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novembermike wrote:
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 am sorry but we are playing a wargame, taking away specialisation of a unit, to interact with specific maybee mechanically diffrent unit types and touting that as an improvement is questionable. And whilest i can get behind simplification of melee weapons anti-tank weaponry once upon a time had a very specific niche. (granted 40k has mechanically so heavily degraded that we don't even have a reason to treat a tank diffrent from a dread from a monster or an infantry model realistically but he.)

Not Online!!! wrote:
?!?
I am sorry but we are playing a wargame, taking away specialisation of a unit, to interact with specific maybee mechanically diffrent unit types and touting that as an improvement is questionable. And whilest i can get behind simplification of melee weapons anti-tank weaponry once upon a time had a very specific niche. (granted 40k has mechanically so heavily degraded that we don't even have a reason to treat a tank diffrent from a dread from a monster or an infantry model realistically but he.)

Well, 5th edition managed to get by with just 9 types of combat weapons and I'd argue it still pulled off that wargame thing quite well

I love my plague marines and their smattering of close combat weapons a lot, but I really could do with just plague weapon, heavy plague weapon and flail. The difference between axes and swords and the other swords matters just as little as does the difference between greater plague cleaver and mace of contagion.

 Jidmah wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
?!?
I am sorry but we are playing a wargame, taking away specialisation of a unit, to interact with specific maybee mechanically diffrent unit types and touting that as an improvement is questionable. And whilest i can get behind simplification of melee weapons anti-tank weaponry once upon a time had a very specific niche. (granted 40k has mechanically so heavily degraded that we don't even have a reason to treat a tank diffrent from a dread from a monster or an infantry model realistically but he.)

Well, 5th edition managed to get by with just 9 types of combat weapons and I'd argue it still pulled off that wargame thing quite well

I love my plague marines and their smattering of close combat weapons a lot, but I really could do with just plague weapon, heavy plague weapon and flail. The difference between axes and swords and the other swords matters just as little as does the difference between greater plague cleaver and mace of contagion.

Yeah, hence the Part of simplification of melee weapons, what i disagree with is combi weapons. Or the fact that armor values don't exist anymore.. grumbles in longbeard....

novembermike wrote:

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.

Poison created regular wounds. Poison could not create Critical Wounds. Critical Wounds didn't exist. There were no Critical Wounds. We can infer Poison NOW/WILL create critical wounds as Anti-(something biological).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

novembermike wrote:

 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.

but losing some of that flavor is ok

Breton wrote:

novembermike wrote:

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.

Poison created regular wounds. Poison could not create Critical Wounds. Critical Wounds didn't exist. There were no Critical Wounds. We can infer Poison NOW/WILL create critical wounds as Anti-(something biological).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

novembermike wrote:

 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.

but losing some of that flavor is ok

Admittedly we don’t have all the information yet, but from what has been revealed it seems to me the addition of Critical Wounds is purely semantic and not a mechanical change from 9th. I don’t really see why people are getting so worked up about it.

Aash wrote:


Admittedly we don’t have all the information yet, but from what has been revealed it seems to me the addition of Critical Wounds is purely semantic and not a mechanical change from 9th. I don’t really see why people are getting so worked up about it.

Yeah, this. At the moment, it seems clear to the great majority of people that this is just a semantic clarification/keywording of a pre-existing concept, to avoid repetition and to allow for easy triggering of other abilities. I don't get why 'That's how you do them, that's not what they are' needs to be repeated in a Sheldon Cooper-esque way for pages and pages. We have literally no way to 'solve' this conundrum-to-some by discussing, as we can't glimpse some sort of ground truth GW is currently hiding from the Akashic records or whatever.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Yeah, hence the Part of simplification of melee weapons, what i disagree with is combi weapons. Or the fact that armor values don't exist anymore.. grumbles in longbeard....

I honestly have mixed feelings on the combi part.

On the one hand, I absolutely loathe having to hunt down or find someone to print tiny parts of a bolter which completely change what a unit can do. A flash git holds a gun made of 8 distinct pieces, and every single one of them is larger than a combi-melta or plasma of a blightlord terminator. Some of them are actual kombi-weapon parts. Somehow no one is breaking into in tears over their immersion because the obvious plasma cannon with kombi-KMB a flash git is holding has the same profile as the gun which is just 5 big shootas stapled together. And don't give any of that "power of believe" horsegak.

Then again, plasma, flamer and melta are so different game wise that picking one is an actual decision, and I feel that removing this decision would be an actual loss for the game. However, if your unit is locked into one of each, finding a good target for them is a wash anyways, so might as well roll the same profile to speed up the game...

