Warhammer 40K Tabletop Thread XLI: Secondary Opinions

[LeSwordfish]

Surely against 2+W targets (which are apparently the only important ones now), "double shots" and "double damage" are the same thing? They have different distributions but you get the same average damage at the end of it.

[JNAProductions]

Not if they have -1 Damage or a FNP.

[Voidhawk]

Problem is that Disintigrators are S5 Ap-2 D2. So the new Splinter Cannons are just worse Disintigrators. I mean, I assume Disintigrators will change, but it's hard to be happy when you've already got a gun that does this exact thing, but now you no longer have a gun that just puts out a massive amount of shots.

A big issue for Dark Eldar is a severe lack of Plasma-equivalent multi-shot 2+ dmg guns. The only one is the Disintegrator, and they're only available on vehicles: Ravagers, Raiders and the aircraft. Which is the reason all Dark Eldar lists I see start with "3 Ravagers, 1-3 Razorwings".

Upping the damage on weapons like the Splinter Cannon could help alleviate this... if they didn't also halve the shots at close range and make it so infantry can't move and shoot without penalty. Because when I think of Dark Eldar I think "static gunline".

[LansXero]

Surely against 2+W targets (which are apparently the only important ones now), "double shots" and "double damage" are the same thing? They have different distributions but you get the same average damage at the end of it.

Not quite since -1 DMG (Duty Eternal, DR, Banner of Remembrance) is becoming ubiquitous. Also wounding on 4s at best is still a losing proposition, specially if you end up hitting in 4s or 5s.

Its going to be Dark Lances and Blasters for everybody, I guess.

[Voidhawk]

Its going to be Dark Lances and Blasters for everybody, I guess.

TBF, it's always been that. Switching from Disintegrator to Dark Lance Ravagers isn't much of a change.

For a faction that has always been called "glass cannon", they're going to need significant firepower upgrades to keep up with this "All Termis All The Time" edition.

[Forum Explorer]

Surely against 2+W targets (which are apparently the only important ones now), "double shots" and "double damage" are the same thing? They have different distributions but you get the same average damage at the end of it.

Against 2 Wound targets it is still slightly worse due to FNP and just the flat -1 damages.

At half the number of shots and -1 to hit though, its still nothing. A sidegrade at best, unless point cost also goes up.

Yeah, basically my thoughts. If the only change they made to the Splinter Cannon was giving it AP-1 I'd be quite happy. As is I'm mostly just annoyed that it became a heavy weapon.

[Blackhawk748]

Yeah, basically my thoughts. If the only change they made to the Splinter Cannon was giving it AP-1 I'd be quite happy. As is I'm mostly just annoyed that it became a heavy weapon.

Which removes the guns primary role, which was belching out large amounts of shots. Yes, that wasn't terribly relevant this edition, but its a niche that needs filling, and now it's gone.

Its rather baffling actually.

[Forum Explorer]

Which removes the guns primary role, which was belching out large amounts of shots. Yes, that wasn't terribly relevant this edition, but its a niche that needs filling, and now it's gone.

Its rather baffling actually.

It's about as baffling as the faction traits for Kabalites in Psychic Awakening. I'm really coming to the conclusion that whoever is writing Dark Eldar actually has no clue on what Kabalites actually do on the table.

[Blackhawk748]

It's about as baffling as the faction traits for Kabalites in Psychic Awakening. I'm really coming to the conclusion that whoever is writing Dark Eldar actually has no clue on what Kabalites actually do on the table.

I've never played Deldar, nor had any real desire too, but I always assumed that they were basically Dire Avengers. Just dudes with guns

[Forum Explorer]

I've never played Deldar, nor had any real desire too, but I always assumed that they were basically Dire Avengers. Just dudes with guns

More like Guardians. So yeah, dude with guns. But I think all the spikes on the models are confusing someone into thinking they're a melee unit.

[Blackhawk748]

More like Guardians. So yeah, dude with guns. But I think all the spikes on the models are confusing someone into thinking they're a melee unit.

