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I'd argue that a Warboss has a major interest in giving the lads a good fight.


See without a good scrap every now and then, orks fall into internal fighting. So a Warboss who doesn't provide ample fights for their horde will see it turn in on itself which could mean that they lose command.


OF course really smart Warbosses realise that they can do more than just seek out fights. They can engineer situations to result in favourable fights. Heck they've even saved favoured opponents so that their opponent can go away; rebuild and provide a fun fight later.


The more fights the bigger the waaagh grows
The bigger the waaagh the more fights it needs

Deliver and the waaagh grows; fail to deliver and it shatters.

Charax wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The first sentence says 'select one of the battle sizes below'.

None of those are 500 points, so the game is telling you you can only choose one of those 3 point levels to play. It's not an inference, it's an instruction to pick 1000, 2000, or 3000. Those are your only points level options the game offers to pick from.

So you read the "select one of the battle sizes below" part and then just kind of lost interest after that, drifted off, had a snack or something? because it's immediately followed by:
"This will determine the total number of points each player can spend to build their army"

CAN

Not MUST

No minimums are listed, so if you are playing at 500pts, or 750pts, or 999pts, then you can use the Incursion rules
I mean hell, you can play 500pt games using Onslaught rules if you really want to, because the game size is the total number of points you can spend, not the number of points you must spend.

I have no dog in this fight, I was merely pointing out what the rules say.

I would say Can is being used as 'is allowed' to spend in order to avoid exactly the issue brought up about not having exactly 2000pt armies. That's deliberately legal language to prevent arguments over having 1995pts being illegal.


Ive no issue with it being used to evidence different points maximums for armies, but I will say the single use of can to open up what is otherwise pretty clearly written to describe the flat numbers emphasised in the graphics is about as poor a way to provide players that instruction as you can get, which is at odds with the legalese and nit picky way in which gw writes their rules these days.

I can't think of another rule in the game that would rest on the use of a single word to allow you to do something other than what they've specified in everything around that one word.

Maybe that's what it's for but I'd vote it as the absolute worst rules implementation in this edition. They could have written 1-1000, 1001-2000 and 2001-3000 to explicitly say this in a way that doesn't rely on the use of a single word without changing the graphics design at all.

The fixed battle sizes to me match their fixed unit costs in design aesthetics so it doesn't see at all odd.

 Overread wrote:
I'd argue that a Warboss has a major interest in giving the lads a good fight.


See without a good scrap every now and then, orks fall into internal fighting. So a Warboss who doesn't provide ample fights for their horde will see it turn in on itself which could mean that they lose command.


OF course really smart Warbosses realise that they can do more than just seek out fights. They can engineer situations to result in favourable fights. Heck they've even saved favoured opponents so that their opponent can go away; rebuild and provide a fun fight later.

That's just a regular warboss, they are way more intelligent than imperial propaganda gives them credit for. There is a reason why the Deathwatch keeps tabs on all the Waaagh!s out there.
A really smart warboss like Thrakka, Badrukk or Ufthak makes multi-stage long-term plans AND has the ability to make the other orks actually follow those plans.

Deliver and the waaagh grows; fail to deliver and it shatters.

It has been described to be more of a "fail to deliver, and someone might backstab you because they think they would make a better boss". These kind of back-stabbings than often result in mass front-stabbings because a bunch of nobz who were kept in check by one big boss suddenly think they should be the boss. Also more back-stabbings if bloodaxes are involved.
The novel "warboss" does a great job at describing what happens when the big boss sudden has a gargant's head dropped on it.

There is comando orks, so ork tactics are quite advanced when needed to be.

Aren't Kommandos looked down on though for being too sneaky? I remember reading in the 4th ed codex that Kommandos are seen as kind of odd by most orks for wanting to use stealth first.

Orks are a weird one like that.

Yes, on the whole they’re predictable and can be baited. But, they’re also wildly unpredictable. You can’t really cover all possible Orky Tactics, because they fight largely from instinct. But they also adapt rapidly to new ways of fighting demonstrated by their foes.

Kommandos work because standard doctrine says Orks don’t do sneak attacks.

