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Not Online!!! wrote:
 vict0988 wrote:
I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?

What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?

How about adding pts costs for all Crusade options and letting them be used in regular games? That's way too much bloat for pickup games.


And yet the local HH community manages to play with Militia armies.


I did not say you couldn't play with a bloated codex, it just subtracts from the experience of a pickup game. Could you answer the ether/firestorm question?
   
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Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

Adding points for options is now "adding bloat"?

My my, how the Overton Window has shifted...

Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
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 vict0988 wrote:


What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?



I agree. If something doesn't affect player's decisions during the game one bit, it is pointless bloat and belongs on the chopping block.

But of course in this industry you need such meaningless "content" to fill the superfluous supplements you want your customers to buy.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 10:25:47


 
   
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I mean, what would be WRONG with adding options like that? What's lost by not having them? Variety in list building. What's gained? Options.

Options don't necessarily need to have a physical representation to be good.

- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
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You potentially lose the modelling flexibility that abstract options provide.
For example, if my guy can take a 'Power Weapon' then I can model it however I like. It could be a sword, axe, spear, claw, whatever. But if I have a list where every one of those has a unique set of rules, suddenly there is an expectation that my guy will be using them even if they're sub-standard.
Classic example would be when Power Axes were made AP2/Unwieldy in 6E, and suddenly became the best option for sergeants while also becoming useless for characters. Every sergeant wanted to pull off their old swords because they were built for aesthetics rather than rules.
A more recent example would be Chaos Accursed Weapons, which have recombined all manner of melee weapons back into a single profile. While I don't think this should encompass Lightning Claws, it is very nice not to arbitrarily throw away half the bits because they are 10% less effective into MEQs.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 10:43:08


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Wayniac wrote:
I mean, what would be WRONG with adding options like that? What's lost by not having them? Variety in list building. What's gained? Options.

Options don't necessarily need to have a physical representation to be good.


I wouldn't say they are really "options" if they don't affect the way you play. They are meaningless memory load of hardly any relevance for the game state.

What is lost? Elegance of design. The game is too shallow for how big it is. As designers are unable to make the game's basic concepts result in deep gameplay, they try to obfuscate how shallow it is and create an illusion of interesting complexity by making it bigger.

A quote that applies here would be:
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex... It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 10:58:51


 
   
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It's this obsession of abstraction that really makes more and more apathetic to the system with each passing day, ngl. It might not add to your game, it does mine.
   
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I am not against options. I love meaningful options that result in interesting and impactful decisions. The more, the better, I love complex games!

I am against meaningless options that don't affect the game but still take up time and memory and I am also against using them to bury the basic mechanics of the game under a pile of bloat so that maybe some people wont see how shallow and outdated they are.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 11:15:23


 
   
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Cyel wrote:
I am not against options. I love meaningful options that result in interesting and impactful decisions. The more, the better, I love complex games!

I am against meaningless options that don't affect the game but still take up time and memory and I am also against using them to bury the basic mechanics of the game under a pile of bloat so that maybe some people wont see how shallow and outdated they are.
Fair point here. While i personally do like those little things to tweak characters to make them mine, there's a point where it's either too much and just becomes huge bloat (as much as I love the Chaos 3.5 dex it had this in spades), or it turns into the normal "6 choices but 4 are garbage, one is useful in specific situations, and one is good 99% of the time" crap we already get tons of.

- Wayne
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Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

Cyel wrote:
I love meaningful options that result in interesting and impactful decisions. ... I am against meaningless options that don't affect the game but still take up time and memory...
What do you consider to be examples of both of these?

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 vict0988 wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
 vict0988 wrote:
I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?

What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?

How about adding pts costs for all Crusade options and letting them be used in regular games? That's way too much bloat for pickup games.


And yet the local HH community manages to play with Militia armies.


I did not say you couldn't play with a bloated codex, it just subtracts from the experience of a pickup game. Could you answer the ether/firestorm question?


Funny that, the militia list is about half the size of the miles upon miles of books common since 8th edition onwards. So you may want to retry.
No don't need to, because it's a false equivalent. For one Crusade rules are not realistically implementable as rules / pts basis.
For two, one is better sword, and?

