Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 catbarf wrote:
I agree with this, and also that the 10th Ed detachments tend to be awfully prescriptive and boil down to 'spam X'. As someone else mentioned earlier, the Assimilation Swarm detachment for example really does just come down to a couple of units taken en masse.

Here are all the recent assimilation lists from the following tournaments:

Jupiter Games Warhammer 40,000 Tenth Edition Tournament [January]
January ITC Strike Force Tourney
BC540 Invitational Qualifier - RTT








Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
For the uninitiated, literally what is "Flanderization" mean in this context?

It looks like people have different definitions, but the actual definition is :

Flanderization is the process through which a complex fictional character's essential traits are oversimplified to the point where they constitute their entire personality, or at least exaggerated while other traits remain, over the course of a serial work.

i.e. White Scars are flanderized when they're encouraged to take all bikes, because they only way for them to be fast is on a bike.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
For the uninitiated, literally what is "Flanderization" mean in this context?

It looks like people have different definitions, but the actual definition is :

Flanderization is the process through which a complex fictional character's essential traits are oversimplified to the point where they constitute their entire personality, or at least exaggerated while other traits remain, over the course of a serial work.

i.e. White Scars are flanderized when they're encouraged to take all bikes, because they only way for them to be fast is on a bike.

Derives from how Ned Flanders in The Simpsons degenerated over time from a slightly pious regular guy to a diddly-spouting religious nut caricature of himself.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Yeah, I'll take the 4th ed options where
1: I can build an entire army mounted on bike models
2: Has the wargear options available to customize units for roles as I see fit
3: Forgoes hidden, bespoke special rules that are invisible to my opponent, in favor of USRs known by all.
4: Characters can join and leave squads as they see fit.

For just pure eyeballs, one can be an entirely mounted bike army, plain as day, with options modeled, visible and paraded with pride. The other can bring no more bikes than any standard Space Marine army, appearing no different than any other Space Marine army that happens to have the same units, but somehow behaves differently without telegraphing any of that information.

"Sanitized" is an excellent word for the second option.

Why pick on the Techmarine? Give him a Servo-Harness and a Bike and attach him to a unit and add extra firepower, or ride around and smash things with his Servo-Harness Attacks. Or repair any vehicles that you bring along, but keep him on a bike to stick with the theme. Just an option to make a cool model if you want it.

#1 in a game where there's actual structured missions having an army of all move 20/22 makes for a very lopsided game. If you desire such a thing you can't also be for a balanced game.
#2 just because primaris gets limited loadouts doesn't mean 40K is sanitized. Chaos Bikers still have selective loadouts. Will they redo old marine bikes? No idea.
#3 isn't really true. Everything is pretty easily visible and digestible at the start of a game.
#4 is so rarely useful as to be not worth mentioning. Putting searchlights on all the vehicles might make you look like a genius when night fight is rolled, but at the end of the day isn't an engaging way to design a game just because you happened to drop that missile launcher for search lights.

Clearly there's a few ideas in this thread. This one being ultimate customization at the cost of literally everything else.

It amuses me how quickly you've gone from "Just take as many bikes as you want, 10th is so open!" to "Well golly if you're allowed to take a whole army of bikes ThAt'S So UnBaLaNcEd!"

Your responses to 2-4 are likewise negligible. If you want to talk Chaos options now vs. Chaos 3.5 options, do so at your own peril. Bespoke Special rules are not as visible as modeled equipment, nor as accessible as USRs. And po-pooing the ability for characters to leave and join squads right after emphasizing character abilities as a replacement for abilities purchased for units in counter-example is likewise amusing.

No idea what the Searchlight thing is on about, but they were auto-take in my book because Night-Fight absolutely happened, and they were invaluable in the occurence.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:

I remember the Seeding Swarm, an alternate Tyranid list from... 3rd, I think? It restricted how many heavy-hitters you could take, but gave the entire army Deep Strike. It also came with a few extra options, like paying points to have a unit amped up on lethal levels of stimulants, so it would get a combat bonus but always count as destroyed at the end of the battle. That's the sort of alternate list that makes me think about how the models in my collection could be used in new and different ways, since it played very differently from vanilla despite using all the same units.

I have the Seeding Swarms in my Chapter Approved 2003, so late 3rd.

There was likewise an interesting Drop Pod Attack option in the 3rd ed Marine book. In a mission which allowed Deep Strike, you could Deep Strike any Infantry, Dreadnoughts and Land Speeders, but any Bikes or other Vehicles in your list couldn't be used. This was really interesting because it wasn't a list choice, it was a deployment choice. You decided at the start of the battle.

