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most of the rules are gone, and the wierdest part, is some releases of minis look amazing, but have bland rules like deathwing knights, thunder wolf calvalry for space wolves? and inner circle companions? they are very very mild. its rare for nerfs this extensive. why would gw make some of the best units rather tame? because people were using them too much? trying to get people to switch?

Nobody is really sure, and while that opinion is divisive, I 100% agree that it feels sanitized. A lot of things have bland rules to me. "Sterile" is how I describe it to friends. It feels so different to what came before, even 9th edition, that it hardly feels like 40k.

It's very hard to pinpoint a single thing, but it feels like something else wearing 40k's skin to me. It's telling that I enjoyed 8th and, to a lesser extent, 9th, but 10th I played a few games of and just can't bring myself to bother with it, as it feels so hollow and unsatisfying to play (again, YMMV)

 lordstarhawk wrote:
most of the rules are gone,

Which rules? A lot of the nitty gritty (read: mostly a waste of time) rules got dropped in the transition from 7th to 8th. From 9th to 10th, we lost subfaction rules and some of the generic strats, but we gained a bunch of unit-specific rules plus some USRs.

and the wierdest part, is some releases of minis look amazing, but have bland rules like deathwing knights, thunder wolf calvalry for space wolves? and inner circle companions? they are very very mild. its rare for nerfs this extensive. why would gw make some of the best units rather tame? because people were using them too much? trying to get people to switch?

Did T-cav get a release recently? I thought we were still using the 5th edition models for them. In general, what's considered good or bad varies over time in 40k. What was good in one edition may be less good in the next and vice versa. Especially in the case of units that were considered too good in recent years.


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Wayniac wrote:
Nobody is really sure, and while that opinion is divisive, I 100% agree that it feels sanitized. A lot of things have bland rules to me. "Sterile" is how I describe it to friends. It feels so different to what came before, even 9th edition, that it hardly feels like 40k.

It's very hard to pinpoint a single thing, but it feels like something else wearing 40k's skin to me. It's telling that I enjoyed 8th and, to a lesser extent, 9th, but 10th I played a few games of and just can't bring myself to bother with it, as it feels so hollow and unsatisfying to play (again, YMMV)

Can you elaborate on that a bit? Words like "sterile" and "sanitized" make me think of either removing contraversial rules or else updating content to be less "offensive" to the faint of heart. I'm not sure 10th really did either of those things to a notable degree. Perhaps there's a more accurate word we should be using?

Bland, maybe?

Oh. Sure. In that case, here's a recent 63 page thread covering the same topic.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/811846.page

well for example all the psycic rules are gone, grey knights feel like an empty shell they have movement, but dont feel like grey knights, all thier psycic abilities, are weaker versions other armies get all the time. Hammer hands for example is onley lethal hits on the charge, grandmaster is lackluster, with once per game stratagem, no wargear at all, they really needed the hammers and halberds, and even less shooting untill recently the dreadnight was crap, and couldnt hit the broad side of a barn with sub par wepons at a 4+ even with super elite status, other mosters got upgraded, and the dreadnight got alot worse. but its slightly better now, playable. oh and many factions have anti psycic rules, so if you are psycic and grey knights are, its more of a debuff then a buff. they had 8 brotherhoods and each one was amazing and fun to play, i didnt even get to try them all. now you have one way to play and no differences, its ether dreadnight and librarians, or nothing much like riptide lists. well i guess you could use tanks but it feels so bland, no legends of titan, you have to run away hide and deny scoring, and too many toughness 7 units witn -1 to wound, so you have to wound wraith stuff, squig riders and others on a 6 with extremely exp terminators thier some of the most expensive super elites in the game and they cant take on squig riders? or wraithgaurd? or other units? wth? normal terminators dont have this problem and when i compare a grandmaster or brother captain to thier equivalent space marine heros they just feel ... tacky. space marine detachments, and others were amazing on release, they removed some small things, but other armies are more empty then others. and yes thunder wolf calvary used to be amazing im sure the space wolves would groan about it more but they have lost thier teeth, they used to have some amazing wepons. • Astartes chainsword
• Lightning claw
• Power axe
• Power fist+5
• Power maul
• Power sword
• Thunder hammer+10
now they just have ap1, and a few attacks.


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the grey knight index is full of convoluted rules, very holow, even thier descriptions are empty, the soul of the grey knight is purity and thier purity is sacrosant? wth? as oposed to the space marine intro: There is no combat theatre in which the Space Marines cannot excel, no foe they cannot overcome, and no danger they fear to face. They are the elite shock troops of the Imperium, whose lightning-fast campaigns are conducted with such spectacular brutality that they have come to be known as the Angels of Death. fantastic! amazing! but for grey knights well.. psycic space marines that are not psycic, and 0 hype, like they want them dead.


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oh and a ton of armies aparently have anti psycic what do psycic wepons do? they count as a psycic attack.. nothing.. absolutely noting. the abilities come from heros or strats thats it. the nemisis wepon is not a special wepon anymore.

I think that what the OP is largely noticing is that they don't need to waste time adding up wargear costs.
And then doing it again with the next Balance Sheet..

Because rules? There's plenty of rules. Every unit has 1,2, 3+ unique rules. And 1/2+ of the weapons as well.

ccs wrote:
I think that what the OP is largely noticing is that they don't need to waste time adding up wargear costs.
And then doing it again with the next Balance Sheet..

Because rules? There's plenty of rules. Every unit has 1,2, 3+ unique rules. And 1/2+ of the weapons as well.

And a lot of the rules feel pretty dull or unimpactful.
Plus, without any costs for anything besides unit size (in bulk) there's often a clear winner in terms of gear to pick.

ccs wrote:
I think that what the OP is largely noticing is that they don't need to waste time adding up wargear costs.
And then doing it again with the next Balance Sheet..

