lethality is going down, the points cost of horde units are going to be extra important. I wonder if we'll see some of the defensive changes meant to help hordes survive go away now that lethality is being toned down. For instance, do we think orks will go back to being T4? (Probably not given that the wyrd boy is still T5, but I can hope; flamers hurting orks on a 5+ makes me sad.)

 Daedalus81 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Ah yes, the good ol' "what if you don't run into the best target? What if GW didn't balance points? Best scrap everything" argument.

Trying to make it sound easy doesn't make it easy.

Trying to make it sound hard doesn't make it hard, either.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Trying to make it sound hard doesn't make it hard, either.

Given that more balanced systems are far and above more restrictive than even this version of 40K seems to be I'd be comfortable going out on the 'not so easy' limb.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Trying to make it sound hard doesn't make it hard, either.

Given that more balanced systems are far and above more restrictive than even this version of 40K seems to be I'd be comfortable going out on the 'not so easy' limb.

I'm gonna go with poor design choice and lack of effort on GWs part, and reiterate That the near-autistic drive for balance has a high probability of ruining some of what a lot of people enjoy about the game. Praise Be To The Balance God!

Aka: 40k should totally be more like chess, amirite? /sarcasm

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Trying to make it sound hard doesn't make it hard, either.

Given that more balanced systems are far and above more restrictive than even this version of 40K seems to be I'd be comfortable going out on the 'not so easy' limb.

I'm gonna go with poor design choice and lack of effort on GWs part, and reiterate That the near-autistic drive for balance has a high probability of ruining some of what a lot of people enjoy about the game. Praise Be To The Balance God!

Aka: 40k should totally be more like chess, amirite? /sarcasm

If by 'more like chess' you mean 'should the 40K rules be simpler?' then it seems that GW, and I'm sure a lot of players, do agree. From GW's perspective I'm sure it makes sense too, a simpler game is going to be easier to manage and balance. Whether that drives a meaningful number of people away from the game remains to be seen.

Combi-weapons though seems like an odd hill to plant a flag on, this apparent change really on affects a tiny number of units, across a handful of factions.

I'm becoming less enthused with each of these reveals. 9th has it's problems and I'll reserve final judgement, but if I had to choose between bloat or no choices I'll take bloat.
Brewing is one of the most enjoyable aspects for me. I really hope that doesn't get homogenized in the quest for perfect balance.
Also I am concerned that certain factions will get screwed. Marines for example have a billion HQ data sheets but drukhari has very few. So forced joining units is not a big problem for SM. But drukhari probably won't be seeing an archon alongside grots or succubus with incubi. This new approach just seems worse for less supported factions.

Bencyclopedia wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Trying to make it sound hard doesn't make it hard, either.

Given that more balanced systems are far and above more restrictive than even this version of 40K seems to be I'd be comfortable going out on the 'not so easy' limb.

I'm gonna go with poor design choice and lack of effort on GWs part, and reiterate That the near-autistic drive for balance has a high probability of ruining some of what a lot of people enjoy about the game. Praise Be To The Balance God!

Aka: 40k should totally be more like chess, amirite? /sarcasm

If by 'more like chess' you mean 'should the 40K rules be simpler?' then it seems that GW, and I'm sure a lot of players, do agree. From GW's perspective I'm sure it makes sense too, a simpler game is going to be easier to manage and balance. Whether that drives a meaningful number of people away from the game remains to be seen.

Simpler rules is a fine goal. If 8th proved out anything it was that accessibility and ease of learning 40K was a very valuable thing to have. I'm perfectly fine with the aim of simpler rules.

By 'chess' I mean achieving balance through removing options and customizeability. Chess is balanced, but there are no options.

Combi-weapons though seems like an odd hill to plant a flag on, this apparent change really on affects a tiny number of units, across a handful of factions.

Am I planting a flag? Maybe. . . The idea that it affects only a handful of units is quite untrue though. As a First/True/Realborn Marine player it actually affects about every infantry unit I've tended to field in the last six years or so. Tactical Squads, Sternguard Squads, Devastator Squads, Scouts and Characters. Plus Combi weapons also show up on Primaris and Sisters of Battle, if I'm not mistaken.

But also, (and since we haven't seen the rest of what's coming I don't know which direction this is going) there are two outcomes that would seem to arise from the Combi-precedent:
1: The traditional array of Special Weapons are getting squashed into one profile, which would suck.
or
2: The Combi-Weapon is now it's own new gun, rather than simply having it be an assembly of two already existing guns. . . in which case it's actually not consolidating, and making it's own, new, bespoke thing. Which is sorta the opposite of simplifying. You've reduced the options, sure, but created a new, unique and unnecessary profile in the process.

or I guess 3: You got to buy the codex to get your real Combi's back. . . That's a possibility

 Insectum7 wrote:
By 'chess' I mean achieving balance through removing options and customizeability. Chess is balanced, but there are no options.

