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might be a language thing, but a reaction is always a response to something someone else is doing
you are never reacting to your own actions

my action can trigger a reaction from the opponent, but cannot trigger a reaction from me as I am the acting player
my action can trigger another action or ability from me

might be that native speakers see this different but I am here with lord blackfang, it just makes no sense

I get what GW mean, but I agree it feels clunky.

Honestly I think the 3 year cycle is burning the writers hard trying to think up new things to change and get it all done in a very short timeframe. I think its the same as how 40K 10th wound up with psy weapons that don't actually do anything different to normal weapons in game; save from being potentially blocked by a few anti psy abilities (ergo having it is a negative for the player owning the psy model).

Or models that were created that wound up doing nothing (eg the new little neuro floaties for the Tyranids that are very clearly made to be more than a marker in the game and yet that's all they wound up doing).


So this could well be the case of an idea they had that they never coined a simple good term for and just had to go with reactions because it "kind of works" and because they had to send it off to the printers.

I am with @lordblackfang - calling a reaction something that is basically giving yourself a bonus is counterintuitive.

You know what would work better than an ever-expanding list of reactions (there are sure to be more with the coming books)?

Ditching IGoUGo.

Would fix the "double turn" problem too.

you know what is funny, we have the double turn because GW ditched IGoUGo and keeps that in 4th because per popular request to keep IGoUGo away (as for them it was the best solution for removing it)

if you actually mean that GW should change random player turns to random activations, than you should be more clear because GW is listening to what people say and not what people might mean

As more nonsense is released, the happier I am that we're sticking with 3rd as a group. With a few changes through house rules we're happy with what we have. Decent enough rules, battletomes and warscroll cards printed out and all the models we need.
So no 4th edition for our group. We get to keep playing the armies we want. Big plus is the money we save as a group not buying into it. Money we're already looking at spending elsewhere from GW. Happy days.

You can't do that! You must burn your armies and get angwy at evil multi million quid corpo!

 kodos wrote:
might be a language thing, but a reaction is always a response to something someone else is doing
you are never reacting to your own actions

my action can trigger a reaction from the opponent, but cannot trigger a reaction from me as I am the acting player
my action can trigger another action or ability from me

might be that native speakers see this different but I am here with lord blackfang, it just makes no sense

A reaction is just a respone to an action, it doesn't have to come from another party. If I were to drop a cup with my left hand, I could react to catch it with my right.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 kodos wrote:
might be a language thing, but a reaction is always a response to something someone else is doing
you are never reacting to your own actions

my action can trigger a reaction from the opponent, but cannot trigger a reaction from me as I am the acting player
my action can trigger another action or ability from me

might be that native speakers see this different but I am here with lord blackfang, it just makes no sense

A reaction is just a respone to an action, it doesn't have to come from another party. If I were to drop a cup with my left hand, I could react to catch it with my right.

I think the thing is if you're playing a strategy game then in theory you shouldn't be dropping your cup and then reacting to yourself dropping your cup.

The dropping of the cup itself is an open choice and your follow up to dropping it is a further choice you made.


Ergo you plan each step you make in sequence, you aren't reacting to the previous step because the previous step is part of your two (or more) step plan.



Reacting to your own choices suggests that you're playing very much in the moment and not thinking through your choices.
Now yes MANY people do play like that, but its not really the kind of thinking or approach to a game that a strategy game should encourage.






But that is honestly overthinking things. This is just GW creating a mechanic within the game and rolling it out and giving it a name. Like Wounds or Health Points, Reactions are just a mechanic name and thus on some level their normal use in the real world steps aside for their game use. It's just a term people are disliking the choice of and its getting hyper assessed right now because we've so few bits of the rules to focus on. Time will tell if it was a well chosen name or not; but the real test is if its a fun mechanic that works in the game.

i don't see why clearer rules is a bad thing. this new system has clearly defined points where you can use an ability, and then describes what it's doing. people rag on GW all the time for unclear rules, so here's a step to avoid that

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
i don't see why clearer rules is a bad thing. this new system has clearly defined points where you can use an ability, and then describes what it's doing. people rag on GW all the time for unclear rules, so here's a step to avoid that

Yeah, I just think maybe a different term for reactions that focus on yourself might have been a better idea. "Quick Thinking" Perhaps? "Clever Ploy"?