Well I don't think it's unreasonable to give them a 4+ to make them more Dire Avenger like.

But ya, someone doesn't get what they're for and I don't know why.

[LeSwordfish]

Again, I think it's far more likely that this is a universal thing.

[Forum Explorer]

Again, I think it's far more likely that this is a universal thing.

I don't see why though. Like, Necron melee units all got an extra attack, which makes sense cause they had way too few. But their shooty units didn't just get an attack slapped on them.

But more importantly, I really don't want to have to pay the points for an extra attack. It's a shooty unit. Sure an extra attack objectively means it can deal more damage, but if it costs me even a single point than it isn't worth it because this unit does 99.9% of its damage by shooting.

[Voidhawk]

What Kabalites want to do, and what they actually do has a big gap.

What they want: a ten man squad in a Raider, doing a drive-by with 2 special weapons and a splinter cannon.
What they are: a 5 man troop tax, in a Venom with a Blaster. Sometimes you'll use them as a human-shield to hedge out deep-strikers from getting at the important things (the 3 Ravagers).

Why this gap? Simple: splinter weapons are rubbish.
Buying more Kabalites means paying for more Splinter Rifles, which are (mostly) Bolters that can't kill guardsmen.
Getting a squad of ten lets you take a heavy weapon: either an over-costed Dark Lance that you have to stand still to fire, or a Splinter Cannon that is (as mentioned) not great.

To get Kabalites to do the job they want to do, buff their weapons and/or Raiders.
The simplest method would probably be to change the Splinter Racks upgrade: if it let them reroll all failed hit and/or wound rolls with splinter, that might (might) make taking full sized squads worth it again.
Another might be to let them take a Disintegrator in the heavy weapon slot, but Assault as normal. That's close to what the Splinter Cannon changes are... except it's Heavy and only Ap -1 rather than -3.

Dark Eldar firepower has been left in the dirt this edition. They need more Cannon with their Glass.

[LansXero]

Speaking of which, wonder how they'll shoehorn their 1/detachment nonsense this time. Drukhari have the 1 HQ per 'sub-faction' and no cross-sinergy whatsoever.

[Squark]

Speaking of which, wonder how they'll shoehorn their 1/detachment nonsense this time. Drukhari have the 1 HQ per 'sub-faction' and no cross-synergy whatsoever.

If GW is thinking clearly, they'll conclude the current system already imposes the "pseudo-fluffy list restrictions" that are cropping up in 9e, and thus no additional restrictions are needed.

...

I bolded the words if and pseudo for a reason, although the Necron codex suggests they don't feel the need to impose the same restrictions on a Xenos faction if they can come up with different (And if Necrons are anything to go by, more punishing) restrictions.

[Drasius]

Question: At the moment, terminators aren't terrible for the first time in ... what, almost 20 years, and the communities first reaction, after begging, pleading and demanding that terminators be made playable, is to REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Terminators too stronk! complain about it with every fibre of their being?

Ah, 40k, somehow you change but manage to stay the same.

Also - sweet zombie corpse emperor, I can only agree that those DE changes seem pretty misguided so far. Every time I think about the multitude of attempts made at writing a DE list I like since the start of 6th, it's always ended poorly, and I see nothing to change that so far.

[Cheesegear]

Question: At the moment, terminators aren't terrible for the first time in ... what, almost 20 years, and the communities first reaction, after begging, pleading and demanding that terminators be made playable, is to REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Terminators too stronk! complain about it with every fibre of their being?

Assault Terminators aren't just playable. The problem is that they're (almost) the only thing worth playing. And anything that isn't an Assault Terminator, is like a Asasult Terminator.

"...If I just improve the- *snap, crunch* ...Aaand I broke it."

[Forum Explorer]

Question: At the moment, terminators aren't terrible for the first time in ... what, almost 20 years, and the communities first reaction, after begging, pleading and demanding that terminators be made playable, is to REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Terminators too stronk! complain about it with every fibre of their being?

Ah, 40k, somehow you change but manage to stay the same.

