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Hey All.

So with the release of Warhammer 40k 8th edition, I have currently played just 2 games, and plan to play more to get a more thorough opinion. But for some reason I just dont get the same tactical feel from the 8th compared to 7th.

Now granted 7th of course had its problems and issues, and the rules for 8th are more placeholders than actual rules currently, but it just feels like it was simplified to much. I miss the universal rules like fear or fleet etc, and I actually preferred the way terrain works, now it just feels like a few have said, just for los purposes.

Cant quite work it out right but just not enjoying it as much as I thought I would, sure this will change as I play more games, but overall i feel 8th was rushed and has left currently at least a rather bland game, especially with the units and armies.

Anyway not a rant, just getting my first thoughts, seen alot of people enjoying 8th, which is great. But wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way.

cheers

I agree with terrain, but thats my only criticism about the current state of 8th (Ok, some disbalanced units like Scions command squads but nobody here used that kind of tricks so...)

Like, 80% of the terrain I have used since 5th has ben LOS bloking one so... to me it still fells that terrain matters.

Plus I have never understand how people related "Special Random Bonusses"=An army with more character.

Did your Imperial Fist feel more unique just because they reroll 1's with Bolt weapons?... eeeh... no thanks. With my competitive games I prefer a more simple ruleset with a much similar playing field to everybody involved.

Warhammer40k has always had the problem with how people want their armies to be the most beautifull and unique special girl in the night dance festival.

Yes, terrain NEED more fleshed out rules, but that's my only complaint too.

Loving the new rules. Definitely the best edition of 40k yet, IMO. I do agree about the terrain and cover rules. I would prefer cover and terrain to play more of a role - intervening units, etc.

Played with a ton of LoS blocking terrain over normal terrain anyways, so the terrain changes didn't affect too much.

Shinzra wrote:
But for some reason I just dont get the same tactical feel from the 8th compared to 7th.

Are you sure you played 7th? Whole thing was a gakshow.

The effects of the USR's is unchanged, they are incorporated into each unit, thus saving having to constantly flick through 2+ books.
If granulation is what you're after, codexes are in the future.
8th is not rushed, not by a long way. 6e was an utter hackjob, and every book released between then and just before 8e has been increasingly hacky, money-grabbing and rushed. That we don't have an obvious auto-lose army is self-evidently proof that GW put more thought into this ruleset than any release since 6e.

Keep in mind there's a section in the 8th Advanced Rules on Battlefield Terrain:

Woods provide cover and slow units down.

Models behind barricades get cover.

Vehicles can't ascend buildings.

Dangerous terrain tests for battlescape.

Obstacles slow down units.

I'm really enjoying it so far. I think it has been a massive improvement over 7th in almost every conceivable way. I do think it's going to take a while for the dynamics of the game to change in order to make the best out of the 8th edition ruleset.

The way boards look is a big one for me. There needs to be a concerted push by GW to make people understand that 4 or 5 small bits of terrain just isn't going to cut it any more. I think the terrain rules are ok, it's just the terrain currently used by most people, isn't.

Shinzra wrote:
Hey All.

So with the release of Warhammer 40k 8th edition, I have currently played just 2 games, and plan to play more to get a more thorough opinion. But for some reason I just dont get the same tactical feel from the 8th compared to 7th.

Now granted 7th of course had its problems and issues, and the rules for 8th are more placeholders than actual rules currently, but it just feels like it was simplified to much. I miss the universal rules like fear or fleet etc, and I actually preferred the way terrain works, now it just feels like a few have said, just for los purposes.

Cant quite work it out right but just not enjoying it as much as I thought I would, sure this will change as I play more games, but overall i feel 8th was rushed and has left currently at least a rather bland game, especially with the units and armies.

Anyway not a rant, just getting my first thoughts, seen alot of people enjoying 8th, which is great. But wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way.

cheers

Not at all. I find the idea that 8th was rushed compared to 6th's errata combined with all the horrors of Fantasy's most unbalanced magic phase (with almost no alterations) to be hilarious, considering how quickly it came on the heels of 6th.

Terrain doesn't need weird random rules.


I do dislike the departure from USRs in replace for slightly different special rules, as its more reference work, and the indexes are a mess of pointless cross-referencing for basic information that should be together.

But the rules themselves are far more solid with only a few problematic outliers, mostly in the form of specific units

 Galas wrote:

Plus I have never understand how people related "Special Random Bonusses"=An army with more character.

Did your Imperial Fist feel more unique just because they reroll 1's with Bolt weapons?... eeeh... no thanks. With my competitive games I prefer a more simple ruleset with a much similar playing field to everybody involved.

