Hey everyone, Reecius here from Frontline Gaming to discuss 7th ed as we settle into this new edition.
If you want to skip the rationale behind this article, just read the following two sentences:
Out of the book, 7th edition is a total train-wreck in terms of game balance.
With community imposed restrictions/gentleman’s agreements, it is the best edition of the game yet.
If you’re still reading, then I will explain the above statements. 7th edition is a sand box rule set. GW has handed us the tools to play whatever type of game we want to play. That is cool! But, without agreements made at the table or before an event, 7th ed can be the most unenjoyable waste of 3 hours you ever experienced. I will go into more depth as to why I made such a strong statement.
If you come to the table to just play a game, and your opponent did the same, you both bring with you all of the pre-conceived notions as to what a game of 40k should be. That varies wildly from person to person. For some, it means recreating a narrative from one of the many GW books. Their army represents a part of the fiction of the gaming universe and their objective is to see that come to life on the tabletop. They are “Forging the Narrative” so to speak and find enjoyment in seeing a cooperatively told story unfold before them.
For other gamers, the objective is to have a competition wherein the objective is to try to defeat your opponent through clever list building, intelligent tactics and luck. This player sees the game as a tactical exercise and builds an army for maximum advantage. They find enjoyment in pushing the limit of their skill against a like-minded opponent in a tough, close game.
This division between gamer mentalities is something none of us are unfamiliar with. We often use the pejoratives WAAC (Win At All Costs) and FAAC (Fluff At All Costs) or sometimes Fluff Bunny to describe one another (which really, we shouldn’t as the terms are insulting and only further divide us). All you have to do to see an example of it is to scroll down to the comments below to see my point illustrated.
At any rate, when these two different types of gamers come to the same table, it can cause conflict because they are both seeking essentially different types of games and feel let down or frustrated when they don’t get that. 7th ed simultaneously allows both types of players to get the exact type of game they want while also having an even wider gap between them than before. It is a mixed blessing.
So what we are left with is is the weight of responsibility of communicating with our fellow gamers the type of game we want to play. As a casual gamer, you have total freedom now to play just the army and game you want to play. That’s great! I am genuinely stoked for my casual gaming buddies as 7th gives them everything they want. That is awesome. I love a good narrative campaign, myself, and this allows you to do that like you never could before. Just be sure to communicate what limitations you want with your opponent so that you can have a fun, fair game.
Even things that I immediately raised my eyebrows at like Allies of the Apocalypse (Daemons and Grey Knights in the same army…WTF?!) and unbound armies, my perspective was changed about when some of the little whipper snappers in our store heard they could use their Orks and Nids in the same army and they were stoked! We had another customer come in that was super excited to add IG to their Nids to make a Genestealer Cult. And another was excited to use Unbound rules to make an all Assault Marine army led by Shrike. My mind, being a TO and competitive gamer, went immediately to how broken this COULD be and unfun it COULD be. But, when you communicate to your opponent, hey, I want to use this for making a specific, fun, themed army then it’s awesome. When a bunch of 10-12 year old munchkins are using it to just put all of their toys on the table and have a blast playing 40K, again, it’s awesome. When a competitive minded gamer is using it to make the most powerful list they can within the limits of the rules, it isn’t fun for most folks unless they are bring the same type of army and are looking for the same type of game. That is why communication about intent is going to be critical in this edition.
The big difference between the casual and competitive game though, is that the competitive gamer will more often than not come to the table with a preset rules packet as to what these agreements will be. The reason being is that practically, it is the only way to run an event. This is why the competitive crowd is upset that the new rules are so open because it fundamentally undermines the nature of fair competition. At their core, competitive gamers crave balance because most of us get the juice from those ultra close games were every decision and toss of the dice is critical and you know you have to play your best against an opponent that is also giving it their best. That is where the excitement is for us. That can only happen when the competition is relatively fair, to reduce outside variables and increase the odds that the game’s outcome came down to player choices and some luck.
Looked at from that perspective, 7th ed presents a lot of challenges for the competitive crowd. While this edition did fix a lot of little issues (and thanks for that) it created some big issues. Competitive players MUST exclude some of the rules form 7th ed in order to play it fairly. Outside of an event that is an “anything goes” Ard Boyz style event (or more accurately, an Apocalypse Tournament), you just can’t play 40K “as it lays” in a competitive setting. One guy shows up with an army of all Level 3 Heralds of Tzeentch and then summons 1,000pts of Daemons onto the table a turn, or turns them all into Blood Thirsters, or whatever, and you can see how quickly the game degenerates into absurdity. There has to be some base level agreement on restrictions for tournaments to function.
While some folks have been screaming that the tournament players should GTFO, or deal with the fact that 40K is not a tournament game (which really, is an incredibly spiteful stance to take. I would be genuinely sad for the casual crowd if the shoe was on the other foot), the fact is we PREFER to play the game competitively and there is nothing wrong with that. We form a large part of the purchasing power of the community, drive a lot of the media that everyone enjoys, and host most of the big events that are so much fun for everyone. That is not to say we are better than anyone, we aren’t, just that it really would be bad for everyone if we as a group decided to go support another game system. Everyone would lose in that situation.
Limitations will help to provide a fair and fun playing field upon which to play. As TOs we should come to a general baseline as to what we should allow. Having spoken to a lot of TOs around the world in the past few days, I can tell you that most everyone is in agreement on a few key topics.
- Tournament Armies should be drawn from 2 sources only, 1 primary detachment, and 1 other source. Some folks like Formations here, some don’t. Some want to see armies able to ally with themselves, some don’t. But in general, expect to see 1 primary and 1 allied detachment at tournaments. That is fair, allows for tons of creativity in list building and avoids the situation we had at Adepticon where you had 9/16 finalists with Inquisition…because why WOULDN’T you take one if you can? The paradox of choice is that more choices allowed to players equals less variety as everyone cherry picks the best stuff.
- No unbounds lists. Perhaps for specialized events bu in general, it just does not work. No, we do not need to try it first to see, simple logic dictates that this is a truism.
- No Maelstrom Cards as they are right now. I love the idea of the cards but we’ve played 8 games with them now and they simply do not work as they are presented in the book. 7/8 games the player that drew the better hand in the first draw won the game regardless of what happened in the game. The 8th game, the player with the better hand tied despite having 4 models left and being about to get tabled. The core mechanic of them simply does’t work. With modifications, they could be a lot of fun, but as is: not for tournaments.
- The Psychic Phase needs work. If you don’t spam Psykers, the new psychic phase is great! It is harder to get powers off than before, and really helps to even out the power of psykers. However, when you spam out psykers, the wheels come off the ship. Combined with Malefic powers, you can reliably bring around 40 Warp Charge Dice to the game which just dramatically throws this phase out of whack and makes the game unenjoyable. Some folks may like the idea of facing an army that can reliably bring 500+ points of new units onto the table every turn, but the vast majority of gamers will not. It is quite clearly a broken game mechanic. Armies that dramatically skew the warp charge pool will cause all kinds of problems. We need to either limit Warp Charge or in some way limit the psychic phase to bring some balance to the equation.
- Invisibility is way too good. No one I have spoken to thinks otherwise. We have to ban this or tone it down somehow. As I stated over at Frontline, a T6 target with a reroll 2+ save (which, damn it, are still in the game for some stupid reason) + invisibility will be indestructible. A Bolter has a 1/1296 chance of actually hurting this unit. And, with 40+ warp charge to throw at psychic powers, it is not unlikely at all to get this off every turn.
Overall happy with what I read thus far, just with the same concerns regarding the cards and the psy-phase.
I am very new to the game, having only started late last year, but even I can see that there are things that can be abused in 7th, or at least FEEL like abuse if both players do not share the same vision of how the game should go.
Apparently we don’t normally see the “death stars” in South Africa, so that is not a factor here but I see the point.
Psychic phase can be really abused, but as the Eldar/Cron batrep shows, it does not always have to be the case.
Also like the idea of the tactical cards, but as some batreps show, it can be VERY unbalanced.
We still have a 6th tournament coming up (in June I think), so will probably only seriously start playing 7th after that. Looking forward to trying some of the changes 7th and the FAQ made to my GK army 🙂
Hey, I’m in SA too, I also recently started – early last year (after a false start in 5th edition, got about 3 games in) Where abouts do you live/play?
Also yeah, this is awesome to read, I do like having a structured set of rules with which to find cool combos and synergy in lists 😀
Awesome article Reecius!
I am at Warbanner in Centurion, and you?
Ah, I’m down in Cape Town hehe.
Hello down in SA!
Yeah, 7th can be awesome, it has the potential, but you HAVE to house rule some stuff in order to have anything resembling a fair game. If you do that, it can be a really fun time.
Reecius, how does it feel to be the voice of reason for an entire sub-culture? Keep up the good work and if all goes well I will see you in Vegas!!!!
