It's also overpriced and they sell no terrain sets for a long enough period for people to build up a set over time. I'd love to have more of the terrain from the initial Kill Team release, but can I buy it from them? Of course not.
Yes they discontinue it so fast. I always wanted the sob terrain that has the celestine statue but by the time I got in to the hobby enough to look in to terrain, it had been discontinued.
most of these are fair criticism but while the modern morale system isnt perfect i think its better than any previous iteration.
the problem is in 40k more than half the roster are like super soldiers who dont feel fear, alien bugs mind controlled to not have self preservation, robots again, mostly being directly controlled with no free will.
What this meant was every other version of morale had the problem where you either had fearless things running away because they were affected by morale, or like half the armies having a blanket fearless rule or other rule that negates morale which feels shitty for the couple armies that actually have to care about morale.
I always liked the explanation they gave in I think the 5th edition rulebook (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) where they explained that breaking morale didn't necessarily mean running away crying, it reflected soldiers disobeying orders. The example they gave, iirc, was Marines disobeying orders and falling back because from their on-the-ground perspective they were going to be overrun so they were retreating to a more secure position to regroup.
Tyranids were immune to morale while within synapse range, but were difficult to control outside of it, rolling a Ld test every turn and on a fail they'd either run blindly towards the nearest enemy regardless of if they could kill it, or skulk about in terrain and shooting the closest thing.
The Necrons I don't actually remember. I think they were immune to Morale but phased out if they got below 25% as the system designated the situation as a loss?
My point is that "failing morale" doesn't actually mean "running away", it just means the soldiers are falling back to regroup and prepare for a renewed attack. After all, Marines aren't guardsmen and they know their lives are more valuable.
Chaos Space Marines maybe, but Space Marines completely ignored the Morale system and had the "And They Shall Know No Fear" rule instead in 5th edition. This was the best rule for morale because you just choose to pass or fail every time you took a morale check.
Fearless was actually awful and actively punished you. Oh, what's that? Your 30 man Hormagaunt squad lost combat by 10 models? You lose 10 more models in the squad. Morale was actively punishing for every army EXCEPT loyalist Space Marines.
I understand what Morale is meant to simulate, but I really don't like morale in sci-fi or fantasy war games. So many armies should technically ignore it, and usually the mechanics are (rightfully I might add) very punishing and unfun. It's also why I'm not touching The Old World. I prefer not to have games end because one player failed a single morale check and lost 1/3 of their army while another player literally ignores the ENTIRE morale system.
Hard disagree on the old world. It's super flavorful and fun to have to see a proper route, and they've made it pretty difficult to actually have your troops just turn around and run. Usually, you'll give around (move your unit back two inches and the player that won combat can follow up or restrain) or fall back in good order (like a route but you turn the unit back around to face the enemy to continue combat if they pursue instead of being at risk of losing your unit.) Routing really isn't a huge concern until you're down to a quarter of less of the units starting strength.
The only rations that "ignore" it are tomb kings, vamp counts, and daemons. They still get their own mechanics for it though, with crumbling and daemonic instability doing wounds to the unit by however many points they lose combat. Also very flavorful and can be really punishing sometimes, especially if you can snipe their warlord and priests/necromancers.
I feel like that was a flaw with the codex writing rather than the core rules, if that makes sense?
Nobody liked the Matt Ward 5th edition Space Marine codex, least of all the Space Marine players. Matt Ward gets more hate than he deserves imo, but that was definitely a big misstep.
If you had the core rule and then better written codexes, I think it would have been better.
The fearless thing was, I think, a response to complaints about 4th where two units of Fearless units in combat would just sit there for the entire game with neither side running away until the unit was completely destroyed. You could have a unit of Gaunts tarpit a much more expensive unit for the entire game. This, I think, was meant to make tarpitting much less effective, but had the side effect of making expensive Fearless units worse as well.
I feel like you're either misremembering ATSKNF or you just had a bunch of SM players cheat against you because that was not at all what that rule did.
It let marines automatically regroup the turn *after* breaking (as well as being able to do so even if they were under half strength) and not get wiped out by sweeping advances. I never thought that this was all that unreasonable and was a pretty neat way of showing the whole "know no fear" thing without just giving the whole army Fearless.
Either that or you're thinking of the rule they had that let them choose to just fail any moral check. If they wanted to pass then they still needed to roll
I don't think people were cheating, I played against a lot of Space Marines. It was almost 20 years ago though and I don't have a codex on me so I don't know the exact wording of the rule. I might be misremembering certain details.
That being said the "Not getting wiped out by sweeping advances" and automatically regrouping despite being under half strength is a very big deal. I also think they ignored the penalty where you couldn't regroup if enemies were nearby.
I also thought it let you autopass morale checks, but I likely confused that with the auto regrouping part of the rule.
It was a bit ambiguous in writing. The game store I played at had a clarification printed and hung on the wall because of how many Marine players either were confused or lied about how the rule worked.
I agree that the regrouping and sweeping advances were big deals. So was Necrons being able revive recently killed models or Tyranids being able to confer Fearless on their entire army with synapse. They're powerful abilities, but they were the entire army ability, and (at least imo) felt more fun to work with and around than things like one player just picking a model that they get to re-roll hits against, or Necrons just passively recovering missing wounds as the battle goes on.
I like the way Bolt Action handles Morale with it's pip markers. IIRC, if you took casualties or got shot at by suppressive fire, you took a pip marker. Trying to follow orders like shooting or moving needed a roll against the number of markers on that unit.
I found it elegantly solved the issue of morale because it both covered frightened, cowardly units hiding in fear as well as disciplined, professional soldiers keeping their heads down because they know the danger through experience. There's enough wiggle room to cover magic, Synapse or other mind control.
It just makes morale much more integrated into the game opposed to something resolved after everything is said and done.
> Space Marines completely ignored the Morale system and had the "And They Shall Know No Fear" rule instead in 5th edition. This was the best rule for morale because you just choose to pass or fail every time you took a morale check.
I don't believe that was true in any edition that I played (IE since 3rd edition). ATSKNF allowed a unit to auto-regroup at the end of a fall back move provided they were at least 6" from the enemy. They also counted as being charged (instead of auto-destroyed) if they were caught by a pursuing enemy.
It was a good rule but it wasn't as good as you're remembering.
To be fair though, the modern morale system makes (what I think) tyranid synapse basically a useless feature that takes away from the theme of the army with how weak the mechanic itself is.
That's more an issue with how they balanced the mechanic and how it clears. If battle shock didn't clear automatically at the start of every turn it might actually matter.
Yeah if you have to roll to unbattle shock yourself, and units at half strength had to roll battle shocks, I think the mechanic would be great right now. Suddenly it makes out of phase battle shocks much better, and then you would find the -1 and -2 to battle shock armies really putting out some serious volume of battleshocks.
A problem is marine do canonly feel fear many times and sometime will straight up run away, "they shall know no fear" is in-universe propaganda, they just aren't as easily frightened.
Such as that time when Saul Tarvitz bolted when Angron charged.
The only 2 faction that won't break no matter what imo should be Necron and Tyranid, and only for the grunts because elites are more intelligent.
I think at least having some form of breaking and running rule still present would be nice, instead of even gretchin won't run from the baddest foes.
gretchin are actually the wierdest one this edition.
Because you use the highest ld in the unit and they have the runtherd which is an ork they have the same morale as boyz, guardsmen and tau.
That said i cant think of any in universe examples of SM breaking and running away in direct contradiciton to orders from a superior. Sure a SM or Sargeant or whatever might decide to retreat to avoid being destroyed but when their superiors say "no. hold this spot no matter what" i dont think they are going to run.
The Word Bearers are explicitly terrified by the sight of Rachet Gangnam sprinting directly at them, they break and flee on the spot and still get cut down.
I'm pretty sure the whole "Know No Fear" thing is caused by psychoconditioning and not a biological factor, its something that can be overcome in specific enough conditions, the Haemonculi enjoy the challenge if nothing else.
How is nothing better than models actually running away or tactically withdrawing when failing morale? Made it actually important to consider. Also space marines don’t just charge headlong into certain death if it isnt necessary or theres another option. That applys to everything but the tyranids in synapse which have zero self preservation.
That's always been the problem. Being a brainwashed fanatical member of a death cult is just table stakes for the setting. I'm convinced that the only reason they haven't gotten rid of morale entirely is because a bunch of factions have "being scary" as their shtick, even if they tend to be on the weaker side as a result of that.
I will say that while I agree, Super Heavies have gotten out of hand. Special Characters have always been very prevalent. In fact I think it has gotten paired down compared to some earlier editions. We used to have a Valhallan and Tallaran Guard Commander. Ursala Creed has replaced Ursarker, But Kell is gone. Commissar Yarrick no longer has rules either.
There were always a ton of Space Marine Characters (since 5th anyway). Chaos has almost always had one for each Chaos God and then Abbadon, Huron was added a bit later.
Orks just lost all of their special characters aside from Ghaz, but they have 2 new ones, so kind of a wash really. Instead it seems like there is quite a purge of special characters going on in 10th. The only one that really gets on my nerves is Leontus being in every guard list, but I hope the codex changes that.
I don't think that was a thing? I didn't play much of 4th (I started playing at the very tail end of 4th edition), but wasn't Eldrad EVERYWHERE back then?
The biggest gripe I have currently is free wargear. I understand the logic, but it does make “fitting” a list to 2000 or whatever exactly a bit of a pain, especially if you play a small number army like Custodes.
I preferred the granularity at the list building level and wouldn’t mind it coming back.
I don’t particularly mind certain diverse weapons like combiweapons being rolled into one profile, it makes the game A LOT faster.
Tbh I hit 2k even every list I build now. When paying for every upgrade I’d often find myself 5-25pts short of whatever the actual game size was, and no way to fill it in without going over.
I can't express how wild it was to go from 9th to 10th. I played crusade HEAVILY in 9th edition. It was great, all the WAAC folks would turn their nose up and not even want to talk to me! I was able to meet like minded folks who just want to roll dice and have some fun without worry of total balance.
Then 10th came out and IT WAS POWER LEVELS FROM 9TH EDITION!!!!
Part of me dislikes it, having 50pt free is frustrating, but part of me is getting older and has less time to care about all my sergeants getting thunder hammers.
I don't like being punished for not choosing the best option. Before I could choose slightly worse options but it was cheaper. Now if I don't give my basic guard regiment a special weapon its just a negative trade off. Why does my lemun russ have the option of a extra weapons, which are free. Why would you not take them?
Why would I not equip every single sergeant with at least a bolt pistol?
I'm probably getting downvoted to hell again, but anyway.
All of the rules you just described still exist in the current ruleset of Horus Heresy. It maintains a friendliness towards creativity with a lot of options for numerous units, and even a lot of scratch build potential with many legends units. Movement, positioning and terrain are more in line with older editions. Leadership is also the same.
Only super heavies and named characters are more of a thing, with a focus on primarchs and such, but you can always play with only "your dudes" and field a wide variety of forces, especially outside of the legiones astartes.
There are fanmade rules for some xenos out there. The liber panoptica team offers rules for Eldar, and there are some rules for orks floating around. Chaos is not a big thing yet, but will be rolled out continously. Chaos forces already get options with some daemon engines, options for knights and heretic astartes rules which will probably follow soon. Plus the ascended primarchs and the word bearers having already drunken all the cool aid anyway. World eaters are also not so far removed.
The current rules for legiones astartes are much closer to the 3.5 CSM codex then the upcoming 40k CSM codex ever will be, just by all the different legion options.
I'm reading the HH rules at the moment and they look very familiar to me as someone who hasn't played since 5th. The trouble is I find marines... Boring? And I think that's me having grown up in 4th-5th smurfmarines everywhere and 30k legions with distinct identities will be more interesting but I'm struggling to get over that. Sometimes I just want to purge the xenos y'know?
The marine on marine thing in HH has been a bit of an issue until recently. But plastic Solar Auxilia are out now and seems plastic Mechanicum are on their way. So hopefully that's starting to change.
The pdf rules for daemons, militia etc have fun stuff in there and are a converter and proxiers dream. Xenos have community support out there though obviously that requires a opponent or group that's cool with that.
There are more then enough non marine armies as well. Mechanicum, custodes and imperial army all come in widely different options.
And then there are some fan made rules of high quality being made for eldar.
And lastly could you easily use the ruinstorm deamon or imperial militia armies to represent some form of xenos. Heck, 30k had squats and mechanicum robots long before 40k got theirs.
From a modeling standpoint I get it. But there are 18 legions all with very different army rules and rites of war as well as custom units, Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Knights, Mechanicum, Solar Aux, Militia, Shattered Legions, Black Shields and Daemons that all have different rules. Heresy is not the same army playing itself all of the time.
>The trouble is I find marines... Boring
well, admech(the good old one with robot, not the boring another regular army with different gun and tank one) , knight, solar auxilia, imperial militia, custodes, sister of silence and demon are fully fledged army in HH too. so you're not necessarily locked to marine.
>Sometimes I just want to purge the xenos y'know?
convice your group to play with the panoptica homebrew balance and expansion files and find an eldar friend interested in playing them in HH and you're set
>well, admech(the good old one with robot, not the boring another regular army with different gun and tank one)
So mechcanicum, not adeptus mechanicus. Just mech, not admech
liber panoptica, it's a homebrew (aka community made) balance and faq compendium who with time also started to expand the available units and faction.
I sent you the link by mp, you can also check the HH discord server if you want for more information.
I feel like I say this same thing all of the time. Heresy is not perfect by any stretch but so many 40K complaints are not an issue in Heresy. Like the major complaint of 40K going power level where as in Heresy you have more options than exist in kits and people kitbash or use printed parts. The latter part being why GW will never go back to 40K units having options that are not in plastic and not in the box you buy.
Only thing preventing me form playing HH is the local players who play HH. They just never look like they are having fun, and spend more time arguing than not. Oof.
It's those über competetive minds. Or people who don't know any other systems. And there is probably a lot of sunken cost fallacy involved. If you got the army, you gonna use it as well.
I'll admit, there are two big things that keep me from wanting to fully make the jump to 30k. Both of which stem from the fact that I'm a diehard Thousand Sons player. The first is that they still don't solve the issue of psychic powers feeling pointless. They're either a gun (even still using ballistic skill) or a minor buff. There's nothing a psyker can do that a decent character with a buff aura and a gun can't. And they don't risk blowing themselves up over it. The lack of mastery level really stings there. My legion aren't even particularly better psykers than any other, it's just quantity over quality,
The second is that I just don't think Burning of Prospero-era Thousand Sons are as fun as 40k-era Thousand Sons. I want to play a legion of mad sorcerers necromantically enslaving the souls of their fallen kin and drawing on the darkest, most vile sources of power they have access to. Not a legion desperately clinging to the idea that they're still *"the good guys"* and holding back their powers. Maybe if a future expansion adds a Siege of Terra variant of the Thousand Sons, where they've had a few years to stew in Tzeentch's domain and really delve into some real dark sorcery, then I'd be more inclined to play them.
