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 Haighus wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 kurhanik wrote:
[(the glorious 3.5 dex, which for all its faults was probably the most interesting codex the army got).

So true, for so many armies. Sigh.

The more I find from the 3rd (and early 4th) ecosystem, the more I think Andy Chambers was the best lead designer for 40k. That paradigm was peak for me.

Fully agreed.

 Haighus wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 kurhanik wrote:
[(the glorious 3.5 dex, which for all its faults was probably the most interesting codex the army got).

So true, for so many armies. Sigh.

The more I find from the 3rd (and early 4th) ecosystem, the more I think Andy Chambers was the best lead designer for 40k. That paradigm was peak for me.

Go read the rules for Mongoose Publishings Starship Troopers game and then come back and tell me whether or not you agree.

Thats not a judgement against Starship Troopers btw, its a pretty fantastic set of rules, but it was also very heavily inspired by what Andy Chambers had intended for 40k 4th edition before he was shot down by others in the studio, so its a peak into the "what could have been". I find 40k players often find those rules icky and are greatful he wasn't able to do have his way with the rules.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 kurhanik wrote:
[(the glorious 3.5 dex, which for all its faults was probably the most interesting codex the army got).

So true, for so many armies. Sigh.

The more I find from the 3rd (and early 4th) ecosystem, the more I think Andy Chambers was the best lead designer for 40k. That paradigm was peak for me.

Go read the rules for Mongoose Publishings Starship Troopers game and then come back and tell me whether or not you agree.

Thats not a judgement against Starship Troopers btw, its a pretty fantastic set of rules, but it was also very heavily inspired by what Andy Chambers had intended for 40k 4th edition before he was shot down by others in the studio, so its a peak into the "what could have been". I find 40k players often find those rules icky and are greatful he wasn't able to do have his way with the rules.

Hmm, interesting. I like those rules, but I am not sure how well they scale to 40k. However, I could see a hybrid between those rules and 40k 4th being a great game (in particular reactions).

Andy Chambers is a designer who understands the need to balance fluffy mechanics for verisimilitude against abstractions to keep the game moving. He's also good at designing systems that accomplish a desired effect with a minimum of dice-rolling and bookkeeping.

3rd Ed introduced a lot of simplifications and abstractions that were controversial at the time, but it played much quicker than 2nd while still having cinematic moments and allowing a ton of personalization of Your Dudes. More than anything else, I feel that this elegance of effects-focused design is what 40K has lost. 6th-7th got too in the weeds with simulation and minutiae, then 8th overcorrected into bland simplicity (propped up by piling on layers of special rules), then 9th doubled down on the bs and legalese, and now at 10th we're finally at the quantum superposition of it being both simplistically bland and also tedious and overcomplicated. It's clunky, and still wedded to decades-old core mechanics that feel increasingly atavistic.

SST slaughters a bunch of 40K sacred cows (no rolling to hit, no discrete phases, dice besides D6s, automatic reactions) to accomplish more elegant design and it works. It was an excellent game let down by being just too much for its company to support. If Chambers had been allowed to push 40K in the direction that SST embodied I imagine there would have been a lot of outcry, just as there was when he led the transition from 2nd to 3rd. But I'm also convinced the game would ultimately have been better for it.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Problem with making guard weapons stronger is the ripple in the pond effect. You make Grenade launchers D2, then do all grenade weapons become D2? Do Stick Bombs? Do Allarus Custodian Grenade Launchers? Auto-Launchers? Primaris Grenade Launchers? Frag Storm? I mean, if you make it JUST guard, that's pretty rough.

Not sure who you're responding to, and am not familiar with all those weapons. However, the current grenade launcher's krak profile is Dd3, so changing that to D2 is just giving it a more reliable set value equivalent to its current average. Removing the chance of killing half a marine instead of a whole marine at the cost of not spiking and doing 3 Damage. Seems like a pretty minor change that wouldn't have to have huge ripples throughout the game. Especially given that stikk bombz are (iirc) just the "grenades" keyword at the moment, and most grenade weapons I can find seem to already do at least 2 damage.

I think keeping it at it's current profile but changing blast rules makes more sense.

Surely changing a USR that is present on tons of weapons throughout the game would have more knock-on effects than just tweaking specifically human grenade weapons; and that's assuming that we *have to* change a bunch of other profiles if we tweak the grenade launcher.

I do think Sniper weapons should be be like Sly Marbo's Ripper pistol. Auto-wound on hit. All sniper weapons.

