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Between AoS and 40K we had:

- Inflict MW instad of damage on 6 to wound.
- Inlict MW in addition to the damage on a 6 to wound.
- +X AP on a six to wound
- Bonus damage on a six to wound
- More wounds to save on a 6 to wound
- Slay the enemy model on a 6 to wound
- Ignore Invuln on a 6 to wound
- Spread damage on a 6 to wound

...

It makes damn good sense to create a handy defintion for 6 to wound!

"facts/logic/math don't care about your feelings" is not a rebuttal to "I feel things aren't where I want them to be".

If anything, it is an affirmation of that feeling, while simultaneously rejecting it. What I saw was:

"Immortals should feel stronger than marines"
"Well, point for point they are"
"Okay, but individually they aren't"
"Well, point for point they are. Here is some math."
"But I want them to be individually stronger than marines!"
"Everything is fine and balanced, didn't you read my math?"

Tsagualsa wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
A DEMORALISING WOUND, perhaps, that forces a Battleshock test even if the unit hasn't lost enough models for them to need to take one normally?

Didn't the new Flamer dudes for Marines get a bespoke rule to do that?

The Screamer Killer has one.

Neither do, technically. Instead, they both force a battleshock test on a unit hit by their atacks.
With some additional language that you can only force a test on a single unit and it only affects the pyreblaster attacks (or bio plasma. Or technically shooting, but that's the unit's only shooting attack). So you can't multitarget and spray everything in range and battle shock everything.

Yeah. I think the chance of that being an option is going to be close to zero. It could happens, but GW does seem to be learning things no matter how slowly.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
Necrons don't have any of those things, so why would changes to them make him care? At some point it becomes an argument with a person, who doesn't care about your stuff, cares about his and no amount of argumentation or math will convince them. Only thing worse is talking about a faction being bad, like Cruel Boys, with a person who thinks that Cruel boys shouldn't even be a faction.

There's multiple layers here and the post I made isn't addressing one particular person directly, but many who constantly badger me.

As for Necrons - deciding that Immortals are no longer worthwhile while not having seen Immortals in this edition or contextualizing WHY Immortals felt different in older editions doesn't make for great discussion material in a thread about *checks notes* 10th edition gameplay and rules discussion.

I realize that I'm being a huge dick right now and I apologize to the forum in general for going on a tirade. I'm just sick of some of these dynamics. If you don't agree with my premise - say so. Tell me why it's not compelling. Don't just cop out and say 'hur hur you defend GW'.

Honestly taking a step back and providing contextual opinions and viewpoints based in reality of mathematics in a largely probability based game are a key needed angle. Your points are always well worded and presented, but please don't stop just because of the gnashing of some others.

Another trope often mocked here is "wait and see", but we really do need to wait and see to as degree, there's a lot of unknowns and the full picture of GW's implementation remains to be seen.

What does Critical Wound even do? Does it ignore armour?

 JNAProductions wrote:
For what it's worth, Daed, I think you're being reasonable.

We don't always agree, but you're not the jerk here.

I want to second this. You're not at fault here daedalus. You're just trying to have a discussion with people who reject the very idea of ever being wrong about anything.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What does Critical Wound even do? Does it ignore armour?

As far as we know, a Critical Wound is a Wound Roll results that causes a Wound to the target regardless of the Strength of the attack. That's it. You still roll to Save as normal.

A unmodified 6 is always a Critical Wound.
Some rules may change what dice results cause a Critical Wound.
Some rules may cause additional effects if an attack generates a Critical Wound.

Edited for rule 1.

edited for rule 1.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What does Critical Wound even do? Does it ignore armour?

It wounds, regardless of S vs T. By default a critical wound is 6, so it isn't impactful by itself, but other mechanics hang off it. Anti-X shifts the target number, and things like devastating wounds create turns a wound roll into a mortal wound.
We are, quite naturally, still learning the list of effects

Edited for rule 1

Knock it off now please. It will obviously be a surprise to some but different people like different things and they are allowed to. Stick to discussing 10th edition gameplay and rules and not posting barbs about other posters.

 alextroy wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What does Critical Wound even do? Does it ignore armour?