Because rules? There's plenty of rules. Every unit has 1,2, 3+ unique rules. And 1/2+ of the weapons as well.

yea some rules are cut and paste, grey knights terminators? well them and paladins are basically watered down custodes for the same cost similar abilities. they even gave a massive points cut to custodes and restored thier best rules from 9th and tripled thier power. grey knights? 90% nerf and conditional rules. oh well. wish my rules were unique, theres very little unique about them. but whatever it is what it is. i do wish they had left all the wepons in, having just one wepon for everything doesent work at st 6.

8th, 9th, and 10th are all bad, with each edition out to perform that it can be worse than the edition before it. It started long before that when the tournament shifted from playing base 40k and continued to run their own scenarios.

- 8th edition was the result of them giving GW the finger for 3 editions (maybe more), and finally implementing their version of 40k into the rules. This is where 'Competitive 40k' was born, and it created a separate ruleset from 'Tournament 40k'. This alienated those who were avoiding those events and looking for 40k Tournaments. Needing separate lists to play 7th, and compete in 7th carried over into the actual rules for 8th, and limited Tournaments to players who agreed with the restrictions to be 'Competitive'.

- 9th Edition only made things worse, but those who hadn't already left, simply didn't find any fun in 9th, including myself. It's like they took a look at how bad 8th was and said 'Hold my beer, we can wreck it even more'. It simply wasn't worth the time and effort to learn to play, paint up the miniatures to not enjoy the game, or hobby in general anymore. We could play the armies that we wanted OR we could play the armies to win.

- After seeing how bad 9th was, 10th came in like a best friend, put a comforting arm around 9th, and declared 'Don't worry, I'll make sure you're not the worst'. Those of us who haven't been included in 8th or 9th, but still held on to our stuff, are trying to return to the hobby. I still love the lore, find painting relaxing, but simply struggle to even bother learning to play the game. I'm only a handful of games in, and I'm simply trying to learn how to play my army and I'm even ignoring the objectives just to roll some dice and it's not relaxing or even fun.

The stupid thing is that GW at least took a snapshot and a better rules set exists. Horus Heresy/AoD has provided a far superior rules set to 10th. The outcome is the same though since HH is limited to the armies available. So we have to invest in an army we don't want to play to enjoy a game we used to. 10th we have the armies we want to play, but 'Competitive 40k' has become so restrictive, that we have to run a list that we love and will have fun OR run a list that we don't enjoy to be able to succeed. Every faction will have players telling them that their lists are competitive or not. If a list isn't considered competitive, there doesn't appear to be any attempt to make them competitive, which 10th is a beacon of limiting what is or isn't competitive.

The solution is pretty simple. Release missing faction rules to open up Horus Heresy to the rest of the 40k players. This is what is probably going to need to happen before they realize how bad 8th, 9th, and 10th is, since there is little hope that anything is going to improve for 11th at this stage. That, or someone will create a system and give GW the finger all over again and push this crap out. We already know this works because that's how we got to 10th in the first place.

Well, your experience is your own, and your point of view is valid, but don't make the mistake of believing that opinion is universal or objective.

For me, 9th was the best edition, and I've played them all except 6th and 7th. I think a lot of folks who like RPGs would really like 25PL Crusade in 9th... Which was all I ever played- though one of my forces did grow to 35PL.

I'm not sure how I feel about 10th- I think I can have fun playing it, but I don't think I'll find it as good as previous versions. A lot of how much I can do with 10th will depend on the Sisters and Drukhari dexes- specifically the Crusade content.

lordstarhawk wrote:well for example all the psycic rules are gone

Well, no. Most (all?) of the GK stratagems are psychic abilities being put to use in one way or another, plus at a quick glance, it seems like most of the GK units (if not all) have some sort of psychic ability. Admittedly, Strike Squads' Purifying Ritual isn't a very flashy "psychic" power, but it seems inaccurate to say that "psychic rules are gone." Is it fair to say that what you're trying to identify is that you don't like how psychic abilities are handled (ex: no psychic test) or that you don't like the specific powers that GK *do* have rather than that psychic powers aren't present?

, grey knights feel like an empty shell they have movement, but dont feel like grey knights, all thier psycic abilities, are weaker versions other armies get all the time. Hammer hands for example is onley lethal hits on the charge, grandmaster is lackluster, with once per game stratagem, no wargear at all, they really needed the hammers and halberds, and even less shooting untill recently the dreadnight was crap, and couldnt hit the broad side of a barn with sub par wepons at a 4+ even with super elite status, other mosters got upgraded, and the dreadnight got alot worse. but its slightly better now, playable.., its ether dreadnight and librarians, or nothing much like riptide lists. well i guess you could use tanks but it feels so bland, no legends of titan, you have to run away hide and deny scoring, and too many toughness 7 units witn -1 to wound, so you have to wound wraith stuff, squig riders and others on a 6 with extremely exp terminators thier some of the most expensive super elites in the game and they cant take on squig riders? or wraithgaurd? or other units? wth? normal terminators dont have this problem and when i compare a grandmaster or brother captain to thier equivalent space marine heros they just feel ... tacky. space marine detachments, and others were amazing on release, they removed some small things, but other armies are more empty then others. and yes thunder wolf calvary used to be amazing im sure the space wolves would groan about it more but they have lost thier teeth, they used to have some amazing wepons. • Astartes chainsword
• Lightning claw
• Power axe
• Power fist+5
• Power maul
• Power sword
• Thunder hammer+10
now they just have ap1, and a few attacks.

Okay, so I'm gathering two main complaints here:
1.) You feel like the GK rules don't reflect their modus operandi in the fluff. Which, fair enough. That's probably true for lots of factions/units.
2.) You feel that GK are underpowered. Which again, fair enough. Although it's a little hard to sympathize with someone complaining that they can't one-shot multi-wound elite enemies. (Even if wraithguard are OP at the moment.) But last I heard, GK did in fact have a low win rate, and that stinks.

oh and many factions have anti psycic rules, so if you are psycic and grey knights are, its more of a debuff then a buff.

