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 Wyldhunt wrote:


Yeah. Old initiative was bad for the reasons you've mentioned. As an eldar player, I don't really want that version of it back. That said, it feels like initiative was a big part of our survivability that we never really got back/replaced in any fashion. Back in the day, if you charged your hormagaunts into my harlequins, I could take satisfaction in knowing that the expensive clowns who were supposed to be some of the best melee combatants in the galaxy would at least get some licks in before being overwhelmed by your horde of mooks. Now, a trash mob unit can potentially go into melee with a melee specialist and wipe them out with no casualties in return. Which just doesn't feel right.

Going from 7th to 8th, units like harlequins and wyches went from reliably getting some licks in and being harder to hit in the first place (compared WS) to being hit as easily as guardsmen and potentially not swinging a single attack while they're torn apart in melee. Their supposed melee prowess just goes away if they aren't the ones actively rolling dice. It felt better when both sides of a fight were likely to come away scuffed up and getting the charge just meant that the charger came out trading better. As opposed to now where charging means you frequently just wipe out the enemy entirely unless you're bad at melee or are charging a terminator brick.

I'd tend to agree with these points. As someone who's been on both ends of the spectrum, Initiative rules have always been kind of crap. I've crammed high-Init units in my Eldar army (or just Banshees) down my opponent's gullet with little they could do in return. On the other hand, my primary WFB army was always Lizardmen, and Saurus Warriors, with the lowest Init in the game (1) were very overpriced blocks of infantry that almost never won an actual fight, especially against anything remotely close to them in points value. Primarily due to always fighting last unless they managed to get a charge off, or they were fighting a unit with 2-handed weapons.

10th 40K, as you say, has not helped the situation. Essentially units like Murder Clowns are one-shot wonders unless you get lucky or your opponent gets stupid. You HAVE to get the charge off with them, they'll likely do really good damage, but unless they somehow delete their enemy and manage to consolidate back onto a Starweaver, they're sitting ducks that go last when return charged. But, that concept seems to be endemic to 10th...do as much damage as you can on the turn you choose to expose yourself, then pick up your models from the return deletion. Most things seem to be over very quickly, one way or another.

It's even weirder with Strikes-First units. You charged my Banshees? Cool, I get to go first in the Strikes-First phase of the fight. My Banshees charged your Von Ryan's Leapers? Or the Leapers used their ability at Heroic Intervention on my turn? They get to go first. It's all a little bizarre. I mean, it's fine, everyone knows the rules, and you just have to think through the consequences of doing something with your little painted figures, but some of the design decisions this edition are just plain odd.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I feel like the obvious downside there is that it's a lot of extra design work for the designers to create and balance a bespoke set of debuffs for each faction, and then it's a lot of extra rules for players to learn/memorize. Current morale isn't ideal, but at least you know what happens when your opponent fails a batlteshock test without having to memorize a d6 table for their faction in advance.

Well in the one case, it would be a single 'disruption effect' that the army receives. one rule for each army.

The old single mechanic fits all only really works well if everyone is affected equally, but GW loves to show how fearless each army is above the other, and it ends up mostly just being a rule that punished a couple of armies and is ignored by others. The old morale mechanics had basically 3 army effects, ignore, rarely a problem and punishment. You can divide most armies across those three effects pretty easily and it's the main reason IMO so many people hated the mechanic. It became another hoop a range of armies had to jump through while others just stepped over it.

A generic disruption mechanic that affects everyone equally will work, but will likely get many fans of fearlessness annoyed that their army is now being affected by 'morale'.



As to the initiative conversation, the issue comes back to what levers you have to make units survivable. High I armies like eldar and tyranids were often easily killed, so being able to strike first gave them survivability by proxy of killing some of their opponents before they could attack back. GW keep shrinking these levers and now the game is tuned entirely to survivability being the stats that a certain set of armies naturally have in abundance but others don't - T, W, Sv.

And because some armies conceptually are highly survivable without those stats, the cognitive dissonance of T6 genestealers to represent their initiative/speed as a a defence doesn't work for most people.

The more they strip, the necessarily more abstract their mechanics need to become to allow for these factors.

The game used to use simulationist RPG representation, Wounds means wounds, toughness means toughness. Because they had enough stats that you could represent the speed, skill, dodge etc defence with stats that mapped to them.

However, now as they remove stuff, these stats don't entirely represent the word used to name them anymore. It's like EPIC where there are so few stats that you have to accept the abstract representation of a unit with low armour and toughness but high reflexes having a high 'save', because save represents ALL the different attributes that go into keeping the unit alive.



If GW are going to insist on 40k only having those basic defence mechanics, then they need to get comfortable using wounds and toughness as abstract survival mechanics and give armies that don't normally look tough higher stats to reflect their survival from other areas.

High initiative didn't really gave that much survivability when half the game (any ranged army) pretty much ignored it.

My I6 genestealers definitely didn't feel survivable every time anyone fired at them, even with just bolters. They always felt like glass cannons (glass hammers? what is the melee equivalent of a glass cannon?) at best.

If want something to feel survivable I play monsters, a Tyrannofex or a Maleceptor feels survivable*. Genestealers? no.

*Well 8th and up. 5th-7th felt kinda horrible with GW refusing to give Tyranid monsters anything above T6 Sv3+

In 2nd ed they were -1 to Hit when running (which was all the time because they're trying to get into melee), as were the eldar.

