We here at Frontline Gaming are curious as to what you all are enjoying or not enjoying about this new edition so far.
8th ed 40k has gone bananas, that much is obvious. Stores are selling out of the new books and kits, leagues and clubs are swelling in numbers and we anticipate record breaking attendance to Games Workshop events this year. So, the edition is obviously a hit!
But, what do you all like so far and not like? For me, it is very interesting to see folks go through the ups and downs and adjustments to this new edition that I have already gone though previously. When I read some of this information from community members I simply nod and say, yeah, just be patient that stage will pass quickly. Some of it I have to agree with as I see things from another perspective. I’ve also been fortunate enough to teach some players totally fresh to the game how to play, and see them pick up the rule-set quickly and easily.
As a gamer what I love:
- The removal of un-fun (IMO) elements of the game such as “Deathstars” which were too durable, powers and rules that tended to dominate the game (Hunter’s Eye, Invisibility, etc.) and bloated lists with free points which took hours and hours to play.
- The streamlining of the game and emphasis placed on in-game decision making as opposed to optimal list writing (although that is still very important).
- The move to units and armies that play closer to their lore but are still effective on the tabletop in a competitive setting. I’m looking at you, Berserkers!
As a retailer what I love:
- The reasonable price point to get started in the hobby for a new player. As you tend to have less units on the table, the new player can get rolling easier which lowers the barrier to entry. As we all know this hobby keeps you hooked for years, so as a retailer I am confident that customer will continue to purchase goodies as they start new armies or expand existing armies, but now it is a lot easier to get them going.
- The ease of teaching new players the game. Much as with 8th ed Fantasy; 7th ed 40k was a morass of rules that was very difficult to approach for the new player and often we saw customers choose a simpler game as their eyes glazed over while we tried to explain how to simply build an army in 7th ed 40k.
- We brought vastly more new hobbyists in with Age of Sigmar during this period of time due to the two above reasons and it convinced me that this was the right business model for a successful miniatures game.
As a tournament organizer what I love:
- A rule set that is vastly more streamlined. This means less judging staff needed to run an event, less rules debates, more time spent enjoying an event.
- A responsive Games Workshop that wants this edition of the game to be great, and is willing to support it with speedy and clear support.
However, it isn’t all rainbows and sunshine, of course. Some material is a bit unclear and units here and there could be better or worse but much of that is subjective. In general, I am just thrilled with 8th ed and am so happy to see others sharing that enthusiasm.
I am a bit close to this project though for obvious reasons. What are all of your opinions at this early stage in the new edition of the game we all love?
Tbo, my only complaints are the lack of chapter tactics for both SM and chaos (I know the actual codexs will have them). Also, while I get why it’s done this way, the speration of points for wargear and units is slightly tedious.
Question! Is the ITC using power levels for their events? There is a rumor going on my area that this the case.
I’m not with the ITC in any way but I can tell you from watching all the streams that Reece firmly believes Power Levels is NOT made for matched play. That doesn’t stop a TO from running a tournament how he wants to though (I believe).
Josh is correct, no Power Levels for matched play as standard in the ITC.
I think Reece is right, because some pieces have a huge variability in power and cost… A good example is a defiler, Helbrute, or a Chaos Knight (each can add 50-75 points over the base cost…)
However, the flip side is the Tyranid Codex. I don’t think there is a huge cost difference in any of the models I’ve tried out. Tyranids with power levels would be pretty close to competitive play, honestly.
Other than Inquisition, most of the Factions I’ve seen with massive amounts of Upgrades available seem to be MEqs. I haven’t looked into it in real detail, but just from flipping through, many of the Xenos, AdMech, Daemons, and IG all seem to work reasonably well under the Power Level system.
I added up the points for a couple of PL100 Lists the other day that my buddy and I had used (Necrons and Nids), and they came out within 15 Points of each other.
I would have really liked a big summary page in the indexes. It is so annoying to have to constantly flip between pages to check values for models.
Yeah, writing a list this edition is quite a bit more time consuming. I have to agree there but once a list building app is available it will be really nice.
I just (re)downloaded the Battlescribe app for my iPad and it made it relatively painless to make lists both with PLs and Points.
Good to know!
I’ve had half a dozen games so far. I have to say I find it boring.
My armies are bland and the rules for my two armies are spread over 6 books which is no improvement on 7th!
The game itself feels predictable, the loss of randomness in deep strike and vehicle damage chart has removed cinematic elements. Feels like a grind as you slowly reduce the large numbers of wounds things have.
Seems to me people are starting to field just three units, bubblewrap, lascannons and tough vehicles.
Finnicking around with templates and angles has been replaced by finnicking around with previse distances and placement of units in the close combat phase.
I like the new variety of missions.
Ok so I seriously can’t figure this out. How the heck are two armies rules in six books. No matter how I looked I couldn’t figure out how that could be?
My renegades and heretics now need the FW IG book, Index Imperium 2, Index Chaos and the FW Chaos book.
My Iron Hands (Index Imperium 1) have a relic predator (FW book) and an Imperial Knight (Index 2).
So 6 books between them.
At least for someone new to the hobby entering to play the exact same armies as you, the books cost less in total than the ones they replaced.
Well my Renegades ran from the Chaos Codex and IA13 before, those books together were about £50 or £60, which is what buying the books to replace them will cost.
It feels bad though because the replacement books are in every way inferior, there are units missing that were in IA13 (mainly Dreadnoughts).Traitor Legions and Angels of Death.both gave me a huge number of fluffy and interesting options. The Indexes are boring, my Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors and Iron Hands are all just paint schemes again which is dreadful after the fun formations, relics, warlord traits and objectives they all had before.
I’ve been running my army from the leaks and I know I’ll have to buy the indexes to continue realistically, but I have no desire to do so. In comparison to the rules I had in 7th, the Indexes are such a huge step backwards. I don’t particularly enjoy the changes to 8th either.
I think I will shelve 40K until final codexes come out and try it again. I’ll strip and repaint some models for 30K, and concentrate on SAGA and Bolt Action.
Well that is like 3 different armies there. But R&H are a bring a load of books army, because they can pull units from so many different places which is what makes them so good.
lol
Boring, huh? Interesting. The bubble-wrap shooting units are good and will probably stay around but if you use enough LoS blocking terrain (which we cannot recommend enough) the game becomes about movement. Much more enjoyable.
There’s a ton of depth to the game, you just have to play about 10 times to start to see it, IMO.
And you liked the random deep strike and damage table? Interesting. I most assuredly didn’t and am glad to see them go, personally.
I’m not sure I can be bothered to give it 4 more goes… I’ve squeezed in some extra games this week because I’ve had a gamer friend staying, but as of now I’m back to one game a week at my club. Not sure I can face another month of just 8th Ed!
What I liked about random deep strike was that it gave me control. I could choose to squeeze a unit into a small space if I wanted. Yes it was risky with mishaps, scatter etc, but with something like a single Oblit that risk was often worthwhile. Now I can only put the guy in 9″ away, and its easy to block deep strikers entirely because of the clear area they need.
I liked the damage table too, for two reasons. Again it felt like there was a calculation about risk and reward to be made- if a meltagun guy could conceivably one shot something it might be worth risking the unit to get him close. Likewise you really feared for a precious vehicle if you knew it could be one shotted- those moments of tension and the odd surprise when a vehicle exploded were fun and cinematic.
Now you just plug away at a vehicle knocking off wound after wound tediously. Feels like a cost accounting excercise. do I have enough lascannons. Add them up. Its predictable. I’m sure tournament players love that, but its not fun for me.
I would have liked to see a similar table for MCs, as I’ve said elsewhere in this thread. My 8th Ed, if I had written it, would have had a damage table for both MCs and vehicles, rolled on with 2D6 to reduce randomness. Explodes (or ‘Headshot’ for MCs) might have been a 14+ on that table, AP1 giving +3, AP2 +1 with a bonus for shots from the rear (+2), Ordnance (+2) and D (+4).
Combined with armoured ceramite as an option for landraiders and a big increase in the cost to meltaguns and grav I think this would have hit all the sweet-spots.