For a milita commander you get your choice if you pick a "power weapon".
Alas.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 14:03:00


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Mozzamanx wrote:
You potentially lose the modelling flexibility that abstract options provide.
For example, if my guy can take a 'Power Weapon' then I can model it however I like. It could be a sword, axe, spear, claw, whatever. But if I have a list where every one of those has a unique set of rules, suddenly there is an expectation that my guy will be using them even if they're sub-standard.
Classic example would be when Power Axes were made AP2/Unwieldy in 6E, and suddenly became the best option for sergeants while also becoming useless for characters. Every sergeant wanted to pull off their old swords because they were built for aesthetics rather than rules.
A more recent example would be Chaos Accursed Weapons, which have recombined all manner of melee weapons back into a single profile. While I don't think this should encompass Lightning Claws, it is very nice not to arbitrarily throw away half the bits because they are 10% less effective into MEQs.


This is true to an extent.

However, I would argue that the issue is less a matter of reducing abstraction and more a matter of GW dramatically changing how weapons (or other items) perform between editions.

In 3rd-5th, power weapons of all kinds were de facto AP2 and struck at the model's initiative. Then in 6th-7th Axes became mini power-fists (AP2 but no longer striking at initiative), swords dropped to AP3 (striking at initiative but no longer being effective against all armour types), and Mauls became Big Choppas.

Then in 8th things changed yet again. Axes kept their strength but were only AP-2, but also no longer encumbered the model (either in terms of initiative or in terms of the -1 to hit that Power Fists changed to). Swords, previously had been average against armour but now became the best at penetrating armour with AP3. Only Mauls remained more or less as they had been (though even then not quite as AP-1 was vastly better than AP4).

My point is, the issue is not merely that power weapons were split, it's that they are so inconsistent in how they behave between editions. Even after they were given defined roles, GW couldn't manage to stick to those roles, hence axes and swords literally switching which one is the best against armour.

This is what causes the real issues because there's no guarantee that a weapon will behave consistently between editions.

It's the same reason people don't like the change to vehicles and meltaguns. Because weapons that have always been specifically designed to penetrate and destroy vehicles now struggle to reliably wound vehicles and are apparently meant to be used against heavy infantry instead.


I believe Catbarf made a similar point some pages ago regarding units, wherein a great many units have drastically changed in functionality between editions.

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 the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, when i read the small novel that is the Death Guard unit options and think about resolving the attacks from a melee-oriented min size death guard squad, the thing that springs to mind is "Accessible!"

 Argive wrote:
GW seems to have a crystal ball and just pulls hairbrained ideas out of their backside for the most part.


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 insaniak wrote:

You're not. If you're worried about your opponent using 'fake' rules, you're having fun the wrong way. This hobby isn't about rules. It's about buying Citadel miniatures.

Please report to your nearest GW store for attitude readjustment. Take your wallet.
 
   
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There's that lack of iteration again; never building upon what came before. Always looking for a better wheel.

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On the point about adding/removing options. One thing the rework of 8th (which new 40k is roughly based on) is that new system of weapons and defense went away from certain weapons having niches that they were optional at and being to various degrees less ideal for. Instead it went to a system where it's much easier to have optimal weapons that do most things well and having far fewer niches for weapons to occupy.

Using the old AP and cover system. A weapon like a hot shot las rifle or volley gun was designed to beat MEQs due to their AP3 negating the armor of power armor. The shots plinked off Terminator armor while it was sorta overkill against units with t shirt and cardboard armor but it still bypasses their armor. Put the crap armor models in cover and the AP of the weapon didn't matter because you used the cover save instead. Weapons like flamers that ignored cover and had rather meh AP could slaughter those weak armor infantry while power armored units didn't care that much. The super good AP weapons were usually some combination of high strength / low volume of attacks, risky to use (gets hot), and high points cost which while they could kill most things, were rather cost ineffective against those previously mentioned cheap low armor infantry who used numbers to offset their fragility and cover as their primary means of defense. All of this, while not always the most realistic, created a lot of niches and edge cases were each weapon had a useful place on the battlefield without automatically becoming the default "does it all" weapon. It created both hard and soft counters to various unit stats and defenses. Pile onto that the area of effect weapons which made localized model concentration of an area (and not just how many models at under the template but in the nearby area in case of scatter) play heavily into the effectiveness of a weapon and the decision making that went into target selection.

