In 8th, Are marines the wrong baseline?

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

WTH ? Seriously where is the link to the advert ???

[Bryan Blaire]

Well, I think the previous post by Mileposter is a ways off, but be that as it may - this is a highly divergent discussion from "Should Marines be the baseline for the current rules set" question that was originally asked.

 

From the integral fluff of the game setting itself, the obvious answer is that the "elite of the elite of Humanity" shouldn't be the baseline - because the elite are not the baseline. That would be akin to saying that the Special Forces units of the world's militaries are the basic troops of said militaries. The concepts don't align.

 

However, from a strict game development stand-point, Marines are the most popular army, the one most commonly seen on the table top, and therefore the "baseline" against all other armies need to be balanced against. GW did this themselves, and it means that there will always be issues in rectifying the fluff with the game rules.

 

Since there are clearly different concepts being judged in different ways here, whether any person cares about one outlook or the other is going to be highly personal. This is also the reason why there will never be a universally loved version of the game - no version will ever satisfy everyone's view of the material.

[Slave to Darkness]

I wouldnt mind going back to a multi dice system instead of a D6 system. 40k did start off that way but GW decided 3rd ed was going to be inferior.

[Deathwalker]

I wouldnt mind going back to a multi dice system instead of a D6 system. 40k did start off that way but GW decided 3rd ed was going to be inferior.

Indeed it did.

[Wargamer]

People who think that unnecessary complexity is superior to streamlining probably shouldn't comment on game design. A D6 system is by far the most accessible option because that is the most common dice type around. The less specialised stuff you need to play, the easier it is to play.

[Captain Idaho]

Stat changes should still be in place though. S6 T6 Marines, S5 T6 Orks, S3 T3 Humans, S6 Bolters, S4 Lasguns...

 

The system would have worked better.

 

Alas maybe next edition.

[Wargamer]

That is a terrible idea. You'd wind up with either elite armies being tiny, or armies like Guard needing hundreds of models in a 2000pt army.

[Deathwalker]

People who think that unnecessary complexity is superior to streamlining probably shouldn't comment on game design. A D6 system is by far the most accessible option because that is the most common dice type around. The less specialised stuff you need to play, the easier it is to play.

 

 

That is a terrible idea. You'd wind up with either elite armies being tiny, or armies like Guard needing hundreds of models in a 2000pt army.

People with these Idea's probably should not comment on games design

1: adding more dice is not complex, you want complex, go play Bushido from the early 80's

2: a DICE cost a buck for a D6, maybe 2 for a D4/8/10/12/20

How much are your mini's??

Oh, and by the by, cost should have no bearing on rules because cost is not a rules concern.

 

3: Are you being sarcastic?

I can field some 30 AM and a commander for close to the cost of 10 marines. So, YES, a AM army does not "need" hundreds of models, but for around 600 points, I could get over 100.

I don't need it, but I can do it.

[Kite Senet]

I don't know where you live, but if it costs you $2 for a non-D6 dice, then there's no way in heck these should ever be implemented in WH40k's combat. Imagine being told you're going to need to buy ~$70-$80 of dice just to play the game, on TOP of the cost of miniatures themselves. That's utterly ridiculous when the system could easily work with D6's and cost a grand total of $8 for one Chessex dice block, IF you want some nice quality dice, AND be available at any old LGS rather than only specialist wargaming stores that actually go out of their ways to support WH40k.

[Deathwalker]

I don't know where you live, but if it costs you $2 for a non-D6 dice, then there's no way in heck these should ever be implemented in WH40k's combat. Imagine being told you're going to need to buy ~$70-$80 of dice just to play the game, on TOP of the cost of miniatures themselves. That's utterly ridiculous when the system could easily work with D6's and cost a grand total of $8 for one Chessex dice block, IF you want some nice quality dice, AND be available at any old LGS rather than only specialist wargaming stores that actually go out of their ways to support WH40k.

Why would I need 35-40 non standard dice for a game?

In addition, my point was non standard dice tend to cost around twice that of normal dice, so if your D6's cost 20c, non standard should cost around 40c.

When GW THEMSELVES are selling 16 D6 for 49 BUCKS per set and making sales on that margin, just don't bother complaining about "non GW" dice costing twice as much as a D6 when they sell 16 for 50, and I can get 25 for the same.

[Kite Senet]

How would you not need 35-40 dice for a game? We are talking about resolving *combat* with non-D6 dice, are we not?

