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Wayniac wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

Hell, the fact 40k is no longer a small scale game where individual weapons matter is IMHO reason enough to get rid of all of it. In a game the size of what 40k is mean to represent I shouldn't care if a squad has a flamer, or a meltagun, or a missile launcher or whatever. . .

The don't pay attention to it.

But for those of us who actually like it, why remove it?

You always had the choice to not care about what your squads were armed with. All your doing then is removing the choice for people like me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dai wrote:
Yeah the horse is long bolted if you're bothered by the sterilisation of the game.

But does it mean that one can't be bothered about further sterilization?

Because "people like you" (your words, not mine) are why the game is so bogged down and bloated. Because you have a game that's company/battalion level with minutiae for a skirmish game. By virtue of it existing, it's problematic. It's not just a matter of "well ignore it then", it's the fact that because it exists, it bloats the game whether someone ignores it or embraces it.

Are you saying that Special Weapons are bloat?

In a company or higher game? Yes. Below that, no. MAYBE company level, it depends.

Company/Battalion level doesn't need to know "this guy has a plasma gun", it just needs to know the squad has whatever appropriate equipment they need to deal with the "relevant" situation.That's why in most historical games at that level the type of weapon doesn't actually matter and doesn't have its own special rules, it's just a generic approach because as a battalion/brigade commander, you don't need to care about minutiae like that. In a platoon or squad level game you care about each guy's individual weaponry. You don't at higher abstractions, because in-game you trust the individual commanders take care of it.

40k is trying to be like multiple levels of wargame rolled into one, and that's where a lot of the issues come from. Ideally there should be 3 "games" of 40k:

1) Kill Team (small, squad level, focus on individual)
2) 40k "Normal" (call it Incursoin/Strike Force whatever; this is "regular" 40k with a step up of abstraction from Kill Team as it's larger)
3) Onslaught/Apocalypse (even more abstracted than normal, most special/heavy weapons don't even get unique stats because it's not relevant)

An ideal solution for someone like me would be to represent these 3 "games" as 3 separate, individual games:
1) Kill Team
2) 40K
3) Epic scale

Shoehorning 40K into all three levels feels.. unsatisfactory. I wouldn't even mind maintaining my army across the 3 different systems, in order to allow any level of a game, during a longer campaign, for example.

Regarding the transport leaks, I do like what I am seeing. I see a Repulsor in my army's future now, whereas earlier when it was only for Primaris, there was no way to thematically fit one in (I only field Gravis & firstborn)

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Probably because y'all still buy it anyway. Plastic Crack USED to be a joke, but with how Dude and you are replying, I don't think it's a joke at this point.

You're right, I exist to fuel my need to snort sweet plastics. The same way you seem to exist to try and win edge lord points for your keeping it real "I hate this game and you should too" image.

 tauist wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

Hell, the fact 40k is no longer a small scale game where individual weapons matter is IMHO reason enough to get rid of all of it. In a game the size of what 40k is mean to represent I shouldn't care if a squad has a flamer, or a meltagun, or a missile launcher or whatever. . .

The don't pay attention to it.

But for those of us who actually like it, why remove it?

You always had the choice to not care about what your squads were armed with. All your doing then is removing the choice for people like me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dai wrote:
Yeah the horse is long bolted if you're bothered by the sterilisation of the game.

But does it mean that one can't be bothered about further sterilization?

Because "people like you" (your words, not mine) are why the game is so bogged down and bloated. Because you have a game that's company/battalion level with minutiae for a skirmish game. By virtue of it existing, it's problematic. It's not just a matter of "well ignore it then", it's the fact that because it exists, it bloats the game whether someone ignores it or embraces it.

Are you saying that Special Weapons are bloat?

In a company or higher game? Yes. Below that, no. MAYBE company level, it depends.

Company/Battalion level doesn't need to know "this guy has a plasma gun", it just needs to know the squad has whatever appropriate equipment they need to deal with the "relevant" situation.That's why in most historical games at that level the type of weapon doesn't actually matter and doesn't have its own special rules, it's just a generic approach because as a battalion/brigade commander, you don't need to care about minutiae like that. In a platoon or squad level game you care about each guy's individual weaponry. You don't at higher abstractions, because in-game you trust the individual commanders take care of it.