Post rework weapons, armor, removal of proper area of effect attacks, and the gutting of the cover system makes it so more AP is better because it eats through both armor and cover. It's just weapons that deal multiple damage per wound that end up being overkill against single wound models but even then it's not a total waste if they have a FNP style save. All the edge cases and niches that existed before don't have a place because the math doesn't work out. You end up with a lot of fairly redundant weapons that mostly boil down to killing power for point cost. So having a lot of options might not seem very useful now because the game system was built in a way that made the various combinations of stats differ less.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/10/28 17:20:00


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That's an interesting take. I usually see the opposite take, that 3rd-7th encouraged "does it all weapons" like plasma and autocannons and 8th+ started the introduction of more variety, especially as they expanded the defensive profiles in the game.

edit: re-thinking this the diversification of both weapons and defensive profiles may not have actually occurred until 9th edition

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 15:09:02


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 vipoid wrote:
It's the same reason people don't like the change to vehicles and meltaguns. Because weapons that have always been specifically designed to penetrate and destroy vehicles now struggle to reliably wound vehicles and are apparently meant to be used against heavy infantry instead.


This keeps being said but I don't think its true.
I feel Meltas are still "meant" to be used against vehicles (as much as anything is meant to be used against anything). They just aren't as effective as they were in 9th. Because in 9th they were incredibly powerful - and therefore a significant reason why vehicles died in seconds. Which is something GW was trying to change in this edition.

Its much like how in 8th Plasma was anti-MEQ but really anti-everything weapon because it was so cheap and easy to stack rerolls. GW has then tried in various ways (including points) to cut it back. This isn't I feel a change through the editions - its "this was too good, so we nerfed it".

A possible answer could be buffing melta strength so you are wounding vehicles on 3s or 4s again - but you cap its damage. But I suspect there would be similar complaints about that.

By contrast I think the power maul/power axe/power sword split was an experiment that failed. Trying to have micro-differences in close combat weapons doesn't work because its hard enough to get into combat. Getting across the table and charging - having potentially faced shooting phases, overwatch, being charged in turn etc - has to do lots of damage. The vagaries of S6 AP-1, S5 AP-2 and S4 AP-3 disappear into that opportunity cost. Have them all be S5 AP-2 - on the grounds that this should be an okay stat line into most 40k unit stat lines. The idea that mauls would be slightly better into T5 6+ Orks but the Sword is better into T3 3+ Eldar (if they didn't have invuls) is sort of meaningless.
   
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I suspect theres no one-size-fits-all conclusion to draw about that, as both perspectives are reasonably accurate and fairly valid. I think it mostly comes down to ones personal preferences and how a given individual believes armor penetration is best abstracted and represented within the context of the setting.

A reasonably lore accurate take of the representation of power armor and terminator armor is that its reasonably immune to the effects of weapons not designed specifically to defeat it. Bolter rounds and lasgun fire for example are typically represented as basically glancing or exploding harmlessly against it, and typically only results in injury if a lucky hit is scored against a weak spot such as a joint between armor plates or an unprotected head, etc. On that basis, yeah I kind of think that the all-or-nothing model of pre-8th is more appropriate than the current modifier system where relatively minor weapons that should be shrugged off easily have a slightly improved chance of penetrating the armor.

But then you have guardsmen with flak armor, which is more often than not just a vest, shoulder pads, and a ballistic helmet - theres a lot of exposed unarmored body to hit, so the all-or-nothing approach never entirely made sense - a lasgun or a shoota fired at the face were saved on a 5+, but a bolter went right through and blew a hole out the other side. For something like this I'd argue that the modifier system makes more sense as it better depicts the varying levels of lethality of weapons vs "lesser" armor.

