Warhammer 40K Tabletop Thread XLII: The Dice Make Fools of Us All

[LansXero]

This is why people dont like old edition players. They dont care about broken rules because they play like once every three months and want their one afternoon free from their busy lives to be filled with random nonsense, "epic" plays and dumbly op stuff. They have a pile of shame that would choke most rivers so they dont mind whatever is good, they probably have it somewhere (likely unassembled). To be fair, most of them also dont mind being on the receiving end of randumb cool stuff, but its still an entirely different play experience to what newer audiences / most people nowadays want.

[Avaris]

Now, maybe there's a way to do it that makes sense;
Regularly Resilient. This model has Ignore Wounds (5+) against attacks with a Strength of 3 or less.

...or maybe against attacks that have AP-? Not sure. But I do know that bringing back "Your unit is 100% useless against my unit." is very definitely a step backwards.

"It takes 894 Lasguns to destroy [unit]."

Spoiler: Hell Yeah

Show

Another approach might be to make use of the ‘no more than X wounds in a phase’ rules? Perhaps limit by AP or Str? So a lascannon with high strength and high AP can do as many wounds as it likes, whereas a vehicle can only take 5 wounds a phase from lasgun level weaponry?

[LansXero]

Another approach might be to make use of the ‘no more than X wounds in a phase’ rules? Perhaps limit by AP or Str? So a lascannon with high strength and high AP can do as many wounds as it likes, whereas a vehicle can only take 5 wounds a phase from lasgun level weaponry?

You and several other posters seem to have missed the reason for the change.

ANY imperviousness you add to certain models, it means that whatever can counter it gets singled out during deployment, blasted, and the rest of the game is the tough model player running circles whie whats left of the other army plinks at him uselessly.

If alpha strike is an issue now, imagine when you make it so whoever goes first goes after the other guy's anti-tank then becomes unstoppable for the rest of the match. Dice roll means I get to own you on round 1 - 2, and you dont actually have any reason to play any of the others because core mechanics just tell you to give up.

This then shifts to 'all anti-tank, all the time' which then gets countered by sneaky hordes who bank on anti-tank low rate of fire, and edges out people who wanted to field their vehicles in the first place because everything is tailored to blow them up. Resulting in vehicles being even LESS relevant, which is the entire opposite of what you set out to do.

Older editions worked because the internet wasn't yet a thing, and because people aproached the game with a different mindset. Thats over. Good_stuff.rosz is the new normal and any highly skeweable changed you want to go back to will be met with heavy spam and counter-meta shifts much harder and much faster than in any previous edition.

[IthilanorStPete]

Speaking as a mostly-spectator looking in, the idea that plinking away with boltguns at a tank doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me; I liked the AV system back in 5th, but I admittedly never experienced the "parking lot" effect. It sounds like the issue there was more a lack of viable anti-vehicle weaponry, was that the issue? Seems like making heavy weapons a bit more common would be the solution to that, though I suppose that doesn't make sense for all armies; I have a hard time imagining Orks effectively using anti-tank missiles . The unified system of Toughness and Wounds does make things simpler, though, so I understand why GW implemented it and why people like it.

EDIT, LansXero's post went up while I was writing this:

You and several other posters seem to have missed the reason for the change.

ANY imperviousness you add to certain models, it means that whatever can counter it gets singled out during deployment, blasted, and the rest of the game is the tough model player running circles whie whats left of the other army plinks at him uselessly.

If alpha strike is an issue now, imagine when you make it so whoever goes first goes after the other guy's anti-tank then becomes unstoppable for the rest of the match. Dice roll means I get to own you on round 1 - 2, and you dont actually have any reason to play any of the others because core mechanics just tell you to give up.

This then shifts to 'all anti-tank, all the time' which then gets countered by sneaky hordes who bank on anti-tank low rate of fire, and edges out people who wanted to field their vehicles in the first place because everything is tailored to blow them up. Resulting in vehicles being even LESS relevant, which is the entire opposite of what you set out to do.

Older editions worked because the internet wasn't yet a thing, and because people aproached the game with a different mindset. Thats over. Good_stuff.rosz is the new normal and any highly skeweable changed you want to go back to will be met with heavy spam and counter-meta shifts much harder and much faster than in any previous edition.

That's definitely understandable. To my mind it highlights the problems with the current "all of my stuff goes, then all of your stuff goes" system, but if we're reworking that we're talking about a totally different system.