Initiative makes them survivable in melee despite low T,W,Sv. Guardsmen would kill genestealers if they didn't strike first.

At WS3 vs WS6 and S3 vs T4? a whole squad would may be able to kill one if they get the charge bonus.

But to be honest I don't really care about the hypothetical guardsmen melee. I care about their blast and template weaponry.

Kagetora wrote:
I'd tend to agree with these points. As someone who's been on both ends of the spectrum, Initiative rules have always been kind of crap. I've crammed high-Init units in my Eldar army (or just Banshees) down my opponent's gullet with little they could do in return. On the other hand, my primary WFB army was always Lizardmen, and Saurus Warriors, with the lowest Init in the game (1) were very overpriced blocks of infantry that almost never won an actual fight, especially against anything remotely close to them in points value. Primarily due to always fighting last unless they managed to get a charge off, or they were fighting a unit with 2-handed weapons.

10th 40K, as you say, has not helped the situation. Essentially units like Murder Clowns are one-shot wonders unless you get lucky or your opponent gets stupid. You HAVE to get the charge off with them, they'll likely do really good damage, but unless they somehow delete their enemy and manage to consolidate back onto a Starweaver, they're sitting ducks that go last when return charged. But, that concept seems to be endemic to 10th...do as much damage as you can on the turn you choose to expose yourself, then pick up your models from the return deletion. Most things seem to be over very quickly, one way or another.

It's even weirder with Strikes-First units. You charged my Banshees? Cool, I get to go first in the Strikes-First phase of the fight. My Banshees charged your Von Ryan's Leapers? Or the Leapers used their ability at Heroic Intervention on my turn? They get to go first. It's all a little bizarre. I mean, it's fine, everyone knows the rules, and you just have to think through the consequences of doing something with your little painted figures, but some of the design decisions this edition are just plain odd.

Exactly. Like I said, it used to feel like most dedicated melee units got their licks in. Either they were higher initiative and thus typically swung first, or else they tanky enough or numerous enough that there would probably be enough of them left to do some damage in return. And then the old sweeping advance rules (feelsbad as they were) meant that it was okay to not cleave your way through every last wound of the enemy squad. It was more about seeing who could do more damage over the course of the whole phase. And charging just meant that you were more likely to trade better thanks to the bonus attacks and possibly bonus strength/initiative from furious charge and similar effects. Whereas now it feels like I'm just launching suicide missiles at the enemy with my melee elves. (My terminators are fine standing around getting hit back.)

The old system had lots of room for improvement, but I think I kind of preferred it on the whole. And not just because my main armies had high initiative.

Hellebore wrote:
Well in the one case, it would be a single 'disruption effect' that the army receives. one rule for each army.

The old single mechanic fits all only really works well if everyone is affected equally, but GW loves to show how fearless each army is above the other, and it ends up mostly just being a rule that punished a couple of armies and is ignored by others. The old morale mechanics had basically 3 army effects, ignore, rarely a problem and punishment. You can divide most armies across those three effects pretty easily and it's the main reason IMO so many people hated the mechanic. It became another hoop a range of armies had to jump through while others just stepped over it.

A generic disruption mechanic that affects everyone equally will work, but will likely get many fans of fearlessness annoyed that their army is now being affected by 'morale'.

I was comparing your suggestion to what we have now in 10th. Battleshock has room for improvement, but it's pretty straightforward to resolve and impacts most armies more or less evenly.

As to the initiative conversation, the issue comes back to what levers you have to make units survivable. High I armies like eldar and tyranids were often easily killed, so being able to strike first gave them survivability by proxy of killing some of their opponents before they could attack back. GW keep shrinking these levers and now the game is tuned entirely to survivability being the stats that a certain set of armies naturally have in abundance but others don't - T, W, Sv.

And because some armies conceptually are highly survivable without those stats, the cognitive dissonance of T6 genestealers to represent their initiative/speed as a a defence doesn't work for most people.

The more they strip, the necessarily more abstract their mechanics need to become to allow for these factors.

The game used to use simulationist RPG representation, Wounds means wounds, toughness means toughness. Because they had enough stats that you could represent the speed, skill, dodge etc defence with stats that mapped to them.

However, now as they remove stuff, these stats don't entirely represent the word used to name them anymore. It's like EPIC where there are so few stats that you have to accept the abstract representation of a unit with low armour and toughness but high reflexes having a high 'save', because save represents ALL the different attributes that go into keeping the unit alive.



If GW are going to insist on 40k only having those basic defence mechanics, then they need to get comfortable using wounds and toughness as abstract survival mechanics and give armies that don't normally look tough higher stats to reflect their survival from other areas.

Yeah. It's not my preferred solution, but theoretically giving eldar several wounds per model and putting a cap on how much damage they can take at a time would actually kind of represent speed as defense pretty well. In an unintuitive, unfluffy sort of way. You'd functionally need to throw out lots of attacks because the first couple of wounds each elf loses would be assumed to represent them dodging around as they moved.

I feel like there's probably a better solution to be had in hit modifiers, general lethality reduction, range-related mechanics, etc., but I hear what you're saying.

Tyran wrote:High initiative didn't really gave that much survivability when half the game (any ranged army) pretty much ignored it.

