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Its going good.

Played in a three-round 46 player local tournament on the weekend - the event had sold out and they made some space. We still had a waiting list.

I like the missions and cards and this sentiment seemed to be universal - almost everyone took Tactical Objectives. I took Dark Angels. My games were all quite close. The first two against Iron Hands and Thousand Sons were high-scoring with some big turns but my third game (and loss) was a low-scoring affair.

The top player was Aeldari, and he quickly blew his opponents off the table each round. Maybe that's a feature of 10th and not a bug?

The top ten included five Space Marines with my Dark Angels just on the outside looking in at 11th place having gone 2 and 1. My third opponent placed fourth with his Orks. Two(!?!) Death Guard and a Grey Knights were also in the top ten.

Our results were, perhaps, atypical due to the brief given to us by the TO going in (keep it friendly)? I do think that they need to lock the developers in a building for a month with some competitive players to fix the balance. They also need to remove Towering or make it as Line of Sight is reciprocal.

So its early days but our little community seems to be doing well with 10th.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Firstly, you played Combat Patrol, which is to 40k what Warcry is to Warhammer. It's not really 10th. Secondly, you played Death Guard, arguably the worst army in 10th.

I don't think that's a good metric from which to base your conclusions.

but it is what GW wants new players to experience as metric if they like it or not
buy the combat patrol you like most, play the game with pre-made, (advertised as balanced) army lists and having so much fun that buy more stuff to play the full game

if their new intro fails on that level and someone does not like it all, no reason to continue and spending more money to realise that balance (or the army you like) does not get better

PS: compare it to someone hitting his head when trying to get into a new car, it does not matter how well it drives, the chance to buy is gone the moment the very first experience is negative

More like the person hitting their head when walking through the door on the way into the dealership. They're not even at the car yet - they can just see it from where they are.

Combat Patrol isn't 10th. Playing Combat Patrol doesn't mean you've played 10th. It means you've played some weird intro version of the game mandated by people who don't design games so that they could sell more expensive boxes.

GW advertises something different, "CP is the ideal way to start playing 40k" and also "the fast and fun way to play 40k"

now you are saying GW is wrong and CP is not the real 40k as only matched play and crusade are "real" 40k

GWs fault if their false advertising is hitting them back, not ours
so someone doing what GW suggested and being disappointed, no need to convince them that it will get better if they spend 5 times the money for a "real" army

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
More like the person hitting their head when walking through the door on the way into the dealership. They're not even at the car yet - they can just see it from where they are.

Combat Patrol isn't 10th. Playing Combat Patrol doesn't mean you've played 10th. It means you've played some weird intro version of the game mandated by people who don't design games so that they could sell more expensive boxes.

What does a larger game add to 10th in your eyes at that point? They use the exact same rules, but with obviously fewer options and less stuff in a smaller space.

Dudeface wrote:
What does a larger game add to 10th in your eyes at that point? They use the exact same rules, but with obviously fewer options and less stuff in a smaller space.

More units on the table so games are less likely to be decided by "I killed your one anti-tank unit on turn 1, my tank now wins" and not being locked into the weird combat patrol armies and their random incoherent unit/upgrade choices.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

The top player was Aeldari, and he quickly blew his opponents off the table each round. Maybe that's a feature of 10th and not a bug?

Or the eldar is busted. At least fate dice got nerfed quite a bit but they still have too cheap units.

[qupte]Our results were, perhaps, atypical due to the brief given to us by the TO going in (keep it friendly)? I do think that they need to lock the developers in a building for a month with some competitive players to fix the balance. They also need to remove Towering or make it as Line of Sight is reciprocal.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
More units on the table so games are less likely to be decided by "I killed your one anti-tank unit on turn 1, my tank now wins" and not being locked into the weird combat patrol armies and their random incoherent unit/upgrade choices.

This is true - but your opponent now has more units to kill your 2-3 anti-tank units.

I'm not sure I'd judge 10th entirely on one combat patrol game, but I'm not sure its as far away as that. The DG Combat Patrol sucks - but the DG index also sucks. Playing 2k points of it, so you can lose from deployment against Eldar/Knights/GSC/Custodes/Thousand Sons/Daemons/Tyranids/Necrons (etc etc) isn't automatically going to give you a better experience.

You can I guess say "ah, but to get the real 10th experience you just shouldn't play, idk, half, two/thirds, 5/6ths... of the factions" - but that seems a bit limiting.

Tyel wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
More units on the table so games are less likely to be decided by "I killed your one anti-tank unit on turn 1, my tank now wins" and not being locked into the weird combat patrol armies and their random incoherent unit/upgrade choices.

This is true - but your opponent now has more units to kill your 2-3 anti-tank units.