I’ve previously speculated such Orky specialists are just particularly niche Oddboyz. Not as generally useful and essential to Orky Kultur as Doks, Meks and Runtherdz etc. But still an expression of Ork Society’s Self Sufficient Programming. A way to provide specialist troops so when specialist troops are Just The Ticket, there they are, ready to go. Even if their specialism is something most Orks find distasteful.

I'm a bit confused as to where the various strands of argument in the thread are going.

I guess to be objectionable, I'd ward against this idea that Space Marines and Eldar etc are somehow special, and that all games need to accommodate for this.

I mean yes, neither faction probably should fight a conventional trench fight engagement where thousands of guys are hurled into a meat grinder. (Although its equally easy to come up with scenarios where they'd do precisely that). Both should be launching some lightning assault to seize a strong point, assassinate a leader or hold a point while some wider strategic maneuver is taking place. But this effectively makes Marines and Eldar the "real armies", while other factions are NPCs that blunder around being maneuvered on. Which I'd contend isn't exactly fun in a two player game.

Its in turn why people hate move-shoot-move. You may think its the high point of skill - and indeed arguably it is. For your opponent however its just an exercise in frustration. If you "play well", they don't get to play at all. Which is fine versus a computer which doesn't have feelings (for now), but not so much a human player.

But it does suit them thematically if you view the game itself as part of a wider engagement. Then, the smaller, highly specialised forces are on a highly specific mission.

For Marines, it’s the old pressure point shtick. Their actions in-game can be translated as creating a gap in the enemy line for others to follow up, decapitation of enemy high command (however localised) and so on.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily matched by the actual missions. Which is a different issue. Or is it? I’m really not sure.

For the theatre of my mind’s eye, I’d prefer objectives to be something more than “just that spot there”. It should represent something tangible. An asset to be seized, a tool to be dismantled etc.

Let me see if I can kind of combine/distill a few of the concepts I've touched on in this thread.

I think, for me, a lot of this just comes back to asking what the flavor/power fantasy of a given army or unit is meant to be. And I don't mean that in the sense that my eldar or marine should be dunking on my opponents and treating their armies like NPCs.

There are certain iconic traits for some factions that, maybe by necessity, just aren't very well represented in a 2k game of 40k. I want my marines to feel like elite little murder monsters who can shrug off a bunch of punishment and take on a numerically superior force. But you can only take that so far in a game with dozens or even hundreds of models on a given side and where things like tanks (who *should* be blasting apart any marines they get a shot against) exist.

I want my eldar to feel crazy agile and like they're coordinating and using their speed to minimize casualties while taking on foes who have superior brute power or raw numbers. But again, you can only push that so far in a tabletop game where you kind of have to kill a big chunk of the enemy army to have a good match.

Which again, is why I kind of prefer the idea of smaller-scale versions of 40k. Let the vehicles blast exposed marines to smithereens (smith-marines?), but also only have one or two vehicles in your army, and have few enough marines that sneaking around to avoid the worst of the enemy's offense is feasible.

Have marines and eldar die, but with few enough total casualties (due to the smaller game size) that it feels like you gave acceptable losses to accomplish some critical objective rather than losing half your chapter in a random battle.

Have objectives that can be completed with agility and positioning instead of just making every mission a matter of sacrificing wave after wave of bodies to stand in the magic circles for another turn.

10th edition feels like a cage match/meat grinder. And if you're playing an army whose personality is partly defined by avoiding meat grinders, the game starts to feel like it isn't representing that personality very well.

I don't want every single game with my eldar to feel like it's a desperate last stand where we've eschewed mobility and stealth to just... point-blank range shuriken the enemy until one of us is dead.

But where is the satisfaction of losing 2 chapters worth of marines in a single, hours long Dawn of War game?

The desperate last stand is the cover art though. :p

This is why we desperately need a 40K Epic back (no, not you Epic 40,000. Dirty boy! Back in your hole!)

Eldar did indeed rely on speed, but also the cunning placement of Warlocks which allowed you to see your opponent’s Orders before assigning your own, which could be a massive boon. In a straight fight, they’d get mullered, and so had to use their perks to fight as unevenly in their favour as possible. Oh, and pop up attacks from their skimmers could be deadly.