I had this argument in the thread I linked earlier, but this was sort of always the case. The advantage of having psychic abilities is that you *have* abilities that you otherwise wouldn't. Something being psychic has pretty much always just meant that there's a chance the power won't go off or that it can be shut down by your opponent in some way. That was true in 8-9th. That was true in 7th. It was probably even true in 5th if you ran into the right anti-psychic wargear, but I'm fuzzy on how GK powers interacted with others back then. An effect being psychic has never innately been advantageous. The advantageous part is that your unit can shoot magic fire and teleport around the table in ways that other units can't. What specifically would you be looking to be done differently in regards to this point?

they had 8 brotherhoods and each one was amazing and fun to play, i didnt even get to try them all. now you have one way to play and no differences

I mean, that's what tends to happen during an edition reset. Presumably your codex will include a few different detachments that let your army play in different ways. Criticisms of specific detachments or of how edition resets are handled in general are valid though. But yeah, all but like... 5(?) armies are in the same boat right now.

the grey knight index is full of convoluted rules, very holow, even thier descriptions are empty, the soul of the grey knight is purity and thier purity is sacrosant? wth? as oposed to the space marine intro: There is no combat theatre in which the Space Marines cannot excel, no foe they cannot overcome, and no danger they fear to face. They are the elite shock troops of the Imperium, whose lightning-fast campaigns are conducted with such spectacular brutality that they have come to be known as the Angels of Death. fantastic! amazing! but for grey knights well.. psycic space marines that are not psycic, and 0 hype, like they want them dead.

Well, if you're complaining about flavor text, you're entitled to your opinion. But personally I don't think the entry you're referring to sounds so bad if you quote the full thing:

The soul of the Grey Knights is sacrosanct, and their purity is incorruptible. The silvered armour of this
Chapter’s warriors is bound with incantations, engraved with sigils of warding. Their blades shine with the inner
light of their sanctity, for each of these Space Marines is a psychic warrior, in empyric communion with his
battle-brothers. Empowered by minds constantly on guard, they can cut steel with bare hands, their eyes blaze
with fire and even the power of their words flays the otherworldly skin of daemons. They are the Imperium’s
foremost sword and shield against the daemonic. Guided by the foresight and prophecies of the Chapter’s
Prognosticars, a Grey Knight can adapt to the most irrational of foes and, in a flare of teleportation energies,
emerge at exactly the right location to unleash their devastating power.

That sounds pretty cool, and it works as the elevator pitch for what makes these guys cool:
* Shiny incorruptible boys.
* Lots of psychic powers.
* Magic wargear.
* Strategic decisions made with the benefit of precognition.

Compared to the marine one basically going, "These guys win left and right because of how fast and elite they are," I might even prefer the GK text. Feels like GK actually have something specific to latch onto.

oh and a ton of armies aparently have anti psycic what do psycic wepons do? they count as a psycic attack.. nothing.. absolutely noting. the abilities come from heros or strats thats it. the nemisis wepon is not a special wepon anymore.

What they "do" is have better stats than generic power weapons. A nemesis force weapon is essentially a power sword that's strength 6 where it would be strength 4 for a normal marine and D2 where it would be D1 for a normal marine. Your benefits are just always-on rather than needing to pass a psychic test or what have you. I agree that rolling all the specific weapons together into one profile is kind of lame and that there are more flavorful ways to represent them, but pretending that the weapon's unusual nature isn't being represented in some way feels disingenuous.

EDIT: But if it helps, look at what they're doing with the Thousand Sons detachment rule. I'd be surprised if GK didn't get something similar in their codex.

PenitentJake wrote:Well, your experience is your own, and your point of view is valid, but don't make the mistake of believing that opinion is universal or objective.

For me, 9th was the best edition, and I've played them all except 6th and 7th. I think a lot of folks who like RPGs would really like 25PL Crusade in 9th... Which was all I ever played- though one of my forces did grow to 35PL.

I'm not sure how I feel about 10th- I think I can have fun playing it, but I don't think I'll find it as good as previous versions. A lot of how much I can do with 10th will depend on the Sisters and Drukhari dexes- specifically the Crusade content.

9th was just a bit too much to juggle for me; mostly because of the mission rules on top of the prevalence of strats. 8th was probably my favorite of the last 3. If you weren't fielding the flavor of the month wombo combos, it was pretty easy to have close games with flavorful armies and a fair bit of customization.

10th is functional, probably pretty accessible for newer players and relatively well balanced, but it is completely bland uninteresting beige slop.

They simplified not simple'd it into something totally boring. It's having at least a few wider knock-on effects too; multiple 40k content creators have been talking about how the 40k batrep scene is just collapsing at the moment with views plummeting.

well the thing is psycic abilities actually did work rather well in every edition, felt like psycic, and were a great advantage and wile there were things to counter them you could defend against or get around it, now however, its much worse, as you give your enemy better saves a feel no pain, or they do things to you. its completly backwards to how its supposed to work, as psycic, could be defended against never a major debuff for having it, and it always enhanced the warrior.

so heres the thing about psycic rules now, have you played grey knights from prior editions? thier psycic was very good, now though its not very good as an ability because other armies have it better, for example templar have lethal hits all the time, you can give it to other armies permanently, i onley get it on the charge. Nemisis wepons always did something, sometimes they caused more wounds, or a single mortal up to 6, but they always did something decent and nice, this bieng because they had raw warp energy pouring through them. The description of grey knights for the index does not reflect thier codexes, or thier stories, at all wearas the space marine one does all the hype. the one in the index, feels alot like the old 3rd ed dex, and a couple of rule book entries that just make them out to be normal psyker space marines, of wich they are not, thier alot closer to custodes, in power, and should at minimum reflect that status much like the space marines. I think perhaps you thought the lore needed changing? grey knights dont have to be overpowered to make sense, and even in thier insane battles they do in fact loose, they often loose to win, they just take a ton with them, and theres nothing wrong with that they rarely have survivors, and rarely a clean victory like space marines do, or other imperial armies, instead they strike like a malet, at the worst infestations of chaos, slaying it purging it like a cancer, so the rest of the imperium can survive. these and the bland rules are some of the reasons you onley see 2-5% grey knight players in tournaments, its about 3 players for every 100, thier just tacky, but you dont have to agree with me, heck you might even like how they sound now, but most grey knight players have switched to other space marines armies, as have I till they start adding detachments back to them. they are always some of the last to recieve updates, and sometimes get worse, instead of better, they did have a slight boost but lost most of thier stuff including critical wepons they needed like halberds and hammers. it doesent take alot to make grey knights players happy, a couple small quality of life upgrades would go a long way, and honoring thier lore in thier codexes from 5-9th, rather then this blah, entry ill tell you what ill give you a better example of what should have been put as the index introduction to grey knights : "The Grey Knights are the legendary Chapter 666 - and although nominally a Chapter of the Astartes, They are the chamber militant of the ordo malleus Each member of the chapter undergoes a gruelling and torturous selection process, and even once inducted, their harsh training regime is without equal. In battle, they move as an army of silver ghosts, surrounded by awe, and equipped to the teeth to deal with the worst foes that Chaos can raise to meet them."