Also - sweet zombie corpse emperor, I can only agree that those DE changes seem pretty misguided so far. Every time I think about the multitude of attempts made at writing a DE list I like since the start of 6th, it's always ended poorly, and I see nothing to change that so far.

I honestly hadn't heard any complaints about Terminators until the Deathwing Termies dropped with their permanent Transhuman, -1 damage, a FNP, and objective secured. Before that, people complained about Apothecaries reviving things like Terminators, but no one seemed to have a problem with the terminators themselves.

[Cheesegear]

Sure wish I could play with Assault Terminators again...
*Monkey's Paw does the thing...*
...And now I can't play with anything except Assault Terminators!

[LansXero]

Question: At the moment, terminators aren't terrible for the first time in ... what, almost 20 years, and the communities first reaction, after begging, pleading and demanding that terminators be made playable, is to REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Terminators too stronk! complain about it with every fibre of their being?

wat. Deathshroud / blightlords were playable in 8E, GKs too for a while and after supplements dropped Assault WS Termies also were viable.

The issue for the nth time is win conditions, not statlines. Ok, the extra wound is a bit much, but once you take away their main issue (being slow as hell) by turning the game to an static grindfest, then they get to be unkillable, plus killy, PLUS able to win the game all on their own. DW ones are even ObSec just because and are extra unkillable because screw everyone who isnt a marine.

[Voidhawk]

Sure wish I could play with Assault Terminators again...
*Monkey's Paw does the thing...*
...And now I can't play with anything except Assault Terminators!

You may have noticed that this keeps happening.
"I want to be able to play Green Tide!" - only hordes meta.
"I want to be able to play mech-inf!" - razorbacks and chimera parking lot only.
...and so on, forever.

There are two reasons for this continuing pattern, one rules-mechanics issue and one socio-philosophical issue.

The mechanical issue:
1 unit of [Terminators] costs X pts, and is better than anything else that costs X pts.
2 units of [Terminators] costs 2X pts, and is better than anything else that costs 2X pts.
3 units of [current meta best] costs 3X pts... etc etc

Points costs are linear. Effectiveness is linear. While that remains true, there will always be a Best (most efficient) unit in every codex, as well as the game as a whole. And zero reason to not just take the maximum allowed of that unit.
(Rule of Three is a band aid on a broken limb, just hiding the issue and pretending it doesn't exist.)

How to fix it: one or both of Cost and Effectiveness must be curved with number of units; costs must curve upwards and effectiveness downward.

Curving Costs is easy - you simply make each unit more expensive than the previous: the first is X pts, but the second is X+Y pts, and the third is X+2Y pts, etc. So the total price curve ends up being: X, 2X+Y, 3X+3Y, 4X+6Y...
That way each unit is less efficient than the previous, but you can run alot of them if that's what appeals to you. ("This is my mono-biker army. The fifth unit cost me 500pts.")
By dialling the values of X and Y you can have multiple units where one is good, two are ok, and three+ is probably too much. Dodging the reoccurring binary of "Not the best? Never take them."

Curving Effectiveness is harder, but more rewarding because it changes the environment in which other problems exist.
There are no simple solutions here, because it involves re-evaluating base game mechanics.
Mostly, the core issue that Killing and Not Dying are the only things that matter, and there's no method to force an enemy to retreat.

This is also the reason I heavily opposed the removal of Vehicle Armour and the changes to AP: it made effectiveness far more linear and easy to calculate.
There used to be GEQ, MEQ, and Tanks/Monsters to calculate effectiveness against; these days there's just 1 Wound and 2+ Wounds.

Interestingly, the closest 40k has come to Curved Effectiveness was the recent introduction of Stratagems: you get to do The Thing with exactly one of each unit per turn, having any more than that is mostly just a back up for when the first gets killed.
But they missed the mark in a few ways:
- Not enough of the power is in the Stratagems, so paying for 1 more [Best Unit] is often still better than taking [Second Best + Stratagem].
- They tied the Stratagems to a static limited resource (CP). This meant Stratagems themselves end up ranked by efficiency, and any CP spent on [Second Best Strat] could have instead been spent on [Best Strat].
- There's no limitation on Stratagem use/timing, so just blowing your entire load as fast as possible to gain advantage is the norm.