See you in Vegas!
And yeah, no reason to freak out, we just have to work some stuff out.
Good article! I’m a bit in both worlds, allthough I’m of the mind that a fluffy game should be tactically challenging and close as well. The problem is that the rules allow for serious abuse when a WAAC kind of player sets his mind to it.
What I find so surprising is that the overall community is so upset that the rules straight out of the book are not tournament friendly and are still so against changing the rules. I’m from Sweden, and here the tournament scene has used a comp/handicap system since forever. It works quite well, not perfect but still better for tournament play. Why is it so hard to agree on a system like this? I mean this edition shows more than anything that the core rules are not made for tournament play. So I would like to see less negative whining and more unity. I think those points you bring up is a good start!
As a primarily tournament player, the issue I personally have with GW basically requiring that TOs change the rules in order to play the game is consistency. Ideally, I would like to play in many different tournaments throughout the year, run by all different kinds of people. However, if every TO has their own set of “house rules” to curb the issues that Reece pointed out above, then every tournament is going to require a completely different set of tools.
It also makes play testing almost impossible, unless I am playing with a large group of people who all are planning on attending the exact same events that I am. This is great for large-ish groups of gamers that travel together to a set of tournaments, but for those of us who only have a few friends we regularly play with, the potential fracturing of the tournament scene is going to be difficult if not impossible to prepare for.
Yes, I understand that. But that wasn’t my question. Like I said, in Sweden every tournament follows the same system. So why is it so hard for the TO’s in the US to decide on one ruleset? It’s really not GW’s responsibility if you ask me, as they have made clear in both the way they act and the way they write rules they have no interest in it… It’s much better if those who are interested in it takes a swing at it, and people unite behind it.
I suspect the biggest reason why we don’t have one unified system is geography. With people so spread out and very rarely overlapping in tournaments (even major tourneys have some overlap, but not all the big names come to every large GT), it’s a lot harder to come to a consensus.
I think if the organizers of the large tournaments (FLG Guys, Mike Brandt from Nova, Adepticon TOs, maybe a few other big regional events) all got together and uniformly decided on a format, most of the community would follow suit. However, until now there really hasn’t been much of a push for it, and so while each big tournament had it’s own set of rules, they were all close enough to each other that it didn’t matter. Now that the game is borderline unplayable at a tournament without some major FAQs, maybe that’ll happen.
That’s definitely a valid point, but like you said if the “big ones” can agree on something you’ll be set. Let’s hope for the best! 🙂
Most other game companies that produce games with large tournament scenes (Magic, Warmachine, etc…) produce tight, balanced rulesets and well-designed tournament rules. GW is really an outlier in completely disregarding this desire from their customer base.
You said it! It is funny that people want solid rules but are against changing anything. Such a funny paradox.
But hey, like you said, Sweden has been doing it for ages and it works. We will have to follow suite here.
Dont you now reece? america has a different culture from the US, anything they do there cant POSSIBLY work here.
Mmm. Having spoken with a number of Swedish players and reviewed the systems that they have been playing under, I would disagree pretty strongly with the “and it works” part. The heavy comp they use is both variable across locations (meaning that every local tournament has their own little world they live in, with virtually no crossover to other areas) and offputting to many of the local players, as typically it is a relatively small cadre that is making the decisions about what is “right” for the game.
I reviewed several of their comp systems in the past on 3++ and did not come away impressed at all- stuff like being able to bring a full Draigowing list during 5E while still scoring enough comp points to get essentially two “free” wins at the tournament does not sit particularly well.
Great article!
I agree with almost everything- personally I’m torn between 2 or 3 detachments. I’m in favour of formations and dataslates though.
I love the Maelstrom cards as secondaries to eternal war- but only if you use just the second half, 41-66.
If you draw until you have 3 each turn, then in theory you can complete all 18 in 6 turns. If you ever get one that you cannot achieve that turn, you can choose to discard it.
I think invisibility could be changed to “Malediction, WC2. Target unit can only make snap shots, and only hits on 6s in melee.”
Not only would this prevent it from enabling death stars, it can actively neuter them.
The hardest question is the psychic phase. A potential solution is “Each psyker can only use their own warp charge points, along with any generated by the D6 roll.”
This stops you putting too many dice into big spells every turn- sure a level 3 guy could take 6 from the pool for a 9 dice summoning, but then the rest of your army can only use 1-3 at a time, which is far less reliable.
Our group are going to playtest some of these ideas, hopefully I’ll be able to get back to you 🙂
Hey Simon, I like your idea for changing Invis, that is cool. Plus, it means you can DtW with bonuses, too. Nice!
And limiting psykers to using their own dice plus the pool is another great idea! The only downside I can see is that the bookeeping could get confusing.
Then you come up with the problem in which I cast Invisibility on your 1000-pt mega-deathstar-of-doom or Lord of War unit and now they can’t even kill a rhino.
Both solutions are bad when taken to the extremes.
Fair enough, but you can DtW with bonuses against maledictions, so you have good odds to stop it. And, it adds a balancing factor to Death Stars as they can be shut down for a turn, which honestly, I am fine with. Better that than making the Death Star totally unstoppable for a turn.
I think there are other things to consider with the questions that are being posed. It really is no secret that GW has little concern over game balance, while at the same time randomly nerfing and buffing certain units. This game is wholly unpredictable, and for the cost it is bad decision. In the previous edition there were very clearly armies that had strong advantages regardless of whether not anyone abused the rules. If people actually did abuse the rules (or push them to very limits), the disparity got even worse. Now, the tides have slightly turned, although Daemons is one of the best if not the best armies out there. Taken to it’s logical extreme it will literally overwhelm anything out there. I have seen unbound lists of all T heralds. I have seen bound lists spamming as many T Heralds and pink horrors as possible. The plan in both lists is to spam spawn, including more summoning units (pink horrors, T Heralds, LoC) Without community limitation, this game has gone completely bonkers.
Another issue is the FAQs and BRB. While many of the overpowered units went unerfed, certain ones, in armies that were already lacking, were nerfed even further. Those are fundamental rules which aren’t going to be changed by friendly agreement. Who is going to agree to allow FMCs, especially non-Daemon, to use the old rules? Who is going to all poison to re-roll on equal toughness/strength? Who is going to allow the only accesible skyfire units some armies have to shoot at regular balistic skill? No one I can think of. It seems almost random, stupid, and not well thought out.
The problem I see is that GW has a strong customer base which needs a balanced system from a central, singular source, which I can’t conceive of anyone better to do to than GW. However, GW simply refuses to do that. Their primary concern is profit, which is a self-destructive path. Profit is important, but keeping customers long term is more important. GW doesn’t see that. With the amount of money people are putting into this game, the current system is going to create a market for other games where the companies will do what the customers want. I for one have promised myself that I will not spend another dollar on GW products until the end of the calendar year (I have spent approximately $3000 in the past 12 months, not including paints, airbrush, and other modeling supplies/costs). I am going to be looking into other games where balance is a goal, where the company fixes issues with inequities, and where each army or side has as close to an equal chance at winning. I just don’t want to play a game where you feel compelled to buy everything new, because if you don’t your sure to get your ass handed to you by the local jerk. Yes, I like to compete, but only if it is on a level playing field, where everyone can participate without having to drastically reinvest every few months.
You can always tell a bad decision when you have the feeling that the only way to make the bad decision better is to make the same decision again.
Hey Cuddles, you make some really good points. GW is indeed opening the door to the competition to fill the need they are neglecting. Games like Warmahordes and DzC are just swooping players up left and right. They care about game balance and it shows.
We will see how it shakes down but I tend to agree with you that if GW doesn’t address their rules they will continue to see a decline in their customer base as they focus only on one aspect of their game.
Yep, I’ve switched to DzC…Honestly though 40k will never be a game that requires actual tactics etc… the 28mm scale simply doesnt allow for that unless you play floor hammer.
Great article Reece. I definitely feel like 7th ed (minus the Psychic shenanigans) is “the one edition to rule them all”. Its a universal set of rules that require a pre-arranged set of agreements on by both players before a game takes place… regardless if your a tourney player, a casual player or a narrative player. In that sense it brings tourney players and non-tourney players closer in their approach to the game as the onus is on both camps of players to have a non-abusive approach to the game.
I’m not put off at all by the sort of wide-open approach GW has with 7th ed, I have no problem exerting restraint when I play and I really don’t want to play against people who can’t do the same. Excellent article as always Reece
Thank you, sir! And yeah, you said it, this is GW saying, here, play the game you want to play. It is smart of them, I just wish they would have been a bit more clear in their intentions.
It’s not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. You want everybody to play your version of the game which is too restrictive.
Did you even read the Article? Reece’s whole point is that if you want to play the rules as-is that’s fine, and if you get 2 guys together just out for a fun, chill game with “normal” lists these new rules will work better than any previous edition.