 lordstarhawk wrote:
well the thing is psycic abilities actually did work rather well in every edition, felt like psycic, and were a great advantage and wile there were things to counter them you could defend against or get around it

If you liked the "feel" of psychic powers in previous editions better, that's fair enough. However, there was not always counterplay to psychic powers being shut down. In 5th edition, thing like psychic hoods and wolf tail talismans/runic weapons just had a flat percentage chance to negate your psychic powers, and you didn't really have any say in the matter. In 8th/9th there really wasn't much to counter someone passing a Deny the Witch test unless you happened to have a relic or stratagem or whatever to make your power undeniable. In 7th, there *was* some counterplay in the form of being able to dump all your psychic dice into a small number of powers to basically guarantee they went off, but your tastes are unconventional if you liked that approach.

, now however, its much worse, as you give your enemy better saves a feel no pain, or they do things to you. its completly backwards to how its supposed to work, as psycic, could be defended against never a major debuff for having it, and it always enhanced the warrior.

So I get that what you're trying to convey is that there are currently some rules that trigger off of the psychic keyword and that these are almost always rules that are advantageous to the psyker's enemies. However, what you're actually saying simply isn't true. Psychic powers did not always "enhance the warrior" (warrior here meaning the psyker?). There have been at least a few special rules that make enemies especially effective against psykers in any edition that had a condemnor boltgun, a culexus assassin, or a crucible of malediction. Plus the last couple editions where there have been secondaries that reward you for killing psykers. Furthermore, there has never been anything inherent to the psyker rules that make psychic abilities inherently advantageous just for being psychic abilities. I mean, obviously being able to buff yourself or shoot lightning is a plus, but an ability being a "psychic power" historically just means that there's an X% chance you'll fail to cast the power, that there's an X% chance your opponent will deny the witch, or that the caster will be susceptible to the aformentioned anti-psyker rules.

If you want to make the case that there should be fewer special abilities that proc vs psychic attacks or whatever, you can certainly make that argument. But let's not confuse the facts.

so heres the thing about psycic rules now, have you played grey knights from prior editions?

A little. I proxied my marines as GK for a few games in 5th edition, but that's about it.

thier psycic was very good, now though its not very good as an ability because other armies have it better, for example templar have lethal hits all the time, you can give it to other armies permanently, i onley get it on the charge.

I mean, that's kind of 10th in general. A lot of armies are arguably overusing the same handful of bland USRs (lethal hits, devastating wounds, etc.) in a way that makes armies feel kind of same-y. With some armies having access to each of those rules in different ways/to varying extents. You can make the case that BT are stronger than GK (I have no idea if that's true or not) or that GK and BT both having access to lethal hits makes them feel too similar/directly comparable. But note that neither of those arguments is directly related to how psychic powers function in general.

Like, if you're just trying to say that you want GK to feel more unique without necessarily being more powerful than BT, that's totally valid.

Nemisis wepons always did something, sometimes they caused more wounds, or a single mortal up to 6, but they always did something decent and nice, this bieng because they had raw warp energy pouring through them.

Again. Nemesis weapons currently do something. Would you feel better if they said something like,

"This Strength 4 D1 weapon adds +2 to its Strength and +1 to its Damage stat because it's psychic"?

Because that's what the psychic warp energy is doing. It's causing more wounds (like before), and it's wounding more reliably (basically a baked-in Hammerhand). You basically have always-on Hammerhand and always-on extra damage. It seems like you're maybe hung up on the presentation rather than the actual rules here?

just make them out to be normal psyker space marines, of wich they are not, thier alot closer to custodes, in power, and should at minimum reflect that status much like the space marines.

I mean, saying that GK are more like custodes than like psychic space marines is just... objectively not true. They are literally space marines with psychic powers. Aside from that, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Are you saying that you want GK to be marines +1 that cost more points? Because that's fair enough. Or are you literally just saying that a specific paragraph of fluff doesn't get you hyped? In which case... fine. I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong for not liking some flavor text.

I think perhaps you thought the lore needed changing? grey knights dont have to be overpowered to make sense, and even in thier insane battles they do in fact loose, they often loose to win, they just take a ton with them, and theres nothing wrong with that they rarely have survivors, and rarely a clean victory like space marines do, or other imperial armies, instead they strike like a malet, at the worst infestations of chaos, slaying it purging it like a cancer, so the rest of the imperium can survive.

I did not think the lore needed to change, nor do I think GK are significantly *more* Gary Stu-ish than normal marines.

these and the bland rules are some of the reasons you onley see 2-5% grey knight players in tournaments, its about 3 players for every 100, thier just tacky, but you dont have to agree with me, heck you might even like how they sound now, but most grey knight players have switched to other space marines armies, as have I till they start adding detachments back to them.

I mean. I think most tournament players are either playing what's powerful at the moment or else playing the armies they already have and are familiar with. I doubt a significant number of GK players jumped ship because of the index's flavor text.

they are always some of the last to recieve updates

That is kind of true and stinks. Not really relevant to 10th edition as a whole or the current GK rules though.

, and sometimes get worse, instead of better

My drukhari sympathize.

