State of the Union (Heresy)

[depthcharge12]

Has a test game of 2.0. Few thoughts:

 

- Night fighting is brutal and completely invalidates long range shooting, collectively we killed 3 tactical marines in two turns of shooting. So my extra armour tax will now be replaced by a searchlight tax and augery scanners are now a default choice as they ignore the night fight and provide interceptor spam.

 

- dreads doing ID at S10 makes them unintentionally powerful vs 2 wound models as they double their combat resolution. They also can be breached which feels wrong.

 

- reactions completely dominated the game. Instead of making it faster, it as way slower as we constantly had to consider moves. It was only 1.5k so maybe it didn't scale well. It also completely neutered bolt pistols as any use of them would result in volkite to the face again.

 

- being able to shoot three times in your opponents turn is stupid.(interceptor, react to shooting, overwatch)

 

I like the AP changes. I like the dread changes. I like the fact that my powerfist Sargents never got to swing as every other weapon cut them down.

 

I don't like reactions at all and they feel very abusable.

Yeah I was worried reactions would slow the game down and allow a ridiculous amount of counter fire.

 

I wonder if they should limit the total number of reactions per game based on points level so you aren’t just spamming 1-3 per phase. Or just make most reactions a “once per game.”

[Unknown Legionnaire]

Has a test game of 2.0. Few thoughts:

 

- Night fighting is brutal and completely invalidates long range shooting, collectively we killed 3 tactical marines in two turns of shooting. So my extra armour tax will now be replaced by a searchlight tax and augery scanners are now a default choice as they ignore the night fight and provide interceptor spam.

 

- dreads doing ID at S10 makes them unintentionally powerful vs 2 wound models as they double their combat resolution. They also can be breached which feels wrong.

 

- reactions completely dominated the game. Instead of making it faster, it as way slower as we constantly had to consider moves. It was only 1.5k so maybe it didn't scale well. It also completely neutered bolt pistols as any use of them would result in volkite to the face again.

 

- being able to shoot three times in your opponents turn is stupid.(interceptor, react to shooting, overwatch)

 

I don't like reactions at all and they feel very abusable.

 

 

Yep, exactly this. 

 

Thanks for sharing and good to see that other people have somewhat similar experiences.

[Marshal Loss]

 

 

Scorpius AP3 makes me sad. I know it's there is balance and whatnot, but it wouldn't have killed to let it have AP3 when it's first lore was built around how it's missiles were meant to pierce power armor.

The Scorpius' lore in Book 2, where it was introduced, mentions nothing of the sort.

True, but the second edition of "Imperial Armor Volume 2: War Machines of the Adeptus Astartes" does, which was published the same year if I'm not mistaken.

 

It's presented as a legend that arose from millenia of mysticism of course, but the artwork descriptions do present it as weapon meant to take on armored infantry such as Ork Nobz.

 

"Conceived to engage heavily armoured infantry" and "meant to pierce power armour" are two very different things. The missiles not being AP3 doesn't contradict the lore at all. :)

[Mogsam]

Honestly it feels like you could just turn most of them off entirely and the game would be much better.

 

I can't help but feel some of the designers wanted to get rid of the turn system but instead delivered a half approach that is going to please no one.

 

Leave interceptor but make it cost a turn again because deep strike is going to be insane without it and turn overwatch back to automatic but snap firing and I don't think you lose anything at all.

 

Every other change is fine, but being able to run away from charges, being able to shoot tons of times etc, it doesn't add anything and just takes away the fun bits. They are obviously targeting alpha striking, but they went so far the other way instead.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Mogsam

[Bung]

 

Has a test game of 2.0. Few thoughts:

 

- Night fighting is brutal and completely invalidates long range shooting, collectively we killed 3 tactical marines in two turns of shooting. So my extra armour tax will now be replaced by a searchlight tax and augery scanners are now a default choice as they ignore the night fight and provide interceptor spam.

 

- dreads doing ID at S10 makes them unintentionally powerful vs 2 wound models as they double their combat resolution. They also can be breached which feels wrong.

 

- reactions completely dominated the game. Instead of making it faster, it as way slower as we constantly had to consider moves. It was only 1.5k so maybe it didn't scale well. It also completely neutered bolt pistols as any use of them would result in volkite to the face again.

 

- being able to shoot three times in your opponents turn is stupid.(interceptor, react to shooting, overwatch)

 

I like the AP changes. I like the dread changes. I like the fact that my powerfist Sargents never got to swing as every other weapon cut them down.