But at a tournament people aren’t in it to have a chill game, some (like me) bring tough, well rounded lists hoping for a fair fight, but other people just come to smash as much face as possible. Tighter restrictions mean that people who want a fair fight can actually get one (In a tournament setting). Do whatever you want at home.
I run a GT in Florida so this is important to me. I asked the local area two questions:
Have you read all of the rulebook yet ?
Have you played any games yet ?
The majority said no to both questions. Therefore IMO it is way too early to start throwing out the banhammer.
Based upon Throne of Skulls tournament format (actual GW guidelines for everyone who says they do not support tournaments… heh) here is my suggestion for 7th edition:
Primary detachment
Up to one allied detachment
Up to one formation
Up to one Lord of War
Dataslates (e.g., Belakkor) do not go towards these limits. I would not use the cards as they are too random – other than that no changes to the rules as YET.
Oh, so the rules changes you want to make are fine. I see how it is.
ignore him he’s a retarded article writer for bell of losts souls who makes a huge amount of mistakes with every article he writes regarding the rules. in fact u should read them if your ever bored or want a laugh lol
I’m glad someone got it! =)
Nice troll BBF. Take your hurt feelings and go back to your basement. And if you are actually serious with that comment, then I’m shaking my damn head at you.
keep on shaking it weebles .
I actually don’t at all want everyone to play my version of 40K at all. I would like to see a fun, fair competition where the most people can come to the event and have a good time. That’s all.
Right. Lol.
I miss puppet master
Ditto
Droozy, I have your tape measure from Kublacon. You left it there.
And yeah, Puppet Master was nuts!
I REALLY miss Terrify, that was such an equalizer.
Thank you sir, New job is breaking me off, I will be there soon to pick it up and hang out with you guys
Moar batreps. Generate moar data! Skip the mission cards for the next one and start imposing some of these restrictions?
I think we will!
I decided to post here instead of on BoLS in order to not get lost in the crowd of screaming arguments. I just wanted to say that I agree with you entirely, look forward to what the ultimate decisions are to repair the game for competitive play and that I myself will adopt them for my games, even for casual play with my friends, because even “casual” is pretty stupid under the current rules.
hear, hear! I’ve already convinced my LFGS to use comp. much like what is being suggested here. ignore the trolls!
Yeah, the BoLS Trolls are funny because they hate on tournaments and organized play but they don’t participate in it…so why bother? haha, funny.
Yeah, BoLS can get hard to be heard, but I still love the site.
For sure, all the TOs are talking and we all want the same thing: fun, fair games. Right now 7th lets you do anything, but that can be good and bad.
I’m afraid to even glance at the bols comments for this article. Lol
That way lies madness…
Lol! haha
It’s a start, but not enough. I have a biased opinion as I am a Nids player and the rules imposed still don’t help my army to become any more competitive or fair to play against. Furthermore, you are doing nothing about limiting the broken rules in codices; i.e. Tau and Eldar, and to a very lesser extent Astra Milatarum. These top tier armies (sans AM) will still be prevalent in the Tournament scenes unless you limit the shenanigans of the amount of “Ignores Cover” they both get.
Or just change some rules that can bring lesser Armies back into the fold? Allow assaults from Scout moves that go second, or assaults from Outflank? It makes no sense these are excluded from the last three editions (sans the new Scout rule that was updated) especially with the advent of Overwatch.
I think you are heading in the right direction, but again you are only helping the better codices while some of us are still left behind.
Ignores Cover was something I was really hoping would get looked at in the new edition. We’re talking about house-ruling that “-2 To Cover Save” rumour for Ignores Cover even though it didn’t make it into the book.
Only Warlords being able to Summon Demons is our other fix for the time being…
With the introduction of Flyers and Skyfire weapons on units as a counter, I would enjoy fielding an army where some units (ie Heavy Support, HQ-conferred bonuses, or even as Blessings) were given Interceptor and then an Outflanking unit was allowed to charge on the turn it arrived. If the mechanics aren’t drastically changed from it’s current iteration, you know some units will arrive from a table edge and have an appropriate counter. Adjust your gunline to keep your flanks secured..
Did they change that in 7th? Beause in 6th you could assault after scout moves if going second, I did it all the time with khorne hounds
Hi Novastar, yes that changed it in 7th. They changed one word… from “their” to “the” turn. First paragraph in the Scout Special Rules, second to last sentence:
“A unit that makes a Scout redeployment cannot charge in “the” first game turn.
Sorry, I was way off. It has nothing to do with “the” or “their”. It’s the difference between “first turn” and “first game turn”. I guess it is up for debate. I may have read it wrong.
Oh yeah, I also forgot the nerf to Poison CC attacks, and don’t get me started about FMC not assaulting after landing.
It feels as if the updates to some of the rules were made in spite of my favorite army.
Yeah, your poor Nids got kicked in the nuts for sure.
I think they can still get it done, but with more shooting units like Exocrines, etc. Poor Nids.
Yeah, I was sincerely hoping they would change Ignores Cover to just -2. That is a bummer that they didn’t.
Very good article Reece!
Regarding summoning. How about capping it at not beyond your starting number of models.
Thanks, Tommy!
And yeah, that is a good solution, actually. It is simple, too.
Then, the only thing to think about is how to deal with one army getting 40+ DtW dice, too. That’s too much defense, I think.
You sure someone would overkill on dice if not needed? If it was me I’d use my points elsewhere 🙂
I’ll be playtesting at least but it’d be fun if the community runs several versions of capping or limiting the psychic phase just to get more facts instead of theoryhammering ourselves to death 🙂
Yeah, I agree. This is one that needs to be tested out first to avoid unintended consequences we didn’t see in the beginning.
I think you need to put a lot more thought into how I shape the psychic phase to achieve the result you want. Specifically the deny mechanic is potentially a huge deterrent to the 2+ Reroll Death Stars. As is read it a unit only can attempt to manifest a power once. So if a seer council gets fortune denied it is SOL until the next turn. As you know the seer council needs 2 powers to manifest to get it’s defenses all the way up, and the eldar player will generate about 20 dice a turn. A player who generated a similar number of dice or higher like a GK player or a daemon player will have a great chance of denying the important powers several times a game. If a player cannot consistantly get the nessicarily powers off the deathstars become a liability in a GT setting as. So I don’t think limiting the pool is the right way to go as it is potentially the thing that will stop the 2+ reroll. I think it makes more sense just to straight ban he summoning powers and invisability. That way the fact some one generates a lot of dice can’t be used to make the game 4000pts vs 1850pts.
Iv have been saying ban Malefic powers since the beggining
You want to ban everything .
No, Only unbound and Malefic powers I think should go. I think the missions with some tweaking(removing cards you cant possibly score)
Yeah, you are right, each unit gets one chance to cast a power. It does help tone it down, but, if you really need to get it off, you can throw a shit ton of dice at it and risk the perils. The other player has no way to stop it if they only have a few DtW dice.
I think psychic powers will not be as reliable – even if you stack your army. Necrons and Tau did just fine in 6th edition without any psykers. Probably 8-10 warp charge will be enough for psychic armies.
Great article Reece. A very well thought out take on the situation, and provides a lot of hope for us if we can get together over the next week and come out with some basic guidelines.
Managing expectations really is key. I’ve mentioned it a few times on my own site, but if player were more open to communicating about their game expectations, a lot of the angst and anger could be removed from the game.
You said it. Just like a good relationship with your GF or wife, it’s all about communication. As TOs, we facilitate that a lot more than normally occurs, so we have to be twice as mindful about the choices we make.
Well written article and I agree with your underlying premise about the different types of gamers and working together.
However I think you’ve been far too fast to condemn the new bits of 7th ed. 8 games is really not a lot, and you’ve only posted 2 battle reports. To make a realistic assessment, it would be fairer to play 8 games, learn the new system & missions. Then re-make lists to fit the mission types, then play 8 more games and re-evaluate.
Lists and strategies used in the above battle reports are still mostly 6th ed – minded with the exception of the daemons and he somehow only pulled off a tie.
For example – When playing with the cards, your list has to be extremely flexible, or capable of wiping out your opponent with massive firepower or # of units. The Necron player who was steam rolled in the battle report above did not have this. He had a gunline army sitting behind an aegis that performed mediocre. In a game where seizing objectives early is imperative (6 cards first turn), much of his firepower was off the table (flyers), or unable to move forward fast (footsloggers).
Add to that he doesn’t play Necrons normally.
Point being – with at least the 2 battle reports posted so far – they’re really more warm up games and not a fair assessment of what this would look like competitively.
Who knows – maybe you’ll get to that point and still have the same opinion. It’s likely. But thus far I don’t think it’s been a fair and balanced assessment of 7th.