Warhammer40k has always had the problem with how people want their armies to be the most beautifull and unique special girl in the night dance festival.

Gonna have to disagree with you there. Firstly, the bonuses weren't random, but more importantly, they did change the way that the army played, because you didn't randomly apply those bonuses to an unrelated army list.
If you're playing Imperial Fists, you aren't *Just* rerolling 1s with Bolt Weapons that you happen to have, you are getting an incentive to take more Bolt Weapons over other types of units. Where you might have instead taken, I dunno, an Assault Squad, you're instead rewarded more overtly for taking a Tactical Squad, or a Land Raider Crusader might get picked over a Land Raider. Next thing you know, your whole army fits the fluff of the Imperial Fists better, because you were incentivized to do so.

The problem was that, most of the time, these bonuses just weren't balanced against one another very well. Re-rolling 1s on Bolters makes Bolters about 15% better, getting you one extra Bolter hit per every 7 Bolter shots or so. Meanwhile, something like Iron Hands just makes every single model about 16% better, by reducing the damage they take. Ultramarines could get those re-rolls for less time, but on everything, and with more accuracy as to what you need - Want to buff shooting? Just buff shooting. Want to buff assault? Just buff assault.
Meanwhile, Salamanders get a buff on... Flamers. That's not a weapon that Space Marines could ever spam, so why is that all they really get?


Army bonuses on a chapter-to-chapter basis are great, they just need to all give actual bonuses.

Going to admit, I haven't played a match yet for 8th, but I have finally picked up Index Imperium 2.

The way the index is organized drives me nuts lol. Unit composition/rules near the beginning of the book, weapon stats 75% of the way through, and actual point values in the back. Lots of flipping back and fourth to figure everything out. I preferred the old codex layout, with 90% of what you needed all grouped together in the back.

Only other thing is that the new Guard rules, while certainly more effective, do feel bland. As weird as it may sound, I kind of liked the platoon set up of 7th.

Aside from that, still looking forward to playing. There are a bunch of things that are going to be nice in a simpler state.

By far my favorite edition since 2nd. I love the amount of tactical depth. The ability to attack from so many angles and having to defend from the same, the ability to fall back so other units can use their ranged strength, being able to set up ambush assaults around corners to avoid overwatch, and all the nuances of close combat all make this a great experience for me.
I think the only thing I'd want again is the psychic power cards back. Otherwise, I couldn't be more happy with how this edition started up.
If your having terrain issues, I suggest more buildings and large rocks and such to block LoS. I find that a decent coverage makes the game much more enjoyable.

Nope. I like 8th edition and think it's a vast improvement over the previous ones.

Where I am disappointed is in the army indices. A good 40% of the special rules for units are straight copy-pasted across the board. In general there's just a terminal lack of flavor.

Hopefully the codices fix this, but imo if there ends up being a huge discrepancy in quality between the indices and codices then the former should have been free.

Overall, I really enjoy playing it, but there are definitely some areas I feel disappointed in. A lot of special rule and equipment loss happened (especially to my beloved AdMech) and while I agree that vehicle rules needed an improvement, I don't know if this was the best way to do it. The loss of things like firing arcs/armor facings/etc. took away a lot of tactical decisions. The "terminal lack of flavor" really sums it up well.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 Galas wrote:

Plus I have never understand how people related "Special Random Bonusses"=An army with more character.

Did your Imperial Fist feel more unique just because they reroll 1's with Bolt weapons?... eeeh... no thanks. With my competitive games I prefer a more simple ruleset with a much similar playing field to everybody involved.

Warhammer40k has always had the problem with how people want their armies to be the most beautifull and unique special girl in the night dance festival.

Gonna have to disagree with you there. Firstly, the bonuses weren't random, but more importantly, they did change the way that the army played, because you didn't randomly apply those bonuses to an unrelated army list.
If you're playing Imperial Fists, you aren't *Just* rerolling 1s with Bolt Weapons that you happen to have, you are getting an incentive to take more Bolt Weapons over other types of units. Where you might have instead taken, I dunno, an Assault Squad, you're instead rewarded more overtly for taking a Tactical Squad, or a Land Raider Crusader might get picked over a Land Raider. Next thing you know, your whole army fits the fluff of the Imperial Fists better, because you were incentivized to do so.

The problem was that, most of the time, these bonuses just weren't balanced against one another very well. Re-rolling 1s on Bolters makes Bolters about 15% better, getting you one extra Bolter hit per every 7 Bolter shots or so. Meanwhile, something like Iron Hands just makes every single model about 16% better, by reducing the damage they take. Ultramarines could get those re-rolls for less time, but on everything, and with more accuracy as to what you need - Want to buff shooting? Just buff shooting. Want to buff assault? Just buff assault.
Meanwhile, Salamanders get a buff on... Flamers. That's not a weapon that Space Marines could ever spam, so why is that all they really get?