For those of you who play MTG, I find CPs to be rather like if everyone started a game with 5 Black Lotus in play and no lands anywhere. There's no resource development, just a race to spend as hard and as efficiently as possible.

Now lets touch briefly on the socio-philosophical issue:

GW wants to be able to sell you Unit A today, and Unit B tomorrow. For that to happen, nothing but Unit A can be playable today, and Unit A can't be playable at all tomorrow.
GW doesn't want you to be able to play with the majority of your collection.
GW wants them sitting on the shelf collecting dust.
GW doesn't want the game to be good.

There are possible fixes. My preferred one would be to "liberate" the 40k rules from GW: if a large enough group of players moved to using a core ruleset not controlled by GW, then they could implement the necessary alterations. And as it would provide a "safe harbour" where players could actually use the models they own, it should have a strong enough memetic-gravity to pull in players and displace the GW rules as the most popular way to play.

Something similar almost occurred with the ITC, and it worried GW enough that they've tried their best to absorb them. The ITC just didn't go far enough in changing the rules.

[LansXero]

The mechanical issue:
1 unit of [Terminators] costs X pts, and is better than anything else that costs X pts.

That will always be true, what will maybe change is the 'size' of that gap, but there will always inherently be better and worse choices. Ideally, those would rotate by context (better in x mission, better against x target, better for a given subfaction) but even those sliders will be ranked by efficiency and the harder to meet / less common will be discarded.

People. Like. Winning. They do, what they dont like is having to earn that win, but so long as people enjoy winning they will always care about the best choice only (because that excuses them from having to think/ work more).

How to fix it: one or both of Cost and Effectiveness must be curved with number of units; costs must curve upwards and effectiveness downward.

And yet people kept fielding Castellans; and yet people gut support / utility when Deathstars get increased in points. Unless the curve is horrendous this just shifts the same thing around, people wont dumbly go 'varied medley of mediocre units' just because actual good stuff is more expensive. Unless they are all interchangeably mediocre, at which point why even have the curve, or the extra cost is just horridly high, at which point you move to second-best-but-not-super-expensive so it merely broadens good_stuff.rosz a little.

Mostly, the core issue that Killing and Not Dying are the only things that matter, and there's no method to force an enemy to retreat.

Only in Eternal War. Which is why it was bull**** for several editions but somehow everybody forgot and when they put it in a new rulebook now its great. Whoever asked for top of the turn scoring should be taken out to an alley and shot.

Now lets touch briefly on the socio-philosophical issue:

GW wants to be able to sell you Unit A today, and Unit B tomorrow. For that to happen, nothing but Unit A can be playable today, and Unit A can't be playable at all tomorrow.
GW doesn't want you to be able to play with the majority of your collection.
GW wants them sitting on the shelf collecting dust.
GW doesn't want the game to be good.

GW has plenty of whales / hobbyists / casuals buying random junk to not need to focus on this to the extent people imagine. They also have enough of those to simply not care too much about rules being better or worse. They just make them workable, and leave it to the always positive crowd to shill for free and to dismiss all criticism as WAAC. You'll see in most casual groups people are afraid of 'gatekeepers' and 'toxic waac types' shaming people for their dumb purchases or stupid choices.

My preferred one would be to "liberate" the 40k rules from GW

Cant happen, wont happen. Either GW will sue them or they will buy them off. And new player acquisition will remain in GW stores / stockists hands.

[Voidhawk]

And yet people kept fielding Castellans; and yet people gut support / utility when Deathstars get increased in points. Unless the curve is horrendous this just shifts the same thing around, people wont dumbly go 'varied medley of mediocre units' just because actual good stuff is more expensive. Unless they are all interchangeably mediocre, at which point why even have the curve, or the extra cost is just horridly high, at which point you move to second-best-but-not-super-expensive so it merely broadens good_stuff.rosz a little.