—
sidenote – i don’t see what’s wrong with everyone taking inquisition – that’s not a bad thing – it fits the 40k universe pretty well. And it wasn’t an imperial army that even won Adepticon – so not overpowered. If Adepticon had allowed more variety: imperial knights, stronghold assault, cypher, legion of the damned, forgeworld 40k approved, you wouldn’t have just seen inquisition, there would have been greater variety. But they didn’t.
It’s not opening up what is allowed that causes blandness IMO – but opening it up partially. If the only supplement / mini-dex allowed is inquisition – then yes, it is very powerful & lots of people will take it.
Hey Jonathon.
You make some good and fair points.
We have already played about a dozen games of 7th, which honestly, is more than many people play in a year. We haven’t mastered the edition yet by any means, but we do have a fairly good handle on it. And, we can usually see what is or isn’t broken really quickly. We found the 2++ reroll save in 6th within 2 days of the edition hitting. That’s not to say we’re super awesome or anything, just that while yes, it takes time to learn the nuance of the game, it doesn’t take that long to see the problems.
We move fast on these choices because if we wait, some of this stuff becomes entrenched. Like the 2++ reroll saves. By the time we made a choice on nerfing them, everyone was used to using them and it was a big pain in the ass. If we would have just bit it in the butt early, it wouldn’t been such a pain to change, later. It’s also to allow something in later than to try and take it away when everyone is used to it.
As for 3 sources, the issue is that you end up with EVERYONE having the same stuff. And while no, an Inquisitor didn’t win, 9/16 finalists had on, lol! That’s crazy, and takes away the diversity. Imperial Armies already have a huge advantage in allies (the most choices) they really don’t need another that becomes a near auto-include.
Adepticon would have allowed Knights and such but they came out too close to the event.
2++ re-roll wasn’t “discovered” until Daemons & Eldar, respectively, as they were the only races to allow re-rolls. I remember all your content, you did find it super quick, and your analysis was spot on, but you didn’t discover the 2++ re-roll in July 2012.
—
Warp Charge does need some sort of cap for tournament play. Although I don’t think Invisibility is as broken as you think it is (You have to roll the power, the rest of the tree is middling, and it can still be denied).
It’s only really broken when cast on an already beefy unit that has Fortune cast on it (re-rollable save and snaps only)
—
Do a battle report of CSM w\ Belakor & Sorc’s with Spell Familiars vs Necrons with a pair of Surfboard Lords (Sweeps still hit on 4’s – whaaaat!)
Hey Mark,
Actually, we did find the 2++ reroll save right away. I remember it well because Frankie was playing the damned Harliestar and I had to play against it all the time, lol! Everyone arguing about whether or not Eldar psychic powers worked on Dar Eldar models attached to them (Vect, primarily). It was sort of short lived though as once the Heldrake came out, the Harliestar was invalidated pretty quickly as it was able to bypass Vect who tanked all the wounds and ignored the reroll 2+ cover save of the Harlies.
The actual 2++ reroll save unit though, debuted on FLG with Anonymou5’s article about the Screamerstar. I think that is when it really became evident that it was a problematic unit and rose to prominence.
I agree that Invis has to be rolled up but when it is, Emperor save us, it is crazy. On most units it is OK, but we are thinking worst case scenario (which once that is figured out, you can count on it becoming the norm like Seer Council, etc.). For example, a Seer Council that is ALSO Invisible. Things like that that are just so crazy OP as to be laughable.
As for capping warp charge in some way, yeah, you said it, it needs to be done. We are batting around a lot of ideas as to how to accomplish that. If you have any ideas feel free to share them.
Surferboard Lords, lol, that is awesome! I haven’t heard that one before.
I’m surprised you haven’t got the “battle brothers become alliies of convenience” tweak.
GW has shown time and again that they can’t properly balance units within a codex/supplement. When you combine that fact with the synergistic potential of battle brothers, things can get ugly (as they did in 6th). Besides, the distribution of battle brothers is about the clearest case of fluff vs competitive balance which you can find.
I actually like BBs, honestly. I like what they bring to the game for fluff reasons but like you said, holy crap is it skewed in favor of the Imperium.
Nevertheless, it’s a rule which, left as is, could lead to a lot of problems down the line. Astra Militarum is already very strong. All it would take is for GW to give one or two nice abilities to upcoming Space Wolves or Blood Angels ICs that incidentally synergise perfectly with AM and we’ll be straight back to those largely predictable tournament turnouts and results.
Well, limiting the Detachments to two, helps a lot with this. And yes, AM are super tough, no argument here, but they don’t have anything like the 2+ reroll save units that are neigh-on indestructible. They are powerful, but you can fight them.
It was skewed in the favor of xenos in sixth edition.
By which you mean “two Xenos armies had two BBs each, while the Imperium had like six, so obviously Xenos are too good”?
Malefic isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be, because:
1) Possession: You summon a BT Turn 1, DS’s in doesn’t do anything. Turn 2, lands, doesn’t do anything else. Turn 3, assaults if he survives standing around doing nothing. If he gets invisibility, might be tougher to kill in 1 turn, but really no different than if he was flying.
2) Sacrifice: 2 Wound Herald DS’s in. 6″ Range makes it a good chance of mishap. 2 Wound Herald by himself is not exactly hard to kill. Easy KP for those missions.
3) Summoning: Free models is good and all, but the resources needed to accomplish it means that it is all they are doing. The newly arrived units aren’t doing anything. PB’s are clumped up for Blasts. IF the Daemon Player rolls perfect on everything, then it could be problematic. But, the same can be said for a Tau shooting phase. Daemons have no real shooting phase to speak of.
The Daemon can assualt the turn after it arrives, not 2 turns later.
The summoned units come with Icons, so you don’t scatter after the first.
You can run after coming in to not be bunched up. And you overwhelm your opponent with numbers. You may think it is fine, but in all of our games so far it’s been a bit of a joke. It needs to be limited.
If you’re talking about the BT or LoC, they can’t. They Deep Strike, so they are Swooping. Can’t change to Glide until following turn since Movement phase is past and they Swoop until start of their next turn. Following turn can’t assault since they just changed to Glide. Conjured FMCs can’t assault until 2 turns after they come in.
What makes you say they Deep Strike in Flight Mode? I have not seen any rules that back that up.
Page 68 under deployment. Deepstriking FMC always counts as swooping.
Yeah, FMCs always come down in flight mode. Good for the LoC, not so much for the BT. The GUO is still totally an option, though, and that guy is pretty impossible to remove.
Malefic and invisibility aside, what is your plan for balancing things like Wyverns that can erase a unit per turn at will and can’t be avoided other than by getting beyond 48″ or hiding in a transport which many armies don’t have? Because if I’m playing Daemons, and I can’t summon, I lose to Wyverns. Will you reinstitute 6th ed rules for barrage and ruins?
What is your plan for dealing with objective secured Wave Serpents with 3+ jink saves? Those can pretty much only be killed in assault, and are super fast objective owners.
Do you plan to restrict death stars in any way beyond 2+/4+? Will you implement a one IC per unit rule since AM is perfectly capable of fielding nasty death stars in-codex?
If summoning is bad, how about Skyblight and Endless swarm? A Necron Destroyer Lord getting back up is mathematically similar to summoning a new unit. Perhaps you restrict summoning to a single attempt per turn as obviously it’s stronger than these other things.
You said it on AM, I think they are going to be so powerful this edition.
As for Barrage, yeah, something needs to be done. It is idiotic that they can hit something under a ledge, that is stupid.It always bugged me that you could do that with Vector Strike, too, just doesn’t make sense.
Objective Secured vehicles in general are going to be interesting. The WS is probably the biggest offender, but think about Power Field DA Land Raiders, etc. too. They are crazy durable and scoring. Ouch. We will have to play that out some more.
Deathstars I think will suffer some with the new psychic phase so long as we limit it. If you only have a certain amount of dice to throw in a phase, you can really cut back on the stacked buffs.
We have found Skyblight to be good but not overpowering so far. We play it a lot and the army is beaten regularly. But yeah, Summoning needs to be looked at seriously.
Would a reasonable limit be to make a significant number of psychic abilities one use only? Once the unit has successful cast that power, it’s done. No need to worry about who gets what or max levels or charges. Just limit certain powers. That’d keep both summoning at 2++ rerolls under control.
Yeah, a lot of people are talking about that especially with Conjuration powers.
I remember the leaked rules a couple years back, why not just get all the TO’s to fix that or make their own rules from scratch. I know its a huge undertaking, but it might serve you guys in the long run to do the work now, before GW sabotages you even more with 8th ed.
That often comes up but it is hard to implement without a lot of money and effort. We’d have to do a “Pathfinder” so to speak and make a book and really go the distance with it for it to stick. GW would probably sue us, too.
Kickstarter dude!