Orks were brutes to fight. Where other armies could give up Victory Points through picking off their support detachments? Orky Detachments were added to the main mob, meaning you really had to work hard to bag your VPs.

Imperial Guard needed their command chain for maximum effectiveness, but also had some of the nastiest, point for point, Artillery.

Marines had transport up the wazoo, enabling them to be highly mobile, and of course somewhat above par on a model for model basis.

It really got across a flavour of how the different forces wage war.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
This is why we desperately need a 40K Epic back (no, not you Epic 40,000. Dirty boy! Back in your hole!)

Eldar did indeed rely on speed, but also the cunning placement of Warlocks which allowed you to see your opponent’s Orders before assigning your own, which could be a massive boon. In a straight fight, they’d get mullered, and so had to use their perks to fight as unevenly in their favour as possible. Oh, and pop up attacks from their skimmers could be deadly.

Orks were brutes to fight. Where other armies could give up Victory Points through picking off their support detachments? Orky Detachments were added to the main mob, meaning you really had to work hard to bag your VPs.

Imperial Guard needed their command chain for maximum effectiveness, but also had some of the nastiest, point for point, Artillery.

Marines had transport up the wazoo, enabling them to be highly mobile, and of course somewhat above par on a model for model basis.

It really got across a flavour of how the different forces wage war.

Sounds amazing! Sorry I missed it. :(

Whilst I love the new Legions models I do very much agree its a huge wasted shame that it was set in the 30K and not 40K setting.

I'd have loved to have seen all the 40K Xenos factions appearing at that scale! So much creativity potential too for many factions to get models that they just won't ever get at the 32mm scale.

We could have seen our first proper Dark Eldar, Votaan, Tau and Genestealer Cults titanic models! Not to mention more tanks and other exotic units that just don't fit in 40K all that well (and even when they do the cost a fortune; you can often only take one and there's years between their development and release)

Might as well plug Net Epic and Net Epic Armageddon:
Net Epic, based on the original game.
https://netepic.org/
Net Epic Armageddon, based on Epic Armageddon
https://tp.net-armageddon.org/

A friend of mine and I have gotten into Net Epic Armageddon, printing our own models, and having a blast marker.* I've been meaning to post some pics but haven't gotten around to it yet.

*If you know you know.

 Overread wrote:
Whilst I love the new Legions models I do very much agree its a huge wasted shame that it was set in the 30K and not 40K setting.

I'd have loved to have seen all the 40K Xenos factions appearing at that scale! So much creativity potential too for many factions to get models that they just won't ever get at the 32mm scale.

We could have seen our first proper Dark Eldar, Votaan, Tau and Genestealer Cults titanic models! Not to mention more tanks and other exotic units that just don't fit in 40K all that well (and even when they do the cost a fortune; you can often only take one and there's years between their development and release)

Sneak peak of the future GSC titanic model

Also, I forget what it was called, there was that flier skirmish game they have before it got cancelled and moved to 30K epic that had a bunch of Xenos aircraft that would have been really cool in a large scale game.

 KingGarland wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Whilst I love the new Legions models I do very much agree its a huge wasted shame that it was set in the 30K and not 40K setting.

I'd have loved to have seen all the 40K Xenos factions appearing at that scale! So much creativity potential too for many factions to get models that they just won't ever get at the 32mm scale.

We could have seen our first proper Dark Eldar, Votaan, Tau and Genestealer Cults titanic models! Not to mention more tanks and other exotic units that just don't fit in 40K all that well (and even when they do the cost a fortune; you can often only take one and there's years between their development and release)

Sneak peak of the future GSC titanic model

Spoiler:

Also, I forget what it was called, there was that flier skirmish game they have before it got cancelled and moved to 30K epic that had a bunch of Xenos aircraft that would have been really cool in a large scale game.

I would buy so much eldar and tau titan stuff at that scale. GW could extract so much of my money if they did an epic 40K.
But I do honesty think they don’t want to do anything that may compete with 40K directly.

Epic wouldn't compete with 40K at all.