, they did have a slight boost but lost most of thier stuff including critical wepons they needed like halberds and hammers. it doesent take alot to make grey knights players happy, a couple small quality of life upgrades would go a long way, and honoring thier lore in thier codexes from 5-9th, rather then this blah, entry

That's fair. A lot of armies are definitely irked by the loss of options this edition. Again, my drukhari sympathize.

ill tell you what ill give you a better example of what should have been put as the index introduction to grey knights : "The Grey Knights are the legendary Chapter 666 - and although nominally a Chapter of the Astartes, They are the chamber militant of the ordo malleus Each member of the chapter undergoes a gruelling and torturous selection process, and even once inducted, their harsh training regime is without equal. In battle, they move as an army of silver ghosts, surrounded by awe, and equipped to the teeth to deal with the worst foes that Chaos can raise to meet them."

I'm... glad you thought up some flavor text you like? I don't mean to tear apart your writing, but as an elevator pitch meant to convey an army's gimmick and how it operates, I don't think it conveys as much as the GW fluff I quoted earlier. The earlier quote tells me:
* These guys are using a bunch of supernatural gear.
* They're psychic.
* They're marines.
* They're known for fighting daemons.
* They use precognition when forming battle plans.
* They have a thing for teleportation.

That gives me a decent idea of what to expect from the army. Compared to your text which tells me:
* They're marines.
* They work with the ordo malleus (which may or may not be informative depending on whether or not I already know what the ordo malleus is.)
* They move like ghosts, suggesting to me that they're known for stealth or possible phasing through walls? Neither of which is really true. Or if I disregard the silver ghosts thing then that line tells me nothing.
* They're known for fighting chaos.

So in terms of conveying information, the GW one is better. But if you're literally just saying you prefer your own writing style to that of whomever wrote the index flavor text... you are entitled to that preference.

There's tons of stuff to criticize 10th edition over, and I have no doubt that there are plenty of legitimate problems with GK that can be criticized. But that said, a lot of the specific gripes you're bringing up at the moment don't hold up under scrutiny. Let's be angry at GW for the right reasons, yeah?

ignoring all the GK talk and going back to the start, i disagree that the rules are overly sanitized. 10th edition is just in an awkward state, and one that will be fixed as more codexes come out. three of the four released codexes are good-to-great, with AdMech being the one miss (and with them being one of the most complex armies last edition, it does feel like they've lost their soul a bit). but only one miss so far is a solid enough hit rate for being less than a year into the edition

i do wish 10th had changed psychic to be like magic in AOS instead of what they actually did, tho. i think that would've fixed the "some armies don't interact with this phase" issue

GW keeps trying to make the game competitive but it's built off the bones of a system that does not work well for a competitive game. The more they move away from flavorful gameplay mechanics, the more stale the game becomes and it highlights the weaknesses of the game instead of letting the bright points shine enough to obscure the problematic aspects of the game (IGYG being a nightmare to balance around for competitive play).

Let's use blast weapons for example. They gave the game the feeling of having a weapon that blew up an area and it made the placement of models matter in relationships to each other. Misses scattered and could potentially hit other units and in general blast weapons could hit multiple units. It gave the concept of area concentration more impact in the game as a very congested area was a prime target for blast weapons while during the later parts of the battle when units have been thinned out, the combat effectiveness of a blast weapon diminished due to them hitting less targets. From a competitive standpoint, these things causes arguments over exactly how many models did that blast template hit, spamming blasts bogged down the game, needing to space out models to negate blast weapons effectiveness, and in general it was a longer process to resolve than just "my guys will shoot those guys *click clack* you need to make 7 armor saves". From a more cinematic and tactical experience, blast weapons where a fun concept and made the battlefield feel more dynamic and made each model placement matter. The calculus of the effectiveness of those types of weapons shifted as the battlefield changed to where it became difficult to calculate because it really depends on the placement of models and the concentration of models in the area (including if it scattered off onto something else). This again was something great for the enjoyment and skill of playing the game to determine what are the best targets for those sorts of weapons but it was bad for figuring out game balance and everything competitive.

Blast weapons effectively went away to simplify the game and to make to better for competitive play so you don't have sweaty gits arguing that they hit 5 models with a small blast as they look at the template at a certain angle while slightly moving it back and forth. While that decision was sorta reasonable, the replacement is a system that made a mortar/grenade/sub munition cannon blast/etc feel like an RNG machine gun that the Orks would use instead of something that was simulating an explosion hitting a wide area.

Repeat this simplification process over and over again to make it more competitive and beginner friendly until you have what 8th and 10th became while 9th was just 8th but with the inevitable excessive bloat that comes with trying to work with an insanely oversimplified game foundation and selling rules updates plus power creep.

Frankly I found 8th to be an absolute snooze to play despite my Orks being stronger and it got to the point that I missed the brutal oppression that was trying to use 7th edition Orks vs the insanely OP Eldar because at least the game at moments of entertainment between getting my teef kicked in. 8th felt like playing a children's board game like Risk. I have no idea how 10th managed to be even more boring.

With regards to denying psychic powers from previous editions. 7th system wasn't terrible IF you have 1 psyker on each side. The idea of using warp dice to pay for the power but using more dice meant a higher chance to perils but getting skimpy on the dice made it easier to possibly deny the power or just fail to manifest it. Granted the fact that buff spells on friendly units could only be denied on 6s vs spells targeting enemies could be denied easier made offensive powers weak while the super OP powers like invisibility really hard to stop. The real issue was when one side has a ton of cheap psykers which could generate a ton of dice and made it so you could dump buckets of dice into those must have powers and certain BS psykers *cough* Eldar *cough* could just negate the dangers of perils for the most part. The side with 1 psyker going against the psyker swarm would get bullied as their 1-2 powers being cast had buckets of deny dice rain on them so they basically were useless. The system was a decent concept but it was not at all prepared to handle edge cases like Eldar, Grey Knights, Daemons, possibly Inq spamming cheap/plentiful psyker units. RNG psychic power lists was also a problem but that wasn't directly related to the psychic phase system.

ccs wrote:
I think that what the OP is largely noticing is that they don't need to waste time adding up wargear costs.
And then doing it again with the next Balance Sheet..