 

I don't like reactions at all and they feel very abusable.

Yeah I was worried reactions would slow the game down and allow a ridiculous amount of counter fire.

 

I wonder if they should limit the total number of reactions per game based on points level so you aren’t just spamming 1-3 per phase. Or just make most reactions a “once per game.”

 

I think there would be simple solution for this.

A single sentence.

 

A unit may only make one reaction per Game turn.

So you would still get one reaction per Phase but Not for the same unit, which wouldnt lead to that amount of counter fire.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Has a test game of 2.0. Few thoughts:

 

- Night fighting is brutal and completely invalidates long range shooting, collectively we killed 3 tactical marines in two turns of shooting. So my extra armour tax will now be replaced by a searchlight tax and augery scanners are now a default choice as they ignore the night fight and provide interceptor spam.

 

- dreads doing ID at S10 makes them unintentionally powerful vs 2 wound models as they double their combat resolution. They also can be breached which feels wrong.

 

- reactions completely dominated the game. Instead of making it faster, it as way slower as we constantly had to consider moves. It was only 1.5k so maybe it didn't scale well. It also completely neutered bolt pistols as any use of them would result in volkite to the face again.

 

- being able to shoot three times in your opponents turn is stupid.(interceptor, react to shooting, overwatch)

 

I like the AP changes. I like the dread changes. I like the fact that my powerfist Sargents never got to swing as every other weapon cut them down.

 

I don't like reactions at all and they feel very abusable.

Yea....I was worried about all of this.

 

The night fighting is obviously very punishing. It feels more scaled to the old artillery stats, as a similar version of it existed in 6th (it and ruins controlled barrages power), but it's obviously too overbearing now. People will take augury scanners and search lights just to avoid the experience of their first few games without them. And then you lose the best part about night fight; how it controls long range output. More auguries bleeds over to affecting infiltrate and deepstrikes too, as I've mentioned several times.

 

And that covers your next point of reactions bogging everything down. I caught a lot of flak for saying alternate activation for 40k would suck because there's too many units and you need to consider a lot of reactions to each of your activations. Welcome to reactions in 30k. Except of course, there doesn't seem to be anything stopping multiple full BS shooting actions in a game turn. Idk why any of the full bs shooting reactions don't lock you out of shooting until the next game turn; you use your shooting attack early, not gain bonus shooting attacks.

 

I think if I were going to axe reactions (and I might, my main 30k opponent of the past 7 years basically refuses to touch 2nd because of them) I'd do the overwatch and death or Glory revert back to their old way. Interceptor would only be allowed on the units with the wargear, so it'd show up a lot still. Alpha legion would get no overwatch/interceptor against the first charger/deepstriker activated that turn. Horus gets...I got nothing, sorry. Horus gets nerfed.

 

Small price to pay for the rest.

Edited April 9, 2022 by SkimaskMohawk

[Gorgoff]

I can't imagine these problems didn't occure during testing. That's impossible although there is a small chance that the testers where all of the "Ooooow guns do BOOMBOOM" kind which basically have no understanding of playing a tabletop whatsoever. Edited April 9, 2022 by Gorgoff

[BitsHammer]

I mean these are testing documents so it's possible that they refined it further, or people were playing with the intent of units being only able to react once per turn. Either way we won't know until the actual final draft leaks or the rules are previewed when they go on pre-order. 

[Scammel]

Perhaps reactions will require some mindset adjustment? If both players are getting the opportunity to take actions in each others' turns, the amount of meaningful gameplay (i.e, removing models) per minute remains the same, but the individual turns take longer - and that might take some getting used to?

[Astartes Consul]

For all we know this Phase 3 version of the rules came about because Reactions were of negligible impact in the earlier versions of the testing. So they ramped it up to see if that worked better.

 

Either way, hope it is more balanced in the final product.

[Ripper.McGuirl]

A: I don’t think reactions were added to streamline the game.

B: The first game with new rules always takes forever

C: I welcome a slowed pace with more consideration for order of events and timing, with active involvement on both sides.

D: I imagine there will be a lot less mulling over when and whether to pop a reaction once they are kind of in your brain as you are watching and planning.

[Gorgoff]

A: I don’t think reactions were added to streamline the game.

B: The first game with new rules always takes forever

C: I welcome a slowed pace with more consideration for order of events and timing, with active involvement on both sides.