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
i don't see why clearer rules is a bad thing. this new system has clearly defined points where you can use an ability, and then describes what it's doing. people rag on GW all the time for unclear rules, so here's a step to avoid that

GW's method of writing clearer rules tends to be criticized for the loss of readability. What GW has done for the last few editions of their main games is usually called legalese, but it's more like a programming language with clear sequencing and strict terminology. It's probably of great benefit to the writers themselves for getting their rules right since it provides a template that is easily followed and checked. It provides mechanical clarity for the robots who play at tournaments. But one may doubt that a lingo with a required catalogue of specific terms reads and teaches as well to a more casual audience as more free-form, idea-based rules written in plain English.

 Geifer wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
i don't see why clearer rules is a bad thing. this new system has clearly defined points where you can use an ability, and then describes what it's doing. people rag on GW all the time for unclear rules, so here's a step to avoid that

GW's method of writing clearer rules tends to be criticized for the loss of readability. What GW has done for the last few editions of their main games is usually called legalese, but it's more like a programming language with clear sequencing and strict terminology. It's probably of great benefit to the writers themselves for getting their rules right since it provides a template that is easily followed and checked. It provides mechanical clarity for the robots who play at tournaments. But one may doubt that a lingo with a required catalogue of specific terms reads and teaches as well to a more casual audience as more free-form, idea-based rules written in plain English.

Every game has term-centric rules to itself; even games like Football have terms and concepts that are unique to it which require a period of learning.

And most people can grasp those rules.


The problem GW continues to have is that they keep re-writing the rules and changing the terms coupled to a style of writing and information presentation whcih makes simple concepts much harder to take on board. This is then compounded by their desire to segment rules into multiple books so suddenly you've got bits here, bits there all without easy cross referencing elements (eg page number marks) and the like.

Instead of sitting on a 30 year matured rules system with set terms; clear writing and adjustments to feedback; GW are constantly sitting now on a 3 year rules system that's immature and only finding its feet. Constantly we hit the same problem that they just about start to get things working; casual and competitive players are just getting into the real swing of learning and playing the game and then BOOM all change. It's rather like being at the Mad Hatters Teaparty where every few moments you have to swap chairs to a new seat. You hardly get to enjoy your cup of tea before its all change.

 Overread wrote:
Every game has term-centric rules to itself; even games like Football have terms and concepts that are unique to it which require a period of learning.

And most people can grasp those rules.

Every game doesn't use three different ways of formatting terms to tell you that they are specific terms that must be read a specific way. Have a look at this:



RUN, fully capitalized and bolded
run roll, bolded
Move, capitalized and bolded

None of that is necessary. Most people could grasp that a charge has specific meaning after reading the close combat rules in days of yore. But in pursuit of airtight rules GW deemed it necessary to change a charge to a CHARGE ability, and variations like the charging unit to a unit using that CHARGE ability.

GW's use of terms extends to sentence structure and formatting far beyond what other companies do with game specific terms. It's not about the existence of unique or specific terms, but how they influence the writing.

Sadly so, and compounded by the terminology not being consistent between games. In HH, for example, reactions are exactly what you'd expect.

I think what's really influencing the rules writing is all the ad nauseum debates about 'rules as written' versus 'rules as intended'. It seems to me they're just trying to do a better job of clearly writing the rules as intended.

 Geifer wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Every game has term-centric rules to itself; even games like Football have terms and concepts that are unique to it which require a period of learning.

And most people can grasp those rules.

Every game doesn't use three different ways of formatting terms to tell you that they are specific terms that must be read a specific way. Have a look at this:



RUN, fully capitalized and bolded
run roll, bolded
Move, capitalized and bolded

None of that is necessary. Most people could grasp that a charge has specific meaning after reading the close combat rules in days of yore. But in pursuit of airtight rules GW deemed it necessary to change a charge to a CHARGE ability, and variations like the charging unit to a unit using that CHARGE ability.

GW's use of terms extends to sentence structure and formatting far beyond what other companies do with game specific terms. It's not about the existence of unique or specific terms, but how they influence the writing.

They're used to dealing with people that put 12 exalted eightbound in a rhino at events because it didn't call out the unit precisely by spelling/name on the restrictions. I don't fully blame them.

Also

 Geifer wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Every game has term-centric rules to itself; even games like Football have terms and concepts that are unique to it which require a period of learning.

And most people can grasp those rules.