As far as we know, a Critical Wound is a Wound Roll results that causes a Wound to the target regardless of the Strength of the attack. That's it. You still roll to Save as normal.

A unmodified 6 is always a Critical Wound.
Some rules may change what dice results cause a Critical Wound.
Some rules may cause additional effects if an attack generates a Critical Wound.

So looks like a way to devalue races that rely on toughness instead of armor. So orks basically.

Where is Sempermortis.... Semper can you believe this crap

Boosykes wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What does Critical Wound even do? Does it ignore armour?

As far as we know, a Critical Wound is a Wound Roll results that causes a Wound to the target regardless of the Strength of the attack. That's it. You still roll to Save as normal.

A unmodified 6 is always a Critical Wound.
Some rules may change what dice results cause a Critical Wound.
Some rules may cause additional effects if an attack generates a Critical Wound.

So looks like a way to devalue races that rely on toughness instead of armor. So orks basically.

Where is Sempermortis.... Semper can you believe this crap

Uh. I think I'm missing context.

Boo, you've been able to wound things on a 6 for two editions now. All Alextroy is saying (unless I'm missing something) is that a "Critical Wound" is the new short-hand for saying, "on an unmodified to-wound roll of 6..."

So if they want to have a weapon do something special on a to-wound roll of 6 (like current shuriken weapons, rail weapons, etc.), they can just say, "Critical Wounds do X." Or if they want to add a special rule that makes those shuriken/rail weapon effects go off on a value other than 6, they could say something like, "Weapons with this rule generate Critical Wounds on a to-wound roll of 5+." Or if they want to clarify whether bonus wounds generated by some other rule count as being 6s or not, they can throw the words "Critical Wounds" in there somewhere.

It's just giving them a simple, two-word term that other rules can reference.

Dudeface wrote:
Honestly taking a step back and providing contextual opinions and viewpoints based in reality of mathematics in a largely probability based game are a key needed angle. Your points are always well worded and presented, but please don't stop just because of the gnashing of some others.

Another trope often mocked here is "wait and see", but we really do need to wait and see to as degree, there's a lot of unknowns and the full picture of GW's implementation remains to be seen.

I appreciate the kind words from you and others.

I know that likely things I say may not come off the right way so I'll try harder to be sensitive and rephrase what I say so it doesn't offend. I'm not perfect and I'm ok being wrong.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"facts/logic/math don't care about your feelings" is not a rebuttal to "I feel things aren't where I want them to be".

If anything, it is an affirmation of that feeling, while simultaneously rejecting it. What I saw was:

"Immortals should feel stronger than marines"
"Well, point for point they are"
"Okay, but individually they aren't"
"Well, point for point they are. Here is some math."
"But I want them to be individually stronger than marines!"
"Everything is fine and balanced, didn't you read my math?"

That isn't how I would characterize it and I didn't do any math on immortals, but I'll reflect on this so that I can do better in the future.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Uh. I think I'm missing context.

Boo, you've been able to wound things on a 6 for two editions now. All Alextroy is saying (unless I'm missing something) is that a "Critical Wound" is the new short-hand for saying, "on an unmodified to-wound roll of 6..."

So if they want to have a weapon do something special on a to-wound roll of 6 (like current shuriken weapons, rail weapons, etc.), they can just say, "Critical Wounds do X." Or if they want to add a special rule that makes those shuriken/rail weapon effects go off on a value other than 6, they could say something like, "Weapons with this rule generate Critical Wounds on a to-wound roll of 5+." Or if they want to clarify whether bonus wounds generated by some other rule count as being 6s or not, they can throw the words "Critical Wounds" in there somewhere.