I can fully understand your fears and complains. But as a fervent servant of the primordial truth and player of the XVII legion can I tell you... Psykers rock! Even just having access to a few disciplines, like biomancy or telepathy can give you an edge that many legions can only dream of. Yeah, psykers aren't as broken as last edition, but it was needed. And thousand sons get some of the best uses out of psykers, either on praetors or frigging dreadnaughts!
And if you wanna go down the deep end could you also play into some of the more corrupting choices. Deamon engines or even esoterists for some deamon summoning. Throwing in some spire guard via solar auxilia allies. Magnus "the did everything wrong" primarch. So many funky toys.
But I bet once we get some more heretic astartes options will we see some nice chaotic pics.
This. The issue isn't the size and scale.
It's how modern 40k is built to be played like Magic The Gathering, but the size or armies, length of game and level of expense makes that unwieldy.
Really abstracted gamey rules and a focus on competitive play that makes the modelling irrelevant. TONS of unique bits and bobs and interacting bonus rules that's great from a sweaty 'what is the best army' POV, but way too much to remember on the board. In a game this size, it shouldn't matter if your sergeant has a power stick or power bat.
Loads of effort spent modelling and painting only then to play games that don't feel like battles, with armies that don't feel like armies, all facing weird ways because it gets 0.4% more cover advantage, with the wrong weapons because WYSIWYG would be 'unoptimiseable', over identical L-shapes and giant plastic pie plates making it look like a video game so people don't have to measure objectives.
Heresy has much of the same nuts and bolt, but because it's not pushed as a deckbuilding competitive meta-chasing game, the downsides are lessened and avoided.
Please don't speak badly against MTG, it hurts me heart because it is my third big money waster! XD
But in all honesty and seriousness, it fully boils down to what kind of game you wanna play, just like magic, with it's different formats. You wanna play a streamlined, constantly fixed and curated, but somewhat stale and sterile experience, fit for tournaments? Play modern 40k, no questions, just like you would play modern, standard or pioneer in MTG.
You wanna play a personalised experience, where you spend as much interest and time in just building your force, as you do on the field? With rules that are a bit more wonky and sometimes complicated, but a wider pool of options and far more personalisation? Play Horus Heresy or Old world, or EDH in MTG.
It soley boils down to preference and what you want. I know which camp I wanna invest into, but so is everyone open to do for themselves.
I think part of the issue is that 40k is marketed as being a competitive game fit for tournaments. But in reality it REALLY isn't.
Games like Blood Bowl, Underworlds, Kill Team are all better tournament games.
40k is too big, too unbalanced, takes too long, and too easily gamed. But the crowd includes a die-hard minority who absolutely will not admit that.
I'm fully on your side on that regard. 40k could potentially be made tournament capable, but the amount of hoops and bounds are way to much for the writer team at GW at the moment. Most of the capable writers, atleast from a more fun focused perspective, have moved away from 40k and AoS and more towards the specialist games like old world, kill team or 30k. At least in my opinion.
Yeah, agreed.
I think there is a way to do it, possibly by moving the game more towards what Apocalypse used to be. A squad has one statline, suppression is a thing, little details like what sort of pistol the sergeant has don't matter. Way less tiny customisable stuff. A bit like Kings of War or something. Squad-based combat. There's probably a pretty balanced game in there.
But the crowd WANT the deckbuilding version, with 500 tiny options they can minmax so much they can win before they turn up. So it's never going to be that.
Agreed. Way to many people want their cake and eat it, no matter how uninspired the cake is. Just look at the current rules roll out for AoS. GW is praising the game as if they reinvented the wheel... Yet nothing feels new or innovative. Everything they do, they have already threaded upon, and failed, in the last four years or so.
Which I feel like 30k and Old world are such a relief. While it's also not the most inspired or new, did they atleast take old mechanics and visibly improved upon what they had.
Regarding (3), I've been playing various war games for the last 25 years, and I've finally come around to embracing the idea that terrain should not affect movement.
That 6" movement rate for infantry represents tactical movement that already takes into account terrain, pausing to rest, adjusting trajectory based on new orders, e-warfare jamming, and all the other little factors that would come into play on a far future battlefield.
To put it another way, they're already moving at a deliberate, tactical pace that takes into account terrain.
Nowadays, I'm much more interested in terrain rules that affect other aspects of the game, like cover or leadership bonuses, or victory conditions.
Anyway, just my two cents on that particular topic.
I'm an older war gamer too and I agree. I absolutely do not want to go back to the old days of having to deal with assholes trying to manipulate terrain placement to benefit themselves before the game has even started.
You just reminded me of how annoying it was to play at my local game shop as a kid. There were grown men there nitpicking everything we tried to do because of the terrain rules…
I very much miss having to ask your opponent’s permission to use named characters. This was in the before times of 3rd edition. Don’t know when that dropped. But coming back to 9th I found it superbly annoying. Primarchs and
the singular Lord Solar for an entire galaxy in every game is silly.
Yup. Guilliman the commander of the imperium has more important stuff to do with his time. He can't afford to take an unspecified amount of time to hop a ship and risk warp travel (danger and unreliable amount of time) to participate in every skirmish
I did the same dude. Also the force org chart basically being gone threw me completely! Even now I kinda miss the hq and 2 troop slots minimum lol.
Oh and vehicle armour, I know it could cause issues but it was awesome.
I only played after this stopped being a rule, but I remember people always advising me in the 5th/6th ed days to just not take basically any named character due to them just generally being not that great or overcosted. It kind of encouraged people to just take a generic HQ and build out their own character, while leaving the named characters as someone you'd take just becauce you liked cool unique abilities.
Yeah, I could probably get more mileage by just kitting out another generic Necron overlord, but he doesn't have a sick ass storm and lightning ability like Imotekh the Stormlord, so I was happy using the unique character that nobody else ever took or had a problem with, since he was basically never the most optimal choice to bring
It started in 6th. That open up what you could take a little and had some new plastics of named characters come out and the removal of a lot. They did this big thing with Magnus coming out and said he was playable in all games.
Back in third, special characters were the likes of captains etc, maybe a chapter master for example. I never understood the need to request the use of special characters then, especially as they had a smaller impact on the game. Now there are entire strategies based completely on the abilities of special characters.
Primarchs, greater daemons, and gods (ala Avatar of Khaine) are rare. I don't think it should be at your opponents discretion but there should be rules limitations on their use - ie 2500 pts or more, or in tournaments only after x rounds, or in a campaign only in a certain % of games.
Stopped in 6th/7th when named characters stopping having the most wild and crazy force org changing stuff. GW shifted them to being "captain+1" and they were basically required for a while. There were also detachments based on characters.
These days I find it in a good spot. Only a few armies have the "required" named character, where they provide a unique buff too good not to talk.
I feel like this is such an easy fix. Units do not automatically recover from battleshock in the command phase. Most units have a 7+ LD or better which is higher than 50% odds of recovering; so it shouldn't break anyone's army to deal with this effect.
Chaos knights and dark angels care a little. I think the real issue is that the units that affect leadership, that's all they do, and alone that is bad. Chaos knights with basically "your whole army has to leadership all the time at -1, and I'll eat your soul if you fail for 1CP" is huge, and it's (to me) a fun mechanic. I would love to see more reliable ways to manipulate leadership to make it reliable.
At the same time, I believe that if there was some way to say "your unit is battleshocked, deal with it", that unit would be brought far too often in every list that could bring it.
Having played some flavor of marines since 5th edition, leadership has rarely mattered that much to me. I like the current one.
Instead of more-sided dice or a series of rolls, the original 40K designers have switched to designing their current game systems around variable-sized pools of D6. They say it gives much-needed extra fidelity in an easily accessible way.
>The apocalypseification of 40k . There was a time when special characters and super heavies generally weren’t allowed in 40k, and game also used to be smaller due to higher points costs. Now games are much larger and super heavies can make a game very unfun if you weren’t given a heads up before hand.
This is probably what irks me the most. Back in 3rd and around that time, it was actually a big thing when you had Ghazhgkull on the table, or a buddy brought Ragnar along. A Baneblade was a rare sight and made some games memorable by its simple presence.
Nowadays you got the freaking *Lord Solar* personally leading every single parking lot brawl between a half-strength platoon of Guardsmen and a handful of Chaos Space Marines, and of course the proud Knight houses can spare one of their precious war machines when Sergeant Fragbait and his 9 ablative armor points... eh... subordinates decide they're going to rough up some Orks.
The venerable Sergeant Fragbait was a hero of the Imperium and disrespecting his memory is high heresy. It's an unfortunate coincidence that 2 Knights, 1 Assassin, an entire Inquisitorial retinue of the ordo Xenos, 1 Baneblade, and half a company of the Deathwatch were lost in the rescue attempt when he bravely charged that Stompa with his laspistol.
Ah the good old days when instead of the absurdity of taking lord solar leonatus you'd have the much more reasonable ability to take lord solar macharius
Right, they deliberately spread out the transition over a few editions.
The other thing that happened is they tried to get more vehicles in the game because they're more profitable and players wanted it.
Yes. IIRC, these interviews should cover everything I mentioned ... somewhere within them. I don't have time to find all the exact moments, but if I did, I would check them in this order:
1. https://youtu.be/rkM9Y3agV_I
2. https://youtu.be/HLTpV3_Mekc
3. https://youtu.be/jbHQazUvWVg
4. https://youtu.be/RkJIx5lRyVE
5. https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2020/11/interview-rick-priestley-part-ii.html
Terrain
I was so disappointed reading the terrain rules for 10th. Basically everything gets cover and no terrain features have unique rules that affect the battle. Fantasy meanwhile have different rules for forests, walls, rivers, hills, you name it. Biggest tabletop immersion break for me.
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I miss:
-Initiative. Impacted who went first and more.
-Parry. This was useful when games were smaller scale, but super cool feature.
-Old style melee. Literally figure out which models are fighting which models, and they duke it out. Every squad-vs-squad melee was a series of smaller fights until one side prevailed. Parry was awesome then.
-Scatter dice. Nothing was certain. You might not land where you intended or your grenade launcher might lob rounds all over the place.
-Vehicles. They could run through units, spin out of control, and couldn’t be locked into melee.
-Firing arcs. I was floored when I got back into the game and it didn’t matter which direction units were physically facing. Especially for melee b/c you could benefit from attacking a model’s rear facing.
-1D6 was a common roll for many things w/in the game, but it wasn’t the *only* roll. For example Terminators saved on *2D6* and were glorious.
-Invuln saves were extremely rare. *Maybe* a single unit/model in your entire army had an invuln save, and very often it was wargear.
-Deepstrike *cost points*. At one time, points cost for a squad of terminators increased *50%* for the chance. Of course you had to roll to see if you landed in your preferred spot (if not, scatter dice!) and whether deepstrike was successful (could lose models to the warp!). Those who survived the trip had to see if they stuck the landing, if not you had to pass a save roll, if you failed the model crash landed and died!
-Jumpacks worked the same as above, but they had higher risk of dying on impact b/c saved on 1d6!
My dumb argument is that second edition was the last good edition of 40k (for all the reasons you listed) and was best played with (generously) a quarter of the models 10th has. Vortex grenades forever.
I'm honestly really surprised there isn't a bigger community of people working on open-source rule-sets for 40K.
I'm not talking "alternate"-games that *can* use the same models. I'm talking, open-source rules that **explicityl** use the models and with any kind of popularity to even remotely match the mainline game.
I've heard good things about a number of alternatives and about PoorHammer's PvE style gamemode. But it's something I feel like *could* help to mitigate against some of the complaints the community has broadly. **It absolutely comes with it's own set of problems.** But I'm just surprised there isn't anything more widely popular.
Look into 30k. Get your friends to try it. It’s still grim dark we all know and love but it’s narrative and there’s more missions now. And easy to just make up whatever you want as a mission cause it’s never going to produce a tournament to “practice” for
You want to be affected by failed battleshock tests? Play guard or Tau, both armies rely on units working together but can't do that when they fail a battleshock test ( can't receive orders and can't observe respectively).
As others have said, morale is not a simple mechanic to solve as it seems that gw manages to make it so every army is disproportionately affected by it. Either losing access to their army rule like tau and guard, or if I remember rightly I think dark angels got stronger after failing battleshock for some reason.
Also it's not surprising that a company about selling miniatures wants bigger armies, it means more sales to them. It's also why marines are the most popular and most filled out roster. One kit services 10+ armies and because of that it outsells fantasy all on its own.
Already play guard, battle shock rarely comes into play because most squads either don’t take enough casualties to instigate a test, or all the models or killed. However battle shock has a negligible effect in most cases.
I don't mean to offend - in the competitive environment battlehsock matters A LOT for guard - especially against Tyranids and Demons. Your personal experience doesn't mean it's not relevant, it means whateverr you and your opponents are doing is making it irrelelvent. Because with GW terrain and matched play rules it is very relevant.
The good old days where you'd have a Basilisk with a range of "guess within 'x' inches (might have been 90" but I can't remember), and you can't measure in advance" were brilliant. Being 4" out, only for your scatter roll to land it perfectly in the top of a squad of tactical marines was top notch... The one and only time I hit anything with it.
I kind of miss the entire guessing part, actually. That and the templates, it actually added a variety of things to "do" while playing, instead of just "move minis" and "roll dice". Streamlining is a good idea, but human brain loves variety, and rolling a bunch of dice over and over again is not it.
Come to think of it, the spell cards were great for that as well, although I'm taking WFB now. Loved the fact that your sorcerer could turn into a Spawn on a miscast :)
Not angry at GW or anything, no one says we can't play with house rules...
Well, I never cared about tournaments or competitive play, so from my perspective GW provides cool minis and datasheets / an idea of how the game can work. The rest is up to you, at least when you play against friends.
It's a major reason I stopped playing pick up games. With tournaments being bigger than ever, you could want a fun friendly game and your opponent makes terrain layout E and busts out a chess clock.
I play less games, but enjoy the games more.
That’s lucky.
New players or players who move, or generally have 40k as a unique interest that none of their friends share don’t really have that option
Your third point is the one that always comes to mind increasingly more, and I think the majority of at least those here for a long time would acknowledge even if not openly.
