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.

For each edition of 40K that I've played, I think you can easily make a change to one area to make the game better.

2e - get rid of modifiers in close combat based on rolling sixes and ones. Just slows the game down for marginal benefit.
3e - fix the assault rules to make them more like 4es.
4e - get rid of the bailing out after penetrating hits and reduce the severity of entanglement, to make transports more viable.
5e - fix wound allocation by forcing removal of whole models.
6e - get rid of the weird challenge rules
7e - get rid of formations

Never played the later editions or Rogue Trader but I'd be interested to hear what people would change, or if they'd change something different about the earlier editions.

While all of those surely make the respective edition better, but would it make them good?

If you ever get the chance to play in a 10th edition crusade, go for it. 10th edition's biggest issue is bland gameplay, but adding crusade on top with all its interesting additional rules, options and funky missions has made 10th edition's crusade the best 40k to me so far.

I'm not going into detail about what made 8th and 9th better, GW already did a decent job on that.

The one thing to improve 10th for me would be fixing the charge/fight phase movement. Fixed charge distances (maybe keep random for reserves?), replace pile-in with less restrictive "who can fight" rules, do something about the 1" from a wall thing. Obviously, it would totally mess up the current balance, but right now this the only part of the system which doesn't feels right. It's like you are getting up for five minutes of chess in the middle of a soccer game.

I'd be up for it if the chance comes along for sure. My stuff is one the wrong base sizes for some of my armies but I could get it to work for others.

But yeah, I think 3,4 and 5 are all good as games. Not great, but good for sure. 6 and 7 the wheels started to come off though! 2 is like a different thing entirely, I have a love hate relationship with it.

10th - Go back from fixed to-hit values for melee to a WS comparison.

Even if it is something as simple as echoing the S vs. T comparison rather than a proper look-up table.

I'd like to do something similar for ranged attacks, but that would require adding a stat to the game to compare to, rather than just switching something back from weapons to model stat lines.

 Da Boss wrote:
For each edition of 40K that I've played, I think you can easily make a change to one area to make the game better.

2e - get rid of modifiers in close combat based on rolling sixes and ones. Just slows the game down for marginal benefit.
3e - fix the assault rules to make them more like 4es.
4e - get rid of the bailing out after penetrating hits and reduce the severity of entanglement, to make transports more viable.
5e - fix wound allocation by forcing removal of whole models.
6e - get rid of the weird challenge rules
7e - get rid of formations

Never played the later editions or Rogue Trader but I'd be interested to hear what people would change, or if they'd change something different about the earlier editions.

formations are my favorite part of 7th edition's rules (that and all the alternate FOC charts), so personally i'd lean into that a little more. the system has issues, but it's entirely workable if they had stuck with it

10e - either:
A) introduce facings
B) remove the stipulation about aircraft needing to move forward.
Because as is? "Forward" has no game/rules definition.

Bring back Initiative scores.

I miss it so much. It brought so much strategy to the game.

Now its: I fight first, you fight next.
Meh.

I disagree, initiative really needed interactive ways to be modified aside of lack of grenades into terrain.

The biggest one is bringing back "Must shoot nearest (KEYWORD) unless leadership check." or something similar.

Secondary is to bring back Initiative and in addition to previous, add it in as the opposition for Ballistic Skill. WS vs WS, BS vs I to generate the To Hit number.

I'd bring back the psychic phase from 9th to 10th. It's really the only flaw I see in the base rules of 10th. Everything else is on the codex or organisational Level (no models no rules, points etc.).

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd bring back the psychic phase from 9th to 10th. It's really the only flaw I see in the base rules of 10th. Everything else is on the codex or organisational Level (no models no rules, points etc.).

I've never really played much with armies that have a huge stake in a psychic phase. Do you mind explaining why the loss of the phase itself is/was such a big deal? I get that for some armies like TSons it's a big part of their identity, like if somehow they integrated the melee phase into something else for Orks.

From an unenlightened perspective, everything seems to have been slotted in quite smoothly into new categories. Using Orks as an example as it's what I'm most familiar with: 'Eadbanger being a shooting attack and Da Jump being used in the movement phase. That seems to make sense and feels intuitive to me.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but the Psychic Phase being gone seems to be a big criticism of 10th and I don't understand why it's necessarily a bad thing.

