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I haven't played since 5th edition, but I have the rules for 10th in my hand and I notice that a lot of the randomness is gone.

No random game length. No nightfighting, no scattering deep striking units, no templates, no armor on vehicles, no armor facing (why have to pivot the tank, when it has no bearing which way you are facing), no iniative so your thunderhammers hit at the same time as power swords.

No reason not to take every upgrade on a vehicle. Why not take the hunter-killer missile-its free!

No rending, or pinning, or morale for that matter. It's very different. I'm not sure I understand all the changes.

This doesn't feel like 5 editions of positive refinements.

Nah, even 5th to 6th was a downgrade imo, and 6th to 7th broke things even further. It's a cycle of starting a new paradigm and then gradually breaking it so you can start a new paradigm again. Even the fact that Warhammer has had so many editions can tell you that. Hell, 4th to 5th was arguably more of a side grade than an upgrade especially when you take codices into account. It's been a bumpy road being a warhammer fan!

I'm hesitant to judge the modern game without playing it though. It doesn't look like my cup of tea for that sort of game but it seems very popular and the people who play it seem really happy with it, so I trust it's actually pretty fun if you get into it. I'm just put off by the fact that they upscaled the miniatures and shrank the battlefield size.

RE: Flyers in 6e! Oh man I had forgotten about that. Yeah, that is a good shout, much worse than the Challenge rules.

And Psychic Phase in 7e - a cool idea but it went completely bonkers IIRC with powers like Invisibility, as well as the inherent imbalance of some armies having loads of Psychic stuff they could do and others having zero Psykers.

I want Overwatch to be back to charges only. Getting shot at in 3 phases of the game to try and get into melee for one phase sucks.

Edit: Hell, I'd be fine if overwatch was once a turn move OR charge, but not both.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I want Overwatch to be back to charges only. Getting shot at in 3 phases of the game to try and get into melee for one phase sucks.

Edit: Hell, I'd be fine if overwatch was once a turn move OR charge, but not both.

At least you can fire Overwatch. In order for me to use it in my IK army I have to play the less-than-optimal forgepact detachment and I can only use 1 weapon.

I don't mind overwatch, I just think it should be an action on the part of the unit, not a stratagem.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:

Edit: Hell, I'd be fine if overwatch was once a turn move OR charge, but not both.

Good news! Go re-read the Overwatch stratagem carefully.

 Quixote wrote:
I haven't played since 5th edition, but I have the rules for 10th in my hand and I notice that a lot of the randomness is gone.

No random game length. No nightfighting, no scattering deep striking units, no templates, no armor on vehicles, no armor facing (why have to pivot the tank, when it has no bearing which way you are facing), no iniative so your thunderhammers hit at the same time as power swords.

No reason not to take every upgrade on a vehicle. Why not take the hunter-killer missile-its free!

No rending, or pinning, or morale for that matter. It's very different. I'm not sure I understand all the changes.

This doesn't feel like 5 editions of positive refinements.

Random game length is bad for people with time restraints, like at tournies or shops with closing time or limited time slots for table use. Bringing it back if your community has no such issues would be easy to implement, if maybe hard to convince why it's a good thing for the game. The thing I liked about random game length was that it gave more of a chance for come-backs and hail marys in casual games with mates where time maybe wasn't an issue.

Deep Strikes scattering could decide a game through no fault of your own a little too easily, you could pretty easily have the optimum position of a DS be punished very harshly by removing it from the game at no cost to your opponent. Deep Strike screening is also very rewarding because you're sure it's going to work, you can't be hit by a surprise no scatter result.

Templates required people space their models apart which took time and scattering them caused arguments.

Armour on vehicles either made them unkillable or terrible compared to monsters.

Armour facing was easily mitigated by using terrain and at the same time could be hit by low counter-play BS like Drop Pods which could DS in deep trouble and hit your rear armour.

Initiative being locked mainly based on faction caused a lot of factions to always strike first or always strike last against factions. I think it might be interesting if 5th put initiative stats on weapons instead of wielders instead of just having weapons that struck at I1 or full I.