Army bonuses on a chapter-to-chapter basis are great, they just need to all give actual bonuses.

I can agree with that. In theory special rules are great, for making more diverse gameplay, but in practice GW just didn't know how to do them.
But thats really hasn't anything to do with my point. I still think people is so obsessed with their armies having special rules to it to be different from the rest of other armeis of his own faction, that they have reach a point where they just can't enjoy a game with... 18? I don't know how many factions 40K has today. Isn't that enough variety? Did we really need another 5-6 subfactions for every faction?

It has to be said that the layout of the Indexes works a lot better with the digital versions. Flipping back and forth through the physical copies can be annoying. The quick-flipping mechanics of an Ipad make it a lot easier.

In all honesty i'm just glad the game is actually reasonably playable now. I'm pretty happy with it so far. Well organized and coherent core rules, not overly convoluted etc. I just wish there wasn't such a push for larger scale games as I prefer to play 500-1000 points. Once the games get large then things start to drag down, as a person has to go through a full turn on their own before you can...in contrast to the I go you go style of AoS. 40k is less interactive like that as you watch your opponent go through the motions. You still have to pay attention to make sure your opponent isn't trying to pull some tricks.

Still yet to play but concerned about vehicles like landraiders getting tied up by small units of infantry especially with magic movement and deep striking so prevalent now.

Hmmm I wouldn't say disappointed. I was both looking forward to 8th and not at the same time from the moment it was hinted it would essentially be 40k: AoS. I have played and continue to play the odd game of AoS, mostly because sometimes on a certain day it's what's being played at the store. I don't think it's a great, or even decent rules system, but it's playable and it gives me an excuse to break out my old WFB minis.

So, my expectations were a bit low, tempered by the fact that unlike AoS I want to like 40k because I like the fluff and the miniatures. Also, despite my annoyance with many of the mechanics of GWs AoS and now 40k, it is absolutely playable. That that's such a strong selling point says more about how terrible 7th edition became, but nevertheless, I am happy that I can actually play again

For me, it really comes down to realizing this is a break from the war gaming/historical roots of these systems. The rules aren't trying to simulate anything, be "realistic", or even represent what's happening on the table. They're just a tool for using the minis on the table, nothing more.

Shinzra wrote:
Hey All.

So with the release of Warhammer 40k 8th edition, I have currently played just 2 games, and plan to play more to get a more thorough opinion. But for some reason I just dont get the same tactical feel from the 8th compared to 7th.

Now granted 7th of course had its problems and issues, and the rules for 8th are more placeholders than actual rules currently, but it just feels like it was simplified to much. I miss the universal rules like fear or fleet etc, and I actually preferred the way terrain works, now it just feels like a few have said, just for los purposes.

Cant quite work it out right but just not enjoying it as much as I thought I would, sure this will change as I play more games, but overall i feel 8th was rushed and has left currently at least a rather bland game, especially with the units and armies.

Anyway not a rant, just getting my first thoughts, seen alot of people enjoying 8th, which is great. But wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way.

cheers

wait wait wait...Fear? Really? Fear literally NEVER came up in all of 6th or 7th.

 jeff white wrote:
Still yet to play but concerned about vehicles like landraiders getting tied up by small units of infantry especially with magic movement and deep striking so prevalent now.

If you're worried about that, I've been playing a lot and have yet to have that happen to me, nor do it to the enemy.

I pulled the stunt once using Celestine and Seraphim on a Ghost Ark, but QS saved its bacon by a single hit and it escaped next turn.


An Ork player did do it to an SM player, killing off a whole squad of guys, though, and that SM player was mad. But this particular Ork player has been pulling this stunt since his 7e book came out, so that's really nothing new. In fact, more guys than usual survived the destruction of the surrounded Rhino, since there was apparently space to put down 2 of the guys now that the Rhino doesn't leave a wreck.


I am not disappointed with 8e. It meets my expectations. I give it a B-. There's a lot of different things I would have done, that I think would have improved it drastically, but as a whole, it's fun to play.

I'm not convinced by the following changes:

Changes to the 'to wound' chart. I like the fact that everything can hurt everything but not so enthused that double strength is required to wound on a 2+. Overall I'm happy to see greater homogenisation but this seems a needless step too far.

Removal of WS chart. Similar comments to above. It removes the defensive aspect of high WS and seems like an oversimplification.

