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If someone has problems adding 50 to 15 and then to 145. Then their life is going to be painful as an adult. And that is without trying to do high math stuff like taxs, which actualy does feel like magic doing it the first time this year.

MongooseMatt wrote:
I think, fulfils GW's 90/10 rule nicely.

What is this?

While I think unoptimized lists are fine, there is no reason for any unit to be trash in every context or for a unit to easily win fights against things that ought to counter it. A Leman Russ with its gear stripped off just isn't going to perform unless it is cheaper than the fully upgraded one. People didn't go with stripped Russes because they wanted an underdog match, if they did they could just play 1900 pts.

MongooseMatt wrote:
It might be worth bearing in mind, before we start slinging too many personal insults about one another's mathematical ability, that the majority of players on these forums do not come close to representing the majority of players overall for 40k. The things you take as 'obvious' and 'essential' in play may just not be so.

my 12 year old can make a list in Deadzone or Kings of War without needing the army builder or a calculator and has no problem adding points for options

if someone says that the majority of people cannot do this or that the average 40k player is not able to do this, this is not an insult but there is a very big problem

and if options are without extra points, it is much harder to figure out which ones are the good ones so much easier to hinder yourself if you are not good at math

 Gadzilla666 wrote:


You're take is entirely personal, subjective, and specific to your own playgroup. The end.

The way you describe playing only works in an enviroment, where the majority or non of the people playing care, if they army works or not. Because they either have to option to play different games or different armies, and/or they have the ability to rebuy a new army under the lenght of one seson of w40k.
You are not going to find many people being in to unoptimised lists, when buying a list is a substential investment and there is no army/game waiting at the back to play instead, if the unoptimised stuff doesn't work. Playing 10-12 games per week, during summer, and losing all of the games every time, very fast to a point where taking out the models and then taking them back home takes more time, will make you quit if the cause is taking an "unoptimised fellblade".

On top of that some armies in w40k come prebuild high optimised, just by virtue of how GW wrote their rules. The reverse is also true. There are armies so good(a combination of being powerful and undercosted) in w40k, that they can easily carry 300-400pts of bad units. Meanwhile other armies have to be played which what is more or less the optimised tournament list, or the game will end for them turn 2.

MongooseMatt wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Bull . I've always stuck to the lists that "make me happy".

Indeed. There is a fair contingent of us that intentionally take unoptimised lists, even to tournaments - whether it is to be contrary (!) or to set a personal challenge (taking a woeful army and getting it into the top 10% seems to be a common aim). I am trying to wrack my brain as to when I have ever taken an 'optimised' list to a tournament.

Open things up to 'casual' or narrative play, and optimisation rapidly disappears into the rear view mirror.

It might be worth bearing in mind, before we start slinging too many personal insults about one another's mathematical ability, that the majority of players on these forums do not come close to representing the majority of players overall for 40k. The things you take as 'obvious' and 'essential' in play may just not be so.

One more vote for the current system. It is so much smoother and, I think, fulfils GW's 90/10 rule nicely.

The new system punishes people who don't want to optimise more than the previous one. This has been mentioned numerous times in this thread and it really is infuriating to see it continue to come up as a supposed advantage of the new system. Under the old system you could take something that wasn't considered the best, most optimal loadout and at least know you were likely paying less for your units because of it. That opened up more options because you had a whole spectrum of options from cheap to expensive that a single unit could occupy and theoretically it could be costed appropriately at each point on that spectrum. Now if you want to take a LRBT without sponsons, a stubber and a HKM you're being charged for them regardless.

Can you define what you mean by "smoother"?

True. My army has 1 ancient and one apothecary, because they were characters. Now each one of my 5 termintor units should have one. GW doesn't sell separate models of apothecaries or ancients. So in order to update my army, I would have to buy 4 boxes of termintors, Which is more or less equal to rebuying the entire army. And the difference between a -1OC and resurecting a dead termintor per turn, for the same cost is HUGE.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Please elaborate what you mean with "the current system is smoother" and what the "90/10" rule is.

I'll take the 90/10 rule first, as it is way less subjective

It basically boils down to 90% of the effect for 10% of the effort. Think of the new edition's list building as the points equivalent of Contrast paints. You get 90% of everything needed for list building for 10% of the effort, much as Contrast paints do your base, shade and highlights in one pass.

And, actually, you have just reminded me of something, a conversation I had with one of the 40k designers long ago - when it comes to rules writing, they said that if they had a choice between doing a page of rules that covered every possible eventuality or a single paragraph that covered 90% of them... they went with the single paragraph.

Huh, that 90% again. Sorry, I digress, that just popped into my head...