It's just giving them a simple, two-word term that other rules can reference.

I think this could be worded slightly differently.

A critical wound is a wound that always succeeds. A 6 to wound is always considered a critical wound.

That way when you have Anti-Vehicle it says a 3+ causes a critical wound, which tells us it will automatically wound any vehicle on a 3+

Dudeface wrote:


But they did need it so anti-infantry can be granular in comparison to flat critical wounds, also to use your example, you'd only be here repeating the same thing that a "poison wound" is a different thing than a wound or mortal wound using your demonstrated logic.

Other than the fact that I've already pointed out that Poison is likely Anti-X and in the past poison created regular not Critical wounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dysartes wrote:
I don't doubt there will be abilities other than DEVASTATING WOUNDS - either on weapons, units, or even detachment/factions - that key off Critical Wounds. We just haven't seen them yet, though we may get exposed to more of them as the Faction preview cycle rolls on.

And we didn't have a Rending USR coming into 10th -

We didn't have a poison USR either, but we can all draw the parallels between Poison and Anti-X like most of us can draw between Rending and Devastating Wounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

But they did need it so anti-infantry can be granular in comparison to flat critical wounds

Why is that? Why does anything need to be a critical wound? Why does Poison need to be critical instead of just 6+ to wound?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m genuinely looking forward to getting a feel for 40K now.

I appreciate other opinions are available, but it’s seeming less complex for the sake of complexity, without moving away from 40k’s long time mechanics.

I'm mixed. I'm worried we lost too much flavor complexity. Everyone is an Ultramarine, or a Black Legionnaire is a step back. Perhaps, and hopefully the Codex will bring two-page's for each subfaction and the current faction rule is really just a bandaid to get us through.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:

Breton wrote:


Except there's no (readily apparent) reason to make Anti-X wounds Critical Wounds when they could just be made Wounds.

You can't, because Normal Wounds are scored by comparing strength vs. toughness. This makes them different than Critical Wounds, which are scored regardless of toughness and without concern for it. I am uncertain why this is so hard to get.

Except with Poison, Transhuman, and so on. Poison in 9th did not create critical wounds - because critical wounds didn't even exist.

If I have Anit-X, and I exceed the X score needed, the wound is called a critical wound, because even if your toughness is 998,473,912, the wound still hurts you BECAUSE IT'S CRITICAL. A normal wound does not do this.

Normal wound= Requires a strength roll vs. toughness in order to inflict damage
Critical wound= Does not require a strength roll vs. toughness- skip the roll and process directly to saving throw

Again if I have a poison dart gun I (regular) wound on a X+ even if your Toughness is 998,473,912.

Breton wrote:

But then I still have to wonder why they bothered to make Critical Wound in the first place. Anti-X/Poison and "6's always succeed" didn't need it,

Because now, the Devastating Wounds ability doesn't have to say "If you rolled above the poison target when firing a poisoned weapon, or you rolled a 6 on a weapon that wasn't poisoned, the wound becomes a mortal wound."

Instead, you can say "When this unit scores a critical wound, they inflict a Mortal wound rather than regular damage." Easier, right? That's why they did it.

Except we're already pretty much ruling out Poison - Anti-Infantry - Critical Wound - Devastating Wounds - Mortal paths being common.

As others have pointed it, there are quite likely to be other effects that trigger off Critical Wounds; if this is true, then creating the Critical Wound descriptor was an even better design decision, because it will save space in the rules on a bunch of abilities, rather than just on the Devasting Wounds ability. But even if it turns out NOT to be true, the term Critical Wounds still has value, because it provides a way to describe a wound which bypassed toughness without having to list all of the scenarios that cause that type of wound.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
A DEMORALISING WOUND, perhaps, that forces a Battleshock test even if the unit hasn't lost enough models for them to need to take one normally?

Didn't the new Flamer dudes for Marines get a bespoke rule to do that?

