Considering HH because I loathe 8th edition

[Claws and Effect]

Templates, imho, are a much better mechanic than 1D6, 2D6 shots etc. and they can target multiple units, like they should be able to (again, just imho).

Bunch up at your peril and look through the plastic shape, was for me far more fun than blob up because we have a bunch of bulletproof bubble buff makers.

 

Whilst 7th and therefore HH were/are not perfect, I agree with the OP that 8th is rubbish for so many reasons. But just an opinion.

Templates went away because they slowed the game down in a big way.

 

Not only was a lot of time spent trying to get the template JUST right in the shooting phase, but it also made the movement phase take way longer.

 

To avoid taking more casualties players would actively measure unit coherence, making sure they were exactly 2" apart. Not a big deal with a 5 man Scout squad, but it took ages when Ork players did it with 20+ strong mobs of Boyz.

 

I actually prefer the xd6 shots that template weapons became. Partly for the fact that people aren't obsessed with keeping their models exactly 2" apart at all times. And partly because the models physical pose and position don't reflect what they are actually doing. A Captain isn't going to walk around the battlefield with his sword in the air all the time, and an individual soldier isn't going to just stand there when someone points a flamer at him. He's going to try to get the hell out of the way, and the random number of shots represents how many models in that unit succeeded pretty fairly in my opinion.

[MARK0SIAN]

 

Templates, imho, are a much better mechanic than 1D6, 2D6 shots etc. and they can target multiple units, like they should be able to (again, just imho).

Bunch up at your peril and look through the plastic shape, was for me far more fun than blob up because we have a bunch of bulletproof bubble buff makers.

 

Whilst 7th and therefore HH were/are not perfect, I agree with the OP that 8th is rubbish for so many reasons. But just an opinion.

Templates went away because they slowed the game down in a big way.

 

Not only was a lot of time spent trying to get the template JUST right in the shooting phase, but it also made the movement phase take way longer.

 

To avoid taking more casualties players would actively measure unit coherence, making sure they were exactly 2" apart. Not a big deal with a 5 man Scout squad, but it took ages when Ork players did it with 20+ strong mobs of Boyz.

 

I actually prefer the xd6 shots that template weapons became. Partly for the fact that people aren't obsessed with keeping their models exactly 2" apart at all times. And partly because the models physical pose and position don't reflect what they are actually doing. A Captain isn't going to walk around the battlefield with his sword in the air all the time, and an individual soldier isn't going to just stand there when someone points a flamer at him. He's going to try to get the hell out of the way, and the random number of shots represents how many models in that unit succeeded pretty fairly in my opinion.

I think it’s more the fact that they can only target a single unit that he finds worse. It’s made area-effect weapons exactly the opposite, they can only target one thing, no matter how closely everything is jumbled together. It also feels like the number of shots/hits you get from the xD6 method always seems a bit low compared to what you would expect from the weapon and is certainly low compared to what you’d have got placing a template on a bunched up blob of 30 boyz :)

 

I have to admit, I find it quite annoying that weapons which would’ve been large blast templates or even apocalypse templates previously can now only affect a unit and not the others which are an inch away or even in the middle of the unit like some characters are. It just doesn’t make sense for the type of weapon it’s supposed to be. Compared to Heresy, 8th edition has very much homogenised the different weapons and their effects and if that’s not something that appeals to the OP I would say Heresy will definitely help scratch that itch.

 

But you’re right in regards to some of the drawbacks on templates, they can take a while and if someone is going into Heresy they should be prepared for a lot of templates.

[Marshal Rohr]

Guys rules aren’t the question, it’s how to adapt to the differences in rule. I.E. blast weapons take a little longer to resolve in Age of Darkness games but can be used to hit multiple units

[rendingon1+]

Please, not another templates vs D6 discussion...

[Interrogator Stobz]

It is relevant to the discussion, but I agree, let's not get carried away with the details.

 

And it is mostly the inability to target multiple units that bugs me most about that part of the 8th rule-set; many parts of 7th were far better game-play-wise, many were worse, 8th has some merit; wouldn't it be great if there was a compromise.

Maybe GW are looking at it and 9th will be better for everyone and HH may be updated to that rule-set, who knows.

 

But for now I'm with the OP and avoiding the majority of 8th and looking for alternatives, like Kill team; and I'm avoiding tournaments because of their lack of rules flexibility, I'll stick to casual games with mates that agree to doctor the rules.