As for smoother, the new system allows for army building within minutes (seconds?) with any addition done in your head or the back of an envelope. If you can accept that the 'correct' points value of a unit is not a laser-focussed point but a broader range across the spectrum, then it has every chance of nailing issues more often than not without getting bogged down in the weeds.

I do have some ideas of where things become better. balance-wise, with the new system and I am happy to discuss them. I can also see why some might be less than happy with the new system over old, but also think that for many this will... pass.

As I said, happy to discuss any of this further, this is just where I am coming from/my starting position.

MongooseMatt wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
Please elaborate what you mean with "the current system is smoother" and what the "90/10" rule is.

I'll take the 90/10 rule first, as it is way less subjective

It basically boils down to 90% of the effect for 10% of the effort. Think of the new edition's list building as the points equivalent of Contrast paints. You get 90% of everything needed for list building for 10% of the effort, much as Contrast paints do your base, shade and highlights in one pass.

Even if that's true (and I've no idea how you'd show it is), the problem is that each part of the whole is not equal. That last 10% might be the most important part. I'd certainly agree GW seems to have put about 10% effort into this system though.

MongooseMatt wrote:

As for smoother, the new system allows for army building within minutes (seconds?) with any addition done in your head or the back of an envelope. If you can accept that the 'correct' points value of a unit is not a laser-focussed point but a broader range across the spectrum, then it has every chance of nailing issues more often than not without getting bogged down in the weeds.

This is another comment that comes up time and again in this thread and I just don't think it's accurate. Building lists is, on average, taking me longer with the new system because of the lack of granularity. In order to make adjustments you need to take out entire units, then often rework chunks of your list to get close to the limit. Previously you'd just remove a model here or there, or add an upgrade or two to a couple of units.

It's also been demonstrated repeatedly that this new system doesn't "nail issues more often than not". It creates more because of how half-assed the implementation is. This goes back to your 90/10 comment, I think. The bit GW have skimped on is the important bit. They've done all the lazy stuff but failed to even attempt to follow through on their design goals, leaving us with the mess we currently have.

I agree that the new system is more annoying. It is playing Tetris with huge unwieldy chunks. In old system you could always adjust wargear or remove or add individual squad members to get the points to match. Now if you're a few points over you need to swap whole units. And smaller your collection is, more difficult this becomes.

MongooseMatt wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
Please elaborate what you mean with "the current system is smoother" and what the "90/10" rule is.

I'll take the 90/10 rule first, as it is way less subjective

It basically boils down to 90% of the effect for 10% of the effort. Think of the new edition's list building as the points equivalent of Contrast paints. You get 90% of everything needed for list building for 10% of the effort, much as Contrast paints do your base, shade and highlights in one pass.

And, actually, you have just reminded me of something, a conversation I had with one of the 40k designers long ago - when it comes to rules writing, they said that if they had a choice between doing a page of rules that covered every possible eventuality or a single paragraph that covered 90% of them... they went with the single paragraph.

Huh, that 90% again. Sorry, I digress, that just popped into my head...

Just for your interest, it's customary that it's more like 80/20, and known as the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, much more widely known than a 90/10 rule
It originated in economics, and acquired its current meaning via a detour through computer science:

In computer science the Pareto principle can be applied to optimization efforts.[16] For example, Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most-reported bugs, 80% of the related errors and crashes in a given system would be eliminated.[17] Lowell Arthur expressed that "20% of the code has 80% of the errors. Find them, fix them!"[18] It was also discovered that, in general, 80% of a piece of software can be written in 20% of the total allocated time. Conversely, the hardest 20% of the code takes 80% of the time. This factor is usually a part of COCOMO estimating for software coding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Tsagualsa wrote:


Just for your interest, it's customary that it's more like 80/20, and known as the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, much more widely known than a 90/10 rule
It originated in economics, and acquired its current meaning via a detour through computer science:

Much appreciated, thank you. As far as GW is concerned, I believe it is actually the 90/10 they work to - happy to be corrected on this.

MongooseMatt wrote:
I'll take the 90/10 rule first, as it is way less subjective

It basically boils down to 90% of the effect for 10% of the effort. Think of the new edition's list building as the points equivalent of Contrast paints. You get 90% of everything needed for list building for 10% of the effort, much as Contrast paints do your base, shade and highlights in one pass.

And, actually, you have just reminded me of something, a conversation I had with one of the 40k designers long ago - when it comes to rules writing, they said that if they had a choice between doing a page of rules that covered every possible eventuality or a single paragraph that covered 90% of them... they went with the single paragraph.

Huh, that 90% again. Sorry, I digress, that just popped into my head...

I understand what you mean, though I'm more familiar with the aforementioned 80/20. Hard to tell one way or another how GW or even specific departments work or what guidelines they follow.