But they *did* feel more survivable in melee though. Which meant that your opponent had to shoot them to deal with them without trading inefficiently. Which meant you could do things like going after shooty units first or otherwise trying to tie-up/debuff shooty units so that your opponent was forced to make tough choices about whether it was worth it to charge in or to redirect guns they'd rather point at other targets.

In other words, it created interesting decisions and counterplay. Whereas now, so long as they have a melee unit somewhere in the area, they can just throw it into your genestealers and know it will do max damage without fear of losing anything first.

...Unless of course they have the audacity to charge with more than one unit thus opening themselves up to the interrupt stratagem... Which is a whole other strange, annoying design decision. Right up there with fights first units that don't charge being faster than fights first units that do charge even though not-fights-first chargers are faster than not-fights-first non-chargers...

 Tyran wrote:
IMHO battleshock only needs to be made more punishing and battleshock modifiers need to be written into the core rules so it actually matters.

My personal suggestion is that a battleshocked unit can only shoot and charge the nearest enemy unit.

Or it gets merged with pinned and they can't do anything for a turn other than move to cover if they can. If no cover then they get a bonus to saves.

The thing I liked about the old morale system and pinning is that it's a way to temporarily remove threats without killing them. Right now there's one solution to threats and that's to remove them from the board. Even morale is just a way to remove models after you just finished removing models. That feels bland to me; in most tactics games you're given a variety of solutions to a problem.
Consider FiraXCOM; you don't have to kill everything on the same turn (although that is optimal), you have debuffs, buffs, stuns, decoys, etc. You have a lot more solutions to a problem other than just "shoot it until it dies".
That's something that 40k lacks; the only solution you ever have is "shoot it to remove models. If you remove enough models you get to remove more models", and that's a pity.

On a related note, battleshock is a stupid name for a rule and reeks of someone trying hard to be cool. I would call it Squad Morale Broken as a nod to Dawn of War.
It's clear, it's to the point, it's an actual descriptive phrase that explain clearly what it does and it's a reference to what is perhaps the best Warhammer 40k game adaptation released.

 Tyran wrote:
IMHO battleshock only needs to be made more punishing and battleshock modifiers need to be written into the core rules so it actually matters.

My personal suggestion is that a battleshocked unit can only shoot and charge the nearest enemy unit.

That's not a terrible idea- I could live with it. But it's kinda funny, because if that's the solution, then sure I have to shoot or fight the nearest unit, but I also get to maintain control of the objective I'm standing on, and when I do deal with the nearest unit, I can dump a bucket of strats on the attack to make sure I delete them; the current system prevents both of those things, but does let me deal with whoever I choose. I'm honestly not sure that either system is more or less of a penalty than the other.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Or it gets merged with pinned and they can't do anything for a turn other than move to cover if they can. If no cover then they get a bonus to saves.

Another decent solution that I'd be okay with, but the same situation above applies:

"Hah! You're broken! Run and hide!"

"Yep, I'll do that but the objective is stickied, and I've got more OC than your attackers, so I still score and you don't. Looking forward to attacking me on your next turn? No problem, I'll just drop this strat and go into strategic reserve. Aren't you glad you broke me?"

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

The thing I liked about the old morale system and pinning is that it's a way to temporarily remove threats without killing them. Right now there's one solution to threats and that's to remove them from the board.

There are strats that represent pinning, though perhaps not as well as it was represented in previous editions, and of course everyone's favourite complaint about strats still applies: they aren't a core mechanic. But I have strats and unit abilities that can penalize your ability to shoot, or to fight, or to move, or to charge, or some combination of the above.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Even morale is just a way to remove models after you just finished removing models. That feels bland to me;

Well good news then, the game doesn't have to feel bland, because that ISN'T how morale works. You don't remove ANYTHING when you fail Battleshock- you lose the ability to control objectives and use strats.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

in most tactics games you're given a variety of solutions to a problem.
Consider FiraXCOM; you don't have to kill everything on the same turn (although that is optimal), you have debuffs, buffs, stuns, decoys, etc. You have a lot more solutions to a problem other than just "shoot it until it dies".
That's something that 40k lacks; the only solution you ever have is "shoot it to remove models. If you remove enough models you get to remove more models", and that's a pity.

Again, 40k doesn't lack those things at all- they're just strats and unit rules rather than being core mechanics.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

On a related note, battleshock is a stupid name for a rule and reeks of someone trying hard to be cool. I would call it Squad Morale Broken as a nod to Dawn of War.
It's clear, it's to the point, it's an actual descriptive phrase that explain clearly what it does and it's a reference to what is perhaps the best Warhammer 40k game adaptation released.

Well, agree to disagree since it's such a small point of semantics... But for the record, shock is a genuine medical condition that causes confusion- something that is very well represented by an inability to control territory or use effective strategy. Typically, shock is caused by injury or other forms of trauma, so Battleshock is Shock caused by battle. And what do you know, it's a single three syllable word.

Squad Morale Broken, on the other hand is three words totalling four syllables, and it doesn't do anything to suggest how the squad with Broken morale will behave unless you know the rule, where as the term "Shock" actually suggests what the behaviour will be whether you know the rule or not.

Like I said though, minor point of semantics, so agree to disagree.