40k is trying to be like multiple levels of wargame rolled into one, and that's where a lot of the issues come from. Ideally there should be 3 "games" of 40k:

1) Kill Team (small, squad level, focus on individual)
2) 40k "Normal" (call it Incursoin/Strike Force whatever; this is "regular" 40k with a step up of abstraction from Kill Team as it's larger)
3) Onslaught/Apocalypse (even more abstracted than normal, most special/heavy weapons don't even get unique stats because it's not relevant)

An ideal solution for someone like me would be to represent these 3 "games" as 3 separate, individual games:
1) Kill Team
2) 40K
3) Epic scale

Shoehorning 40K into all three levels feels.. unsatisfactory. I wouldn't even mind maintaining my army across the 3 different systems, in order to allow any level of a game, during a longer campaign, for example.

Regarding the transport leaks, I do like what I am seeing. I see a Repulsor in my army's future now, whereas earlier when it was only for Primaris, there was no way to thematically fit one in (I only field Gravis & firstborn)

Right. They should have had 3 different games with 3 different levels. I much lament the loss of Epic because 40k represented firefights within a much larger battle; think like the conflict at Hougomont during Waterloo, with a focus on the fighting specifically around La Haye Sainte. Instead, 40k has bathtubbed* so much that it's trying to represent that conflict, plus Waterloo itself, plus as large as Leipzig. So when they got rid of Epic, they rolled all the stuff that made epic, well, epic and throw it into 40k without care for whether or not it actually fit. Flyers especially spring to mind, as they should have worked closer to how they do in Bolt Action, where they are just support that come on and do a strafing/bombing run, not stick around like they were a landspeeder on steroids.

* "Bathtubbing" is the concept of scaling down maps/units to make a campaign manageable on the tabletop. E.g. 10 guys representing an entire corps of soldiers, one tank representing an entire Panzer Division, etc.

The worst part is, while it's undoubtedly cool to have those things in "regular" 40k, it adds more to the bloat. Epic worked in part because it was what, 6mm or something like that? So you really could have a huge battle play on a tabletop, and 40k was best left suited to key encounters within that battle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Probably because y'all still buy it anyway. Plastic Crack USED to be a joke, but with how Dude and you are replying, I don't think it's a joke at this point.

You're right, I exist to fuel my need to snort sweet plastics. The same way you seem to exist to try and win edge lord points for your keeping it real "I hate this game and you should too" image.

Now now, if anything I DO hate the game. Because I've been around it and GW for almost 30 years, and I've seen the "golden age" when the game was both enjoyable and reasonably balanced and was really suited to all players, and GW either didn't care only about miniatures but good rules as well or were really good at hiding it, and I witnessed the decline when all their good designers quit and left and went elsewhere (and, surprise surprise, the companies they founded have good rules that are reasonably balanced and appeal to all players) and the rise of the "We're a miniatures company, not a game company!" mantra to justify their shoddy rules. And, let me tell you, this is a pale shadow of what came before. This is like the tail end of the Roman Empire acting like it's still the days of Augustus and the Legionaries.

I've been a hard-core WYSIWYG player since 5th edition. I rather build a while new model/unit by Kit-bashing than play a proxy. But this is my own OCD.

If the new game simplifies things, and now I don't have to worry about building a Stalker Bolter Lieutenant for the backfield, and an Auto Bolter Lieutenant for the frontline, but now Power Swords are free, so I have to make a Power Sword and Auto Bolter Lieutenant from the Power Sword and Bolt Pistol Lieutenant I got from DI... Then I'll take the hit.

I bought ebay bitz, and I've bought 3rd party bitz just to keep up with meta and I'm over it now. Kitbashing is my favorite part of the hobby. I LOVE building unique units out of spare parts. But not having to hunt down 3 extra Plasma bitz or combi-grav parts where the cost of shipping is higher than the part, I'll take that.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I've been a hard-core WYSIWYG player since 5th edition. I rather build a while new model/unit by Kit-bashing than play a proxy. But this is my own OCD.

If the new game simplifies things, and now I don't have to worry about building a Stalker Bolter Lieutenant for the backfield, and an Auto Bolter Lieutenant for the frontline, but now Power Swords are free, so I have to make a Power Sword and Auto Bolter Lieutenant from the Power Sword and Bolt Pistol Lieutenant I got from DI... Then I'll take the hit.