MongooseMatt wrote:
As for smoother, the new system allows for army building within minutes (seconds?) with any addition done in your head or the back of an envelope. If you can accept that the 'correct' points value of a unit is not a laser-focussed point but a broader range across the spectrum, then it has every chance of nailing issues more often than not without getting bogged down in the weeds.

I do have some ideas of where things become better. balance-wise, with the new system and I am happy to discuss them. I can also see why some might be less than happy with the new system over old, but also think that for many this will... pass.

As I said, happy to discuss any of this further, this is just where I am coming from/my starting position.

Do you agree with the pro and con list I made some pages ago?

If yes, I would like to hear if/why the pro side outweighs the con side. If not, I'd like to hear your reasoning for it.

MongooseMatt wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:


Just for your interest, it's customary that it's more like 80/20, and known as the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, much more widely known than a 90/10 rule
It originated in economics, and acquired its current meaning via a detour through computer science:

Much appreciated, thank you. As far as GW is concerned, I believe it is actually the 90/10 they work to - happy to be corrected on this.

"80/20" and "90/10" are both heuristics anyways, it's a moot point. The thing about the Pareto Principle though is that you have to be clever - yes, you can get 80% done with 20% of the effort, but that 20% that's expended needs to be used efficiently. It doesn't seem like GW gets that.

a_typical_hero wrote:

Do you agree with the pro and con list I made some pages ago?

If yes, I would like to hear if/why the pro side outweighs the con side. If not, I'd like to hear your reasoning for it.

I would be happy to.

- It is faster to write an army list / Less micro in how you equip your stuff, as it won't effect the total cost of the unit.
- Units get to use wargear that was underutilised before.

These are both true, obviously. Don't know if we want to take a massive dive on this but these are not the only advantages. To stick to the points you made though:

- The time saved during army list creation is negligible and somewhat countered by the fact that it is harder to achieve exactly the desired points value.

It is not necessarily about time saved, it is about approachability. Everything is right at your fingertips and just works so smoothly - in comparison, the last edition was a complete pain in the rear end with points tending to be scattered in different sections, and possibly multiple documents (and I say this as someone who has been playing since 1st edition, 8th and 9th were the two that really did not sit well with me, despite having a great core rules system).

- Unit size is locked in many places now where you are unable to add or remove a single model to accomodate spare points over or under your game size.

Yes, this is true, and I have been thinking about this. I have a suspicion (haven't spoken to anyone at GW HQ about this, so unsubstantiated comment coming) this might be intentional, and it is an aid to unit balancing. Bear with me...

Imagine you were building your 2,000 point list in the last (or any previous) edition. You take a Flamer out of one squad because you figured it was unlikely to have much of an effect on the battle, you take a model out of another unit, because that is not really going to cost you, you make all these little trims and cuts... and you are finally able to squeeze in that extra elite unit/tank/aircraft/hero. List optimised.

The thing is (and this is only a suspicion as to the - or a - reason)... it is possible you were not supposed to squeeze in that extra unit. You have got yourself a whole new unit, and have done so by trimming elements of your army that you decided would not have much effect on the battle. That makes (in a way) the unit free.

Okay, not free - but we start getting into a situation where not all points are equal, where some points are doing more work than others... and, speaking from experience, I can tell you that this is a blinking nightmare for game design If this is the case, I can understand why they would lean into it.

- Since not all upgrades are created equal but cost the same, there now exist optimal loadouts, which in turn means less variety on the field.

Maybe. This is an implementation thing and, over time, I think this will smooth out, especially when you look at how new units are being configured.

First off, we do not have to start with a premise that, say, a Lascannon is automatically worth more than a Heavy Bolter because it is more powerful. You can make upgrades situational so that they all become much closer to an averaged centrepoint. Which is better, the Lascannon or Heavy Bolter? Depends whether you are shooting at a Carnifex or a Gaunt - but taken over a range of games and armies, they will both fall into the same range of points (and, remember, we are looking for a tight-ish spectrum of what things are worth, not a laser focus - which does not work for reasons I would be happy to go into). So an absolute optimal loadout is less likely to appear, at least in a long-lasting stable form (the meta changes).

Now, you will be able to point out a number of instances in the current lists where it might seem this is not working perfectly, and I might well agree. On a first release/temporary set of lists? I would be amazed if everything was perfect However, if all goes well, this will start to smooth out over subsequent Codexes and miniatures releases. I think that would be the aim. The current Indexes are just there to get us playing.

Second, some loadouts of the past will fall out of favour. Of course they will, this happens with every edition. If a hyper-optimised unit is no longer viable... that might actually be a feature not a bug. Others will fall by the wayside for other reasons (it might simply not be worth implementing one unit's upgrade if it means additional rules or janking a dozen other units over, for example).

- As units are pointed with upgrades taken in mind, you get less bang for your buck unless you take the "most expensive" things.