I guess its boring to undermine arguments by bringing up GW's tendency to punch people in the foot.
But I'm kind of remembering assault differently to those posting here due to the rather stupid "strike at initiative 1 if you cross difficult terrain rule and have forgotten your grenades" rule.

Wyches had plasma grenades, but Incubi infamously did not. Which did impact charging into say Guardsmen across anything but planet bowling ball (or your friend's rather empty kitchen table.)

I can't remember every iteration of Tyranids but I think Flesh hooks might have counted as assault grenades in 5th (or did something similar?) but I'm pretty sure by 7th they didn't and Genestealers had the same issue despite move through cover.

The issue with pinning/stunning versus killing in 40k usually stems from the fact there's so few "moves" that can be made in game. If I can pin/stun/blind etc a unit at the top of turn 3, and you functionally won't get control back until the bottom of turn 4 (depending on what else I do to you through a whole new turn), then functionally they may as well be dead - beyond absorbing some action from my turn 4.

Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.

I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)

Tyel wrote:
I guess its boring to undermine arguments by bringing up GW's tendency to punch people in the foot.
But I'm kind of remembering assault differently to those posting here due to the rather stupid "strike at initiative 1 if you cross difficult terrain rule and have forgotten your grenades" rule.

Wyches had plasma grenades, but Incubi infamously did not. Which did impact charging into say Guardsmen across anything but planet bowling ball (or your friend's rather empty kitchen table.)

I think the strike-last-when-charging-through-terrain thing is sort of its own discussion. It definitely mattered, but we were discussing the merits of the old initiative system rather than advocating for its return or the return of other problematic elements tied to it. If we were to bring back initiative in some form, we could do so without terrain making the have-nots swing last, or we could mitigate how big an impact it has.

One proposal I've seen for initiative is to do it kind of like Old World(?) does. So you have initiative stats, but you also have lots of little modifiers to it. So charging might give you +1 init or +d3 or whatever the numbers need to be to make it work out. And then you could have charging through terrain apply a -1 to that. So the idea is that an army like eldar will still generally be swinging first or at least simultaneously with enemies in melee, but an army like orks won't be stuck swinging last every time; especially if they charge or otherwise take steps to raise their initiative.

That approach would also potentially have some fun interactions with suppressing fire come to think of it. "Pinning weapons" could lower the init of their targets in the subsequent fight phase.

The issue with pinning/stunning versus killing in 40k usually stems from the fact there's so few "moves" that can be made in game. If I can pin/stun/blind etc a unit at the top of turn 3, and you functionally won't get control back until the bottom of turn 4 (depending on what else I do to you through a whole new turn), then functionally they may as well be dead - beyond absorbing some action from my turn 4.

Yeah. Shrinking table sizes and speeding units up has probably offset this somewhat compared to like, 7th edition. But losing a turn is still a huge penalty. Which is why I tend to call out overly severe morale penalties as a potential problem when they get pitched in Proposed Rules.

Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.

I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)

I feel like my dream version of 40k would probably involve something like 500-1k point armies, would probably have more player turns so that you have time/space to do more of the maneuvering/cat & mouse stuff, and would maybe use AA. But the AA would mostly be there to facilitate trade-offs like giving up movement to shoot sooner in the shooting phase rather than a way to compensate for the low turn count.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

But they *did* feel more survivable in melee though. Which meant that your opponent had to shoot them to deal with them without trading inefficiently. Which meant you could do things like going after shooty units first or otherwise trying to tie-up/debuff shooty units so that your opponent was forced to make tough choices about whether it was worth it to charge in or to redirect guns they'd rather point at other targets.

Pretty much any shooting unit down to the humble tactical squad was efficient at shooting into Genestealers.

Your point was true against armies that had pure melee units and a few shooting ones... which was only true against daemons (and ironically another Tyranid player also playing a Genestealer list).

So cute theoretical decisions and counterplay, in practice it meant pretty much nothing aside of edge cases.

 Tyran wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

But they *did* feel more survivable in melee though. Which meant that your opponent had to shoot them to deal with them without trading inefficiently. Which meant you could do things like going after shooty units first or otherwise trying to tie-up/debuff shooty units so that your opponent was forced to make tough choices about whether it was worth it to charge in or to redirect guns they'd rather point at other targets.

Pretty much any shooting unit down to the humble tactical squad was efficient at shooting into Genestealers.

Your point was true against armies that had pure melee units and a few shooting ones... which was only true against daemons (and ironically another Tyranid player also playing a Genestealer list).

So cute theoretical decisions and counterplay, in practice it meant pretty much nothing aside of edge cases.

It has been a while, but I think 5th edition bolter marines were hitting on 3's, wounding on 4s, going into a 5++ on the genestealers. So 5 bolters > 10 shots in rapid fire > 6.7 hits > 3.35 wounds > ~2 failed saves = 2 dead genestealers. More damage if you swap a bolter out for a flamer. Less if you swap it out for a meltagun. So not typically solo'ing genestealers on their lonesome. And if they wanted to go into melee to try and finish you off, they'd probably die or suffer significant casualties due to the initiative difference.