In the end, I think everyone agrees that GW should just put enough bits on the sprues (once again, combi bits are TINY) like they did for MANz and then keep treating them like actual options.
Under the premise of that not being an option and GW stubbornly insisting on NMNR, having one profile totally beats resolving one flamer, one plasma gun, one melta and one combi-bolter separately.

That said, I'm not convinced that all combi-weapons will look like the one on the terminator librarian. GW has blanked out tons of things on the early previews, what we see here might just be the rules for a combi-grav weapon or something.

The discussion about losing flavor in weapon names and consolidating similar profiles is interesting and I am of two minds about it.
On the hand, I appreciate a bit of simplifying all the different options. Not only does it make the game a bit faster if you don't know all the different weapons your opponent might field. But from a modeling perspective, it reduces a lot of analysis paralysis. My hobby is mostly spend modeling and painting, but I draw most fun out of modeling different characters in a squad. I like making up short stories about how they came to their equipment whilst looking at all the options on the kit, adding some spare bits here and there so each squad of guardsmen, Orks or space marines is a bit different. And I really struggled a lot with getting past the mindset of in-game effectiveness of a choice. I really liked about the new kill Team that I didn't have to worry about the price of an upgrade, because it was just assumed that I would take all the upgrades/specialists. And in this new version of 40k I will have less struggle justifying esthetic choices over tabletop performance. If it curbs some of the issues with tons of similar yet different weapons in a squad, leading to a lot of small roles of "this combi weapon than this special weapon than this other pistol that is almost the same but different" then I'm all for it, because I caught myself starting to equip units not based on a cool narrative but based on "this equipment will be a pain to resolve in battle". Worst example where the death guard Terminators, where each combi weapon was available once. So everyone got a combi bolter because I could just not be bothered resolving this mess in a game.

But, here is the thing: some of these issues could have been mitigated with smart sprue design. Why can I only build one of each combi weapon in a death guard terminator squad? Why aren't there enough special weapons so I can take the same weapon twice in some other squads? And some consolidation might just go too far, stripping out iconic weapons can upset more narratively minded people and I really get that. For me, modeling and gaming are more and more disconnected as started to force myself to care less on optimizing weapons, so having a "heavy melee weapon" instead at "power first, chain axe, and something I just might be forgetting" doesn't matter to much to me, but I really understand people who have enjoyed taking the correct weapon for the correct job, and getting the satisfaction and reward when the choice, investment and positioning pays off. I rarely got that to work for me, and the cases of "man, I should have brought this other weapon on my squad leader" were really frustrating. Yes, I'm not very good at the game, as I really didn't get to play a lot (maybe once a month and increasingly less).

That GW cut out the mental burden of considering more and more complex faction and sub-faction rules, good knows how many strategems, recent erratas that buff/debuff certain units and factions .... It makes me really look forward to 10th edition and I'm really liking the new morale system, so some weapon consolidations are more of an inconvenience to me. But the perspectives offered here and in other threads got me thinking again about it.

Sorry for the long post, just had to get those thoughts out of my head.

Tsagualsa wrote:
Yeah, this. At the moment, it seems clear to the great majority of people that this is just a semantic clarification/keywording of a pre-existing concept, to avoid repetition and to allow for easy triggering of other abilities. I don't get why 'That's how you do them, that's not what they are' needs to be repeated in a Sheldon Cooper-esque way for pages and pages. We have literally no way to 'solve' this conundrum-to-some by discussing, as we can't glimpse some sort of ground truth GW is currently hiding from the Akashic records or whatever.

But why male models???

Breton wrote:

Poison created regular wounds. Poison could not create Critical Wounds. Critical Wounds didn't exist. There were no Critical Wounds. We can infer Poison NOW/WILL create critical wounds as Anti-(something biological).

The wounds created by poison were not given a special label, however they did ignore toughness, which is what the things that are now called critical wounds do.

Because the term critical wound now exists, we don't have to list all the circumstance that can cause critical wounds every time we have a rule that keys off them; instead, we can just say, "On a Critical Wound, this weapon deals a mortal wound instead of regular damage." or "On a Critical Wound, this weapon gains AP 1."

You've been told this at least 10 times. Everyone seems to get it except you.

As much as I part in jest suggested something similar for combi weapons I don't think a single profile is right.

My stance is that combi weapons over the last few editions have turned squads into specialist niches they otherwise weren't designed to fill. Such as termicide squads as a classic example, or blobs of 10 slaaneshi terminators with plasma guns. Likewise they also fill the hole of "extra special weapon" in units that maybe aren't meant to have them. If sister dominions were supposed to be all flamers, why limit the superior to not having a flamer, but then immediately provide a work around via combi?