Because rules? There's plenty of rules. Every unit has 1,2, 3+ unique rules. And 1/2+ of the weapons as well.

I feel like the on table experience has a lot more going on but there's less to mess with off table and over the years I've realized for a lot of people that's the main draw.

 Vankraken wrote:
GW keeps trying to make the game competitive but it's built off the bones of a system that does not work well for a competitive game. The more they move away from flavorful gameplay mechanics, the more stale the game becomes and it highlights the weaknesses of the game instead of letting the bright points shine enough to obscure the problematic aspects of the game (IGYG being a nightmare to balance around for competitive play).

Totally agree. I remember providing feedback in the 7th(?) edition survey put out by GW where I stated I wanted more focus on balance, but that was because the game at the time was so imbalanced and full of unclear rules that it was difficult to have a decent casual game without a bunch of extra work. But the focus on tournament style games in recent editions has really drained a lot of personality from 40k.

Let's use blast weapons for example.

Oh. Well, hold on now...

They gave the game the feeling of having a weapon that blew up an area and it made the placement of models matter in relationships to each other...
Blast weapons effectively went away to simplify the game and to make to better for competitive play so you don't have sweaty gits arguing that they hit 5 models with a small blast as they look at the template at a certain angle while slightly moving it back and forth. While that decision was sorta reasonable, the replacement is a system that made a mortar/grenade/sub munition cannon blast/etc feel like an RNG machine gun that the Orks would use instead of something that was simulating an explosion hitting a wide area.

While argument-prevention was definitely a big part of it, that experience wasn't exclusive to competitive play. Sure, my casual games almost always found polite ways to resolve disagreements about blast templates, but those resolutions were usually either a role-off or one person simply shrugging and backing down. Neither of which was great. Plus, the "model positioning" thing usually boiled down to punishing horde players for not taking the time to perfectly space their squads every time they moved or for having the audacity to pile in when their melee units did melee things. Which, competitive or casual, didn't feel great.

Agreed about the random hits mechanic not being a good replacement, but I think the current incarnation of the blast rule works reasonably well.

With regards to denying psychic powers from previous editions. 7th system wasn't terrible IF you have 1 psyker on each side.

That's true. It was just such a big if. And the way the math worked out, you really wanted to be putting something like 2 dice per warp charge towards each power you cast to have a relatively good (but still far from guaranteed) chance of casting a power *before* factoring in deny the witch. So if your army featured a caster who wanted to cast two powers in a turn (because they're paying points to do so), you were kind of encouraged to bring along a psychic battery to help them out.

Which also didn't feel great. Like, if I took a farseer and a warlock, chances are I was rolling, at most, a single die to see if my warlock's power went off, meaning I had something like a 50% chance of my warlock just not casting a power each turn. And as you mentioned, armies like GK and tzeentch daemons that automatically have a ton of psykers break the system pretty much instantly. And armies that had no psykers (either as a conscious choice in army creation or because the faction lacks psykers) were always going to be down a couple of dice compared to the "ideal" 1 psyker per side scenario. And of course, the fact that spamming psykers meant you were more likely to shut down your opponent's psykers and also less likely to get shut down yourself created a natural incentive to take lots of psykers where possible instead of just sticking to a humble single psyker per side.

So while 7th's casting system wasn't terrible if you happened to be bringing the right matchup, it kind of actively encouraged you to *not* bring a balanced matchup, plus it wasn't especially fluffy even when you did. Like, the aforementioned scenario of a warlock only managing to make psychic things happen every other turn never felt right. Nor did my shadowseers (when fielding mono-harlies) randomly failing to cast the one power that kept their squad alive because I didn't bring enough spare psykers to dump dice into their tests.

7th's casting system felt like the result of someone coming up with a cute minigame and falling a little too in love with their idea. It didn't do a very good job of representing the lore of the game, and it actively encouraged frustrating, imbalanced scenarios. It was just kinda neat to feel like you could put your back into resisting your least favorite enemy power. Not that being able to do that feels particularly fluff-appropriate to me, mind you.

and certain BS psykers *cough* Eldar *cough* could just negate the dangers of perils for the most part.

In my space elves' defense, it's pretty unfluffy for them to go around with their heads randomly exploding like they're wyrd boyz or something. Ditto my centuries-old chaos sorcerers, my mysterious servants of the laughing god, my literal daemons. Perils' is flavorful, but it's also kind of out of character for any psykers that are supposed to know what they're doing.

That said, I did like the 7th edition perils table for Corsairs. You wouldn't explode like a wyrd boy, but you would come away feeling like you'd touched something unpleasant.

 LunarSol wrote:

ccs wrote:
I think that what the OP is largely noticing is that they don't need to waste time adding up wargear costs.
And then doing it again with the next Balance Sheet..

Because rules? There's plenty of rules. Every unit has 1,2, 3+ unique rules. And 1/2+ of the weapons as well.

I feel like the on table experience has a lot more going on but there's less to mess with off table and over the years I've realized for a lot of people that's the main draw.

i like there to be a healthy balance between the two... and 10th is heavily leaning towards one and not the other. on the other hand, 9th edition had a lot that pointed in that direction, so it didn't feel balanced there, either. there's probably a good middleground to be found. in the meantime, if i want a crunchier game experience, i'll turn to fantasy if i want something crunchier, since that's a game really built for this sort of thing

"Sanitized" is perhaps not the right word, but I do know what the OP is feeling. As a previous poster pointed out, "Sanitized" implies an attitude toward depictions of violence, and that isn't something that's happened here- violence is depicted in pretty much the same way as it ever was- removing models.

The psychic stuff is one of my biggest complaints of the edition. Psychic powers were always "in addition to" everything else; now in some cases they are "instead of things everyone else has". So for example, in an addition that has movement, shooting, close combat and leadership abilities- a psyker would get all of those things PLUS a psychic ability.

In 10th, movement may be psychically influenced... But it's still just movement, which everyone else does anyway, even if they do it differently.