[Wraith]

Vehicles were changed to simply being 'big models' with higher Toughness and more Wounds, and that you didn't like that, or just a Monster with a different Keyword. Whereas I, did like it.

In retrospect I understand why it was done. I thought that the AV system was nice and simple, but then I've been playing the game for a long time and I "just know" how it "should" work, which isn't the same as it actually being easy to use and efficient.

I'd honestly be interested to hear what a new (9th edition) 40k player would think of the AV rules, hearing them for the first time. I know that back in the day we made fun of them when they were inconsistent - why aren't Bikes the same thing as vehicles and have an AV? It can't be because they're 'open topped', otherwise Dark Eldar Raiders would have wounds too! etc - but that aside... Was the division between Monsters and Vehicles an inherently bad system, or just a poorly implemented one? I liked it for the fluff, and the crunch had it's moments of success too.

I like to imagine it's the latter. Frankly, one viable alternative that I could think of for our currently wonky To Wound chart would be to replace ALL models' Toughness with an "AV score" - roll d6, add the weapon's strength, do you beat my Space Marines' T of 7? Would need game-wide rebalancing of all models, but a) it'd be a lot easier to remember and b) it would help bridge the gap between Vehicles and Monsters to account and balance for exactly what you just described.

[Cheesegear]

ANY imperviousness you add to certain models, it means that whatever can counter it gets singled out during deployment, blasted, and the rest of the game is the tough model player running circles whie whats left of the other army plinks at him uselessly.

That's why you gotta go first against Death Guard.
Anything that the Death Guard have, that actually deals Damage, is going to target anything good you have on their Turn 1. If they destroy or neuter your Damage-dealing capacity in their Turn 1, your Turn 1 becomes significantly less effective against Death Guard, whose entire game plan relies on you not being able to deal damage.

But let's make the whole game, Death Guard, is the solution to that problem? Uhhh...I have serious questions.

If alpha strike is an issue now, imagine when you make it so whoever goes first goes after the other guy's anti-tank then becomes unstoppable for the rest of the match.

*Looks at Death Guard Vehicles during 8th Ed.*
You mean like that?

This then shifts to 'all anti-tank, all the time' which then gets countered by sneaky hordes who bank on anti-tank low rate of fire

Hey, you played 5th Ed.!
However the problem with 5th Ed. was that Razorbacks had Twin Assault Cannons, so that sneaky hordes were simply obliterated.

The counter-meta obliterates the meta.
But the counter-counter-meta was obliterated by the actual meta, making it useless.

Older editions worked because the internet wasn't yet a thing, and because people aproached the game with a different mindset.

Without the internet you had to quite literally 'do your own research.'
Sometimes this was your playtesting. Sometimes this was with maths. But you had to do it yourself. That's over.

In 20xx, if you have access to the internet, then you have access to all data from all Codecies, more or less equally. If you don't know what's in a Codex or how it works, you can ask how it works (you can also...Find...It). You no longer need to do your own research, because you can just copy someone else's. Look up the quadrillion Guides to any Faction or unit, and find an author you like who plays reasonably competitively and you're already halfway there. You don't need to playtest everything, because post-8th Ed., Mathhammer is more-or-less more reliable than it's ever been, so you can 'playtest' by simply using a Spreadsheet. Once again, if you don't know how, just ask someone who does and they'll tell you everything (ideally).

The gatekeeping ****head in your meta who refuses to teach you how to beat him, is no longer relevant. If there's a gatekeeping ****head in your meta who can't be beaten, just ask the internet how to tailor against him and then just take those models.

The mindset, was simply you had to figure out how something works, because it wasn't like you could ask a teacher or parent for help. You were good at the game, and you figured it out. Someone, had to be the first one to write a walkthrough. Someone, somewhere, was the first one to figure it out. In the age of shareable internet, you no longer need to do anything. Perhaps more importantly, is that your opponents can read exactly the same stuff that you do. There's no more 'hidden gems.' Everything is shared, all the time.

What you can do, for yourself, is find out what's important to you. That is, reading your own meta, and applying the knowledge that you've been given.
Tournament data, isn't exactly one-to-one with casual data (I could elaborate on that on the weekend if I remember). Because the casual meta, isn't the same as the tournament meta. But, the same rules still apply. You might not need to know how to ruin Death Guard, because everyone in your meta is from 9th Ed., and no-one started in 8th Ed. using Death Guard from the starter set. But you may need to know how to ruin Necrons, and the answers are actually in your Codex, if you know how the Necron Codex, works.