So I get why people are upset by the change and its a little more radical than I envisaged, but at the same time I do fully understand it. Plus as Jidmah said, other armies have weapons with cobbled bits on or mixed barrels, but it's only an issue in this instance because there's historic precedent.

 Jidmah wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Yeah, hence the Part of simplification of melee weapons, what i disagree with is combi weapons. Or the fact that armor values don't exist anymore.. grumbles in longbeard....

I honestly have mixed feelings on the combi part.

On the one hand, I absolutely loathe having to hunt down or find someone to print tiny parts of a bolter which completely change what a unit can do. A flash git holds a gun made of 8 distinct pieces, and every single one of them is larger than a combi-melta or plasma of a blightlord terminator. Some of them are actual kombi-weapon parts. Somehow no one is breaking into in tears over their immersion because the obvious plasma cannon with kombi-KMB a flash git is holding has the same profile as the gun which is just 5 big shootas stapled together. And don't give any of that "power of believe" horsegak.

TBF, Posaz and their guns always were described as ramshakle beyond any reason. That said, they always only had 1 type of gun afaik. Unlike Nobs, and their combi-weaponry.

Then again, plasma, flamer and melta are so different game wise that picking one is an actual decision, and I feel that removing this decision would be an actual loss for the game. However, if your unit is locked into one of each, finding a good target for them is a wash anyways, so might as well roll the same profile to speed up the game...

In the end, I think everyone agrees that GW should just put enough bits on the sprues (once again, combi bits are TINY) like they did for MANz and then keep treating them like actual options.
Under the premise of that not being an option and GW stubbornly insisting on NMNR, having one profile totally beats resolving one flamer, one plasma gun, one melta and one combi-bolter separately.

I think the worst offender on this problem is the new CSM terminator kit. That standardised chainaxes as standard weapon during their 8th release, only to have a singular chainaxe in the whole stupid box. but he, you have enough fences to make a graveyard gothic fence for about 10 CM. (no joke,) in the sprue. But 5 combibolters and then 5 consecutive bits was too much usefullness for GW.

That said, I'm not convinced that all combi-weapons will look like the one on the terminator librarian. GW has blanked out tons of things on the early previews, what we see here might just be the rules for a combi-grav weapon or something.

May well be the case. But for me it represents regardless a loss on the mechanical front if they become a single weapon. Just as a combi skorcha isn't the same as a combi-rocket.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:
As much as I part in jest suggested something similar for combi weapons I don't think a single profile is right.

My stance is that combi weapons over the last few editions have turned squads into specialist niches they otherwise weren't designed to fill. Such as termicide squads as a classic example, or blobs of 10 slaaneshi terminators with plasma guns. Likewise they also fill the hole of "extra special weapon" in units that maybe aren't meant to have them. If sister dominions were supposed to be all flamers, why limit the superior to not having a flamer, but then immediately provide a work around via combi?

So I get why people are upset by the change and its a little more radical than I envisaged, but at the same time I do fully understand it. Plus as Jidmah said, other armies have weapons with cobbled bits on or mixed barrels, but it's only an issue in this instance because there's historic precedent.

Jid is right insofar as flashgits weapons look cobbled together but they always shared a singular profile / squad and always had a singular purpose (when they were not overly expensive paperweights for once).
Meanwhile orks have classic combiweaponry aswell/ had them on nobs (which is still one of the best ever kits but also suffers from not enough bits to fully equip a squad... 4 big choppas, 2 combi rockits, 1 combi skorcha and other shenanigans).

It would feel wrong there, that combirockits now als suddendly are rolled together with skorchas.

Not Online!!! wrote:
It would feel wrong there, that combirockits now als suddendly are rolled together with skorchas.

Eh. Neither really ever was a defining or even decent option for the unit.
In the end, it would just be yet another wargear option removed from our line. Remember when nobz could have shootas or boss poles or cybork bodies or bikes? The only army to come close to losing as many options as orks since 5th are drukhari.

Aash wrote:


Admittedly we don’t have all the information yet, but from what has been revealed it seems to me the addition of Critical Wounds is purely semantic and not a mechanical change from 9th. I don’t really see why people are getting so worked up about it.

Except its not a semantic change - its a "keyword" change and that's mechanics. I can't say why everyone else is, but they're revamping things and this feels like (so far) one of the "major" changes assuming there's more to it than Devastating Wounds upgrades - I'm guessing its going to be a framework for some of the subfaction deviations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:

Breton wrote:

Poison created regular wounds. Poison could not create Critical Wounds. Critical Wounds didn't exist. There were no Critical Wounds. We can infer Poison NOW/WILL create critical wounds as Anti-(something biological).