Different game different scale; heck its more likely to get old players buying more 40K models as they start buying again for the new game and new scale and then get re-energised to buy some new shiny things for their bigger models.


Epic scale does tanks, titans, aircraft and so forth fantastically well. Infantry are less exciting at that scale in terms of detail and character; so that's where 40K comes into its own.

It’s a completely different gaming experience and tactical challenge as well.

Gone is the minutiae and fine tuning. Instead, it’s a Big Picture Game, especially 2nd Ed/LI style where you can really fart on your weetabix if you blob your orders. Where CC is deadly (your stand loses a round, your stand is dead), there can be a real ebb and flow as both players jockey for position and objectives.

Vehicles are pretty solid, as small arms can’t tickle them. But with -1/-2 save modifier for side and rear shots, you again need to be conscious of what’s where, where it might pop up next, and the risks involved.

I dunno if there’s an online emulator, but if there is you could spend an afternoon in worse ways than trying a game of 2nd Ed/LI to get a feel for it.

Plus, no game anywhere else looks as truly glorious as a game of Epic with two painted armies and scale appropriate terrain. It’s just glorious.

Pinched from Sherrypie in the Epic Show It Off Thread.

Just….regard

Epic really lived up to its name, it's the only game IMO that really represented total war for each faction, combining superheavy units, regular detachments, aircraft and (at least in Epic: Armageddon) orbital assets in a way that was meaningful and tactical, it really makes you feel like you're an army commander organising assets over the entire engagement.

Eldar had small, fast, devastatingly powerful detachments that could speed past defenders to achieve objectives or attack squishy backfield assets

Imperial Guard were sprawling walls of infantry backed by massive waves of tanks and artillery that could delete or rout enemy units en masse if used correctly

Space Marines were elite forces that could engage many times their number of enemies and were infuriatingly hard to put down, but every loss was a heavy blow and they made up for their small numbers by being able to redeploy effectively

Every army played exactly how you would expect them to play, backed up by massive warmachines that could delete swathes of enemies at once (but usually ended up engaging their opposite numbers first)

Epic was Epic

Yeah whilst aircraft, artillery and other cool stuff looks awesome at 40K scale it does sometimes feel rather odd that you've got those things taking part in a fight over a tiny area. epic scale artillery can really feel like its bombarding over long distance; that aircraft are screaming past and titans getting to actually deal out terrifying amounts of firepower.

The army-tailoring goes beyond just the Detachments – the missions you play and your objectives in each game are determined by the selection of your army. Forces designed to take and hold ground will be rewarded for doing so, while armies that prefer to kill loads and loads of enemies will earn victories through carnage.

So looks like 11th May be addressing this on an army composition level by making objectives dependant on the detachments you take, so it's less "Eldar should be fast and capturing backfield objectives" and more "your particular army is composed of fast detachments so you need to capture backfield objectives"

Seems like an interesting approach, wonder how flexible it'll be

I’m definitely intrigued.

It sounds reminiscent of 2nd Ed, where each player would draw their own mission from a deck. I’d need to check out my rulebooks for exactly when that happened (after army selection for sure, possibly after terrain setup but before deployment?).

As with all things, sound good doesn’t mean good execution. How many missions does each army get? Do they help reflect their way of war? Might they over influence army selection? Are they selected randomly?

Charax wrote:

The army-tailoring goes beyond just the Detachments – the missions you play and your objectives in each game are determined by the selection of your army. Forces designed to take and hold ground will be rewarded for doing so, while armies that prefer to kill loads and loads of enemies will earn victories through carnage.

So looks like 11th May be addressing this on an army composition level by making objectives dependant on the detachments you take, so it's less "Eldar should be fast and capturing backfield objectives" and more "your particular army is composed of fast detachments so you need to capture backfield objectives"

Seems like an interesting approach, wonder how flexible it'll be

This is the peek at 11th that has me most excited to be honest. Tailoring missions to fit my army so it feels like my dudes specifically have a reason to be present and a job to accomplish could really breathe some life back into my gaming experiences. No more standing in magic circles for vague and abstract reasons that require mental gymnatics to justify me sending wave after wave of squishy space elves to stand in them for 5 seconds before being promptly obliterated by the next wave of power armor.