Personally, in the past I've suggested that armor saves should be represented as two values - the actual save itself and a "shrug" value, with the shrug indicating how many points of AP the armor can negate. A guardsmen in flak armor would be Sv 5+ with a Shrug of 0. A Space Marine in Power Armor would be a Sv 3+ with a Shrug of say 1 - so it would only suffer a -1 against a weapon with AP-2, -2 against AP-3, etc. Terminators might be Sv2+ with a Shrug of 2, which allows them to negate the first 2 points of AP a weapon might have, so an AP-4 weapon like a meltagun puts them down to a 4+ save. It seems a good midway point between the two systems, where certain armors can just negate the AP effects of certain weapons, but still degrade against other weapons. It also helps the situation with vehicles, as adding a shrug value to tank armor allows you to limit the armor penetration ability of small arms. I think for a lot of people it probably doesn't sit right that bhot-shot lasguns degrade a leman russ's armor save just as effectively as an autocannon does, which is otherwise a purpose-built light anti tank weapon. The alternative way of managing the shrug would be to make that your all or nothing threshold and you suffer full degradation beyond that. I.E. Space Marine with Shrug 2 gets its full 3+ save against weapons with AP-1 and AP-2, but gets a 6+ save against Ap-3 and no save against AP-4. Thats a little truer to how the old system used to work, but might be too much of an overreaction to the current system. Either way, that two-part system allows you to configure weapons and armor that have a way more meaningful set of possible interactions and design spaces than what we have now. You can make certain weapons more capable against infantry without consequently making them more lethal against tanks at the very least.

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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Adding points for options is now "adding bloat"?

My my, how the Overton Window has shifted...

You'd be happy if I brought 3 units of Lokhust Destroyers with:

One with Each time a model in this unit makes an attack, on an unmodified wound roll of 6, add 1 to the Damage characteristic of that attack and When a model in this unit makes an attack, you can re-roll the hit roll. In your Shooting phase, each time this unit is selected to shoot, models in this unit can only target the closest eligible enemy unit.
In your Charge phase, each time this unit declares a charge, you can only select the closest enemy unit (excluding AIRCRAFT) as the target of that charge.

A second with Each time you make a Reanimation Protocol roll for this unit, you can change a single dice result to a 6 and This unit cannot perform any actions or psychic actions.

And a third with If an enemy model is destroyed as a result of an attack made with this weapon, until the end of the turn, that model's unit is treated as being at below Half-strength and You cannot use any Stratagems to affect this unit, nor can you use the Command Re-roll Stratagem to affect any dice rolls made for it.

On top of their original rules assuming a paid a fair price? I unfortunately still haven't gotten into Crusade in part because to me this seems like too much even if those 6 changes across 3 units is all your list had from Crusade.
Cyel wrote:
 vict0988 wrote:


What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?



I agree. If something doesn't affect player's decisions during the game one bit, it is pointless bloat and belongs on the chopping block.

But of course in this industry you need such meaningless "content" to fill the superfluous supplements you want your customers to buy.

That's my opinion at the moment as well, although we probably differ on where we each think the cutoff should be. My DoC fandex had 1 trillion builds for each Herald so it's not like I can't change my mind back to what most current posters in the thread say they would prefer 40k to look like.
Wayniac wrote:
I mean, what would be WRONG with adding options like that? What's lost by not having them? Variety in list building. What's gained? Options.

Options don't necessarily need to have a physical representation to be good.

The concerns are bogging down pre-game discussions with pointless information, unclear game states as players fail to remember what has what and making balancing the game harder as it's basically impossible to brute force test so many combos and mathing out combos on paper is a hassle. If Crusade options are broken it's not that big a deal, it's expected I'd say and you're expected to tune things down and not bring out the triple Skatachh Wraithknight.
 Vankraken wrote:
On the point about adding/removing options. One thing the rework of 8th (which new 40k is roughly based on) is that new system of weapons and defense went away from certain weapons having niches that they were optional at and being to various degrees less ideal for. Instead it went to a system where it's much easier to have optimal weapons that do most things well and having far fewer niches for weapons to occupy.

Yes, but it's kind of gamey when an AP3 power sword offers no benefit against a 2+ Sv Terminator and we all know how AP4 tended to be looked down upon because 3+Sv was such a common thing in the game. I'm all for gamey things so I I'd be ambivalent about going back, although I think the best thing would be going back to old cover saves. Factions would probably need some work to make this work I think, the current system is really forgiving towards bad game design I'd say, but if you messed up a faction's old-school AP values then their anti-tank could be real useless depending on the damage tables of the edition.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 16:27:50


 
   
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 vict0988 wrote:
I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?

What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
Imo this ia all about implementation. The old Guard Doctrines were about Regimental level Upgrades, so you weren't looking at differences between models trying to see who had a 4+ save.

And to your example, are Relics modeled? Is that an Astartes Chainsword or the Teeth of Terra? A Plasma Pistol or a Master Crafted weapon? There are often not any clear visual distinctions within the current system either.

As for Bloodletters upgrading their weapons, those upgrades may synergise with other abilities, interactions with core rules, or specific targets.