I'm not sure I'd judge 10th entirely on one combat patrol game, but I'm not sure its as far away as that. The DG Combat Patrol sucks - but the DG index also sucks. Playing 2k points of it, so you can lose from deployment against Eldar/Knights/GSC/Custodes/Thousand Sons/Daemons/Tyranids/Necrons (etc etc) isn't automatically going to give you a better experience.

You can I guess say "ah, but to get the real 10th experience you just shouldn't play, idk, half, two/thirds, 5/6ths... of the factions" - but that seems a bit limiting.

I suppose the question is around that word experience. Combat patrol does use the entirety of the core rules, so it might be fair to say you're happy with the rules within the confines of a smaller game. It's not the same experience as a 2k army using a mission deck however, but it is the same rules.

Tyel wrote:
This is true - but your opponent now has more units to kill your 2-3 anti-tank units.

Right, but now you have redundancy against bad dice, more options to put stuff in reserves, etc. With 500 point games RNG has too much of an effect because one attack decides the game. If your one anti-tank unit dies you lose. If your anti-tank unit rolls hot and kills their one tank on turn 1 you win. But when you're talking about 5-10 anti-tank units vs. 5-10 tanks you start getting to the point where you're rolling enough dice for things to reliably be close to the average. Some exchanges go your way, some go your opponent's way, and usually there's enough balance that you end up with a meaningful game. And even if the dice are against you that one tank isn't your entire army, you still have other units that can hope to score some VP and keep you in the game.

It's also a matter of decision points. With only 1-3 (meaningful) units per side max there's not a lot of strategy involved. You know what your one unit needs to do, you know what your opponent's one unit needs to do, and after turn 1 it's very often clear who the winner is and there's no need to play out the rest of the game. At 2000 points with more stuff on the table you have a lot more room for "if X then Y" chains and weighing different options with fewer obvious correct answers.

tneva82 wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

The top player was Aeldari, and he quickly blew his opponents off the table each round. Maybe that's a feature of 10th and not a bug?

Or the eldar is busted. At least fate dice got nerfed quite a bit but they still have too cheap units.

[qupte]Our results were, perhaps, atypical due to the brief given to us by the TO going in (keep it friendly)? I do think that they need to lock the developers in a building for a month with some competitive players to fix the balance. They also need to remove Towering or make it as Line of Sight is reciprocal.

Make it what?

Towering as is works both way. He sees you, you see him.

One way tournaments can help with towering is upgrade terrain. Towering still needs to physically see the enemy so good 4-5" solid walls will cover from towering. You could model boards over windows in ruins etc if you don't want to go just for big foam walls.

Having played where physically big enough terrain pieces to block entire knight for several editions helps here.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
It's also a matter of decision points. With only 1-3 (meaningful) units per side max there's not a lot of strategy involved. You know what your one unit needs to do, you know what your opponent's one unit needs to do, and after turn 1 it's very often clear who the winner is and there's no need to play out the rest of the game. At 2000 points with more stuff on the table you have a lot more room for "if X then Y" chains and weighing different options with fewer obvious correct answers.

I agree - that's why I'm not a fan of armies which are 2 WKs, 3 Fire Prisms and the Yncarne, Belakor and 5 Greater Daemons, 3 bricks of Custodes that with character attachments are 550-600 points each, knights etc.

Some armies go wider than others but that's not universal.

Re: the Oath of Moment discussion, I think limiting it to INFANTRY would help a bit, but I'm not sure if that would limit it too much.

The Doctrines are what they should've done from the beginning with that idea, too. AP bonuses were hard to keep track of, though my brain isn't exactly 'normal'.

SM are over-tuned right now, but I definitely like how the core ideas work.

Doing a bit of 10th. Liking it mostly. I feel like warhammer 40k is always at it’s best before the inevitable codex bloat. I don’t like the approach to special weapons or that we only get to pick what’s in a box now. I do very much like that gw is dipping their toes into alternate unit activation. We have some abilities now that’s used during the opponents turn. I like that, 40k has always had the issue of being very passive when it’s not your turn.

Well it was going great. I was liking the rules and super excited that life has lined up again at the perfect time to give me time to play.

Then the marine culling announcement happened and I’ve lost all desire to play or even think about 40k.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Re: the Oath of Moment discussion, I think limiting it to INFANTRY would help a bit, but I'm not sure if that would limit it too much.

The Doctrines are what they should've done from the beginning with that idea, too. AP bonuses were hard to keep track of, though my brain isn't exactly 'normal'.

SM are over-tuned right now, but I definitely like how the core ideas work.

meaning the target can only be infantry or the benefit only applies to infantry? Because both are pretty bad changes IMO.