I bought ebay bitz, and I've bought 3rd party bitz just to keep up with meta and I'm over it now. Kitbashing is my favorite part of the hobby. I LOVE building unique units out of spare parts. But not having to hunt down 3 extra Plasma bitz or combi-grav parts where the cost of shipping is higher than the part, I'll take that.

So you were on board with the 9th edition Plague Marine datasheet, because it stopped you from needing extra bits?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Probably because y'all still buy it anyway. Plastic Crack USED to be a joke, but with how Dude and you are replying, I don't think it's a joke at this point.

You're right, I exist to fuel my need to snort sweet plastics. The same way you seem to exist to try and win edge lord points for your keeping it real "I hate this game and you should too" image.

Seems I touched a nerve.

Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly has a fanbase too but the difference in defending those games vs 40k fans is remarkable.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I've been a hard-core WYSIWYG player since 5th edition. I rather build a while new model/unit by Kit-bashing than play a proxy. But this is my own OCD.

If the new game simplifies things, and now I don't have to worry about building a Stalker Bolter Lieutenant for the backfield, and an Auto Bolter Lieutenant for the frontline, but now Power Swords are free, so I have to make a Power Sword and Auto Bolter Lieutenant from the Power Sword and Bolt Pistol Lieutenant I got from DI... Then I'll take the hit.

I bought ebay bitz, and I've bought 3rd party bitz just to keep up with meta and I'm over it now. Kitbashing is my favorite part of the hobby. I LOVE building unique units out of spare parts. But not having to hunt down 3 extra Plasma bitz or combi-grav parts where the cost of shipping is higher than the part, I'll take that.

So you were on board with the 9th edition Plague Marine datasheet, because it stopped you from needing extra bits?

I did, and I played Death Guard at the time so the "nerf" directly affected me as I often ran like 2 plasma or blight, double knives, etc. in my squads. I felt it was way better for both balance and WYSIWGY as it alleviated the idea of needing to buy multiple boxes/kitbash/3d print enough weapons to pick the "optimal" choice, which has always been a problem. One kit should make a single squad with the relevant options, but if GW refuses to do that and refuses to sell weapon boxes like they do for HH, this is a necessary evil. it actually rewarded you buying a single box and building a variety kit. I also absolutely love the Accursed Weapons for Chaos Terminators, for the same reason.

Wayniac wrote:
Company/Battalion level doesn't need to know "this guy has a plasma gun", it just needs to know the squad has whatever appropriate equipment they need to deal with the "relevant" situation.That's why in most historical games at that level the type of weapon doesn't actually matter and doesn't have its own special rules, it's just a generic approach because as a battalion/brigade commander, you don't need to care about minutiae like that. In a platoon or squad level game you care about each guy's individual weaponry. You don't at higher abstractions, because in-game you trust the individual commanders take care of it.

I'm not sure where it started, but there's a long-standing principle in wargame development that the player gets to wear two hats, ie represent two command echelons.

So if you are playing a game where your force is a single company, generally the player is taking on the role of the company commander (giving orders to the platoons) as well as acting as the platoon leaders (giving orders to the individual squads). But you are not responsible for the orders given to your individual soldiers; that's the job of your sergeants.

So in a company-level wargame where you command multiple platoons, the most granular it ought to get is moving squads around, and then things within the squad are abstracted. A good example would be the old Squad Leader by Avalon Hill, where each squad is just a chit. You care about a squad's capabilities and its overall status but you don't track its individual casualties or manually position riflemen at windows.

Then an example of a slightly smaller scale would be Chain of Command, where you are both the platoon leader and the sergeants. Now you do care about the armament and positions of your individual dudes, but at most you're managing 20-40 of them in total, because the platoon is your entire force.

A game where you only wear one hat- say as the company commander- might be too simplistic, because you only have 2-4 moving parts on the board.

But a game where you are the company commander, the platoon leaders, and the sergeants- responsible for the positioning and actions and equipment of 100+ individual troopers- gets messy and complex. And since the tactical considerations at a squad level and at a company level are so different, you'll probably wind up with a game that fails to adequately model one end or the other. Usually, that manifests as a game that is fundamentally squad/platoon in its design and tactics, but then doubles or triples its model count to hit squad/platoon/company game size but without adopting the C&C considerations that become relevant at that level.