The point is to widen the Good Stuff metric until it encompasses everything. Instead of as it currently is, where whatever is Best immediately invalidates literally everything else.

You say "interchangably mediocre" and all I hear is "I hate options". To have valid decision points, one option can't be better than all others.

Have an extreme example:
1 unit of Termis, Bikers or Devastators is 100pts. 2 is 250pts.
You have 300pts to spend on an army.
How much better do Termis have to be, that a second unit is better than Bikers+Devastators?

Curved points make room for more than just the Best. And if you miss judge, you have more than one dial to adjust: the base points of each unit, or the curved costs of the 2nd+ ones.

Only in Eternal War. Which is why it was bull**** for several editions but somehow everybody forgot and when they put it in a new rulebook now its great. Whoever asked for top of the turn scoring should be taken out to an alley and shot.

I agree with you there. Top of turn scoring is pretty dumb; it makes the game much more defensive and penalises risk-taking.

GW has plenty of whales / hobbyists / casuals buying random junk to not need to focus on this to the extent people imagine. They also have enough of those to simply not care too much about rules being better or worse. They just make them workable, and leave it to the always positive crowd to shill for free and to dismiss all criticism as WAAC. You'll see in most casual groups people are afraid of 'gatekeepers' and 'toxic waac types' shaming people for their dumb purchases or stupid choices.

Now you're just victim blaming.
The GW designers have the ability, and the time/money, to create and release a ruleset in which 90% of the models they sell are valid choices.
That they choose not to is a deliberate act, done to take advantage of new players and invalidate existing models.

As players, it is in our interests to push back against this at every turn.

Cant happen, wont happen. Either GW will sue them or they will buy them off. And new player acquisition will remain in GW stores / stockists hands.

If it's a freely distributed ruleset, GW can do jack about it. There's nothing to sue. And tournament organisers can set whatever requirements/lack they like.

The writers/maintainers getting bought out is a different issue. But seeing as the purpose is to supplant the current rules anyway, that doesn't make the game worse.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If it's a freely distributed ruleset, GW can do jack about it. There's nothing to sue. And tournament organisers can set whatever requirements/lack they like.

While I agree, sadly I can't agree with this point.

Trademark. Cease and desist letters. A freely distributed ruleset (and any place hosting it) would get hit with DMCA takedown orders in about 3 heartbeats for using IP belonging to GW. And you can't avoid that--even the names of the units and factions are trademarked six ways from Sunday. You'd have to basically create all your own unit designations, have no images, and have a no lore attached whatsoever.

[Forum Explorer]

The point is to widen the Good Stuff metric until it encompasses everything. Instead of as it currently is, where whatever is Best immediately invalidates literally everything else.

You say "interchangably mediocre" and all I hear is "I hate options". To have valid decision points, one option can't be better than all others.

Have an extreme example:
1 unit of Termis, Bikers or Devastators is 100pts. 2 is 250pts.
You have 300pts to spend on an army.
How much better do Termis have to be, that a second unit is better than Bikers+Devastators?

Curved points make room for more than just the Best. And if you miss judge, you have more than one dial to adjust: the base points of each unit, or the curved costs of the 2nd+ ones.



I agree with you there. Top of turn scoring is pretty dumb; it makes the game much more defensive and penalises risk-taking.



Now you're just victim blaming.
The GW designers have the ability, and the time/money, to create and release a ruleset in which 90% of the models they sell are valid choices.
That they choose not to is a deliberate act, done to take advantage of new players and invalidate existing models.

As players, it is in our interests to push back against this at every turn.



If it's a freely distributed ruleset, GW can do jack about it. There's nothing to sue. And tournament organisers can set whatever requirements/lack they like.

The writers/maintainers getting bought out is a different issue. But seeing as the purpose is to supplant the current rules anyway, that doesn't make the game worse.