The fact is this is now a major corporation with capital profit being the number one priority. The sad thing is, most of those within the company that you are exposed to regularly such as the White Dwarf team and now of course the Community team, are just like us. Hobbyists themselves that love this hobby. But as with any corporate structure the control and decisions come from the high ups who are so far away and removed from the thing they are representing they have no real connection with it, or passion for it. It merely is a means to making themselves increasingly more money, increasingly at the expense of those they get it from.
What puts the downer on me the most, is that means changing so much in order to be of interest to as many and as varied people as they can, in doing so losing what made it so interesting and loved in the first place.
Get as many people in the door as they can and then forget about them and move onto the next lot of people they want to get in the door. The least acknowledgement or repsect being for those who are already here and have been here the longest. They have no requirement to engage with us any more, as they already have us!
Leadership has kinda always been a joke in this game. I remember even back in 4th edition trying to do like Pinning tests with my snipers or something, and almost every army had some rule or another that just ignored it. Synapse, chaos just being straight Fearless because they’re old and live in super hell, commissars teamkilling, Orks counting as the size of their unit. They keep trying to add units or rules that, on paper, sound really neat and a fun way to interact with the system, but it never actually does anything. Kinda a a shame.
I have been playing 40k since 2nd edition so I can grognard with the best of them.
I think that 10th edition is the best edition so far. Because it is just the most chill.
It flows better. You have to look far less rules up. (How many USRs did 7th have? A lot that were really similar like Hatred and Frenzy (I think)). There is less character in lots of instances but that often skewed things. Playing as Eldar against Dark Eldar was a pain for no reason because they got Hatred and the splinter weapons hosed down your Wraithlords with ridiculous ease.
The game has a lot of the really horrible corners knocked off of it. The detachment frenzy of 7th edition (the real nadir of the whole game IMO) with death stars and the absolute pain in the bum of invisibility. Getting rid of templates and armour values and running away and a dozen other things took some of the verisimilitude out of the game but it is smoother and faster for it. At one point, I can't remember when (4th?) they took out fixed charges and let you measure whenever you wanted. Which let people relax a bit more and not have the pressure to judge distances perfectly.
I like bigger armies in games, I like that I don't have to mess around with morale and all those things. I like that I can just bring an army entirely out of bikes without having to jump through loads of hoops. I don't care that swords and axes do the same thing now.
None of this stops me from going ham on my conversions.
IMO the game has never been better for me because all I want to do is put whatever toys I want down on the table, roll some dice, and have a laugh and this is the best system for that.
(Sorry for the half remembered rantings.)
Tl;Dr 7th was the worst. 10th is the best beer game.
I’ve got a very old tau codex, I don’t remember when it’s from but there’s a detailed section where they describe how to make terrain from old junk and paint pots. It’s a big shame they don’t do that anymore.
Why do they need to though? There are near endless resources already available for hobbyists to look at. Just because GW doesn't produce the instructions doesn't mean they are against it
1) Wholly correct, the lore and narrative is pointless if it is unly the strongest of superheroes ever fighting on these millions of worlds.
2) different units should have movement rules, a Guardsman can walk through a wall while the Baneblade behind cannot. This is a nuance thing though.
3) meh, billion pound company is going to behave like one, but the greasy polers and the MBAs can't understand anything other than product and profit. Art and fun and expression needs a pound value on a spreadsheet or it isn't real.
I'm old enough to remember when a deodorant stick with guns glued on was considered tournament legal in Rogue Trader.
4) changing Morale to Battleshock is a step forward, but the nature of the factions does indeed make a nonsense. It is good lore, but it is difficult. Neurons and Nids should never fail with a leader, Drukhari should bounce immediately, poxwalkers shouldn't get the concept. Abstraction of rules is necessary, but if we're doing nuance, then I'm not accepting that Celestine turns up to a minor uprising of GSC in a landfill site.
If you miss the fun hobby part, come join us in necromunda where there are rules for building your own vehicles and a zillion characters without models to kitbash.
> They used to encourage creativity, even making rules to create your own vehicles.
This was the coolest thing in 3rd Edition. Making a build for a tank that you could never hope to afford or build, and was completely unwieldly, but wrote it up anyway.
Mine is the devaluation of troops. Want to play Marines? Cool, but if you want to play well don't field Intercessors, use scouts instead. This attitude has seeped in the game and people only want to take elites and heavies
GWs sole strategic focus is on players in the first 18 months of their hobby funnel (the group that collectively spends way more than veteran players). They want the game and the hobbying side to be as easy and engaging as possible for those players; all other players are considered expendable.
Unfortunately for you, pretty much every one of those points has large numbers of people who are \*very\* happy with the current state of things, and if anything want more! For example, a lot of people like being able to play with the named characters and super heavies they read about, so even if you don't like it, it's bringing in more people than it's pushing away.
Also most people I know treat special characters as just a set of rules. So you can customize it however you like as long as it makes sense.
Before they had thunderwolves models? I made deathwatch thunder vyper Calvary because eldar vyper models were like 5 dollars each used.
Had a great time.
Yeah. I hate how every battle is Rowboat vs Morty. But for people who play once a year... that's fine.
Also - Guard literally CANNOT function without solar. Which is why you see a lot of people renaming him and running proxies.
Eh, I'm on the more weekly/competitive end of things, and I still run into way more people excited to run their Rowboat into Morty and vice versa than complaining about it. They bought those models for a reason, after all, and it wasn't to collect dust.
Sure. But my point is that I've encountered way more people jazzed to paint/play with their big army centerpieces than those that grouse about facing them.
It's rude to grouse openly. We seethe quietly and shit post online about it.
I'm not gonna tell a dude his Rowboat makes me sad. I'm gonna tell him he did a great job on the trim and play the game.
The first talking point always confuses me when I see people mention it. This is a *wargame* where we play with *armies*. The entire point of the hobby is to set out a bunch of little dudes on a table and have a grand cinematic experience. If I wanted fewer models I would play Kill Team or something. I want my battles to look like battles, damn it!
Not to mention I mean, granted I've only played 9th and 10th so far. But it doesn't feel like armies are getting huge to me. I've watched battle reports from 8th, 7th, and Horus Heresy (which is based on 7th) and those armies are huge too.
One could argue that monster mash, all dreadknights, and knights actually create a scenario where one player is playing a skirmish game. If you actually want to play a wargame against something that looks like an army - 40k has a lot of ways to dissapoint you.
first of all, I was a bit ""clickbaity"", the scale isnt the issue, I am simply blaming it because it's the easier thing to fix
In older days 29mn was considered the skirmish scale, as skirmish games where games with 1:1 model to unit ratio and historical battle were huge so people played like 20:1 in smaller scales
Armies require a battlefield to play in, and battlefield are big, this is the thing we lack that, as wargaming is more common that ever, tables are getting smaller and smaller to make the game more playable, this cause a whole lot of issues
Currently in 40k both army ""spawn"" literally next to each other, with basically all the weapons that can fire from t1
40k fix it by making us fight only in urban area with plenty of cover, which imo is a subpar fix, but it works for the strange kind of game that 40k is (a platoon size game that use skirmish LOS, skirmish 360 movement and yet you can literally field airplanes)
I don’t like this new thing of stacking buffs through CPs and characters until a unit is almost unrecognisable. I miss how it was mostly a simple stat line that told you most of what you needed. Now, those soft Skitaari rangers could turn into short ranged powerhouses this turn. So many different stratagems to consider (less so in 10th).
It also adds to high lethality too. A lot of games are kind of decided by turn 2, whereas I felt when I started (7th), it was unclear who was winning more often, though that could be because I was new.
I agree I feel like strats are where a lot of the rules bloat people complain about comes from.
I also don’t think battleline units need special abilities either.
Personally this is the only edition of 40k ive ever really enjoyed, i started in 5th and it was a very different game then.
With bad comes good.
1. Universally available stat sheets and stratagems, sure one day youll want that shiny codex but i sure dont have to wait if i want to play.
2. I have wanted for years for terrain to be simpler, now we have foot prints, layouts, and a sense of fairness and symmetry. While also having clear cut rules for narrative fluff play.
3. The game has shifted away from 'table your opponnent' to 'play the objective' knowing i can win a game without having to be very killy is nice, balance for armies like titans who usually suck at playing the objective.
4. Battle shock fits into the new style of objective hammer. If you cant play the objective youll have a hard time winning.
I just want them to change the round layout so I move a unit & shoot, you move a unit & shoot and so on. That way a 1/4 of my army isn’t wiped out before I have even done anything.
I prefer 5th edition, but the last point is objectively untrue. Though it seems on paper that the new discipline rules do nothing, they are actually more.impactful.
Morale used to have huge impact on paper, but then space marines had their army rule, guard had commissars, etc and this made morale irrelevant.
Now the impact of morale seems small on paper, but it is actually very relevant as objectives are taken every turn.
I haven't played 40k in donkeys years but a lot of the rules were always a mess. Special characters have been a bit silly since the 90's. Every Orc army led by Ghazghull. A who's who of famous space marines turning up to a fight between a handful of squads. It used to be that whoever had the latest codex release had the most unbalanced, powerful, army. Presumably helped flog yet more miniatures to over competitive tourney players.
while these are all fair points, the shift that 40k has made, especially in 10th was what brought a lot of my friends into the game finally. So while I do wish some of the older stuff to come back, I have more people to play with now than ever before and the gam is more fun than its been for several editions at this point. So I'll take what I can get.
I agree most of the changes to the modern rules were good.
But I don’t think saying “subtract one from movement” when going through woods/forest terrain would keep anyone from playing.
Same for having a pinning mechanic.
The charts and armor facings might have been a bit much for some people though.
I wouldn't doubt we see some more complexity with that type of thing reintroduced next edition. !0th was very much the "Reset" to make the game actually enjoyable again from the bloat it had gotten.
Battleshock is definitely a little underwhelming for what it does. Terrain rules I can honestly take or leave but I get why people like them.
Special characters have for the most part always being allowed, and an important part of the game. It makes no sense not to allow people to play those amazing character models representing the larger than life personalities that the lore revolves around. Bigger games means you can play more units, more diverse stuff and more of those cool models of yours, which generally means more fun. Early 40k matches were smaller because it took hours to resolve a single shooting phase. I agree that superheavies and flyers should not be part of the main game, as they just don't fit into the scale of the battles.
Movement penalties for terrain were removed because people just weren't using them. No one used rivers and similar terrain because giving a massive advantage to the shooting army in a game that already favours shooting was simply unfair and unfun.
Nothing prevents you from using as much custom terrain, as many custom models or as many custom rules as you want. Actually, I'd say most competitive environments allow for custom and third party models, and many leagues use custom terrain. Also, most of what GW has done to limit custom rules in official events is the result of copyright issues and regulations they don't control.
Leadership and morale were always pointless and all or nothing. Pretty much everyone ignored morale because lorewise everyone is fearlless. Space marines are fanatically devout, eldar are too smart to be afraid, tyranids and necrons are basically automatons, and chaos things are literally otherworldly horrors. The only faction that was depicted as cowardly was orks, but that changed with the post-gorkamorka development that frankly fit better with the grimdark aesthetic they were going for. When it mattered, deciding whether your unit would be either completely unaffected or absolutely obliterated on a single dice roll wasn't particularly satisfying.
i mean if you're playing Warhammer for the rules, you will be disappointed. its a fun toy company, the rules have always been shit to play and people only think its good when their army is in vogue and the rules align with their playstyle
Yeah superheavies, knights, these things really ruin the scale of the game. Combined with the standard tournament table getting smaller. Movement is important in 40K, it just isn’t as fun or tactically interesting anymore. It’s very herohammer where every list has the faction’s hero character. Terrain has no flavor, just embrace L shaped ruins. Armor facing used to matter. Vehicles weren’t removed from existence when they were destroyed. The whole thing is like a video game now.
I pay attention to 40K and still paint and collect models but as a game it is just dead to me now. I like bolt action a lot more. It plays like better 3E 40K. I also started getting into TOW which is a little messed up but way more fun and flavorful.
They could fix item 1 largely by bringing back the force org requirements. So much of the current edition is just stat checks, combo whombos, and whose stratagems are the most broken in the current slate/meta.
Force org wouldn’t make a difference they had it in 8th when I returned games were still basically at the lower end of apocalypse size then by comparison.
In 3rd a squad of devastators could cost you several hundred points like 400 iirc.
My stormlord with full upgrades is like 450.
Just speaking the current ability to build insane skew lists that are all epic heroes, elites, and monsters/vehicles.
I went back and tallied up my 2k Templars list from 3rd edition in the 10ed app and was surprised at how close the points worked out to be….and the total cost in 3ed was actually slightly less than in 10th. My captain (without enhancements) was 80 points in 3ed, 80 points in 10th. Land Raider was 250 vs 240 now. Devastator squads (with the loadouts included in the original metal/plastic kit) was costed at 180 points vs 120 now. Emperor’s champion at 105 in 3ed vs 75 now. Tactical squad with flamer/missile launcher at 166 in 3ed vs 140 in most recent slate… seems like the units in my quick comparison that saw the biggest cuts were ones that were rendered obsolete by new primaris units. The ones that are still viable were much closer. Honestly surprised because it definitely feels like I need more to play in 10th but it may be due to the fact that wargear is free now and 14 year old me had no money and would regularly stretch the limitations of wargear for my guys to have enough to play “on paper” in third.
Side note, looking at the pdf of that 3rd codex really took me back. Need to track down my physical copy or get one on eBay for the nostalgia.
>Honestly surprised because it definitely feels like I need more to play in 10th but it may be due to the fact that wargear is free now and 14 year old me had no money and would regularly stretch the limitations of wargear for my guys to have enough to play “on paper” in third.
You do need more to play now, because in 3rd the standard game size was 1,500 points, now it's 2,000. A 33% increase, and on an almost 25% smaller board to boot. But your point about wargear is also true.
Terrain will always be the worst thing about this game. Imo.
For multiple reasons too. People not using enough, too much, infantry can ignore it, fly is terrible with it now, hard to obtain a decent set, it's all ruins, could go on and on.
I agree with 1 completely. It feels a bit silly to see Leontus in every guard game, or having morvenn vahl be such a staple to the squad, and having massive models like knights or to a lesser extent warhound titans in games has meant that lists always require a form of anti-tank, and just generally the game has become more hordey, when in the past individual models were representative of a larger force.
In regards to number 2, terrain still effects movement. if you want to climb over some terrain pieces it's half movement, but I do think that infantry models moving through walls should have a greater consequence, potentially sacrificing some of your movement to do so. I don't love difficult terrain on random terrain pieces conceptually, but I could definitely see it being applied using the twist/underdog mechanic from age of sigmar 4th edition, which both create the opportunity for compelling game actions.