 Insectum7 wrote:
It amuses me how quickly you've gone from "Just take as many bikes as you want, 10th is so open!" to "Well golly if you're allowed to take a whole army of bikes ThAt'S So UnBaLaNcEd!"

Your responses to 2-4 are likewise negligible. If you want to talk Chaos options now vs. Chaos 3.5 options, do so at your own peril. Bespoke Special rules are not as visible as modeled equipment, nor as accessible as USRs. And po-pooing the ability for characters to leave and join squads right after emphasizing character abilities as a replacement for abilities purchased for units in counter-example is likewise amusing.

No idea what the Searchlight thing is on about, but they were auto-take in my book because Night-Fight absolutely happened, and they were invaluable in the occurence.

You got me. Perhaps I should have said "if you want to max out bikes"?

3/4th had tons of options, because characters literally had nothing on their datasheet.

I don't need to purchase a daemonic aura when characters already come with an invulnerable save. And I guarantee you that 9th had wildly more options than 3.5e. You just prefer the super fiddly buy everything from oldhammer.

10th still has a wide array of abilities in far more interesting assortments than simply +1S, +1T, +1A, 5++, 2+, etc ( bar the small handful of interesting abilities ) and in ways that make me feel more like a general instead of a quartermaster.

Breton wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I get where you're coming from here. However, I feel like that level of distinction might not be a feasible ask. At that point, you're talking about every supported army archetype having 9+ variations. So if there are 6(?) supported archetypes that are each modified in 9 chapter-specific, slight-different, equally-viable ways, that's functionally 54 different sets of detachment rules.

I don't think its an unreasonable ask, its not that difficult. A Chapter Tactic for each subfaction of each main faction, and a handful of detachments is still fairly basic. Sure it runs out to 54, but they don't have to manually create each one. They have to create 9 things and 6 things that work together but don't require each other.

I want a generic Iyanden Craftword Trait like the AP reduction from 9th - something generic that doesn't specifically call out guardians and wraith - that can then interact with a handful of detachments in such a way that Iyanden units might play the same Det in a different way.

Gotcha. That would be way more reasonable. Still not sure I'm a fan of the idea though. If you introduce a list of X/Y traits where the X traits are all craftworld-explicit, then we sort of loop back around to haves and have-nots, right? Making the Y-splats (the army archetypes) craftworld agnostic sort of solved issues like GW having different opinions than you about how a subfaction should be represented and GW only providing support to certain canon subfactions. If we make the X-splats craftworld-specific, then what do we do about minor craftworlds or non-canon craftworlds? I could see making the X-splat into something craftworld-agnostic but thematic. Stoicism, Foresight, etc., but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.

I also, and I mean this with no disrespect to your or marine players intended, feel that it might be a bit of "marine privelege"

You mean even though I've taken pains to specifically and repeatedly include all the factions by calling out Hive Fleets, Klans, and Septs and so on. Sounds like more sour grapes on your part than supported arguement.

Fair enough in regards to you calling out hive fleets, etc. I don't think it's sour grapes on my end so much as concern that adding a craftworld-specific element might complicate things/make it harder to pull off a good ruleset well.

I'd rather just have a well-written rules for a handful of archetypes rather than needing each color scheme to feel extra special, you know? Let an Iyanden ghost army and an Ulthwe ghost army both use the same rules.

And I'd rather the stoicism of Iyanden make their Wraiths more resistant, while the Alaitoc Wraiths are more hidden.

See, I'm already not thrilled by the sounds of that. If the only things we can think of differentiate Iyanden wraith hosts and Alaitoc wraith hosts are to make them more tanky or more stealthy, I feel like we've already started entering into unnecessary hair-splitting territory. Granted, I imagine those were just off-the-cuff examples and that you could probably come up with something appropriate for the wraith hosts of each craftworld if you were so inclined. But on my side, the important thing there is "wraith host." I don't necessarily need a camoflauged variation on wraith host rules. If anything, I'd probably prefer that the hypothetical complexity budget be spent on further fleshing out the wraith host archetype's rules even further. That said, reasonable people can disagree, and I do see the appeal of what you're describing.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It amuses me how quickly you've gone from "Just take as many bikes as you want, 10th is so open!" to "Well golly if you're allowed to take a whole army of bikes ThAt'S So UnBaLaNcEd!"

Your responses to 2-4 are likewise negligible. If you want to talk Chaos options now vs. Chaos 3.5 options, do so at your own peril. Bespoke Special rules are not as visible as modeled equipment, nor as accessible as USRs. And po-pooing the ability for characters to leave and join squads right after emphasizing character abilities as a replacement for abilities purchased for units in counter-example is likewise amusing.