It seems to me the changes have mostly taken away tactical options and cinematic possibilities. Terrain used to present a choice- do I shelter my melee unit from fire at the cost of slowing? Do I put my shooting unit behind terrain to slow down assaulters at the cost of reduced shooting options due to LoS? Now terrain doesn’t slow units down these choices are gone.
Casualty removal, templates, facings, all made the placement of models important in a meaningful sense that made sense in the narrative. Now placing units is still important, but for gamey purposes to do with drawing units into assault. Just as fiddly, less realistic and fun.
I’m sure as a Tournament Organiser you have a different opinion because all the things people argue over in high tension games- facings, angles, template coverage, scatter, are all gone. But as a casual player gaming with friends, I had no problems with those elements and they added to the fun.
If you’re a casual gamer, you can keep playing seventh. You get to keep everything you love
well I will carry on with 30K, and luckily there are a few players at my local club who are just getting into 30k so I will have some opponents.
No offense but that sounds horrible to me. All the different damage and effect tables and other ran-dumb was one of my biggest problems with 7th. I’m super happy a lot of that is in the trash.
well we all have preferences. I started playing 35 years ago with Laserburn, which as a Bryan Ansell game was the ancestor of 40K. It was definitely a simulation type game, which was the fashion. As time has passed games have got quicker and more streamlined, but also more abstract. some people prefer one type, some another.
I think the fact that most of the 30K players were veterans like me, with similar preferences, was probably a factor in 30K keeping 7th. The gameyness of 8th and lack of granularity didn’t go with the seriousness and simulation elements of 30K.
I don’t find it bland at all. In fact, instead of forcing me to imagine things and build lists in certain restricted ways like with 7th, the new edition has opened up so many possibilities. And the lack of charts that didn’t really add much except complexity has helped make the game accessible, which means more people to play with.
Imagine this:
https://tidesofdestruction.blogspot.se/2017/06/episode-27-classic-orks-vs-dark-angels.html
Impossible to melee, impossible to avoid, impossible to tie up, impossible to snipe-cripple, impossible to out-objective, impossible to kill because things like 90p whirlwinds kill a whooping 3 guardsmen per turn and flamers 2 orks per suicide shot and your vehicles will be melee-tied turn one.
There is simply NO counter to this for sm, csm, gk, dw. N O N E!!
Even if every tac squad takes a heavy bolter and flamer you will be tabled. There is nothing you can do, nothing! Flamers and artillery should have a potent anti horde role instead of killing 3 guardsmen per turn for a 90p whirlwind or chasing single models.
Good job playtesters, good job!
Rofl. 2 things 1, that kind of ork list is unbelievably time consuming and awful to play and 2 you can totally build a list that counters this.Since you can only Da Jump 1 unit per turn he’s wasting just an incredible amount of points on weirdboyz and 2 units of scouts is enough to keep them outside of charge range. Then after that 5 units of HB devs with a CM and a Lieutenant (865 points) will kill 30 boyz a turn and since that squad you Da jumped is more than 6 away from the other orks you only need to kill 20 to get it to blow itself up, should leave you a full unit to start clearing out the other units. Then just make a wall of heavy flamer landspeeders or asscan razorbacks turn two carve each boy unit down to 20ish he’ll eat a couple of vehicles and then turn three bring the units down to =/<10 and watch them blow themselves up to morale.
Just bring 4 stormtalons and whatever else and laugh for the 35 minutes it takes you to table him.
I could table that in 3 turns with my SM flyer list easily. Sorry, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
My opinion of 8th Edition is best summarized by watching The Lego Movie.
Everything is awesome when you’re part of a team!
Haha
Pros: games run faster, and armies are generally re-balanced.
Cons: Most of what was good (within Chaos Daemons) didn’t change or got worse, while stuff that sucked before (i.e. not selling) became really good.
Question: For a chaos player, I haven’t been able to find why I cant have chaos marines and chaos daemons in the same detachment. Yet in the list builders I have found, it doesn’t allow it. Am I misreading something?
Thanks all.
Battlescribe allows it, it’s just a slightly clunky way of doing it.. you make the detachment with one force, and then add another force to that detachment.
Yeah, had an issue getting that going as well, trying to add Assassins to everything 🙂
I only have Battlescribe on the mobile app, and havent been able to figure this out. 🙁 I will poke around and see if I can make this work. Thanks for the advice.
Remember, those apps are not official rules interpretations, they’re all third party.
But yes, you can take a general Chaos faction keyword detachment and put any Chaos units you want in it (assuming they don’t have some more specific rule disallowing some combination, of course).
To me it is preposterous how they chose to market the indexes. They should have all been included in the base rulebook like they did when they switched from 2nd to 3rd edition. I look at my bookshelf at upwards of 10 codexes and supplements I purchased to play the factions in my collection during 6th and 7th, and have to resist the urge to throw them into a fire, as they are now absolutely useless (and don’t talk to me about the art and fluff inside them – aside from the Daemons codex it was an abortion across the board). On top of the $500 or so dollars I spent on those books, I now am expected to spend more than $125 on indexes that have a shelf life of a few months… An app with free data slates like AoS can’t come soon enough. I get that game designers need to be paid, but the indexes are such an incomplete product.
Generally, I think the rules are a definite improvement on 7th. I don’t like the deployment order which results in the player with fewer units being able to choose to go first or second. Flame weapons and grenades hitting fliers is absolutely ridiculous – they should have kept an AA weapon mechanic. Other than that, I like the simplicity of it.
However, let’s be real here – it was a wasted opportunity to do something radically different. There are no new rules concepts or mechanics here that haven’t been beaten to death in previous versions of 40k and its offshoots. The whole ‘I go, you go’ turn order is tired, old, and boring, even un-cinematic, to invert a term so loved by the game designers. Seriously, what is cinematic about one whole force of soldiers frozen in time, while the entire enemy army has their way with them, and then vice versa? They even got rid of the one reactive action you could do as your opponent shot you: go to ground. The designers could have easily switched to a phased turn order, where one player moves a unit, then the other moves a unit, players alternate shooting, then assaulting, etc… It results in a much more dynamic and balanced game where both players are constantly engaged and are forced to think quickly, instead of your opponent checking their iphone and removing models as you roll buckets of dice shooting at them, potentially blowing them off the table first turn with no chance to reciprocate. The precedent and success of games like X-wing, Infinity, and Bolt Action is testament to this modern alternate turn-order mechanic. Hell – even chess has it! I appreciate that 8th edition is easier and faster to play, as well as slightly more balanced, and I’m already having fun with it. However, GW is still being shady with their pay to play rules, and said rules are hardly the revolution or even innovation that I and others were hoping for.
Really dislike how important the roll off for objective deployment has become. There no way that loser should be picking the map and what side he wants. I play a horde army (this edition) so im going second constantly, but each game ive played ive not picked a map i want, nor side, nor went first, its already getting old after 4 games.
And as a side note, imo craftworld eldar which i have a huge force of, might be the worst army in the game, definetely in the xenos index book they come in.
Well they get to pick their side of the deployment map but if you go to the page listed when it says determine deployment type you’ll see they still have to roll for which deployment map you use.
Check the side bar on page 216 about match play and deployment mapd
Couldn’t agree more about the Igo/Ugo. The moment I realised they stayed with that (and really seeing everything else just being rehashes or really predicatable tournament friendly versions of existing rules I just couldn’t feel any excitement. Being dragged along by the torrent atm but fellow Necrons are allready at 6 Doomsday Arcs or such spam for armies and if it keeps going like this I’ll have lost interest before summer is over.
its funny to do such a big reboot and not change the turn sequence.
It is a huge flaw in GW games in general. Rick has shown how it could be done with Bolt Action/GofA.
I’m just glad they did not go to AOS turns
Yes AoS turns can swing games on it’s own. I did some AoS skirmish the other day though and it seemed to work ok there in small games.
I don’t think spam is every going to go away. It’s a case of finding people to play with who aren’t boring enough to play six doomsday arks.
I don’t think spam is ever going to go away entirely. It’s a case of finding people to play with who aren’t boring enough to play six doomsday arks, and actually want to play Warhammer 40,000.
