The future of 30k (not an official statement!)

[Fangbanger]

 

When the ancedotals outnumber the so called larger social media groups which are likely mostly the same people in different groups its no longer anecdotal. Except at maybe someones house 30k is dead in the Central Florida region. I play in various stores and aside from playing 40k legions using 30k models you wont see any 30k. Them switching to 8th is not the death of 30k in 7th. You guys like 7th, I get it, feel free to keep playing to your heart's content. Many many of us with 30k armies want to be able to play our armies with our groups, its not anecdotal, its pretty much the rule. Most groups are playing 8th edition and do not want to switch to back to 7th and remember old rules. Groups on social media playing 30k are a very tiny minority of people who were playing 30k before. You are a niche within a niche. Unless there is an influx of cash at FW I fear we might see an ending to FW. They have priced FW vehicles out of usability in 40k and there will be even less people buying them. Unless they print some new rules, they wont be selling books either. With income at least they have a leg to stand on.

HH was a niche in a niche for years and still they brought black book after black book.

Only those great plastic boxes spread the word to 40k players.

But have those been good customers for FW?

No, they where not.

They might bought lots of plastics, which only helped GW, but those players didn't buy those black books or big expansive miniatures made of resin.

Almost all new players who came to the heresy after Betrayal at Calth had armies made of 90% plastic. FW looses nothing if those people stop playing HH and jump onto the next hypetrain.

I am not disrespecting those players but from a salesman perspective those players are invisible for FW. They make most of the money from people buing resin, lots of it. And those gamers are not people who like that loony cartoony look of current 40k.

Who plays Heresy?

And why?

Like I said there where those gamers who played it just it was the new :cuss. And -shocker- those gamers jumped on the next bandwaggon imediately after 8th hit the shelves, but HH and the resin miniatures are and alway had been crap for fast satisfaction because they are expansive, hard to get if ya not from Britain, hard to build and work with, the fluff is harder to follow (millions of books), the rules always been even more in depth RPGesk even compared to the so called bloated 7th and you have to wait for your stuff.

Sometimes for month and month or even years (DORN!). If you get past that barrier you are made from sterner stuff then most gamer and are much more stubborn then most players.

You don't shelve your 2k of miniatures because 8th edition allowes you to get hammered while playing without any impact on your game, no.

You keep playing because you have the soul of an old fart and like slow pace. All those new Mambojambo 'Vehicles can charge while shooting out of their butts' scares you. ;)

Abs that's why the heresy train will keep going.

It is just an old steam engine but it will keep on going.

 

And by the way:

People who forces you to shelve your army because they refuse to play anything besides their new toy ARE selfish people.

Yes

[Brother Heinrich]

At the end of the day it comes down to the people you interface with. Personally I was stoked for an 8th edition reboot for Heresy. I play 30k because the background is better, the characters are more engaging, and the models rule. It take's place at a time in the fictional future when mankind was in the ascendant and the only thing that stopped it was itself. 

 

I do not play 30k because 7th edition rules were awesome. In fact, since I started playing in 3rd edition, they have been my absolute least favorite set of rules written thus far. The few games I've played of 8th have been rad because they fixed 3 main issues I've had for a while.

 

1) the speed of a game - with the normal size of 30k games being 2500pts games take for god damn ever under 7th. 

2) the durability of MCs - the usage of a universal wounds model in 8th is fantastic, no more T8 creatures soaking up 8 meltagun shots before dying while a landraider goes down in one. level. playing. field.

3) AP values - the AP value mechanic is garbage and makes no sense when you can get hit with a str 7 autocannon but still get a 3+ save. When I played fantasy in 8th and saw the way armor saves could be modified by the str of weapons I was like holy :cuss, why don't we have this in 40k. 8th fixed that, hallelujah.

 

I see people lose their minds over semantics "How can a tank have wounds?" (its called an abstract concept fyi), or throw a hissy fit about facing no longer being an issue on vehicles (good, quibbling over facing and pivoting vehicles bogs down play and leads to asinine garbage like people deploying Rhinos butt-to-butt to protect rear armor). Are there balance issues with 8th? Yeah, of course, but remember why 30k is such a balanced and awesome game in the first place... EVERYONE PLAYS SPACE MARINES. 