No idea what the Searchlight thing is on about, but they were auto-take in my book because Night-Fight absolutely happened, and they were invaluable in the occurence.

You got me. Perhaps I should have said "if you want to max out bikes"?

3/4th had tons of options, because characters literally had nothing on their datasheet.

I don't need to purchase a daemonic aura when characters already come with an invulnerable save. And I guarantee you that 9th had wildly more options than 3.5e. You just prefer the super fiddly buy everything from oldhammer.

10th still has a wide array of abilities in far more interesting assortments than simply +1S, +1T, +1A, 5++, 2+, etc ( bar the small handful of interesting abilities ) and in ways that make me feel more like a general instead of a quartermaster.

Yeah I'm just going to post this again:



And note that, sure, you can buy the Death Guard book $50 and unlock Nurgle Captain options in 10th (which will be good for maybe 2-3 years) . . . but I'll happily take the single $25 book for everything instead.

Right, so I would say you don't actually care about customization as a concept. What you really care about is oldhammer

.

I care about 40K, the lore, the mechanics, and the setting. what you call 40K now (8th-10th) is a game, a gamey game like chess. at this point you could name it anything you want because the current state of the game is so removed from the setting that created it. and because of that it is focuses on tournament competition. which it appears from my experience to be the majority of current active players for this edition. but it is not a wargame and it does not represent the 40K univeral lore in the game mechanics.

I pointed this out in previous posts. what draws people into a game like 40K (and keeps them coming back) or a fandom is the rich background. an investment in the setting. rather it be star wars, 40K or battle tech etc...

Yeah I'm just going to post this again:

Yeesh. That armory list on its own has me coming up with more cool kitbashes and army concepts than all of 10th edition. Probably all of 8th and 9th too. Man I miss ye olde dark eldar armory...

All the possibilities..... none of them taken

That's pretty misleading considering you're comparing the entire armory to a single chaos lord...without literally anything else 9th had, which included, but is not limited to ( this is only Black Legion options )...



And then inflating your list with stuff like Bike or Terminator armor, which is simply another datasheet. Frag grenades...krak grenades...melta bombs...vehicle upgrades like havoc launcher and pintle combi-bolter...spells...

And then you get to the table and there's nothing else where 9th had this and more....






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:
All the possibilities..... none of them taken

I can't wait to sit down for four hours and waffle on whether or not spiky bits will be worthwhile! Reroll one miss in melee...hot diggity dang!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 aphyon wrote:

Right, so I would say you don't actually care about customization as a concept. What you really care about is oldhammer

.

I care about 40K, the lore, the mechanics, and the setting. what you call 40K now (8th-10th) is a game, a gamey game like chess. at this point you could name it anything you want because the current state of the game is so removed from the setting that created it. and because of that it is focuses on tournament competition. which it appears from my experience to be the majority of current active players for this edition. but it is not a wargame and it does not represent the 40K univeral lore in the game mechanics.

I pointed this out in previous posts. what draws people into a game like 40K (and keeps them coming back) or a fandom is the rich background. an investment in the setting. rather it be star wars, 40K or battle tech etc...

What you think keeps people in the hobby =/= what keeps people in the hobby.

Consider the mountains of evidence over the years and complaint after complaint through every edition -- what keeps people invested...is complaining about 40K.

Daed, you included psychic powers on your list. Which Chaos Lords cannnot take.
And honestly? Considering how many of those were mutually exclusive (one Relic per Lord, though you could also take a Daemon Weapon), I'd still prefer the 3.5 armory.

 LunarSol wrote:
All the possibilities..... none of them taken

True, but an option that exists provides infinitely more possibility than one that does not. We can certainly argue whether a given option should have the rules it does, whether it's worth the cost, whether it should be an option, etc. However, I fail to see how losing those options entirely makes current lists less flanderized.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Daed, you included psychic powers on your list. Which Chaos Lords cannnot take.

And you'll note the same for his list, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 waefre_1 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
All the possibilities..... none of them taken

True, but an option that exists provides infinitely more possibility than one that does not. We can certainly argue whether a given option should have the rules it does, whether it's worth the cost, whether it should be an option, etc. However, I fail to see how losing those options entirely makes current lists less flanderized.

I enjoyed it for what it was when I played it, but honestly I "played" a lot more 40K on paper than on the table given the time it took to put an army on the table and analysis paralysis.

It's more RPG than anything. It's enjoyable. Some people prefer that. I don't really anymore unless I want to garage hammer.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Why do you think it looks boring?