Does that perhaps sound like any game we know?

So you were on board with the 9th edition Plague Marine datasheet, because it stopped you from needing extra bits?

Not the one you asked, but as a Plague Marine player I would have loved for a majority of the melee loadouts to just be "Plague Weapon" that had the plague rule and maybe -2 to AP. So a plague knife, mace, and the weapons you wield with one hand would just be a generic Plague Weapon. Then the big cleaver and flail could have been Greater Plague Weapons. Kind of hoping 10th will do that. And yes, I played a lot of Plague Marines after their upgrades became free as they were finally worth it.

Instead we have the current mess and no, it's not a solution to have 7 axes, 7 maces, 7 knives, and so on on the sprue. I don't want to buy a Battleforce worth of plastic for 7 troop dudes just so I have some precious "options" that I could easily throw in the bin because there is only one option worth taking each and every edition. I just really don't want to own hundreds and hundreds of Plague Marines so I am ready every edition with each option. Nobody has space for that amount of plastic and the planet does not need that extra plastic.

Combis should just have been

One model may be equipped with a bolter and one of the following: Plasma/Melta/Flamer/Bolter

 tauist wrote:


40k is trying to be like multiple levels of wargame rolled into one, and that's where a lot of the issues come from. Ideally there should be 3 "games" of 40k:

1) Kill Team (small, squad level, focus on individual)
2) 40k "Normal" (call it Incursoin/Strike Force whatever; this is "regular" 40k with a step up of abstraction from Kill Team as it's larger)
3) Onslaught/Apocalypse (even more abstracted than normal, most special/heavy weapons don't even get unique stats because it's not relevant)

An ideal solution for someone like me would be to represent these 3 "games" as 3 separate, individual games:
1) Kill Team
2) 40K
3) Epic scale

Shoehorning 40K into all three levels feels.. unsatisfactory. I wouldn't even mind maintaining my army across the 3 different systems, in order to allow any level of a game, during a longer campaign, for example.

Regarding the transport leaks, I do like what I am seeing. I see a Repulsor in my army's future now, whereas earlier when it was only for Primaris, there was no way to thematically fit one in (I only field Gravis & firstborn)

To be fair, Kill Team exists and Apocalypse as well.

But still, 40k is too bloated for a game that can go from 500 to 3000 points. Weapons options, keywords, relics, stratagems, special rules on every datasheet...
While its not realistic to ask that of GW, there should be a clear difference between say 750-1500pts, and 1500-3000pts.

The real problem is twofold:
- hardcore/uncompromising old-schoolers who want to keep the granularity of their loadouts in regular 40k, at all costs and become incredibly agressive and snarky when the word "simplify" is brought up. They apparently love swinging dices for hours during interminable turns
- GW rules team who is lives under the impression that the community as a whole wants to keep that granularity, maybe afraid of bad PR if they shake things too much. So far with 10th, they have tried to simplify loadouts and limiting available relics and stratagems, but datasheets are going to be a mess of special snowflake rules. The upside is, those rules should be known to everyone because they will be USRs.

All people are doing is arguing over definitions.

You all agree some kind of bloat reduction is good and focus on a set 'scale' of play is good.

You're just disagreeing on what level of streamlining or scale is appropriate. Because it's subjective. So there's not going to be one objective truth.

There are lots of different scales between a roleplaying game level of weapons stats and EPIC.

You could make special weapons identical to bolters and give them each a special rule:

flamer - autohit
Plasma - autowound infantry
melta - autowound vehicle

Pretty bland and abstract, but it distinguishes them from one another and bolter.

BUt I'm not sure arguing back and forth over who's version of streamline scale is the right one is really going to accomplish anything.

I think it's important to keep in mind the context in which GW rules team makes decisions. The game design team are a small part of a much larger organisation whose primary goal is to make and sell miniatures. As far as the company directors are concerned, they make miniatures, not games. The games are more of a marketing tool.

Accordingly the games ultimately have to serve this goal. That's not to say that the game designers set out to make bad games, but they have to make decisions and more importantly compromises, within that framework. Bad PR from making rules changes only really matters to the extent that it leads to selling fewer models. Simplifying the rules is about making the game more accessible to help drive sales. You also have to keep in mind that rules come after models. Having rules for squads full of dozens of weapon options (Sternguard, Plague Marines, CSM Terminators, etc) is (from GWs perspective) unnecessary if they're not going to make kits that have all those options.