Eh, sure. Sort of

I heard someone say the other day that they are quite happy for their Marine Sergeant to have the Plasma Pistol or Thunder Hammer, because those things are fundamentally more fun to use than a Bolt Pistol or Chainsword. I find that a difficult argument to beat.

However, as I mentioned above, this will smooth over time because people will gravitate to what they view as best as they have done with every new edition that has ever been released. But, you ask, what about the people who have units built and painted for the old way of doing things? Does it just suck for them?

Umm... maybe, yes. As has happened with every edition that has come before. There have always been winners and losers and that becomes all the more inevitable when you have a change of core mechanics. It is possible that a new Leman Russ Datasheet will appear without sponsons... But I think in the next year or two, every Leman Russ you see on the table will have sponsons. Unless they are playing in 30k. Or they are with the narrative gamers.

- Depending on how much leeway you get for WYSIWYG, you might have to get new models or modify existing ones, if you don't have the best loadout and don't want to be handicapped for taking a missile launcher instead of a lascannon (silly you).

In the best of all possible worlds, unless you have really gone deep into this kind of optimisation, the differences should be minute (should as in an ideal, not necessarily as what we have now). Let's say a Lascannon is x% better than a Missile Launcher across the board. That difference will have no appreciable effect on the game, even if you take them across multiple units in the same army, because the points balance for each unit is based on a broader range and not a laser focus where one specific points value is correct and every deviation is wrong. These games simply do not work that way (they can, to a decent degree, and I am happy to talk about it but I want to keep this post from waffling ).

- If a specific wargear option is too strong on a unit, all other options will be nerfed alongside, which only helps to exacerbate the aforementioned problems.

This goes into the argument above - in the best of all worlds, different wargear will have different uses in different situations, each of which wil end up with a similar effect on the result of a battle (wildly different though the actual effects might be). There will be weak points in this argument upon the edition's new release, because 40k is just too big and complex (I do not envy the 40k design team), but over time they get ironed out.

At the end of the day, I think a lot of anger (not saying it is from you ) may be coming from trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. This is a brand new edition rather than a slight tweaking, and trying to do things the old way is oft going to lead to frustration. It is my belief (which I reserve the right to change down the road...) that in a year's time a lot of this will be less worrisome.

At the end of the day, it is still a fun game which is why most of us are here...

MongooseMatt wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
Please elaborate what you mean with "the current system is smoother" and what the "90/10" rule is.

I'll take the 90/10 rule first, as it is way less subjective

It basically boils down to 90% of the effect for 10% of the effort. Think of the new edition's list building as the points equivalent of Contrast paints. You get 90% of everything needed for list building for 10% of the effort, much as Contrast paints do your base, shade and highlights in one pass.

And, actually, you have just reminded me of something, a conversation I had with one of the 40k designers long ago - when it comes to rules writing, they said that if they had a choice between doing a page of rules that covered every possible eventuality or a single paragraph that covered 90% of them... they went with the single paragraph.

Huh, that 90% again. Sorry, I digress, that just popped into my head...

As for smoother, the new system allows for army building within minutes (seconds?) with any addition done in your head or the back of an envelope. If you can accept that the 'correct' points value of a unit is not a laser-focussed point but a broader range across the spectrum, then it has every chance of nailing issues more often than not without getting bogged down in the weeds.

When was the last time you made a list in seconds? You'll have to do a lot more math because you have to go back and forth between combinations of units instead of just including the things you want in the highest possible quantity as pts allow.

I do have some ideas of where things become better. balance-wise, with the new system and I am happy to discuss them. I can also see why some might be less than happy with the new system over old, but also think that for many this will... pass.

As I said, happy to discuss any of this further, this is just where I am coming from/my starting position.

Would you agree that it wouldn't be a tonne of effort to make all sponsons and hunter-killer missiles cost a few pts?

Karol wrote:
True. My army has 1 ancient and one apothecary, because they were characters. Now each one of my 5 termintor units should have one. GW doesn't sell separate models of apothecaries or ancients. So in order to update my army, I would have to buy 4 boxes of termintors, Which is more or less equal to rebuying the entire army. And the difference between a -1OC and resurecting a dead termintor per turn, for the same cost is HUGE.

OR....
You buy 1 box (because you need the bodies, weapons, etc) & you go bitz shopping on EBay or such for the Apothecary arm x4 (just the arm with the drill thingy).
Nowhere near the cost of re-buying an army.

I am all for "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" but I am also against using that as an excuse to do bad work.

GW bothered to put a LOT of effort into a (somewhat) unique bespoke rule for each datasheet in the entire game, apparently as a way to seek depth.