There isn't really 'one thing'. For me its a philosophical one with game design. Either embrace large model counts and move to games based around units, or scale it back and stick with the individual soldier mattering. Currently by being a hybrid of both it suffers.

But in the spirit of the thread - smaller base sizes. Makes it too hard to use models with lots of terrain.

 Afrodactyl wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd bring back the psychic phase from 9th to 10th. It's really the only flaw I see in the base rules of 10th. Everything else is on the codex or organisational Level (no models no rules, points etc.).

I've never really played much with armies that have a huge stake in a psychic phase. Do you mind explaining why the loss of the phase itself is/was such a big deal? I get that for some armies like TSons it's a big part of their identity, like if somehow they integrated the melee phase into something else for Orks.

From an unenlightened perspective, everything seems to have been slotted in quite smoothly into new categories. Using Orks as an example as it's what I'm most familiar with: 'Eadbanger being a shooting attack and Da Jump being used in the movement phase. That seems to make sense and feels intuitive to me.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but the Psychic Phase being gone seems to be a big criticism of 10th and I don't understand why it's necessarily a bad thing.

while an army like orks fares pretty well with the new psychic system, psychic-heavy armies like ksons or eldar are a lot worse off. but i think that's an issue with implementation. the psychic phase was an issue of its own (the fact that only some armies cared means that it only benefits some armies and creates uneven gameplay). bringing it back isn't the solution, but rather, to find better ways to integrate psychic outside of it

alternatively, do what AOS does and have psychic happen in the "beginning of the turn" phase

IDK, I feel like Cabal points do a pretty good job retaining the feel of the psychic phase. It's not something I want back, but I would definitely like to see them do more with psychic, it just doesn't need to be in a dedicated phase (and good riddance to all the rolls and stuff of the old system).

Like when a Weirdboy uses Da Jump, it feels like a proper psychic warp effect. When they give you sustained hits or something that a dozen leadership characters grant, it doesn't feel very reality defining. Even if you did something thematic like limiting reroll effects to psychics would do more to make it feel better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for rules I want changed, True LOS can go straight in the bin. Give models a height stat, let players assign terrain heights and make rules that block LOS accordingly. Ruins exist as the sole terrain in the game specifically because they abstract LOS rules. Doing the same to everything else just lets you use cooler terrain and cooler models without ruining the game.

Bring back the scatter die for deep striking.

Add a little uncertainty to trying to deploy a brick of terminators right on the board edge.

The_Real_Chris wrote:


But in the spirit of the thread - smaller base sizes. Makes it too hard to use models with lots of terrain.

Tyranids already overhang their bases. If anything I say hormagaunts need oval bases.

 Tyran wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:


But in the spirit of the thread - smaller base sizes. Makes it too hard to use models with lots of terrain.

Tyranids already overhang their bases. If anything I say hormagaunts need oval bases.

At least they ship genestealers with 32mm bases these days. They comically overhung their old 25mm bases.

RE formations: I liked the concept. More army appropriate army structure, with the potential to reward mechanically sub-par but fluffy combos. Absolutely horrible broken implementation, designed more to sell models then make for a good game.

 Afrodactyl wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd bring back the psychic phase from 9th to 10th. It's really the only flaw I see in the base rules of 10th. Everything else is on the codex or organisational Level (no models no rules, points etc.).

I've never really played much with armies that have a huge stake in a psychic phase. Do you mind explaining why the loss of the phase itself is/was such a big deal? I get that for some armies like TSons it's a big part of their identity, like if somehow they integrated the melee phase into something else for Orks.

From an unenlightened perspective, everything seems to have been slotted in quite smoothly into new categories. Using Orks as an example as it's what I'm most familiar with: 'Eadbanger being a shooting attack and Da Jump being used in the movement phase. That seems to make sense and feels intuitive to me.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but the Psychic Phase being gone seems to be a big criticism of 10th and I don't understand why it's necessarily a bad thing.