You don't know how the Necron Codex works? Cool. Ask someone on the internet. You don't need to playtest or do anything. Because someone else has already done the playtesting, run the numbers and read the Necron Codex, for you.

In retrospect I understand why it was done. I thought that the AV system was nice and simple, but then I've been playing the game for a long time and I "just know" how it "should" work, which isn't the same as it actually being easy to use and efficient.

Again, a light bulb went off in my head the more I thought about it.
Vehicles don't suck because the AV system was changed.
Vehicles suck, because Vehicle Toughness was nerfed into the ground (I dunno, maybe 7th Ed. happened or something and ruined it for everyone)

As I said, Land Raiders should be T10, if not T11, if we ported the AV system to 9th Ed. Similarly, on the lower end, Venoms would be T7, and Rhinos would be T8.
That's obviously not the case. That's the real problem.
"T8 max." is what's ruining Vehicles. Not lack of AV.

[LansXero]

Was the division between Monsters and Vehicles an inherently bad system, or just a poorly implemented one? I liked it for the fluff, and the crunch had it's moments of success too.

Enter Imperial Knights / 8

> Few things can crack Rotate Ion Shields while also tanking Knight firepower to the face.
> EVERYONE gears up to blow up at least 1 Knight (24 wounds of T8 behind a 4++, sometimes with a FNP) in one go.
> Any vehicle that isn't a Knight (or impossible to hit like an Aeldari plane) vanishes from the game, as anything that can one-round a Knight can evaporate a Leman Russ, Predator, etc.
> Despite this, heavy whining about 'unkillable' knights leads to successive nerfs because even with the heavy shift to all anti-tank all the time the game is diminished and feels like a poorer experience.

There is no need to guess, it was tried, worked as predicted, and the game moved away from it.

I like to imagine it's the latter. Frankly, one viable alternative that I could think of for our currently wonky To Wound chart would be to replace ALL models' Toughness with an "AV score" - roll d6, add the weapon's strength, do you beat my Space Marines' T of 7?

So 'to wound' is T-S on the dice? That seems oddly cruel to infantry; T3 gets wounded on 2s by lasguns, T4 gets wounded on 2s by bolters as well :v (roll 2, add S4 = 6, beats T4).

As I said, Land Raiders should be T10, if not T11, if we ported the AV system to 9th Ed. Similarly, on the lower end, Venoms would be T7, and Rhinos would be T8.
That's obviously not the case. That's the real problem.
"T8 max." is what's ruining Vehicles. Not lack of AV.

This just makes +1 to wound way too valuable. Which coming from an IF main is understandable, specially in the context of vehicles, but anti-tank bouncing off vehicle thoughness makes it pretty weird. Lascannons would have to go to S10 alongside meltas, missiles maybe S9? Still, it has rippling ramifications that are unlikely to work well (Lascannons going to 2+ to wound instead of 3+ vs Gravis and Terminators, although transhuman is still broken but now more so).

[snowblizz]

Older editions worked because the internet wasn't yet a thing, and because people aproached the game with a different mindset. Thats over. Good_stuff.rosz is the new normal and any highly skeweable changed you want to go back to will be met with heavy spam and counter-meta shifts much harder and much faster than in any previous edition.

B.S.

The Internet was a thing, we hashed all the stuff on GW's own boards, sometimes with the game developers. And complained they should ask us first before releasing the easily broken stuff.

I've played against many a netlist before the millennium turned. Most of them by people who had no clue how the list worked because they only had the list to go off. There's nothing new with that mindset either. Even more hilarious when they are trying to act all knowy but you can tell they've only seen this done to themselves once before.

Speaking as a mostly-spectator looking in, the idea that plinking away with boltguns at a tank doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me; I liked the AV system back in 5th, but I admittedly never experienced the "parking lot" effect. It sounds like the issue there was more a lack of viable anti-vehicle weaponry, was that the issue? Seems like making heavy weapons a bit more common would be the solution to that, though I suppose that doesn't make sense for all armies;

Basically you shouldn't be playing 40k with Titans and Armoured Companies. No you can't play with all and only tanks. Problem sorted.

I have a hard time imagining Orks effectively using anti-tank missiles .