OoM should be a "once per battle" for one phase

Dudeface wrote:
What does a larger game add to 10th in your eyes at that point?

Choice. And being larger has nothing to do with it. You can play 40k at Combat Patrol points levels and it'd be far better.

Dudeface wrote:
They use the exact same rules, but with obviously fewer options and less stuff in a smaller space.

I'd argue they don't, specifically because they use set pre-determined forces. It's not 40k. It's a store demo game writ large.

Very rough so far. 1-1-2 record, so I've seen all the results.

Had an incredibly boring game last night. Playing crusade, 1000 pt armies.

The main mission required a character and unit to interact and not shoot and charge to score each turn. Most of my secondary missions required units to not do anything to interact to score points. My opponent had lots in deep strike so my shooty units had nothing to shoot at for the first few turns.

So I sat around sitting on objectives with my combat units doing nothing else. Blood Angels didn't get a charge all game.

I got way ahead on VP, because I knew I had to, as from previous experience I knew my opponent would wipe me off the board by turn 3. I was ahead by about 60 VP, then got wiped out (by turn 4 I had 1 unit). We then calculated out the last 2 turns to see if he could get enough VP to overtake me.

Ended up 80something -77 for him.

I don't mind the loss, but not doing anything with my units for the whole game - even though they scored tons of VP and I almost won - was really dull.

Combine this with 3 of my units in my Crusade army being squatted (Assault, Scout snipers and landspeeder) makes me much less inclined to play 10th anymore.

Got my first game in. Marines vs Guard. 1500pts

I used all first born units (so that I could say my Sons of the Rock have played 10th). My opponent had a good mix of tanks and infantry.

We played the mission from the book as the cards looked too complicated for a first game.

My list
Terminator Captain attached to Terminators (5]
Librarian attached to Tac squad with ML and PG
Tac Squad with Melta and Multimelta in Drop pod
Scout snipers with ML
Whirlwind
Vindicator
Speeder with HB
Speeder with MM

Enjoyed the game which we called after turn 3 (ran out of time] with Marines probably on top but still plenty of guard on the table.

Takeaways
Oath of Moment is good but it takes most of 1500 Pts. to kill one Leman Russ even with Oath, except for a Vindicator linked to a Speeder, that doesn’t need the help.

Melta feels really ineffective.

Everything having different abilities was cool but it was a lot of moving parts to remember and part of the army choices was “these are the ones we’ve got cards for”, allied with not going to play Aeldari because that doesn’t feel like fun for anyone.

Precision on the Snipers forced some very careful positioning of characters.
Particularly when we realised it didn’t trigger on critical hits. In the end combined with a plasma overheat it killed a Colonel.

Battle shock didn’t make a lot of difference but I could see that changing as we play into it a bit more.

Used most of my command points on Command re-rolls, definitely felt there was a real balance in using them or keeping them and probably will get better with practice. The captains stratagem rule felt really good.

Lethality is definitely down, watching terminators rapid fire an infantry squad and have it survive was a bit of a shock. Cover is ubiquitous and effective.

Overwatch was the other thing I spent CP on and it was probably a waste, though the threat of suffering it from a Hellhound rooted my tactical squad in place!

From the other side the guard were in the game and had plenty of tools, having a Command tank shoot on death was a nasty surprise, and Executioners live up to their name! Oath of Moment is one of those rules that you can’t do much about from the other side and probably will take a bit of getting used to.

Overall, a good start and looking forward to another game. Delighted with how many quirky old models have rules available and also that all the terrain I’ve bought will see some play as well

Ashitaka wrote:
Very rough so far. 1-1-2 record, so I've seen all the results.

Had an incredibly boring game last night. Playing crusade, 1000 pt armies.

The main mission required a character and unit to interact and not shoot and charge to score each turn. Most of my secondary missions required units to not do anything to interact to score points. My opponent had lots in deep strike so my shooty units had nothing to shoot at for the first few turns.

So I sat around sitting on objectives with my combat units doing nothing else. Blood Angels didn't get a charge all game.

I got way ahead on VP, because I knew I had to, as from previous experience I knew my opponent would wipe me off the board by turn 3. I was ahead by about 60 VP, then got wiped out (by turn 4 I had 1 unit). We then calculated out the last 2 turns to see if he could get enough VP to overtake me.

Ended up 80something -77 for him.

I don't mind the loss, but not doing anything with my units for the whole game - even though they scored tons of VP and I almost won - was really dull.

Combine this with 3 of my units in my Crusade army being squatted (Assault, Scout snipers and landspeeder) makes me much less inclined to play 10th anymore.

If you're playing Crusade, can't you use the Legends cards for those "Squatted" units? Crusade is the best place for Legends units.