Less math with no upgrade costs, makes setting up games quicker and most units in most editions have had agreed upon optimal loadouts, the disparity between good and bad is just larger than ever because even if an upgrade used to be auto-include choosing not to include at least meant you got a measly discount even if the upgrade was worth it ten times over.

Lethal Hits kind of does what rending did, just works better against greater daemons and worse against Terminators. Resolving lethal hits is really fast, different levels of AP causes issues with save rolls. Let's say I have 3 Necron Warriors in cover and 7 outside, I want to take cover saves against all the non-rending attacks, but do I get to, what's the timing of the different AP values? That's something the rules need to clear up when you have the same weapon have different AP values depending on this. The game still has Rending for certain weapons though, so GW still has the issue. But Lethal Hits is elegang design.

Leadership caused problems because a lot of 40k's fighters aren't going to run away from a losing fight out of fear for their lives, this led to widespread fearless and ATSKNF which meant the value of morale rules was harder to determine and units that didn't get to ignore morale could get wiped by a single guy regardless of unit size or at the very least caused units to act against what might have felt narritively satisfying. 8th-10th probably has more retreating just because it's an option rather than something that happens based on a dice roll.

I’d still like to see Armour Facing return. And it needn’t be complex.

If we look to Legions Imperialis? Every tank has a save value. But, shots coming from the side inflict -1 armour, and the rear -2. With special rules to reduce that for Chonccs.

The same could apply to 40K, either as a straight port or a starting point. And with it, brings more carefully considered positioning of units.

If you sell 11th with a way of determining facings without room for discussion for every single vehicle in the game, I'll gladly take it back.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d still like to see Armour Facing return. And it needn’t be complex.

If we look to Legions Imperialis? Every tank has a save value. But, shots coming from the side inflict -1 armour, and the rear -2. With special rules to reduce that for Chonccs.

The same could apply to 40K, either as a straight port or a starting point. And with it, brings more carefully considered positioning of units.

Well, you'd have to address the biggest problem with armor facing, which was always, "Where exactly is the 'side' armor?" On an imperial rectangle, it's pretty obvious. But it gets a lot trickier with wave serpents and devil fish and so forth. And it's kind of hard to communicate where the cutoff is without adding a diagram to every vehicle's datasheet.

In practice, side armor rarely mattered except against like, guard tanks. Most xenos and marine tanks had the same armor on the front and side. So most of the time, the only angle you really cared about was the rear. So if you really wanted to bring back armor facing, you could just have players leave a straight line marker against the base/hull of their vehicles, and every model wholly on the far side of that line is considered to be targeting the rear.

Of course, rear armor shots were *mostly* only important in melee (where it automatically got targeted) or against deepstrikers. Most of the time, you could just point your butt at a ruin or board edge to avoid having it targeted. But theoretically the straight line thing gives you most of the benefits of different armor facings without all the vagueness of trying to figure out where one facing ends/begins.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Well, you'd have to address the biggest problem with armor facing, which was always, "Where exactly is the 'side' armor?"

I happen to have an image uploaded that solves this problem.
It's not rocket science.

That image isn't even consistent where the Rear and Side arcs are on the casings around the rear thruster. If anything it just makes it more obvious how hard arcs are to define on those things. Perfect 90 degree arcs are also more complicated on things like a Rhino, where the side will stop at very arbitrary points.

 LunarSol wrote:
That image isn't even consistent where the Rear and Side arcs are on the casings around the rear thruster. If anything it just makes it more obvious how hard arcs are to define on those things. Perfect 90 degree arcs are also more complicated on things like a Rhino, where the side will stop at very arbitrary points.

It's not complcated if you make it universal or simply geometric. If you have a better solution I'm here for it, but equal quadrants is really not hard.

And as much as I enjoyed the tactics and flavor of facings, these discussions are why I’m OK with them being abstracted away. It was another point of contention at the table.