I bet that took a huge amount of that 10% of the effort (relative to whatever their effort was before). If they had dropped that strange thing and focused that same level of effort on, say, getting points costs right and deepening the core rules to achieve the required depth, I think they would have actually been applying the 90/10 rule.

ccs wrote:

Karol wrote:
True. My army has 1 ancient and one apothecary, because they were characters. Now each one of my 5 termintor units should have one. GW doesn't sell separate models of apothecaries or ancients. So in order to update my army, I would have to buy 4 boxes of termintors, Which is more or less equal to rebuying the entire army. And the difference between a -1OC and resurecting a dead termintor per turn, for the same cost is HUGE.

OR....
You buy 1 box (because you need the bodies, weapons, etc) & you go bitz shopping on EBay or such for the Apothecary arm x4 (just the arm with the drill thingy).
Nowhere near the cost of re-buying an army.

They are the most expensive bits here currently from the box, but good news is other grey knight bits seem to be going down.
So I do think it’s rather huge ask considering the price of them on the market to make up for GW silliness.

And once you've done that, 11th will come out and put all the prices back again.

You know. To keep up the chur- er, because GW listens.

 vict0988 wrote:

When was the last time you made a list in seconds? You'll have to do a lot more math because you have to go back and forth between combinations of units instead of just including the things you want in the highest possible quantity as pts allow.

Umm, last week? I was showing a complete newbie the new rules and I quickly knocked up two 600 point armies (the Dark Angels were scouting out an outpost that had stopped communicating, only to run into the Death Guard), and then a 1,000 pointer to continue the story (the Dark Angels originally got repulsed, but came back loaded for bear).

 vict0988 wrote:

Would you agree that it wouldn't be a tonne of effort to make all sponsons and hunter-killer missiles cost a few pts?

Doing things the old way, sure. Even better if they put those points on the datasheets/unit descriptions (pet peeve of last edition).

But okay, let's tackle your specific example of the sponsons (this will mostly apply to the Hunter-Killer too, but let's concentrate on one thing).

I put it to you that, nine times out of ten, those sponsons will not have an appreciable effect on the outcome of a battle - in which case... their presence (or not) will disappear into the broad range of the unit's value (remember, what I am driving at is that the points cost for a unit is not a laser point focus of a precise number - in these types of games it cannot, and should not, be). I will concede that, in this example, there are cases that may raise an eyebrow, as it were - a Demolisher with Multi-Meltas, for example, or an Exterminator/Punisher with Heavy Bolters, as both are adding to the main role of the unit. But your average Leman Russ with Heavy Bolters or Heavy Flamers... I would venture not so much.

However, at the same time, I would also propose that in a year's time, damn near every Leman Russ you see will have sponsons.

I guess that, ultimately, my point is that there is no singular fixed points cost that absolutely describes any unit in the game. Each unit has a range of values that would work, to one degree or another, and it is the job of the designer to get the points in the mid-portion of that range. And if the majority of weapon options also fall in that range... why not have just one points cost for them all? Simplified, but not simple.

I am not saying it is a perfect implementation. I am saying that I think this is where the system is coming from and that, with careful attention, it can work perfectly well for good games of 40k. I am not sure we can ask more of it than that.

so I rate the current system 30/90, not 90/10
you get 30% effect, for 90% effort

example with the Wraitknight, taking away points from options cuts 10% off in time in list building, unit costs always the same but list building does not change much because which units are taken in which combination is still important and taking the right units to fill the points as exact as possible is still there
Could be 20% off but this depends on the unit, and only if you change that more often, so 10% less effort for list building overall, not more as the important part is still the same

yet for the effect, Wraithknight has 1 out of 3 loadouts matching the points for the unit, the other ones are not worth taking for the cost or under performing for the price
so we get 30% effect, could be more with other units but could be less as well
some armies, with lot more datacards might have better ratio, but as everyone gets the same point system to use, exceptions don't help much so overall, 30% effect

so compared to the old system, which was not perfect and maybe an 80/20, we have 30% of the former effect for 90% of the former effort

yeah, no, I don't see the big improvement here, as being a little bit faster once (unless you are a WAAC guy that needs to change the list every time to adjust it for the opponent) for bigger imbalance and less options with only 1 valid option per unit left
I cannot agree that this is anywhere near the 90/10

MongooseMatt wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
it is about approachability.

Trap choices makes a game less approachable. Sponsons are trap choices, therefore 10th is less approachable because of PL. Have you looked at the Combat Patrol rules for Astra Militarum? It's practically a warcrime giving a new player that many weapons to keep track of. Complicated and unapproachable, but still the right choice to lessen the number of new players making trap choices when building their Combat Patrol to later upgrade to 2k.

- Unit size is locked in many places now where you are unable to add or remove a single model to accomodate spare points over or under your game size.