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Alright this thread has stalled into city mouse/country mouse. The soul people feel there's an extreme limiting of options for terrain, missions, characters and unique army builds. The math crunching, power gamers don't understand why you would want an option that seemingly is only fluffy. Because frankly when they see a large list of wargear they get intimidated with all the number crunching they're going to have to do to be able to sleep at night knowing they squeezed the extra 0.2% efficiency out of their character.




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 Rihgu wrote:
That's an interesting take. I usually see the opposite take, that 3rd-7th encouraged "does it all weapons" like plasma and autocannons and 8th+ started the introduction of more variety, especially as they expanded the defensive profiles in the game.

edit: re-thinking this the diversification of both weapons and defensive profiles may not have actually occurred until 9th edition


I don't think plasma was spammed all that much, sure Guard/Scions used it a fair amount but Space Marines spammed grav because it was basically OP against most things. High strength volume of fire weapons like the autocannon equivalents were useful against vehicles because of glancing hits chipped hull points and vehicles didn't have armor saves so they tended to yield better results than the actual heavy hitting anti tank weapons like Lascannons and Railguns. Melta was the exception due to how cheap and reliable they were at damaging/blowing up vehicles. The "does it all" situation wasn't encouraged by the game mechanics and more to do with GW generally being bad at game balance. Selecting the best weapons for their battlefield role was something that mattered quite a bit when doing things like Tau Crisis Suit loadouts and you didn't just default to spamming Riptides.

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As much as I’ve (not entirely unjustifiably) slagged off 3rd-whateverTh vehicle rules?

They were so straight forward, they allowed for evocatively hard weapons and vehicles.

For instance, anything Melta or Lance tended to be well deadly in the right circumstances. But, something like a Monolith outright ignoring those boons made the beneficiary a near meta shifting threat.

And in terms of “well that’s a bit good” and “oh Lawks, I’ve no reliable to knack that monstrosity” the later editions just haven’t quite measured up.

Whether that’s to the benefit or detriment of the game, is one for the individual. I’d argue it remains situational. Certainly despite a significant model based glow-up? The Monolith remains something of a Big Girl’s Blouse. Or indeed if we want to use our Big Words? A sizeable lady’s chemise.

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Not Online!!! wrote:
 vict0988 wrote:
You forgot relics, traits, psychic powers and crusade.


No he did not. Crusade is directly inadequat beeing a special modus and not representative of the basegame and the relics are potentially 6, the traits are 6 however the militia force commander has what 4-5 to himself aswell.


Unit started this particular line of the conversation, and he specifically invoked Crusade- two or three times in his post, I think. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have even responded, and merely continued to lurk. Just because YOU don't want to include Crusade options in the discusion, that doesn't give you the right to move Unit's goal posts for him. If Unit himself wants to modify his original challenge and remove Crusade from the discussion, that's fine... Because without Crusade, Unit is right, and I'll be the first to admit it.

It is worth noting though that named characters can't really engage with Crusade, they can't take relics and their WL traits are assigned. This also interferes with their ability to use requisition strats, as those usually impact the use of relics and WL Traits, so there is some fairness to the post that lists the comparative options- if it ain't a on named character's data slate, they aren't getting it. (With the exception of the 9 Great Game rewards in the in the Daemon dex, though these are so narrative that you don't just earn them, you also have to continue to be worthy of them or they go away).

However, in that comparative list of daemons and their options, any non-named character unit from the 9th list needs to add at least 10 options. For example, the poster lists the Contorted Epitome as having Zero options, but it's got 6 psychic powers to choose from, three Crusade Psychic Fortitudes, 11 Crusade Relics and two Requisition strats in the Daemon dex alone. It will also qualify for most if not all of the Crusade upgrades in the BRB, a handful from each of the campaign settings and a bunch from the four White Dwarf articles that I mention in my post. And virtually every non-named character in that list qualifies for a similar number of options that are not credited in his list.

To be fair to my opposition, there are far, far more dataslate options for units in HH than there are in 9th- I don't need read HH books to know that... It's never been in dispute. But the big mistake that those who prefer previous editions tend to make is confusing Options with Equipment Options. No one is denying that 9th has fewer equipment options, and that 10th has fewer still. What we're saying is that almost every unit in 9th gained 10-30 non-equipment options in 9th, a great many of which did not exist in previous editions of the game, or other versions of it (HH).