Lack of distinct psychic phase is the first thing that came to min first
Maybe its just usual resistance to change dunno but also the army rules/ unit rules seemed to be nothing to write home about but I guess I'm looking at it through the prism of end of 8th..

Mission structure for some of the missions im not a fan of.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Daed, you included psychic powers on your list. Which Chaos Lords cannnot take.

And you'll note the same for his list, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 waefre_1 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
All the possibilities..... none of them taken

True, but an option that exists provides infinitely more possibility than one that does not. We can certainly argue whether a given option should have the rules it does, whether it's worth the cost, whether it should be an option, etc. However, I fail to see how losing those options entirely makes current lists less flanderized.

I enjoyed it for what it was when I played it, but honestly I "played" a lot more 40K on paper than on the table given the time it took to put an army on the table and analysis paralysis.

It's more RPG than anything. It's enjoyable. Some people prefer that. I don't really anymore unless I want to garage hammer.

Having not played 3.5 CSM, but knowing something of CSM, I would not be surprised if they COULD upgrade to be a pysker.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Daed, you included psychic powers on your list. Which Chaos Lords cannnot take.

And you'll note the same for his list, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 waefre_1 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
All the possibilities..... none of them taken

True, but an option that exists provides infinitely more possibility than one that does not. We can certainly argue whether a given option should have the rules it does, whether it's worth the cost, whether it should be an option, etc. However, I fail to see how losing those options entirely makes current lists less flanderized.

I enjoyed it for what it was when I played it, but honestly I "played" a lot more 40K on paper than on the table given the time it took to put an army on the table and analysis paralysis.

It's more RPG than anything. It's enjoyable. Some people prefer that. I don't really anymore unless I want to garage hammer.

Well, in 3.5th a Chaos lord could be upgraded to a sorcerer, so I think that is broadly a wash in this case.

Edit: Dammit, ninja'd by 2 seconds!

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Yeah I'm just going to post this again:

Yeesh. That armory list on its own has me coming up with more cool kitbashes and army concepts than all of 10th edition. Probably all of 8th and 9th too. Man I miss ye olde dark eldar armory...

You won't catch me standing up to defend 10th; like I said, I'm going to play it with the free stuff at my disposal, I'm going to keep an open mind, and I expect it will be fun enough. Once the dexes for Sisters and Drukhari drop, Goonhammer reviews will tell me everything I need to know in order to decide whether or not to buy in.

I want the models in the Krootbox, so Tau will actually be the first dex I get my hands on, and I'll end up with it whether Goonhammer says it's good or not because I can't buy that collection of models without it.

I'm in this thread because people decided to take drive-by shots at 9th, which is my baby.

In 9th, I had about five Chaos detachments I wanted to build- EC, Daemons of Slaneesh, Ksons, Slaanesh mortal Cultists, Tzaangor Warpmeld... And then I could combine those detachments to create multiple armies built from the same component parts. And of course, all of them would be Crusades, which fought both independently and as allied forces. It would have been f-ing epic.

I haven't even looked at 10th chaos yet- not with the intensity I poured over 9th. I build a CSM list (500 pts) and a Daemons of Slaanesh (500 points), but that's about it.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
and in ways that make me feel more like a general instead of a quartermaster.

Snipped the rest.

I think there is something to this line, and in conjunction with what you said later about more of an RPG vibe to older 40k.

Part of what I dislike about current 40k is that it feels more like a card game with tokens, rather than an RPG wargame. However, I can see why that appeals to others (after all, MTG is huge).

As for PenitentJake specifically... crusade is the feature of 9th I found most interesting, and it is because of the RPG aspect. So there you go. I also liked similar campaign systems in earlier editions too.

Oh yeah, I really feel like a general when only one unit of my jetpack equipped soldiers can use their jetpacks to jump back behind cover each turn, provided I have the CP to spend on that ability, that is.

Or how all of my jetpack troops have now forgotten how to fire their weapons on the move effectively unless they are lead by a commander in coldstar armour. Seriously, GW removed the Assault rule from every single crisis suit weapon. They didn't even make our Plasma Rifle rapid fire again to compensate.

 Haighus wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
and in ways that make me feel more like a general instead of a quartermaster.

Snipped the rest.

I think there is something to this line, and in conjunction with what you said later about more of an RPG vibe to older 40k.

Part of what I dislike about current 40k is that it feels more like a card game with tokens, rather than an RPG wargame. However, I can see why that appeals to others (after all, MTG is huge).