The Screamer Killer has one.

Neither do, technically. Instead, they both force a battleshock test on a unit hit by their atacks.
With some additional language that you can only force a test on a single unit and it only affects the pyreblaster attacks (or bio plasma. Or technically shooting, but that's the unit's only shooting attack). So you can't multitarget and spray everything in range and battle shock everything.

I didn't look up the Screamer Killer, but the Flamer Marines do - the orginal premise was a weapon that forces a Battleshock before casualties forces one - and the Flamer Marines do - it's required in the shooting phase, it requires a hit not a casaulty or even a wound, only from the flamer that auto-hits. They took the long way around to get there probably for the limit 1 criteria.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What does Critical Wound even do? Does it ignore armour?

The accurate answer is: We don't know yet.

All we currently know is: its another bucket of special wounds - this bucket can be turned into Mortals suggesting but not confirming it's the middle bucket between regular wounds and mortals.

Most of us believe there's more to them than just a trigger for Devastating Wounds. How much more we suspect is different from person to person, and probably different from our guesses and GW's reality.

I'm pretty sure we've already learned what there is to learn about Critical Wounds in the Terminator Article.

Anti abilities – covering many different keywords like Infantry, Monster, and Vehicle – produce a Critical Wound** on any wound roll that matches or beats the specified score, regardless of the target’s Toughness. This makes for specialised weapons that excel in their field, but don’t stay equally deadly against other target types.

** A guaranteed success, normally achieved by rolling an unmodified six.

In addition to that, we have seen that other abilities key off of Criticals (both Hits and Wounds). I'm not sure why everyone wants to make it more complicated that what they have already told us rather clearly.

Breton wrote:

Other than the fact that I've already pointed out that Poison is likely Anti-X and in the past poison created regular not Critical wounds.

No, poison in the past created Critical Wounds, they just didn't have that name. All that changed is the label, the thing itself is no different.

Ok... I'll do my damndest to make this as succinct and related to 10th Edition discussions as possible as possible. Here goes...

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I throw cold hard math at the problem. If someone says "I don't see the reduction in lethality" is it or is it not a valid method to discuss this concern by doing the math and making comparisons? If instead someone says "why are ranged weapons not getting treated the same as melee weapons" and I show an example as to why that might be, but that's not valid either, I guess.

My point was that posting reams of mathematics is the method through which you argue. So, when I say that a Heavy Chainaxe and a Power Fist shouldn't be the same thing, you come back with a block of maths that shows the results both weapons get is largely the same, so that's the justification for making them into a generic weapon. Let me illustrate why this type of thinking drives me up the wall (and I'll put in spoiler tags to shorten things):



It's not that the math is wrong - numbers are numbers and it's hard to be biased with raw maths - but it's that it doesn't paint the entire picture. It's not the be-all and end-all of a discussion. It cannot be the only thing one relies on, because if everything is clinical and sterile just raw figures, then it really doesn't matter what topping is on your pizza.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You'll (finally) accept that GW is making some good changes, but you still wallow around in the 'Oh they gon feth up! I just know it! GW never changes!' And that's a very easy position to take, isn't it? All you have to do is wait a little. And it WILL happen, but what matters is the degree and how it gets handled...

You're right in that if were graphing this, the chances of GW screwing up would eventually = 1. It is inevitable, but my ire stems more from the fact that they don't learn from their mistakes. I'm not sitting here rubbing my hands greedily waiting for that screw up so I can pounce on them. I want them to learn from past mistakes and try to fix things, something that is very difficult to do when they constantly try to reinvent the wheel each time they do a new edition and especially when they make decisions that seem so hasty and rushed ("Everyone hates bloat... so, let's remove all psychic powers/relics/warlord traits as choices and just have a few of each!"). This is why I've been banging on recently about their rules not being iterative. It's good that they're willing to try new things, but if everyone here found the faults in, for example, the new terrain rules within 1/2 an hour of them being posted, how will does it bode for everything else?