To what end? That would make ratlings, rangers, etc. way more powerful than they currently are. It might not be OP if infantry squads were the only units with sniper rifles in the game, but that's just not the case. I'm also not sure it makes much sense. I get that snipers are theoretically trying to aim their shots well, but I'm not sure a guardsman sniper should be automatically bypassing the toughness of a centurion or wraith lord.

I don't think we can ever fix melta now, that Genie's out of the bottle. They've got too many modern dedicated Melta units designed around the modern style of melta rules. You change the rules, you basically have to invalidate or reinvent the entire unit.

Huh? What genie exactly? All melta really needs is a strength boost. Even just a situational strength boost that only kicks in while in melta range. That's a pretty easy fix to put in place. I'm also not sure what "modern style of melta rules" you're referring to. Eliminators, heat lance scourges, and crisis suits could all probably receive a boost to their melta weapon strengths without breaking the game. (Not that scourges need it atm.) Even if it was just an imperium-specific update, sisters would absolutely love for their melta weapons to actually work well against tanks again, melta marines would become more viable again, scions would have more reason to look at meltas again... I'm not sure there's really an imperial use case where just upping the strength of meltas (situationally or in general) would be a game breaker.

The one thing I could see getting a "Guard specific shakeup" is making the range on their HWT's +12" when "fixed" (Not having moved in the last turn). This would effectively make them better at their primary purpose, and keep them from being OP, or game breaking.

Weapons gaining range when you hold still is a cool mechanic. Wouldn't mind seeing that in a few places.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Problem with making guard weapons stronger is the ripple in the pond effect. You make Grenade launchers D2, then do all grenade weapons become D2? Do Stick Bombs? Do Allarus Custodian Grenade Launchers? Auto-Launchers? Primaris Grenade Launchers? Frag Storm? I mean, if you make it JUST guard, that's pretty rough.

Not sure who you're responding to, and am not familiar with all those weapons. However, the current grenade launcher's krak profile is Dd3, so changing that to D2 is just giving it a more reliable set value equivalent to its current average. Removing the chance of killing half a marine instead of a whole marine at the cost of not spiking and doing 3 Damage. Seems like a pretty minor change that wouldn't have to have huge ripples throughout the game. Especially given that stikk bombz are (iirc) just the "grenades" keyword at the moment, and most grenade weapons I can find seem to already do at least 2 damage.

I think keeping it at it's current profile but changing blast rules makes more sense.

Surely changing a USR that is present on tons of weapons throughout the game would have more knock-on effects than just tweaking specifically human grenade weapons; and that's assuming that we *have to* change a bunch of other profiles if we tweak the grenade launcher.

I do think Sniper weapons should be be like Sly Marbo's Ripper pistol. Auto-wound on hit. All sniper weapons.

To what end? That would make ratlings, rangers, etc. way more powerful than they currently are. It might not be OP if infantry squads were the only units with sniper rifles in the game, but that's just not the case. I'm also not sure it makes much sense. I get that snipers are theoretically trying to aim their shots well, but I'm not sure a guardsman sniper should be automatically bypassing the toughness of a centurion or wraith lord.

I don't think we can ever fix melta now, that Genie's out of the bottle. They've got too many modern dedicated Melta units designed around the modern style of melta rules. You change the rules, you basically have to invalidate or reinvent the entire unit.

Huh? What genie exactly? All melta really needs is a strength boost. Even just a situational strength boost that only kicks in while in melta range. That's a pretty easy fix to put in place. I'm also not sure what "modern style of melta rules" you're referring to. Eliminators, heat lance scourges, and crisis suits could all probably receive a boost to their melta weapon strengths without breaking the game. (Not that scourges need it atm.) Even if it was just an imperium-specific update, sisters would absolutely love for their melta weapons to actually work well against tanks again, melta marines would become more viable again, scions would have more reason to look at meltas again... I'm not sure there's really an imperial use case where just upping the strength of meltas (situationally or in general) would be a game breaker.

The one thing I could see getting a "Guard specific shakeup" is making the range on their HWT's +12" when "fixed" (Not having moved in the last turn). This would effectively make them better at their primary purpose, and keep them from being OP, or game breaking.

Weapons gaining range when you hold still is a cool mechanic. Wouldn't mind seeing that in a few places.

I suck at the whole formatting thing, so I'm just gonna use numbers to respond to your points.

1. I'm talkin about how grenade launchers are not a one off for just guard. They exist for multiple factions, and units other than guard. As has been the case before, if you give one a buff, but not all the others, ESPECIALLY if one of those is the poster child faction for the entire game, the people with pitch forks come out. TLDR: changing the launcher would require buffing more than just guard, and I'm not in the camp that wants to see that reality, where SM get buffs because the least used weapon in Guard suddenly feels weak.