[FlamingDeth]

No discussion about removal of templates would be complete without an Ork player chiming about the loss of their only semireliable shooting, and how D6 shots at BS 5+ isn't quite the same...

 

I've also tired of bubblehammer and how their "streamlining" didn't seem to streamline much of anything. I've considered jumping to HH at least when it comes to power armored stuff, though I'm not sure how much of a scene there's for that locally.

[Ishagu]

Ork shooting is amazing lol

[Vykes]

Alright, soo... this might be, like, glaring obvious: but HH isn't exactly just 7E 40K redux.  How comfortable are you fighting, oh, say, Imperial armies... all the time?  

 

There's, ummm, not many xenos around in the heresy.  Kinda, well, none really.  And the non Marine factions can be at least construed as OP by certain portions of the community. Like, this is obvious but a lot of people I know play 40K with a graduated interest in xenos and that sort of thing, while some like me play almost exclusively for the Imperial Civil War/Long War angle and don't care about the gribbly bugs, evil robots, space elves, and weeboo fish folk (thus it doesn't bother me, but others won't touch 30K because their favorite army ain't in it).  

 

I'm not saying it's the same match up every time (Lupercal knows, even the same army can be put together remarkably differently), but 30K typically plays a little more like a community oriented self-moderating Historical game in some respects, because IF you want to break it and list build, it'll happen just as easily as other editions.  All the little nuances, templates vs. D6, facings vs. wounds, insta-death vs. multi wound, is all down to personal preference, but you could still find yourself fighting 6 knights and thinking 'I could be doing this with my saturday, or gouging my eyes out with a spoon.'  It's not a magical remedy to the ails of 8E for "smart people". 

 

So if it comes down to "8E is stoofis and I don't like the smelly system, gonna take my space marines and go home play 7E with subtitles" it's not that simple. 

 

If it's just a protest move, you probably won't have a ton of fun.  But, if you're really into the heresy narrative and want to work with that wondrous and tragic period that is the glory of the Horus Heresy, then it's still alive and kicking!  It's not some dead system, even if it may be arguably archaic.  Incidental and anecdotal, I know, but we're just starting up an escalation league in my area and we maxed out players in a few days of our local 30K campaign starting up (it was supposed to be 6-8 players, but the response was so immediate that it expanded to 12 and had to be capped to make it workable).  If your local area doesn't have one, it's not hard to send out a few feelers and I bet you'll get some bites! Add in Zone Mortalis, convert some kill team, get some Adeptus Titanicus sorts on board, have fun with it: it's a fantastic setting and a fun system. 

[DuskRaider]

Technically HH has it's own Kill Team game of sorts... Victory is Vengeance or something of the sort. It's much more customizable than Kill Team as well from what I remember.

[Marshal Rohr]

Victory is Vengeance is hyper customizable. Kill team is great but ViV is on its own level

[Malios]

I agree with the statement that the OP is suffering from "the grass is greener" syndrome. I love the heresy, but by god it has as many flaws as every other Games Workshop system. Its far from balanced and has its own version of codex creep.

 

The largest strength of the Heresy, the narrative, is also its greatest weakness: narrative is always subjective. One man's narrative depiction of an Iron Warriors siege army is another man's textbook example of a win at all costs player to avoid. One person's ideas of a narrative event is completely different to another's. 

 

Further to this, you have to be prepared for the cost investing in the heresy, either financially or morally. Outside of the UK, Forge World is ridiculously priced: in Australia, I can buy four tactical squads of 40k marines from Games Workshop directly for the same price as a 10 man MkIV assault squad with my choice of legion shoulder pads and not have to pay any shipping / postage for the tacticals. But, because the demand is there, you will eventually run into the moral dilemma of recasters: I know its a taboo topic and the elephant in the room, but you can't ignore it. Recasting is rampant in the heresy community and you will eventually come across people who buy recaster products. That is a moral dilemma you will have to wrestle, so be prepared for it if you enter the heresy.

 

With all of those things aside though, if you can look past them and / or find a middle ground with a supportive community, welcome to the heresy train!

[Panzer]

8th edition has a bunch of issues but so has 7th and any other edition before. It's really just personal preference but the latest edition will always be the most popular regardless. If he thinks 7th edition/HH rules are better than 8th edition rules then it's not really for us to judge him or even convince otherwise.