Yeah, you go I go is antiquated and by far the biggest bummer about 40k. The best activation system I’ve seen for this genre/scale was AT-43. Each unit had a card, both players stack the cards in the order you want to activate at the beginning of each turn, then each player alternates in flipping one and activating a unit. Some things would allow you to move a card out of sequence (in 40k could be a command point or warlord ability).
Besides tactical/strategic planning, this added a layer of suspense and anticipation (similar to X-Wing), and was super fun.
I play Tzeentch.
Pro:
Brimstone Horrors are amazing. I feel like I have tons of easily used characters. Magnus is great. Games feel much easier to get in to.
Cons:
Split is, unfortunately, too expensive (imo) and we will not see anyone using it. The rule was seen as too powerful and has, in my opinion, been over corrected and we will now all only see brimstone horrors now.
Screamers are slightly disappointing, the removal of the fly by attack is a bummer.
Physic, as it stands, is incredibly boring. (Which I understand the changes for, but like split my opinion is that it was OVER corrected.)
Power level seems bad.
Marines not having chapter tactics, for now, is upsetting. No reason to play anything other than Raptors or Ultramarines, for Lias or Guilliman.
…Screamers still get a flyby attack. It’s different, but it’s absolutely still there.
It’s different to a degree in which it may as well not be considered the same. Having automatic hits turn into a POSSIBLE mortal wound is a rather significant change.
However, if we’re just harping on whether or not there is an ability called “Slashing Attack”, then yes, you’re correct.
The damage portion of the mechanic changed but saving the flyover attack was “removed” is blatantly incorrect. It’s still there. You still do damage for flying over people. It just uses mortal wounds rather than S4 wounds.
It’s an argument of pedantry, I was intending to imply it changed to a degree that it wasn’t the same any longer. I even clarified that.
Yes, they have an ability to move over things and do a mortal wound on a 6. My statement is that that ability, as changed from before, is different and that I, personally, am bummed out by the change from multiple S4 auto hits per model.
However, I will HAPPILY add, for the third time, that yes, I misspoke.
The ability exists.
I simply don’t like the change.
If I could edit it, I would have long ago.
I am so glad the psychic phase got streamlined, yikes. In 7th it was non-interactive from a broader perspective. You either had a million dice or none. And the powers dominated the game. I was so happy to see that changed, previously it only really worked for armies that went all in psychic which was so dull, IMO.
And the split mechanic in 7th….thank the Emperor that is gone. That was atrocious, IMO. It’s amazingly good now though, you just need to get used to it.
I think my gripes about the Psychic phase will diminish as more powers (AND MAYBE DESTINY DICE?!) become available over time.
I think split being good is slightly overstated, but that’s just a personal opinion due to Brimstones being as good as they are. If they reduced the overall cost from 240 or so points for 10/20/20, I would probably be more interested in using Horrors, but until then I would rather just use 120 Brimstone horrors instead, because it’s simpler and more efficient.
I look forward to tweaks, but am confident in my opinion that it was over corrected. I’d love to be proven wrong over time, though! I’m welcome to learning something I might be missing.
Yeah I think it’s a mistake to say the psychic phase is a problem. The phase is fine, we’re just hurting for more powers to use *in* that phase.
I agree psychic phase needed to get streamlined but as of right now it’s boring and I take issue with the distinction they made in the previews a few weeks back where they said the system now scales equally well if you have one or two psykers or a ton. In my opinion that’s absolutely false.
Pretty much every army gets 3 whole spells. And you can only cast them once per turn in matched play. As Thousand Sons I can bring Ahriman or Magnus and one other sorcerer and that’s it. If I want to bring any more psykers they’re reduced to being smite bots. To me that takes most of the fun out of the psychic phase and hardly qualifies as “scaling well into bigger games.” Maybe if I had at least 6 different spells then my psykers would have something to do. Right now there’s basically 0 point to bring more than 1 or 2 psykers unless you’re going for something cheesy like brimstone smite spam.
As a Chaos player you actually have access to more than 3 whole spells. If you dedicate yourself to Tzeentch you have access to 6 spells, 3 from Dark Hereticus Discipline and 3 from Tzeentch Discipline on the Daemon side of the house. Slaanesh has access to 6 as well. Nurgle has access to 9 as the Death Guard offer it three more. By looking outside the box one can easily adept to what 8th has to offer.
Eldar and the Imperium can open the door to similar expansion of their spell lists threw using other sub factions within their indexes.
That would be great and all but that doesn’t help my Tzeentch daemons or my Thousand Sons when played solo. If I want to play a straight up tzeentch daemon army I have 3 whole spells to choose from. Same for t-sons. Same for basically every army.
I don’t want to HAVE to split my psykers between 2 or 3 different sub-factions just so I can cast spells not named smite with more than one guy a turn. And I don’t think anyone should have to, either.
Hey Reece would I be right in thinking that the power level of horrors takes split into account?
Also to those who want more variety in their psychic I am pretty sure that we’ll see more when codexs come out. Though do not underestimate mortal wounds. Even basic librarians have been total badasses in my games.
It’s not that mortal wounds are not powerful… it’s just that it’s a boring mechanic. In basically every previous edition, psykers came with all these great, unique-feeling abilities that were all manners of different kinds of buffs, debuffs, and tons of styles of shooting attacks.
We can all agree that last edition was a mess with a few powers (I.E. invisibility) that were absurdly powerful, random tables bogged the game down and made psykers way too unreliable unless they were guaranteed their powers, and the warp dice system sucked.
Still, they could have kept the flavor of psychic powers while easily remedying last edition’s woes. Instead, in an edition where everything gets its own bespoke rules, psykers are left in the dust and basically become “let me do a few mortal wounds to the closest enemy” bots.
Pro: The bit I have played I really found the game refreshing.
Pro: I also find it MUCH more enjoyable to watch! Thanks for the games on Twitch FLG! Even though it is 2AM here when you play, I still watch them the next day 🙂
My cons are more specific to my local area rather than the actual game itself! I already have someone who last played 4th seriously looking at getting back into it, and a few other looking back in as well 🙂
Local Con: Lack of LoS blocking terrain…so my GK are going to have a tough time.
Local Con: People insisting on only using Power Levels, and “reserving” the points system to tournaments.
Yeah, the Power Level thing is going to take a minute to adapt to. It is intended for casual play (and says so in the book, lol). Matched play is for use with points by intent.
Make some hills or something for your games my friend! Haha, it makes 8th vastly more enjoyable to play.
But glad you’re enjoying watching games and agree 100%, the shorter time makes it so much easier to follow.
Powerlevels can be ok as long as you understand them. Free wargear for all. AKA do not pick units that do not have wargear. If in 50 pp game one has 700 match points of stuff vs a dude with 1000, well yeah of course who is gonna win?
Power points is kind of like trying to abuse wargear options the most.
This is sort of a pro and a con together. I’m glad we don’t have invincible death stars running around anymore. I say this as a player that ran one.
However, I don’t like how easily everything dies. The end game missions so rarely matter as one person gets tabled or nearly tabled.
Maybe it’s because we haven’t figured the game out so players take bad engagements instead of hiding which means things die faster. If everyone just ran at each other turn 1 in 7th we might see the same.
So in summary, I’m glad things aren’t invincible anymore, but I’d like to see mission play come back. I basically just throw the objectives anywhere because I know someone is conceding before it gets to that point.
I agree with that. Any game with an assault army ends up with a big scrum with as many units involved as possible. To be honest it looks like AoS. Shooting armies just line up and plink away because there is no advantage to getting side/rear shots and deep strike is easily prevented.
Though vehicles were so mediocre in 7th that their armour facings rarely mattered anyway. It was usually only Knights that encouraged any kind of focus on flanking their armour.
as a casual player at clubs I saw loads of vehicles on the table. Even at tournies plenty of people were running Battle Company for the free boxes.
I agree vehicles should have been buffed slightly, though the problem really was expensive vehicles being too vulnerable, cheap rhinos etc were OK. If they had introduced armoured ceramite for Land Raiders and increased the cost of grav guns and melta guns it could have been fixed without losing the tactical details of facings or the cinematic qualities of the damage chart.
In fact in a perfect world I would have had a damage chart for MCs too, perhaps made both on 2d6 to reduce the randomness slightly.