2. The USR change would absolve the above problem by making grenades actually useful in general for 40k as a whole. I can honestly say, aside from some extremely obscure/niche moments, I've never really seen people rely on the grenades.

3. Sniper weapons are mostly doo doo right now for most factions/races. The most powerful sniper in the game is the Imperial Assassin, and he/they/it kinda sucks. Maybe 2 shots the entire game, if it doesn't get out right ignored by the opponent. Snipers should be feared by leader units.

4. The Genie that is every faction has some form of super special them-specific melta unit that will need to be changed if we change "what melta is". think back to the Fiasco (unsure how long you experience goes) of when the Melta Intercessors dropped, it created a massive s storm, because suddenly everyone's melta wasn't as good as THAT melta, and GW ended up caving, and giving everyone the special melta rule, making everyone equally stupidly dangerous. The old melta rule was roll 2d6, take the higher inside half range, that was too swingy, so they made it, d6+X, which meant it was a LOT more powerful. If you suddenly make Guard melta S10/11, what does that do to LCs, Plasma, or other AT weapons that are still S9? Suddenly the people with pitchforks are back, and they want the new S12 Meltas as well, especially the Eldar bikers.

5. Guard really have needed some form of "Dig in" mechanic for a long time. Most RTS games like Warcraft/star craft even have it already. Seigemode for the Siegetank, or Hunker Down for the Robot things, I mean, point is, it's there. Turn long buff that activates once you haven't moved for a turn, meaning you can't use it turn 1.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Problem with making guard weapons stronger is the ripple in the pond effect. You make Grenade launchers D2, then do all grenade weapons become D2? Do Stick Bombs? Do Allarus Custodian Grenade Launchers? Auto-Launchers? Primaris Grenade Launchers? Frag Storm? I mean, if you make it JUST guard, that's pretty rough.

Not sure who you're responding to, and am not familiar with all those weapons. However, the current grenade launcher's krak profile is Dd3, so changing that to D2 is just giving it a more reliable set value equivalent to its current average. Removing the chance of killing half a marine instead of a whole marine at the cost of not spiking and doing 3 Damage. Seems like a pretty minor change that wouldn't have to have huge ripples throughout the game. Especially given that stikk bombz are (iirc) just the "grenades" keyword at the moment, and most grenade weapons I can find seem to already do at least 2 damage.

I think keeping it at it's current profile but changing blast rules makes more sense.

Surely changing a USR that is present on tons of weapons throughout the game would have more knock-on effects than just tweaking specifically human grenade weapons; and that's assuming that we *have to* change a bunch of other profiles if we tweak the grenade launcher.

I do think Sniper weapons should be be like Sly Marbo's Ripper pistol. Auto-wound on hit. All sniper weapons.

To what end? That would make ratlings, rangers, etc. way more powerful than they currently are. It might not be OP if infantry squads were the only units with sniper rifles in the game, but that's just not the case. I'm also not sure it makes much sense. I get that snipers are theoretically trying to aim their shots well, but I'm not sure a guardsman sniper should be automatically bypassing the toughness of a centurion or wraith lord.

I don't think we can ever fix melta now, that Genie's out of the bottle. They've got too many modern dedicated Melta units designed around the modern style of melta rules. You change the rules, you basically have to invalidate or reinvent the entire unit.

Huh? What genie exactly? All melta really needs is a strength boost. Even just a situational strength boost that only kicks in while in melta range. That's a pretty easy fix to put in place. I'm also not sure what "modern style of melta rules" you're referring to. Eliminators, heat lance scourges, and crisis suits could all probably receive a boost to their melta weapon strengths without breaking the game. (Not that scourges need it atm.) Even if it was just an imperium-specific update, sisters would absolutely love for their melta weapons to actually work well against tanks again, melta marines would become more viable again, scions would have more reason to look at meltas again... I'm not sure there's really an imperial use case where just upping the strength of meltas (situationally or in general) would be a game breaker.

The one thing I could see getting a "Guard specific shakeup" is making the range on their HWT's +12" when "fixed" (Not having moved in the last turn). This would effectively make them better at their primary purpose, and keep them from being OP, or game breaking.

Weapons gaining range when you hold still is a cool mechanic. Wouldn't mind seeing that in a few places.

I suck at the whole formatting thing, so I'm just gonna use numbers to respond to your points.