There's even special Orks for it. The ones insane enough to stand in front of Tank Shocking Land Raider. And they didn't use them very effectively no. BS 2 didn't get you that far. But there were *a lot* of those rokkits around.

[LansXero]

B.S.

The Internet was a thing

Ok, boomer.

I've played against many a netlist before the millennium turned. Most of them by people who had no clue how the list worked because they only had the list to go off.

That is actually my point. Message boards were niche and had limited resources to share, finding PDF copies of EVERYTHING, even before the phisical copies were even out, wasn't as widespread, but also, it didn't permeate and saturate the cultures as it does now. List? You now get play by play battle reports, several times a week, on dozens of channels for all styles of play. You get play by play reports and analysis and critique and deconstruction, hell you can even do none of it, hire a coach (overpriced imho) and let him not only build your list but also tell you exactly what to do when and how to play vs each match up.

There's nothing new with that mindset either. Even more hilarious when they are trying to act all knowy but you can tell they've only seen this done to themselves once before.

This I agree with. The 'I'll just copy someone else to succeed' mindset was a thing as far as anything could be copied. BUT the quality of what you could copy, who you had access to copy it from, and how trivially easy it was to do was nowhever near the level of what we have now.

There's even special Orks for it. The ones insane enough to stand in front of Tank Shocking Land Raider. And they didn't use them very effectively no. BS 2 didn't get you that far. But there were *a lot* of those rokkits around.

Odd that Orkz wouldn't solve Armored problems the way Marines did: take a 100odd point model, point him to a 400+ vehicle, let him smash it to pieces with a giant fist or hammer.

[LeSwordfish]

Older editions worked because the internet wasn't yet a thing, and because people aproached the game with a different mindset.

ah yes the simple bucolic pre-internet days of 2013

[Cheesegear]

Most of them by people who had no clue how the list worked because they only had the list to go off.

And now we have Twitch streams and YouTube videos, which show people not only how to build the list, but also play the list.
We have entire tournament-level games streamed.
We know exactly what decision is made. We know exactly what 'we' would have done differently. We know why any game played, turned out the way it did. We even see dice rolls now.
When someone's dice rolls like fire in a tournament game, we can actually find out that that happened.

We had internet. But it wasn't like it is, now. We can actually get information straight from some of the highest-level tournament players on the planet, in their words.

We no longer read a netlist and have to wonder what the guy was thinking. We no longer need to read a battle report and wonder why the decision was made to do what someone, did. Because we can actually see recorded video of the terrain set up and how their opponent deployed and what Stratagems their opponent used in counterplay, and we also know what, specifically, was put into Reserves, instead of having to guess. Once again, because we can see it. Not all the time, sure. But often enough to know that it certainly is a thing that exists, and can be learned from.

"Drukhari beat Death Guard." How? Show me. Oh...Yeah that makes sense. I don't have to guess how it happened. I watched it happen. And I see the allowances and the reasons for why it happened. I know that that perfect storm is very difficult to replicate, and as such is not an example I'm willing to use in discussion. Except to say that yes it did happen.

Game tapes are a thing. Even for 40K.

There's nothing new with that mindset either. Even more hilarious when they are trying to act all knowy but you can tell they've only seen this done to themselves once before.

...That's called learning. They do it the first time, and botch it. They should've waited 'til Turn 2 to use their Stratagem out of Reinforcements. Rather than blowing their load on Turn 1 when they were out of position or their opponent was able to counter by going first.
Then they do it to the next guy, executed well.

There is always a 'next game', and the guy running a netlist he knows nothing about, probably has the capacity to learn, because he's a person, and not a straw potato.

[Wraith]

So 'to wound' is T-S on the dice? That seems oddly cruel to infantry; T3 gets wounded on 2s by lasguns, T4 gets wounded on 2s by bolters as well :v (roll 2, add S4 = 6, beats T4).

As I said, it would require re-writing the stats for every unit in the game. Weapons too, probably.

The idea is that '4' would no longer be the standard starting point for stats - weapons' Strength and units' Toughness would be rebalanced so that Boltors still wound Marines 50% of the time, and Guardsmen more reliably, but also there'd be a sensible scale between 1-10 for Strength and Toughness to encompass things like vehicles and Monsters. Monsters could have T10 or 11 again - Normal weapons would work, albeit only in large numbers, Snipers would be useful again, and Monkey-Brain like big numbers.