Hahah, I know, right?! =P
Hey guys,
First off, I would like to say that I am a long time fan and listener to your podcast and I don’t even play 40k anymore.
I am really sorry for the position that the new edition has put you in, despite that. It is never a good thing when a game you love misses the mark on a set of rules.
While the unbound and psychic phases do pose some problems, I had an idea concerning the mission cards.
Now forgive me if this can’t be applied (as I haven’t even seen the cards or the mission rules) but from what it sounds like, the problem boils down to the random nature of the card draw and the fact that it can be game swinging.
Well what if you took a note from another game (malifaux) and randomly draw the mission cards (for example 10 cards), choose which ones to keep of the cards drawn (example keeping 5 out of the 10) or allow a proper mulligan and then those are the secret objectives for the rest of the game, in addition to the normal mission objectives.
No obviously the deck of mission cards would have to be constituted of mission cards selected at the beginning. This would be no different from banning certain cards, and anyone who has ever played any card game competivly would be used to it.
The benefits as I see it are thus: it would allow a player to choose mission cards that they could accomplish, it would mitigate the random mid-game swinging nature of the cards, and it would relegate them to the role of scoring in addition to the normal mission.
Yes the players would still have to get a good draw but if the most abusive cards are taken from the deck and drawing from a larger pool of cards then making a selection, means that making that choice becomes a skill in itself. Also as long as the scoring for the normal mission rules is balanced to the points given by the cards it shouldn’t be to overpowering.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and keep producing the great content. I am sure you will find some excellent solutions that everyone will be pleased with…
Hey Spoonfunk, thanks for the feedback.
Yeah, I like that idea and I agree that we need to do something that keeps the wheels turning. The Cards will honestly not see the light of day in a tournament unless they are modified in a way like you suggest. A mulligan might be a good choice, too. Every game so far has been so lopsided with the cards.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, too, we really appreciate it!
I’m sorry, but I just feel like it’s way too soon to be making these types of declarations. I’m not trying to stir up anything in comments here, but how can you declare “train wreck” after less than a week? Just looking at the two bat reps you have here concerning the cards, I see one where the cards actually evened out the match, and a second where, yes, a lucky first draw was the deciding factor, but sometimes you lose to luck even with the cards. You didn’t even touch on the fact that that particular mission was the only one where that situation could possibly happen (you usually only draw 3 cards).
To use anecdotal evidence, I played against a friend of mine the other night where I scored all three cards on the first turn, and he scored none. I eventually won the game, but it was by a single point, and we later determined I had made a mistake and could possibly have not gotten a point, and that he had missed a situation where he possibly could have, so the game could have easily gone the other way.
I get that people don’t like to lose to random chance, I just feel that it’s too soon and there hasn’t been enough play testing to already make this kind of claim. And please please please don’t take this as a troll comment, I know I haven’t agreed with the consensus here, but I really do enjoy and respect the insights on this site. I promise I’m not trying to stir anything up (this isn’t BoLS comments after all).
The ability to drop an extra couple thousand points on the table says its a train wreck. You merely need pause to consider the implications of such a mechanic to realize where that road leads. It leads to everybody allying with two squads of Horrors, jacking up the warp charge count and finishing two turns in two and a half hours.
Except that this article focuses more on the Maelstrom cards than the summoning powers. But if you and your opponent seriously enjoy that and have all afternoon to play a game, fine. If not, then I doubt you’re going to see people playing that style too often when all their games end on turn two because their opponent has to leave. It would be good for a laugh, but I doubt people are going to cart 6,000 points of models around with them every time they come out to play a match.
Alternatively, why would anyone bring that sort of list to a tournament that has restricted time limits for rounds? You risk losing after two turns because you spent all your time and psychic powers summoning more daemons who end up standing around looking dumb on your side of the board. That sort of a thing will self-correct on its own.
Exactly, I didn’t even mention that and wish I would have. The game takes AGES to play when you summon so much stuff, it just doesn’t work within the tight time limits of a tournament.
Chess Clock
A shared half hour for Pregame/ deployment, any excess may be used for rules disputes, breaks, or if the game is down to the wire and both players used their time up.
Each player gets 1 hour for turns. Saving throws and the assault phase you clock in and out for. when your clock runs out the other player gets to continue.
The most annoying part of the game for me is rushing my whole turn in under 10 mins because I know my tau/ Eldar opponent needs at least 15 to 20 mins for each shooting phase and I would like to make it to turn 4 so I might actually be able to get across the board.
This would curb a lot of the “unfun” things in the game because players could not bring a list they could not handle in the allotted time, as well as adding another skill to master in list building and gameplay.
Hey CKuno,
I see where you are coming from and no, you aren’t stirring anything up, no worries.
We have played a lot more games of 7th so far than what you saw in the videos. We are at about a dozen games so far which is way more than most people will play in the next few months. Not to say that this makes us 100% right of course, but we are speaking from more experience than it may appear.
The cards are a fun idea but they simply don’t work right now as is. The 8 games we played were with different folks and every single person said the same thing: the cars are not balanced at all.
This article was not just about the cards either, it was about the main issues that jump out. Psychic phase needs to be toned down, cards don’t function in a competitive setting as is, there must be limitations on army selection. That was my point.
If we wait to long to make any decisions, we will end up with a situation where folks are used to using the abusive stuff and it will be 100x harder to change it. If we go too far now, we can always recant later and let more stuff in. That’s a lot easier than taking things away.
Fair enough, maybe some of my comment came from jealousy of not having a job where I can test out or observe up to 12 games of 40k in less than a week! I probably should have mentioned that I fully expect the cards to be more of a beer and pretzels aspect of the game and not to be in tournaments. I also completely support the idea of single primary and allied detachments. I am more of a casual player myself, but I certainly understand the tournament scene and the idea of how god awful it would be to work months to assemble and paint your army only to show up and lose the first round of the first game because Joe Lucky managed to pull the right types of cards from the deck.
As for the psychic phase… I don’t where I am on that. I like it for the most part so far, but I’ve only played a couple of matches in 7th and I’ve actively avoided using my Grey Knights in favor of my Black Templars because I don’t want to seem like “that guy,” so maybe that’s an answer right there.
As Reece points out, the cards are probably fine for beer and pretzels!
I’m planning to play a number of games with the cards, but I don’t expect to see it at a tournament. Unfortunately, to do that justice, they’d have had to make the cards a lot less dull, and make the cycling/mechanics of it better.
For instance, maybe you should lose every card, every turn (score it that round or lose it), and can only hold back one card? Odds are though, that luck will interfere and one player will end up scoring a few objectives they already hold.
Yeah, we test the REALLY crazy stuff all the time to see how bad it actually is. We play a ton, and watch a ton of games. We really do have more hands on experience with the rules than most people do. Not saying that makes us better, just that our opinions are typically backed by facts. We aren’t always right, of course, but we try to make informed decisions.
In tournament play, if something is possible to bring, no matter how crazy, someone will. We have to plan for it as if we don’t, it becomes an arms race and we end up with lame ass Deathstar 40K again, or whatever that version of the game would be under the new conditions.
I lose to chance most games against Eldar! Ended on turn 5? Well that was a fun waste of a couple hours…
Having objectives to score though out the game finally turns it into winning by playing, instead of winning by stalling then moving your jetbikes out of the corner.
Wyverns and TFCs (similar stuff) will make quick work of sniping heralds very quickly.
A Pod army can easily remove 2W T3 heralds, even more devastating if they go first.
Daemons options are way limited if Malefic is banned to be honest, as our FMCs have been hit severely with being unable to contest against troops, vector nerf, smash nerf, and inability to charge on the same turn. Dealing with long range indirect fire and mass mech is gonna be an issue.
I can understand wanting to limit Psychic Dice to 20 max but banning Malefic? That’s severely drastic, especially calling how badly the sky is falling in under a week.
Malefic I think is fine with limitations but as is is just not practical in terms of how long it takes to play the game, and balance issues.
I agree Barrage got way too good this edition.
“All you have to do to see an example of it is to scroll down to the comments below to see my point illustrated”
….best line ever
Lol! That was meant more for BoLS than here (where folks tend to be reasonable) but yeah, haha.
Yeah I caught that. Good stuff. I won’t even look at comments on bols
I skim them sometimes and just laugh at most of it. There are some nice folk there but a lot of it is mindless vitriol.
Excellent article. I think your analysis of game systems and their ramifications are spot-on. I especially appreciate your analysis of the mathematics involved.
It takes me a while to gather my thoughts, but I have composed them here:
http://www.buildingabetterwargame.com/2014/05/when-its-such-train-wreck-you-cant-look.html
Thanks for the support and yeah, it is quite clearly out of whack. But, with some community fixes, it will be good to go.