That wouldn’t of been enough. So long as scattbikes and warp spiders existed AV10-11 just meant ‘lose 3 per turn’.
from what I’ve seen, two shooting armies don’t really “plink”,
“mutual obliteration” is more how I would describe it!
Same with assault armies.
I’m not saying that the games I’ve played have been lopsided. Every game I’ve lost I’ve thought “If I just had 30 more boys right now I could win this” the game is close but literally everything is dead. usually with 1 person holding 1 or 0 objectives and the other holding 1 or 2 an secondaries only being important for pride.
We found this happens a lot in the beginning of your games. After a while, you will find games playing to the mission more as you learn to hold things back a bit. Early in though, yeah, games will be wipe-outs.
My marines are purple and shiny. They rock with all the rocking.
Pros:
Ease of Play -with a few slight instances the game is quick and has few argument points.
Indexes – great summary books
Inclusion of Models – So many things that were Nigh unplayable are a serious choice I have to think about taking. I mean Warp talons with a command pt reroll get into CC on a 52% chance with deep strike.
NOISE MARINES ARE METAL(figuratively not literally) AGAIN!
Chaos Monster Machine Mash is just ridiculously fun to play. but it is not the only way I see to be successful. Hey Land Raider. Time to hit the Car Wash.
Cons
I have 9 Oblits. They will be going on a shelf. But Queso Cheese so Cheese.
Icons are pretty varied in usefulness. (re: GWs why for do you pour all the haterade on Slaanesh)
No hard to hit for Heldrakes.
GWs continued aversion to Indexes at the end of books.
I can’t play all day erryday
I think the edition is a knock out of the park. Of course, that’s not helpful info, so here’s something a bit more actionable:
Power points:
| The Good
– These are great for throwing together a game without worrying about minutia.
– Using power as a secondary way to measure something is very helpful, and I like how some missions care about that.
| The Bad
– At least for the moment, Power doesn’t seem to be completely balanced, seeming to favour durability over lethality. I’ve seen five “high power” (power 15+) units in action so far (Swarmlord, Abaddon, Defiler, Monolith, Wraithknight), and while the Swarmlord is worth every penny, the rest seem either a little or a lot high priced. The Monolith especially was very expensive for comparatively little damage output, so while it was very tough, it didn’t interact enough with the battlefield. Again, I can’t completely stand by this since I don’t have enough experience yet.
– Another issue with Power is that some units, fully upgraded, seem to be worth a lot more. A good example were the Tau and Imperial Guard. Everyone that I’ve spoken with that has built armies both points and power tends to find that a 100 power list is almost 2000 points, plus or minus 50 points, when they take all their upgrades. Tau and Imperial Guard hit almost 2300 points, with the players I know who played these saying that they would have had a lot less stuff if it had been a points game rather than a power game.
Characters:
| The Good
– Characters tend to work in a very satisfying way, extending their influence to all nearby units
– Having characters be hard to single out is comforting for keeping them alive from shooting
| The Bad
– Daisy-chaining multiple units onto a single character is problematic for very large units.
– Close combat really exposes characters since they must get to base to base, and this makes it very easy for them to be the closest unit afterwards.
Fall Back:
| The Good
– This mechanic is great for opening up possibilities and allowing many armies to fight as you imagine them.
– For tough and high-powered units that don’t fly, and for units that want to charge even if they do fly, there is a very real cost to falling back. Not being able to shoot or charge effectively deals with the unit for a turn.
| The Bad
– There’s very little cost to falling back for small units or units that don’t have much damage output. Personally, I feel like falling back should be an immediate Leadership test, representing how a disordered Fall Back will lead to some being struck down. Not 100% sure though because losing a vehicle simply because it fell back sounds somewhat over-punishing, but then again, maybe not.
Armour Save Modifiers:
| The Good
– Nice way to keep units from being totally defenceless, yet also able to strip them of all defences if strong enough weapons brought to bear
– Works really well with cover
| The Bad
– really tough stuff relies on Invulnerable saves to stay alive, since -3 and -4 armour modifiers effectively work out the same in many situations. Perhaps considering a “Hardness” special rule that allows the armour to resist 1 point of armour modifiers.
I’m liking it a lot overall. Everything having split fire is great, the new AP system is better, it is easier, it removes deathstars and gives tools for anything to almost every army, it removes “tax” units, etc… I’m very happy with it, and expect this to be a very gamey summer.
As for cons I do not like how points work now, it is confusing and cumbersome. I also don’t like the lack of customisation (powers, artifacts, traits…) but I understand that all of that will come back with the release of real codices. And I don’t like either how combat works in relation to multi-level buildings.
Oh and I also don’t like the new haters that have apperared, but they’ll surely go away with time as the horde of new happy players displaces them :P!
Don’t like the haters? You should have been an early supporter of AOS. It was like I was for shooting puppies
My only gripe is how the first turn is determined. Meh, at least I can deploy knowing that I’ll go second!
Agreed. While it works fine for fun pick-up games, it doesn’t seem fair for matched play.
Absolutely loving the game thus far. Power Level has been great for pickup games, while point values seem about right, with one caveat…
It really feels like there’s a huge gap between the power brought by Forgeworld vs. the “regular” stuff. I’ll never complain about FW being used (I own plenty myself and love using the models), but things like Decimator Engines, the Brass Scorpion, and Malanthropes seem so much more effective for their points than their non-FW counterparts that it’s hard to justify not taking them.
Other than that, though, it’s been all one great experience to this point. Really looking forward to seeing how the tournament scene shakes out.
One thing that I love, and kind of don’t love at the same time, is the cost of unique characters. Last edition the vast majority of them were overpriced and rarely saw the field. They fixed a lot of them and made them cheap enough that they’re a little more appealing. That’s great in my book because I love the flavor unique characters bring to the table.
At the same time some of the prices are a little bit *too* cheap. Typhus, for example is the exact same as a Lord of Contagion in many respects. Except Typhus has the Destroyer Hive, he’s a psyker, his melee weapon is slightly better, he has grenades, and he buffs nearby poxwalkers. Yet somehow Typhus is 20 points cheaper than the Lord of Contagion once you factor in the LoC needing to pay for his weapon while Typhus’ cost is entirely included in the base cost. To me that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Either Typhus is laughably underpriced or the Lord of Contagion is way overpriced for what he does.
After assembling my LoC model, then consulting my Index when it came in… I went all Sad Face…
All of Tzeentch daemons are sadface for me. I loved using my LoC and Kairos last edition. Now they’re just blah. Melee beatsticks and smite bots. What’s the point of bringing multiple heralds or LoC + Kairos when one or two models is all you need to cap out the rule of one…
Pros- I am liking the books, having multiple armies in each book is really helpful. I like the idea of power level for newer players and adding an easy mechanic for them to get started. I do feel they could be organized much better “How hard was it to put a base points cost on the same damn page?” Then have a wargear section right nearby somehow.
Cons- Where are my Chapter Tactics?!?! All of the Usual Suspects are there character-wise, why not have some notation like -Including this Character gives your detachment “X” Ability? Even though there are no Iron Hands characters present, which makes me sad but I could still live with it.
– I know this might make me look stupid, but I could not find anything about penalties for shooting at flyers very easily. Maybe this comes from previous edition mentality, but I did get it figured out it was just not easily explained for me.
– All of the “Detachments” are still there even if just in the use of the term Detachment. However it’s all just a different flavor of Vanilla. I find this to make list building very cumbersome and needless. While trying to make things easier, they sure heaped on the extra side of confusion.
-Command Points, really? … Meh, surely this is where they missed the chance for Chapter Tactics.
I know looking over my list of cons it seems pretty negative, but honestly I’m really excited to start playing again since I left the debacle of 7th. I hope this broadens the reach and the community overall. Any chance I get to play with my beloved toy soldiers again makes me happy. I’ve spent way too many years of buying, painting, and community building to not find some level of joy in what we have been presented.
Happy Gaming All!
I feel certain Chapter Tactics will be out in a new codex before summer is even over.
And that’ll be the big test of the whether the reboot went well, imo. Will GW be able to avoid creating another White Scars or Wave Serpents or Scatterbikes monster?