I haven't thought it all through (Can you tell? ) but in broad terms I think something like the old AV system would be where I'd start, to make a less clunky and more easily managed system.

[Fergie0044]

That's why you gotta go first against Death Guard.
Anything that the Death Guard have, that actually deals Damage, is going to target anything good you have on their Turn 1. If they destroy or neuter your Damage-dealing capacity in their Turn 1, your Turn 1 becomes significantly less effective against Death Guard, whose entire game plan relies on you not being able to deal damage.

Context - while my main army is DG, I haven't got to play their new codex yet because *gestures at the world*

Is this how DG are now? Since when did we have good T1 shooting? Unless you skew your list that way with 3 crawlers and a bunch of forgeworld dreads. But if you do that then I doubt you'd have the bodies left to play the objectives game. I remember back in 8th I would usually want to go second as DG, as allowing my opponent's to move first meant more of my guns would be in range for T1 shooting.

[LansXero]

As I said, it would require re-writing the stats for every unit in the game (...) to make a less clunky and more easily managed system.

Not that this isn't true, but the current system is already considered simplistic and barebones. Not sure how much more easily managed you can make it or how you go from 'its too simple' to 'lets make it simpler' as a solution.

4 is the baseline because its 50% on a d6 which is all that 40k will likely ever use. So if T4 is marine toughness, a boltEr would have to be S1 so it wounds only 50% of the time against them. So what are lasguns? S0? Its a weird workaround for something that is, cant stress this enough, easy to recall even if you dont remember it.

I doubt you'd have the bodies left to play the objectives game

People keep saying 'objectives game' as if it existed. Look at the GT missions: you get 5VP/round for holding 1 objective. 1, thats it, likely the one you start the game on top of. Then, another 5 VP for getting to the next closer one. Thats all. How many bodies do you need to play that 'objectives game'? Do it for all 4 scoring phases, you get 40 VPs. Maximum you can get is 45 anyways, you can make up those last 5 with secondaries or by killing enough of the enemy that you trigger 'hold more than enemy' for a round. There is no 'objectives game' in 9E that requires mobility or body count.

[Saambell]

I'm late to a lot of this, but I got some of my own tales of the weirdness of the AV system.

"Infantry shouldn't be able to punch tanks to death" says someone who has never had their Leman Russ tanks meleed to death by a squad of tactical marines. On many occasions. AV14 front, and AV13 sides mean squat when melee hits the rear AV10 and thus anything with S4+ can kill them. Hull Points were real bad for tanks, and likely why so many of the Eldar and Tau walkers were so much better, as they were totally immune to those issues.

On the reverse side of that, imagine having your 30 man Boyz squad, with no power klaw or grenades, wiped out in melee by a single sentinel which was literally invincible to them, and ran them down when they tried to retreat from melee wiping the entire unit with no effort. Sure, its "ok" when space marine tanks are immune to melee, but when one of the weakest walkers in the game can rout hordes 3 times their cost, and take no damage doing so, you have to wonder why this is allowed. An open top chicken walker where you can SEE the chump guardsman sitting there, and 30 boyz cant take a pot shot or jump up there, or push the thing over? All cause they didnt bring a Klaw or grenades.

Yes, the To Wound "chart" needs some improvements, and maybe some things could use higher toughness, but I still prefer it a lot over the old AV system. And especially Hull Points, those things were real bad.

[Squark]

It's also worth pointing out that armored vehicles are actually fairly vulnerable once you get a couple of people climbing on them. It's not a death sentence, but if one of the attackers knows what they're doing (Or gets lucky), an unsupported armored vehicle is pretty vulnerable- Especially if the terrain is uneven enough that someone can safelt get under the vehicle without getting crushed*

*The Normandy Countryside is full of these little hedgerows that are just tall enough for a partisan to lie down and hide behind- then stick an improvised explosive under a tank as it passes over the hedgerow.

[Lord Torath]

I'm late to a lot of this, but I got some of my own tales of the weirdness of the AV system.

"Infantry shouldn't be able to punch tanks to death" says someone who has never had their Leman Russ tanks meleed to death by a squad of tactical marines. On many occasions. AV14 front, and AV13 sides mean squat when melee hits the rear AV10 and thus anything with S4+ can kill them. Hull Points were real bad for tanks, and likely why so many of the Eldar and Tau walkers were so much better, as they were totally immune to those issues.