Reece, do you have any proposed thoughts on how to fix Invisibility and the psychic phase? A lot of people have been suggesting “max six dice on one cast, max twelve dice in a turn” as a solution, but I think that is not going to work out well- it makes WC3 powers very difficult to get off and means armies like GK and Nids that rely on their psykers are essentially left out in the cold due to Seer/Screamerstar.
Similarly, I don’t see an easy solution to Invisibility that doesn’t just completely change its function. Removing the power entirely from the discipline is likewise pretty unpalatable.
Do you feel that the 2+/4+ change (or something similar) is still needed, above and beyond any of the changes to the above? Deathstar-type armies seem like they got several very strong boosts, so it does seem like this will still be an issue.
I suggested a change to my gaming group and played a game with the change last night.
You shoot Invisible units at BS1, and you hit Invisible units on a 6.
This does a couple things. One, the direct counter to invisible units becomes blasts and templates – which only makes SENSE. If some invisible dudes were running at you, would you drop your flamer so you could randomly fire off some bolter rounds? Two, The BS could still be improved (Tau) to murder the squad. Three, in CC, the invisible unit doesn’t hit automatically on 3’s because the enemy is WS1.
I felt like the power was still really good, and it is. However, at least this brings about a hard counter with templates/blasts. It might shift the meta a little, but its not an auto-win if you roll the power.
I like that idea. The thing that should counter invisibility are blasts and templates. The fact that they don’t is non-intuitive.
When I first saw the new invis I was like. woah, crazy good – and it would allow certain footslogging units to be more viable (like banshees, it helps them a ton but doesnt make them broken)
However, it’s obvious that in a general sense it’s way too good, and this change is actually a really logically sound option – I like it a lot!
Note that new Invis doesn’t make the other guy WS1 anymore, they just hit the Invisible unit on 6s in close combat. Helps defensively but not offensively.
Otherwise seems like pretty reasonable solutions, tho. May give them a spin with my group.
In response to the psychic phase in general, I think only limiting deny dice is needed. Let those armies with all the psykers do their thing on their turn. Really shooty armies will still be able to blow apart a bunch of little daemons. Like I said, the meta will shoot to handle taking out heralds and the like. If anything, make the summoning power warp charge 4.
The problem, IMO, is denying. The army that brings 30 warp charge is going to counter absolutely everything another army with 6 warp charge does. That is a little too much. You can still dominate the psychic phase if you’re limited to rolling 6 dice for each deny. You have a chance to deny EVERY power the other guy is going to do, but you aren’t guaranteed to get it. A lot more fair.
I agree on the DtW part of that, if you stack all of those deny dice you utterly shut down the other guy which is no fun.
Hey Abuse, good to see you in our neck of the woods!
You raise some good points. For invis, we have a few ideas we like so far.
As for the Warp Charge issue, it is going to take some work to get that figured out. Like you said, some armies need the the warp charge to function, but too much and it utterly skews the psychic phase into a one sided affair. If you allow all those dies it also means one army will DtW all the dang time be pure volume of dice.
For invisibility.
1.) Make it what it was last edition at 2 WC.
2.) Change it to hit on 6’s, as auto has suggested also.
3.) As SimonW noted, youc an change it to a Malediction that targets an enemy unit and makes them fire snap shots and hit on 6’s in assault. That means only 1 enemy unit suffers the nerf instead of the entire enemy army and it also helps to potentially nerf deathstar units, too, which I think is a double plus.
And yeah, we’re sticking with the 2+/4+ as our community embraces it and it makes the game so much more enjoyable for more people. Unless it becomes evident that it is overkill, we aren’t getting rid of it.
Good to be here, I’m liking a lot of the batreps you guys have done. Maybe we’ll even get a game in at the GC or something. 😛
Seem fair. The only reason I dislike the 2+/4+ at times is it takes some otherwise-fine units (like guys using the Mantle of the Laughing God) and essentially makes them non-options. Admittedly, Eldar are not the army folks need to be crying over these days, but I’m still sad to see otherwise-interesting options go away.
BS1 and hit on 6s seems like a reasonable fix for Invis, although admittedly that isn’t _that_ different at the end of the day. That still makes any non-marker weapons virtually useless against the Invis/Fortune/Shrouding unit, though.
I largely agree with what was said here. To me though the imbalance issues just aren’t worth fixing. Clearly GW is hostile to the idea of 40k being played in the manner that I want to play (with a good tight rule-set that provides a framework for balanced competitive play) and I just don’t see the point in fighting them to enjoy the game any longer.
I’ve been gradually selling my 40k stuff since 6th edition came out though so at this point it isn’t much of a loss to me. I understand that your mileage may vary if you’ve still got thousands invested in the game. And to those of you that do, best of luck fixing this mess.
You’re not alone in that. A lot of folks are making the same choice and going to other games. It is sad to see, but hey, if there are games you like more then it is what it is. My only hope is that we can stop the flow away and win some folks back.
If not, DzC is an awesome game! So is Warmahordes and Infinity and quite a few others.
Definitely intending to give DzC a look. The look at least reminds me a lot of Epic which is a game I always wished that GW would show more love. I’ve heard lots of people say positive things about it so it’s on my short list of places to look for my future wargaming fix.
I honestly can’t recommend DzC enough. The ONLY downside is that you don’t have the freedom to model and paint that you do in 40K. Outside of that it is flat out a better game for organized play.
Fact – Top 3 armies in tournaments are Eldar, Tau, and Chaos Daemons in that order. This also includes any other army allied with those 3. Apparently you can’t win or play this game “competitively” without them.
Fact – Nothing that FLG or any other TO can say or do to the new BRB will change the top 3 armies in tournaments. Sounds pretty boring to me. You want this game to be fair and balanced? Then fix more than what is being discussed.
If you were truly looking to make the game like Fox News, you have to do more than just “ban” things. You have to make adjustments to current rules to help buff the lesser armies in this game (i.e. grant assault from Scout, Outflank, Deepstrike, etc). Make changes to Ignores Cover to -1 or -2 so that armies that have way too much of this (Astra Militarum, Eldar, and Tau) aren’t spamming it. Finally, maybe just eliminate allies all together including Battle Brothers. If the top 3 have to play on their own, maybe they won’t be so tough anymore.
All you are really talking about and doing is keeping the top armies at the top. There is nothing fair or “competitive” about only having 3 out of 17 available codices representing the entire “competitive” gaming community.
I understand your frustration, but we have to go slowly and take it one step at a time. For now, the BRB rules is where to focus, and then move on from there. If we do too much too fast, we will have a lot of backlash and fallout.
Before limiting power dice I would try banning summoning powers first. I don’t play psykers generally and they seem to have been nerfed. Nerfing them even more seems a bit harsh right now.
I know GK can generate silly amount of dice for cheap but I think we need to see what game breaking combos they can pull off. Seer council will still be a pain but I feel if it doesn’t get invisibility its not as good as it was. Plus if serious tourny players will be scared of the 30+ power dice lists which can shut them down.
GK being battle brothers with all the imperium is where I would be most interested in seeing how bad it can be.
So I would ask you to test daemons or any psyker heavy arm vs a simple wave serp and wraithknights spam list. Maybe add a imp knight in there too
And ban summoning powers if you do test it out
Yeah, we are definitely trying out more combos now, but can say the summoning spam as of now is definitely not OK.
Hmm. Has anyone considered a point-handicap between armies? Some armies seem overall to have a greater point-efficiency than others, more or less across the board: CSMs vs SMs. All power armor forces seem a bit over-costed relative to non-power armor forces. Etc. So perhaps some armies could be chosen at 110% or 125% the standard points in different events. This would have the advantage of keeping the existing books and point values unmodified, but might bring less-effective armies into the mix.
Flames of War had a mechanic similar to this back in its 2nd edition, and it seemed to work okay.
Naturally, this would not fix psychic powers, combos, etc. They would need some additional modification. But it might assist lower-tier armies.
They tried that in 7th ed Fantasy and it didn’t really work. Daemons were down 500pts and still winning =(
Yeah, I agree with Reece.
“Handicaps” on a force, is really saying “we don’t know how balanced each unit is, but we think overall it should work out at about X%”. The problem is composition/mix.
Any blanket discount, has to be conservative, to account for a stacked-mix (like maxdrake lists). Which means, while it MIGHT help, it won’t ever go far enough.
The best option instead is to tweak costs/buffs/nerfs to improve/degrade certain units. Unfortunately, players don’t much like nerfs, so buffs/cost tweaks might be needed.
20% more CSM points, means more cultists, drakes, etc. Not more Chaos Space Marines. The problem is the price/ability of a range of Chaos units, not the overall cost (IMO).
Exactly. The only way you could REALLY fix the inequities between books is to go in and unit by unit, item by item, adjust points/rules. That becomes too complex in a number of different ways.