Chess has many options just none that come before the game starts. It's even highly customizable such that one could easily build a 40k chess set with each figure nicely painted and posed.

Am I planting a flag? Maybe. . . The idea that it affects only a handful of units is quite untrue though. As a First/True/Realborn Marine player it actually affects about every infantry unit I've tended to field in the last six years or so. Tactical Squads, Sternguard Squads, Devastator Squads, Scouts and Characters. Plus Combi weapons also show up on Primaris and Sisters of Battle, if I'm not mistaken.

It sounds like you might want to play your whole codex instead of hampering yourself and then asking for buffs that allow half a faction to compete equally with full codices.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
That said, I find myself kind of missing the pre-7th system of just paying points for psychic powers. Was there really anything wrong with that approach? You could have weaker and stronger powers, and the cost of your psyker unit went up or down based on how expensive (read: powerful) your chosen powers were. They tossed it out in 7th for the Fantasy-esque dice-off game, but I feel like the pre-7th approach was just better in general.

One of the big things they're trying to accomplish this edition is for the other player to be able to look at a model in your army and know what it does without having to get your dissertation on it. It's a reaction to 9th, obviously. Every terminator librarian you see is going to have roughly the same threat level, as opposed to this one doing some mortal wound chip damage, and this one taking away your invuln and turning your Lord of War into paper.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
That said, I find myself kind of missing the pre-7th system of just paying points for psychic powers. Was there really anything wrong with that approach? You could have weaker and stronger powers, and the cost of your psyker unit went up or down based on how expensive (read: powerful) your chosen powers were. They tossed it out in 7th for the Fantasy-esque dice-off game, but I feel like the pre-7th approach was just better in general.

One of the big things they're trying to accomplish this edition is for the other player to be able to look at a model in your army and know what it does without having to get your dissertation on it. It's a reaction to 9th, obviously. Every terminator librarian you see is going to have roughly the same threat level, as opposed to this one doing some mortal wound chip damage, and this one taking away your invuln and turning your Lord of War into paper.

I can sympathize with that design goal. On the other hand, part of me worries that we're going to see them handing out a wide variety of special abilities to similar-but-different models. So like, terminator librarian has the powers previewed, power armor librarian has some different power entirely, primaris librarian gets something else, phobos librarian gets something else... And then you have the farseer with two options in the form of bike or no bike and wyrd boy with no option at all.

Or maybe they don't do that. Either way, I still think I'd prefer a little variety, even if it's just swapping out one of the default powers with one of, let's say, threeish options. My favorite part of the game is being able to give my army its own personality (especially through wargear/unit options.) So I'm hoping they don't diminish my ability to do that too much.

But as we've said many times already, there's still a lot we don't know.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


If by 'more like chess' you mean 'should the 40K rules be simpler?' then it seems that GW, and I'm sure a lot of players, do agree. From GW's perspective I'm sure it makes sense too, a simpler game is going to be easier to manage and balance. Whether that drives a meaningful number of people away from the game remains to be seen.

Simpler rules is a fine goal. If 8th proved out anything it was that accessibility and ease of learning 40K was a very valuable thing to have. I'm perfectly fine with the aim of simpler rules.

By 'chess' I mean achieving balance through removing options and customizeability. Chess is balanced, but there are no options.

Combi-weapons though seems like an odd hill to plant a flag on, this apparent change really on affects a tiny number of units, across a handful of factions.

Am I planting a flag? Maybe. . . The idea that it affects only a handful of units is quite untrue though. As a First/True/Realborn Marine player it actually affects about every infantry unit I've tended to field in the last six years or so. Tactical Squads, Sternguard Squads, Devastator Squads, Scouts and Characters. Plus Combi weapons also show up on Primaris and Sisters of Battle, if I'm not mistaken.

But also, (and since we haven't seen the rest of what's coming I don't know which direction this is going) there are two outcomes that would seem to arise from the Combi-precedent:
1: The traditional array of Special Weapons are getting squashed into one profile, which would suck.
or
2: The Combi-Weapon is now it's own new gun, rather than simply having it be an assembly of two already existing guns. . . in which case it's actually not consolidating, and making it's own, new, bespoke thing. Which is sorta the opposite of simplifying. You've reduced the options, sure, but created a new, unique and unnecessary profile in the process.

or I guess 3: You got to buy the codex to get your real Combi's back. . . That's a possibility

Given that removing options is one course of simplification, I guess the discussion is really about what level of simplification is 'acceptable'. I'm sure we all have different opinions on how granular the game should be; personally I'm all for less granularity than 9th edition has, provided that we get the benefit of a better balanced, more accessable game.