I wasn’t so sure about modifiers when it was explained, but after having played a couple of games, I think it adds some depth and makes the game more enjoyable. The missions are quite good, very cinematic, and the overall slimming of the rules (characters, challenges, universal rules) makes playing and teaching the game more fun. And the power levels are a much-needed bridge for new players. I thought 7th was a C, 8th is a B+
However, the two elements that I do not like, are 1) the alternating combats in the fight phase. I think it takes the cinema out of the game and makes it… well, very game-y. I’d have much preferred a simultaneous combat system.
2) absolutely hate the morale phase. Firstly, for all they were supposed to have fixed, the fact that morale was basically ignored by over half the units, morale is basically ignored by over half the units, including all characters, monsters, vehicles, small units, tyranids, orks, and dark eldar units. So pretty much, it only affects large squads in certain armies. Secondly, it just doesn’t feel appropriate to the universe to have individual models fleeing from the battle, particularly hardened space marines or terrifying chaos abominations. It did feel appropriate to have whole units being driven back by overwhelming firepower or get pinned down by massive artillery blasts, and I wish they could have come up with a system that represents the unholy terror of war in a much more fulfilling way and balanced way that is fair to all armies. Thirdly, it’s kind of a chore to keep up with, as now you have to keep a running tally of casualties for your large units.
Pros:
Boyz are back!!
Cons:
I am incapable of writing a points based list without a spreadsheet….
Pros:
-All armies feel good, some need a bit of love but you can make things work with basically any army you think looks cool.
-Games feel fast and fluid. I haven’t had to crack open the main rulebook to look over rules that often, really just for things like Heroic Intervention and some Charge cases. Specific rules on Dataslates you get used to really easily, especially for armies who haven’t changed that much, I barely look at most of the ones for my units anymore.
-The story going forward looks awesome!
-Everyone being on the same page is nice. I know it won’t last, but there’s no more “oh, X army hasn’t been updated for 3 editions so they’re behind”. Everyone feels like they’re playing with the same deck of cards.
Cons:
-Some small rules clarifications.
-Spam armies feel a bit dull. I like that you can take what you want, but 120 Brimstones doesn’t feel fun, 7 Scion Command Squads don’t feel fun.
-All Superheavy armies have the potential to turn the game into Rock Paper Scissors. We had a 4 Knight army do real work in a weekend event we did recently, and I hope we don’t see that become the norm at events.
Overall enjoying 8th so far! Glad to have both 40k and AoS be in a state that I can play either and be happy!
The bad:
– A handful of the rules need clarifying.
The meh:
– I was hoping random charge distances wouldn’t make it into 8th initially, but now that first-turn charges are possible, I can see why they have them. I haven’t reached a conclusion on this one yet, but I’m leaning toward a neutral stance now.
The good:
– Pretty much everything else.
Seriously, I’ve only had a chance to play two games of 8th so far, but I can already tell that it’s going to be my favorite edition so far. This is speaking as someone who started with 5th Edition. Super excited to be getting more games in this weekend!
My only complaint is the Renegades army list from FW. Straight garbage, very little effort put into it.
My biggest concern, looking to the future, is how GW will release updated codecs with new powers, upgrades, relics, etc. In the past, they were released one faction at a time with large gaps in between. At times one faction received multiple updates while others received none (looking at you Eldar and Chaos). My hope is that GW releases updates for every faction at the same time. I would wait longer for that to happen.
The thing I don’t like so far is that you can’t shoot a character because there is a unit locked in combat closer than the character so you can’t shoot them either.
That made me think, if your whole army except your characters is locked in combat in the middle of the field that would mean if the opponent was behind the combat, none of their units could shoot? Your characters could walk around and not worry
Yep that’s how it would work.
My only rules complaint would be vehicles being able to fire their side sponson weapons through themselves.
I winced at that initially but now I just presume the vehicle is pivoting all over the place to fire.
Yeah, I think there was some sort of comment from one of the designers at some point about that just representing that the Vehicles are actually moving significantly more than the Model itself does.
I love almost everything. My lists all feel like they should fluffwise while still being competitive!
The one thing I hate are the missions. I drastically preferred the old deployment and first turn rules, and thought they were more fair. But my group has just gone back to using the 7e ITC missions and problem solved!
Let me start by saying that I think 8th is a huge improvement over 6th and 7th and I pretty well agree with most of the Pros people are listing especially as it relates to streamlining the game. Finishing a game in under 2 hours is awesome!
I will also add that as someone who has played since 2nd edition and who has seen what amounts to the equivalent of index lists for 2nd/3rd edition 40k and 6th edition Fantasy the 8th edition indexes are AWESOME. I realize there are things like chapter tactics that would have been nice to have but for a total reboot get you by list these things are great.
I have two cons so far.
One. I still don’t think flyers feel right. I mean actual fliers like the Valkyrie not jump pack troops or Tau suits. I didn’t like em in 6th/7th and still don’t really think they quite play right. Especially the way they interact with heavy weapons they just feel mostly clunky and a little over priced. There are some stand out exceptions but most of the fliers feel like a miss to me.
Two. The Imperial Armour for Astra Militarum feels really phoned in. It’s completely missing the normal Medusas (only has Armageddon pattern), the artillery doesn’t interact with the master of ordnance as far as I can tell. The vendettas feel like a bad joke. 230+ points for 6 lascannons that will almost always hit on 5s. Why even bother? Not sure about the other Imperial Armour indexes but I was pretty disappointed by the Imperial Guard ones.
Still overall fairly minor complaints and I’m really looking forward to playing more 8th!
Good:
Streamlined rules. No more having to look up random stuff that happens 1 in 20 games (a single model in a unit surviving and rolling morale to rally 4+ times until he runs off the table.) Less BS to keep track of (oh, I forgot you stunned my Rhino last turn, etc.) No more BS unit types. Games play faster. Vehicles don’t blow up in one shot, etc.
Streamlined psychic phase.
Removal of Templates. Good God, I hate templates. 2 out of 3 of my armies are hordes (GSC and Nids) and having to space my dudes 2″ apart vs flamer heavy lists was NOT FUN PERIOD.
Reserves. Coming in when and basically where you want is SO MUCH BETTER. Getting screwed on bad reserve rolls waiting on your Mawloc to come in bottom of Turn 4 was just not fun.
95%+ of units seem at least viable.
Command Points. CPs are amazing. They take a lot of the sting out of that “one dice roll” that jams you up.
Bad:
Some points costs seem off. I’ve only got one game with GeneCult under my belt, but they seem dramatically overcosted. An acolyte is one point less than a Hive Fleet Genestealer for a T3 dude with a 5+ save (he’s not THAT much more survivable in 8th vs 7th) and it seems like all the models that can ambush ate an “ambush tax” even though only half of the army can ambush RAW (this will likely be fixed with the Codex, but it still stings)
Psychic was horrible in 7th but seems a little bland in 8th. Race specific powers are good. Being able to pick powers is great. Maybe two or three charts per race? Fine line to cross without going into bloat again.
The FW books (on the surface) look pretty badly composed and rushed.
Again, I’ve only played two games of 8th so far.. and do not like the missions in the book as I’ve experienced them.
Yeah the Forge World stuff so far really seems like the weakest part of 8th edition. I’m sure there are some gems but it definitely isn’t anything that I already own or am familiar with. It’s pretty weird how much worse the forge world indexes seem than the ones GW released. It makes me wonder if they went through the same sort of testing and QA.
Not quite a handful of games so far so its early days but
Good:
Games get properly stuck in from turn 1. I *want* to be scared that the Bloodthirster might pull off that turn 1 charge
Much more streamlined, much quicker
The option of Power levels – for when quick play with a cold drink in hand is what you need.
Bad:
Forge World quality control – and general balance if their Index Xenos is anything to go by. One or two things maybe too good, several are looking poor and there is the odd non-functioning rule.
I’ve seen quite a few people including myself bring up Forge World as a “con” now. I really wish GW would work more closely with Forge World going forward to make sure that their stuff is at least roughly in line with what GW is doing and also works well with what GW is doing.
One good example that I can think of is the Master of the Ordnance in the Astra Militarum list. Rather than listing specific vehicles that he works with why don’t GW and Forge World get together and introduce an “artillery” keyword and say that he works for all models with the artillery keyword. That way you future proof him as well as let him work with say forge world earthshaker batteries or Griffen mortars or the colossus or whatever.