As for PenitentJake specifically... crusade is the feature of 9th I found most interesting, and it is because of the RPG aspect. So there you go. I also liked similar campaign systems in earlier editions too.

Yea, I think there are many flavors of 40K player. I've changed over time. I think I've always been "this" type, but the old editions occluded it. There are crusaders and super narrative folks -- not for me, but I love to see it. There's the RPG bend, which was fun when I did it. And yet there are other games I don't like -- Infinity -- that is what I'd call sterile / sanitized. 40K still has an edge to it.

I can definitely admit that 10th is a stark difference from oldhammer in choices you can make before the game, but I feel like the current edition gives me a lot more to think about on the table.

And yet the "Warhammer moments" persist. The edge of your seat outcomes, wild swings, miserable dice, etc. When I go to the table I won't be facing other humans - I'll face bugs or elves and more.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I can definitely admit that 10th is a stark difference from oldhammer in choices you can make before the game, but I feel like the current edition gives me a lot more to think about on the table.

In my experience, those are entirely artificial choices created by consistently removing wargear abilities and turning what once were ubiquitous abilities into stratagems.

Deciding which unit gets to do the thing they should all be able to do isn't an interesting choice in a wargame. It's like if people designed a WW2 game where only one of your infantry squads could use their machine gun each turn. It just feels forced.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Oh yeah, I really feel like a general when only one unit of my jetpack equipped soldiers can use their jetpacks to jump back behind cover each turn, provided I have the CP to spend on that ability, that is.

Or how all of my jetpack troops have now forgotten how to fire their weapons on the move effectively unless they are lead by a commander in coldstar armour. Seriously, GW removed the Assault rule from every single crisis suit weapon. They didn't even make our Plasma Rifle rapid fire again to compensate.

I believe that essentially because Assault a very useful USR and so it's handed out rarely. I'd love to run and gun with my flamers, but it'd be pretty silly if I could and that's part of the "lethality" puzzle.

What is it that you think JP marines did in 3rd/4th?

JP w/ a Chaplain now could ( depending on detachment )...Infiltrate, charge with a +1 to wound, some mortals, and precision out a character / dodge a charge / deepstrike turn 1 / move-react to enemy movement / dive into a tank and crump it with SH1 and 5+ crits ( and then wound with a +1 ) / advance & charge / fallback & charge / fight on death / join with a captain instead and pickup lance for free on top of +1S / fallback after fighting ( on to an objective ) / get +1A once per battle.

Making the best choice at the right time with correct positioning matters. CP constraints make it more meaningful. After all, "if everyone is super then no one is".





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Argive wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Why do you think it looks boring?

Lack of distinct psychic phase is the first thing that came to min first
Maybe its just usual resistance to change dunno but also the army rules/ unit rules seemed to be nothing to write home about but I guess I'm looking at it through the prism of end of 8th..

Mission structure for some of the missions im not a fan of.

I think you have to play to experience it. I totally understand the sort of mental gap from just having "spells" that provide a buff, which takes away something you'd normally have to roll for where now it is automatic. The shooting attacjs help to balance that off. Perhaps I'm lucky in that my army rule is a fair bit more dynamic than others, but then I've always had more magic floating than most.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I can definitely admit that 10th is a stark difference from oldhammer in choices you can make before the game, but I feel like the current edition gives me a lot more to think about on the table.

In my experience, those are entirely artificial choices created by consistently removing wargear abilities and turning what once were ubiquitous abilities into stratagems.

Deciding which unit gets to do the thing they should all be able to do isn't an interesting choice in a wargame. It's like if people designed a WW2 game where only one of your infantry squads could use their machine gun each turn. It just feels forced.

An errant related thought - people resort to flamers in recce in BA, because it's the best combination of abilities. Heavy tanks are pretty useless. Guns are basically all the same stats. When you grant everything all the time it becomes pretty hard to make a balanced game. 40K certainly isn't there, but they have a lot more to juggle. BA has the benefit of everyone "being the same".

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
...commander in coldstar armour...crisis suit weapon...

...What is it that you think JP marines did in 3rd/4th? ...

Space Marines had Coldstar and Crisis Suits in 3e/4e? Man, my memory is even worse than I thought.

Snark aside, they could use their jump packs whenever their player felt was appropriate, with however many units of jump-pack troops they felt appropriate to do so (barring any rules that prevented that, I want to say there may have been a few weird guns and/or psychic powers that would have either made using jump packs very dangerous or stopped it outright). It is technically more of a choice now, but as has been pointed out, it is an entirely artificial choice with no clear logical basis beyond gameplay concerns. As far as I know, the fall of Cadia didn't magically make all jump packs vent radiation to the point that commanders had to limit their use per turn due to environmental concerns (and let's be real, this is 40k - the Imperium would consider Project Pluto "a good start").