Does it suck for the people that like having those options? I guess so. Is the 9th edition Plague Marine datasheet awful? yes. But given that it appears that GW don't want to make those kinds of kits for 40k, and that they're not going to make rules for kits that they don't make, simplification of weapons options is the natural conclusion. But that doesn't mean that a Rhino/Waveserpent/Ork Trukk all have to be functionally identical. Differentiation between datasheets is important for making different models and factions appealling purchases.

Siegfriedfr wrote:

To be fair, Kill Team exists and Apocalypse as well.

But still, 40k is too bloated for a game that can go from 500 to 3000 points. Weapons options, keywords, relics, stratagems, special rules on every datasheet...
While its not realistic to ask that of GW, there should be a clear difference between say 750-1500pts, and 1500-3000pts.

I don't know. Apparently they're differentiating between Combat Patrol and "normal" games in 10th. That same concept could probably be expanded to basically be <=1500 pts rules and 1501+ pts rules. I imagine the two big challenges would be:
1. Determining how different the "big game" stats/rules would look compared to the "little game" stats.
2. Figuring out how to present/sell those rules without basically putting two games in a single book or functionally selling two games. (Or maybe you do put two games worth of rules into a single book.)

I'm thinking of the apoc weapon profiles here. You probably can't go so far as to have apoc style weapon stats in the same book that you have more familiar weapon stats. So then do you just kind of treat entire squads as having only one or two gun profiles? But then, what are the consequences of functionally taking the melta guns off of a tac squad? Armies with specialized units would work pretty well with such a system, but armies that currently depend on the little bells and whistles to function would be a bit awkward. I don't know. I'm rambling. It's tricky to make the game significantly more abstract without having a lot of ripples is all I'm saying.

The real problem is twofold:
- hardcore/uncompromising old-schoolers who want to keep the granularity of their loadouts in regular 40k, at all costs and become incredibly agressive and snarky when the word "simplify" is brought up. They apparently love swinging dices for hours during interminable turns
- GW rules team who is lives under the impression that the community as a whole wants to keep that granularity, maybe afraid of bad PR if they shake things too much. So far with 10th, they have tried to simplify loadouts and limiting available relics and stratagems, but datasheets are going to be a mess of special snowflake rules. The upside is, those rules should be known to everyone because they will be USRs.

I feel like I might fall into the old-schooler category. I definitely see the appeal of simplifying the game so that larger games are more managable, but that's only now that I already have a ton of points worth of models. Being able to customize ur dudez is and always was one of my favorite aspects of the hobby. I'm not sure I would have ever gotten into the game if the assumption was that you just spent several hundred dollars on a bunch of cut and paste units that feel extremely similar to the next guy's. No sarcasm here: if you simplify units enough, at some point we should all probably just be using cards or cardboard cut-outs instead of models.

What I'm trying to say is that I support the idea of a more streamlined version of the game meant to support larger armies. I just wouldn't want that approach to become the "default" or to lose the option to play a ur dudez version of the game. And one of the things that keeps me from getting into the latest version of Kill Team is that, as I understand it, you're actually pretty limited in what combination of models you're allowed to take.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm thinking of the apoc weapon profiles here. You probably can't go so far as to have apoc style weapon stats in the same book that you have more familiar weapon stats. So then do you just kind of treat entire squads as having only one or two gun profiles? But then, what are the consequences of functionally taking the melta guns off of a tac squad? Armies with specialized units would work pretty well with such a system, but armies that currently depend on the little bells and whistles to function would be a bit awkward. I don't know. I'm rambling. It's tricky to make the game significantly more abstract without having a lot of ripples is all I'm saying.

I think you could strike a position on granularity in between 40K and Epic/Apocalypse. Maybe the bolters of the entire tac squad condense into a single weapon profile that throws a couple of dice, but then the meltagun gives you a single extra die optimized towards anti-tank. Get away from comparative checks between offensive and defensive stats, move towards offensive stats (affected by target category) that produce hits and defensive stats that negate hits, reduce granularity of casualty resolution.

At a larger scale it's the meltagun that matters, not whether the squad is currently at 8 or 9 dudes or what pattern of bolters they're using or whether the sergeant has a sword or axe. Reduce the minutiae, and you can still keep more significant bells and whistles.