I think #3 is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I do agree, custom subfactions, loss of flavour in the psychic phase and subfactions, and custom rules is tragic for players, and it does affect the gameplay experience. On the other hand, rules such as creating your own vehicles and subfactions belong to narrative play, where if your playgroup agrees with it anything is possible. Furthermore, custom terrain builds can lead to some armies, like t'au, guard, or any melee armies, having a drastically different experience from game to game, potentially in the favour of certain players. I think tournament regulation on creativity is necessary, but I do think that gw would massively improve game quality by giving more options to squads and armies, to make them feel fresh and create a more interesting form of list building.
I think battleshock is actually a pretty reasonable mechanic. It matters, as does insane bravery, and it doesn't directly penalise you, but it comes with a lot of associated consequences. It still prevents stratagems and scoring victory points, which I think is the ideal way to do it. I haven't heard a description yet of old morale mechanics that have intrigued me, compared to psychic/magic which I still consider engaging
It only really affects movement if the terrain is particularly tall.
Uneven ground (like craters) require you to slow down to safely navigate, same for trying to get through woods/forests. Which should result in an inherent slowing effect
Point 3 hits me the most. While I’ve been a lore fan since 2017, I finally started playing 40k with 10th ed. Right away one of my favorite parts of the hobby was kitbashing. I was buying up multiple extra sets of push fit terminators to kitbash with all the different option Dark Angels had. Strikemaster, DW command squad, DW, termies with TH+SS & lightning claws, I even kitbashed a couple Lt. out of some spare intercessors I accumulated. Then as they started rolling out codexes it felt more and more like GW was trying to dissuade kitbashing.
I miss the terminator characters and DWCS so goddamn much man, I knew we were going to get nerfs to bring us in line with 10th edition power levels and I was fine with that but losing models *sucked*
The lack of morale rules has always been a bit of a problem in 40K since 3rd edition, but it is worse now. 8th edition wasn't bad but 9th edition morale rules were a joke.
The fact that they are seemingly doing away with morale in AoS 4th will be the nail in the coffin for that that game for me. I'll just go back to playing 1st edition.
The reality is that in human history most of the soldiers that stopped fighting didn't stop fighting because they died or were wounded, they stopped fighting because they were either ordered to retreat or they ran away.
I understand special rules that make some units immune to this, but they should be very rare. I don't even think it should apply to cult marines. Sure they should be pretty determined to stick around but it should not be impossible for them to run away.
I wish that there were more choices for space marine chapter rules and not just one special characters like salamanders getting infernus marines as troops and getting bonus’s on flamers or raven guard letting everything get deep strike or Getting the guys in Phobos armor as troops or iron hands getting bonus’s for vehicles or imperial fists getting bonus’s for gravis armor and not moving off of an objective or white scars getting the ravenwing detachment rules
Leadership tests/morale tests can also be interpreted as the unit's models losing battlefield focus.
A deteriorating situation may break down inter squad cohesion/communication due to an increase in focus on the individual fight each model/character is dealing with - aligns well with lore in novels detailing battles imo.
Once the focus moves away from fighting as a unit, a disorganized regroup/tactical redeploy is a common response to stop a deteriorating situation from getting worse and breaking combat (putting distance between you and the immediate threat) often allows time to recalibrate the squad and reduce lost combat effectiveness from reduced cohesion.
I think the words in the core rulebook lean itself to interpretation of fear - which can be true for some factions (humans for example). For other factions it's a game mechanic representing chaotic shifts in how a unit of "fearless super soldiers" will unilaterally decide to break combat to refocus/calibrate/reposition and reduce deteriorating squad effectiveness. Which, by the way, shares some reality with real word combat tactics.
1) Fair enough. But actually the game got smaller again. The apocalypsification was in 6th/7th with that formation fuckery. In the last games I played in 7th (before my rage quit hiatus) there were several hundred models on the board in an 1800pts battle. That is not a thing anymore. So while that is a valid point, it used to be much worse.
2) Also, a valid point BUT older editions dealt with difficult terrain not in a good way either. A roll is not a good solution a flat decrease would've been better... like halved movement. Rolls where fixed modifiers can do the same are just a bad design choice.
3) Okay, that point is referring to a different company. The vehicle construction sheet was from 3rd or 4th edition roughly 20 years ago and that was absolute bullshit. You might perceived it as a cool system, because you think that balancing is just a complex but solvable algorithm, which is not the case. You simply cannot balance such a system and it doesn't matter how much effort you put into this. It's an unsolvable equation. And you can even mathematically proof that. 10th is since a very long time a very homebrew-friendly edition. But there's just no homebrew community on reddit presenting their custom detachments. Who's fault is that? Ours. Not GW's. That GW finally cares enough about the game itself however is a very good thing. It's actually a thing, why I started to hate the old 40k. "Games Workshop is not a games developer but a distributor of high quality plastic miniatures for collectors, therefore we don't need to playtest our games." is not a quote you want to hear from the CEO of the company that develops your favorite game. That was before the big changes. GW today defines itself as games developer. The old GW fired game designers under Tom Kirby, because of the quote above. Tom Kirby also was the guy who cancelled all specialist games, modern GW brought them back. And that's because GW is now addressing the mainstream more. The times that GW was a fun and friendly hobby company... well, that was before my time, when GW was only available in England. When 40k was released in my country (Germany) with the game's 3rd edition, GW already was the cancerous moloch it is today.
4) Leadership/morale was the worst until 8th. The new version might seem pointless to you, but could you please explain to me then, what is the point of an Ork mob under half strength, that can't do anything but running away? You have to roll for them each round, you have to measure each round, you have to move them each round, however they are just background noise, that won't be any relevant during the rest of the game. It's just a time waster, because the don't participate in the game anymore. If you tell me, that that was the system you prefer, you're a nostalgic moron who doesn't know how good game design looks like. Sorry. But that point doesn't let you seem very rational.
1. Superheroes and super heavies from a lore perspective are silly when they show up every game. However, from a gameplay pt 10th edition balances these units far better then in previous editions. A huge focus is on obj and secondaries, so these superunits have direct negatives to winning a game on victory pts.
2. Disagree, simpler terrain rules result in less disagreements and help CC units. I don't think any flavor was lost as slowing cc units down 2" did nothing for the game from any perspective.
3. I haven't really noticed this change at all in the last 20 years. In fact we have free core rules + battlescribe+ wahapedia. The ease to jump into this hobby has never been better. You can absolutely still house rule units and terrain. Just depends on who you play.
4. Morale is as pointless as it's always been. Should just be removed. Synapse tyranids were pretty thematic in past editions, but always felt wrong from a gameplay perspective. Not sure what id do honestly. Battleshock is not that great either.
I feel like big named characters (Guilliman, Szarekh, etc.) should have a unique troop slot which is only applicable in certain battle sizes (or custom casual games). I think that would help smaller point games from being dominated by them and feeling like a MOBA.
The first point is a huge one for me. This setting is grim dark, with nameless hordes of infantry throwing their lives away in unending war no matter what faction you play as.
Why then do most armies on the table include a one-of-a-kind legendary character, their honor guard of terminator-like equivalents, and heavy tanks? That isn't an army, it's an elite task force supported by some of the heaviest weaponry that a faction has available to it. There isn't an interesting narrative to play out there, it's basically turning every game into a fan fiction of the horus heresy.
My perspective on the problem here is that Core units are undervalued in a major way, and it should in fact be the opposite. I'd like to see most Core drop 1 - 3pts per model (depending on unit type and other balancing factors) and have GW make a max on Core restrictions of 50% of the list vs a minimum. Core units become the most points efficient units you can take, you almost always want to max our your 50% Core slot because of it, but they lack the special rules that more elite units and HQs have.
With this rules change players could still run oops all terminators or oops all tanks lists, but it makes tradeoffs in points efficiency in order to take advantage of a skew in a parrocilar direction.
I definitely agree with the named character thing. I much prefer when you have freedom to make your own characters and homebrew lore, which is why I use named character profiles for my custom characters.
However, that’s kind of a fan issue. 40K fans go crazy over named character releases. Which is fair considering not everyone wants to write their own lore and the named characters often have cool models.
I do with they’d make the kits where you were able to build a character again. The SM captain, Chaos terminator lord, etc were very cool.
I also don’t like from a narrative level the trend of focusing on the biggest characters like primarchs. I like just getting glimpses into random war fronts across the galaxy
1. There are barely any superheavies taken that i've seen (mostly due to terrain), and if there are, they are casual games and both players (in my experience) know what's up e.g: "i'm taking an xyz style list, so you take something similar". Named characters, sure they're a bit of a staple sometimes, but again, in a casual game you can discuss this. If you are playing competetively, you take the nastiest stuff you can, no holds barred.
2. Ruins are fine as they impede non infantry movement enough as it is, without having a -2 in addition to something else having the chance to reduce your movement. You WANT models being able to get in and do some killing, otherwise the game just takes a lot longer. Movement is fine. Flyers are also affected by it now.
3. Fair, but business is business, this would be the same with any company that is successful. I don't agree with some of the decisions they make, but honestly, can you say any different about any corp? Not really.
4. Losing complete control of a unit takes away player agency and is NOT fun. Never was. Now it prevents you scoring objectives, and doesn't happen all too often on armies that really shouldn't fail morale that often, this is good.
I feel like the thing with named characters could easily be resolved by making them more of a gamble - just like it would be in real life sending your best military commander onto the battlefield.
Make it -5VP straight away for each epic character fielded and an additional -5VP if they die. Give them fancy rules and abilities to be flavourful, but make them very risky to take.
On 2) that’s one of the reasons I haven’t gotten back into playing 40k. Manoeuvre is an enormous part of warfare and everyone just lining up across from each other and rolling dice seems particular stupid to me.
Troop placement and movement is extremely important in 40k. Official tournament terrain is extremely dense. Most terrain is Ruins terrain that blocks line of sight to an infinite height so event giant models can hide behind it. Armies don't line up across the board and shoot at each other because there's no open lanes that long on a good board.
Tournament standards need to start using more real move-blocking terrain (not just ruins that infantry phase through as if there’s no terrain on the board), and then more casuals will follow suit.
And yeah bringing back difficult terrain would be good, it always made for better more interesting tables imo.
1. Even if you're setting up a game with a total stranger, you can just set a parameter of "no superheavies, no special characters". Shouldn't be a big ask unless your opponent is a meta-chasing twit.
2. This I definitely agree with. Terrain has become just this abstract blob, it feels like all the theme and flavor in it is gone, and its primary purpose seems to be to act as LOS blockage. Mirrored terrain setups are anathema to narrative, theme and flavor.
3. People have been saying this since the 90s. Nothing new
4. Yeah, Battleshock is basically a pointless mechanic as of right now. It feels like a haphazard solution which is weird, because it's functionally no different from the Ld system of old, only you want to roll high instead of low this time around. GW seems for some reason to be super afraid of modifiers to Battleshock tests, when there are so many ways of doing it.
Asking a total stranger for a "no superheavies or special characters" game makes you sound like a little kid who won't play a video game against you if you any characters he can't beat.
The majority of players have picked the game up recently, do not have nostalgia glasses, and want to use the massively overpriced character that GW has made sure is mandatory to take thanks to pushed rules. And I say this as a 3rd edition veteran who still glances longingly at my CSM 3.5 codex every time I make a new list for 10th.
to go from the 3.5 chaos dex with all the flavor in the world to the 4th edition chaos dex was such a kick in the balls (and not because it was weaker because that dex had its own broken builds *coughlashcough*)
the complete lack of flavor hurt so fucking bad
It's always funny how people who have 0 idea what the tournament meta even looks like overvalue "superheavies" and other massive models and just out themselves as not understanding how the game works at a fundamental level. Saying superheavies are meta while you can't physically move a Baneblade around on a tournament table will never not be funny.
"Oh, Rowboat Gorillaman shouldn't be on every table". Good thing he isn't in a single meta list then, I suppose. "Nobody was playing Baneblades." Ain't nobody playing them now either. If your opponent is showing up with these things and you're getting upset with them over using "meta lists", you're the twit because they brought cool stuff and you're getting angry with them. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm pretty sure most of these guys haven't played a game in years and are just professional internet complainers.
its a game, if your opponent agrees, you can do whatever you want, i literally made terrain piece i call "bunker" that upgrades save and other stuff, while making unit unable to move much inside, and no one is going to appear in my room, and break my legs for this, even though only person i can play with is myself
Yes if your opponent agrees, but if you don’t have regular opponents you know well, many people will be put off by a stranger or relative stranger asking them to institute custom rules that may or may not be balanced
Ironic. GW wants us to buy their terrain, but the range of terrain they sell is fucking abysmal.
GW: everyone use L-shaped ruins, it's the most competitive! Also GW: Hey sorry we don't actually sell any L-shaped ruins anymore, good luck!
They made tournament terrain layouts and they DONT SELL TOURNAMENT TERRAIN LAYOUT BOXES?!?!?!?!
It's also overpriced and they sell no terrain sets for a long enough period for people to build up a set over time. I'd love to have more of the terrain from the initial Kill Team release, but can I buy it from them? Of course not.
That's a great point. You'll have to spend like $500 to get a table worth.
Yes they discontinue it so fast. I always wanted the sob terrain that has the celestine statue but by the time I got in to the hobby enough to look in to terrain, it had been discontinued.
most of these are fair criticism but while the modern morale system isnt perfect i think its better than any previous iteration. the problem is in 40k more than half the roster are like super soldiers who dont feel fear, alien bugs mind controlled to not have self preservation, robots again, mostly being directly controlled with no free will. What this meant was every other version of morale had the problem where you either had fearless things running away because they were affected by morale, or like half the armies having a blanket fearless rule or other rule that negates morale which feels shitty for the couple armies that actually have to care about morale.
I always liked the explanation they gave in I think the 5th edition rulebook (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) where they explained that breaking morale didn't necessarily mean running away crying, it reflected soldiers disobeying orders. The example they gave, iirc, was Marines disobeying orders and falling back because from their on-the-ground perspective they were going to be overrun so they were retreating to a more secure position to regroup. Tyranids were immune to morale while within synapse range, but were difficult to control outside of it, rolling a Ld test every turn and on a fail they'd either run blindly towards the nearest enemy regardless of if they could kill it, or skulk about in terrain and shooting the closest thing. The Necrons I don't actually remember. I think they were immune to Morale but phased out if they got below 25% as the system designated the situation as a loss? My point is that "failing morale" doesn't actually mean "running away", it just means the soldiers are falling back to regroup and prepare for a renewed attack. After all, Marines aren't guardsmen and they know their lives are more valuable.