On the reverse side of that, imagine having your 30 man Boyz squad, with no power klaw or grenades, wiped out in melee by a single sentinel which was literally invincible to them, and ran them down when they tried to retreat from melee wiping the entire unit with no effort. Sure, its "ok" when space marine tanks are immune to melee, but when one of the weakest walkers in the game can rout hordes 3 times their cost, and take no damage doing so, you have to wonder why this is allowed. An open top chicken walker where you can SEE the chump guardsman sitting there, and 30 boyz cant take a pot shot or jump up there, or push the thing over? All cause they didnt bring a Klaw or grenades.

Yes, the To Wound "chart" needs some improvements, and maybe some things could use higher toughness, but I still prefer it a lot over the old AV system. And especially Hull Points, those things were real bad.

When 3rd first came out, there was a lot of mocking about how main battle tanks could now be taken out by bolt pistols.

Hit locations also meant that you had a chance of hitting the pilot of an open-topped vehicle with shooting, and in melee, you could direct your attacks against any location your model could reasonably reach.

As a filthy casual, I am fine with needing heavy weapons to take out med- to heavy vehicles. Lasguns should not be taking out Leman Russes. In a close assault against a stationary target, sure, there should be a chance. 2nd and 3rd (IIRC) both had rules for increased penetration against stationary vehicles. I'm not sure what the current edition says.

Edit: And yes, I do have a pile of shame: 5-6 landspeeders, a predator (but I really like my lego ones) a falcon and fire prism, a bunch of guardians, and some misc. tyranids.

[Wraith]

Bunch of updated rules have been leaked, mostly the new Mechanicus and a random Sister Exorcist. All of the full stats are on Bell of Lost Souls/Reddit, paraphrased below.

Spoiler: Sisters of Battle Exorcist

Show

Statlines: -1T -1S -1W +1 Ld
Exorcist Conflagration Rockets change from D1 to D2
Exorcist Missile Launcher change from AP-3 to -2
Heavy Bolter change from D1 to D2

Spoiler: Mechanicus Archeoraptor

Show

Archaeopter Stratoraptor
Statline is unchanged
Cognis Heavy Stubber changes from Heavy 3 to Assault 4
Cognis Twin Lascannon changes from Heavy 2 to Assault 2, Damage changes from D6 to D3+3

Archaeopter Fusilave Statline is unchanged
Cognis Heavy Stubber changes from Heavy 3 to Assault 4

Archaeopter Transvector Statline is unchanged
Cognis Heavy Stubber changes from Heavy 3 to Assault 4
Twin Cognis Heavy Stubber changes from Heavy 6 to Assault 8

Spoiler: Serberys Riders/Sulfurhounds

Show

Serberys Raiders
Toughness changes from 3 to 4
Wounds change from 3 to 2
Attacks change from 1 to 2
Galvanic Carbine changes from AP- to AP-1

Serberys Sulphurhounds
Toughness changes from 3 to 4
Wounds change from 3 to 2
Attacks change from 1 to 2
Phosphor Blast Carbine changes from R24″ toR18″ and from Assault 4 to Assault 2d3
Phosphor Blast Pistol changes from Pistol 1 to Pistol D3
Sulphur Breath changes from R8″ toR12″ and from AP-1 to AP-2
Power Maul changes from S+2 to S+3 and from AP-1 to AP-2

Spoiler: Ironstriders/Dragoons

Show

Ironstrider Ballistari
Save changes from 4+ to 3+
Twin Cognis autocannon changes from Heavy 4 to Assault 6
Twin Cognis lascannon changes from Heavy 2 to Assault 2, and from D:D6 to D:D3+3

Sydonian Dragoons
Save changes from 4+ to 3+
Attacks changes from 3 to 4
Radium Jezzail AP changes from 0 to -2
Taser Lance AP changes from -1 to -2

TL;DR - Mostly buffs across the board, except for the Exorcist whose stats have been brought in line with the typical Rhino rules and the Sulfurhounds who have gained +1T in exchange for -1W.

[Blackhawk748]

Speaking as a mostly-spectator looking in, the idea that plinking away with boltguns at a tank doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me; I liked the AV system back in 5th, but I admittedly never experienced the "parking lot" effect. It sounds like the issue there was more a lack of viable anti-vehicle weaponry, was that the issue? Seems like making heavy weapons a bit more common would be the solution to that, though I suppose that doesn't make sense for all armies; I have a hard time imagining Orks effectively using anti-tank missiles . The unified system of Toughness and Wounds does make things simpler, though, so I understand why GW implemented it and why people like it.