In 10th, you may have a psychic shooting attack- and it is fair to say that IF you can use that psychic shooting attack in addition to a regular shooting attack, then this type of ability is still "in addition to"... but I'm not sure that all psychic shooting attacks are in addition to; I think some might be instead of.

This is particularly true with HTH. Wyldhunt is correct that Nemesis force weapons are stronger than non-psychic attacks, but they always were and they used to be "in addition to" casting an actual power in the psychic phase.

This is most egregious in 10th when it comes to leadership/ datacard abilities. This is an edition where EVERY leader has a leadership ability and EVERY unit has a datacard ability. But with psykers, often times, their leadership or datacard ability will be a psychic ability. When this happens, what that means is that the psyker effectively does not actually have a leadership or datacard ability- they have a psychic ability INSTEAD.

If GW wanted to maintain the feel of psyker status, but decided to redefine what would have been a power in previous editions as a leadership ability, the unit would need BOTH a standard leadership ability (like the kind every other unit in the game has) AND a psychic leadership ability (which is the thing they get for being a psychic). Similarly, a psyker shouldn't have just a psychic datacard ability- they should have a mundane one (like every other unit in the game) AND a psychic one, which they get because they are psychic.

Finally, and I've mentioned this in other threads, the psychic test/ perils and Deny the Witch weren't just rules- they were part of the narrative. A failed psychic test IS an expression of warp anomolies interfering with a psyker's ability, and there were other narrative focused rules which keyed off this concept- such as Theatre of War rules for warp storms which modified the roll, or mission specific rules which did the same. And perils is literally daemonic possession/ incursion. Forces skilled at Denying the Witch had a narrative hook for their inclusion against particular enemies, and their exclusion when those enemies were absent.

Deny the Witch, for example, is WHY Sisters and not regular ole Guard made a good Chamber Militant for the Ordo Hereticus. But these days, guard might as well be the Hereticus Chamber, because Deny no longer exists.

As for LunarSol's comment:

I feel like the on table experience has a lot more going on but there's less to mess with off table and over the years I've realized for a lot of people that's the main draw.

This is somewhat true- there is definitely less to mess with off table. But I wouldn't say there's more going on in the on table experience than previous editions- I feel that's roughly the same, it's just coming from different sources.

10th is just dull as dishwater now. If it was a spice it would be flour.

For me, the biggest issue is just the way the rules work. They FEEL clunky and with a lot of "hidden" parts that you just don't get unless you see it, or unless you're a high-end comp player who digs into it to find the old "Well, the rule is worded like X so that means I can do Y since that's part of X" kind of stuff that just fries my brain to consider. I find watching games that I'm shocked by people doing things that don't even seem possible and then you read the rule and it's like some nuanced thing that's allowable due to the wording the rule, but not something that anyone "normal" would even consider can be done.

That frustrates me probably the most because it constantly feels like there's this metagame within the game that you're only aware of if you're looking for it, and just playing the game doesn't work. Like, it legit hurts my brain to watch people play 40k and constantly be like "Wait, that's legal?" because it's not something that even remotely appears like a thing you can do. I do not recall the game EVER being like that in the past.

Psychic powers being as bland as they are is another huge problem; the AOS approach would have been 100% better than what we got.

 Vankraken wrote:
GW keeps trying to make the game competitive but it's built off the bones of a system that does not work well for a competitive game.

I don't even think it necessarily comes down to 'fluffy' mechanics like armor facings or blast templates, for which the implementation of the ideas was always clunky and prone to arguments. I think they just haven't put enough legwork into making those bones produce a decent game, and resort to layering stuff on top.

In most wargames, it's the core rules that establish the tactics and general dynamics of the game. You can play Warmaster, Future War Commander, Hail Caesar, or Pike & Shotte and recognize the common command structure that drives decision-making even though they're totally different settings. The individual units, special rules, and weapons affect how you interact with the core mechanics of command-and-control and maneuver across those eras, but those core mechanics are deep enough to produce a good gameplay experience across the different settings, and the stuff layered on top just adds flavor. Going beyond Warmaster but staying within GW, Blood Bowl has great core mechanics and strategy no matter what team you play. Or Battlefleet Gothic draws a lot of depth from its movement and orders system even if you only play Imperial-vs-Imperial using just core rules. The basic mechanics are fun and interesting to engage with, and then all the faction rules and unit types and special rules add flavor and variety.

Currently, 40K's core rules are about as deep and compelling as the original release of Age of Sigmar. There's just nothing there, and it's pretty telling how a comparably simple game like Grimdark Future can be more interesting just by virtue of better activation and action mechanics, even if the lack of chrome can lead to it ultimately getting stale.

So 40K relies on its depth coming from layers of additional codex-specific mechanics, but the core rules only have so many levers to work with. Even with the USRs written into the core rules, notice how many of them are just different flavors of 'kill more'. And there's only so much 're-roll 1s to hit if [condition]' you can read before it starts to feel same-y and 'sanitized' as OP put it, while the more special rules they cram in the harder the game becomes to play. Then you throw in a tournament attitude towards neutering unpredictability and emphasizing balance over verisimilitude, and things get bland.

I don't feel that the codices that have released so far fix it, and I'm not sure that they can.

 catbarf wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
GW keeps trying to make the game competitive but it's built off the bones of a system that does not work well for a competitive game.

I don't even think it necessarily comes down to 'fluffy' mechanics like armor facings or blast templates, for which the implementation of the ideas was always clunky and prone to arguments. I think they just haven't put enough legwork into making those bones produce a decent game, and resort to layering stuff on top.

In most wargames, it's the core rules that establish the tactics and general dynamics of the game. You can play Warmaster, Future War Commander, Hail Caesar, or Pike & Shotte and recognize the common command structure that drives decision-making even though they're totally different settings. The individual units, special rules, and weapons affect how you interact with the core mechanics of command-and-control and maneuver across those eras, but those core mechanics are deep enough to produce a good gameplay experience across the different settings, and the stuff layered on top just adds flavor. Going beyond Warmaster but staying within GW, Blood Bowl has great core mechanics and strategy no matter what team you play. Or Battlefleet Gothic draws a lot of depth from its movement and orders system even if you only play Imperial-vs-Imperial using just core rules. The basic mechanics are fun and interesting to engage with, and then all the faction rules and unit types and special rules add flavor and variety.