So in a vacuum, we're talking about genestealers charging something, either killing it off or taking it hostage (I don't think intentionally falling back was a thing even for marines back then). Then, assuming the marine player can shoot at you at all, they either need to commit multiple tac squad type units to it or they need to dedicate something more shooty than a tac squad. (And ideally you'd be making those shooty units your priority targets in the first place.) And then, if your opponent didn't finish the 'stealers off with the shooting available, you're making him choose between either not finishing you off, or else sending a unit into melee to finish you off at which point you probably inflict significant casualties thus making it a less good trade. And he kind of has to finish you off because if he doesn't, you're going to win combat on his turn, then go charge another squad and make the overall trade go even better for yourself.

That's in a vacuum. Realistically, there will be plenty of situations where your opponent just doesn't have a ton of shooty units that can draw a bead on your 'stealer squad thanks to terrain or what have you. And our discussion so far has assumed one squad of 'stealers versus multiple marine units. If we do the tyranids the same courtesy by assuming there are additional 'stealers around or some other support elements, then we can talk about how more of those marine shooty units might reasonably also be tied up in melee or might have their output reduced by debuffs or by casualties from tyranid shooting.

As someone who owns a bunch of genestealers and has been playing 'nids off and on since 5th, we agree that genestealers are squishy vs shooting. But that doesn't change the point that making enemy melee less scary thanks to initiative was a significant benefit. Not every unit with a gun in the game was auto-deleting whole genstealer squads. Making it more costly for opponents to finish you off via melee was a significant plus. Forcing opponents to point guns towards your 'stealers because the melee unit they'd prefer to use would get wiped before swinging an attack was a significant plus. I have trouble believing that you're being honest if you say you don't see the merit in that.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

It has been a while, but I think 5th edition bolter marines were hitting on 3's, wounding on 4s, going into a 5++ on the genestealers. So 5 bolters > 10 shots in rapid fire > 6.7 hits > 3.35 wounds > ~2 failed saves = 2 dead genestealers.

AP5 so no save unless cover. So 3 dead genestealers. 5 Marines would literally get 60% returns on Genestealers (as Genestealers were similarly priced to Marines) in a single round of shooting.

Moreover the 2 remaining Genestealers? 3 attacks each on the charge, hitting on 3+ and wounding on 4s with rending. So 6 attacks, 4 hits, 2 wounds with a 52% chance of at least one rending, so chances are a dead marine.

Genestealers were extremely dependent on not getting shot and failing that, having cover.

Also if that Marine unit has a flamer? they can easily kill a 5 genestealer unit, getting a full 100% return.

I have enough of Tyranid trauma trying to play 5th edition Genestealers to know they sucked. The only decent ones were the Ymgarl version thanks to their special deployment that allowed moving and charging from reserves and 4+ armor save (plus extra attacks, strength or toughness with their mutation rule).

Initiative was only truly a survivality boost to units tough enough to not fold to a light breeze of shooting. Stuff like GK Paladins with the +2 initiative power halberds. Now that was scary to assault.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Even morale is just a way to remove models after you just finished removing models. That feels bland to me;

Well good news then, the game doesn't have to feel bland, because that ISN'T how morale works. You don't remove ANYTHING when you fail Battleshock- you lose the ability to control objectives and use strats.

I stand corrected then, good to see that's how it works now.

As for stratagems, I'm not a big fan of it as a mechanic. Maybe it's better these days, but I remember when everything was connected to a stratagem, even equipment and unit types, and you can really slow down gameplay with them, either by interrupting your opponent's turn with whatever trap card you have or using it during your turn to buff your forces.
Not to mention that to balance them they had to introduce a resource management minigame that's also impacted by other mechanics and it got real clunky real fast.

 Tyran wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

It has been a while, but I think 5th edition bolter marines were hitting on 3's, wounding on 4s, going into a 5++ on the genestealers. So 5 bolters > 10 shots in rapid fire > 6.7 hits > 3.35 wounds > ~2 failed saves = 2 dead genestealers.

AP5 so no save unless cover. So 3 dead genestealers. 5 Marines would literally get 60% returns on Genestealers (as Genestealers were similarly priced to Marines) in a single round of shooting.

Moreover the 2 remaining Genestealers? 3 attacks each on the charge, hitting on 3+ and wounding on 4s with rending. So 6 attacks, 4 hits, 2 wounds with a 52% chance of at least one rending, so chances are a dead marine.

Genestealers were extremely dependent on not getting shot and failing that, having cover.

Also if that Marine unit has a flamer? they can easily kill a 5 genestealer unit, getting a full 100% return.

I have enough of Tyranid trauma trying to play 5th edition Genestealers to know they sucked. The only decent ones were the Ymgarl version thanks to their special deployment that allowed moving and charging from reserves and 4+ armor save (plus extra attacks, strength or toughness with their mutation rule).

Fair enough. 5th edition was a while ago, so I'm fuzzy on the details. So either no save at all, or else a 4+ cover save meaning less wounds from the non-flamer weapons than before. I know the offense (and thus the cost efficiency vs bolters) could fluxuate a lot depending on which upgrades you gave them. But if 2 'stealers are averaging one dead marine, then that means you were highly likely to take a squad hostage rather than killing it outright. Which would mean you're not getting shot at at all on your opponent's turn unless you accidentally roll too hot on your offense or sent in a squad with roughly double the bodies of the marines.

Initiative was only truly a survivality boost to units tough enough to not fold to a light breeze of shooting. Stuff like GK Paladins with the +2 initiative power halberds. Now that was scary to assault.