 

I need almost 40 dice at once to resolve (at once) one rapid fire shooting attack with a full-size "Ru-brick" unit of Rubric Marines--and this is a fairly elite unit! I'd need 80 to resolve a rapid fire shooting phase with a mob of cultists. Now, in that latter case, I'm okay with re-rolling dice in two steps if I really have to, but if I have many fewer dice than that, I'm going to need to resolve it in three, four, or five different stages of re-rolling, counting, and totalling. The game already takes long enough as it is.

 

The option of stupidly expensive dice is utterly irrelevant. For some of us, we either have to deal with stupidly expensive shipping for a handful of dice, or we have to go down to the TCG-only LGS down the street and our two options are either Chessex cubes, or $8 for a 7-dice set. Wargaming is tough enough already when the nearest wargaming store is a 200 mile drive away.

[Wargamer]

3: Are you being sarcastic?

I can field some 30 AM and a commander for close to the cost of 10 marines. So, YES, a AM army does not "need" hundreds of models, but for around 600 points, I could get over 100.

I don't need it, but I can do it.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but it's not particularly fun to set up hordes of models only to remove them as casualties.

 

Also, shifting Marines to T6 would have two immediate and utterly abysmal changes to the game - :cuss all would happen most of the time. You'd be looking at a game where 5+ to wound becomes the norm, except vs the utterly nerfed Guard who are wounded on 2+ by virtually every gun in the game. It would become utterly boring and, moreover, you make everything below S or T 5 pointless because flat 6 is now the baseline.

[Deathwalker]

How would you not need 35-40 dice for a game? We are talking about resolving *combat* with non-D6 dice, are we not?

 

I need almost 40 dice at once to resolve (at once) one rapid fire shooting attack with a full-size "Ru-brick" unit of Rubric Marines--and this is a fairly elite unit! I'd need 80 to resolve a rapid fire shooting phase with a mob of cultists. Now, in that latter case, I'm okay with re-rolling dice in two steps if I really have to, but if I have many fewer dice than that, I'm going to need to resolve it in three, four, or five different stages of re-rolling, counting, and totalling. The game already takes long enough as it is.

 

The option of stupidly expensive dice is utterly irrelevant. For some of us, we either have to deal with stupidly expensive shipping for a handful of dice, or we have to go down to the TCG-only LGS down the street and our two options are either Chessex cubes, or $8 for a 7-dice set. Wargaming is tough enough already when the nearest wargaming store is a 200 mile drive away.

Is there something in the rules that says you need to roll everything at once?

Let me be clear here, my only interest in this is from a rules mechanics perspective, dice costing you more, or mini's costing me more is utterly irrelevant to that discussion and is a bad distraction because it gets peoples feelings up, and that's sorta pointless about a subject that is irrelevant to the question.

D6 is easier to get, cheaper and more readily available, I agree with you 100%

Does that mean you should sacrifice games design, or limit your options based on that?

I don't think so.

[Deathwalker]

 

3: Are you being sarcastic?

I can field some 30 AM and a commander for close to the cost of 10 marines. So, YES, a AM army does not "need" hundreds of models, but for around 600 points, I could get over 100.

I don't need it, but I can do it.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but it's not particularly fun to set up hordes of models only to remove them as casualties.

 

Also, shifting Marines to T6 would have two immediate and utterly abysmal changes to the game - all would happen most of the time. You'd be looking at a game where 5+ to wound becomes the norm, except vs the utterly nerfed Guard who are wounded on 2+ by virtually every gun in the game. It would become utterly boring and, moreover, you make everything below S or T 5 pointless because flat 6 is now the baseline.

 

I Have played empire since 2nd ed WFB and I am well accustomed to seeing my units of 30-50 men getting wiped by 5 chaos knights. It's not always fun, no, but it's part of the game. It's the way inferior troops fold to elites, and I'm ok with that. Now that the game is more objective based than just wiping the table, I'm even more ok with that.

 

As for your second point, why is changing the stat of one model make it easier to hurt a different model?

It doesn't.

What could do that is changing weapon strengths to hurt these new T6 models on 4's as a standard, which defeats the purpose of raising the T from where it is now entirely and would give those consequences you allude to. But guess what, that's the situation we are in right now. the "galactic standard" for weapons is S4 to counter marine T4. and guard and eldar are getting wounded on 3+ by the standard weapon, and 2+ on S6 anyway.

That's why I haven't even gone near weapons yet, they are a different kettle of fish.

[Kite Senet]

Is there something in the rules that says you need to roll everything at once?