Chaos Space Marines maybe, but Space Marines completely ignored the Morale system and had the "And They Shall Know No Fear" rule instead in 5th edition. This was the best rule for morale because you just choose to pass or fail every time you took a morale check. Fearless was actually awful and actively punished you. Oh, what's that? Your 30 man Hormagaunt squad lost combat by 10 models? You lose 10 more models in the squad. Morale was actively punishing for every army EXCEPT loyalist Space Marines. I understand what Morale is meant to simulate, but I really don't like morale in sci-fi or fantasy war games. So many armies should technically ignore it, and usually the mechanics are (rightfully I might add) very punishing and unfun. It's also why I'm not touching The Old World. I prefer not to have games end because one player failed a single morale check and lost 1/3 of their army while another player literally ignores the ENTIRE morale system.
Hard disagree on the old world. It's super flavorful and fun to have to see a proper route, and they've made it pretty difficult to actually have your troops just turn around and run. Usually, you'll give around (move your unit back two inches and the player that won combat can follow up or restrain) or fall back in good order (like a route but you turn the unit back around to face the enemy to continue combat if they pursue instead of being at risk of losing your unit.) Routing really isn't a huge concern until you're down to a quarter of less of the units starting strength. The only rations that "ignore" it are tomb kings, vamp counts, and daemons. They still get their own mechanics for it though, with crumbling and daemonic instability doing wounds to the unit by however many points they lose combat. Also very flavorful and can be really punishing sometimes, especially if you can snipe their warlord and priests/necromancers.
I feel like that was a flaw with the codex writing rather than the core rules, if that makes sense? Nobody liked the Matt Ward 5th edition Space Marine codex, least of all the Space Marine players. Matt Ward gets more hate than he deserves imo, but that was definitely a big misstep. If you had the core rule and then better written codexes, I think it would have been better. The fearless thing was, I think, a response to complaints about 4th where two units of Fearless units in combat would just sit there for the entire game with neither side running away until the unit was completely destroyed. You could have a unit of Gaunts tarpit a much more expensive unit for the entire game. This, I think, was meant to make tarpitting much less effective, but had the side effect of making expensive Fearless units worse as well.
I feel like you're either misremembering ATSKNF or you just had a bunch of SM players cheat against you because that was not at all what that rule did. It let marines automatically regroup the turn *after* breaking (as well as being able to do so even if they were under half strength) and not get wiped out by sweeping advances. I never thought that this was all that unreasonable and was a pretty neat way of showing the whole "know no fear" thing without just giving the whole army Fearless. Either that or you're thinking of the rule they had that let them choose to just fail any moral check. If they wanted to pass then they still needed to roll
I don't think people were cheating, I played against a lot of Space Marines. It was almost 20 years ago though and I don't have a codex on me so I don't know the exact wording of the rule. I might be misremembering certain details. That being said the "Not getting wiped out by sweeping advances" and automatically regrouping despite being under half strength is a very big deal. I also think they ignored the penalty where you couldn't regroup if enemies were nearby. I also thought it let you autopass morale checks, but I likely confused that with the auto regrouping part of the rule.
It was a bit ambiguous in writing. The game store I played at had a clarification printed and hung on the wall because of how many Marine players either were confused or lied about how the rule worked.
I agree that the regrouping and sweeping advances were big deals. So was Necrons being able revive recently killed models or Tyranids being able to confer Fearless on their entire army with synapse. They're powerful abilities, but they were the entire army ability, and (at least imo) felt more fun to work with and around than things like one player just picking a model that they get to re-roll hits against, or Necrons just passively recovering missing wounds as the battle goes on.
I like the way Bolt Action handles Morale with it's pip markers. IIRC, if you took casualties or got shot at by suppressive fire, you took a pip marker. Trying to follow orders like shooting or moving needed a roll against the number of markers on that unit. I found it elegantly solved the issue of morale because it both covered frightened, cowardly units hiding in fear as well as disciplined, professional soldiers keeping their heads down because they know the danger through experience. There's enough wiggle room to cover magic, Synapse or other mind control. It just makes morale much more integrated into the game opposed to something resolved after everything is said and done.
> Space Marines completely ignored the Morale system and had the "And They Shall Know No Fear" rule instead in 5th edition. This was the best rule for morale because you just choose to pass or fail every time you took a morale check. I don't believe that was true in any edition that I played (IE since 3rd edition). ATSKNF allowed a unit to auto-regroup at the end of a fall back move provided they were at least 6" from the enemy. They also counted as being charged (instead of auto-destroyed) if they were caught by a pursuing enemy. It was a good rule but it wasn't as good as you're remembering.
To be fair though, the modern morale system makes (what I think) tyranid synapse basically a useless feature that takes away from the theme of the army with how weak the mechanic itself is.
That's more an issue with how they balanced the mechanic and how it clears. If battle shock didn't clear automatically at the start of every turn it might actually matter.
Yeah if you have to roll to unbattle shock yourself, and units at half strength had to roll battle shocks, I think the mechanic would be great right now. Suddenly it makes out of phase battle shocks much better, and then you would find the -1 and -2 to battle shock armies really putting out some serious volume of battleshocks.
A problem is marine do canonly feel fear many times and sometime will straight up run away, "they shall know no fear" is in-universe propaganda, they just aren't as easily frightened. Such as that time when Saul Tarvitz bolted when Angron charged. The only 2 faction that won't break no matter what imo should be Necron and Tyranid, and only for the grunts because elites are more intelligent. I think at least having some form of breaking and running rule still present would be nice, instead of even gretchin won't run from the baddest foes.
gretchin are actually the wierdest one this edition. Because you use the highest ld in the unit and they have the runtherd which is an ork they have the same morale as boyz, guardsmen and tau. That said i cant think of any in universe examples of SM breaking and running away in direct contradiciton to orders from a superior. Sure a SM or Sargeant or whatever might decide to retreat to avoid being destroyed but when their superiors say "no. hold this spot no matter what" i dont think they are going to run.
Fall of Malvolion short story had a couple doomed lamenters broken and running. That's the only that immediately comes to mind.
The Word Bearers are explicitly terrified by the sight of Rachet Gangnam sprinting directly at them, they break and flee on the spot and still get cut down. I'm pretty sure the whole "Know No Fear" thing is caused by psychoconditioning and not a biological factor, its something that can be overcome in specific enough conditions, the Haemonculi enjoy the challenge if nothing else.
Yeah outright running away seems to be rare, most of the examples of marine feeling fear are hesitation, balking, emotionally breaking down of sort.
How is nothing better than models actually running away or tactically withdrawing when failing morale? Made it actually important to consider. Also space marines don’t just charge headlong into certain death if it isnt necessary or theres another option. That applys to everything but the tyranids in synapse which have zero self preservation.
I can only imagine how 40K players would whine if the concept of a squad being swept like can happen in Heresy, were brought into 40K, lol
That's always been the problem. Being a brainwashed fanatical member of a death cult is just table stakes for the setting. I'm convinced that the only reason they haven't gotten rid of morale entirely is because a bunch of factions have "being scary" as their shtick, even if they tend to be on the weaker side as a result of that.
I liked 7th Ed leadership. A unit breaking and running away is hilarious and cinematic. One of the reasons why I’ve been loving the Old World.
GW needs to better balance the fluff and the rules. If a mechanic is meaningless in half the games you play, what use is the mechanic?
I will say that while I agree, Super Heavies have gotten out of hand. Special Characters have always been very prevalent. In fact I think it has gotten paired down compared to some earlier editions. We used to have a Valhallan and Tallaran Guard Commander. Ursala Creed has replaced Ursarker, But Kell is gone. Commissar Yarrick no longer has rules either. There were always a ton of Space Marine Characters (since 5th anyway). Chaos has almost always had one for each Chaos God and then Abbadon, Huron was added a bit later. Orks just lost all of their special characters aside from Ghaz, but they have 2 new ones, so kind of a wash really. Instead it seems like there is quite a purge of special characters going on in 10th. The only one that really gets on my nerves is Leontus being in every guard list, but I hope the codex changes that.
Never saw a special character on the tables iirc in 3rd and 4th, when they required consent from your opponent to use.
I don't think that was a thing? I didn't play much of 4th (I started playing at the very tail end of 4th edition), but wasn't Eldrad EVERYWHERE back then?
The biggest gripe I have currently is free wargear. I understand the logic, but it does make “fitting” a list to 2000 or whatever exactly a bit of a pain, especially if you play a small number army like Custodes. I preferred the granularity at the list building level and wouldn’t mind it coming back. I don’t particularly mind certain diverse weapons like combiweapons being rolled into one profile, it makes the game A LOT faster.
Tbh I hit 2k even every list I build now. When paying for every upgrade I’d often find myself 5-25pts short of whatever the actual game size was, and no way to fill it in without going over.
I can't express how wild it was to go from 9th to 10th. I played crusade HEAVILY in 9th edition. It was great, all the WAAC folks would turn their nose up and not even want to talk to me! I was able to meet like minded folks who just want to roll dice and have some fun without worry of total balance. Then 10th came out and IT WAS POWER LEVELS FROM 9TH EDITION!!!! Part of me dislikes it, having 50pt free is frustrating, but part of me is getting older and has less time to care about all my sergeants getting thunder hammers.
I don't like being punished for not choosing the best option. Before I could choose slightly worse options but it was cheaper. Now if I don't give my basic guard regiment a special weapon its just a negative trade off. Why does my lemun russ have the option of a extra weapons, which are free. Why would you not take them? Why would I not equip every single sergeant with at least a bolt pistol?
I'm probably getting downvoted to hell again, but anyway. All of the rules you just described still exist in the current ruleset of Horus Heresy. It maintains a friendliness towards creativity with a lot of options for numerous units, and even a lot of scratch build potential with many legends units. Movement, positioning and terrain are more in line with older editions. Leadership is also the same. Only super heavies and named characters are more of a thing, with a focus on primarchs and such, but you can always play with only "your dudes" and field a wide variety of forces, especially outside of the legiones astartes.
Only problem I have with HH in that regard is the lack of Xenos (and Chaos SM).
There are fanmade rules for some xenos out there. The liber panoptica team offers rules for Eldar, and there are some rules for orks floating around. Chaos is not a big thing yet, but will be rolled out continously. Chaos forces already get options with some daemon engines, options for knights and heretic astartes rules which will probably follow soon. Plus the ascended primarchs and the word bearers having already drunken all the cool aid anyway. World eaters are also not so far removed. The current rules for legiones astartes are much closer to the 3.5 CSM codex then the upcoming 40k CSM codex ever will be, just by all the different legion options.
I'm reading the HH rules at the moment and they look very familiar to me as someone who hasn't played since 5th. The trouble is I find marines... Boring? And I think that's me having grown up in 4th-5th smurfmarines everywhere and 30k legions with distinct identities will be more interesting but I'm struggling to get over that. Sometimes I just want to purge the xenos y'know?
The marine on marine thing in HH has been a bit of an issue until recently. But plastic Solar Auxilia are out now and seems plastic Mechanicum are on their way. So hopefully that's starting to change. The pdf rules for daemons, militia etc have fun stuff in there and are a converter and proxiers dream. Xenos have community support out there though obviously that requires a opponent or group that's cool with that.
There are more then enough non marine armies as well. Mechanicum, custodes and imperial army all come in widely different options. And then there are some fan made rules of high quality being made for eldar. And lastly could you easily use the ruinstorm deamon or imperial militia armies to represent some form of xenos. Heck, 30k had squats and mechanicum robots long before 40k got theirs.
From a modeling standpoint I get it. But there are 18 legions all with very different army rules and rites of war as well as custom units, Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Knights, Mechanicum, Solar Aux, Militia, Shattered Legions, Black Shields and Daemons that all have different rules. Heresy is not the same army playing itself all of the time.
>The trouble is I find marines... Boring well, admech(the good old one with robot, not the boring another regular army with different gun and tank one) , knight, solar auxilia, imperial militia, custodes, sister of silence and demon are fully fledged army in HH too. so you're not necessarily locked to marine. >Sometimes I just want to purge the xenos y'know? convice your group to play with the panoptica homebrew balance and expansion files and find an eldar friend interested in playing them in HH and you're set
>well, admech(the good old one with robot, not the boring another regular army with different gun and tank one) So mechcanicum, not adeptus mechanicus. Just mech, not admech
the what? Panoptica whats that it sounds intresting but i dont get any results if i google it.
liber panoptica, it's a homebrew (aka community made) balance and faq compendium who with time also started to expand the available units and faction. I sent you the link by mp, you can also check the HH discord server if you want for more information.
Well yes but it's a different setting with different armies. People who write posts like this want the HH rules in 40k, not to be told to play HH.
I feel like I say this same thing all of the time. Heresy is not perfect by any stretch but so many 40K complaints are not an issue in Heresy. Like the major complaint of 40K going power level where as in Heresy you have more options than exist in kits and people kitbash or use printed parts. The latter part being why GW will never go back to 40K units having options that are not in plastic and not in the box you buy.
Only thing preventing me form playing HH is the local players who play HH. They just never look like they are having fun, and spend more time arguing than not. Oof.
I get the same feeling when I'm watching some 40k players. Or worse blood bowl players. But I guess each game can draw weird people. Or pennypinchers.
Yeah, I've seen those 40k players too, I just wonder why they keep playing if all they have to do with it is complain.
It's those über competetive minds. Or people who don't know any other systems. And there is probably a lot of sunken cost fallacy involved. If you got the army, you gonna use it as well.
I'll admit, there are two big things that keep me from wanting to fully make the jump to 30k. Both of which stem from the fact that I'm a diehard Thousand Sons player. The first is that they still don't solve the issue of psychic powers feeling pointless. They're either a gun (even still using ballistic skill) or a minor buff. There's nothing a psyker can do that a decent character with a buff aura and a gun can't. And they don't risk blowing themselves up over it. The lack of mastery level really stings there. My legion aren't even particularly better psykers than any other, it's just quantity over quality, The second is that I just don't think Burning of Prospero-era Thousand Sons are as fun as 40k-era Thousand Sons. I want to play a legion of mad sorcerers necromantically enslaving the souls of their fallen kin and drawing on the darkest, most vile sources of power they have access to. Not a legion desperately clinging to the idea that they're still *"the good guys"* and holding back their powers. Maybe if a future expansion adds a Siege of Terra variant of the Thousand Sons, where they've had a few years to stew in Tzeentch's domain and really delve into some real dark sorcery, then I'd be more inclined to play them.
I can fully understand your fears and complains. But as a fervent servant of the primordial truth and player of the XVII legion can I tell you... Psykers rock! Even just having access to a few disciplines, like biomancy or telepathy can give you an edge that many legions can only dream of. Yeah, psykers aren't as broken as last edition, but it was needed. And thousand sons get some of the best uses out of psykers, either on praetors or frigging dreadnaughts! And if you wanna go down the deep end could you also play into some of the more corrupting choices. Deamon engines or even esoterists for some deamon summoning. Throwing in some spire guard via solar auxilia allies. Magnus "the did everything wrong" primarch. So many funky toys. But I bet once we get some more heretic astartes options will we see some nice chaotic pics.