So to clarify, you do acknowledge that high initiative had defensive merits; you just wanted to side tangent to complain about 'stealers being vulnerable to shooting?

Regarding Initiative, while I think there were issues with the implementation, I do think it was better when the game had another 'lever' to pull.

As it stands, we still have initiative - it's just even more all-or-nothing than before. The old system was a scale and allowed for modifiers (not that they were used much, but still), whilst the new system is just 'normal' or 'strike first'.

One of the things that amuses me is that striking first, while useful, was still only half the battle. A lot of units got to strike first but still did naff-all because they were single-attack units with S3 and no special attacks.

(Though Sweeping Advance probably shouldn't have been initiative based, or at least not a straight initiative duel.)

I'm also of the opinion that units charging through cover should lose the bonus attack for charging - which would affect units far more evenly, as opposed to stripping initiative, which some units didn't have anyway.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

So to clarify, you do acknowledge that high initiative had defensive merits; you just wanted to side tangent to complain about 'stealers being vulnerable to shooting?

It has defensive merits, but not to the point it can replace actual defensive stats.
In particular because 40k is mostly a shooting game in which shooting is extremely common and it would easier to list units that cannot shot vs those that can shot.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


As for stratagems, I'm not a big fan of it as a mechanic. Maybe it's better these days, but I remember when everything was connected to a stratagem, even equipment and unit types, and you can really slow down gameplay with them, either by interrupting your opponent's turn with whatever trap card you have or using it during your turn to buff your forces.
Not to mention that to balance them they had to introduce a resource management minigame that's also impacted by other mechanics and it got real clunky real fast.

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure I like strats either- they don't drive me crazy the way they do some people, but I think there were more elegant ways to do some of the things that are currently done by strats. And I very much do not like equipment strats- I think they were a terrible idea. If GW wanted to limit the use of a piece of equipment, there were way better ways to do that. To get back to 11th, I don't think starts are going anywhere.

As for tying them into a minigame, I actually don't mind that part. I don't see it as a minigame, but rather as an interesting option for unit abilities. It's worth noting as well that in 10th, CP aren't awarded based on which detachments you use the way they were in 8th and 9th, so it's already less pronounced than it was... But lots of units have an ability that lets them use a strat for one less CP or whatever. I think little tweaks like that actually help effectively integrate the CP system into the game as a whole.

Like I said though, the jury's out. I think MOST Dakkanaughts dislike strats, or like me are at best ambivalent.

I wish strats were 1/game abilities tied into different units.

And these abilities are granted by what Detachment you take.

For Example:

Deathwing Terminators gain 1/game Rapid Ingress, when fielding a Dark Angels Detachment.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I stand corrected then, good to see that's how it works now.

As for stratagems, I'm not a big fan of it as a mechanic. Maybe it's better these days, but I remember when everything was connected to a stratagem, even equipment and unit types, and you can really slow down gameplay with them, either by interrupting your opponent's turn with whatever trap card you have or using it during your turn to buff your forces.
Not to mention that to balance them they had to introduce a resource management minigame that's also impacted by other mechanics and it got real clunky real fast.

Stratagems are a lot less disruptive. Most armies get way less CP these days, usually 2-3 per battle round. You also don't get them up front, so you have the most CP when there are the least units on the board.
At least my armies (Orks and DG) tend to use a lot of the default ones, so tank shock, throwing grenades, counter attack or overwatch. In addition, every other detachment has some army specific defensive stratagem (kind of like going to ground, but balanced to work for your army).

Between those there usually is not that many CP left to activate a lot of trap cards, and many of the really bad gotcha's are gone anyways. And even if there is one, you now have exactly one page with 6 color-coded stratagems to worry about which tell you at one glance whether they can be used in the current phase. Most detachments also don't allow super-charging units by stacking stratagems anymore. If a detachment has two damage buffs, they often are mutually exclusive and have to be played on different units.

They pretty much implemented exactly what people suggested in all those "how to fix stratagems?" threads we had.

 Jidmah wrote:
They pretty much implemented exactly what people suggested in all those "how to fix stratagems?" threads we had.

They clearly didn't implement my suggestions.

We can see this from the fact that stratagems are, in fact, still in the game, as opposed to in a burning trash can on the far side of Mars.

Are you truly surprised that no one listened to you when, in fact, you didn't suggest anything?

Stratagems in 11th work way better than initiative ever did. Yet you think one is salvageable while the later is not.

Tyran wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

So to clarify, you do acknowledge that high initiative had defensive merits; you just wanted to side tangent to complain about 'stealers being vulnerable to shooting?

It has defensive merits, but not to the point it can replace actual defensive stats.
In particular because 40k is mostly a shooting game in which shooting is extremely common and it would easier to list units that cannot shot vs those that can shot.

Well, my comments about initiative on the previous page were in regards to "elite" units taking one-sided beatdowns in melee specifically as a result of initiative going away. So it sounds like you and I have been having semi-unrelated conversations. Bolters killing wyches and genestealers and harlequins is fine. That's how you're supposed to counter them. My gripe was that something like a mob of hormagaunts or ork boyz used to come away knowing they'd scrapped with a serious threat when they charged something like a harlequin squad, whereas now they can punch all the clowns to death and not take a single casualty in return. That's the part that bugs me.