1. I'm talkin about how grenade launchers are not a one off for just guard. They exist for multiple factions, and units other than guard. As has been the case before, if you give one a buff, but not all the others, ESPECIALLY if one of those is the poster child faction for the entire game, the people with pitch forks come out. TLDR: changing the launcher would require buffing more than just guard, and I'm not in the camp that wants to see that reality, where SM get buffs because the least used weapon in Guard suddenly feels weak.

2. The USR change would absolve the above problem by making grenades actually useful in general for 40k as a whole. I can honestly say, aside from some extremely obscure/niche moments, I've never really seen people rely on the grenades.

3. Sniper weapons are mostly doo doo right now for most factions/races. The most powerful sniper in the game is the Imperial Assassin, and he/they/it kinda sucks. Maybe 2 shots the entire game, if it doesn't get out right ignored by the opponent. Snipers should be feared by leader units.

4. The Genie that is every faction has some form of super special them-specific melta unit that will need to be changed if we change "what melta is". think back to the Fiasco (unsure how long you experience goes) of when the Melta Intercessors dropped, it created a massive s storm, because suddenly everyone's melta wasn't as good as THAT melta, and GW ended up caving, and giving everyone the special melta rule, making everyone equally stupidly dangerous. The old melta rule was roll 2d6, take the higher inside half range, that was too swingy, so they made it, d6+X, which meant it was a LOT more powerful. If you suddenly make Guard melta S10/11, what does that do to LCs, Plasma, or other AT weapons that are still S9? Suddenly the people with pitchforks are back, and they want the new S12 Meltas as well, especially the Eldar bikers.

5. Guard really have needed some form of "Dig in" mechanic for a long time. Most RTS games like Warcraft/star craft even have it already. Seigemode for the Siegetank, or Hunker Down for the Robot things, I mean, point is, it's there. Turn long buff that activates once you haven't moved for a turn, meaning you can't use it turn 1.

1) Going from Dd3 to D2 is... A reliability buff, against W2 models, which are pretty common.
A nerf against W3 models.
Irrelevant against W1 models.
But it's VERY minor.

2) Blast Rules are actually decent, and feel good, at least to me. Bigger squads targeted gets you more shots-it's simple, fast, but effective.
Also, Grenades aren't a weapon. They're a keyword that lets you use a Strat.

3) And what counterplay should there be? Not to mention, S4 AP-2 D2 is a pretty damn good profile, even if it's only one shot. It takes 18 Bolter shots at BS3+ to kill a Marine. It takes 6 Sniper shots at BS4+ to kill a Marine without cover, and 8 with cover.

4) Lascannons are S12.
And a Meltagun should be dangerous if you get close enough-adding Melta Bonus to Damage AND Strength is unlikely to break anything, and applies reasonably equally across most factions.

5) That seems fair.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

1. I'm talkin about how grenade launchers are not a one off for just guard. They exist for multiple factions, and units other than guard. As has been the case before, if you give one a buff, but not all the others, ESPECIALLY if one of those is the poster child faction for the entire game, the people with pitch forks come out. TLDR: changing the launcher would require buffing more than just guard, and I'm not in the camp that wants to see that reality, where SM get buffs because the least used weapon in Guard suddenly feels weak.

I'm struggling to picture the scenario you're worried about. As JNA said, going from Dd3 to D2 is a pretty minor change that we could probably make in a vacuum. But even if we couldn't change IG grenade launchers and leave others untouched, what specific units/weapons do you see becoming a problem? Like, I don't think changing the intercessor grenade launcher from Dd3 to D2 as well would be a big deal.

2. The USR change would absolve the above problem by making grenades actually useful in general for 40k as a whole. I can honestly say, aside from some extremely obscure/niche moments, I've never really seen people rely on the grenades.

What edition are we talking about here? In 10th, being able to potentially dish out a bunch of mortal wounds (which is what the grenade keyword does) is potentially pretty useful. In the past, I definitely did plenty of damage with haywire grenades, and I always threw krak grenades if I happened to be close enough to do so. So I'm not sure what you're getting at with this one, but I'm also pretty sure I disagree.

Regardless, changing blast to try to fix grenades seems like a pretty textbook example of a sweeping change with lots of unintended knock-on effects being made to fix a relatively specific problem. Which is exactly the sort of thing we yell at GW for doing all the time. Probably not the best approach, but you're always welcome to write up your pitch and present it in the Proposed Rules section.

3. Sniper weapons are mostly doo doo right now for most factions/races. The most powerful sniper in the game is the Imperial Assassin, and he/they/it kinda sucks. Maybe 2 shots the entire game, if it doesn't get out right ignored by the opponent. Snipers should be feared by leader units.