Love most things. Everyone I’ve played with thinks it’s a HUGE improvement.
Eeeeeeeeeeexcept the First Player rule. Armies without transports = hidden rule of “you will only go 1st on a 6”. Like, how dumb does that sound… Imagine. You have 5 armies: chaos daemons and admech. And they have no transports and the daemon summoning is way too overnerfed (can’t move is the biggest hitter. can only summon in combat pretty much so you don’t suffer from that). So until this rule is changed – I pretty much CAN’T go first. I’ll begin every single game of 8th ed as 2nd player(so far that’s been true in 8 out of 8 games)
While people are complaining about Forgeworld, am I reading correctly the Leman Russ Conqueror with it’s battle cannon is roughly the same cost as a regular Leman Russ without any weapons at all?
The Pros:
– I have the rules for 11 factions for $45. That would have set me back at least a couple hundred dollars last edition. I just got into GSC and realized I would likely want the Imp 2 index. Will easily pay $23 more bucks for ~five more factions worth of rules sets.
– Landraider: I’ve always loved the design of the landraider, now I have a reason to invest in one (or two!(CSM))
– Power Levels: having limited time to play lately, I can build a list in less than 10 minutes if needed.
– A lot of great deals on fully painted Tau//Eldar armies online right now ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
The Cons:
– Primaris Marines making my OG marines look like Squats.
It is a sad time to be an OG marine. But hey, explains why squats are brought back in the fluff. 🙂
I love that the game is more cinematic, most units are viable, they feel much more flavourful and that’s even without the relics, traits etc. that we became accustomed to and will almost certainly get back in codices.
I love that the psychic system is straightforward, fast, and it just works. A million, million times better than the ridiculous and pointlessly drawn out and un-fluffy 7th edition psychic phase. Just roll 2D6, compare, apply special rules, sorted! Combined with powers that aren’t silly like old invisibility, fortune, etc., it means that psyker-heavy armies and armies with just one or two psykers for flavour both work!
I love that tanks are tough.
I don’t love that the replacement system for blast weapons, while at least better than using templates, is still not there yet. Using purely dice and no templates is the right way to go, but there’s simply no reason to randomise the number of shots ex-blast weapons fire. Have a set number of shots to represent the power of the blast, and leave it to BS to determine how much of that blast hits the enemy. You don’t need to both randomise number of shots *and* roll to hit. As it is, almost every weapon that used to be a large blast now sucks because they roll D6 to determine number of shots. They should all fire six shots every time, and it would be fine. Bizarrely, Necron monolith particle whips do this and it makes sense, but nothing else does.
In a similar veing, single big weapons rarely inflict reliably high damage, which leads to tanks that are primarily based on one big weapon being rather crap because they’re really likely to just not do much. Fire prisms, railgun hammerheads, vindicators, tyrannofexes, doomsday arks, and whatever else I’m forgetting. Not only do their big expensive guns still only inflict D6 damage (with a rarely occurring single mortal wound something added to a railgun), but they all still get -1 to hit when moving, so there’s a fair chance that big fancy expensive gun won’t even hit!
There’s simply no reason to take them over the smaller hard-hitting guns, i.e lascannons, bright lances, dark lances, heavy gauss cannons, etc. A wave serpent with twin bright lances is more likely to succeed than a fire prism, it’s better to have multiples of the smaller versions. It’s hardly cinematic and fluffy when the fire prism swoops in to deal out death to enemy tanks… and probably misses because it gets -1 to hit when it moves despite eldar being focused on mobile warfare. It isn’t very cool when the hammerhead swivels its fearsome railgun into position, the shot smashes into the target with terrifying force, and… inflicts two wounds. When the vindicator rolls up, fires its mighty demolisher cannon at the defences arrayed against it, and… pops a single dude.
What I’m saying is the game is fantastic except random shots and unmitigated random damage can go screw themselves. Other than this main thing I’m absolutely loving it!
>They should all fire six shots every time, and it would be fine
No. I do not want to see Rapid-Fire Battle Cannons getting twelve S8 AP-2 DmgD3 shots per turn. Nor do I want to see IG Mortals putting out six shots for a trivial number of points.
I’m not a huge fan of randomization, but “just make it maximum” is a horrible system.
Also, the Hammerhead with Railgun is not a bad tank. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s a very good tank. The Doomsday Ark, though I haven’t tested it, also seems like a very good shooting platform; the Fire Prism and Vindicator I am less sure about.
Used to be more swingy which was fun. If you clumped a unit up, for whatever reason, and it was hit bang on by a battlecannon or vindi you could lose the whole unit. Made the gun feel powerful and added to the depth of the game. Now hordes etc need have no fear of those guns. Its stupid.
How do they not fear these weapons? Do they not do damage to them? Are they immune to them? =P
I am teasing of course, but the massive amounts of hyperbole about the changes to blasts and templates makes me laugh. I build lists around these weapons and rock people with them in 8th. They’re not better or worse, simply different.
And when did you see either battlecannons or demolisher cannons in 7th, anyway? They actually get tabletime, now.
In response to Reece: From what I can tell you don’t take a Leman Russ Battle Tank for the battle cannon, you take it for the hull and sponson weapons! The battle cannon itself doesn’t do a lot with the pretty high chance of rolling low on shots followed by hitting on 4+. I just don’t see why it needs to be so inconsistent, you already have BS to determine hits.
Yeah, I take assault Russes for the Heavy Flamers, honestly. The Punisher Cannon and Storm Bolter are just icing on the cake!
I don’t have a large sample size, but I’ve found D-Arks to be solid and occasionally amazing. They do what I need them to do, they chunk big things, and every now and then the stars will align and they’ll hadoken something out of existence.
Tough, too. I imagine my serious ‘cron lists will run a pair of them most of the time.
It’s so likely to fail. The chance of hitting, wounding, getting through armour, and then rolling decent damage is so low. It’s why multiple lascannon equivalents are generally better, more shots and only slightly weaker.
Why? They’re only BS3 so they’ll probably only get three hits. Considering how expensive they are, reliably getting three hits per turn with their main turret gun doesn’t seem unreasonable at all.
In fact, rolling anything less just feels like the Guard player is being cheated. Put it this way: A battle cannon firing at marines right now will probably only kill one guy. That’s just sad.
I like the new repair protocols for Necrons, rather than being twice as tough as everyone else, the new RP is much more tactical for Necrons and their opponents. I do miss the old gauss, being able to dunk a leman rust with a 20 man warrior blob was fun, but I get it’s not balanced now.
Other likes, templates being gone is wondrous, I love that so many armies can compete now, vehicles and monstrous creatures having the same rules makes much more sense, and weapons profiles actually mattering is also nice.
My only complaint at this point is that some things weren’t clarified well enough leading to some vague confusing things. But with a whole game update that’s bound to happen.
Otherwise, I love everything so far.
I generally like the edition, and I will say the ability to use almost all of my models competitively is fun. I can’t exactly make a 7th edition list and expect to win, but I can guarantee a larger amount of my collection is useful!
Dislikes?
1. Costing. If it wasn’t for the “interactive” digital codex, I might have waited a month for Army Builder to update, lol!
2. Imperium as a keyword- this really is annoying, allowing mix and match still for the entire Imperium…
3. Psychic Focus- a given power can only be attempted once per turn? The phase is basically wasted for single side lists, but Chaos and Imperium have a huge list. The powers are good, generally, and I like the casting and denying mechanism. the whole phase just feels so minimal now, it becomes a smite fest rather than casting the interesting stuff
4. Deteriorating ability implementation- I like the deteriorating, but I believe it was overthought. Some models become almost useless as the take enough wounds, and others have almost no realistic penalty. Shooting pieces that go from 4+ to 5+ after taking half their wounds… just lame
5. Obliterators- they are honestly just trash now!
But again, all in all, a very exciting, fun edition.