PenitentJake wrote:

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure I like strats either- they don't drive me crazy the way they do some people, but I think there were more elegant ways to do some of the things that are currently done by strats. And I very much do not like equipment strats- I think they were a terrible idea. If GW wanted to limit the use of a piece of equipment, there were way better ways to do that. To get back to 11th, I don't think starts are going anywhere.

As for tying them into a minigame, I actually don't mind that part. I don't see it as a minigame, but rather as an interesting option for unit abilities. It's worth noting as well that in 10th, CP aren't awarded based on which detachments you use the way they were in 8th and 9th, so it's already less pronounced than it was... But lots of units have an ability that lets them use a strat for one less CP or whatever. I think little tweaks like that actually help effectively integrate the CP system into the game as a whole.

Like I said though, the jury's out. I think MOST Dakkanaughts dislike strats, or like me are at beast ambivalent.

We're three editions into giving stratagems a shot. They're better now than they were in 8th and 9th, but I still feel like they've ultimately done more harm than good. It feels like a lot of our cool wargear or special abilities that were formerly used to customize units and give armies personality got rolled into strats, and then largely got removed. And the ones that stuck around in some form being stuck in strat form means that you only use them when they're the most efficient use of your CP. And even then, you're stuck only being able to use them on one unit per round.

Lathe Biosas wrote:I wish strats were 1/game abilities tied into different units.

And these abilities are granted by what Detachment you take.

For Example:

Deathwing Terminators gain 1/game Rapid Ingress, when fielding a Dark Angels Detachment.

See, I'm the opposite. I feel like one of the main problems with stratagems is that they're limited to one unit per round meaning that one of the main sources of your army's flavor can only be felt in one place at a time. So back in the day, eldar tanks or jetbikes could all choose to Jink (giving up offense on the following turn for defense when they were targeted with attacks). Now, that has been replaced by a single unit in your army being allowed to use Lightning Fast Reactions (-1 to-hit strat), and the downside being paid in CP instead of offense on the following turn means it feels more gamey and less like a fluffy in-universe decision being made by the pilot. There are lots of little things like that where it feels like widely-available, flavorful abilities that could help define an army have become locked to the one or two units per turn that will get the most out of them.

That's why I'd like to see stratagems get dropped and replaced with something closer to Rites of War. You want to play the vroom vroom detachment? You get bikes as troops, have to start all your infantry in transports, and you get some rules revolving around keeping your units in motion every turn. Army-wide stuff. Stuff that doesn't have to be amazingly strong but changes how your army plays/feels as a whole. I think that would go a long way towards getting rid of the "esports"/"card game" feeling people talk about these days.

I really don't like how stratagems aren't actually what they're described as, but that's part and parcel of GW continuing down the gamification abstraction of 40k, where terms can't be taken literally anymore.

A stratagem is an an action or behaviour, not wargear. If you took the stratagem 'grenades' then what that SHOULD mean, is that your command issued grenades to everyone as part of their strategy.

It shouldn't mean that your squads remember they have grenades one at a time and at random times.


But I think it's just the old manning of preferring simulationist style gaming over the modern game for gamesake perspective.

 Hellebore wrote:
I really don't like how stratagems aren't actually what they're described as, but that's part and parcel of GW continuing down the gamification abstraction of 40k, where terms can't be taken literally anymore.

A stratagem is an an action or behaviour, not wargear. If you took the stratagem 'grenades' then what that SHOULD mean, is that your command issued grenades to everyone as part of their strategy.

It shouldn't mean that your squads remember they have grenades one at a time and at random times.


But I think it's just the old manning of preferring simulationist style gaming over the modern game for gamesake perspective.

No. That's a pretty good example of what I'm trying to get at with my previous post.

"We're a detachment of tank hunters given krak grenades and melta bombs to cripple the enemy artillery before it reaches our fortifications."
Cool concept. Giving access to special explosives is a good way to represent that. I think 7th edition corsairs had something similar with vibro mines in one of their don't-call-it-a-detachment formations?

Nowadays, a single unit per turn can throw some grenades against a single target.

Back in the day, you could put shock prows on all your raiders. It wasn't super points efficient, but it was cute, and it meant you could give your army a little personality by letting your fleet of pirate ships turn themselves into battering rams! Nowadays? One raider per turn can use the tank shock strat.

 Jidmah wrote:
Are you truly surprised that no one listened to you when, in fact, you didn't suggest anything?

Stratagems in 11th work way better than initiative ever did. Yet you think one is salvageable while the later is not.

What's the difference between how strats are going to work in 11th vs how they do here in 10th?

RE: The discussion on Initiative values in older editions and the Genestealers vs Marines examples.

Genestealers had more than initiative to protect them in combat. The also had Weapon Skill to make them harder to hit. Since their WS was higher than the marines, they would hit the marines on 3+ and only get hit in return on 4s. Another thing that made them potent in 4th edition was Rending. Rending triggered on a hit roll of 6 and caused that hit to automatically wound and bypass armor saves. Terrain and LOS were abstracted making it easier for them to avoid fire. Genestealers started at 16 points each. They could take flesh hooks for 1 point per model. Those counted as frag grenades and allowed them to assault through cover and attack at Initiative 10 which was convenient because defenders in cover also attacked at I10 except for Powerfists and Thunder Hammers. Stealers could also improve their save to 4+ for 3 ppm and get the Scout special rule for 3 ppm as well.