 

 

Let me be clear here, my only interest in this is from a rules mechanics perspective, dice costing you more, or mini's costing me more is utterly irrelevant to that discussion and is a bad distraction because it gets peoples feelings up, and that's sorta pointless about a subject that is irrelevant to the question.

D6 is easier to get, cheaper and more readily available, I agree with you 100%

Does that mean you should sacrifice games design, or limit your options based on that?

I don't think so.

 

 

There is nothing in the rules requiring that one need to roll everything at once. Theoretically the entire game could be played with a single D6 die. The resulting game would also be about as pleasant as warp travel without a Gellar field. I'm not saying it's not possible to play D12-hammer with the eight or so D12 dice you might be able to get for the same price as one Chessex dice block. I'm just saying it would turn an already often painfully long game taking 2-3 hours to play into an impossibly long game taking 8-12 hours to play.

 

I would argue that, yes, accommodations do need to be made to make a game physically playable by ordinary players, rather than a nice, theoretically slightly better game. If the cost of dice is irrelevant, and more importantly tripling or quadrupling the time you demand from your players is irrelevant, then what relevance does a rule change that would make a game effectively unplayable at its intended scale have?

 

And considering this entire issue can be entirely avoided with use of D66 mechanics in the very few places where additional precision are actually desired, the concept of modifying the rules to force some 12-sided dice into the game when they are effectively inferior in almost every way? Well, frankly, it just seems like an utterly unnecessarily and exceptionally onerous demand, if not overtly spitefully elitist against the ordinary player.

[Bryan Blaire]

painfully long game taking 2-3 hours to play into an impossibly long game taking 8-12 hours to play

When I see statements like this, it reminds me why discussions like this are fruitless (similar to why most large group Codex creation ventures fail)—what one person sees as something to be reviled and avoided, or even cut down, others see as easily acceptable, or even enjoyable.

[Volt]

Stat changes should still be in place though. S6 T6 Marines, S5 T6 Orks, S3 T3 Humans, S6 Bolters, S4 Lasguns...

 

The system would have worked better.

 

Alas maybe next edition.

Why on earth would Orks be T6? T4 for the average boyz would be the max. 

[Guest]

T6 for a Ork Boyz seems excessive, let's not forget that Orks are a horde army. This should mean their strength isn't in individual strength but as a unit. You want to make a Ork army tougher you get elites or add more Boyz.

 

Warbosses should be T6 though..

[Deathwalker]

 

Is there something in the rules that says you need to roll everything at once?

 

 

Let me be clear here, my only interest in this is from a rules mechanics perspective, dice costing you more, or mini's costing me more is utterly irrelevant to that discussion and is a bad distraction because it gets peoples feelings up, and that's sorta pointless about a subject that is irrelevant to the question.

D6 is easier to get, cheaper and more readily available, I agree with you 100%

Does that mean you should sacrifice games design, or limit your options based on that?

I don't think so.

 

 

There is nothing in the rules requiring that one need to roll everything at once. Theoretically the entire game could be played with a single D6 die. The resulting game would also be about as pleasant as warp travel without a Gellar field. I'm not saying it's not possible to play D12-hammer with the eight or so D12 dice you might be able to get for the same price as one Chessex dice block. I'm just saying it would turn an already often painfully long game taking 2-3 hours to play into an impossibly long game taking 8-12 hours to play.

 

I would argue that, yes, accommodations do need to be made to make a game physically playable by ordinary players, rather than a nice, theoretically slightly better game. If the cost of dice is irrelevant, and more importantly tripling or quadrupling the time you demand from your players is irrelevant, then what relevance does a rule change that would make a game effectively unplayable at its intended scale have?

 

And considering this entire issue can be entirely avoided with use of D66 mechanics in the very few places where additional precision are actually desired, the concept of modifying the rules to force some 12-sided dice into the game when they are effectively inferior in almost every way? Well, frankly, it just seems like an utterly unnecessarily and exceptionally onerous demand, if not overtly spitefully elitist against the ordinary player.

 

Seeing as I suck at multiquote in this forum, let me define paragraphs as points if you will.

Point 1:

totally irrelevant to games design.

The base REAL cost of the models keeps people out of the game, you think more expensive DICE would stop them??

Please.

1 mini cost the same as 5 odd dice, I cam play the game without 1 mini to have dice.

 

Point 2:

Do you spend 50 bucks on 5 bits of plastic required to play the game?

 

Point 3:

You did not change the dice, but you absolutely changed their use and paramaters. As for the rest of that quote, I have some spare straw, how much do you need?