I for one am glad that I don't have to play 7th anymore but I still have a list of things that I think needs to be worked on badly in 8th edition. The 'need' to cram most of your units in aura range is one of the things I don't like too much about 8th because everytime I try to split my forces to do something more tactical I feel like gimping myself. Then again it was the same in 7th except that you had one deathstar and the rest of your units were more or less just looking at your not-bubble-but-single-big-unit to do most of the work (or you were just spamming big units like Riptides).
However for everything I don't like in 8th there are two things I don't like in 7th so I'm overall still happy.

 

As for actual tactics ... I come from WHFB 7th edition and started 40k only with 7th edition. I always felt like 40k is a lot less tactical than WHFB and most of it being just list building and target priority since you can kill enemy units without having to move all that much and don't have static formations for your units to move in while in WHFB 7th edition you won the games in the movement phase by setting up charges to a units flanks and so on.

So neither 40k 7th edition nor 40k 8th edition are particularly tactical in that regard for me. Both are pretty bland. However I found in 8th edition there are a lot more things I could fiddle with while in 7th it was mostly "have your character infront of the unit so he can tank all the shots with his superior save" and "don't be dumb and keep the front of your tanks towards the opponent". Getting into the flank of vehicles or even the rear sounds awesome tactical-wise but was often not very doable or even needed when you could easily glance every vehicle to death with S7 spam anyway.

 

Templates? Meh.

The idea was fun but for the most part it was just wasting time with your opponent to argue the direction of the scatter (holy hell I still can't believe how terrible some people are at drawing a parallel line to an arrow on a dice) and whether the edge of the base of the 4th model is still barely under the template or not and afterwards both felt bad for it because one side pushed the yes and the other pushed the no and when there was no arguing one side still felt bad because someone always thinks that the number of models hit is not correct. It was much more manageable for flamer weapons because there was no scatter and because you usually hit the whole unit with it anyway with how large the template was.

The 1d3/1d6 system we have now in 40k is a terrible translation of the template mechanic but at least it's much much quicker and nobody has to feel bad about getting the number of hits wrong because they looked at it from a different angle than their opponent.

(on that note I'd love a change for former template weapons to a single hit roll which produces 2d3 hits which can be equally distributed between two or three units that are only ~2" apart from eachother and in range of the weapon)

 

Now for OP ... just try to play a bunch of games with different kinds of lists and see what's possible and what's not with the HH ruleset and talk with actual HH players about what they think are the issues with their ruleset and their meta (just don't mention 8th edition since many HH player then get super defensive about their ruleset which isn't exactly helpful). I too get the feeling that there's a "the grass is greener" mentality at work here ... or rather nostalgia. But of course those feelings of yours could be totally legit as well and there's no other way to learn whether it is than to try things out.

[Ficinus]

Maybe instead of arguing about template scatter angles, people should just, I don't know, play a game with their toys. I really do not understand how someone can argue for half an hour or whatever hyperbolic things have been said: are they giving out gold bullion for winning where you play? Is your game over which of the two of you get to live or die? Don't be insufferable, instead be the bigger person: none of this matters, it's supposed to be fun.

 

As to the main topic, I much prefer Heresy to 7th, but given my local scene I mostly play 8th. Heresy is much more about the community, narrative, and hobby, even in throw off games. 8th, as I've experienced it, is much more about winning. Even people in a non-competitive local scene try to devise the most powerful list instead of an interesting story. Now, there are hardcore players of Heresy (I'm looking at you, Swedes) and there are narrative players of 8th, but the overall nature of my experience has been that even the most WAAC Heresy players care a lot about narrative and that 8th is a competitive game.

[Panzer]

Maybe instead of arguing about template scatter angles, people should just, I don't know, play a game with their toys. I really do not understand how someone can argue for half an hour or whatever hyperbolic things have been said: are they giving out gold bullion for winning where you play? Is your game over which of the two of you get to live or die? Don't be insufferable, instead be the bigger person: none of this matters, it's supposed to be fun.

 

"None of this matters, it's supposed to be fun"

This is really not the issue. It's an instinctive reaction wanting things to be done right and depending on the angle one would look at templates it's basically a given that there are always two different outcomes when counting how many models get hit by a template. So now both of you think you are right and even if you don't necessarily care about it in terms of "I have to win!" you still want things to be done right so you talk about it for 2 minutes or whatever. 2 minutes of wasted time for each shot every round. This adds up over the course of a game and is pretty frustrating because even though none of you cared enough to actually fight over it, the fact that you had two different views of how things are and both of you just wanted things to be right added stress to the game. Even if you don't argue about it one would always feel like it's been done wrong because he saw things from a different angle and thus came to a different number.