Yes, this is true, and I have been thinking about this. I have a suspicion (haven't spoken to anyone at GW HQ about this, so unsubstantiated comment coming) this might be intentional, and it is an aid to unit balancing. Bear with me...

Imagine you were building your 2,000 point list in the last (or any previous) edition. You take a Flamer out of one squad because you figured it was unlikely to have much of an effect on the battle, you take a model out of another unit, because that is not really going to cost you, you make all these little trims and cuts... and you are finally able to squeeze in that extra elite unit/tank/aircraft/hero. List optimised.

The thing is (and this is only a suspicion as to the - or a - reason)... it is possible you were not supposed to squeeze in that extra unit. You have got yourself a whole new unit, and have done so by trimming elements of your army that you decided would not have much effect on the battle. That makes (in a way) the unit free.

Okay, not free - but we start getting into a situation where not all points are equal, where some points are doing more work than others... and, speaking from experience, I can tell you that this is a blinking nightmare for game design If this is the case, I can understand why they would lean into it.

When you pay 200 for a Leman Russ with sponsons your points are doing more work than when you pay 200 for a Leman Russ without sponsons, what a nightmare to balance! /Sarcasm.

On a first release/temporary set of lists? I would be amazed if everything was perfect

Human errors are expected accidents and can be fixed, systemic errors like free sponsons are automatic and unavoidable and would lead any competent designer to stay away from them if you want to give people the freedom to use their old models and build models how they like. If you don't then you should just come out and say that sponsons are mandatory wargear now and sell some 3d-printed upgrades for it.

I heard someone say the other day that they are quite happy for their Marine Sergeant to have the Plasma Pistol or Thunder Hammer, because those things are fundamentally more fun to use than a Bolt Pistol or Chainsword. I find that a difficult argument to beat.

I like naked Wraiths, the guns didn't exist when I joined 40k and I don't like them. My models are either from before the weapons existed or were bought second hand so I have far from enough guns to glue on all the weapons.

At the end of the day, it is still a fun game which is why most of us are here...

Constructive criticism makes games better.

Umm, last week? I was showing a complete newbie the new rules and I quickly knocked up two 600 point armies (the Dark Angels were scouting out an outpost that had stopped communicating, only to run into the Death Guard), and then a 1,000 pointer to continue the story (the Dark Angels originally got repulsed, but came back loaded for bear).

You would have had to accidentally pick units worth the same number of pts. Writing down the wargear choices taken takes a couple of minutes.

I put it to you that, nine times out of ten, those sponsons will not have an appreciable effect on the outcome of a battle - in which case... their presence (or not) will disappear into the broad range of the unit's value (remember, what I am driving at is that the points cost for a unit is not a laser point focus of a precise number - in these types of games it cannot, and should not, be). I will concede that, in this example, there are cases that may raise an eyebrow, as it were - a Demolisher with Multi-Meltas, for example, or an Exterminator/Punisher with Heavy Bolters, as both are adding to the main role of the unit. But your average Leman Russ with Heavy Bolters or Heavy Flamers... I would venture not so much.

Ten sponsons 100% chance of changing the outcome of the game. You don't know how many Russes without sponsons someone will take, so they should cost pts.

I guess that, ultimately, my point is that there is no singular fixed points cost that absolutely describes any unit in the game. Each unit has a range of values that would work, to one degree or another, and it is the job of the designer to get the points in the mid-portion of that range. And if the majority of weapon options also fall in that range... why not have just one points cost for them all?

Leman Russ is worth A, sponsons are worth B and B>0. A+B must be larger than A.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

MongooseMatt wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:


Just for your interest, it's customary that it's more like 80/20, and known as the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, much more widely known than a 90/10 rule
It originated in economics, and acquired its current meaning via a detour through computer science:

Much appreciated, thank you. As far as GW is concerned, I believe it is actually the 90/10 they work to - happy to be corrected on this.

"80/20" and "90/10" are both heuristics anyways, it's a moot point. The thing about the Pareto Principle though is that you have to be clever - yes, you can get 80% done with 20% of the effort, but that 20% that's expended needs to be used efficiently. It doesn't seem like GW gets that.

Indeed, if you are not clever it can easily lead to 'bikeshedding': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

The idea that Russ sponsons won't change the outcome of a game is, frankly, silly.

The difference between a Punisher and an Exterminator is also not likely to be meaningful along the same judgement with those wide goals, and yet they cost different points.

I mean one could argue that a Russ itself won't have a meaningful impact on the game - the players are free to deploy it in a corner out of LoS and never move...

Free Leman Russes!!! Yaaaay ... At least it doesn't matter if you glued sponsons to them or not.