When Tau initially came out they had inbuilt JSJ. It was oppressive.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It amuses me how quickly you've gone from "Just take as many bikes as you want, 10th is so open!" to "Well golly if you're allowed to take a whole army of bikes ThAt'S So UnBaLaNcEd!"

Your responses to 2-4 are likewise negligible. If you want to talk Chaos options now vs. Chaos 3.5 options, do so at your own peril. Bespoke Special rules are not as visible as modeled equipment, nor as accessible as USRs. And po-pooing the ability for characters to leave and join squads right after emphasizing character abilities as a replacement for abilities purchased for units in counter-example is likewise amusing.

No idea what the Searchlight thing is on about, but they were auto-take in my book because Night-Fight absolutely happened, and they were invaluable in the occurence.

You got me. Perhaps I should have said "if you want to max out bikes"?

3/4th had tons of options, because characters literally had nothing on their datasheet.

I don't need to purchase a daemonic aura when characters already come with an invulnerable save. And I guarantee you that 9th had wildly more options than 3.5e. You just prefer the super fiddly buy everything from oldhammer.

10th still has a wide array of abilities in far more interesting assortments than simply +1S, +1T, +1A, 5++, 2+, etc ( bar the small handful of interesting abilities ) and in ways that make me feel more like a general instead of a quartermaster.

Yeah I'm just going to post this again:



And note that, sure, you can buy the Death Guard book $50 and unlock Nurgle Captain options in 10th (which will be good for maybe 2-3 years) . . . but I'll happily take the single $25 book for everything instead.

That's pretty misleading considering you're comparing the entire armory to a single chaos lord...without literally anything else 9th had, which included, but is not limited to ( this is only Black Legion options )...

Spoiler:

An interesting list. I wonder how many of those amount to the +1S or +1 Attack that you bemoaned earlier. And also how many of those items you can stack, as you can in the 3.5 list, because of course a list of items you can combine will give you far more freedom than a list of items that are exclusive. I also wonder if you list is applicable to minor characters such as Sergeants as well, because the 3.5 list is. Heck, you were able to hand out a bunch of those options to entire units of Chosen. How did 9th's Chosen compare?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
And then inflating your list with stuff like Bike or Terminator armor, which is simply another datasheet. Frag grenades...krak grenades...melta bombs...vehicle upgrades like havoc launcher and pintle combi-bolter...spells...

Ah yes, "Inflated" by options that you can no longer take, such as Chaos Lords and Sorcerers with things like Jump Packs.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

And then you get to the table and there's nothing else where 9th had this and more....

Spoiler:

I seem to recall how 10th cut a wide array of Stratagems because people f'kin hated how out of control they had become. Those hidden 'gotchas' we mentioned earlier. Those are them. I'll take the lovingly converted army with visible exotic options over Stratagems any day.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
All the possibilities..... none of them taken

I can't wait to sit down for four hours and waffle on whether or not spiky bits will be worthwhile! Reroll one miss in melee...hot diggity dang!

A well worth it upgrade when Weapons Skill is used as a comparative roll and you're not just hitting on 2's all the time.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

Right, so I would say you don't actually care about customization as a concept. What you really care about is oldhammer

.

I care about 40K, the lore, the mechanics, and the setting. what you call 40K now (8th-10th) is a game, a gamey game like chess. at this point you could name it anything you want because the current state of the game is so removed from the setting that created it. and because of that it is focuses on tournament competition. which it appears from my experience to be the majority of current active players for this edition. but it is not a wargame and it does not represent the 40K univeral lore in the game mechanics.

I pointed this out in previous posts. what draws people into a game like 40K (and keeps them coming back) or a fandom is the rich background. an investment in the setting. rather it be star wars, 40K or battle tech etc...

What you think keeps people in the hobby =/= what keeps people in the hobby.

Consider the mountains of evidence over the years and complaint after complaint through every edition -- what keeps people invested...is complaining about 40K.

To be clear, what brought me here (because I've been fairly inactive here for a while), was your full-of-beans statement about "Just take bikes if you want a bike army" in comparison to 4th where you had far more ability to field an army of bikes.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
When Tau initially came out they had inbuilt JSJ. It was oppressive.

And? Unless I've misread the conversation, we're talking about choices available during gameplay, not how they felt to play against.