 

That makes it really easy to balance.

 

Regardless, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and it comes down to who you play with. Theres a stellar bunch of chaps making an 8th edition ruleset for 30k and I plan on playtesting that. Hopefully it's awesome and shows the work ethic and care that much of this community is capable of. For those who want 8th edition, there's always hope for the future, and potentially a nice fan-made option. For those who want to stay 7th, looks like you've got your wish for now, and if it changes, you can go back continue to play with the very black books and seventh edition rules you own now. 

 

That's the beauty of all this, you can rewind the clock whenever you want. Here's to hoping the heresy train keeps rolling, in whatever form that takes.

[Snook]

Yesterday everything was betterer then today! And now get of my lawn!

 

Realy? The world does not stop to turn just because u want it to. GW (should) know best what they do (regardless of what some people think).

And yes GW could do better, everyone even the best can do better. There is always room for improvement.

 

But I bet the end is nigh and GW will burn within a month because you did not get what you wanted ;)

 

Internet spezial snowflake syndrome... I hate that so much.

[Marshal Rohr]

8th Edition has point values for everything you can use in the heresy with the exception of heresy specific wargear (Volkites, Paragon Blades, Rad Weapons). It should be pretty easy to play games without legion specific units now that FW was released 8h edition rules for heresy vehicles in their index. 

[Panzer]

Yesterday everything was betterer then today! And now get of my lawn!

 

Realy? The world does not stop to turn just because u want it to. GW (should) know best what they do (regardless of what some people think).

And yes GW could do better, everyone even the best can do better. There is always room for improvement.

 

But I bet the end is nigh and GW will burn within a month because you did not get what you wanted

 

Internet spezial snowflake syndrome... I hate that so much.

Disregarding peoples tastes and preferences as simple "yesterday everything was better thAn today" and calling them special snowflakes is definitely not helping either tho. In fact it only makes you look bad.

[Kizzdougs]

 

I see people lose their minds over semantics "How can a tank have wounds?" (its called an abstract concept fyi), or throw a hissy fit about facing no longer being an issue on vehicles (good, quibbling over facing and pivoting vehicles bogs down play and leads to asinine garbage like people deploying Rhinos butt-to-butt to protect rear armor). Are there balance issues with 8th? Yeah, of course, but remember why 30k is such a balanced and awesome game in the first place... EVERYONE PLAYS SPACE MARINES. 

How many arguments did you have in 7th edition about armour facing? I think I can remember one time that I pulled up an opponent regarding armour facing and it was very quickly resolved. Sure, some Necron and Dark Eldar vehicles make it harder to identify front/side/rear, but all of the vehicles in the Heresy are pretty straight forward. The Acquisitor with its rounded prow would probably be the most ambiguous of the 30k vehicles and even that would be pretty easy to sort out.

 

Many of the 8th Edition players that I've spoken to like most of the rules but agree that keeping armour facing would have been good. Of course this is just anecdotal evidence, but it could have been as simple as +1 or -1 to the vehicle's save. It doesn't need a complex solution, but removing it from the game entirely was a gross oversimplification and takes away from the tactical aspect of vehicle facing and positioning. 

 

Also, tanks firing all of their weapons from the top of a smoke stack or 1mm of track... there is simplifying a bloated rules set and there is crazy. 

 

I really think the biggest problem with 7th Edition was 40k. All of the crazy formations (Rites of War are mild in comparison), the abusable psychic phase (thanks to easy access to warp charge), the bloat and overlap of multiply expansions (Champions of Fenris, Wrath of Magnus, Curse of the Wulfen etc.), Tactical Objectives, unbound, and the breakdown of the ally system, all combined to make 7th Ed 40k a bit of a mess. There was also a fairly noticeable 'Codex creep'. In 30k the Custodes and Thousand Sons in Inferno were definitely a step up in power compared to the previous armies, but in general 30k managed to avoid 'Codex creep' of the same magnitude as 40k.

 

Many people bemoan the 'bloat' and complexity of 7th, but a lot of these problems were particular to specific Codexes (warp charge and the Daemon Codex for example) or were additional rules heaped on top of the core rulebook rules. By the end of 7th Edition GW had released over 40 Codexes, supplements, and expansions, nearly twice as many as in 6th Edition, and more than three times as many as in 5th.