The wounds created by poison were not given a special label, however they did ignore toughness, which is what the things that are now called critical wounds do.

Because the term critical wound now exists, we don't have to list all the circumstance that can cause critical wounds every time we have a rule that keys off them; instead, we can just say, "On a Critical Wound, this weapon deals a mortal wound instead of regular damage." or "On a Critical Wound, this weapon gains AP 1."

You've been told this at least 10 times. Everyone seems to get it except you.

So you're saying Poison didn't create critical wounds? Same as I just said? Where did you see Critical Wounds are AP1? That's the sort of thing I'm wondering about - what else besides feeding Devastating Wounds.

 Jidmah wrote:

I honestly have mixed feelings on the combi part.

On the one hand, I absolutely loathe having to hunt down or find someone to print tiny parts of a bolter which completely change what a unit can do. A flash git holds a gun made of 8 distinct pieces, and every single one of them is larger than a combi-melta or plasma of a blightlord terminator. Some of them are actual kombi-weapon parts. Somehow no one is breaking into in tears over their immersion because the obvious plasma cannon with kombi-KMB a flash git is holding has the same profile as the gun which is just 5 big shootas stapled together. And don't give any of that "power of believe" horsegak.

Then again, plasma, flamer and melta are so different game wise that picking one is an actual decision, and I feel that removing this decision would be an actual loss for the game. However, if your unit is locked into one of each, finding a good target for them is a wash anyways, so might as well roll the same profile to speed up the game...

That is because in the end, orks are not space marines. Same with tyranids, eldar etc. The majority of opponents will not care, if the specific custodes army is painted the "right way". With marines, there is enough people carrying about how things look, not just for rules punishing you for wrong painting exist, but GW creating an entire full extra game, where marine players can have everything painted the right now, weapons/helmets/etc put only on specific types of MK armours etc. So yeah, while non marines player may not care how an actual Kraken tyranid strain looks like, the marine players will react with non acceptance to someone trying to play with a DA army (not a succesor one) painted the wrong shade of green or even something that isn't green/black/bone coloured.

Eh. Neither really ever was a defining or even decent option for the unit.

Which means that maybe it won't be that bad. Problems start when a faction, like my dudes existed, which is defined by "magical" bolters, multitiude of various power weapons and gear options, and litteral magic. And GW says that it will streamline all three of those things. Who knows maybe this time they will get it right. But I have seen how different the 6-9th rules were from 5th when the army actualy had options and multiple builds, GW would have to focus a lot on rules writing, for a faction that has 1(one) new model and no updated planed within the next 12 months.

Ain't a GK specific thing either. I know this won't find much sympathy among non marine players, but to marine player factions, they are playing the faction and not marines. A WS or IF player wants to play WS or IF. A Deathwing player wants to play deathwing, and not even RW or Greenwing. Never mind be forced in to playing ultamarines or ironhands. In the end I expect 10th, to be the same as 8th and 9th over time. GW does a lot of changes for changes sake and in the end editions play out the same way. They have no entice to change, till sales start to drop hard, and I don't think it will happen soon, considering they can't produce enough stuff that people want. We potentialy be a few step away from going mainstream. With the death of some frenchises, there is a void to fill out.

Dudeface wrote:
As much as I part in jest suggested something similar for combi weapons I don't think a single profile is right.

My stance is that combi weapons over the last few editions have turned squads into specialist niches they otherwise weren't designed to fill. Such as termicide squads as a classic example, or blobs of 10 slaaneshi terminators with plasma guns. Likewise they also fill the hole of "extra special weapon" in units that maybe aren't meant to have them. If sister dominions were supposed to be all flamers, why limit the superior to not having a flamer, but then immediately provide a work around via combi?

So I get why people are upset by the change and its a little more radical than I envisaged, but at the same time I do fully understand it. Plus as Jidmah said, other armies have weapons with cobbled bits on or mixed barrels, but it's only an issue in this instance because there's historic precedent.

Some of this is due to the 7th-8th ed changes, as in the 3rd-7 paradigm you only got one shot with the special weapon half. So you had one Plasma/Melta/Flamer/Grav volley, and then you're back to bolters again. Since they have unlimited shots now, and in many cases cost the same or enough more you'll happily pay, it's become more of a no-brainer choice.

Looks like units might be in fixed increments ala sigmar

Astra is here

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/05/08/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-astra-militarum-2/

Krak grenades are now anti tank weapons

Dudeface wrote:
Looks like units might be in fixed increments ala sigmar

I'm not sure guard is the best place to look for a trend in that regard. They tend towards fixed squad sizes by default anyway.