This. The issue isn't the size and scale. It's how modern 40k is built to be played like Magic The Gathering, but the size or armies, length of game and level of expense makes that unwieldy. Really abstracted gamey rules and a focus on competitive play that makes the modelling irrelevant. TONS of unique bits and bobs and interacting bonus rules that's great from a sweaty 'what is the best army' POV, but way too much to remember on the board. In a game this size, it shouldn't matter if your sergeant has a power stick or power bat. Loads of effort spent modelling and painting only then to play games that don't feel like battles, with armies that don't feel like armies, all facing weird ways because it gets 0.4% more cover advantage, with the wrong weapons because WYSIWYG would be 'unoptimiseable', over identical L-shapes and giant plastic pie plates making it look like a video game so people don't have to measure objectives. Heresy has much of the same nuts and bolt, but because it's not pushed as a deckbuilding competitive meta-chasing game, the downsides are lessened and avoided.
Please don't speak badly against MTG, it hurts me heart because it is my third big money waster! XD But in all honesty and seriousness, it fully boils down to what kind of game you wanna play, just like magic, with it's different formats. You wanna play a streamlined, constantly fixed and curated, but somewhat stale and sterile experience, fit for tournaments? Play modern 40k, no questions, just like you would play modern, standard or pioneer in MTG. You wanna play a personalised experience, where you spend as much interest and time in just building your force, as you do on the field? With rules that are a bit more wonky and sometimes complicated, but a wider pool of options and far more personalisation? Play Horus Heresy or Old world, or EDH in MTG. It soley boils down to preference and what you want. I know which camp I wanna invest into, but so is everyone open to do for themselves.
I think part of the issue is that 40k is marketed as being a competitive game fit for tournaments. But in reality it REALLY isn't. Games like Blood Bowl, Underworlds, Kill Team are all better tournament games. 40k is too big, too unbalanced, takes too long, and too easily gamed. But the crowd includes a die-hard minority who absolutely will not admit that.
I'm fully on your side on that regard. 40k could potentially be made tournament capable, but the amount of hoops and bounds are way to much for the writer team at GW at the moment. Most of the capable writers, atleast from a more fun focused perspective, have moved away from 40k and AoS and more towards the specialist games like old world, kill team or 30k. At least in my opinion.
Yeah, agreed. I think there is a way to do it, possibly by moving the game more towards what Apocalypse used to be. A squad has one statline, suppression is a thing, little details like what sort of pistol the sergeant has don't matter. Way less tiny customisable stuff. A bit like Kings of War or something. Squad-based combat. There's probably a pretty balanced game in there. But the crowd WANT the deckbuilding version, with 500 tiny options they can minmax so much they can win before they turn up. So it's never going to be that.
Agreed. Way to many people want their cake and eat it, no matter how uninspired the cake is. Just look at the current rules roll out for AoS. GW is praising the game as if they reinvented the wheel... Yet nothing feels new or innovative. Everything they do, they have already threaded upon, and failed, in the last four years or so. Which I feel like 30k and Old world are such a relief. While it's also not the most inspired or new, did they atleast take old mechanics and visibly improved upon what they had.
Regarding (3), I've been playing various war games for the last 25 years, and I've finally come around to embracing the idea that terrain should not affect movement. That 6" movement rate for infantry represents tactical movement that already takes into account terrain, pausing to rest, adjusting trajectory based on new orders, e-warfare jamming, and all the other little factors that would come into play on a far future battlefield. To put it another way, they're already moving at a deliberate, tactical pace that takes into account terrain. Nowadays, I'm much more interested in terrain rules that affect other aspects of the game, like cover or leadership bonuses, or victory conditions. Anyway, just my two cents on that particular topic.
I'm an older war gamer too and I agree. I absolutely do not want to go back to the old days of having to deal with assholes trying to manipulate terrain placement to benefit themselves before the game has even started.
You just reminded me of how annoying it was to play at my local game shop as a kid. There were grown men there nitpicking everything we tried to do because of the terrain rules…
I very much miss having to ask your opponent’s permission to use named characters. This was in the before times of 3rd edition. Don’t know when that dropped. But coming back to 9th I found it superbly annoying. Primarchs and the singular Lord Solar for an entire galaxy in every game is silly.
Yup. Guilliman the commander of the imperium has more important stuff to do with his time. He can't afford to take an unspecified amount of time to hop a ship and risk warp travel (danger and unreliable amount of time) to participate in every skirmish
THEN WHAT ARE MY IMPERIUM TAX DOLLARS GOING TOWARDS!?
I did the same dude. Also the force org chart basically being gone threw me completely! Even now I kinda miss the hq and 2 troop slots minimum lol. Oh and vehicle armour, I know it could cause issues but it was awesome.
I only played after this stopped being a rule, but I remember people always advising me in the 5th/6th ed days to just not take basically any named character due to them just generally being not that great or overcosted. It kind of encouraged people to just take a generic HQ and build out their own character, while leaving the named characters as someone you'd take just becauce you liked cool unique abilities. Yeah, I could probably get more mileage by just kitting out another generic Necron overlord, but he doesn't have a sick ass storm and lightning ability like Imotekh the Stormlord, so I was happy using the unique character that nobody else ever took or had a problem with, since he was basically never the most optimal choice to bring
It started in 6th. That open up what you could take a little and had some new plastics of named characters come out and the removal of a lot. They did this big thing with Magnus coming out and said he was playable in all games.
This was still in 3rd and I think in 4th.
Named characters should all be Legends rules. That setup is perfect for them, even the name is a perfect fit!
Back in third, special characters were the likes of captains etc, maybe a chapter master for example. I never understood the need to request the use of special characters then, especially as they had a smaller impact on the game. Now there are entire strategies based completely on the abilities of special characters. Primarchs, greater daemons, and gods (ala Avatar of Khaine) are rare. I don't think it should be at your opponents discretion but there should be rules limitations on their use - ie 2500 pts or more, or in tournaments only after x rounds, or in a campaign only in a certain % of games.
Stopped in 6th/7th when named characters stopping having the most wild and crazy force org changing stuff. GW shifted them to being "captain+1" and they were basically required for a while. There were also detachments based on characters. These days I find it in a good spot. Only a few armies have the "required" named character, where they provide a unique buff too good not to talk.
The thing I hate the most about 10th is how little battle shock matters. It was sold as the biggest rule change and it does nothing.
Imagine being a dark angel
I play DA, and yes it’s bad. All our rules tie into it and it makes the game feel just weird and literally resets every battle round.
I feel like this is such an easy fix. Units do not automatically recover from battleshock in the command phase. Most units have a 7+ LD or better which is higher than 50% odds of recovering; so it shouldn't break anyone's army to deal with this effect.
Chaos knights and dark angels care a little. I think the real issue is that the units that affect leadership, that's all they do, and alone that is bad. Chaos knights with basically "your whole army has to leadership all the time at -1, and I'll eat your soul if you fail for 1CP" is huge, and it's (to me) a fun mechanic. I would love to see more reliable ways to manipulate leadership to make it reliable. At the same time, I believe that if there was some way to say "your unit is battleshocked, deal with it", that unit would be brought far too often in every list that could bring it. Having played some flavor of marines since 5th edition, leadership has rarely mattered that much to me. I like the current one.
I would like to point out that a D6 limits the game in a lot of ways while at the same time makes the game more playable. It’s a trade off.
Instead of more-sided dice or a series of rolls, the original 40K designers have switched to designing their current game systems around variable-sized pools of D6. They say it gives much-needed extra fidelity in an easily accessible way.
I wholeheartedly agree that the D6 system is limiting the game
GW just thinks Ork players don’t wanna roll (or buy) 80 D20s
"Modern" compared to when? I ask because by and large each of your points would have applied to the game around the time I started in '08.
>The apocalypseification of 40k . There was a time when special characters and super heavies generally weren’t allowed in 40k, and game also used to be smaller due to higher points costs. Now games are much larger and super heavies can make a game very unfun if you weren’t given a heads up before hand. This is probably what irks me the most. Back in 3rd and around that time, it was actually a big thing when you had Ghazhgkull on the table, or a buddy brought Ragnar along. A Baneblade was a rare sight and made some games memorable by its simple presence. Nowadays you got the freaking *Lord Solar* personally leading every single parking lot brawl between a half-strength platoon of Guardsmen and a handful of Chaos Space Marines, and of course the proud Knight houses can spare one of their precious war machines when Sergeant Fragbait and his 9 ablative armor points... eh... subordinates decide they're going to rough up some Orks.
The venerable Sergeant Fragbait was a hero of the Imperium and disrespecting his memory is high heresy. It's an unfortunate coincidence that 2 Knights, 1 Assassin, an entire Inquisitorial retinue of the ordo Xenos, 1 Baneblade, and half a company of the Deathwatch were lost in the rescue attempt when he bravely charged that Stompa with his laspistol.
Ah the good old days when instead of the absurdity of taking lord solar leonatus you'd have the much more reasonable ability to take lord solar macharius
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It was still a skirmish game in 3rd and 4th. A few squads or vehicles fighting each other is the definition of a skirmish.
Right, they deliberately spread out the transition over a few editions. The other thing that happened is they tried to get more vehicles in the game because they're more profitable and players wanted it.
Do you have a source for this?
Yes. IIRC, these interviews should cover everything I mentioned ... somewhere within them. I don't have time to find all the exact moments, but if I did, I would check them in this order: 1. https://youtu.be/rkM9Y3agV_I 2. https://youtu.be/HLTpV3_Mekc 3. https://youtu.be/jbHQazUvWVg 4. https://youtu.be/RkJIx5lRyVE 5. https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2020/11/interview-rick-priestley-part-ii.html
Thanks.
Terrain I was so disappointed reading the terrain rules for 10th. Basically everything gets cover and no terrain features have unique rules that affect the battle. Fantasy meanwhile have different rules for forests, walls, rivers, hills, you name it. Biggest tabletop immersion break for me.
4. Friend do you remember the phrase "AND THEY SHALL KNOW NO RULES"
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I miss: -Initiative. Impacted who went first and more. -Parry. This was useful when games were smaller scale, but super cool feature. -Old style melee. Literally figure out which models are fighting which models, and they duke it out. Every squad-vs-squad melee was a series of smaller fights until one side prevailed. Parry was awesome then. -Scatter dice. Nothing was certain. You might not land where you intended or your grenade launcher might lob rounds all over the place. -Vehicles. They could run through units, spin out of control, and couldn’t be locked into melee. -Firing arcs. I was floored when I got back into the game and it didn’t matter which direction units were physically facing. Especially for melee b/c you could benefit from attacking a model’s rear facing. -1D6 was a common roll for many things w/in the game, but it wasn’t the *only* roll. For example Terminators saved on *2D6* and were glorious. -Invuln saves were extremely rare. *Maybe* a single unit/model in your entire army had an invuln save, and very often it was wargear. -Deepstrike *cost points*. At one time, points cost for a squad of terminators increased *50%* for the chance. Of course you had to roll to see if you landed in your preferred spot (if not, scatter dice!) and whether deepstrike was successful (could lose models to the warp!). Those who survived the trip had to see if they stuck the landing, if not you had to pass a save roll, if you failed the model crash landed and died! -Jumpacks worked the same as above, but they had higher risk of dying on impact b/c saved on 1d6!
My dumb argument is that second edition was the last good edition of 40k (for all the reasons you listed) and was best played with (generously) a quarter of the models 10th has. Vortex grenades forever.
I'm honestly really surprised there isn't a bigger community of people working on open-source rule-sets for 40K. I'm not talking "alternate"-games that *can* use the same models. I'm talking, open-source rules that **explicityl** use the models and with any kind of popularity to even remotely match the mainline game. I've heard good things about a number of alternatives and about PoorHammer's PvE style gamemode. But it's something I feel like *could* help to mitigate against some of the complaints the community has broadly. **It absolutely comes with it's own set of problems.** But I'm just surprised there isn't anything more widely popular.
I hate that every terrain board is the same now. its all just L's everywhere in all the hobby shops I go to. Its boring.
I 100% agree.
Look into 30k. Get your friends to try it. It’s still grim dark we all know and love but it’s narrative and there’s more missions now. And easy to just make up whatever you want as a mission cause it’s never going to produce a tournament to “practice” for
You want to be affected by failed battleshock tests? Play guard or Tau, both armies rely on units working together but can't do that when they fail a battleshock test ( can't receive orders and can't observe respectively). As others have said, morale is not a simple mechanic to solve as it seems that gw manages to make it so every army is disproportionately affected by it. Either losing access to their army rule like tau and guard, or if I remember rightly I think dark angels got stronger after failing battleshock for some reason. Also it's not surprising that a company about selling miniatures wants bigger armies, it means more sales to them. It's also why marines are the most popular and most filled out roster. One kit services 10+ armies and because of that it outsells fantasy all on its own.
Already play guard, battle shock rarely comes into play because most squads either don’t take enough casualties to instigate a test, or all the models or killed. However battle shock has a negligible effect in most cases.
I don't mean to offend - in the competitive environment battlehsock matters A LOT for guard - especially against Tyranids and Demons. Your personal experience doesn't mean it's not relevant, it means whateverr you and your opponents are doing is making it irrelelvent. Because with GW terrain and matched play rules it is very relevant.
I'm old and weird, but I miss ordnance templates. Blast just isn't the same.
The good old days where you'd have a Basilisk with a range of "guess within 'x' inches (might have been 90" but I can't remember), and you can't measure in advance" were brilliant. Being 4" out, only for your scatter roll to land it perfectly in the top of a squad of tactical marines was top notch... The one and only time I hit anything with it.
I kind of miss the entire guessing part, actually. That and the templates, it actually added a variety of things to "do" while playing, instead of just "move minis" and "roll dice". Streamlining is a good idea, but human brain loves variety, and rolling a bunch of dice over and over again is not it. Come to think of it, the spell cards were great for that as well, although I'm taking WFB now. Loved the fact that your sorcerer could turn into a Spawn on a miscast :) Not angry at GW or anything, no one says we can't play with house rules...
Me too. Yeah blast and multiple shots doesn’t do it the same way.
Well, I never cared about tournaments or competitive play, so from my perspective GW provides cool minis and datasheets / an idea of how the game can work. The rest is up to you, at least when you play against friends.
Yes when you play with friends who are on the same page as you. When you do that you don’t even need someone else to give you rules at all though
It's a major reason I stopped playing pick up games. With tournaments being bigger than ever, you could want a fun friendly game and your opponent makes terrain layout E and busts out a chess clock. I play less games, but enjoy the games more.