It's hard to put my finger on what was great about psychic stuff in 8th and 9th, but it just was fun and felt different than mere leadership or command effects you could get through other ways. It was a flaw in these editions that all damage spells were some kind of mortal wounds, but other than that it was a straightforward system that worked and made psychic feel flavourful with the enemy being able to dispel and the possibility to blow yourself up.
Now psychic powers are reduced to the same special rules everyone has, the psychic keyword is just a downside that makes these effects worse than if you got them through other ways. Also the psychic Powers change depending on the armor a character wears which is just puzzling and additional mental load.

Looking at Tyranids I think one problem with psychic is that we have steadily gone from toolbox psy units that could buff/debuff/attack depending on what powers they chose (either in the pregame or during the game) toward more and more fixed-ability units. Where they have very set psy powers.

This is basically as the number of psy capable units has steadily increased and GW has found ways to slot them in by giving them specific roles.


That said I think the problem with the current edition isn't just the loss of the phase itself, but the loss of psy being a "thing" in the first place. Psy attacks don't DO anything. They are just bog standard regular attacks - only they don't work against anti-psy units. So they basically have no positive attachment/bonus to using them. They are just an attack name.


Honestly I could tolerate the loss of the whole phase, but as GW often does; they've gone too far and almost tried to remove psy as an element in the game.

Granted I can see some logic when you've factions like Necrons and Tau who aren't supposed to have any and armies that don't want to use lots of it; but I feel like (as with most GW alterations) they took an idea and went too far

It is mostly a return to the old witchfire powers that were just regular weapons that needed a psych test to use.

I mean, old warp lance: S10 Ap2 Lance
current warp lance: S12 Ap-3 Lethal Hits.

Almost the same thing except I don't need to roll a psychic test for it.

I don't mind the implementation of psychic attacks at all and I REALLY do not like the psychic phase, but as stated, I'd like psychic abilities to feel more reality breaking than what we currently have.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd bring back the psychic phase from 9th to 10th. It's really the only flaw I see in the base rules of 10th. Everything else is on the codex or organisational Level (no models no rules, points etc.).

I've never really played much with armies that have a huge stake in a psychic phase. Do you mind explaining why the loss of the phase itself is/was such a big deal? I get that for some armies like TSons it's a big part of their identity, like if somehow they integrated the melee phase into something else for Orks.

From an unenlightened perspective, everything seems to have been slotted in quite smoothly into new categories. Using Orks as an example as it's what I'm most familiar with: 'Eadbanger being a shooting attack and Da Jump being used in the movement phase. That seems to make sense and feels intuitive to me.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but the Psychic Phase being gone seems to be a big criticism of 10th and I don't understand why it's necessarily a bad thing.

It's hard to put my finger on what was great about psychic stuff in 8th and 9th, but it just was fun and felt different than mere leadership or command effects you could get through other ways. It was a flaw in these editions that all damage spells were some kind of mortal wounds, but other than that it was a straightforward system that worked and made psychic feel flavourful with the enemy being able to dispel and the possibility to blow yourself up.
Now psychic powers are reduced to the same special rules everyone has, the psychic keyword is just a downside that makes these effects worse than if you got them through other ways. Also the psychic Powers change depending on the armor a character wears which is just puzzling and additional mental load.

I absolutely hated the implementation of Psychic tests in 8th and 9th.

It's basically just roll and hope you roll well. At least with the Warp Charge system of 7th Edition, there were decisions to be made. (That had its own issues, such as being way too easy for one side to have an insurmountable advantage in number of Warp Charges, but the core idea had more merit.)

 Nevelon wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:


But in the spirit of the thread - smaller base sizes. Makes it too hard to use models with lots of terrain.

Tyranids already overhang their bases. If anything I say hormagaunts need oval bases.

At least they ship genestealers with 32mm bases these days. They comically overhung their old 25mm bases.

RE formations: I liked the concept. More army appropriate army structure, with the potential to reward mechanically sub-par but fluffy combos. Absolutely horrible broken implementation, designed more to sell models then make for a good game.

can certainly agree there. smaller core formations would certainly have helped a lot. instead it feels like they were putting entire armies into the one slot

 Da Boss wrote:
I'd be up for it if the chance comes along for sure. My stuff is one the wrong base sizes for some of my armies but I could get it to work for others.

No one cares about base sizes in a crusade

Hey, guys. Did you know the forum has a nifty Proposed Rules section?

I'd love to see your suggestions there (and rant about why past editions' psychic systems were bad).