Then came 5th edition which hammered the Genestealers on multiple fronts. TLOS and terrain changes made it harder for them to avoid getting shot on the way in even as it improved their cover save. Rending changed to triggering on the to-wound roll. This dropped their lethality by 38% in the marine scenario. Instead of 10 Stealers averaging a little under 7 dead marines on the charge, they would only average a little over 4. The final blow came with the actual release of the 5th edition codex. Genestealer broods could no longer take flesh hooks and could no longer charge into terrain effectively. In 4th assaulting through or into cover gave the bonus to the defender, but did not alter the Initiative value of the assaulting unit. In 5th this was reversed to a penalty on the attacking unit making them I1. So they faded away from use. Except the special Ymgarl variant which stuck around because of a special hidden deployment rule and a rule that gave them +1 S, +1A, or +1T at the start of each assault phase.

There were only three entries in the 5th edition Nid codex that could charge units in cover and still attack at initiative: Carnifexes with spine banks and adrenal glands, Lictors and Deathleaper. None of them were especially popular. Carnifexes were wildly overpriced at 160 base. With the spines and glands they came in at 175. A Trygon with two additional wounds was only 25 points more. Lictors suffered from being in the overcrowded Elites slot where they had to compete for table time with Hive Guard, Zoanthropes and the Doom of Malantai.

Anyway, lots of words to say that it was always more than just Initiative at play in these interactions and subtle rules changes could have big impacts on how units performed.

Well for starters, we could hope that equipment strats are eliminated from the game. That would be a huge improvement right there.

I think they'll keep them linked to detachments, and continue to limit them to six per detachment.

They COULD go back to having one big list and just let people build their own set instead of forcing us to just choose from a mere handful of prebuild for the sake of OUR DUDES, but I doubt they will.

 Arschbombe wrote:
RE: The discussion on Initiative values in older editions and the Genestealers vs Marines examples.

Genestealers had more than initiative to protect them in combat. The also had Weapon Skill to make them harder to hit. Since their WS was higher than the marines, they would hit the marines on 3+ and only get hit in return on 4s. Another thing that made them potent in 4th edition was Rending. Rending triggered on a hit roll of 6 and caused that hit to automatically wound and bypass armor saves. Terrain and LOS were abstracted making it easier for them to avoid fire. Genestealers started at 16 points each. They could take flesh hooks for 1 point per model. Those counted as frag grenades and allowed them to assault through cover and attack at Initiative 10 which was convenient because defenders in cover also attacked at I10 except for Powerfists and Thunder Hammers. Stealers could also improve their save to 4+ for 3 ppm and get the Scout special rule for 3 ppm as well.

Then came 5th edition which hammered the Genestealers on multiple fronts. TLOS and terrain changes made it harder for them to avoid getting shot on the way in even as it improved their cover save. Rending changed to triggering on the to-wound roll. This dropped their lethality by 38% in the marine scenario. Instead of 10 Stealers averaging a little under 7 dead marines on the charge, they would only average a little over 4. The final blow came with the actual release of the 5th edition codex. Genestealer broods could no longer take flesh hooks and could no longer charge into terrain effectively. In 4th assaulting through or into cover gave the bonus to the defender, but did not alter the Initiative value of the assaulting unit. In 5th this was reversed to a penalty on the attacking unit making them I1. So they faded away from use. Except the special Ymgarl variant which stuck around because of a special hidden deployment rule and a rule that gave them +1 S, +1A, or +1T at the start of each assault phase.

There were only three entries in the 5th edition Nid codex that could charge units in cover and still attack at initiative: Carnifexes with spine banks and adrenal glands, Lictors and Deathleaper. None of them were especially popular. Carnifexes were wildly overpriced at 160 base. With the spines and glands they came in at 175. A Trygon with two additional wounds was only 25 points more. Lictors suffered from being in the overcrowded Elites slot where they had to compete for table time with Hive Guard, Zoanthropes and the Doom of Malantai.

Anyway, lots of words to say that it was always more than just Initiative at play in these interactions and subtle rules changes could have big impacts on how units performed.

While you are absolutely correct, Initiative was a larger piece of that pie than the other components.

If for example you went back to those editions and remove initiative and installed the current system where whoever activates a unit strikes first with it, you'd find that effectively genestealers would do half as much damage on average, because they'd go from doing damage first against 95% of enemy units (nothing but characters or harlequins/wyches were striking at the same initiative, let alone higher), to a ~50% of doing damage first against everything, because the opponent gets to undercut them and would do so if it was their turn to activate a unit and they had guys in melee with stealers. They only strike like their old counterparts if they've charged first, leaving every other scenario dependent on the order of unit selection, favouring the non charging player.

ccs wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Are you truly surprised that no one listened to you when, in fact, you didn't suggest anything?

Stratagems in 11th work way better than initiative ever did. Yet you think one is salvageable while the later is not.

What's the difference between how strats are going to work in 11th vs how they do here in 10th?

It was a typo, I meant 10th.

But yes, I don't see any big changes to the stratagem system coming as a whole, though specific ones are probably going to be tweaked.