Reecius, my group and I have been deep in the prep for two of them going to the ATC next month. Unfortunately given a bit of mathhammer and a lot of playing we have come to the conclusion that there are only three good builds and everything else is basically unplayable. These lists are, massed kastalans with Cawl, Massed conscripts ( 200 to 300 plus support), and guilliman with a ton of missile launcher devestator squads. I have basically lost any modivation to buy or play any because of how over the top these 3 lists are.
When you get you teeth kicked in at ATC by…well any of the many things that don’t care about these lists you should report back.
I’ve heard like 6 different radically different predictions about what the “only viable 8e builds” are in the last few days, everything from this post, to that guy further downthread ranting about about 180 orks + weirdboy spam, to people claiming 8e is a “lascannon spam meta”, etc, etc.
It’s just sort of amusing how many self-proclaimed experts on a game that’s barely two weeks old are running around.
I know, right? lol, the game is just in its infant stages. People need to just chill and be patient a bit.
Agreed. We’re playing with half the game. I’m sure you have a much more comprehensive view of 8th after playtesting the codices, it must be amusing to watch everyone freaking out over index rules that will be edited or replaced within months.
The change from 7th to 8th has overall really improved and streamlined many game mechanics. It’s also very new and very vanilla in a certain sense. 7th, for all its bloat and cumbersome rules, had a lot of flavor in terms of formations and special rules. I do think as time goes on 8th will be richer and deeper, though the irony is we could look back on this day and say “man ‘member when things were balanced before all this codex power creep?”
There are outliers here and there in terms of certain units I think still aren’t very good but by and large the three armies I play (SM, Necrons, DEldar) all feel like they have tools to win games, each has strengths and weaknesses, and there’s a lot of room to further develop them.
There’s also a great swell of interest in the game again which has brought new and old blood back to the game, which is always good. I certainly hope the game continues to progress both quickly and fairly to each faction and we ride this wave of good feelings for years!
Pros: 8th is so much simpler and faster than 7th by a huge margin
Cons: my poor crisis suits are now pretty much useless because they’re so expensive. They’re my favorite unit and the reason I got into 40k.
Can I ask everyones opinion on terrain? I feel.like the 3rd player was always the board, but now the game could be played on a blank piece of wood. Or 1 with 6 shoe boxes.
I love the mechanic simplifications, but miss the the flavor of some things.
The good:
+Easy to get into. 7th was a very awkward game. 8th is learned by a game of 100points and you know how it works.
+Will help gaming community by giving easy access to the wargaming community with many players playing the game and willing to teach the game. I suspect our humble gaming group of 40-50 players will grow.
+Much easier for kids to learn. Our group gets contribution from the government based on amount of kids in the group. Now they will actually be able to play.
+Close combat is tactical and it is very interesting to consider what to activate and fight with next.
+Removal of death stars. Sorry they should just go.
+removal of vastly amount of special rules. Yay!
For the downside:
-The terrain rules sucks. I think they should have gone with a +1 save for each terrain piece that would give cover. Or they should have made area terrain blocking LOS.
-Heavy weapon movement. The combination of the most flexible movement of heavy weapons and the lest effect of terrain is not a good one. I also feel first turn have never been more important.
-Game of extremes. Extreme shooting with little cover. Extreme movement and fast things. It is just a little bloody. I like my games being down to the nails. Now it feels that turn 4 and forward are not needed.
-Since you do not have an alternate activation the game should consider limiting on player’s perfect run. I e one player have a good turn where the other player can’t do anything and then can’t back it up. Alternate activation should have been perfect.
-I could take some movement limitation for vehicles in terrain. Just don’t or max 6″ or something.
I think this is the best ed since 3rd and will give the entire gaming community a boost.
Pros: 8e looks to be an overall improvement in many ways. The game feels like much less of a drag to spin up and that’s really important. And death stars being gone removes perhaps the biggest fun-killer.
Cons:
– Morale when it was first revealed sounded great. The theory is good but the application I absolutely hate. As armies were revealed we came to find out that so many ignore morale or mitigate it extensively. Also small units often have too few models to really interact with it. Morale is the exact same poorly-done all-or-nothing game mechanic that GW and FLG said would be avoided. It’s starting to feel like the Fear ability in 7e.
– Internal codex balance is improved but there are still too many puzzling units. Falcons are inferior to Wave Serpents in every possible way, but cost a lot more points. Vypers are very weak for their points and there are several other units that do their job much better. That kind of thing.
– The -1 to hit on heavy weapons for flyers that have to move feels irritating… Even on just tanks, when you know they’re going to realistically hit on 4+ or 5+ and you see their high point costs, it just looks like why bother?
– Determining who goes first… I hate it. Going first is more important than ever and there’s just too much abuse potential with it.
– Lists with 3 or more superheavies are ridiculously hard to counter. Unless the opponent brough massive anti-tank, the Baneblades/Knights/etc automatically go first and kill whatever can threaten them, then just walk all over their opponents all game with nothing to fear. These matchups are extremely un-fun and predictable.
The ITC rule to make it a +1 roll is a flimsy band-aid that doesn’t address the problem. And the counters to lists like this no longer exist (death stars, tying them up in CC, etc).
– Forgeworld quality control. The Xenos book is a dumpster fire of outright broken rules (Tau flyers that can’t hover but have to remain still to shoot their guns), paid-upgrades that are worse than stock 0 point options, units that are too good and make codex units obsolete, units that have absurdly high point costs, and abilities that don’t do anything in 8th edition. The Tyrannid Dimachreon gets x2 strength on a wound roll of a 6 why now? Why does a 9-point Corsair have the option of a 7-point lasblaster when his 0-point shardcarbine is far superior? There are too many things to list.
– “Imperial Soup Syndrome” as Pablo put it on his podcast. Mixing and matching feels much too easy, and the result is that many imperial factions will never really be played.
I hate the layout of the books
This game is all about RNG now. Almost everything is D6 or D3 shots that do D6 or D3 wounds. When 2 skilled players face each other this game has become about who can get lucky enough to out roll the other person. There’s no skill in that. Making the game about figuring out ways to mitigate the randomness was a terrible direction to take the game.
I’ve rolled like complete crap one game(me and the opponent were cracking up about it. Like 20 1’s 2’s out of 25 dice, snakeeyes re-roll into snake eyes, etc) and still crushed the opponent.
As we’ve been saying over and again, LoS blocking terrain is necessary for a good game.
I insisted on adding 2-3 more terrain pieces to my local game night and everyone agreed that the game was far superior when you have to move instead of it just being a single LOS blocking piece in the center and the rest of the board being a shooting gallery. Looking forward to what the GT’s do with terrain this year. Are you all heading to NOVA this year, Reece?
Yeah, you need to have that extra terrain. And yes, we will be at NOVA! Looking for ward to it.
Sweet, if you have time I’d love a game. Been a follower of the site for years, you probably know a couple of my buddies in the Northern VA tournament scene. I just returned to 40k after stopping shortly after 6th, been having fun with it.
One psychic power per turn is a joke. GK librarians are useless now.
Lack of hard counters for armies like deathwatch, sm , csm, GK against crap like this:
https://tidesofdestruction.blogspot.se/2017/06/episode-27-classic-orks-vs-dark-angels.html
Impossible to melee, impossible to avoid, impossible to tie up, impossible to snipe-cripple, impossible to out-objective, impossible to terrain-counter, impossible to kill because things like 90p whirlwinds kill a whooping 3 guardsmen per turn and flamers 2 orks per suicide shot and your vehicles will be melee-tied into backing from turn one.
There is simply NO counter to this for sm, csm, gk, dw. N O N E!!
Even if every tac squad takes a heavy bolter and flamer and surrenders to armour armies by default you will be tabled and taking a single anti tank option like a las pred (that is ridiculously overpriced) is an even more guaranteed auto tabling for you.
There is nothing you can do, nothing! Flamers and artillery should have a potent anti horde role instead of killing 3 guardsmen per turn for a 90p whirlwind or chasing single models.
1: Traditional anti horde units like SM artillery (do deathwatch even have that?) and flamers are beyond laughable at their logical roles.
Others like bolter centurions are useless for their price due to broken charge rules. Your 250p+ bolter cents will do nothing against a 30 boy deepstriking (ere we go) mob that charges them and the rest of your army (congalined deepstrike might be fun for 5 man terminator squads but not for horde blobs) turn one.