There was another post to indicate that the options in HH were more transformative, and they might be- but that isn't what Unit was arguing either, so it wasn't a part of the challenge I was responding to; even if it was, choosing to use one of these armies itself is a transformative change. Other options that exist for players with the same collection of models include simply using allied detachments straight from their dexes, using them to fill up armies of renoun or simply mono-dexing your way through. Non of those provide as many options as the three lists I've selected, which is the challenge I was responding to... but if you want to open it up to transformative change, heck even choosing to play Crusade vs. Matched is a transformative option.

And finally, for many of you who have mentioned the word allies: these three armies (Torchbearers, Army of Faith, and Chaos Undivided) are NOT armies that use allies- all of the units from the combined dexes are a part of the army list. The differences between these two things are significant. Using one of these three armies does limit some of the options that would otherwise be available to subsets of the army built as mono-factions, or mono-subfaction lists.

I think the difficulty with this conversation is that the people difending different and older systems haven't actually explored the three armies I'm talking about even as an intellectual exercise, much less actually tried them out on the table. And to be fair to them, they can say the same thing about me and HH, 7th ed or 6th ed.

The thing about HH, even if the people who prefer it are right about the number of options it includes for the few factions that are a part of the game (which they are if we exclude Crusade), there are so few of these factions that most versions of 40k have more options game wide, just by virtue of having more factions. This is especially true of 9th, where subfactions for each included faction actually make a huge difference.
from the discussion.

And the second someone says "I'm too poor for Forgeworld" or "I only want plastic" which are both valid points of view, HH looks even less attractive.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/28 18:57:45


 
   
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chaos0xomega wrote:
But then you have guardsmen with flak armor, which is more often than not just a vest, shoulder pads, and a ballistic helmet - theres a lot of exposed unarmored body to hit, so the all-or-nothing approach never entirely made sense - a lasgun or a shoota fired at the face were saved on a 5+, but a bolter went right through and blew a hole out the other side. For something like this I'd argue that the modifier system makes more sense as it better depicts the varying levels of lethality of weapons vs "lesser" armor.

Personally, in the past I've suggested that armor saves should be represented as two values - the actual save itself and a "shrug" value, with the shrug indicating how many points of AP the armor can negate. A guardsmen in flak armor would be Sv 5+ with a Shrug of 0. A Space Marine in Power Armor would be a Sv 3+ with a Shrug of say 1 - so it would only suffer a -1 against a weapon with AP-2, -2 against AP-3, etc. Terminators might be Sv2+ with a Shrug of 2, which allows them to negate the first 2 points of AP a weapon might have, so an AP-4 weapon…


For a few games I was able to use a rule suggested on dakka that made this idea of “shrug” compatible with the GW army lists at the time:

 Haravikk wrote:
1. Armour Saves are only negated if AP is less than the armour value, if AP is equal it's a -2 penalty to the save, and if the AP is one worse (higher) then it's a -1. This means that AP4 weapons reduce marines to 4+, while AP3 reduces them to 5+, and AP2 or better punches straight through. It makes weapons with an AP value that's close a bit more useful, particularly AP4 weapons which are currently pretty underwhelming thanks to the large amounts of 3+ armour out there.


I think you have enough sense that having both shrugs and pen in a game with >60 models per side is Too Many Numbers. This especially since I think it was just in this thread that a lot of people agreed that three rolls plus a damage value is too many

And some terrible things happened to the actual background and model range due to ap4 being so useless in an all-marine game. The short-range griffon mortar is very true to real life and to the background for infantry support, but it’s almost completely gone from the table and we have the ludicrous situation of earth shakers right there next to their target.
   
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I think HH2's use of the Breaching keyword (plasma guns are AP4, but on a 4+ to wound they're AP2, so they're ignoring your armor some of the time but not all the time) makes for an interesting approach to making armor a little more granular, as well as reducing the amount of AP2 spam available.

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While it definitely tones down lethality and overall improves AP granularity, it does little to change the issue that AP was a massive lethality threshold and that put 4+ saves and AP 4 in a very awkward place.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/29 01:07:37


 
   
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 Insectum7 wrote:
 vict0988 wrote:
I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?

What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
Imo this ia all about implementation. The old Guard Doctrines were about Regimental level Upgrades, so you weren't looking at differences between models trying to see who had a 4+ save.