I am unfortunately saddened by this article. As a tourney player I thrive on a challenge. I like rising up to meet them head on and coming out victorious. I look forward to fighting lords of war and went and sought out the challenge and bested it. I look forward to seeing truly broken lists on the field to see if I can snatch the victory. 40k lost that challenge long ago for me. It stagnated and went into a pattern of the same lists being represented at events and flavors of the moth depending on the codex cycle. IT grew stale and boring and I did not feel the pleasure of testing my mettle against the field. It became oh look another deer council list great, oh another Taudar list brilliant, yea its grey nights and so on. Each tourney was net list of the month and it was predictable and to me very boring. That’s why I stopped competing int major tourneys. 6th and 7th started to fire me up for competition again. I got really excited to see all of the unbound and unique combinations that people will come up with in an attempt to gain victory. Unfortunately it looks like those that are in charge of the major tourneys do not see it that way are are rushing to stifle that. They may be right that people will cherry pick the best options and just play that to me then it will be no different than it is now seeing the same style of lists over and over take the field. Just my thoughts.
Luckily I have warmahordes to fulfill my competitive nature.
On another thought, and though it may seem like I am being antagonistic I am really not antagonistic towards the good folks here. What is your definition of broken?
I hear it batted around allot and I don’t think my definition is the same. To me it would be something that makes the game impossible to play against. A list or combination that is practically unbeatable.
The reason I bring this up is that in the daemon psychic spam report what was claimed to be broken only tied the other army. and if it had been a tourney would have lost on time. because at the point the game would have went to time the daemons list would have lost.
I truly am not trying to be antagonistic on this point. basically I am asking if their is something that was not shown or more tests that whee done that made this truly, in my definition of the word, broken?
Hey Redwulfe, you don’t come across as antagonistic at all. We are open to different points of view, here, as long as they are presented respectfully.
Some people are stoked to play totally unrestricted 40K. No doubt. But the few that will totally abuse it will ruin the experience for most players. That means tournaments suffer and we all lose out.
And while yes, the army did tie in that bat rep, they were about to get tabled and the ONLY reason it was a tie was because the Imperial player drew a better hand of cards than the Daemon player. It further showed how skewed the Maelstrom Mission Cards are.
I think there is room for unrestricted 40K, but not in your general event, it is just too out of balance. As you said, 6th got stale (and it did) in unrestricted 40K it would be worse. There would be a handful of Uber Net lists that everyone used that were all damn near the same. Players tend to bring what they think is best, even if it is what everyone else is doing. Going Unbound would give you the same results but even more homogeneously.
My main experience is playing pick up games usually with strangers or acquaintances at a game store, and the general rules for tournaments need to apply to those games as well. I only want o play unbound/mission cards/daemonology/multiple allies and detachments/etc if I agreed in advance. I am thinking of asking my club to establish some ground rules for game night so every one has fun.
That is a good idea. You need some rules or it will degenerate into chaos if a few players really exploit unbound rules, etc.
Lol, so the new meta is now more “chaotic” then the entire Chaos Space Marine codex. That’s funny.
Why not limit the amount of Deny the Witch dice based on how many were used to attempt the cast. Could be x1.5 or x2 or x2.5 or x3. Anything that would feel fair, while still giving an edge to the player with stronger psychic power.
rolling 4 dice seems to be common with WC2 powers, so if someone rolled 6 dice against it they would actually have a solid chance (by averages) of denying that power. 8(x2) dice, even greater chance (more than just 50/50), at 10(x2.5) they are going to deny that power and at 12(x3) that power is probably shut down.
Same could be done with the casting too. Instead of having an overall cap, maybe cap how many dice can be used to cast (x2 – x3 of available Mastery for the individual unit).
We’ve actually been discussing this, but at x6 as that statistically gives you a fair chance to deny (as you should roll 1 dice in 6 as a 6).
x6 might be a faux pas.
at 6 dice you’re likely to deny 1 success. At 4 dice, you’re likely to have 2 successes.
If you’re rolling 4 dice for a WC1 power, you’re risking perils to get it off, if it’s a WC2 power, you’re not casting it against 6 dice (again, if we maintain averages).
Granted that’s why I also suggested capping the dice to attempt a success too :). Will probably take a lot of play testing and unfortunately I don’t know anyone with 40 warp charges in their army and I myself can only summon up a measly 3+d6.
The limit to casting may be, you know, limiting, haha, but it would help to force armies to rely on their powers as a whole and not just on 1 or 2 specific powers.
I guess any of the multpliers could also be adjusted by the floating roll (+d6) after (so a WC2 power can use 4 dice + however many from the d6 to attempt success?).
This kind of rules adjustment does make the phase more complicated though.
True, and we were just throwing around numbers. Maybe a lower limit is better as it is now harder to get powers off than it was.
Good article, but…
I’m really concerned if TO’s are already digging their heels in on the “two sources” thing (which I think you mean as two detachments?). Especially if this is tightened up to mean exactly one Combined Arms detachment and an optional allied detachment.
I would instead recommend playing smaller point games (1500?) initially. If further limits ar needed- how about limiting lists to a total of two combined arms detachments + one allied detachment, with formations taking the place of one of these 3 identified. Seems like at 1500 that’s already very flexible.
It just kills me that the knee-jerk reaction is to throw out the flexibility of the ruleset immediately along with the other 4 things you identify as being out of whack (personally, I would include Maelfic powers as their own thing). I’d prefer to see what sort of damage really gets done allowing these things first.
Maybe I’m just a ‘nid and CSM player though…
Here is how I would address the rest of your list (spitballing/brainstorming):
2. No Unbound- Yes, absolutely this
3. No Maelstorm Cards- Only idea would be to make the cards their own VP, so if you tie, nobody gets a VP, if one player has 1-5 more, he gets +1VP, if a player gets 6+ more than opponent he gets +2VP
4. Psychic Phase- I have a few ideas, but I think I would start with a rule that states that the player with the most warp charges generates charges as normal, and the player with fewer warp charges gets either the number of warp charges his army generates or half of the opposing players warp charges, whichever is higher. Daemonology I’m not sure how to fix… Maybe each Daemonology ability (aside from Primaris) can only be chosen once per army? This has a stealth benefit of limiting the number of psykers who get the free primaris too, but has the drawback that if you had 6 mastery levels, you would be guaranteeed of getting the card you wanted.
5. Invisibility- a ban would really hurt telepathy. I would prefer it worked more like night fighting, where the closer you are the less useful it is. So maybe 36″+, can’t target, 36″-18″, snap shots only, 18″-6″ shrouded, <6" no effect, CC- only hit on 6's (no change).
Hey Jural,
some good ideas, thanks for sharing. We aren’t trying to throw things out because we don’t like the flexibility of the rules, it is because we will the most extreme stuff at tournaments that don’t impose limits. That is the nature of gamers, they game systems. We have to make choices now to impose limits so that people don’t get used to playing unrestricted 40K as while that may work in a closed environment at home, it won’t work in large scale events without hurting the event.
I agree SOMETHING needs to be done, I’m just thinking 2 sources (detachments) is a little limiting, especially if that becomes 1 combined arms + 1 allied.
Maybe give your players multiple options for lists at tourneys which reward different build philosophies? For example-
Option 1- 2 combined arms detachments, must be same faction
Option 2- 2 detachments of any sort, any source
Option 3- 1 combined arm detachment, 2 additional detachments, battle brothers or allies of convenience only?
Not saying the above are well thought out and intelligent 😉 Just more what I would like to see.
I’m a ‘Nid and CSM player, and all my local gamers are tournament players- we don’t want to play unbounded, only lists which are likely to be acceptable at events like LVO or Kubla. Really hoping to try out more than one single detachment of ‘Nids at an event one day 😉
I find two detachments is typically enough that you can still do a lot of tricks, but not so much that you can just go willy-nilly (especially since Lords of War and Fortifications are both part of a Combined Arms.) Three means you can get a CAD, an Ally, and an Inquisition/Formation/etc, and at that point there’s not really much the “limit” is really doing to you.
Limiting detachments does have a few unfortunate side effects by making stuff like the Helbrute formations not very viable, but I think that’s a relatively minor price to pay.
1500 does obviously limit what detachments you can bring a lot more, but there’s still plenty of room for abuse there- I mean, “Summon Spam” Daemons are investing ~400pts per detachment, so you’re looking at someone who will bring four or even five detachments in a game that size, probably not what you want.
2 detachments is fine as long as you can have two CAD. It’s when “2 sources” is defined as 1 CAD + 1 Allied detachment where I have the most heartburn. Some armies really have no restrictions, but other armies like Nids have almost no options unless you bring the ultra un-fluffy Come the Apocolypse Allies (which honestly speaking may be house rules out anyway.)
Wow…this is long.
Ok, here are my suggestions on what to do with the Psychic Phase:
1. Distributed Casting. No unit can use more dice than 2x his Mastery level, plus 1/2 of the D6 pooled dice (unless there is only 1 psyker in that army, which can then use all of the D6 pooled dice).
