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Voss wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Human emotions, people have an attachment to what they know and enjoy and fear loss or get angry at regression,

But is that attachment JUST the armor save? If not, then why does it seem like the problem isn't addressed holistically?

I'm sort of distilling all the complaints into a bucket and I'm sure most individuals have more complex thoughts on the matter, but it feels like those thoughts aren't expressed and we see just this one facet.

nobody is upset orks therefore get tougher as it's an upward shift.

But Snaggas will be tougher than Vanguard by a mile. T5, 5+, 6+++ with the option for a 5++. The most these guys have visually is a shoulder pad. Or are there people upset by this and I've missed it?

People expect orks to be tough but lightly armored. These are. (And there's no indication that other orks will get FNP. Ghaz doesn't have it). And largely people got over the T5 adjustment last edition.
So they fall within expectations.

People also expect cyborgs to be better armored and tougher than run of the mill grunts. Vanguard... aren't. So they don't like it. (And reducing AP via protective doctrine doesn't feel like a 4+ save. Too many cases where it doesn't matter)
The fact that two of the less durable factions (eldar and tau) got to keep 4+ saves on their militia and got 4+ given to scouts grinds glass into that expectation.

Plus basic psychology of losing rather than staying the same or gaining is obviously in play.

I think you missed their point. Beast snagga saves went up they were a 6+ armour save, now they get a 5+ loin cloth.

Dudeface wrote:

I think you missed their point. Beast snagga saves went up they were a 6+ armour save, now they get a 5+ loin cloth.

I'm aware. I didn't miss it at all.
5+ is a lightly armored save. 6+ has, for most of the game, been entirely worthless, as it got countered so easily (in either save system AP5, or Ap-1).
The shift from 6+ to 5+ doesn't really matter much, despite the mathematics, because for those who've been around for a while, 6+ often meant no save.
Lightly armored is where they should be and are (especially with the AP mitigation going around). Are they mathematically better? Probably. But it looks right.

Can anybody sell me on the 5th-ed style charge and pile-in moves we're getting for 10th according to leaks?



Melee hordes have to be trash in 10th right? No ObSec and barely any models get to fight. I'm certainly glad I haven't bought 60 Flayed Ones.

Voss wrote:
People expect orks to be tough but lightly armored. These are. (And there's no indication that other orks will get FNP. Ghaz doesn't have it). And largely people got over the T5 adjustment last edition.
So they fall within expectations.

People also expect cyborgs to be better armored and tougher than run of the mill grunts. Vanguard... aren't. So they don't like it. (And reducing AP via protective doctrine doesn't feel like a 4+ save. Too many cases where it doesn't matter)
The fact that two of the less durable factions (eldar and tau) got to keep 4+ saves on their militia and got 4+ given to scouts grinds glass into that expectation.

Plus basic psychology of losing rather than staying the same or gaining is obviously in play.

I appreciate the insight. I think perhaps what I wind up seeing is snippets of these feelings ( from various people ) that aren't as fleshed out as this post might be and I react to those parts in the moment.

I know that Thousand Sons won't be casting spells like I do now ( mostly, anyway ). I can understand losing things I like or preferred about my faction, but at the same time I look forward to what other things I might be able to do instead, which is why I have a hard time connecting with the concern.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:
Can anybody sell me on the 5th-ed style charge and pile-in moves we're getting for 10th according to leaks?

Spoiler:

I feel like forcing models into base2base and almost freely getting out of being surrounded is taking away from player agency and dumbs the game down.

Melee hordes have to be trash in 10th right? No ObSec and barely any models get to fight. I'm certainly glad I haven't bought 60 Flayed Ones.

I can't sell you on it. It's probably just their way of determining who is in combat less fiddly and reducing the somewhat healthy extra movement we used to get.

I almost feel like this is going to be a shooting edition - it hinges on whether or not we can walk through certain terrain. Shooting into or out of combat changes the relevancy of it a bit. At the same time melee profiles are not powered down as much as melee. Also, with resurrection abilities all over the place the game won't have enough shooting to deal with all the models that can show up. Coupled with missions promoting control of the mid-table you'll want stuff that is durable and effective in CQC.

 vict0988 wrote:
Can anybody sell me on the 5th-ed style charge and pile-in moves we're getting for 10th according to leaks?

Spoiler:

I feel like forcing models into base2base and almost freely getting out of being surrounded is taking away from player agency and dumbs the game down.

Melee hordes have to be trash in 10th right? No ObSec and barely any models get to fight. I'm certainly glad I haven't bought 60 Flayed Ones.

Well, its not that few. Its just hard to mock up in text form.

When you charge, you just have to get in engagement range (1"). Then at the start of the fight, your models have a 3" pile-in.
Anyone in base to base OR engagement range can fight.
Also anyone in base to base with models that are base to base with enemies (not engagement range at this step, which personally I find clunky).