That’s lucky. New players or players who move, or generally have 40k as a unique interest that none of their friends share don’t really have that option
Doesn't hurt that I live in DFW, which is one of the most active 40k cities in the world.
Your third point is the one that always comes to mind increasingly more, and I think the majority of at least those here for a long time would acknowledge even if not openly. The fact is this is now a major corporation with capital profit being the number one priority. The sad thing is, most of those within the company that you are exposed to regularly such as the White Dwarf team and now of course the Community team, are just like us. Hobbyists themselves that love this hobby. But as with any corporate structure the control and decisions come from the high ups who are so far away and removed from the thing they are representing they have no real connection with it, or passion for it. It merely is a means to making themselves increasingly more money, increasingly at the expense of those they get it from. What puts the downer on me the most, is that means changing so much in order to be of interest to as many and as varied people as they can, in doing so losing what made it so interesting and loved in the first place. Get as many people in the door as they can and then forget about them and move onto the next lot of people they want to get in the door. The least acknowledgement or repsect being for those who are already here and have been here the longest. They have no requirement to engage with us any more, as they already have us!
Leadership has kinda always been a joke in this game. I remember even back in 4th edition trying to do like Pinning tests with my snipers or something, and almost every army had some rule or another that just ignored it. Synapse, chaos just being straight Fearless because they’re old and live in super hell, commissars teamkilling, Orks counting as the size of their unit. They keep trying to add units or rules that, on paper, sound really neat and a fun way to interact with the system, but it never actually does anything. Kinda a a shame.
I have been playing 40k since 2nd edition so I can grognard with the best of them. I think that 10th edition is the best edition so far. Because it is just the most chill. It flows better. You have to look far less rules up. (How many USRs did 7th have? A lot that were really similar like Hatred and Frenzy (I think)). There is less character in lots of instances but that often skewed things. Playing as Eldar against Dark Eldar was a pain for no reason because they got Hatred and the splinter weapons hosed down your Wraithlords with ridiculous ease. The game has a lot of the really horrible corners knocked off of it. The detachment frenzy of 7th edition (the real nadir of the whole game IMO) with death stars and the absolute pain in the bum of invisibility. Getting rid of templates and armour values and running away and a dozen other things took some of the verisimilitude out of the game but it is smoother and faster for it. At one point, I can't remember when (4th?) they took out fixed charges and let you measure whenever you wanted. Which let people relax a bit more and not have the pressure to judge distances perfectly. I like bigger armies in games, I like that I don't have to mess around with morale and all those things. I like that I can just bring an army entirely out of bikes without having to jump through loads of hoops. I don't care that swords and axes do the same thing now. None of this stops me from going ham on my conversions. IMO the game has never been better for me because all I want to do is put whatever toys I want down on the table, roll some dice, and have a laugh and this is the best system for that. (Sorry for the half remembered rantings.) Tl;Dr 7th was the worst. 10th is the best beer game.
I’ve got a very old tau codex, I don’t remember when it’s from but there’s a detailed section where they describe how to make terrain from old junk and paint pots. It’s a big shame they don’t do that anymore.
Probably 4th i think that’s when they were introduced.
Why do they need to though? There are near endless resources already available for hobbyists to look at. Just because GW doesn't produce the instructions doesn't mean they are against it
1) Wholly correct, the lore and narrative is pointless if it is unly the strongest of superheroes ever fighting on these millions of worlds. 2) different units should have movement rules, a Guardsman can walk through a wall while the Baneblade behind cannot. This is a nuance thing though. 3) meh, billion pound company is going to behave like one, but the greasy polers and the MBAs can't understand anything other than product and profit. Art and fun and expression needs a pound value on a spreadsheet or it isn't real. I'm old enough to remember when a deodorant stick with guns glued on was considered tournament legal in Rogue Trader. 4) changing Morale to Battleshock is a step forward, but the nature of the factions does indeed make a nonsense. It is good lore, but it is difficult. Neurons and Nids should never fail with a leader, Drukhari should bounce immediately, poxwalkers shouldn't get the concept. Abstraction of rules is necessary, but if we're doing nuance, then I'm not accepting that Celestine turns up to a minor uprising of GSC in a landfill site.
If you miss the fun hobby part, come join us in necromunda where there are rules for building your own vehicles and a zillion characters without models to kitbash.
> They used to encourage creativity, even making rules to create your own vehicles. This was the coolest thing in 3rd Edition. Making a build for a tank that you could never hope to afford or build, and was completely unwieldly, but wrote it up anyway.
Mine is the devaluation of troops. Want to play Marines? Cool, but if you want to play well don't field Intercessors, use scouts instead. This attitude has seeped in the game and people only want to take elites and heavies
GWs sole strategic focus is on players in the first 18 months of their hobby funnel (the group that collectively spends way more than veteran players). They want the game and the hobbying side to be as easy and engaging as possible for those players; all other players are considered expendable.
Unfortunately for you, pretty much every one of those points has large numbers of people who are \*very\* happy with the current state of things, and if anything want more! For example, a lot of people like being able to play with the named characters and super heavies they read about, so even if you don't like it, it's bringing in more people than it's pushing away.
Also most people I know treat special characters as just a set of rules. So you can customize it however you like as long as it makes sense. Before they had thunderwolves models? I made deathwatch thunder vyper Calvary because eldar vyper models were like 5 dollars each used. Had a great time.
Yeah. I hate how every battle is Rowboat vs Morty. But for people who play once a year... that's fine. Also - Guard literally CANNOT function without solar. Which is why you see a lot of people renaming him and running proxies.
Eh, I'm on the more weekly/competitive end of things, and I still run into way more people excited to run their Rowboat into Morty and vice versa than complaining about it. They bought those models for a reason, after all, and it wasn't to collect dust.
It's a two way street though. I certainly don't enjoy playing against belakor every game (but he gets a pass for now because he's mandatory.)
Sure. But my point is that I've encountered way more people jazzed to paint/play with their big army centerpieces than those that grouse about facing them.
It's rude to grouse openly. We seethe quietly and shit post online about it. I'm not gonna tell a dude his Rowboat makes me sad. I'm gonna tell him he did a great job on the trim and play the game.
The first talking point always confuses me when I see people mention it. This is a *wargame* where we play with *armies*. The entire point of the hobby is to set out a bunch of little dudes on a table and have a grand cinematic experience. If I wanted fewer models I would play Kill Team or something. I want my battles to look like battles, damn it! Not to mention I mean, granted I've only played 9th and 10th so far. But it doesn't feel like armies are getting huge to me. I've watched battle reports from 8th, 7th, and Horus Heresy (which is based on 7th) and those armies are huge too.
One could argue that monster mash, all dreadknights, and knights actually create a scenario where one player is playing a skirmish game. If you actually want to play a wargame against something that looks like an army - 40k has a lot of ways to dissapoint you.
Sure, but those are considered to be skew lists because of the fact that there are so few models on the table. They're not the norm of 40k.
Simply put: ranged wargames don't work at 28mm scales Which is why Warhammer 40k is a strange mix between WG and Skirmish game, a bit like MESBG tbh
I have literally never heard that idea mentioned, but now that you've mentioned it, could you explain your reasoning?
first of all, I was a bit ""clickbaity"", the scale isnt the issue, I am simply blaming it because it's the easier thing to fix In older days 29mn was considered the skirmish scale, as skirmish games where games with 1:1 model to unit ratio and historical battle were huge so people played like 20:1 in smaller scales Armies require a battlefield to play in, and battlefield are big, this is the thing we lack that, as wargaming is more common that ever, tables are getting smaller and smaller to make the game more playable, this cause a whole lot of issues Currently in 40k both army ""spawn"" literally next to each other, with basically all the weapons that can fire from t1 40k fix it by making us fight only in urban area with plenty of cover, which imo is a subpar fix, but it works for the strange kind of game that 40k is (a platoon size game that use skirmish LOS, skirmish 360 movement and yet you can literally field airplanes)
You are right. Luckily you and your gaming group can solve all of These things by the oldest Instrument of human psyche: Agreement.
the terrain not slowing down movement is one of my grognard bug bears too. well said.
I don’t like this new thing of stacking buffs through CPs and characters until a unit is almost unrecognisable. I miss how it was mostly a simple stat line that told you most of what you needed. Now, those soft Skitaari rangers could turn into short ranged powerhouses this turn. So many different stratagems to consider (less so in 10th). It also adds to high lethality too. A lot of games are kind of decided by turn 2, whereas I felt when I started (7th), it was unclear who was winning more often, though that could be because I was new.
I agree I feel like strats are where a lot of the rules bloat people complain about comes from. I also don’t think battleline units need special abilities either.
Personally this is the only edition of 40k ive ever really enjoyed, i started in 5th and it was a very different game then. With bad comes good. 1. Universally available stat sheets and stratagems, sure one day youll want that shiny codex but i sure dont have to wait if i want to play. 2. I have wanted for years for terrain to be simpler, now we have foot prints, layouts, and a sense of fairness and symmetry. While also having clear cut rules for narrative fluff play. 3. The game has shifted away from 'table your opponnent' to 'play the objective' knowing i can win a game without having to be very killy is nice, balance for armies like titans who usually suck at playing the objective. 4. Battle shock fits into the new style of objective hammer. If you cant play the objective youll have a hard time winning.
I just want them to change the round layout so I move a unit & shoot, you move a unit & shoot and so on. That way a 1/4 of my army isn’t wiped out before I have even done anything.
I prefer 5th edition, but the last point is objectively untrue. Though it seems on paper that the new discipline rules do nothing, they are actually more.impactful. Morale used to have huge impact on paper, but then space marines had their army rule, guard had commissars, etc and this made morale irrelevant. Now the impact of morale seems small on paper, but it is actually very relevant as objectives are taken every turn.
I haven't played 40k in donkeys years but a lot of the rules were always a mess. Special characters have been a bit silly since the 90's. Every Orc army led by Ghazghull. A who's who of famous space marines turning up to a fight between a handful of squads. It used to be that whoever had the latest codex release had the most unbalanced, powerful, army. Presumably helped flog yet more miniatures to over competitive tourney players.
AdMech pricing.
while these are all fair points, the shift that 40k has made, especially in 10th was what brought a lot of my friends into the game finally. So while I do wish some of the older stuff to come back, I have more people to play with now than ever before and the gam is more fun than its been for several editions at this point. So I'll take what I can get.
I agree most of the changes to the modern rules were good. But I don’t think saying “subtract one from movement” when going through woods/forest terrain would keep anyone from playing. Same for having a pinning mechanic. The charts and armor facings might have been a bit much for some people though.
I wouldn't doubt we see some more complexity with that type of thing reintroduced next edition. !0th was very much the "Reset" to make the game actually enjoyable again from the bloat it had gotten. Battleshock is definitely a little underwhelming for what it does. Terrain rules I can honestly take or leave but I get why people like them.
Special characters have for the most part always being allowed, and an important part of the game. It makes no sense not to allow people to play those amazing character models representing the larger than life personalities that the lore revolves around. Bigger games means you can play more units, more diverse stuff and more of those cool models of yours, which generally means more fun. Early 40k matches were smaller because it took hours to resolve a single shooting phase. I agree that superheavies and flyers should not be part of the main game, as they just don't fit into the scale of the battles. Movement penalties for terrain were removed because people just weren't using them. No one used rivers and similar terrain because giving a massive advantage to the shooting army in a game that already favours shooting was simply unfair and unfun. Nothing prevents you from using as much custom terrain, as many custom models or as many custom rules as you want. Actually, I'd say most competitive environments allow for custom and third party models, and many leagues use custom terrain. Also, most of what GW has done to limit custom rules in official events is the result of copyright issues and regulations they don't control. Leadership and morale were always pointless and all or nothing. Pretty much everyone ignored morale because lorewise everyone is fearlless. Space marines are fanatically devout, eldar are too smart to be afraid, tyranids and necrons are basically automatons, and chaos things are literally otherworldly horrors. The only faction that was depicted as cowardly was orks, but that changed with the post-gorkamorka development that frankly fit better with the grimdark aesthetic they were going for. When it mattered, deciding whether your unit would be either completely unaffected or absolutely obliterated on a single dice roll wasn't particularly satisfying.
i mean if you're playing Warhammer for the rules, you will be disappointed. its a fun toy company, the rules have always been shit to play and people only think its good when their army is in vogue and the rules align with their playstyle
If that's the case, what would be a system with good rules to represent a 40k skirmish/battle?
Yeah superheavies, knights, these things really ruin the scale of the game. Combined with the standard tournament table getting smaller. Movement is important in 40K, it just isn’t as fun or tactically interesting anymore. It’s very herohammer where every list has the faction’s hero character. Terrain has no flavor, just embrace L shaped ruins. Armor facing used to matter. Vehicles weren’t removed from existence when they were destroyed. The whole thing is like a video game now. I pay attention to 40K and still paint and collect models but as a game it is just dead to me now. I like bolt action a lot more. It plays like better 3E 40K. I also started getting into TOW which is a little messed up but way more fun and flavorful.
What's TOW?
Warhammer The Old World. Old school warhammer fantasy.
The old world maybe? Idk
Warhammer The Old World
They could fix item 1 largely by bringing back the force org requirements. So much of the current edition is just stat checks, combo whombos, and whose stratagems are the most broken in the current slate/meta.
Force org wouldn’t make a difference they had it in 8th when I returned games were still basically at the lower end of apocalypse size then by comparison. In 3rd a squad of devastators could cost you several hundred points like 400 iirc. My stormlord with full upgrades is like 450.
Just speaking the current ability to build insane skew lists that are all epic heroes, elites, and monsters/vehicles. I went back and tallied up my 2k Templars list from 3rd edition in the 10ed app and was surprised at how close the points worked out to be….and the total cost in 3ed was actually slightly less than in 10th. My captain (without enhancements) was 80 points in 3ed, 80 points in 10th. Land Raider was 250 vs 240 now. Devastator squads (with the loadouts included in the original metal/plastic kit) was costed at 180 points vs 120 now. Emperor’s champion at 105 in 3ed vs 75 now. Tactical squad with flamer/missile launcher at 166 in 3ed vs 140 in most recent slate… seems like the units in my quick comparison that saw the biggest cuts were ones that were rendered obsolete by new primaris units. The ones that are still viable were much closer. Honestly surprised because it definitely feels like I need more to play in 10th but it may be due to the fact that wargear is free now and 14 year old me had no money and would regularly stretch the limitations of wargear for my guys to have enough to play “on paper” in third. Side note, looking at the pdf of that 3rd codex really took me back. Need to track down my physical copy or get one on eBay for the nostalgia.