For what it's worth, I actually agree with you re: JSJ being obnoxious, but there were ways to fix that which didn't involve strats (ie, reduce the number of units with access to it, or enforcing a cooldown so it couldn't be used on consecutive turns, or making the distance you could move semi-random, or some potential interaction with morale/pinning to make it so that your opponent could lock the suit in place for a turn by focusing fire on it, etc). All of these still allow the Tau player to make use of JSJ without locking it behind playing "mother may I" with the ruleset, and some even give the opposing player more choices in how they deal with it.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
When Tau initially came out they had inbuilt JSJ. It was oppressive.

I think that is actually a myth driven by general hostility to the Tau when they came out from some fans. Like, the most memed and infamous strategy of the Tau from 4th edition wasn't JSJ, it was the Fish of Fury which didn't use any jetpack units but just the borked LOS rules with skimmers and friendly units. And you can hardly claim that Tau were oppressing anyone in 5th edition and retain any credibility. 3rd edition? Maybe people struggled but was that because the mechanics was too strong or due to people lacking familiarity and building armies to counter it?

So then there is 6th, which was also the birth of Riptide spam and turtle Tau, where GW decided to write rules for a mobile, mechanised, combined arms army that rewarded you bunching up at maximum range and standing completely still. The Riptide was a problem, yes. It was too tough, its gun was too strong and had too much range, and it was too mobile. But why was it too mobile?

If there is one unit that was actually oppressive with JSJ, it was Eldar jetbikes with scatterlasers. And that was because, unlike Tau jetpacks who had a base move of 6", jetbikes had a base move of 12" and could also turbo charge (an extra 36" of movement) which made them actually uncatchable even if you had your own bikes or cavalry. Oh, what's that? The Riptide also had an ability to boost it's jump distance? Hmmm, I think we are maybe starting to identify the actual issue.

The problem is not JSJ, it is JSJ with too high a speed potential which renders the opponents own movement inconsequential as you can just reposition away with impunity. If your army cannot catch a unit with 12" movement, then there is a problem with your army. No army can catch a unit with 48" of movement which ignores enemy units and terrain.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I can definitely admit that 10th is a stark difference from oldhammer in choices you can make before the game, but I feel like the current edition gives me a lot more to think about on the table.

In my experience, those are entirely artificial choices created by consistently removing wargear abilities and turning what once were ubiquitous abilities into stratagems.

Deciding which unit gets to do the thing they should all be able to do isn't an interesting choice in a wargame. It's like if people designed a WW2 game where only one of your infantry squads could use their machine gun each turn. It just feels forced.

In my personal experience, there's definitely some truth to this. When I compare 7th edition Jink to the current -1 to-hit strat eldar have, the former felt good while the latter doesn't. A big part of that was that using jink wasn't using a finite resource like CP. You could do it every turn with every skimmer in your army. Plus, it had a built-in downside (you gave up your offense on the following turn) which made it feel more like a meaningful choice. There are definitely a lot of strats that I find myself wishing were just every-turn abilities. Not because they'd be more powerful that way but because they're fluffy and feel good to use.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
When Tau initially came out they had inbuilt JSJ. It was oppressive.

I think that is actually a myth driven by general hostility to the Tau when they came out from some fans. Like, the most memed and infamous strategy of the Tau from 4th edition wasn't JSJ, it was the Fish of Fury which didn't use any jetpack units but just the borked LOS rules with skimmers. And you can hardly claim that Tau were oppressing anyone in 5th edition and retain any credibility.

I didn't start playing until 5th, but I'm inclined to agree. People always seem to be really touchy about JSJ, but it often felt to me like they were basically cranky that they might have to actually maneuver instead of just sitting back and gunlining. JSJ always struck me as a great way to turn 40k into more than just a straight-forward shooting optimization puzzle. Not that JSJ was perfect or incapable of being frustrating.

If there is one unit that was actually oppressive with JSJ, it was Eldar jetbikes with scatterlasers. And that was because, unlike Tau jetpacks who had a base move of 6", jetbikes had a base move of 12" and could also turbo charge which made them actually uncatchable even if you had your own bikes or cavalry. Oh, what's that? The Riptide also had an ability to boost it's jump distance? Hmmm, I think we are maybe starting to identify the actual issue.

The problem is not JSJ, it is JSJ with too high a speed potential which renders the opponents own movement inconsequential as you can just reposition away with impunity. If your army cannot catch a unit with 12" movement, then there is a problem with your army. No army can catch a unit with 48" of movement.