New morale system. I don't have issues the new system itself, more the fact that horde armies seem to get largely full proof mitigants. Given that anti-horde weapons in the form of templates have largely been removed, combined with the new to wound chart, the early thoughts are that the meta will move towards horde armies. We'll have to see how this plays out obviously.

Apart from that (and 17pt Dire Avengers), I'm pretty happy with the new system.

 Galas wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:

 Galas wrote:

Plus I have never understand how people related "Special Random Bonusses"=An army with more character.

Did your Imperial Fist feel more unique just because they reroll 1's with Bolt weapons?... eeeh... no thanks. With my competitive games I prefer a more simple ruleset with a much similar playing field to everybody involved.

Warhammer40k has always had the problem with how people want their armies to be the most beautifull and unique special girl in the night dance festival.

Gonna have to disagree with you there. Firstly, the bonuses weren't random, but more importantly, they did change the way that the army played, because you didn't randomly apply those bonuses to an unrelated army list.
If you're playing Imperial Fists, you aren't *Just* rerolling 1s with Bolt Weapons that you happen to have, you are getting an incentive to take more Bolt Weapons over other types of units. Where you might have instead taken, I dunno, an Assault Squad, you're instead rewarded more overtly for taking a Tactical Squad, or a Land Raider Crusader might get picked over a Land Raider. Next thing you know, your whole army fits the fluff of the Imperial Fists better, because you were incentivized to do so.

The problem was that, most of the time, these bonuses just weren't balanced against one another very well. Re-rolling 1s on Bolters makes Bolters about 15% better, getting you one extra Bolter hit per every 7 Bolter shots or so. Meanwhile, something like Iron Hands just makes every single model about 16% better, by reducing the damage they take. Ultramarines could get those re-rolls for less time, but on everything, and with more accuracy as to what you need - Want to buff shooting? Just buff shooting. Want to buff assault? Just buff assault.
Meanwhile, Salamanders get a buff on... Flamers. That's not a weapon that Space Marines could ever spam, so why is that all they really get?


Army bonuses on a chapter-to-chapter basis are great, they just need to all give actual bonuses.

I can agree with that. In theory special rules are great, for making more diverse gameplay, but in practice GW just didn't know how to do them.
But thats really hasn't anything to do with my point. I still think people is so obsessed with their armies having special rules to it to be different from the rest of other armeis of his own faction, that they have reach a point where they just can't enjoy a game with... 18? I don't know how many factions 40K has today. Isn't that enough variety? Did we really need another 5-6 subfactions for every faction?

Why not more customization? Definitely a maximalist and a fan of "your Dudes." If I were a fan of any particular design of "build your army", it would be the Pete Haines style of Chapter Traits, Guard Doctrines, etc. Were they unbalanced? Of course they were unbalanced, but you tweak and look out for edgecase combos ("Gee, do I take Drop Troops and Close Order Drill, or Warrior Weapons?"), and make sure there's a point to each unit in a TAC army, without skew being a factor. Definitely more enticing than "uh, these Mentors count as Deathwatch" or so.

As for core rules, I feel there's a middle ground between 7th and 8th that would have been ideal, and 8th is the equivalent of a hacksaw where a scapel would have sufficed. It brings up RAW questions which never should have come up as well as dice mechanics which are frankly stupid and go against "common sense". AA flamethrowers, smoke launchers making plasma more likely to explode, 2-man squad coherency, squads not being able to move if they can't reach coherency, and many other glitchy interactions.

dosiere wrote:
Hmmm I wouldn't say disappointed. I was both looking forward to 8th and not at the same time from the moment it was hinted it would essentially be 40k: AoS. I have played and continue to play the odd game of AoS, mostly because sometimes on a certain day it's what's being played at the store. I don't think it's a great, or even decent rules system, but it's playable and it gives me an excuse to break out my old WFB minis.

So, my expectations were a bit low, tempered by the fact that unlike AoS I want to like 40k because I like the fluff and the miniatures. Also, despite my annoyance with many of the mechanics of GWs AoS and now 40k, it is absolutely playable. That that's such a strong selling point says more about how terrible 7th edition became, but nevertheless, I am happy that I can actually play again

For me, it really comes down to realizing this is a break from the war gaming/historical roots of these systems. The rules aren't trying to simulate anything, be "realistic", or even represent what's happening on the table. They're just a tool for using the minis on the table, nothing more.

I hate this about it too. Hate. As in it is criminal to try to turn a wargame into a collectible 3d card game.