 Da Boss wrote:

5e - fix wound allocation by forcing removal of whole models.
6e - get rid of the weird challenge rules
7e - get rid of formations

6e - flyer rules were really problematic because of the lack of counters, hull point counts probably could have been a balanced part of the game, but I think they needed to be 50%-100% higher on most vehicles to now have everything revolve around guns stripping them away. Daemon summoning was complete BS if I recall correctly.
7e - I think it's nice formations were tried for an edition, interesting way to design a game and could highlight different ways armies are constructed from faction to faction, but D weapons were just BS.
8e - Get rid of Chapter Tactics, pushed players to build spammy lists to make use of whatever army-wide upgrade they picked and the always on aspect made the power disparities too important so choosing for flavour got punished pretty hard. Them being released at no real cost made most indexes underpowered as well.
9e - Fix Stratagem bloat, 10e has the best possible version of a Stratagem system GW could implement. It got more and more problematic in 8th edition, but 9th started out bad and got worse when it came to Stratagems.
10e - Make melee like 9th. Melee has gone back to the 5th-7th shell were players shuffle models around according to the rules instead of deciding where their models go to advance their plans which 8th introduced with the stripped down rules for melee. 8th's major flaw was height causing wonky issues, 8th also let an absolute tonne of models fight, which I think was mostly good. .

 JNAProductions wrote:

Spoiler:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd bring back the psychic phase from 9th to 10th. It's really the only flaw I see in the base rules of 10th. Everything else is on the codex or organisational Level (no models no rules, points etc.).

I've never really played much with armies that have a huge stake in a psychic phase. Do you mind explaining why the loss of the phase itself is/was such a big deal? I get that for some armies like TSons it's a big part of their identity, like if somehow they integrated the melee phase into something else for Orks.

From an unenlightened perspective, everything seems to have been slotted in quite smoothly into new categories. Using Orks as an example as it's what I'm most familiar with: 'Eadbanger being a shooting attack and Da Jump being used in the movement phase. That seems to make sense and feels intuitive to me.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but the Psychic Phase being gone seems to be a big criticism of 10th and I don't understand why it's necessarily a bad thing.

It's hard to put my finger on what was great about psychic stuff in 8th and 9th, but it just was fun and felt different than mere leadership or command effects you could get through other ways. It was a flaw in these editions that all damage spells were some kind of mortal wounds, but other than that it was a straightforward system that worked and made psychic feel flavourful with the enemy being able to dispel and the possibility to blow yourself up.
Now psychic powers are reduced to the same special rules everyone has, the psychic keyword is just a downside that makes these effects worse than if you got them through other ways. Also the psychic Powers change depending on the armor a character wears which is just puzzling and additional mental load.

I absolutely hated the implementation of Psychic tests in 8th and 9th.

It's basically just roll and hope you roll well. At least with the Warp Charge system of 7th Edition, there were decisions to be made. (That had its own issues, such as being way too easy for one side to have an insurmountable advantage in number of Warp Charges, but the core idea had more merit.)

See, I absolutely hated the 7th edition system because rrying to deny always felt like a waste of time and most psykers got reduced to being a battery for the one important psyker. 8th/9th was perfect to me in how it made psychic feel different yet it wasn't a bloated mess of rules with little inpact like many things in 7th were. I felt they were far more decisions to make in 8th/9th because of the powers becoming harder to cast the more you cast. While in 7th the decision was: Do I throw all my dice to make my Death Star invisible/prescienced or not... hmm hard choice! (This is of course a strawman, but I don't remember having to decide much in 7th because of the game deciding powers that made any other spell irrelevant and the low chances of being denied.)
I don’t need the psychic phase per se, but rolling to cast, denying, choosing spells, being able to miscast all makes for an immersive game and fun times and 10th just got rid of all of it and just turned psychic powers into worse weapons or commands.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Spoiler:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd bring back the psychic phase from 9th to 10th. It's really the only flaw I see in the base rules of 10th. Everything else is on the codex or organisational Level (no models no rules, points etc.).

I've never really played much with armies that have a huge stake in a psychic phase. Do you mind explaining why the loss of the phase itself is/was such a big deal? I get that for some armies like TSons it's a big part of their identity, like if somehow they integrated the melee phase into something else for Orks.