Voss wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Looks like units might be in fixed increments ala sigmar

I'm not sure guard is the best place to look for a trend in that regard. They tend towards fixed squad sizes by default anyway.

E.g. the Chaos Legionnaries had no such increments, they showed 1 Aspiring Champion and 4-9 Legionnaries on their card.

Tsagualsa wrote:

Voss wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Looks like units might be in fixed increments ala sigmar

I'm not sure guard is the best place to look for a trend in that regard. They tend towards fixed squad sizes by default anyway.

E.g. the Chaos Legionnaries had no such increments, they showed 1 Aspiring Champion and 4-9 Legionnaries on their card.

I was just on my way to check that, thank you.

 p5freak wrote:
Krak grenades are now anti tank weapons

As opposed to... ?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
Krak grenades are now anti tank weapons

As opposed to... ?

Simply not having a reason to exist. Although I'd argue S9 isn't quite anti tank either.

 p5freak wrote:
Astra is here

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/05/08/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-astra-militarum-2/

Krak grenades are now anti tank weapons

A shaped charge weapon that has always been a light anti-tank weapon is now... a light anti-tank weapon? Most surprising, yes. As the used range of Toughness values expands, similar adjustments in weapon strengths follow the trend.

 Sherrypie wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
Astra is here

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/05/08/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-astra-militarum-2/

Krak grenades are now anti tank weapons

A shaped charge weapon that has always been a light anti-tank weapon is now... a light anti-tank weapon? Most surprising, yes. As the used range of Toughness values expands, similar adjustments in weapon strengths follow the trend.

Since when is a grenade launcher a shaped charge weapon ?

Since they put krak, which lore wise are shaped charges, in it.

Dudeface wrote:
As much as I part in jest suggested something similar for combi weapons I don't think a single profile is right.

My stance is that combi weapons over the last few editions have turned squads into specialist niches they otherwise weren't designed to fill. Such as termicide squads as a classic example, or blobs of 10 slaaneshi terminators with plasma guns. Likewise they also fill the hole of "extra special weapon" in units that maybe aren't meant to have them. If sister dominions were supposed to be all flamers, why limit the superior to not having a flamer, but then immediately provide a work around via combi?

So I get why people are upset by the change and its a little more radical than I envisaged, but at the same time I do fully understand it. Plus as Jidmah said, other armies have weapons with cobbled bits on or mixed barrels, but it's only an issue in this instance because there's historic precedent.

On the other side it doesn't make sense for Guard to get special weapons and CSM terminators just...can't? I expect the combi we saw was just for that model, but even that doesn't make a lot of sense. Still CSM Terminators would have just their single heavy option compared to loyalists. None of it adds up. At this point I think I'll be surprised if we do lose them while Guard can resurrect Sentinels.

Dudeface wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
Krak grenades are now anti tank weapons

As opposed to... ?

Simply not having a reason to exist. Although I'd argue S9 isn't quite anti tank either.

Multimelta is S9

Having a Krak grenade and a Multimelta be the same Strength feels wierd.

I hope you're right...

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
As much as I part in jest suggested something similar for combi weapons I don't think a single profile is right.

My stance is that combi weapons over the last few editions have turned squads into specialist niches they otherwise weren't designed to fill. Such as termicide squads as a classic example, or blobs of 10 slaaneshi terminators with plasma guns. Likewise they also fill the hole of "extra special weapon" in units that maybe aren't meant to have them. If sister dominions were supposed to be all flamers, why limit the superior to not having a flamer, but then immediately provide a work around via combi?

So I get why people are upset by the change and its a little more radical than I envisaged, but at the same time I do fully understand it. Plus as Jidmah said, other armies have weapons with cobbled bits on or mixed barrels, but it's only an issue in this instance because there's historic precedent.

On the other side it doesn't make sense for Guard to get special weapons and CSM terminators just...can't? I expect the combi we saw was just for that model, but even that doesn't make a lot of sense. Still CSM Terminators would have just their single heavy option compared to loyalists. None of it adds up. At this point I think I'll be surprised if we do lose them while Guard can resurrect Sentinels.

It's a matter of scope, yes guard squads should get special weapons, but they're not a special weapon squad who should all have a super flexible special weapon strapped to a standard anti-infantry firearm. That changes the units purpose to such a pivotal degree and interacts badly with deepstrike and that resilient armour imo.

If they had x per y combi weapons, maybe 1 or 2 per 5, then that would be a nice extra, rather than a redefinition of the unit.

That said I'd rather a profile that sat between flamer and plasma, then another between plasma and melta.