We didn't. Well, we sorta did but there was a reason 45 Lootas was standard through all of 4th-6th. When all you have is a boatload of Autocannon rounds, you use the hell out of them.

Did nothing to stop AV 14 from rolling over our entire army because a whopping 7 things in the whole Codex could hurt it. Non Mortar Mek Guns, Shokk Attack guns (on a roll of 8 or higher) Power Klaws, Deff Dredds (which have been terrible for pretty much their entire existence), Rokkit Launchas, Tankhammas, and our giant gun on our Looted Wagon That Totally Isn't Just a Basilisk With Grots.

On top of this, most of those only did something on a 6. So ya, have fun with that as an Ork. It was Melee the Tank or Die. And it was usually Die.

[Ornithologist]

We didn't. Well, we sorta did but there was a reason 45 Lootas was standard through all of 4th-6th. When all you have is a boatload of Autocannon rounds, you use the hell out of them.

Did nothing to stop AV 14 from rolling over our entire army because a whopping 7 things in the whole Codex could hurt it. Non Mortar Mek Guns, Shokk Attack guns (on a roll of 8 or higher) Power Klaws, Deff Dredds (which have been terrible for pretty much their entire existence), Rokkit Launchas, Tankhammas, and our giant gun on our Looted Wagon That Totally Isn't Just a Basilisk With Grots.

On top of this, most of those only did something on a 6. So ya, have fun with that as an Ork. It was Melee the Tank or Die. And it was usually Die.

To be fair, a Nob Bike Squad was the main fixer of tanks, and broken in its own way for almost that whole time. Yay Wound Allocation nonsense!

[Corvus]

Sounds like GW having difficulty designing rules that make sense and work.

I've given a WW2 game a go (Flames of War) where tanks are immune to infantry weapons and it's perfectly acceptable to see a Panzer company of nothing but tanks go up against an infantry company with no tanks - and for the infantry to win.

The infantry does have anti-tank guns, which are usually the first target if the tanks, but the infantry can dig in which makes them very hard to kill and the only way to kill them is assault them, which leaves the tanks vulnerable to the infantry.

[Destro_Yersul]

I'm not going to post here every time, but since this video is a follow up to the last one, I thought I would.

The big terrain piece I built is now painted.

That is all.

[Renegade Paladin]

This just makes +1 to wound way too valuable. Which coming from an IF main is understandable, specially in the context of vehicles, but anti-tank bouncing off vehicle thoughness makes it pretty weird. Lascannons would have to go to S10 alongside meltas, missiles maybe S9? Still, it has rippling ramifications that are unlikely to work well (Lascannons going to 2+ to wound instead of 3+ vs Gravis and Terminators, although transhuman is still broken but now more so).

Lascannons always damaged AV14 on 5+, though. The melta rule would need to be reworked back to some semblance of how it used to be, but rolling 2d6 and adding the results to wound at half range would mathematically about do it (actually it would be better since S8 still wounds T10 on 5+ so you'd need 5 on the 2d6 rather than 7; perhaps 1d6+1d3 for the wound roll which would still do it on average but not below average). You can still spam vehicles to death with small arms fire just as effectively but far fewer weapons in the game would evaporate them. Which, having seen what are supposed to be main battle tanks casually evaporated countless times since the advent of 8th edition, is kind of needed.

[LansXero]

is kind of needed.

Why? What purpose does having unkillable models serve in a game where being stationary and sturdy on top of a couple of objectives is already the strongest solve?

[Forum Explorer]

Why? What purpose does having unkillable models serve in a game where being stationary and sturdy on top of a couple of objectives is already the strongest solve?

I think it's more along the lines of, if I'm spending 150+ points on a vehicle, it should take a significant amount of fire power to kill, so I have a good chance of shooting it.

But in that regard, I think more vehicles just need a few more wounds. Like Leman Russes could probably go up to 14 wounds.

Though I'm also of the opinion that 10 Wound vehicles should only bracket once.

[LansXero]

I think it's more along the lines of, if I'm spending 150+ points on a vehicle, it should take a significant amount of fire power to kill

Trying to do it with not-antitank under the current paradigm achieves this. You'd need a disproportionate amount of shots to kill tanks wounding on 5s and 6s with low AP shots. Anti-tank still has low ROF, so the real issue is in model count being so nerfed that it fails to act as a check to taking 'all low ROF, all high S high AP, nothing else'.