And to your example, are Relics modeled? Is that an Astartes Chainsword or the Teeth of Terra? A Plasma Pistol or a Master Crafted weapon? There are often not any clear visual distinctions within the current system either.

As for Bloodletters upgrading their weapons, those upgrades may synergise with other abilities, interactions with core rules, or specific targets.

Relics are very important and few in number, there aren't a dozen of them scattered across an army, so it's not important that they are modelled, but one unit of Lokhust Destroyers having one rule and another unit having a different rule, seems to me like a different thing. Do you think having 15 invisible upgrades and 2 is the same because you already get relics mixed up now and the added mixups coming from more wouldn't be so bad or do you think you could easily remember all 15 invisible upgrades?
 Gibblets wrote:
Alright this thread has stalled into city mouse/country mouse. The soul people feel there's an extreme limiting of options for terrain, missions, characters and unique army builds. The math crunching, power gamers don't understand why you would want an option that seemingly is only fluffy. Because frankly when they see a large list of wargear they get intimidated with all the number crunching they're going to have to do to be able to sleep at night knowing they squeezed the extra 0.2% efficiency out of their character.

I think I'm failing to see how a 4+ Sv on a Company Commander, +1A on a Chaos Lord or +1S on a Herald of Khorne are fluffy roleplaying things and not just tactical math upgrades. I think it's simple to see how Vanguard Veterans are narratively different from an Assault Squad and it's no wonder if a player prefers one or the other despite math being in favour of the alternative. I'd extend that to Relics and WL traits which I think can have enough rules to provide fluff, but +1A is such a little rule that it doesn't say anything and therefore is bereft of fluff, while something like a bolt pistol that shoots 6 shots with dangerous ammo has a narrative throughline in the rules. I do think the Destroyer upgrades I listed are narrative, I can understand wanting to play with them, it seems kind of cool to have different upsides and downsides to each of 3 different Lokhust Destroyer units as their systems have deteriorated down different paths, but I think those kinds of upgrades should be limited to Titanic and character units because I personally have a bad memory so I'm liable to forget things if the game has too many things going on and I've experienced plenty of players forgetting this or that. I don't think it's actually easy to define how many rules is the right amount, GW just added a unique rule to most of their units, unit upgrades like night vision have been added and removed from different factions across the game.
   
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Locally we've gone from tournaments with 10+ tables to just 3 recently. A lot of regulars have disappeared.

The people who show up are enthusiastic and having fun, but engagement has really thinned out.
   
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PenitentJake wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
 vict0988 wrote:
You forgot relics, traits, psychic powers and crusade.


No he did not. Crusade is directly inadequat beeing a special modus and not representative of the basegame and the relics are potentially 6, the traits are 6 however the militia force commander has what 4-5 to himself aswell.


Unit started this particular line of the conversation, and he specifically invoked Crusade- two or three times in his post, I think. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have even responded, and merely continued to lurk. Just because YOU don't want to include Crusade options in the discusion, that doesn't give you the right to move Unit's goal posts for him. If Unit himself wants to modify his original challenge and remove Crusade from the discussion, that's fine... Because without Crusade, Unit is right, and I'll be the first to admit it.


even with crusade unit is right but that is a whole other debate entirely. Fact is, Crusade is not courrant normal for 40k, and even IF we regard crusade as valid it still get's beat by 30k.

It is worth noting though that named characters can't really engage with Crusade, they can't take relics and their WL traits are assigned. This also interferes with their ability to use requisition strats, as those usually impact the use of relics and WL Traits, so there is some fairness to the post that lists the comparative options- if it ain't a on named character's data slate, they aren't getting it. (With the exception of the 9 Great Game rewards in the in the Daemon dex, though these are so narrative that you don't just earn them, you also have to continue to be worthy of them or they go away).

However, in that comparative list of daemons and their options, any non-named character unit from the 9th list needs to add at least 10 options. For example, the poster lists the Contorted Epitome as having Zero options, but it's got 6 psychic powers to choose from, three Crusade Psychic Fortitudes, 11 Crusade Relics and two Requisition strats in the Daemon dex alone. It will also qualify for most if not all of the Crusade upgrades in the BRB, a handful from each of the campaign settings and a bunch from the four White Dwarf articles that I mention in my post. And virtually every non-named character in that list qualifies for a similar number of options that are not credited in his list.
And? Do i need to get the praetor, consuls or etc. transformative options that are far more far reaching in consequence and they are in the basegame, and are far more plentiful to boot.