D: I imagine there will be a lot less mulling over when and whether to pop a reaction once they are kind of in your brain as you are watching and planning.

Same goes for Command Points.

Still a very stupid System.

Edit: just saying. We don't know how it will turn out but it reads problematic so far.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Gorgoff

[Ripper.McGuirl]

To me it reads very much the opposite. The difference between this and strategems is there are like 80000 strategems to track. This is, like, 2 per phase. Command points are irritating because it’s a whole different pool to track. This just os default once per phase.

But, everyone’s looking for different things in their game! The good thing is the current game already exists basically in it’s entirety, so can be used forever.

[ShadowCore67]

I guess a good thing about reactions is if you and your opponent agree on it, it's very easy to just not play with them.

[SkimaskMohawk]

I guess a good thing about reactions is if you and your opponent agree on it, it's very easy to just not play with them.

Kind of. You need to come up with something for intercept and possibly overwatch. Alpha legion's phase 1 legion rules are directly integrated with reactions.

 

But once you come up with solutions with your group, then ya they're easy enough to trim out.

[Mogsam]

To be fair, you just use the LA rule from the old books and ignore every reference to reactions

[depthcharge12]

For all we know this Phase 3 version of the rules came about because Reactions were of negligible impact in the earlier versions of the testing. So they ramped it up to see if that worked better.

 

Either way, hope it is more balanced in the final product.

Per one of the leakers on /tg/, phase 3 has been out for 1.5 years already…

[SkimaskMohawk]

To be fair, you just use the LA rule from the old books and ignore every reference to reactions

The problem there is that some legions had really bad rules. Word bearers, salamanders, death guard, and Emperor's children really don't want to go back to using 1st ed LA rules. White scars need a faq on their stuff if using 1st Ed too.

 

Much simpler to tweak alpha legion.

[Mogsam]

None of the Legion astartes are that bad. I have lists from 3/4 legions you've popped up and they're all fine to me!

[Mango Polo]

The new game's not out yet, we're still looking at playtest rules that run the gamut from old to very old, but some have already decided it's time to make bizarre custom rules. Good god.

[SkimaskMohawk]

None of the Legion astartes are that bad. I have lists from 3/4 legions you've popped up and they're all fine to me!

Yes, some actually are that bad. At least in the context of 1st and their supporting rules.

 

If you only lifted the LA rule, but kept the new units and rites and stuff then they'd have more value.

 

But even with fear and pinning being more important now, you're saying you'd rather auto pass fear and get 3d6 discard the highest, over -1 to wound with heat weapons and it will not die on every multiwound/ vehicle for sallies? Oh and add the drawback of no initiative to sweep and -1 to charge and run.

 

Or reroll failed fear, dangerous terrain and pinning, and a very situational fnp over move 6" but always count as stationary and still get to move and snap shoot during pinning?

[Baluc]

 

A: I don’t think reactions were added to streamline the game.

B: The first game with new rules always takes forever

C: I welcome a slowed pace with more consideration for order of events and timing, with active involvement on both sides.

D: I imagine there will be a lot less mulling over when and whether to pop a reaction once they are kind of in your brain as you are watching and planning.

Same goes for Command Points.

Still a very stupid System.

Edit: just saying. We don't know how it will turn out but it reads problematic so far.

Like the CP system in AoS, practice and list building really speeds up the game.

 

Adding pinning to my lists has helped a lot especially considering I basically play an assault army.

 

Choosing the order of assaults has helped as well. Some of it will become habit and turns have been speeding up.

 

But yeah people should expect the first few games to be long and mentally a lot of heavy lifting.

[Excessus]

oh please, let's not go overboard just because a random person on the internet played with non-final rules from a playtest document once.

 

 

We'll see once the proper rules come out and then we'll have plenty of time to get used to them all. And if there are some outliers that doesn't work properly, I'm sure the community will adapt as we have done before. And besides, if HH now more will be like 40k in that it's a "main" game, then we might see way more FAQ:s and erratas than we have so far to sort out things like that...

[Astartes Consul]

IMO I don’t think anyone on this thread is seriously declaring Heresy 2.0 dead before it’s been actually released - we’re not running a YouTube channel…

[SkimaskMohawk]

I think it's fair to point out that these are still playtest, and logically a lot of the lopsidedness should be ironed out in the final release version.

 

But it's also fair to be highlight areas of concern, to point out GWs track record of releasing broken books, and to point out that getting constant FAQ's doesnt actually fix the problems they tend to make.