[Renegade Paladin]

Why? What purpose does having unkillable models serve in a game where being stationary and sturdy on top of a couple of objectives is already the strongest solve?

That by no means makes them unkillable. It makes them require actual effort to kill. Currently a Baneblade can be casually slaughtered by units costing a quarter of its points value.

[Forum Explorer]

Trying to do it with not-antitank under the current paradigm achieves this. You'd need a disproportionate amount of shots to kill tanks wounding on 5s and 6s with low AP shots. Anti-tank still has low ROF, so the real issue is in model count being so nerfed that it fails to act as a check to taking 'all low ROF, all high S high AP, nothing else'.

I think the problem is that some anti-tank is just way too point effective right now. Like Multi-meltas. 2 Shots per gun, wounding on 4+ at worst, AP -4 so no save, D6 damage, or D6+2 damage. Retributors are a big offender, but even stuff like Attack Bikes, and Land Speeders are way too efficient at kill tanks. Not to mention Eradicators.

And because Multimeltas are so cheap, you also take them to answer things like Deathguard Terminators or Custodes. So it isn't even an opportunity cost in taking them, they are just the best option for every army to have.

[LansXero]

That by no means makes them unkillable. It makes them require actual effort to kill. Currently a Baneblade can be casually slaughtered by units costing a quarter of its points value.

That merely means Baneblades are overcosted or current anti-tank is undercosted / pushed. Special rules on LoWs would be fine to fix this, as all that firepower doesnt matter when you're just as easy to blow up as 2 russes.

However, due to cascading effects, hard to kill Leman Russes mean even harder to kill Baneblades and mean impossible to kill Imperial Knights / Marine tanks / DG tanks. People often focus on their issue only and forget there are other ends of the scale that would get overpushed if they fixed their issue into 'normal'.

[Cheesegear]

"Infantry shouldn't be able to punch tanks to death" says someone who has never had their Leman Russ tanks meleed to death by a squad of tactical marines.

Wrong. Tactical Marines used Krak Grenades which were S6, AV10 was meaningless, unless you were using Space Marines with more than 1 Attack (e.g; Veterans), and then the Space Marine player had to make a decision whether or not to use multiple S4 attacks that Glanced on 6s, or use a single S6 attack that had a chance of just missing. Immobilised Vehicles, were dead Vehicles. Terminators with Lightning Claws, in Melee with Vehicles, were the real losers. And that's one of the reasons that Terminators with Lightning Claws have never existed; As Terminators, they don't have Grenades, and 6s to Glance, even with re-rolls to wound/pen., is bad. Also, y'know, Hammernators have a 3+ Invulnerable and that was Just Better Always.

The good Leman Russes had rear AV11, and it was understood that because Vehicles could be punched to death by S3 Orks, the 3 variants of Russ with Rear AV10, were garbage. Similarly, because Krak Greandes are S6, it was understood that Walkers with Front AV12, were trash, because Space Marines all came with Krak Grenades as standard. So it was all Ironclads (and Soul Grinders), all the time, because Front AV13 Walkers were the business.

Second. Because Rear AV10 Leman Russes could be punched to death by anything S4 (not Tactical Marines, as I said, they used Krak Grenades), it was understood that Guard players had to bubble-wrap their tanks, so that they couldn't be Melee'd to death by Furious Charging Orks with a bajillion S4 attacks each.

On many occasions. AV14 front, and AV13 sides mean squat when melee hits the rear AV10 and thus anything with S4+ can kill them.

AV13 was the meta, because your opponent had to Melee your Vehicles to break them, because S6 was Eldar, and Eldar were the meta. If you bubble-wrapped your Vehicles, you couldn't be Melee'd, and you were AV13, so the S6 Eldar couldn't shoot you to death, either, unless they used Shuriken Cannons with Doom and got lucky on the Rending rolls. Which they quite often did. But the meta was about forcing Eldar to use Shuriken Cannons and not...Anything else that was way better.

- the To Wound "chart" needs some improvements
- and maybe some things could use higher toughness
- but I still prefer it a lot over the old AV system.
- And especially Hull Points, those things were real bad.

Your reasoning is flawed.
But I agree with your conclusions.