Assuming the charging unit wasn't in a single file line when they charged, you've got more or less 11" to play with (in an average charge of 7"). As the fight goes on, both sides must pile in more (unless they're already base to base).

Karol wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


Yeah, because doing cross-faction comparison with the minimal amount of info we got is sooooo productive.

In general maybe not, but eldar are a special case in the way how GW treats them. There wasn't a single time in the games history, when they would get a book or new set of rules and didn't instantly become NPE for everyone and an edition breaker. You can have 0 data on eldar on eldar rules and 8 out of 9 edition they would be borderline OP. I think expecting 10 out of 9 is not exaggarated or unproductive.

Ding ding, we have a winner

why bother with "engagement range" as a thing?

give melee weapons a range, can then be on the profile and be set to whatever is appropriate for the unit in question

If you didn't have engagement range, vertical melee would be broken.

 Trickstick wrote:
If you didn't have engagement range, vertical melee would be broken.

not really, you can easily add a vertical range component, which can then itself also vary, no need for 'special rules' etc, its just part of the weapon profile

That sounds like engagement range with extra steps.

 vict0988 wrote:
I feel like forcing models into base2base and almost freely getting out of being surrounded is taking away from player agency and dumbs the game down.

If you're surrounded in melee and try to retreat, each model that has to move through the enemy dies on a roll of 1-2. If the unit is battleshocked, you have to make that test for every model whether they're surrounded or not. That doesn't sound like almost freely getting out to me.

I don't think it's dumbing-down for the game to lean more into morale and risk management, and less into fiddly and scale-inappropriate gimmicks like exactly placing of each of 30 Termagants to maximize how many enemy models are tri-pointed.

 Trickstick wrote:
That sounds like engagement range with extra steps.

except without the need to define it, and with the ability to vary it

leopard wrote:
why bother with "engagement range" as a thing?

give melee weapons a range, can then be on the profile and be set to whatever is appropriate for the unit in question

That exists in AoS. It creates a situation where 25mm bases are MASSIVELY superior to 32mm bases for melee.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
That sounds like engagement range with extra steps.

except without the need to define it, and with the ability to vary it

How would you determine when you were in melee combat with a model? If my melee range is 3" and yours in only 1", am I in melee range with you, even when you can't be in melee range with me? How is a successful charge determined? Have you considered how this will effect units with 40mm+ bases? What about 25mm base units that get a significant advantage over similar units on 32mm?

Age of Sigmar which DOES have ranges on their melee attacks solves this issue by not allowing models to be within 3" (the maximum melee range). If you DO end up inside 3", you're considered 'in combat' and have to deal with everything that comes with that.

It's a good system and works well...EXCEPT it creates absolutely MASSIVE denial zones around units. Two unit sitting next to each other have a full 6.5 inches of 'nope'. This is fine in a predominately melee game, but would need to be accounted for in 40k.

 catbarf wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
I feel like forcing models into base2base and almost freely getting out of being surrounded is taking away from player agency and dumbs the game down.

If you're surrounded in melee and try to retreat, each model that has to move through the enemy dies on a roll of 1-2. If the unit is battleshocked, you have to make that test for every model whether they're surrounded or not. That doesn't sound like almost freely getting out to me.

I don't think it's dumbing-down for the game to lean more into morale and risk management, and less into fiddly and scale-inappropriate gimmicks like exactly placing of each of 30 Termagants to maximize how many enemy models are tri-pointed.

How does the new morale rules and you call it risk management test player skill? I'm not sure what you mean by risk management, because 1 Vanguard Veteran dying is almost nothing compared to simply being unable to do it as in 8th or having to pay 2CP and only being able to do it once per turn as in 9th, you were managing two different resources at once, now you're just evaluating whether it's worth the risk of losing on average a third of the models at risk (which could just be a single 0,25 PL model in a 50 PL game.

 vict0988 wrote:
I feel like forcing models into base2base and almost freely getting out of being surrounded is taking away from player agency and dumbs the game down.

I really hope so, it needs dumbing down a bit. If we are lucky we'll have a few months of closer games between players of a different skill level.

ERJAK wrote:

leopard wrote:
why bother with "engagement range" as a thing?

give melee weapons a range, can then be on the profile and be set to whatever is appropriate for the unit in question

That exists in AoS. It creates a situation where 25mm bases are MASSIVELY superior to 32mm bases for melee.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
That sounds like engagement range with extra steps.

except without the need to define it, and with the ability to vary it

How would you determine when you were in melee combat with a model? If my melee range is 3" and yours in only 1", am I in melee range with you, even when you can't be in melee range with me? How is a successful charge determined? Have you considered how this will effect units with 40mm+ bases? What about 25mm base units that get a significant advantage over similar units on 32mm?