2: Deepstrike is flawed. an 30 strong ork mob that deepstrikes can congaline 9´away from enemies encircling the whole opponents army and charge everything.
Deepstrike needs a nerf so this loophole cant be exploited.
Deepstrikes must be area restricted, you cant have 30 strong blobs deepstrike and line up across the whole enemy army.
3: vehicles being ineffective due to melee-touch makes this even worse (se point above).
4: Solutions should be applied on an army to army basis if you want to keep idiotic blasts and flamers as they are now. IF grey knights get nerfed army wise smite because it is “sooooo good” then orks should get army wide nerfed charges because 6x 30 boys with 6 weirdboys has no counters other then 50 strong morale negating conscript blobs. Have “fun” playing against that meta if you are a power armour army.
5: See above. Same goes for psychic heavy armies like 1ksons and GK. IF army wide smite nerfs are ok then army wide psychic one-power-a-turn restrictions should be thrown out the same window.
6: There are still useless units out there.
Non flexible GK techmarines priced like crazy compared to SM ditto.
GK librarians that cant use their powers due to psychic restriction rules.
Anti horde units that have their roles so nerfed they are useless (who wants a whirlwind for anto single model hunting when you cannot get a fairly priced horde counter?).
7: Auras are cool but not thought through.
Characters like vulkan can do exactly what?
Advance to the opponent in a vehicle doesnt work since the aura doesnt work from a transport.
And then what, a 6´bubble does jack shit when your already worthless flamers are facing massed hordes and have risked all to get into template range.
8: Logical misses like templates can be negated by charging from 8.1´away and plasma overheat that gets worse if the opponent has used smoke.
It´s simply too irritating to be excused by fluff.
Also:
9: Objective grabbing is flawed. The aforementioned horde army of deepstrike doom that cannot be touched or avoided due to lack of counters cant even loose in the objective game as 2 cheap orks automatically take an objective from a 400p imperial knight.
I sooooo hope people will smarten up and we will see a meta of never ending deepstrike hordes so that you in denial can start petitioning gw for some changes.
Wow, haha, holy smokes, dude. I think you should take a deep breath and calm down a hair.
Play the game a bit more, a lot of your concerns will fade away. Ir, take a break from playing? No reason to get this upset, friend.
Well we need to shout out the flaws to geedub so they get fixed as soon as possible.
Then again I would love to be shown how wrong I am because I do enjoy the game and I was really REALLY hoping for an 8th edition with no f*****g eldar2.0 over powered cheese with no counters.
By all means DO tell me where I am wrong in my post.
How do sm, dw, gk counter 180 ork boys with massed da jump weirdboys. I am going through strategies left and right but see absolutely nothing that counters this.
All In all it really looks like I found a very broken thing in 8th that needs to be corrected.
As for the other points I brought up shoot them down and show me why I am wrong. It sounds weird but this time I actually hope that I am making a fool out of my self and really am wrong about these things, the alternative is a very buggy 8th with eldar2.0 on crack in the form of massed horde armies with zero counters to them and a deep strike system that is extremely broken and open to abuse.
You should know tons more then me about these things so shoot!
30 boyz solo charging a 2000 point SM army, even with Warpath, will lose 10 boyz to overwatch (more if they have something like guillamen or shrike) and the rest will die after doing a grand total of 8 wounds.
Really? Watch his batreps first.
Not everyone uses guilly, especially not non imperial armies and the point is not to kill on the first charge but to tie up things and force them to back.
While you are happy about your 10 dead orks due to overwatch the remaining 150 boys are so much closer. Good luck handling them with NO counters in your army.
Try not being a blind cheering fanboy and think a bit instead for a change.
Also, big congrats to not meeting a single one of my points. I guess you like DS conga lines able to tie up the entire opponents army or “anti horde” artillery only killing 3 guardsmen a turn, 2 gaunts taking an objective from a 400p landraider or GK librarians being useless due to 1 power per turn rules.
Like I said, blasts are awful and plasma cannons are a f*****g joke as are flamers:
https://www.miniwargaming.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=122776&sid=c3543a0cafb0a3480a1e05174b71a110
Loving 8th. One random points question: why are Thunder Hammers and Power Fists the same cost? They have identical rules but Thunder Hammers are Damage 3, Power Fists are Damage D3. There’s absolutely no reason for any model to ever take a Power Fist if they can take a Thunder Hammer. Any insight or just an oversight (or am I missing something)?
I have another question just for the fun of it:
Were the people putting point costs on wargear high on drugs or was it simply a lack of any math education beyond kindergarden?
Here is a “fun” example of wargear being priced by clueless simians throwing bananas blindfolded at a chart of numbers:
Land raider
hurricane bolter, range 24 = 4 point cost
vs
flamestorm, range 8 = 30 point cost.
https://imgur.com/23LD9iR
The redeemer land raider flamestorm cannon comes into its own after toughness 5, but there’s a big caveat to this test which is point cost. If we were to factor in points, the results of the hurricane bolter would have to be multiplied 3.8 times to be equal the worth of a single flamestorm cannon in which it would far exceed the latter.
Thus said question regarding drug usage is pretty valid.
Also as a bonus, looking at the gk dreadknight heavy incinerator, the pathetic output it has for the atrocious point cost it is burdened with am I the only one wondering about the aforementioned drug usage over at geedub or whatever genius they put at pricing wargear?
Alright dude, you’re angry, we get it. Tone it down, please. If you continue to throw out insults I will be showing you the door which I’d prefer not to do.
Pros
1) Flyers. I played some games with my Storm Raven and Storm Talons supporting Primaris Marines. Much of the bloat really got trimmed down from their rules, they feel powerful for their points, but I’m glad that my opponents don’t see them as being frustrating to face against.
2) Kitting out Sergeants with melee weapons and having it not cost you your first born child.
3) Good opportunity to focus on fluffy army compositions. I feel less punished for doing so, like there’s a chance for me to win.
Cons
1) Things are sorta bland at the moment without sub-faction rules, like Chapters or Septs.
I think bloat vs bland is a tough balance to get right.
Faction codexes will add a lot of flavor to the game, just like they did in AoS.
Yep 🙂 They’ll definitely get to them at some point. I get the reason for the way it’s presented now so that most people get familiar with basic rules before adding on more. I’m just impatient 😛
Very much so. I guess I just want more purpose out of choosing Sub-factions beyond just special characters.
I do kinda hope they take it easy on those, though. I don’t want to see another situation where one of the subfactions is just miles better than the rest.
Kitting out aspiring champs in the new rules makes me happy. Finally GW figured out that giving a sergeant some extra kit shouldn’t triple or quadruple his cost.
I bought into 8th edition like every other bloke out in the field of play. I purchased all the indexes and new starter set. I sat down and poured over the rules and indexes for two weeks, reading and building lists at every opportunity. My conclusion, no matter how hard I fought, was that this edition rule set may be the most balanced. But my God, it was going to be boring with the lack of flavor. What I mean by that at least for myself is “A codex rule set that makes your army unique and fun to play”. I then looked back at my start during 5th edition and remembered how fun my codex was building armies and competing in tournaments. Of course back in fifth we didn’t have a lot of Forge World, Imperial Armors, supplements, stratagems, FAQ’s, Psykic Phase or Super Heavies to get in the way of the strategy that made the game fun and exciting. So I took my 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th edition rule books and set them all on the dinning table and just starred at all. i then realized that 6-8th edition were just total crap and more of an effort for sales than to better the game of 40k. And worse yet is that I got sucked into it because I enjoyed the tournaments and the competition like everyone else. So I threw my 6-8th edition rule books on the fireplace along with all supplements and all the other BS that went along with those editions. Lit them on fire, made some good coffee and started to re-read my old fifth edition rule book and codex’s. And you know what happened. “I started getting excited to play again”.
Look i like the rules in general, but having every weapon able to damage vehicles just seems a bit silly to me. It also slows the game right down when your opponent fires 100 lasguns at your landraider just to shave off a couple of wounds. They use keywords, why dont they keyword weapons like maybe anti-tank or A.T.C (anti-tank capabilities). The group i play with we use modifiers for hitting front side and rear, basically to stop the unnecessary/ridiculous rolling of dice.