One other fixes are “bases for everyone” with arcs marked on them, labeled templates and the datasheet, and probably more I’m forgetting. People have been coming up with fixes for this for as long as they have been around. Pros and cons ro all of them

Bases for everyone with the arcs on the bases fixes many issues - esp when you've got non-standard shaped tanks/beasties and so forth. Of course GW has gone for years with tanks having no bases so suddenly it means putting bases on already big models and so on - esp if they are all round bases (imagine how big they'd be for a baneblade)

 Overread wrote:
Bases for everyone with the arcs on the bases fixes many issues - esp when you've got non-standard shaped tanks/beasties and so forth. Of course GW has gone for years with tanks having no bases so suddenly it means putting bases on already big models and so on - esp if they are all round bases (imagine how big they'd be for a baneblade)

Yup.

Large and legacy models are one of the cons for bases.

Templates have the issue where older versions of kits might not have the same dimensions, and it kills counts-as and kitbashing. Plus having to reference them in game.

Strict 90 degree arcs often have no relation to the actual model.

Pros and cons.

I'm firmly in the no-bases on vehicles camp.

Imo the quad-facing solution is clear 99% of the time, and the ol' "if contended roll a d6" rule clears the rest of it.

But worry not. In a few years your AI assistant will scan the table and tell you.

Quad-facing also frees up you unit for modeling opportunities.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Well, you'd have to address the biggest problem with armor facing, which was always, "Where exactly is the 'side' armor?"

I happen to have an image uploaded that solves this problem.
It's not rocket science.

See, that image raises a lot of questions for me. Is the center of that diagram actually on the center of mass of the serpent, or just an approximation thereof? And if the latter, how did we arrive at that decision? Would I just have to memorize the diagram to know where the center of the intersections should be, or would I be referencing that image any time the arcs/angles were ambiguous? The diagonal lines don't quite line up with "landmarks" on the model like the corners of the engine housings.

So like, the cutoff points aren't intuitive or obvious. You have to constantly reference the diagram to see where the diagonals arbitrary cross over the hull near (but not at the exact corners of) the engines.

If that diagram would work for you in your games, more power to you. But personally, I feel like it's a great illustration of why armor facings are hard to identify/work with.

Honestly I'd just keep it simple - back and front. No side weapon magic, just have a front and rear to vehicles. Its easy to read on most vehicles; its simple to see on the battlefield; doesn't require bases and changing lots of stuff and its basically the main thing that makes tanks and big things feel sensible in what they can fire at

It's also quicker to use so for a larger game it works out well without bloating turn times.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Well, you'd have to address the biggest problem with armor facing, which was always, "Where exactly is the 'side' armor?"

I happen to have an image uploaded that solves this problem.
It's not rocket science.

See, that image raises a lot of questions for me. Is the center of that diagram actually on the center of mass of the serpent, or just an approximation thereof? And if the latter, how did we arrive at that decision? Would I just have to memorize the diagram to know where the center of the intersections should be, or would I be referencing that image any time the arcs/angles were ambiguous? The diagonal lines don't quite line up with "landmarks" on the model like the corners of the engine housings.

So like, the cutoff points aren't intuitive or obvious. You have to constantly reference the diagram to see where the diagonals arbitrary cross over the hull near (but not at the exact corners of) the engines.

If that diagram would work for you in your games, more power to you. But personally, I feel like it's a great illustration of why armor facings are hard to identify/work with.

My counter to that would be that there isn't much space on the battlefield where your qualms come into play. The firing model has to be essentially on a line either way, since the a disputed template centerpoint won't be deviating more than an inch anyways, which is less than a base width of any firing model. Thus, roll a 4+ for it.

Even if vehicle facings have a bit of ambiguity, surely True Line of Sight has that problem a million times over?

At least vehicle facings are only in two dimensions, I remember TLoS causing way more issues back when both were in place.

Put a ruler across the front of the vehicle perpendicular to it, turning it into a T.

Any shots that originate on the front side of the ruler are front shots, any that originate from the back side are rear shots.

If you want more complicated templates you can still be relatively consistent by always zeroing it to the front perpendicular edge of the model rather than trying to find the middle.

You could get fancy and make a rectangle that slides, elongating or shortening to make the front and rear edge of the tank align to show you your arcs.

crossing the T seems easiest to me though.