Age of Sigmar which DOES have ranges on their melee attacks solves this issue by not allowing models to be within 3" (the maximum melee range). If you DO end up inside 3", you're considered 'in combat' and have to deal with everything that comes with that.

It's a good system and works well...EXCEPT it creates absolutely MASSIVE denial zones around units. Two unit sitting next to each other have a full 6.5 inches of 'nope'. This is fine in a predominately melee game, but would need to be accounted for in 40k.

depends how you set the ranges, also I would note that a lot of other games have the concept of a "zone of control" which generally works very well, get within that zone and that unit becomes your primary focus - either fight them or back off, so actually the denial zone starts to be part of the point

obviously it works both ways, say a block of actual combat troops move towards a block of say grots, they can move to within the ZoC of the grots, and even if neither is within actual punching range the grots now have the choices:

- stand still and wait for the inevitable next turn, perhaps shooting but only at the combat troops
- charge the combat troops and bring their destiny a little closer
- back away

and thats basically it

it becomes a way for chaff units to work as a distraction as well, forcing a better unit to pause and deal with them - given this is 40k provide for say a Ld test to ignore a ZoC and fire at or charge another enemy but have it unable to be ignored for movement (basically charge through chaff and anything not chaff shouldn't be able to be ignored anyway)

as for 25mm being better, well it depends what weapons are carried and what range, if 25mm stuff is set to say 1/2" range they are in effect "base to base", stuff on larger bases either getting a greater reach or depending upon better attacks but the smaller base stuff becomes more limited - except perhaps specific dedicated melee 25mm base stuff that probably should be something to worry about

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tyel wrote:The issue is people thought Skitarii were "X" in the wider 40k food chain - but GW are now saying "no, they are Y" (i.e. worse). Its the same complaint we see on how Necrons keep going down relative to Marines.

Voss wrote:Yeah, I generally don't think 'I don't understand why people are upset (or just don't like it), so they shouldn't be' is a productive direction for discussion..

Yea, totally fair criticism, but what do these feelings actually mean? That you don't enjoy your models? That you can't play as well? What's the end result?

The end result is I don't collect or play Necrons anymore, plus a sense of betrayal that GW sold me on a set of ideas and then slowly eroded them away. It's not about winning games or even using the models (if I still had them), it's about a degradation, or sometimes even just changing, a faction or unit identity that I loved.

Hordes of self repairing, elite, hyper-tough killer robots got turned into something more resembling of chaff.

 Insectum7 wrote:

a sense of betrayal that GW sold me on a set of ideas and then slowly eroded them away.

Nicely put, this is exactly why my three xenos armies have been gathering dust for quite some time.

 vict0988 wrote:
Can anybody sell me on the 5th-ed style charge and pile-in moves we're getting for 10th according to leaks?

Spoiler:

I feel like forcing models into base2base and almost freely getting out of being surrounded is taking away from player agency and dumbs the game down.

Melee hordes have to be trash in 10th right? No ObSec and barely any models get to fight. I'm certainly glad I haven't bought 60 Flayed Ones.

I suspect it's partly down to GW wanting to clean up a bunch of fiddly interactions and also remove some of the counter-intuitive shenanigans from the Fight phase. A lot of 40k players will probably tell you there's lots of nuance to the positioning of models in the Fight phase, but to me it comes off as extremely gimmicky and not particularly thematic or tactically interesting. It's like tri-pointing - not massively obvious at first, but once you figure it out it's also trivially easy to exploit without any real thought going into it.

I think GW saw the sometimes massive amount of extra movement units could get when they charge and fight and wanted to make things clearer and cleaner while curbing that extra movement a bit. I don't think the reduction in number of models fighting will be that large anyway so I don't think it's a huge problem for melee armies. I think we may see many more armies that aren't almost 100% combat now, though, with the reduction in potential to tag other units.

Actually quite suprised they gave Makari rules and did not just use him as a marker like Tau droneswith his rules folded into Ghaz's main ones?

 Mr Morden wrote:
Actually quite suprised they gave Makari rules and did not just use him as a marker like Tau droneswith his rules folded into Ghaz's main ones?

Well, there aren't any novels where a drone is the protagonist

 Jidmah wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Actually quite suprised they gave Makari rules and did not just use him as a marker like Tau droneswith his rules folded into Ghaz's main ones?

Well, there aren't any novels where a drone is the protagonist

Yet!

Dudeface wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Well, there aren't any novels where a drone is the protagonist

Yet!

J-5 is alive!

 vict0988 wrote:
How does the new morale rules and you call it risk management test player skill?

Well, now the relevant decisions to melee will be more about how you set up your units before they get into melee, managing threat range, when to pop Overwatch, and whether to risk losing part of the unit by falling back when surrounded or Battleshocked. Skill will manifest as tactical decision-making, not whether you are able to mechanically execute a gimmick.