Really, I would probably play Apocalypse in lieu of 40K more if it had some representation of those special weapons. They set it just barely above the level of granularity I would have preferred for the sort of battles too big for 40K, but not quite at Epic scale.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I've been a hard-core WYSIWYG player since 5th edition. I rather build a while new model/unit by Kit-bashing than play a proxy. But this is my own OCD.

If the new game simplifies things, and now I don't have to worry about building a Stalker Bolter Lieutenant for the backfield, and an Auto Bolter Lieutenant for the frontline, but now Power Swords are free, so I have to make a Power Sword and Auto Bolter Lieutenant from the Power Sword and Bolt Pistol Lieutenant I got from DI... Then I'll take the hit.

I bought ebay bitz, and I've bought 3rd party bitz just to keep up with meta and I'm over it now. Kitbashing is my favorite part of the hobby. I LOVE building unique units out of spare parts. But not having to hunt down 3 extra Plasma bitz or combi-grav parts where the cost of shipping is higher than the part, I'll take that.

So you were on board with the 9th edition Plague Marine datasheet, because it stopped you from needing extra bits?

The 9th Edition Plague Marine datasheet is an abomination. However that is not because it enforces the kit build instructions, but because it was before they realized giving a unit 7 distinct melee weapons options was a very bad idea. As others have said, the datasheet could have had options for a single, dual, and heavy Plague Weapons and thereby given more freedom to the player while matching the assembly instructions.

We can only pray that GW does such rules for 10th Edition.

Wayniac wrote:

Probably because y'all still buy it anyway. Plastic Crack USED to be a Because I've been around it and GW for almost 30 years, and I've seen the "golden age" when the game was both enjoyable and reasonably balanced and was really suited to all players, and GW either didn't care only about miniatures but good rules as well or were really good at hiding it, and I witnessed the decline when all their good designers quit and left and went elsewhere (and, surprise surprise, the companies they founded have good rules that are reasonably balanced and appeal to all players) and the rise of the "We're a miniatures company, not a game company!" mantra to justify their shoddy rules. And, let me tell you, this is a pale shadow of what came before. This is like the tail end of the Roman Empire acting like it's still the days of Augustus and the Legionaries.

When was the golden age of balance, do tell? I've been playing since tail end of 2nd (and 5th for whfb). There have been 0 balanced editions in that stretch by my reckoning. Not one. There have been exceedingly brief stretches of relative balance...then a book comes out in 3 months.

Who are the designers? Jervis? Andy Chambers? Gav? Do you remember the comments at the time?

I do remember the comments of the time. And them shutting down the forum because they didn't want to hear negativity. But yes in my opinion the golden age was when you had people like Alessio and Andy Chambers and Rick Priestley. Guys who actually understood you need a good game to sell the models and add the majority of people buy the models because they're used for the game not to sit on a shelf somewhere.

Was it perfect? Far from it but the fact remains that you look at games like bolt action or Kings of War and you can tell that they are written to be games and they are written with at least some eye towards balance not the current design team level of wackiness.

Considering that it is commonly accepted by the community that in "recent" editions the balance went from:

5th: Horrible
6th: Worse than horrible
7th: Are you even trying??
8th: Decent at times.
9th: Fine... mostly.

Then your last comment is weird. One can say whatever he wants about older editions and which ones he did prefer and for which reason, but it is objectively demonstrated that 9th edition has been the most balanced edition, and 8th edition has been the best before 9th.

9th edition had so much attention to balance that it is claimed as its biggest drawback (the "tournament edition").

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Seems I touched a nerve.

Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly has a fanbase too but the difference in defending those games vs 40k fans is remarkable.

Not at all, just seeing how giving a like for like response works. The big issue here is people not disliking the same things as you isn't 'defending' anything.

Spoletta wrote:
Considering that it is commonly accepted by the community that in "recent" editions the balance went from:

5th: Horrible
6th: Worse than horrible
7th: Are you even trying??
8th: Decent at times.
9th: Fine... mostly.

Then your last comment is weird. One can say whatever he wants about older editions and which ones he did prefer and for which reason, but it is objectively demonstrated that 9th edition has been the most balanced edition, and 8th edition has been the best before 9th.