 Hollow wrote:
It has to be said that the layout of the Indexes works a lot better with the digital versions. Flipping back and forth through the physical copies can be annoying. The quick-flipping mechanics of an Ipad make it a lot easier.

Paper gets even better than digital once you photocopy the points page.

 jeff white wrote:
Still yet to play but concerned about vehicles like landraiders getting tied up by small units of infantry especially with magic movement and deep striking so prevalent now.

You have to be really bad to let them get completely surrounded.

If we lay down the oddities in point costs for units (that are hopefully getting fixed) and move to core rules, here are my impressions after a couple games:

The good:
1. No more templates. A good change. Sure, a feeling of an extra round bit in your hand and a speshul dice to throw around can be satisfying but from a gameplay standpoint getting rid of templates was the right move. Spending 1/3 of the game meticulously measuring this 2' coherency was definitely not fun.
2. You pick casualties now. Great. This combined with 1 has made hordes playable. It's speeded up the game tremendously. And it's the 5-th rule comaback without musical wounds. A lot of people wanted this rule to come back. Personally, i still think that casualties from the front are more cinematic and adds more tactics to maneuvring but after a couple games i thing it's the right way to go.
3. No more deathstars. They were so annoying to face and made games boring.
4. No more magic shenanigans. Magic has been nerfed hard. And it's good. It should really be supportive and shouldn't carry your invincible deathstar on a successful dice roll. Smite spam can still be problematic in some cases but it's not even close to 7-th problems.
5. No more formations with free bonuses. Some formations were good, some were pointless, others were gamebreaking.
6. MC and vehicles are the same. And both have damage tables. That's great and what we've asked for since forever.

The bad.
1. To-hit modifiers and overheat interactions. It just doesn't make any sense. All it needs to be is "overheat on a roll of 1 after all the re-rolls but before any modifiers".
2. Cover. It basically only works for the defender and small squads now. No longer can you use screen tactics and this +1 armor seems pretty pointless to some units and really good to others.
3. No more armor facings and firing arcs. Yeah, the fact that vehicles are now mc is great but it has come at a price of emersion-breaking. I'd like both mc and vehicles to be required to measure los from their weapons. That might add some complications but power-sliding basilisks shooting out of their tracks looks wierd and gamey. And armor facings. Yeah, i know, it's not always obvious what the armor facings are but gw can add a small picture that clarifies it. And all it needs to be is something like -1 armor from the back or something like this. Or it could even vary from vehicle to vehicle. LR won't get this drawbacks while battlewagons could be 3+ on the front and 5+ on the back.

Enigma of the Absolute wrote:
I'm not convinced by the following changes:

Changes to the 'to wound' chart. I like the fact that everything can hurt everything but not so enthused that double strength is required to wound on a 2+. Overall I'm happy to see greater homogenisation but this seems a needless step too far.

Removal of WS chart. Similar comments to above. It removes the defensive aspect of high WS and seems like an oversimplification.

New morale system. I don't have issues the new system itself, more the fact that horde armies seem to get largely full proof mitigants. Given that anti-horde weapons in the form of templates have largely been removed, combined with the new to wound chart, the early thoughts are that the meta will move towards horde armies. We'll have to see how this plays out obviously.

Apart from that (and 17pt Dire Avengers), I'm pretty happy with the new system.

That's funny if I had to pick my three favorite things, those would be them. I'm in general happy with 8th ed, I have a few faction specific gripes (such as tomb world deploy, could you make it a transport kind of thing or summoning kind of thing, because it currently combines the worst aspects of both), but everyone does. I've played enough matches to know that the rules are in the best place i've seen them in, there are a few hiccups for balance, but even the most OP unit for this edition pales in comparison to second string OP units from 7th ed.

I have some concerns about the force org charts, it encourages list diversity, but it also seems to encourage spam. Also, even at the current high point for balance you can feel the system creak under the weight of all of those options, and it won't take a large mistake on the part of the balance team to send the meta tumbling down like a house of cards. Actually one other gripe, I feel like cover should have given a -1 to hit rather than a +1 to armor save, because a -1 to hit is great for everyone, a +1 to armor save varies from doubling survival to not really having any effect.

Great to see such a response so quickly .

I think there are parts I really like for 8th so far like the toned down psychic phase and also the anything can hurt anything is nice.

as a few have said, certain parts I feel I will miss, like the vehicle Armour values.

But definitely need to play some more games, and wait for the main books to come out, will agree though the index layout is horrible, literally just going to print my battlescribe list with the rules attached.

Haven't played nearly enough to form an educated opinion, but first impressions are great so far!

I really want to play more, but alas, time is a frail mistress. Vacation starts soon though, hopefully I will get to play a bunch then.