Honestly, it reminds me of a brief exchange from the second Jurassic Park film:

Hammond: Don't worry, I'm not making the same mistakes again.
Malcolm: No, you're making all new ones.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You just want that blood.

What I want is to be able to field my armies without feeling like each time a revision comes around something else has been chipped away. I don't wait for something new to appear so I can pick it apart - I do that naturally, it's in my nature, hell I've done it professionally, editing and proof-reading everything from press releases to government tenders to entire 40k RPG rulebooks. I'm not looking for the blood, I'm just efficient at finding it as you are at running numbers.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You completely ignore any of my reservations about combis, psychic powers, and how codexes will roll out. Instead you and others frequently insist that everything I say is just supportive of GW and completely ignore what I say unless I put a giant asterisk on each post so I don't interrupt your complaint parade.

And you assume that everything I do is a "complaint parade", no doubt born of a yearning for the way things were 30 years ago.

Two points here:



I like what GW are doing with morale in 10th. I think moving To Hit rolls for weapons to the sheet rather than flat BS is a good idea that opens up the design space. I like what they're doing with transports. From what we've seen the army structure mechanics seems to simplify things in a way that is massively beneficial to the game, as they reduce what catbarf always refers to as the "cognitive load" 40k has. I am very happy that Universal Special Rules have come back into the game, and that they are making consolidations for things that didn't necessarily need to be a thing (making a more flexible Bolt Rifle than three different weapons for Intercessors, for example).

These are all good things - and I will celebrate each and every one (hell, the ideas I have for creating custom detachments for campaigns has been buzzing around in my head for days!), but just because there is good doesn't mean I'm going to pretend that there isn't also bad. The terrain rules are too simplistic (and counter-intuitive), from what we've seen I don't think their USRs go far enough, and consolidating things like power fists - something that has been around in this game for longer than I have been playing - seems like they've gone too far to remove that 'cognitive load'. 9th's problem was 40 Strats per army. 9th's problem was overlapping layered rules. 9th's problem was 45 different types of bolter (and 14 types of Scything Talon ). 9th's problem was 90-odd psychic powers divided amongst just the Marines factions. 9th's problem was a morale system that punished players for losing models by making them lose more models. 9th's problem wasn't that power fists had their own stats, even if the math says that them and heavy chainaxes weren't that different.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
There's multiple layers here and the post I made isn't addressing one particular person directly, but many who constantly badger me.

Do you know how often people jump down my throat for simply posting in a thread? How many people completely dismiss anything I say just to tell me to shut it because it's me? I'm not begging for sympathy, but your plight is not uncommon around here, however unfortunate that might be.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I realize that I'm being a huge dick right now...

I don't think you are.

Ok... apparently not as succinct as I wanted it to be. Sorry about that.

 alextroy wrote:
I'm pretty sure we've already learned what there is to learn about Critical Wounds in the Terminator Article.

Anti abilities – covering many different keywords like Infantry, Monster, and Vehicle – produce a Critical Wound** on any wound roll that matches or beats the specified score, regardless of the target’s Toughness. This makes for specialised weapons that excel in their field, but don’t stay equally deadly against other target types.

** A guaranteed success, normally achieved by rolling an unmodified six.

In addition to that, we have seen that other abilities key off of Criticals (both Hits and Wounds). I'm not sure why everyone wants to make it more complicated that what they have already told us rather clearly.

This implies that there are Anti-Monster things.

Do we think that there will be weapons better suited to anit-tank work and then other weapons that are better at taking out monsters?

I understand the complaint about losing flavor when you combine weapons but losing some of that flavor is ok in the scale 40k has. In an RPG where you control a single character it makes sense to differentiate between two types of chainswords or two types of lasguns. In a game like Kill Team where you have 10 models it makes a lot of sense to differentiate between power fists and heavy chainaxes. At 40k's scale it's more important to differentiate between how squads behave.