Depending on what exactly you mean, I'm not sure I agree. To kill a character with sniper rifles, you generally need a whole squad of them to get the job done. That said, an entire squad of snipers in 10th edition actually does have a pretty good chance of killing a not-especially-tanky character. Vindicaires are swingy but seem to perform about how you'd expect given their price tag. Reasonable people may prefer for sniper units in general to feature a lower number of more individually lethal models to capture the "sniper vibe" better, but that's not new to 10th edition.

All that said, I *don't* want snipers to be so good at killing characters that they're basically auto-deleting characters. So care does have to be taken when you talk about buffing snipers. How much fun do you think people would have if my rangers went from wounding marines about half the time to 100% of the time?

4. The Genie that is every faction has some form of super special them-specific melta unit that will need to be changed if we change "what melta is". think back to the Fiasco (unsure how long you experience goes) of when the Melta Intercessors dropped, it created a massive s storm, because suddenly everyone's melta wasn't as good as THAT melta, and GW ended up caving, and giving everyone the special melta rule, making everyone equally stupidly dangerous. The old melta rule was roll 2d6, take the higher inside half range, that was too swingy, so they made it, d6+X, which meant it was a LOT more powerful. If you suddenly make Guard melta S10/11, what does that do to LCs, Plasma, or other AT weapons that are still S9? Suddenly the people with pitchforks are back, and they want the new S12 Meltas as well, especially the Eldar bikers.

I feel like this isn't actually a problem. Your guardsmen want their meltas to wound tanks better. My storm guardians want their fusion guns to wound tanks better. Sisters want their meltas to wound tanks better. You could give literally every melta weapon in the game 2 extra point of strength (either while within melta range or just all the time), and I think it would be a generally well-received change. Meltas have always been a short-ranged, high-risk-high-reward weapon. 10th just decided to make them inexplicably bad against their classically preferred targets (vehicles).

The issue with eradicators when they dropped was a combination of:
1. Plasma (and other mid-strength/mid-damage weapons) was better at anti-tank than melta at the time. Eradicators' guns were an example of melta actually being better at its more specialized role than plasma (et all), so people simply wanted that same dynamic to be present in their armies.
2. Eradicators were just kind of silly-strong when they were released. Comparing them to fire dragons (THE classic specialized all-meltas-all-the-time unit), they were putting out more melta attacks at a greater distance while also being way more durable for only about 5 points more.

So the changes to melta were popular, but the rollout of eradicators was poorly executed. The "real" problem with the melta updates after that was mostly that they decided to double the shots of multi-meltas on top of making melta weapons in general much better against vehicles.

As for what happens to lascannons if you buff meltas... They remain a reliable, long-ranged tool that isn't at risk of being replaced by melta because of their dramatically different behavior. Meltas just get to go back to being a high-risk-high-reward option instead of being a high-risk-moderate-reward-that-stinks-against-vehicles.

5. Guard really have needed some form of "Dig in" mechanic for a long time. Most RTS games like Warcraft/star craft even have it already. Seigemode for the Siegetank, or Hunker Down for the Robot things, I mean, point is, it's there. Turn long buff that activates once you haven't moved for a turn, meaning you can't use it turn 1.

Sure. I'm not sure you need to make them wait a turn before it activates, but it seems like a decent idea a mechanic. Sort of similar to how volley and rapid fire used to work at different points in time.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:


/snip

Sure. I'm not sure you need to make them wait a turn before it activates, but it seems like a decent idea a mechanic. Sort of similar to how volley and rapid fire used to work at different points in time.

Because I don't want to be getting shot from across the map turn 1. And turn 1 requires a literal move, as you appear on the board. You have to appear on the board. There is no way to get onto the board without some movement. Like how Teleport or reinforcements from off map count as having moved when arriving.

I feel like it's reasonable for the IG to be assumed to have set up their guns prior to the fight starting. I like to picture my space elves zooming onto the table at the start of the first turn, but guardsmen seem far more likely to have been setting things up in the trenches in advance.

Also, if you require a one turn delay to "set up" the long-range mode of weapons, you're both adding bookkeeping to the game (have to remember which units moved during your previous turn), and you're making the rule less likely to actually get used. A squad that needs to move onto an objective on turn 1 won't be able to shoot at a distance until turn 3, for instance.

Right, I guess that's a consideration, if they are setup on site before hand, or if they are off map reinforcements. Maybe this is my 8th brain, but I thought turn 1 all deployed units were counted as having moved, for the purposes of charging and heavy weapons or something. That might have left long ago, I forget where I get that from.