9th edition had so much attention to balance that it is claimed as its biggest drawback (the "tournament edition").

You might also go back and rate those editions for "fun", because lord knows balance isn't the only thing people want from a game.

Hell, for fun I'd rate 7th over 9th, and 7th sucked . . .

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Considering that it is commonly accepted by the community that in "recent" editions the balance went from:

5th: Horrible
6th: Worse than horrible
7th: Are you even trying??
8th: Decent at times.
9th: Fine... mostly.

Then your last comment is weird. One can say whatever he wants about older editions and which ones he did prefer and for which reason, but it is objectively demonstrated that 9th edition has been the most balanced edition, and 8th edition has been the best before 9th.

9th edition had so much attention to balance that it is claimed as its biggest drawback (the "tournament edition").

You might also go back and rate those editions for "fun", because lord knows balance isn't the only thing people want from a game.

Hell, for fun I'd rate 7th over 9th, and 7th sucked . . .

I prefer 9th to 7th for fun but its also a lot more tiring to play. It might just be that 7th was just starting to introduce the stupidity where as 9th has it normalised though.

4th & 5th will be the glory days to me.

 catbarf wrote:


At a larger scale it's the meltagun that matters, not whether the squad is currently at 8 or 9 dudes or what pattern of bolters they're using or whether the sergeant has a sword or axe. Reduce the minutiae, and you can still keep more significant bells and whistles.

Really, I would probably play Apocalypse in lieu of 40K more if it had some representation of those special weapons. They set it just barely above the level of granularity I would have preferred for the sort of battles too big for 40K, but not quite at Epic scale.

Yeah, but what about armies that are build on bolter type weapons and getting special rules to them, and having ad hoc generated special rules and a mix of different weapons for the entire squad. If everything turns in to a one or two roll, and they don't have those plasma, melta etc weapons , because of how GW designed them, then the model line would have to be reset to be playable, and people that already have an army would have the rebuy it, and probally all of it, because GW upscales everything making playing metal SoB next to plastic ones, an expiriance where you get accoused for tailoring for model size adventange.

Even for armies that have squad plasma or melta it would be the death of newer model lines. Intercessors don't have access to special weapons. Their squads are specilised. On the other side of things there are armies that could spam units that are just "special" dice rollers. For marines it would be the death of the infantry army, and they would have to play a bit like custodes. HQs+minimal obligatory MSU troops and then spaming the ever living thing from FW dreads and tanks.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Considering that it is commonly accepted by the community that in "recent" editions the balance went from:

5th: Horrible
6th: Worse than horrible
7th: Are you even trying??
8th: Decent at times.
9th: Fine... mostly.

Then your last comment is weird. One can say whatever he wants about older editions and which ones he did prefer and for which reason, but it is objectively demonstrated that 9th edition has been the most balanced edition, and 8th edition has been the best before 9th.

9th edition had so much attention to balance that it is claimed as its biggest drawback (the "tournament edition").

You might also go back and rate those editions for "fun", because lord knows balance isn't the only thing people want from a game.

Hell, for fun I'd rate 7th over 9th, and 7th sucked . . .

Why would I do that when answering to a comment talking about the balance of the last editions?

^Because "balance" and "fun" are two different goals, not necessarily correlated.

Its tempting to say 3rd edition was not balanced. The end.

But it seemed so to me at the time - because I was 12-16~ or so playing other 12-16 year olds. Our lists were soft-highlander collections - not "just take the best stuff". You ran the good with the bad because that's the models you owned. You didn't spam starcannons, because why would you own the minis to spam anything? People who did that were mocked rather than the norm.

Based on say White Dwarf (which undoubtedly was in a Golden Age) this was how GW has always "imagined" people would play. But its rarely been like that the moment people have been able to pay to win. Cue lots of "we went to a tournament and our innocent eyes were shocked at what we saw" responses from GW as late as last year.

This is why I didn't enjoy 5th much. I imagine if I'd been 10 years younger it would have been great great. But I'm now 22-26, playing other people in their early-mid 20s or so. If something seemed good, you just went out and bought it - even whole armies weren't actually "that" expensive (especially second hand). The meta became much more cut-throat, and the imbalances much more explicit as a result. And yes, this weighed on "my fun". For some reason losing feels much worse when it seems you never had a chance, because their list was just so much better than yours. I hated Grey Knights, Space Wolves and Necrons with the sort of fire Karol directs at the Sun Elfs.