 

This happened regularly even in the most laid back and casual games and was a major complain. You can't downplay it just like that.

[Ishagu]

Templates were awful. You have models of varying heights, terrain etc. Very hard to implement in a manual game properly. Gets even more janky with barrage weapons. I mentioned earlier I've had heated debates lasting 40+ minutes over templates, LoS, Firing arcs, etc in the most recent HH games I played.

 

It's a nice idea in principle but pretty awful in practice.

[Marshal Rohr]

That is weird, I've never had a single argument over templates. Must be a anecdotal experience unique to each individual's own community. 

[Torvak Kyre]

Templates were awful. You have models of varying heights, terrain etc. Very hard to implement in a manual game properly. Gets even more janky with barrage weapons. I mentioned earlier I've had heated debates lasting 40+ minutes over templates, LoS, Firing arcs, etc in the most recent HH games I played.

 

It's a nice idea in principle but pretty awful in practice.

I feel like if you’ve spent over 40 minutes arguing over templates, you care a bit too much about the outcome.

[Ishagu]

Lol if you are correct about something, would you let your opponent argue/complain the outcome away?

 

If I'm at a tournament I'm more serious, but at casual games I just want to chat lore as we roll dice and relax, but the dice, rules and results must be respected.

[Beams]

Lol if you are correct about something, would you let you'd opponent argue the outcome away?

If they care enough about it in a friendly game to argue like that, than they clearly care more then me.

 

If it's a tournament game, I'd ask a TO to check.

 

Either way <5 min.

[Bryan Blaire]

That’s also what they made that actual rule in the book for: Roll a die. 1-3 good for me / 4-6 good for you. Time to get back to toy soldiers and rollin’ den bones.

[wildweasel]

Hyperbole aside: no matter how good faith and casual a game may be, there’s still extra time involved in resolving templates and blast markers. Even “Hey, I’m not sure if this model is under or not, want to check for me” can add up.

 

Yes, in most cases it won’t be a 40 minute argument, but it won’t always just be “I’m getting four models” “Ok that sounds good to me” either. There’s plenty of excluded middle where there can be brief discussions and disagreement about placement that are entirely in good faith on both sides. How much of an actual impact that’s going to have is going to vary a lot, and ultimately is another thing for the OP to consider, and weigh against the tactical and simulationist aspects of templates and blast markers.

[TheFinisher4Ever]

The time for resolving one blast marker is fairly small, sure. Even if there is a disagreement, it still only adds a minute or 2 typically. But if anyone ever played against a Lost and the Damned barrage spam army, you'll know that those minutes reaaally start to add up. There were some armies that could pump out 50+ of these templates every turn and they could be aimed at friendly units which meant double the counting and the double the disagreements. You can prefer templates, and that's completely valid, but they are far slower.

[Marshal Rohr]

The time for resolving one blast marker is fairly small, sure. Even if there is a disagreement, it still only adds a minute or 2 typically. But if anyone ever played against a Lost and the Damned barrage spam army, you'll know that those minutes reaaally start to add up. There were some armies that could pump out 50+ of these templates every turn and they could be aimed at friendly units which meant double the counting and the double the disagreements. You can prefer templates, and that's completely valid, but they are far slower.

 

He counts mine, I count his. Perfect resolution. 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I don’t miss templates all they did was slow down the game.

[m0nolith]

Templates were awful. You have models of varying heights, terrain etc. Very hard to implement in a manual game properly. Gets even more janky with barrage weapons. I mentioned earlier I've had heated debates lasting 40+ minutes over templates, LoS, Firing arcs, etc in the most recent HH games I played.

 

It's a nice idea in principle but pretty awful in practice.

If you're the type of player who is conducive to arguments due to being hyper competitive, then 30k is not the game for you. I'v never gotten into a 40 minute argument about rules, ever, be they templates or anything else.

 

It's a personality thing.

 

Due to the kind of guy I am, I'm not a fan of 8th ed and its mechanics. It's too simplified to me and it loses a heavy amount of tactical depth which I enjoy, and this includes templates.

But there is no right or wrong answer here. It's whatever you personally enjoy, and it seems to me that OP isnt enjoying 8th right now, so 30k would be a good option for him to try out.