To be fair to my opposition, there are far, far more dataslate options for units in HH than there are in 9th- I don't need read HH books to know that... It's never been in dispute. But the big mistake that those who prefer previous editions tend to make is confusing Options with Equipment Options. No one is denying that 9th has fewer equipment options, and that 10th has fewer still. What we're saying is that almost every unit in 9th gained 10-30 non-equipment options in 9th, a great many of which did not exist in previous editions of the game, or other versions of it (HH).
yeah, let's go back and look at the provenance system affects the whole army, what was it, 244 possible ways to form your army for a non niche way. Including equipment, and then theres the fact that these non equipment options you tout are frankly often horrendously lackluster compared to equipment options which change unit types and the whole army. Further they are also including non-equipment and equipment access. So the only thing you got are relics in 40k regardless of if you play crusade or baseline.

There was another post to indicate that the options in HH were more transformative, and they might be- but that isn't what Unit was arguing either, so it wasn't a part of the challenge I was responding to; even if it was, choosing to use one of these armies itself is a transformative change. Other options that exist for players with the same collection of models include simply using allied detachments straight from their dexes, using them to fill up armies of renoun or simply mono-dexing your way through. Non of those provide as many options as the three lists I've selected, which is the challenge I was responding to... but if you want to open it up to transformative change, heck even choosing to play Crusade vs. Matched is a transformative option.
changeing the gamemode is not transformative, it's changing the gamemode. And HH has with the black books better sources for narrative play and campaigns than crusade material due to crusade material being squished into baseline dexes and ammount mostly to as someone described unjustly but still in sentiment apptly, bookkeeping entirely separete from your opponent in a narrative sense.

And finally, for many of you who have mentioned the word allies: these three armies (Torchbearers, Army of Faith, and Chaos Undivided) are NOT armies that use allies- all of the units from the combined dexes are a part of the army list. The differences between these two things are significant. Using one of these three armies does limit some of the options that would otherwise be available to subsets of the army built as mono-factions, or mono-subfaction lists.
i am sorry but these armies reek of an attempt at selling more books by GW more than consideration of balance and lore. And yes whilest it is good that you can field chaos armies as one, one can do the same in HH by merely picking the right consul, and funnily enough via allies that actually can enter into squads , if one picks close enough allies.

I think the difficulty with this conversation is that the people difending different and older systems haven't actually explored the three armies I'm talking about even as an intellectual exercise, much less actually tried them out on the table. And to be fair to them, they can say the same thing about me and HH, 7th ed or 6th ed.

The thing about HH, even if the people who prefer it are right about the number of options it includes for the few factions that are a part of the game (which they are if we exclude Crusade), there are so few of these factions that most versions of 40k have more options game wide, just by virtue of having more factions. This is especially true of 9th, where subfactions for each included faction actually make a huge difference.

Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle, that is what 40k has become, even with crusade. I am sorry but quantity of models by looks doesn't make an enticing game, and mechanically 40k has been so far stripped down, that xenos don't even feel like xeno forces anymore, take a look at DE and poison or morale and or debuff shenanigans they had in the past... I am at a that stage i can represent an Ork list better with the right militia provenances in HH than in 40k, that is where we are at for many xenos factions.

from the discussion.

And the second someone says "I'm too poor for Forgeworld" or "I only want plastic" which are both valid points of view, HH looks even less attractive.



considering some of the newer plastic prices its a GW issue overall. That and the incessant insistence of selling rules in book form and other books often of dubious quality...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/10/29 09:54:08


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GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
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"Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle, that is what 40k has become"

Isnt' that exactly what you are advocating for with options that don't impact the game like a 4+ Sv for Company Commanders, those don't add depth. Relics that change the way you play add depth without adding tonnes of width to the game. A trillion builds for each Herald mean nothing if they all do the same thing more or less well. You could probably scrape together 10 really different builds out of that trillion combinations, the rest is only there for the illusion of choosing between a trillion builds the infinite complexity of the Neverborn.

Isn't list building a lot deeper now that units have unique abilities instead of being able to combine axes, maces and swords in a trillion combinations?
   
 
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