Being Legends should only restrict them from use in tournaments.

Also- I don't have the Crusade book to hand, but man, in a Crusade game where all of my opposition is being held in reserve, I'd be hitting my Agendas to earn XP. In Crusade, VP was always far less important to me than XP- winning is fun and all, but if I get to level 3-4 units postgame, who cares if I lost?

I'd have to check the book to find an Agenda that I could do without killing units; certainly there aren't a lot of Agendas out there right now because we don't have dex-based bespoke agendas yet, but I feel like there should have been at least one that your army could have been working on while you were waiting for his reinforcements to arrive.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


meaning the target can only be infantry or the benefit only applies to infantry? Because both are pretty bad changes IMO.

OoM should be a "once per battle" for one phase

meanwhile eldar re-roll their stuff all the time, and in case of stuff like prisms they have an OotM always on, on different targets and on demand they don't have to mark any unit? How about before sub 50% win rate armies get changed, GW starts nerfing the top 1-3 armies first.

But then again the last changes give us a page of weapon options for an autarch, but no one thought that maybe thunder hammers should be added back to GK, to at least characters.

PenitentJake wrote:


If you're playing Crusade, can't you use the Legends cards for those "Squatted" units? Crusade is the best place for Legends units.

Being Legends should only restrict them from use in tournaments.

Yes, we can still use them because we're playing for narrative - it just leaves a bad taste.

I'll look into agendas. He had some units on the table but most were completely out of sight (they had indirect) and the one I could see - he played a strat so that I couldn't shoot them from more than 12" away. (He later did this on 2 units, as they had the special rule that you could target them with a 0cp strat that had already been used)

Playing in to armies with around 70-80% win rates(higher when played by skilled players) is never enjoyable, unless you also happen to play a 70-80% win rate army, that doesn't get hard countered by the other. Such match ups can make for some very exiting games.

Karol wrote:
Playing in to armies with around 70-80% win rates(higher when played by skilled players) is never enjoyable, unless you also happen to play a 70-80% win rate army, that doesn't get hard countered by the other. Such match ups can make for some very exiting games.

only if the only thing you look for in a game is the outcome, i've had plenty of fun playing bad armies against the top ones, because my opponent was a fun player.

Okey go to someone who has an army which has no chance to win against a properly build good army, and who can't just change a game or army, and ask them how much fun do they have doing pick up games. Especialy around normal new players. Go ask a new players whose friend picked "good" factions and he picked a bad one, how much fun is he having getting farmed by them.

Yeah are right though, people can have fun just because they are around fun people. But then the question rises, why spend a 1000$ on models, rules, painting etc, when you could spend it on other stuff which isn't unfun.

Yeah, you can have fun playing snakes and ladders if your opponent is a fun person to spend time with. That is due to the person, the game is immaterial.

Karol wrote:
But then the question rises, why spend a 1000$ on models, rules, painting etc, when you could spend it on other stuff which isn't unfun.

because the models ARE part of the fun....

Karol wrote:
Okey go to someone who has an army which has no chance to win against a properly build good army, and who can't just change a game or army, and ask them how much fun do they have doing pick up games. Especialy around normal new players. Go ask a new players whose friend picked "good" factions and he picked a bad one, how much fun is he having getting farmed by them.
I
Yeah are right though, people can have fun just because they are around fun people. But then the question rises, why spend a 1000$ on models, rules, painting etc, when you could spend it on other stuff which isn't unfun.

1) The fun comes in seeing how well you can do with the bad army.
2) just because the tourney stats say <army> has x win % doesn't mean that's how it's going to play in our game. I guarantee you that the kid playing the GSC in our shops league is NOT enjoying those tourney lv win rates.
3) Sometimes you build something purely for theme%narrative. Ex: I built a Tryanid list that's virtually impossible to actually win with. Fortunately, narrative wise, all I'm really trying to do is infect you bia the Parasite or kill you with spore mines.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Yeah, you can have fun playing snakes and ladders if your opponent is a fun person to spend time with. That is due to the person, the game is immaterial.

If you're going to "play" a boring non-game like that then why have the game at all? Why not just hang out with people if the goal is purely about the social stuff?

(For the record I don't think 40k is quite a non-game on that level.)

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Yeah, you can have fun playing snakes and ladders if your opponent is a fun person to spend time with. That is due to the person, the game is immaterial.

If you're going to "play" a boring non-game like that then why have the game at all? Why not just hang out with people if the goal is purely about the social stuff?

(For the record I don't think 40k is quite a non-game on that level.)

because enjoyment is subjective? If two peeps are down to play snakes and ladder, theyre free to do so without requiring the "PaintingOwl seal of approval"