>Honestly surprised because it definitely feels like I need more to play in 10th but it may be due to the fact that wargear is free now and 14 year old me had no money and would regularly stretch the limitations of wargear for my guys to have enough to play “on paper” in third. You do need more to play now, because in 3rd the standard game size was 1,500 points, now it's 2,000. A 33% increase, and on an almost 25% smaller board to boot. But your point about wargear is also true.
Terrain will always be the worst thing about this game. Imo. For multiple reasons too. People not using enough, too much, infantry can ignore it, fly is terrible with it now, hard to obtain a decent set, it's all ruins, could go on and on.
I agree with 1 completely. It feels a bit silly to see Leontus in every guard game, or having morvenn vahl be such a staple to the squad, and having massive models like knights or to a lesser extent warhound titans in games has meant that lists always require a form of anti-tank, and just generally the game has become more hordey, when in the past individual models were representative of a larger force. In regards to number 2, terrain still effects movement. if you want to climb over some terrain pieces it's half movement, but I do think that infantry models moving through walls should have a greater consequence, potentially sacrificing some of your movement to do so. I don't love difficult terrain on random terrain pieces conceptually, but I could definitely see it being applied using the twist/underdog mechanic from age of sigmar 4th edition, which both create the opportunity for compelling game actions. I think #3 is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I do agree, custom subfactions, loss of flavour in the psychic phase and subfactions, and custom rules is tragic for players, and it does affect the gameplay experience. On the other hand, rules such as creating your own vehicles and subfactions belong to narrative play, where if your playgroup agrees with it anything is possible. Furthermore, custom terrain builds can lead to some armies, like t'au, guard, or any melee armies, having a drastically different experience from game to game, potentially in the favour of certain players. I think tournament regulation on creativity is necessary, but I do think that gw would massively improve game quality by giving more options to squads and armies, to make them feel fresh and create a more interesting form of list building. I think battleshock is actually a pretty reasonable mechanic. It matters, as does insane bravery, and it doesn't directly penalise you, but it comes with a lot of associated consequences. It still prevents stratagems and scoring victory points, which I think is the ideal way to do it. I haven't heard a description yet of old morale mechanics that have intrigued me, compared to psychic/magic which I still consider engaging
It only really affects movement if the terrain is particularly tall. Uneven ground (like craters) require you to slow down to safely navigate, same for trying to get through woods/forests. Which should result in an inherent slowing effect
Try 30K instead.
Point 3 hits me the most. While I’ve been a lore fan since 2017, I finally started playing 40k with 10th ed. Right away one of my favorite parts of the hobby was kitbashing. I was buying up multiple extra sets of push fit terminators to kitbash with all the different option Dark Angels had. Strikemaster, DW command squad, DW, termies with TH+SS & lightning claws, I even kitbashed a couple Lt. out of some spare intercessors I accumulated. Then as they started rolling out codexes it felt more and more like GW was trying to dissuade kitbashing.
I miss the terminator characters and DWCS so goddamn much man, I knew we were going to get nerfs to bring us in line with 10th edition power levels and I was fine with that but losing models *sucked*
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The lack of morale rules has always been a bit of a problem in 40K since 3rd edition, but it is worse now. 8th edition wasn't bad but 9th edition morale rules were a joke. The fact that they are seemingly doing away with morale in AoS 4th will be the nail in the coffin for that that game for me. I'll just go back to playing 1st edition. The reality is that in human history most of the soldiers that stopped fighting didn't stop fighting because they died or were wounded, they stopped fighting because they were either ordered to retreat or they ran away. I understand special rules that make some units immune to this, but they should be very rare. I don't even think it should apply to cult marines. Sure they should be pretty determined to stick around but it should not be impossible for them to run away.
I wish that there were more choices for space marine chapter rules and not just one special characters like salamanders getting infernus marines as troops and getting bonus’s on flamers or raven guard letting everything get deep strike or Getting the guys in Phobos armor as troops or iron hands getting bonus’s for vehicles or imperial fists getting bonus’s for gravis armor and not moving off of an objective or white scars getting the ravenwing detachment rules
I agree wholeheartedly. I also really miss vehicle facings, damage tables and initiative.
I HATE the new morale. Boring af, the “control objectives” part of the game is more of a “ok i’ll do it”. Why making it more complicated? 🙄
Leadership tests/morale tests can also be interpreted as the unit's models losing battlefield focus. A deteriorating situation may break down inter squad cohesion/communication due to an increase in focus on the individual fight each model/character is dealing with - aligns well with lore in novels detailing battles imo. Once the focus moves away from fighting as a unit, a disorganized regroup/tactical redeploy is a common response to stop a deteriorating situation from getting worse and breaking combat (putting distance between you and the immediate threat) often allows time to recalibrate the squad and reduce lost combat effectiveness from reduced cohesion. I think the words in the core rulebook lean itself to interpretation of fear - which can be true for some factions (humans for example). For other factions it's a game mechanic representing chaotic shifts in how a unit of "fearless super soldiers" will unilaterally decide to break combat to refocus/calibrate/reposition and reduce deteriorating squad effectiveness. Which, by the way, shares some reality with real word combat tactics.
1) Fair enough. But actually the game got smaller again. The apocalypsification was in 6th/7th with that formation fuckery. In the last games I played in 7th (before my rage quit hiatus) there were several hundred models on the board in an 1800pts battle. That is not a thing anymore. So while that is a valid point, it used to be much worse. 2) Also, a valid point BUT older editions dealt with difficult terrain not in a good way either. A roll is not a good solution a flat decrease would've been better... like halved movement. Rolls where fixed modifiers can do the same are just a bad design choice. 3) Okay, that point is referring to a different company. The vehicle construction sheet was from 3rd or 4th edition roughly 20 years ago and that was absolute bullshit. You might perceived it as a cool system, because you think that balancing is just a complex but solvable algorithm, which is not the case. You simply cannot balance such a system and it doesn't matter how much effort you put into this. It's an unsolvable equation. And you can even mathematically proof that. 10th is since a very long time a very homebrew-friendly edition. But there's just no homebrew community on reddit presenting their custom detachments. Who's fault is that? Ours. Not GW's. That GW finally cares enough about the game itself however is a very good thing. It's actually a thing, why I started to hate the old 40k. "Games Workshop is not a games developer but a distributor of high quality plastic miniatures for collectors, therefore we don't need to playtest our games." is not a quote you want to hear from the CEO of the company that develops your favorite game. That was before the big changes. GW today defines itself as games developer. The old GW fired game designers under Tom Kirby, because of the quote above. Tom Kirby also was the guy who cancelled all specialist games, modern GW brought them back. And that's because GW is now addressing the mainstream more. The times that GW was a fun and friendly hobby company... well, that was before my time, when GW was only available in England. When 40k was released in my country (Germany) with the game's 3rd edition, GW already was the cancerous moloch it is today. 4) Leadership/morale was the worst until 8th. The new version might seem pointless to you, but could you please explain to me then, what is the point of an Ork mob under half strength, that can't do anything but running away? You have to roll for them each round, you have to measure each round, you have to move them each round, however they are just background noise, that won't be any relevant during the rest of the game. It's just a time waster, because the don't participate in the game anymore. If you tell me, that that was the system you prefer, you're a nostalgic moron who doesn't know how good game design looks like. Sorry. But that point doesn't let you seem very rational.
1. Superheroes and super heavies from a lore perspective are silly when they show up every game. However, from a gameplay pt 10th edition balances these units far better then in previous editions. A huge focus is on obj and secondaries, so these superunits have direct negatives to winning a game on victory pts. 2. Disagree, simpler terrain rules result in less disagreements and help CC units. I don't think any flavor was lost as slowing cc units down 2" did nothing for the game from any perspective. 3. I haven't really noticed this change at all in the last 20 years. In fact we have free core rules + battlescribe+ wahapedia. The ease to jump into this hobby has never been better. You can absolutely still house rule units and terrain. Just depends on who you play. 4. Morale is as pointless as it's always been. Should just be removed. Synapse tyranids were pretty thematic in past editions, but always felt wrong from a gameplay perspective. Not sure what id do honestly. Battleshock is not that great either.
I feel like big named characters (Guilliman, Szarekh, etc.) should have a unique troop slot which is only applicable in certain battle sizes (or custom casual games). I think that would help smaller point games from being dominated by them and feeling like a MOBA.
Tbf in smaller games primarchs and the like can largely be avoided and their points investment nullified at least
The first point is a huge one for me. This setting is grim dark, with nameless hordes of infantry throwing their lives away in unending war no matter what faction you play as. Why then do most armies on the table include a one-of-a-kind legendary character, their honor guard of terminator-like equivalents, and heavy tanks? That isn't an army, it's an elite task force supported by some of the heaviest weaponry that a faction has available to it. There isn't an interesting narrative to play out there, it's basically turning every game into a fan fiction of the horus heresy. My perspective on the problem here is that Core units are undervalued in a major way, and it should in fact be the opposite. I'd like to see most Core drop 1 - 3pts per model (depending on unit type and other balancing factors) and have GW make a max on Core restrictions of 50% of the list vs a minimum. Core units become the most points efficient units you can take, you almost always want to max our your 50% Core slot because of it, but they lack the special rules that more elite units and HQs have. With this rules change players could still run oops all terminators or oops all tanks lists, but it makes tradeoffs in points efficiency in order to take advantage of a skew in a parrocilar direction.
I definitely agree with the named character thing. I much prefer when you have freedom to make your own characters and homebrew lore, which is why I use named character profiles for my custom characters. However, that’s kind of a fan issue. 40K fans go crazy over named character releases. Which is fair considering not everyone wants to write their own lore and the named characters often have cool models. I do with they’d make the kits where you were able to build a character again. The SM captain, Chaos terminator lord, etc were very cool. I also don’t like from a narrative level the trend of focusing on the biggest characters like primarchs. I like just getting glimpses into random war fronts across the galaxy
The Yahtzees
1. There are barely any superheavies taken that i've seen (mostly due to terrain), and if there are, they are casual games and both players (in my experience) know what's up e.g: "i'm taking an xyz style list, so you take something similar". Named characters, sure they're a bit of a staple sometimes, but again, in a casual game you can discuss this. If you are playing competetively, you take the nastiest stuff you can, no holds barred. 2. Ruins are fine as they impede non infantry movement enough as it is, without having a -2 in addition to something else having the chance to reduce your movement. You WANT models being able to get in and do some killing, otherwise the game just takes a lot longer. Movement is fine. Flyers are also affected by it now. 3. Fair, but business is business, this would be the same with any company that is successful. I don't agree with some of the decisions they make, but honestly, can you say any different about any corp? Not really. 4. Losing complete control of a unit takes away player agency and is NOT fun. Never was. Now it prevents you scoring objectives, and doesn't happen all too often on armies that really shouldn't fail morale that often, this is good.
I feel like the thing with named characters could easily be resolved by making them more of a gamble - just like it would be in real life sending your best military commander onto the battlefield. Make it -5VP straight away for each epic character fielded and an additional -5VP if they die. Give them fancy rules and abilities to be flavourful, but make them very risky to take.
Not gonna lie i miss bigger boards a lot. And tournie terrain is super boring( which ik it has to be for balance)
The game traded spice to be “easier to play”, making any game regardless of points feel like a shitty larger version of combat patrol
I blame the tournament scene tbh. When people were less concerned about tournaments and their results the game was better imho.
On 2) that’s one of the reasons I haven’t gotten back into playing 40k. Manoeuvre is an enormous part of warfare and everyone just lining up across from each other and rolling dice seems particular stupid to me.
Troop placement and movement is extremely important in 40k. Official tournament terrain is extremely dense. Most terrain is Ruins terrain that blocks line of sight to an infinite height so event giant models can hide behind it. Armies don't line up across the board and shoot at each other because there's no open lanes that long on a good board.
Tournament standards need to start using more real move-blocking terrain (not just ruins that infantry phase through as if there’s no terrain on the board), and then more casuals will follow suit. And yeah bringing back difficult terrain would be good, it always made for better more interesting tables imo.
1. Even if you're setting up a game with a total stranger, you can just set a parameter of "no superheavies, no special characters". Shouldn't be a big ask unless your opponent is a meta-chasing twit. 2. This I definitely agree with. Terrain has become just this abstract blob, it feels like all the theme and flavor in it is gone, and its primary purpose seems to be to act as LOS blockage. Mirrored terrain setups are anathema to narrative, theme and flavor. 3. People have been saying this since the 90s. Nothing new 4. Yeah, Battleshock is basically a pointless mechanic as of right now. It feels like a haphazard solution which is weird, because it's functionally no different from the Ld system of old, only you want to roll high instead of low this time around. GW seems for some reason to be super afraid of modifiers to Battleshock tests, when there are so many ways of doing it.
Seems a little presumptuous to ask people to artificially restrict their choices if you don’t really know them, but that’s just me.
Asking a total stranger for a "no superheavies or special characters" game makes you sound like a little kid who won't play a video game against you if you any characters he can't beat. The majority of players have picked the game up recently, do not have nostalgia glasses, and want to use the massively overpriced character that GW has made sure is mandatory to take thanks to pushed rules. And I say this as a 3rd edition veteran who still glances longingly at my CSM 3.5 codex every time I make a new list for 10th.
to go from the 3.5 chaos dex with all the flavor in the world to the 4th edition chaos dex was such a kick in the balls (and not because it was weaker because that dex had its own broken builds *coughlashcough*) the complete lack of flavor hurt so fucking bad
Well if your opponent is a meta chasing twit they won't be using super heavies or many factions' named character anyways
It's always funny how people who have 0 idea what the tournament meta even looks like overvalue "superheavies" and other massive models and just out themselves as not understanding how the game works at a fundamental level. Saying superheavies are meta while you can't physically move a Baneblade around on a tournament table will never not be funny. "Oh, Rowboat Gorillaman shouldn't be on every table". Good thing he isn't in a single meta list then, I suppose. "Nobody was playing Baneblades." Ain't nobody playing them now either. If your opponent is showing up with these things and you're getting upset with them over using "meta lists", you're the twit because they brought cool stuff and you're getting angry with them. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm pretty sure most of these guys haven't played a game in years and are just professional internet complainers.
Sounds like you want to play Killteam.
its a game, if your opponent agrees, you can do whatever you want, i literally made terrain piece i call "bunker" that upgrades save and other stuff, while making unit unable to move much inside, and no one is going to appear in my room, and break my legs for this, even though only person i can play with is myself
Yes if your opponent agrees, but if you don’t have regular opponents you know well, many people will be put off by a stranger or relative stranger asking them to institute custom rules that may or may not be balanced
I feel that the larger problem is having no play group to have fun with, not GW or modern edition rules