Flash forward to 7th, and it wasn't "tournament cheese" to see Wraithknights, Riptides or bike-riding Marine character blobs at over half the tables. It was a random Saturday night in the FLGS. But I kind of accepted it by this point. Play casually with casuals, play competitively with competitive people. 8th and then 9th tried to reduce the number of outright traps in the books, which was a good thing. Its sad certain armies were weak all edition (GK, Necrons to a degree in 8th, Guard until 5 minutes ago in 9th) - but this was better than before.

Tyel wrote:
Its tempting to say 3rd edition was not balanced. The end.

But it seemed so to me at the time - because I was 12-16~ or so playing other 12-16 year olds. Our lists were soft-highlander collections - not "just take the best stuff". You ran the good with the bad because that's the models you owned. You didn't spam starcannons, because why would you own the minis to spam anything? People who did that were mocked rather than the norm.

Based on say White Dwarf (which undoubtedly was in a Golden Age) this was how GW has always "imagined" people would play. But its rarely been like that the moment people have been able to pay to win. Cue lots of "we went to a tournament and our innocent eyes were shocked at what we saw" responses from GW as late as last year.

This is why I didn't enjoy 5th much. I imagine if I'd been 10 years younger it would have been great great. But I'm now 22-26, playing other people in their early-mid 20s or so. If something seemed good, you just went out and bought it - even whole armies weren't actually "that" expensive (especially second hand). The meta became much more cut-throat, and the imbalances much more explicit as a result. And yes, this weighed on "my fun". For some reason losing feels much worse when it seems you never had a chance, because their list was just so much better than yours. I hated Grey Knights, Space Wolves and Necrons with the sort of fire Karol directs at the Sun Elfs.

Flash forward to 7th, and it wasn't "tournament cheese" to see Wraithknights, Riptides or bike-riding Marine character blobs at over half the tables. It was a random Saturday night in the FLGS. But I kind of accepted it by this point. Play casually with casuals, play competitively with competitive people. 8th and then 9th tried to reduce the number of outright traps in the books, which was a good thing. Its sad certain armies were weak all edition (GK, Necrons to a degree in 8th, Guard until 5 minutes ago in 9th) - but this was better than before.

Locally in the day, although I was young too but most of my opponents were older, 3rd was enjoyable. The streamlining from 2nd was favorable to us, and games played faster. You had some stuff still (BA rhino rush was pretty nasty, or the jackass who would bring 3 wraithlords to low point games) but overall it was way better than what came before. I think the issue, as I perceived it anyway, with 9th was that it followed a similar change pattern from 3rd up, by not adding much of the core rules, but then immediately bloated up the game with masses of stratagems and quickly bloated gameplay (IMHO) with secondary objectives as a core thing. So unlike before where it looked like some stuff was cleaned up, it felt like it was just rearranged and a ton more layers thrown on top based only on listening to feedback from people like Mike Brandt and other TOs, who were already basically playing a different format of the game (i.e. ITC's variant) rather than regular players.The adoption of ITC as part of the main game sealed that, and IMHO was one of the largest turnoffs as it took a Frankenstein variant of the game which IMHO missed the point entirely anyway, and said this must be what everyone wants so let's make this the norm.

Wayniac wrote:


Was it perfect? Far from it but the fact remains that you look at games like bolt action or Kings of War and you can tell that they are written to be games and they are written with at least some eye towards balance not the current design team level of wackiness.

No idea on KoW, but Bolt Action is not balanced. It just has tournaments willing to ban the bad stuff and lots more people interested in historical accuracy.

Playing 5th as a Tyranid was kinda horrible.
The whole army was badly designed in a way I don't believe we see anymore.

As bad as 9th balance can get, I don't think there is a faction that is just bad because they are supposed to be the poor NPC.

 Eldarsif wrote:

So you were on board with the 9th edition Plague Marine datasheet, because it stopped you from needing extra bits?

Actually, the oddly specific Datasheet had me kitbash even more!

EviscerationPlague wrote:
.

Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly has a fanbase too but the difference in defending those games vs 40k fans is remarkable.

Monopoly stands against your point considering it's known as "the game that ends friendships".