They more or less managed it in 8th. The game was in a good state, things were more or less balanced. But GW released new things and instead of these new things fitting in the meta, it shattered it. And then 9th came around and in the development of 9th, GW did something to co-opt the ITC and NOVA.

That I think is my biggest problem with 9th on a whole. We went from Eternal War, Maelstrom, ITC (and other variants), Open War cards and even narrative missions to just Eternal War and Crusade missions which mostly use the same scoring as the Eternal War missions. Before we had constant variety and now each mission is practically the same, particularly if you are playing competitively, because the best Secondaries are ones that don't depend on your opponent, so you take them every game.

Anyways, I do fully support getting the ITC to be releasing rules again. However tournament players apparently don't want that. What they want is the rules to stay the same no matter where they are playing, so they only have to master one ruleset.

[Blackhawk748]

Anyways, I do fully support getting the ITC to be releasing rules again. However tournament players apparently don't want that. What they want is the rules to stay the same no matter where they are playing, so they only have to master one ruleset.

I get the desire for one ruleset, but we didn't need to go down to literally one Rule set. Like, Maelstrom, Eternal War, and then Crusade would be fine. Then we can add more as desired.

And 8th was the closest to decent internal and external balance I think the game had ever hit, and then they chucked it out the freaking window with 9th. Like Terminators were... ok ish in 8th, though they could have been better, but what we saw wasn't what we wanted, and don't get me started on the new Dark Angels ones.

Whoever thought that was balanced needs to be slapped

[Squark]

The point is to widen the Good Stuff metric until it encompasses everything. Instead of as it currently is, where whatever is Best immediately invalidates literally everything else.

You say "interchangably mediocre" and all I hear is "I hate options". To have valid decision points, one option can't be better than all others.

Have an extreme example:
1 unit of Termis, Bikers or Devastators is 100pts. 2 is 250pts.
You have 300pts to spend on an army.
How much better do Termis have to be, that a second unit is better than Bikers+Devastators?

Curved points make room for more than just the Best. And if you miss judge, you have more than one dial to adjust: the base points of each unit, or the curved costs of the 2nd+ ones.

This sounds appealing when you put it that simply, but I don't see how it doesn't end up being a nightmare once you have units with different costs.

I mean, just using your example

-Assault Terminators (The ones we care about) cost ~215 points for a unit (less if you season in a few dual-lightning claw termies)
-A base squad of bikes costs 120 points for a unit loaded with special weapons (An attack bike being 45-55 points extra)
-A Squad of Devastators costs 130-170 points, depending on loadout.
That's a huge range of prices before we bring multiple cost curves into account. With such a system, you're not looking at a list so much as a cost benefit analysis. That's a lot to ask of casual players.

[Cheesegear]

hat's a huge range of prices before we bring multiple cost curves into account. With such a system, you're not looking at a list so much as a cost benefit analysis. That's a lot to ask of casual players.

That's why in 8th Ed., with the change to AP, and with Cutlists-with-Autoguns being able to wound Knight Castellans, Mathhammer took a rocket to the moon, since it's now so reliable. What's 'good' and 'bad' now is so clear and well defined.

Welcome to 9th Ed., where casual players become competitive players.

[LansXero]

Successive costs in a curve wont happen, so no point in arguing for or against them. Moving to a fixed unit increase size ala AoS to remove granularity seems more likely, and certainly the tendency is away from complexity, to easierly model it into their half-assed subscription app.

Tournaments cost money. Huge ass venues with tons of amenities cost money. All those increase in earnings for GW stock? Yeah, those also come from moving literal tons of stuff to independent stockists, none of which want old foggies just using their collections while using nothing new. All that money GW makes keeps the hobby viable, profitable and alive. So what incentive is there to screw a model that is working?

My own issue, other than bemoaning the very existence of 9th for robbing us of 8th, is one of tuning. The planning is what it is, the problem is too much stick too little carrot. Sadly, Maelstrom/9 is going to be in a WD which means largely ignored; positive shills wont even touch it so GW will pretend it didnt 'gel' with people and discard it, regardless of how good or bad the system actually was.