Currently, 40K's core rules are about as deep and compelling as the original release of Age of Sigmar. There's just nothing there, and it's pretty telling how a comparably simple game like Grimdark Future can be more interesting just by virtue of better activation and action mechanics, even if the lack of chrome can lead to it ultimately getting stale.

So 40K relies on its depth coming from layers of additional codex-specific mechanics, but the core rules only have so many levers to work with. Even with the USRs written into the core rules, notice how many of them are just different flavors of 'kill more'. And there's only so much 're-roll 1s to hit if [condition]' you can read before it starts to feel same-y and 'sanitized' as OP put it, while the more special rules they cram in the harder the game becomes to play. Then you throw in a tournament attitude towards neutering unpredictability and emphasizing balance over verisimilitude, and things get bland.

I don't feel that the codices that have released so far fix it, and I'm not sure that they can.

40K codexes are what drive the flavor. You can have a perfectly cromulent game of 40K with overwatch, ingress / deepstrike, reserves, and missions. That provides the core of the experience and decision making. What the book or index does on top is just extra. You made a favorable distinction with those other systems, but not with 40K.

You mention USRs being about kill more, but ignore the codex "USRs" that aren't. A Chronomancer provides a move after shooting. Something that a scout or skimisher unit might have. It makes sense for every single army in a historical setting to have access to such a unit. It doesn't make sense in 40K, because these armies all operate extremely differently. Did we want variety in 40K or not?

So blaming a division of where the rules fall doesn't seem compelling - to me, at least. You're certainly right in that index armies might feel a bit more restricted in their capabilities by comparison, but not by the quantity of codexes past.

tournament attitude towards neutering unpredictability and emphasizing balance over verisimilitude

I don't understand this sentence. Also, the majority of tournament players use tactical missions, which are far less predictable.

Wayniac wrote:
For me, the biggest issue is just the way the rules work. They FEEL clunky and with a lot of "hidden" parts that you just don't get unless you see it, or unless you're a high-end comp player who digs into it to find the old "Well, the rule is worded like X so that means I can do Y since that's part of X" kind of stuff that just fries my brain to consider. I find watching games that I'm shocked by people doing things that don't even seem possible and then you read the rule and it's like some nuanced thing that's allowable due to the wording the rule, but not something that anyone "normal" would even consider can be done.

That frustrates me probably the most because it constantly feels like there's this metagame within the game that you're only aware of if you're looking for it, and just playing the game doesn't work. Like, it legit hurts my brain to watch people play 40k and constantly be like "Wait, that's legal?" because it's not something that even remotely appears like a thing you can do. I do not recall the game EVER being like that in the past.

Psychic powers being as bland as they are is another huge problem; the AOS approach would have been 100% better than what we got.

This is hardly something new, just a side effect of the way GW mixes rules language and common concepts into their rules. They need to pin down a flowchart and write their rules to abide to it. Implement timing windows consistently and all that stuff. Most of what you refer to isn't even an issue with the rules so much as the rules interactions which is currently the bit they're behind on. This kind of stuff is still dramatically better than its been in the past though, but GW tends to be about 5 years behind the edge of the curve.

Wayniac wrote:
For me, the biggest issue is just the way the rules work. They FEEL clunky and with a lot of "hidden" parts that you just don't get unless you see it, or unless you're a high-end comp player who digs into it to find the old "Well, the rule is worded like X so that means I can do Y since that's part of X" kind of stuff that just fries my brain to consider. I find watching games that I'm shocked by people doing things that don't even seem possible and then you read the rule and it's like some nuanced thing that's allowable due to the wording the rule, but not something that anyone "normal" would even consider can be done.

That frustrates me probably the most because it constantly feels like there's this metagame within the game that you're only aware of if you're looking for it, and just playing the game doesn't work. Like, it legit hurts my brain to watch people play 40k and constantly be like "Wait, that's legal?" because it's not something that even remotely appears like a thing you can do. I do not recall the game EVER being like that in the past.

Psychic powers being as bland as they are is another huge problem; the AOS approach would have been 100% better than what we got.

For someone who isn't playing 10th, could you give some examples of those weird actions?

a_typical_hero wrote:
For someone who isn't playing 10th, could you give some examples of those weird actions?

The biggest thing I dealt with recently is that units that can be resurrected can't do so when Battleshocked. Some people tried to argue that once destroyed the unit was no longer Battleshocked so they could rez, but GW clarified in the latest patch that the BS state remains.

Fighting an army that will resurrect takes some careful planning to try and mitigate the effect and prevent slamming your head into a wall of meat.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
For someone who isn't playing 10th, could you give some examples of those weird actions?

The biggest thing I dealt with recently is that units that can be resurrected can't do so when Battleshocked. Some people tried to argue that once destroyed the unit was no longer Battleshocked so they could rez, but GW clarified in the latest patch that the BS state remains.

Fighting an army that will resurrect takes some careful planning to try and mitigate the effect and prevent slamming your head into a wall of meat.

Battleshock is clearly something that RAW did not work at all to how GW thought it did. I'd say its the source of most of the 10th caveats, but in truth it mostly just doesn't do anything at all.

 LunarSol wrote:
Battleshock is clearly something that RAW did not work at all to how GW thought it did. I'd say its the source of most of the 10th caveats, but in truth it mostly just doesn't do anything at all.

I'd definitely agree that the impact can seem miniscule compared to the morale of yore. I think a lot of people are still catching up to other facets of the rework so making sure your opponent is testing on all their eligible units every single command phase can slip away.

In general people don't think about the impact as much as they could, but when you catch the scenario that matters it can matter a lot. Other times there's an opportunity, but you wind up on a different choice and so the status becomes irrelevant.

40K is the king of gaming aids - having tokens to mark out units needing tests helps a ton.