Turbo boosting to safety definitely made jetbikes more challenging, but that tactic wasn't uncounterable nor do I think it was the main thing that made scatbikes a problem. The main problem with scatbikes was that they were just super lethal against anything short of a knight. JSJ plus their long range meant that they were a low-risk-high-reward unit. Turbo boosting to safety was an annoying third layer to the issue, but I'd argue it was both an easier problem to solve (you just had to spread out a bit/have units ready to pounce on them after they moved), and it was only really a "problem" because of the hyperlethality and JSJ. Units like reavers and shining spears didn't draw the same ire at the time despite being able to turboboost in the same fashion.

 catbarf wrote:
I remember the Seeding Swarm, an alternate Tyranid list from... 3rd, I think? It restricted how many heavy-hitters you could take, but gave the entire army Deep Strike. It also came with a few extra options, like paying points to have a unit amped up on lethal levels of stimulants, so it would get a combat bonus but always count as destroyed at the end of the battle. That's the sort of alternate list that makes me think about how the models in my collection could be used in new and different ways, since it played very differently from vanilla despite using all the same units.

I find that more engaging than looking at a detachment, seeing what handful of models it buffs, and checking whether I have enough of those to build a list. YMMV.

I think this may be true - but its sort of where the influence of the Tournament Scene kicks in.

If GW brings in very... unusual detachments, they are likely to be abused (as always happens whenever they introduce a rule that meaningfully changes up basic 40k play). We'll have wall to wall complaining as said army stomps tournament after tournament.

Arguably that's how I feel about all these old detachments - and oldhammer in general. They were fun when I was in my 40k innocence stage. But despite not really being competitive, I can't think that any more. I feel if you care about the game *as a game*, there's an inevitable evolution towards being a Spike. Which probably applies to GW themselves - but still.

I mean its a silly example - but I really didn't like the Tyranid Crusher Stampede. I think if you stuck with a "White Dwarf army" - i.e. no Forgeworld, no spam, it was so-so. But if you took it to the obvious next stage (and we had one guy at the store who did) it was just obnoxiously broken. (In before you played DE, what do you know about being obnoxiously broken, oh wait...) I have very positive memories of 3rd - but its because no one was running remotely optimal lists. "This is my collection, these units seem good, these units seem bad." Being about 14 in 2000 (and playing similar people), none of us had the money to go "this unit seems good, I'll go and buy 3." Which did start to become the case by mid 5th and the average age of the group was now mid 20s.

Its like the discussion of JSJ. I don't think in terms of cutting edge, every game is the LVO final, it was that powerful. But did it allow people to absolutely destroy more casual players who were left unable to do anything in response? Yes. So you are left with the question of how you value this. To a degree you can say "get good scrub". But I don't know. Most people just don't play that many games of 40k.

But I do think that's sort of the issue I have with 10th. There's no innocence to it. There's no wonder. But unfortunately that's player evolution for you. I look at the list of Chaos Lord Wargear and don't think "wow, so much options" - I think "wow, so much of this redundant". Cookie cutter builds abounded. If you balance it you end up with a dozen options that all math out to the same. Or you need to come up with a dozen options that all meaningfully add utility in a desirable and comparable way - which I'm just not sure 40k has the scope for.

I mean its turning in my DE card - but the laments for wargear can feel a bit forced. For melee characters, its all about your weight class. A Haemi having about 7 different options that meant he might, on a good roll, kill a Marine, didn't really do anything. GW could perhaps do better but still. But I think they tried with the WLT/Relic system - but then people whinged about that. So we are where we are.

Tyel wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I remember the Seeding Swarm, an alternate Tyranid list from... 3rd, I think? It restricted how many heavy-hitters you could take, but gave the entire army Deep Strike. It also came with a few extra options, like paying points to have a unit amped up on lethal levels of stimulants, so it would get a combat bonus but always count as destroyed at the end of the battle. That's the sort of alternate list that makes me think about how the models in my collection could be used in new and different ways, since it played very differently from vanilla despite using all the same units.

I find that more engaging than looking at a detachment, seeing what handful of models it buffs, and checking whether I have enough of those to build a list. YMMV.

I think this may be true - but its sort of where the influence of the Tournament Scene kicks in.

If GW brings in very... unusual detachments, they are likely to be abused (as always happens whenever they introduce a rule that meaningfully changes up basic 40k play). We'll have wall to wall complaining as said army stomps tournament after tournament.

As an exercise, can you tell us the meaningful difference between an "unusual detachment" and a skew list or other exotic army such as Knights or the hyper-elite Custodes? Because I see them as no different in terms of their potential for issues, the only difference really being that as a full "codex army" one gets more attention for potential balance problems (and yet still an exotic army can languish without much attention for years, regardless.)