From an unenlightened perspective, everything seems to have been slotted in quite smoothly into new categories. Using Orks as an example as it's what I'm most familiar with: 'Eadbanger being a shooting attack and Da Jump being used in the movement phase. That seems to make sense and feels intuitive to me.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but the Psychic Phase being gone seems to be a big criticism of 10th and I don't understand why it's necessarily a bad thing.

It's hard to put my finger on what was great about psychic stuff in 8th and 9th, but it just was fun and felt different than mere leadership or command effects you could get through other ways. It was a flaw in these editions that all damage spells were some kind of mortal wounds, but other than that it was a straightforward system that worked and made psychic feel flavourful with the enemy being able to dispel and the possibility to blow yourself up.
Now psychic powers are reduced to the same special rules everyone has, the psychic keyword is just a downside that makes these effects worse than if you got them through other ways. Also the psychic Powers change depending on the armor a character wears which is just puzzling and additional mental load.

I absolutely hated the implementation of Psychic tests in 8th and 9th.

It's basically just roll and hope you roll well. At least with the Warp Charge system of 7th Edition, there were decisions to be made. (That had its own issues, such as being way too easy for one side to have an insurmountable advantage in number of Warp Charges, but the core idea had more merit.)

See, I absolutely hated the 7th edition system because rrying to deny always felt like a waste of time and most psykers got reduced to being a battery for the one important psyker. 8th/9th was perfect to me in how it made psychic feel different yet it wasn't a bloated mess of rules with little inpact like many things in 7th were. I felt they were far more decisions to make in 8th/9th because of the powers becoming harder to cast the more you cast. While in 7th the decision was: Do I throw all my dice to make my Death Star invisible/prescienced or not... hmm hard choice! (This is of course a strawman, but I don't remember having to decide much in 7th because of the game deciding powers that made any other spell irrelevant and the low chances of being denied.)
I don’t need the psychic phase per se, but rolling to cast, denying, choosing spells, being able to miscast all makes for an immersive game and fun times and 10th just got rid of all of it and just turned psychic powers into worse weapons or commands.

But in 8th and 9th, each power was only a once per turn cast. (Except Smite.)

Also, is Perils actually lore-appropriate?
Or Denials?

It's one thing for a Cultist Rogue Psyker or a Guardsman Astropath to blow their head up when trying to do psykery.
But an Eldar Farseer? A GK Librarian? A Daemon that's literally made of warpstuff?

Yeah. I'm trying not to go on my rants about old psychic phase rules as much, but JNA is right about perils being unfluffy for most psykers in the game.

And on top of that, I'd argue that the old psychic test/denial rules were unfluffy, uninteresting, and not even a very good representation of the themes they're trying to evoke.

Psykers basically never get denied in books outside of very rare moments where the author is showcasing an act of faith or something. And they certainly don't randomly fail to put up a forcefield or shoot lightning.

If you want a system that evokes those themes a bit better I'd suggest something more along the lines of either...

A.) Psykers Can Push Themselves
Under this system, powers have no chance of failing. However, a psyker can push himself to use an enhanced version of a power (provided that power has an enhanced version) or to use an extra psychic ability in the same turn. Pushing comes with a chance of suffering mortal wounds or some other nasty consequence.

So your librarian will never randomly fail to make lightning happen, but he might burn himself out by pushing for super lightning or by trying to juggle a bunch of psychic effects at once.

Anti-psychic effects like Culexus auras could do things like requiring psykers push to use their powers while near the assassin.

B.) Powers are Stressful
Under this system, psychic powers have a Stress stat. Powers go off automatically and can't be denied. However, psykers gain Stress equal to the Stress of the powers they cast. At the end of the turn, roll a d6 for each psyker, and take a mortal wounds equal to the difference between the result and their current Stress (if the die result is lower than their current stress.) Psykers remove X stress during their command phase.

This approach gives you some neat levers to pull like letting especially safe psykers lose more stress in the command phase, letting psykers up the Stress of their powers to do more dramatic effects, and potentially letting psykers cast more powers in a given turn but at the obvious cost of risking hurting themselves.

Let's move the Psyker Talk to another thread.

Don't want to get too off-topic.