[Plaguecaster]

But why not though??? everyone is going on how their marines are no where as tough as they want them to be most of which being fluff reasons so why not have Orks just as tough probably even tougher as a great deal of the fluff does show how about have the boys be t5 but most of the other units (nobs etc ) being T6 or even 7 or more

 

But don't forget you will also be making all things Nurgle and the other stuff even more tougher than normal marines so T7 or even 8 if you want to justify your loyalist stat increases as even though marines are pretty tough they still are no where near as tough compared to other factions so you will have to boost them all up as well

[Leif Bearclaw]

Wasn't being able to do this sort of stat adjustment supposed to be the point of removing the 10 cap for stats in 8th? To allow more granularity, so a Boy could be tougher than a Guardsman, but weaker than a Marine (for example)? Yet they bottled and only used it on superheavy-scale models. Leaving us with the same '4s everywhere' standard that seems to create a bunch of these issues.

[Wargamer]

Wasn't being able to do this sort of stat adjustment supposed to be the point of removing the 10 cap for stats in 8th? To allow more granularity, so a Boy could be tougher than a Guardsman, but weaker than a Marine (for example)? Yet they bottled and only used it on superheavy-scale models. Leaving us with the same '4s everywhere' standard that seems to create a bunch of these issues.

But as I pointed out, there's a balancing act to consider. If Marines are straight-6 for stats, what's a Custode? What's a Dreadnought? What's a Knight?

 

You might want to play a game where your Marines are S6, T6, have 6 wounds and 6 attacks... but would it still be fun if a Leman Russ was Toughness 18 with 40 wounds and dealt 12D6+20 S60 AP-4 hits that deal 18 damage a hit and force you to re-roll invulnerable saves?

 

People have asked whether Marines are the right baseline or not, but they seem to forget that 40K has two baselines - Marines and Guard. Guard are the baseline for any "mortal" army - Eldar, Tau, small Tyranids, etc. Marines are the baseline for the "transhuman" armies - Chaos, Necrons, Orks to an extent. Everything is compared to Marines or Guard to some extent or another and it's clear both of these are used as the baseline in different ways.

 

If you go through the various factions and use these two armies as your yardsticks, you'll find that most factions aim to be in the middle of the two overall.

 

Eldar (all types) - As good as Marines in a fight, but Guard stats for physicality and armour.

Orks - As good as a Marine physically, but with Guard (or worse!) armour and worse-than-Guard shooting.

Tyranids - The bulk of their units are comparable to Guard statwise, but with some advantage in either skill, movement or weaponry. Others have Marine stats but lack in some other feature, such as saves or ranged attack.

Chaos - Just Marines with different options.

Necrons - Very comparable to Marines (haven't read their 8th rules, but I remember they used to be Marines with different guns and Resurrection).

Tau - Guard with better guns.

Admech - Better version of the Guard. Not as good as Marines.

Sisters - Space Marines with Guard physical stats and the magical power of prayer.

 

It's pretty clear where the baseline is when you go through like this - it's not a line at all, but two lines that mark the upper and lower boundaries of acceptability.

[Deathwalker]

40K has 2 baselines, agreed.

One is stats

The other is weapons.

[Leif Bearclaw]

 

You might want to play a game where your Marines are S6, T6, have 6 wounds and 6 attacks... but would it still be fun if a Leman Russ was Toughness 18 with 40 wounds and dealt 12D6+20 S60 AP-4 hits that deal 18 damage a hit and force you to re-roll invulnerable saves?

 

Yes, if the game, and weapon stats, were appropriately balanced around the greater variance in stats, not your deliberately over the top examples (nobody saying universal 6s, just like current Marines aren't universal 4s). Which is why I described it as a missed opportunity. They could have introduced a more granular, detailed system where the differences in fluff are better expressed on the tabletop. But they didn't, they imported the same stat values, and Marines, as an 'elite', armoured army, seem to have suffered more from stuff like the to wound changes (with a lot of anti personel weapons at S5 basically ignoring the T4, because they're wounding both T3 and T4 on 3s) and AP system than other armies (getting a 6+ vs plasma is nice, but doesn't seem to offset most non-small arms knocking marines down to 4+ or 5+).

 

Don't dismiss all complexity as unnecessary complication, and embrace all 'streamlining' as good, objective improvements in game balance. Otherwise we'll eventually just be playing top trumps.

[Captain Idaho]

Blimey it was an example of changes that makes for a more variance in performance without a multitude of special rules for each unit. No one can see that?

 

And no one can imagine such stat changes could accompany a change in other rules such as the wounding chart etc?

 

It's comments such as a flat no without explanation shows why most people shouldn't be into game design.