As opposed to silly gak like deliberately charging short -> exploiting pile-in to tri-point the enemy -> deliberately flubbing attacks -> staying locked safely in melee, where once you've learned the trick it's pretty trivial to execute, and the difference it makes compared to playing the game as intended is massive.

I'm sure there will be much gnashing of teeth on release about how GW is taking all the skill away by making the game about generalship rather than unintended rules exploits. I play a sad song on the world's tiniest violin. A game that doesn't care about the disposition of your squad when a mortar shell lands in their midst shouldn't suddenly be very concerned with the millimeter-precision placement of every trooper once they hit close combat, and the new Battleshock system will make getting out of melee more of a calculated risk and less of a binary 'have you been tri-pointed Y/N'.

 catbarf wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
How does the new morale rules and you call it risk management test player skill?

Well, now the relevant decisions to melee will be more about how you set up your units before they get into melee, managing threat range, when to pop Overwatch, and whether to risk losing part of the unit by falling back when surrounded or Battleshocked. Skill will manifest as tactical decision-making, not whether you are able to mechanically execute a gimmick.

As opposed to silly gak like deliberately charging short -> exploiting pile-in to tri-point the enemy -> deliberately flubbing attacks -> staying locked safely in melee, where once you've learned the trick it's pretty trivial to execute, and the difference it makes compared to playing the game as intended is massive.

I'm sure there will be much gnashing of teeth on release about how GW is taking all the skill away by making the game about generalship rather than unintended rules exploits. I play a sad song on the world's tiniest violin. A game that doesn't care about the disposition of your squad when a mortar shell lands in their midst shouldn't suddenly be very concerned with the millimeter-precision placement of every trooper once they hit close combat, and the new Battleshock system will make getting out of melee more of a calculated risk and less of a binary 'have you been tri-pointed Y/N'.

Agreed on all points. Do you have any examples for Deliberately flubbing attacks? I haven't run into it personally, I'm guessing it involves choosing a weaker weapon to ensure you are safe in melee for another round?

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
[Do you have any examples for Deliberately flubbing attacks? I haven't run into it personally, I'm guessing it involves choosing a weaker weapon to ensure you are safe in melee for another round?

Choosing inferior weapons, and/or minimizing the number of models in engagement range, then after making attacks consolidating into tri-pointing to trap the target. It was worse in 8th when every model had access to the basic close combat weapon profile they could use in lieu of their actual weapons.

Also, 10th Ed is making it so that if your pile-in or consolidate distance can get you into base contact, you have to do it. No more spiraling 3" around a unit while technically getting 0.1" closer to the nearest enemy model; if you want to trap a unit you're probably going to have to surround it before you charge.

Frankly, I don't think anything of value is being lost. Play skill shouldn't come from exploiting unintuitive and unintended rules interactions.

 catbarf wrote:

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
[Do you have any examples for Deliberately flubbing attacks? I haven't run into it personally, I'm guessing it involves choosing a weaker weapon to ensure you are safe in melee for another round?

Choosing inferior weapons, and/or minimizing the number of models in engagement range, then after making attacks consolidating into tri-pointing to trap the target. It was worse in 8th when every model had access to the basic close combat weapon profile they could use in lieu of their actual weapons.

Also, 10th Ed is making it so that if your pile-in or consolidate distance can get you into base contact, you have to do it. No more spiraling 3" around a unit while technically getting 0.1" closer to the nearest enemy model; if you want to trap a unit you're probably going to have to surround it before you charge.

Frankly, I don't think anything of value is being lost. Play skill shouldn't come from exploiting unintuitive and unintended rules interactions.

Those are my feelings too. Most of the various tricks are still possible, you just have to work to set them up and they won't automatically happen as they do now.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

Agreed on all points. Do you have any examples for Deliberately flubbing attacks? I haven't run into it personally, I'm guessing it involves choosing a weaker weapon to ensure you are safe in melee for another round?

A unit of 8 custodian wardens suddenly switching from using their axes on their players turn, to stabbing stuff with misericordias to avoid getting lit up by the entire opposing army, freeing up the once per game use of stratagems and the CP needed to use those stratagems. Then killing the units "trapped" with axes on the enemy turn.

Ah I see now, thank you for explaining

Wow. Am I crazy, or are the Thousand Sons looking way more spicy than the other previewed factions? Being able to just turn off a unit's armor saves a couple times a game is huge. Plus, Doombolt is kind of terrifying, and Psychic Dominion could ruin an attacking unit's day if they have a high rate of fire. (I'm thinking of swooping hawks here.)

Inferno Bolts going down to AP-1 was a surprise to me though. I thought they'd remain at AP-2 given that they used to be AP3 and that being good at punching through heavy armor has traditionally been one of their main things.

But yeah, this is the first preview where I'm actually excited about each thing previewed.