Apple fox wrote:

ccs wrote:

Karol wrote:
True. My army has 1 ancient and one apothecary, because they were characters. Now each one of my 5 termintor units should have one. GW doesn't sell separate models of apothecaries or ancients. So in order to update my army, I would have to buy 4 boxes of termintors, Which is more or less equal to rebuying the entire army. And the difference between a -1OC and resurecting a dead termintor per turn, for the same cost is HUGE.

OR....
You buy 1 box (because you need the bodies, weapons, etc) & you go bitz shopping on EBay or such for the Apothecary arm x4 (just the arm with the drill thingy).
Nowhere near the cost of re-buying an army.

They are the most expensive bits here currently from the box, but good news is other grey knight bits seem to be going down.
So I do think it’s rather huge ask considering the price of them on the market to make up for GW silliness.

If you want to optimize your unit you'll pay the price.... either $ or time. You're pick wich & how much.
•You can do it Karols crazy expensive way,
•You can go bitz shopping for official bits,
•you can go bitz shopping for 3rd party 3d prints,
•You can ALSO do it completely on the cheap by learning how to scratch build. Numerous ways to do this. Really just takes time & some practice to make the efforts look good/acceptable. What you save on $ here you spend in time.

ccs wrote:

Karol wrote:
True. My army has 1 ancient and one apothecary, because they were characters. Now each one of my 5 termintor units should have one. GW doesn't sell separate models of apothecaries or ancients. So in order to update my army, I would have to buy 4 boxes of termintors, Which is more or less equal to rebuying the entire army. And the difference between a -1OC and resurecting a dead termintor per turn, for the same cost is HUGE.

OR....
You buy 1 box (because you need the bodies, weapons, etc) & you go bitz shopping on EBay or such for the Apothecary arm x4 (just the arm with the drill thingy).
Nowhere near the cost of re-buying an army.

OR

you paint one part for a model white for the apothecary, and one part of another model in whatever color you feel to represent the ancient

MongooseMatt wrote:
I heard someone say the other day that they are quite happy for their Marine Sergeant to have the Plasma Pistol or Thunder Hammer, because those things are fundamentally more fun to use than a Bolt Pistol or Chainsword. I find that a difficult argument to beat.

However, as I mentioned above, this will smooth over time because people will gravitate to what they view as best as they have done with every new edition that has ever been released. But, you ask, what about the people who have units built and painted for the old way of doing things? Does it just suck for them?

Umm... maybe, yes. As has happened with every edition that has come before. There have always been winners and losers and that becomes all the more inevitable when you have a change of core mechanics. It is possible that a new Leman Russ Datasheet will appear without sponsons... But I think in the next year or two, every Leman Russ you see on the table will have sponsons. Unless they are playing in 30k. Or they are with the narrative gamers.

This argument frustrates me because it ignores the fundamental difference between this and prior edition changes.

Maybe in a prior edition those sponsons became a lot cheaper and became a must-take, but at least if you didn't have them you got to save 20pts and put those into something else. Now, you get nothing. Same for all those plasma pistols, power swords, and other upgrades that even when undercosted at least had a cost. There was a trade-off, even if from an optimization standpoint taking the upgrades was generally the correct choice.

Making those upgrades free exacerbates the difference between optimized and unoptimized armies, creating a harsher penalty for having a legacy army. It's the same general effect as prior edition changes except significantly worse.

As I have said repeatedly in this thread I like the idea of sidegrades and having some equipment be a basic part of the profile, but the game is chock-full of upgrades that are straight upgrades and have always been balanced via increased cost. You chalk it up as teething pains with a new edition, but I don't see how GW can balance, say, laspistols against plasma pistols without doing something really weird, design-intensive, and less likely to achieve balance than just putting a cost on it.

And frankly, the idea that we shouldn't worry because a year from now everyone will be rocking optimized loadouts is a really threadbare excuse. In 8th Ed I could put together a pretty strong Tyranids list by cherry-picking the good units and upgrades and avoiding the bad ones, but I didn't like getting railroaded into specific builds nor did I hear people use the fact that I could still build an effective list to justify bad internal balance. Trap choices are a bad thing. Options with obvious correct and incorrect choices are a bad thing. This was never controversial before.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Any extra time you save on army assembly using power level is nullified by the extra time it takes to resolve all the different weapons that someone can take under that system. That's a fair chunk of extra rolling.

Also, there is no universal rule that points have to be integer values. If a bolt pistol isn't worth 1 point, then is it worth 0.5?

Ultimately what 'a point' is is more a question of convenience and habit - 'We play Warhammer at 2000 points' is something everybody has a pretty clear picture of, but of course nothing would hinder you from taking everything x5 and having a 10.000 points battle at the same size. In 40k, '1 point' was about the worth of the smallest possible upgrades for most of the time (so bolt pistols or frag grenades, for example), 2nd edition had fractional points, but only for bottom of the barrel stuff like bows and clubs for cultist and such. If you want more granularity, you can always up the points overall, or as an alternative make upgrades for the whole unit cost e.g. 5pts or whatever even if it concerns 30 models. Of course, nowadays everything is divisible by 5 anyway, which means that now you don't even use all of the granularity you already have available.