Every game doesn't use three different ways of formatting terms to tell you that they are specific terms that must be read a specific way. Have a look at this:



RUN, fully capitalized and bolded
run roll, bolded
Move, capitalized and bolded

None of that is necessary. Most people could grasp that a charge has specific meaning after reading the close combat rules in days of yore. But in pursuit of airtight rules GW deemed it necessary to change a charge to a CHARGE ability, and variations like the charging unit to a unit using that CHARGE ability.

GW's use of terms extends to sentence structure and formatting far beyond what other companies do with game specific terms. It's not about the existence of unique or specific terms, but how they influence the writing.

Agreed, this all links into my point that its not the terminology but how GW displays information.

Indeed most of the competitive attempts to abuse the rules often come from the wonky way GW presents them.

Again for a 30-40 year company and game these are really basic things that should have steadily been ironed out over the years as they polished a rules system.

 lord_blackfang wrote:


There's no such thing in MTG, what you describe are Triggered Abilities. You do respond to opponents' plays and in fringe cases you do respond to your own plays, but normal people say "I hold priority and do this second thing" not "I'm responding to myself"

I know MtG rules, thanks. What I'm saying is that this level of abstraction isn't a problem to me, just like the stack, priority or state based actions aren't.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/04/12/how-battle-traits-and-battle-formations-shape-your-army-in-newaos/

So basically detachments from 40k, but they get 4 per index.

i think this could have been expected

detachments in 10th are pretty hit or miss, but i think on the whole the concept is a success. subfaction rules have always been hit or miss, but i don't mind the execution. pretty reasonable to bring it to AOS

It's definitely not worse than 3.0 battalions.

4 detachments per factions = Unaffected lizard enjoyer (as far as numbers go).

Usually there's like 6 subfactions per tome so one has to wonder who's gonna get indexed.

So long as they are just indexing subfactions and not models I'm fine with that; though it can be a right pain for any who build a dedicted theme list, esp in larger forces like Skaven where subfactions often come with a lot of unit restrictions and allowances and thus has a big impact on army composition.

 Overread wrote:
So long as they are just indexing subfactions and not models I'm fine with that; though it can be a right pain for any who build a dedicted theme list, esp in larger forces like Skaven where subfactions often come with a lot of unit restrictions and allowances and thus has a big impact on army composition.

Isnt the restrictions and compositions in the battalions though?
Subfactions is basicly just "give your force a keyword and get a bonus".
Ofcourse they often go hand in hand, but the article specificly called out Battle Formations to be "the subfactions of old" and battalions are not tied to subfactions.

Disclaimer: Its just an honest question, I dont actually play the game, but enjoy reading the battletomes of the armies I collect.

 Fayric wrote:

 Overread wrote:
So long as they are just indexing subfactions and not models I'm fine with that; though it can be a right pain for any who build a dedicted theme list, esp in larger forces like Skaven where subfactions often come with a lot of unit restrictions and allowances and thus has a big impact on army composition.

Isnt the restrictions and compositions in the battalions though?
Subfactions is basicly just "give your force a keyword and get a bonus".
Ofcourse they often go hand in hand, but the article specificly called out Battle Formations to be "the subfactions of old" and battalions are not tied to subfactions.

Disclaimer: Its just an honest question, I dont actually play the game, but enjoy reading the battletomes of the armies I collect.

Effectively, they're doing what they did to 40k: Use whatever Chapter Tactics you want, regardless of how your army is painted.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Fayric wrote:

 Overread wrote:
So long as they are just indexing subfactions and not models I'm fine with that; though it can be a right pain for any who build a dedicted theme list, esp in larger forces like Skaven where subfactions often come with a lot of unit restrictions and allowances and thus has a big impact on army composition.

Isnt the restrictions and compositions in the battalions though?
Subfactions is basicly just "give your force a keyword and get a bonus".
Ofcourse they often go hand in hand, but the article specificly called out Battle Formations to be "the subfactions of old" and battalions are not tied to subfactions.

Disclaimer: Its just an honest question, I dont actually play the game, but enjoy reading the battletomes of the armies I collect.

Effectively, they're doing what they did to 40k: Use whatever Chapter Tactics you want, regardless of how your army is painted.

Which in turn is gw just codifying what players did anyway

With the new edition coming, and with this page at 235 pages I think it's time to shut it down and start a new thread.

Plus as an order thread it has the 'new page' bug which has been fixed.

Any objections?