Homogenizing here also opens up modeling opportunities. I don't have to find fist or chainaxe bits, i can grab a spear from some AOS model or give him giant mutated crab hands or whatever, as long as it realistically looks like a heavy melee weapon.

I don’t think you can say it’s universally acceptable.
You can say it’s fine for you, and argue that it’s better for the health of the game, but HMBC’s point about how it feels is not without merit.

Ultimately, this is a game and hobby we do for fun. If it’s not fun, for whatever reason, something should be adjusted for you.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I don’t think you can say it’s universally acceptable.
You can say it’s fine for you, and argue that it’s better for the health of the game, but HMBC’s point about how it feels is not without merit.

Ultimately, this is a game and hobby we do for fun. If it’s not fun, for whatever reason, something should be adjusted for you.

What? When did I say that it's universally acceptable? I even said that that I understand his complaint. That's kind of a weirdly high energy response to me.

It seemed implied by my quick reading, but on a reread it does seem less so.
My apologies.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I'm pretty sure we've already learned what there is to learn about Critical Wounds in the Terminator Article.

Anti abilities – covering many different keywords like Infantry, Monster, and Vehicle – produce a Critical Wound** on any wound roll that matches or beats the specified score, regardless of the target’s Toughness. This makes for specialised weapons that excel in their field, but don’t stay equally deadly against other target types.

** A guaranteed success, normally achieved by rolling an unmodified six.

In addition to that, we have seen that other abilities key off of Criticals (both Hits and Wounds). I'm not sure why everyone wants to make it more complicated that what they have already told us rather clearly.

This implies that there are Anti-Monster things.

Do we think that there will be weapons better suited to anit-tank work and then other weapons that are better at taking out monsters?

Sure. Drukhari Poison Weapons have long been better against Monsters than they are against Vehicles. Interestingly, if they don't have a Poison USR, they will need to give Poison Weapons multiple Anti rules to match up with the old Poison. They could even make them them if they want. Anti-Infanty 4+ and Anti-Monster 5+.

novembermike wrote:

Homogenizing here also opens up modeling opportunities. I don't have to find fist or chainaxe bits, i can grab a spear from some AOS model or give him giant mutated crab hands or whatever, as long as it realistically looks like a heavy melee weapon.

You don't need to merge Power Fists and Chainaxes together to do that though.

The 3.5 Chaos codex managed to make heavy close combat weapons AKA Great Weapons (two-handed CCW, +2S) and Power Fists (CCW, Sx2, strike last, ignore armour saves) distinct (they were horribly balanced, but still...)

You could still have your converted Gribly McCrab Hands with a counts-as Heavy Close Combat Weapon, and still have the distinct option for a Power Fist.


I wish GW would lean more into using USRs and keywords when creating weapons.
For example, you could have something likea basic Close Combat Weapon (S:user, AP0, A+1), then a Power prefix (AP3), Chain prefix (S+1 against non-vehicles), and Great/Heavy prefix (S+2, no A+1), and combine them to represent everything from a rusty pipe (CCW) to a chainsword ( Chain CCW) to a relic blade (Heavy Power CCW), to an eviscerator (Heavy Chain CCW).

 JNAProductions wrote:
... but HMBC’s point about how it feels is not without merit.

And one day I'm going to find this "HMBC" fella and take back all the thunder he's stolen from me over the years!

That's not a dig at you JNA, more that it's happened to me for literal decades.

Why do you have to roll RP for every unit in your army, even if you didnt lose any models/wounds ?

 p5freak wrote:
Why do you have to roll RP for every unit in your army, even if you didnt lose any models/wounds ?

Because of classic GW rules writing.

Honestly though 99.99% of people won't care if you don't roll for a unit and full strength.

Yeah, nothing will happen so just skip the roll.

It is like LD in 9th. How many people roll LD for an intercessor squad when losing one model?