Fun fact - points systems don't scale linearly. Learned that the hard way several editions ago, turned out 5k points of Eldar didn't have much trouble tabling 8-10k points of just about any other army. Worth keeping in mind to that increasing the cost of a 5 point model or piece of wargear to 10 points is a significantly larger increase in cost than increasing a 50 point model or piece of wargear to 55 points. Theyre both 5 point increases, but one is a 100% increase and the other a 10% increase. Put another way, increasing the cost of something from 5 points to 6 points is a 20% increase, and from 5 points to 4 points a 20% decrease. Increasing the cost of something from 50 points to 51 points is a 2% increase and from 50 to 49 a 2% decrease. In other words, a 1 point adjustment to a low cost model/wargear is much more substantial than a 1 point adjustment to a high cost model/wargear in terms of its relationship to the rest of the army. This is why hiking the cost of guardsmen from 4 points to 5 points basically killed Guard a few years ago, but 5-10+ point adjustments to the cost of a leman russ, etc. did nothing to make it more competitive.

Granularity is a myth. You can ascribe infinitesimally small fractions of a point (or just inflate your point scale from 2k points to 20k points so you can maintain whole numbers), you will not find better balance by having a wider range of numbers to assign to any given model or piece of kit. Point systems don't actually work that way (force shaping, not resource costing, etc.). I have never seen a game that increased its point scale to improve "granularity" actually get more balanced. Conversely, I have seen games that have become less granular and cut their points scale by a factor of ~10 (Flames of War, Warmachine) become more balanced as a result - and yes in the case of Flames of War that is in spite of many units have "free options" available to them, or options that carry flat cost increases regardless of how many models in the unit benefit from it.

All this talk about PL giving time savings, etc. is just smoke. Its irrelevant, we all know it is. The fact of the matter is that points suck. Y'all were just as pissy and moany about game balance and complained about over-optimized lists when every individual piece of wargear in the game had a point cost associated with it, and endlessly tinkering with those costs never actually really produced the mythical balance that you argue that it would (units went from "must take in every army" to "I'll never take these off the shelf", rarely anything in between), etc. Balance now looks to probably be just as poor, the tweaks probably still won't make anything better, but at least theres no more over-optimization.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Granularity is a myth. You can ascribe infinitesimally small fractions of a point (or just inflate your point scale from 2k points to 20k points so you can maintain whole numbers), you will not find better balance by having a wider range of numbers to assign to any given model or piece of kit. Point systems don't actually work that way (force shaping, not resource costing, etc.). I have never seen a game that increased its point scale to improve "granularity" actually get more balanced. Conversely, I have seen games that have become less granular and cut their points scale by a factor of ~10 (Flames of War, Warmachine) become more balanced as a result - and yes in the case of Flames of War that is in spite of many units have "free options" available to them, or options that carry flat cost increases regardless of how many models in the unit benefit from it.

The smallest possible point value needed is entirely dependant on the regular point size of your game and how much your rules are able to represent different point values. Having 1pt upgrades in a 20k game is probably not necessary or even possible to express it in a meaningful way in the actual ruleset.

chaos0xomega wrote:
All this talk about PL giving time savings, etc. is just smoke. Its irrelevant, we all know it is. The fact of the matter is that points suck. Y'all were just as pissy and moany about game balance and complained about over-optimized lists when every individual piece of wargear in the game had a point cost associated with it, and endlessly tinkering with those costs never actually really produced the mythical balance that you argue that it would (units went from "must take in every army" to "I'll never take these off the shelf", rarely anything in between), etc. Balance now looks to probably be just as poor, the tweaks probably still won't make anything better, but at least theres no more over-optimization.

Just because the cook isn't able to get a burger right doesn't mean I don't want to have burgers. The cook should just be way better at making burgers by now, given that he isn't doing anything else for 30 years. Tournament play will - naturally - only show the most streamlined units and lists that somebody comes up with once and then gets copied over and over again, until some change shakes up the meta. If the balance between them is close enough, nobody in a casual game would mind taking Eradicators, MM attack bikes, combi-melta Sternguard in Drop Pods or quad lascannon Predators. They will all do something against enemy tanks and it is up to the player which models they like the most or possess. The implicit need for over-optimisation is stronger now, as the consolidation prize for weaker selections in the form of cheaper upgrade costs are completely gone.

Yeah, this is cart before the horse.

"Points can't achieve perfect balance so we gave up on balancing altogether" is like the kid that said "I will grow old and die someday and my teeth will rot then so why do I have to brush them now?"