I'll grant that if you only play first born marines the potential combi-weapon change does dispropotionately affect your available choices, but GW are designing with much more than just first born in mind. We have to expect that different factions are going to loose various list building choices based on overall design decisions that they make.

Personally I'm expecting outcome 1 as 2 doesn't seem consistent with how the previews are trending. Outcome 3 would be pretty gakky on GW's part, hopefully it doesn't end up there.

I am not too keen on the consolidation of the Combi-weapon profiles.

While we are not there yet I am afraid the game could fall into the No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination problem were, in the name of balance, it kills all uniqueness in the game.

Tyel wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I like the new morale system. I like that psychic powers are spread throughout other phases now.

Not loving the idea of pre-set psychic powers. Being able to choose what type of powers your psykers favor was a nice bit of character customization/flavor. My mortal wound farseer gives off very different vibes than my support farseer. Hopefully they've just presented it this way for simplicity and we won't see psykers going the way of the haemonculus (zero customization options.)

Probably pure fantasy - but hoping GW bite the bullet and just make the Haemonculus a "quasi-Psyker". (Aka a psyker for rules purposes).

But tend to agree with you. Farseers have a lot of iconic psychic powers - and I'm not totally sure how you'd represent that if you get a fixed loadout and that's it.
Tbf they could all be on the datasheet with some rule that you can only cast 2 a turn or whatever.

Arguably though this would apply to Weirdboyz and seemingly no.

Not sure why you would want that now that psychic is just ability/attack. At worst enemy gets fnp vs your attack vs just being non psychic attack.

I love what they have done with combine wepons. Finally no worries about what to model them as to getthe most out of them.
And no more squinting to tell what a unit does best. One tiny piece dictating so much of what a unit did was not fun.

I really like the new morale system The only potential thing I feel could be a problem is if you need to check for battle shock every turn you are below half strength whether or not you suffered any casualties that turn. Not being able to contest or hold objectives is going to be huge and will itself define the entirety of the edition if true; for example if pox walkers are immune to morale, which is likely, they will automatically become the main choice again just because of that. We need to see the entirety of those rules to know It just how critical it will be.

Now on the subject of psychic powers My main concern here is whether what is shown on the sheet is the only one the unit has available or if that is their special one and then there is going to be a generic list of some kind based on discipline or faction or whatever. Back in third edition you bought powers as part of war gear and still had to take a psychic test in order to cast them but they were similar to what was just shown in that rather than being a specific phase the power would tell you when it could be used.

I think it will be quite a detriment if it's streamlined to the point where every psyker just has one or two powers that only they can use and that's it. Because what will happen then is you will see some units always taken because of their unique power and some units never taken because they're special power isn't as good. That will be a step backwards I think compared to any of the other choices which they could do. At the very least I would hope for a system like AOS where each wizard may have their own unique spell but there's still a pool of spells to pick from that everyone has access to based on whatever.

 KingGarland wrote:
I am not too keen on the consolidation of the Combi-weapon profiles.

While we are not there yet I am afraid the game could fall into the No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination problem were, in the name of balance, it kills all uniqueness in the game.

While it's not impossible that this is the outcome, I doubt that's an outcome GW want. At the end of the day they are a company that sells miniatures, uniqueness between the factions is part of the appeal of having multiple armies and by extension buying more models (at least for me anyway).

That said I would be unsurprised if a lot of uniqueness dissappears intially and comes back with new codexes. Gotta sell those overpriced books somehow.

Bencyclopedia wrote:

 KingGarland wrote:
I am not too keen on the consolidation of the Combi-weapon profiles.

While we are not there yet I am afraid the game could fall into the No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination problem were, in the name of balance, it kills all uniqueness in the game.

While it's not impossible that this is the outcome, I doubt that's an outcome GW want. At the end of the day they are a company that sells miniatures, uniqueness between the factions is part of the appeal of having multiple armies and by extension buying more models (at least for me anyway).

That said I would be unsurprised if a lot of uniqueness dissappears intially and comes back with new codexes. Gotta sell those overpriced books somehow.

Combi weapons aren't a uniqueness between factions however, very little (sorry to some people) is lost by condensing them down beyond the number of lines on a unit/price list.

The combi-weapon thing is a bit of a mixed bag for me because different combi-weapons are actually visibly different. Like, you can tell if that's a plasma gun or a flamer strapped to the bolter, it's not the same as the accessories on the primaris boltguns. At the same time combi-weapons were more or less just the attached special weapon while the bolter half got ignored.

Functionally the biggest change here is that marines lost one of their best ways to get melta and plasma shots to the frontlines. Lethality down, I guess.