 

Compared to 7th Edition 40k, 30k is a 'simple' and 'streamlined' game, but doesn't sacrificing any of the tactical nuance. It's not just because "EVERYONE PLAYS SPACE MARINES" (and they don't anyway) but because the Heresy managed to avoid most of the bloat that crippled 40k. So while 8th Edition 40k might be better than 7th Edition 40k, that doesn't automatically mean that 8th Edition 40k is better than 7/6th Edition 30k. 

 

 

I do like certain things in 8th Edition such as AP modifiers and split fire, but I also like certain aspects of 7th Edition such as armour facing, fire arcs, cover, line of sight, initiative in close combat etc. 

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

 

I see people lose their minds over semantics "How can a tank have wounds?" (its called an abstract concept fyi), or throw a hissy fit about facing no longer being an issue on vehicles (good, quibbling over facing and pivoting vehicles bogs down play and leads to asinine garbage like people deploying Rhinos butt-to-butt to protect rear armor). Are there balance issues with 8th? Yeah, of course, but remember why 30k is such a balanced and awesome game in the first place... EVERYONE PLAYS SPACE MARINES.

How many arguments did you have in 7th edition about armour facing? I think I can remember one time that I pulled up an opponent regarding armour facing and it was very quickly resolved. Sure, some Necron and Dark Eldar vehicles make it harder to identify front/side/rear, but all of the vehicles in the Heresy are pretty straight forward. The Acquisitor with its rounded prow would probably be the most ambiguous of the 30k vehicles and even that would be pretty easy to sort out.

 

Many of the 8th Edition players that I've spoken to like most of the rules but agree that keeping armour facing would have been good. Of course this is just anecdotal evidence, but it could have been as simple as +1 or -1 to the vehicle's save. It doesn't need a complex solution, but removing it from the game entirely was a gross oversimplification and takes away from the tactical aspect of vehicle facing and positioning.

 

Also, tanks firing all of their weapons from the top of a smoke stack or 1mm of track... there is simplifying a bloated rules set and there is crazy.

 

I really think the biggest problem with 7th Edition was 40k. All of the crazy formations (Rites of War are mild in comparison), the abusable psychic phase (thanks to easy access to warp charge), the bloat and overlap of multiply expansions (Champions of Fenris, Wrath of Magnus, Curse of the Wulfen etc.), Tactical Objectives, unbound, and the breakdown of the ally system, all combined to make 7th Ed 40k a bit of a mess. There was also a fairly noticeable 'Codex creep'. In 30k the Custodes and Thousand Sons in Inferno were definitely a step up in power compared to the previous armies, but in general 30k managed to avoid 'Codex creep' of the same magnitude as 40k.

 

Many people bemoan the 'bloat' and complexity of 7th, but a lot of these problems were particular to specific Codexes (warp charge and the Daemon Codex for example) or were additional rules heaped on top of the core rulebook rules. By the end of 7th Edition GW had released over 40 Codexes, supplements, and expansions, nearly twice as many as in 6th Edition, and more than three times as many as in 5th.

 

Compared to 7th Edition 40k, 30k is a 'simple' and 'streamlined' game, but doesn't sacrificing any of the tactical nuance. It's not just because "EVERYONE PLAYS SPACE MARINES" (and they don't anyway) but because the Heresy managed to avoid most of the bloat that crippled 40k. So while 8th Edition 40k might be better than 7th Edition 40k, that doesn't automatically mean that 8th Edition 40k is better than 7/6th Edition 30k.

 

 

I do like certain things in 8th Edition such as AP modifiers and split fire, but I also like certain aspects of 7th Edition such as armour facing, fire arcs, cover, line of sight, initiative in close combat etc.

Amen. So many of the common problem cited as reasons for 30K sucking arise from fighting 40k armies with 30k armies.

[Slips]

We're done here.

 

All the arguments to be made for HH staying in 7th have been made.

 

All the arguments to be made for HH transitioning to 8th have been made.

 

We're getting nowhere fast.

 

Talk with your local group; theirs should be the only opinions that determine which ruleset you end up adopting since they're the people you'll be actually playing with.