It will be interesting to see if the missions structure is big difference.
It sounds a little like dropzone commander, or how some modern military's games handle missions. Inching closer to something more Narative driven maybe.
But it’s not that you couldn’t do that with 10th, but hopefully they do get the balance on Narative vs competive game.

It will be interesting to see how it works.



With the ability to take multiple detachments, and how they set the objectives I worry about how GW will balance them. The obvious concern is that some will simply be easier to score max points on, so armies that lean into that style will have a leg up. Or depending on how hard it is to take multiple detachments we could up with something like the “Loyal 32” again. Take a small extra force to unlock more game mechanics, even if it didn’t fit the army.

It will also be interesting to see how they are assigned. With some detachments already tightly themed about certain units, will they also be pigeonholed into certain victory conditions? E.g. if you play Eldar wraith constructs you are going to be forced to take the “hold the line” objective? Even if you’d rather be dumping wave serpents full of d-scythes into your opponent’s deployment zone. Completely made up example, of course.

At its core I like the concept, but poorly implementing good ideas has been GW’s signature move for a while now. Fingers crossed.

Well, Heresy is doing really well with its Status Effects. Those are a cool concept nicely implemented. A tool in the overall kit, without being Big Hammer Fix Everyfing.

Which gives some hope the execution here will be good.

 Nevelon wrote:
The obvious concern is that some will simply be easier to score max points on, so armies that lean into that style will have a leg up. Or depending on how hard it is to take multiple detachments we could up with something like the “Loyal 32” again. Take a small extra force to unlock more game mechanics, even if it didn’t fit the army.

My concern with allowing players to tailor their objectives to match their force is that it allows for another layer of min-maxing. One of the things I enjoy about 9th/10th is how the shift to midfield, progressive objectives forces players to bring a mix of capabilities; I worry that letting players shape the objectives to fit their army rather than shaping their army to fit the objectives might mean more skew lists that do just one thing really well.

Having said that, I do really enjoy Dust Warfare's mission builder system, where determining objectives, deployment types, and battlefield conditions is an adversarial minigame before deployment. If it's something like that then I'm all in.

 catbarf wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
The obvious concern is that some will simply be easier to score max points on, so armies that lean into that style will have a leg up. Or depending on how hard it is to take multiple detachments we could up with something like the “Loyal 32” again. Take a small extra force to unlock more game mechanics, even if it didn’t fit the army.

My concern with allowing players to tailor their objectives to match their force is that it allows for another layer of min-maxing. One of the things I enjoy about 9th/10th is how the shift to midfield, progressive objectives forces players to bring a mix of capabilities; I worry that letting players shape the objectives to fit their army rather than shaping their army to fit the objectives might mean more skew lists that do just one thing really well.

Having said that, I do really enjoy Dust Warfare's mission builder system, where determining objectives, deployment types, and battlefield conditions is an adversarial minigame before deployment. If it's something like that then I'm all in.

That's a valid concern. But I will say that the mid-field progressive objectives are also kind of one of the main things that prevent me from "forging the narrative" these days. Every single battle requiring that I send a few dozen precious space elves to go stand out in the open because it was vital we keep marines from standing there *right this minute* instead of waiting a few minutes for the battle to be over really takes me out of the narrative of the game.

So I acknowledge the challenges of designing missions differently, but I'm also cautiously optimistic that the end results will feel a bit more narrative-friendly.

No disagreement there, progressive scoring isn't a logical fit for every narrative. It's then tough to design your own narrative missions when so many units depend on special abilities that intrinsically assume your objective is one of a handful of tokens somewhere in midfield.

I mean, the classic solution to this problem was to have a half-dozen missions that you rolled for, encouraging you to bring a well-rounded army capable of tackling any of them. But over the years I've gathered that a non-negligible number of players would rather just bring a min-max army and pout if they rolled a mission their min-maxed army couldn't do, so I understand the shift in design ethos.

With each player setting their own objectives there's the potential for them to be orthogonal to one another, which isn't always great for narrative either, but we'll have to see the implementation before passing judgment.