Crossing the T is also a good one, but the loss of resolution is too much, imo. With Front/Side/Rear you get the opportunity to differentiate armor design more, such as having vehicles that are more armored on the sides, or even equal to the front, the way Eldar vehicles used to be. Or vehicles which really only benefit from narrow front angles, like the ol' Basilisk. I think that resolution is proper for 40k. As pointed out above, AI and old Epic iirc used quad-facing, and those are tiny models. Feels shameful for vehicle facing to have less resolution in a game where the models are 10x the size.

I'd be down with a hybrid system though. Smaller vehicles using the cross-T, like Vypers.

IMO the back and forth here around facings and how to measure and the different methods to measure are exactly why I'm glad it's gone.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
Even if vehicle facings have a bit of ambiguity, surely True Line of Sight has that problem a million times over?

Seemingly so in much of 40ks implementation, yes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NurglesR0T wrote:
IMO the back and forth here around facings and how to measure and the different methods to measure are exactly why I'm glad it's gone.

Too much thinking for your strategy game?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Well, you'd have to address the biggest problem with armor facing, which was always, "Where exactly is the 'side' armor?"

I happen to have an image uploaded that solves this problem.
<image>
It's not rocket science.

Cool. Now do it for every single vehicle in the game. I'm especially curious about defilers, triach stalkers and battlewagons.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Well, you'd have to address the biggest problem with armor facing, which was always, "Where exactly is the 'side' armor?"

I happen to have an image uploaded that solves this problem.
<image>
It's not rocket science.

Cool. Now do it for every single vehicle in the game. I'm especially curious about defilers, triach stalkers and battlewagons.

Pick one of two methods
1: Find center of mass between front and back to find point along front-rear axis. Find center along left-right axis using hull, not legs/limbs.
-OR-
2: Ignore limbs, find center of mass on hull.

I feel like y'all are purposefully trying to make this difficult where it genuinely isn't.

The thing is, it's genuinely difficult and you are trying to gaslight us into thinking it isn't. There are hundreds of pages of discussions buried in YMDC on this very topic from previous editions. For the wave serpent alone, I remember at least three different opinions on where the "center of mass" was supposed to be.

If it's that easy, go ahead and draw a picture for those three models. Even in ghosttown dakka, you will find half a dozen people who will disagree with every single one of them.

Every modern game where facings matter, either has those marked on the bases or uses non-circular bases and provides a template to show facings.

Unless that happens, no facings at all is a way better solution than an ambiguous one like yours.

Problems from previous editions mostly arose from the notion of "draw lines through the corners" of models that don't have corners. And ghosttown dakka is naturally still going to have contrarian positions because it's the internet.

But gaslighting I am not. Simple rules get you 95-99% of the way there, and the 4+ "arbitration roll" does the rest.

But also for "modern games" are you discounting AI, which apparently works on quad-facing?

It's really interesting to hear about people having huge issues with facings. Just goes to show how different play cultures can be - I played all the way from 2e to the start of 7e (wasn't playing as much by then!) and never had an issue with facings, I can't remember a single discussion about it in game, ever!

I don't mind "no facings" but I think at least front/rear would be trivial to implement and would make positioning at least a little bit more important. Though with the modern bigger vehicles, smaller play areas and larger bases on most of the minis I suppose there's just not a whole lot of room for that kind of "depth" related play.

I do miss facings when I play GDF I must say. One of the reasons Deep Striking was so worth the risk was getting shots on rear armour and I still want that to be a thing.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Problems from previous editions mostly arose from the notion of "draw lines through the corners" of models that don't have corners. And ghosttown dakka is naturally still going to have contrarian positions because it's the internet.

But gaslighting I am not. Simple rules get you 95-99% of the way there, and the 4+ "arbitration roll" does the rest.

A rule failing 1-5% of the time means dozens discussions over the course of a crusade and hundreds in a large event.
A rule for something as elemental to the game as shooting vehicles needs to work 100%, with zero room for interpretation, which is what we have currently.

But also for "modern games" are you discounting AI, which apparently works on quad-facing?

Are we talking about the game with the hexagonal bases which show facings?