Here’s the problem that this is trying to fix. Say you have a Lvl 3 Daemon Prince with Invisibility, the Summoning and Iron Arm. On average, it’ll take 2 dice to cast a Warp Charge 1 power with any reliablity (75% chance). Thus, to cast Summoning somewhat reliably, you need 6 dice, 4 dice for Invisibility and 2 dice for Iron Arm. Now he’s only got 6 (Level 3) +D3 dice so he needs to choose carefully which power he wants to cast.
This also forces you to allocate some dice for lesser units like Pink Horrors to cast their powers. In short, you cannot use all the dice in the dice pool just to cast the most important powers on just a couple of very important psykers. Instead, you are forced to spread out the dice.
2. Limited Summoning. Cannot successfully bring in more than 1 unit per turn using Malefic Powers (including Summoning, Incursion, Sacrifice and Possession). This should make the game manageable.
3. The New Invisibility. Any unit that shoots or assaults the targeted unit does so at BS1/WS1.
4. Deny. You can only ever use as much Denial dice as 2x the opponent’s Power Dice, plus the D6 pooled dice.
Ok, all better now?
I like those suggestions, Jim. I think those have a lot of merit.
You’re welcome.
I feel like the 2xML+1/2 solution ends up being very limiting- for a ML2 model, for example, that’s only barely enough to cast a WC2 power with any degree of reliability and WC3 are largely out of the question. With many spells increasing in cost, that could be very punishing.
Limited Summoning… I dunno. It does stop the army spamming out free units, but on the flip side it means that virtually everyone wants to grab a random Herald + Pink Horrors detachment to try and roll up some free models, because seriously why wouldn’t you?
Reece,
Do you see Lords of War entering the BAO format now that D-weapons are a bit more reasonable?
The only thing holding us back from a total yes is units like the Trany C’Tan, Sonic Lance Rev and Helhammer with large, ignores armor and cover weapons that can wipe out multiple units at a time.
The C’tan and Stormsword (which I feel is pretty much 100% better than the Hellhammer) are big problems. The Rev is a murder machine, obviously, but it’s not nearly as flexible and eats up a TON of points.
I think, overall, Escalation should still probably be a no-go because of the above units, tho; there’s just too much abusable stuff in there.
Would Conjuration powers (i.e., Summoning, Incursion, Possession) be more manageable if you had to roll 5s rather than 4s for success?
Yeah, or simply limit the amount of units that can be summoned into the game at any given time.
I like the fluff of the daemons summoning non-stop more daemons from the grey knights codex then getting sucked back to the warp when their portal or greater daemon gets killed. Maybe implement a fluff rule like that for summoning? If the Summoner dies (including to it’s own sacrifice for a bloodthirster or whatever) it’s summoned units are removed as casualties?
That does raise a lot of memory issues, though- keeping track of which models are “attached” to which units.
Hrm. Maybe just get rid of the Daemonic “don’t suffer perils on all doubles” immunity? That would make it harder to summon by the bucketful, but probably not enough.
The best solution I’ve heard thus far to reigning in the psychic phase is to say any particular psychic power can only be attempted to cast ONCE per army per turn. So you got 5 guys with Invisibility do ya? TOO BAD!
That would force important decisions about what to use on who (whom?), strategerically speaking.
If all psykers get the Primaris for free, that would unhinder most from not being able to do anything if another unit of Horrors (for example) already flickered their fires. Let them throw as many dice at a power they want. Whatever, but then you wouldn’t have 6 new Daemon units being summoned, but maybe 2 or 3 if they were lucky and got a variety pack of powers in the same discipline.
I think limiting an army to 2 detachments of whatever type is fine for competitive play. They could be combined, or one Primary (combined) and one Allied. I think Formations from Dataslates should be permitted, but they should take the place of the Allied Detachment. Other Dataslate characters should also be permitted.
Definitely no Maelstrom Missions. TOs can generally make cool missions anyway. Or give a each player a list of missions they can pick from every game. At least it saves time from rolling and gives extra stuff for armies to do and make up for 1st blood.
This would hurt pink horror daemons (i.e. Flickering Fire) and most of the Grey Knights, which have many units that can only cast 2 powers.
As Jim said, that is a great idea when looking at the really powerful powers, but some of the basic nuts and bolts powers like force or flickering fire get owned. You could maybe make an exception for those, though.
My zoanthropes scream no!!! Actually, I think it may work, but special units like zoanthropes and all (most) primaris abilities need to be exceptions.
Tyranids and GK would absolutely loathe that, as would some other armies.
There doesn’t really need to be a limit on Daemon Summoning armies, certain armies really do run all over them. Eldar Jetbike Spam, Mass Barrage, Wyverns, HtH, things that Blind, AV 14 is a huge one. Like seriously huge. It would have a hard time dealing a Vehicle Heavy Army like Imperial Guard. Templates beat the crap out of it. AlphaStrike armies with Coteaz. It depends heavily on the first turn, not goingfirst and then having your units shot to pieces sucks.
It’s slow, speed kills it. You have to summon your speedy units.
What else.. Oh it’s actually really complicated to play, it’s a lot to keep track of. It has a lot of very easy counters.
Eldar Jetbikes Summoning Daemons with Warlocks is what you want to watch for.
It’s not the end all of games if you face a summoning army.
One of the reasons I am really against it actually, is how damn long it takes. The games are over 5 hours, if you get good at it, maybe 4 or 3.5. But in a tournament, that simply doesn’t work.
The 7th Edition Army creation process is a great example of things done right in a sandbox- the book lays out a very open method and requests players to agree on a method before a game. I love this approach, and a TO choosing a definition out of the available possibilities is completely in the spirit of the game and wording. You may disagree with the exact methodology a TO uses, but there is no doubt that this is an accepted and desirable activity for a TO to partake in.
But on the flip side, the summoning of more models and the swamping of the psychic phase is somehow built into the sandbox itself! At least the cards are pretty easy to just excise from the game…
It’s maddening really- who didn’t see this coming with the psychic phase, cards, and malefic powers?
IDK if anyone has suggested it but I like the idea of your dispell dice being 1/2 your opponents warp dice+ D6.
It balances out Dameons / eldar without boning them or disallowing certain lists. It also prevents them from totally owning a player who brought 1 psyker. None of this well your PL 2 so you get 2+D6 while the daemon player gets 40+d6 dispell.
I guess I don’t like having 2 ML 4 psykers and being constrained to 1 dice + 1d6 to stop my opponent from casting Iron Arm on his ML2 Daemon Prince with psychic familiar 😉
But I think setting half +d6 as your minimum psychic dice in either your turn or your opponent’s may have merit, 20 dice would allow you to ruin quite a few conjurations from that 40+d6 list!
Spitballing here: What if you start with a base 2 sources for your army, but if you don’t take any psykers you can have a third, and if you exceed a certain number of WCs you are restricted to one source only.
It’s funny, I linked this post in my clubs forum and they hated it and they hate me for liking it…
Another possible solution for Malefic summoning powers is this. Just enforce the FoC. Do you have 2HQ? Can’t summon heralds, have 6 troops? Can’t summon demon troops. Etc. So if they demon play starts with 2HQ and 2 troops, they can then summon what? 4 troops and maybe some elites or fast attack? If you do follow the FoC, that means a herald could not be possessed by a BT if they have another HQ choice. It really reigns in the summon spam. Even if it is used by non demon players. Would you trade your ML 3 Farseer of a Herald?
Great post, as usual. This very cleanly and succinctly states my opinion on what the issues with 7th edition are.
So an idea on the psychic overload. How about limiting dice to some number (12 seems fine), but any additional dice you have can be used to re-roll (for offense and defense)?
Re-rolls would be all or nothing, so if you threw 6 dice at a power you would need a minimum of 18 dice to re-roll it (and you would have to re-roll all 6, not just the failures)
This makes the maximum number of psychic dice which are useful 23 (roll a 1, have 11 to get to 12, and 12 more for re-rolls) but allows a player with only 6 to max out the psychic die they can throw.
The cool thing is that re-rolls aren’t as useful in denying the 3 Warp Charge ability buffs, but they can shut down single Warp charge abilities and witchfires pretty reliably.
It doesn’t solve the Maelific powers, but it may be a good compromise
For a tournament if the scenario had a specific set of cards but not the whole deck, I think that could work add variety and be fun.
As an example scenario 2 uses cards 25-28 and 50-53 (pulled those numbers out of my butt as an example). Then the scenario says each player draws 3 cards and plays them at the end of the game. So as a competitive player I know my opponent has 3 of 5 possible objectives I know what they all are but not his specific objs. Makes it fun and interesting, from a TO or scenario builders point of view I can select specific cards and for each scenario to insure balance.