What would you change about 9th ed?

[Interrogator Stobz]

Drop strategems.

Bring back templates.

Drop bubbles.

Bring back joining characters to units, but make the unit die first.

Drop character targeting rules.

Drop secondaries.

Drop overwatch.

Bring back CC skill comparison tables.

- Edit in support of Cheex below:

Fix terrain rules.

No flamers hitting planes.

Damage like Kill Team is awesome.

Use more variable Toughness stats.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Interrogator Stobz

[Special Officer Doofy]

Edit Edited October 25, 2021 by Putrid Choir

[Cheex]

Stop using similar terms for slightly different things. You make "attacks" with a weapon, but when shooting this has nothing to do with the model's "attacks" characteristic. These attacks then have to "wound" the target, which causes damage, which in turn subtracts from the target's "wounds" characteristic, etc.

 

Simplify terrain traits and cover. "The benefit of cover" is such an awkward phrase - just say "in cover" if in cover, "obscured" if LoS is blocked, etc.

 

Set a minimum weapon range requirement (24"?) for firing at AIRCRAFT. No more shooting flamethrowers at planes.

 

There is no reason why weapon types exist. They are essentially universal special rules in an edition that doesn't use universal special rules. Ditch them, replace with actual USRs.

 

Ditch random damage values. Instead, introduce a new concept: Critical Damage. This would be represented on some (but not all!) weapon profiles as two Damage values - e.g. a lasgun might be 1/1, while a lascannon might be 3/6. Normally a successful wounding hit would cause the first number in damage, but if you roll a 6 to wound then it causes the second number instead. e.g. if you roll a 6 to wound with a lascannon, it inflicts 6 damage.

 

Ditch FNP-type rolls and Transhuman-type wound roll limiters. Instead, just increase the unit's toughness or wounds characteristic - that's what it's there for!

 

Stratagems are getting out of hand. I like them as a concept, but there are way too many and the gulf between 8th edition and 9th edition books is ridiculous.

 

Rules that trigger additional attacks should instead trigger additional hits. Reduce rerolls. 

[Brother Sidonius]

Seems that most people agree that 9th edition is a solid edition but the Moral phase, Stratagems and Secondaries could be improved.

 

With regards to Moral, what do people think about a hybrid system? If you fail Moral while within Engagement Range of an enemy unit Moral happens normally. But if you’re not within Engagement Range of any enemy units you have to make a Fallback move along the shortest path to your board edge

[MARK0SIAN]

The problem I have with morale is that I’ve yet to see a use case for it that made sense, didn’t break immersion or was implemented properly. Basically what is the point of it?

 

Is it to balance out horde armies against elite, with hordes being more susceptible to morale losses? If so, why do they immediately give most horde armies a trifling way to completely ignore it like Synapse? Further, the degree to which elite armies are more resistant to morale losses is not proportional to their cost or their elite nature.

 

Is it to represent the general terror of the battlefield and the morale effect on the troops? If so that meshes very poorly with the lore behind several factions, there’s no way the Adeptus Custodes get scared and run away, there’s no way troops that are essentially programmed liked skittarri do either.

 

Is it to balance out large squads against smaller ones? If so I’d argue that larger squads are already balanced out by their intrinsic downsides like vulnerability to blast weapons, lots of eggs in one basket, less versatility etc.

 

Is it to simply cause further losses to units to speed the game up? A huge problem is that stuff already dies super quickly and easily, we should be making units harder to destroy, not speeding up the process.

 

I just can’t see any point to morale at this point and I wouldn’t miss it if you just straight up removed it from the game.

[Redcomet]

Morale seems like on of those vestiges of Ye Olde games design that they just can’t seem to shake off.

[Valkyrion]

Morale should be retired, really.  

 

Bring back a version of the Independent Character/Retinue rule in place of auras.

If chaplains only gave their benefit to their squad we would likely see fewer MSU's, especially if Morale is also retired, but make it so that chaplain simply cannot be targeted by ranged attacks until his squad is dead so that the squad he is with will likely get the benefit of said 'aura'. 

 

The warlord should give an army wide benefit, rather than an aura, which is different for each type. E.g, a Librarian warlord would grant a different benefit than a Captain, or a Bloodthirster to a Lord of Change. They could still get a personal warlord trait that only affects them.

 

Finally, remove faction abilities that change when the turns change. It's supposed to be a 5 minute snapshot, not a set piece battle set over the course a day. 

[MARK0SIAN]

Morale seems like on of those vestiges of Ye Olde games design that they just can’t seem to shake off.

Yeah I have to agree. It feels like a mechanic that’s perfectly at home in a medieval, Greek/Roman or WW2 war game that deals with regular humans breaking. It doesn’t at all feel at home with several of the factions represented in 40K.

 

It’s like GW spend ages building this world and these factions like Space Marines (whose literal tag line is “They shall know no fear”) and emphasise how tough, unbreakable, heroic they are. How they face the darkest horrors of the galaxy and don’t flinch. And in the same breath they then say “and here’s the part of the game where these same guys get scared and run away because four of their comrades died.”

 

It just jars so hard with what’s been built. Now I can accept that the lore can’t always be accurately represented on the table top but if it isn’t, it should have a good reason why it needs to be that way and I just can’t see what morale adds to the game to justify such a break from the lore.

[The Neverborn]

Too many stratergems. Each faction has with supplements etc maybe 50, then theres like 20 or so factions (including different chapters). It's too difficult to plan your turn if you need to remember 1,000 stragerms your opponent may pull out based on what ever faction they have.

 

Also the secondaries to not give the correct number of points based on their difficulty. RoC EoOF etc are too ubiquitous.

[Ahzek451]

As I don't see stratagems going anywhere, I would like to see each faction relegated to having a small number instead of 4 pages worth. Around 6 really decent ones would be fitting for each faction. 

As others have already mentioned: secondary's. 

Morale to have more of an impact. Which is an odd one, since, lets face it...every army in their respective fluff is depicted as the bravest/scariest things in the universe. So why have it? Perhaps maybe if it had status affects in addition to running away(killing models). Certain morale rolls, rules, and situations could trigger one or the other.  

Vehicles getting some kind of buff or re-work. Related to this, I always found it janky that 2 models that are roughly the same size and wound profiles but one with no damage chart and hence can be just as affective at 1 wound remaining vs. its kin that suffers from worse stats in the same scenario. Would be cool if there was a blanket rule for models starting with 5-10 wounds with one wound remaining to suffer a -1 to hit. OR something like that. 

Edited October 25, 2021 by Ahzek451

[LinkStatic]

 

 

I like the secondaries but I think, the missiom specific one should be mandatory to select

most of them are horrible.

Fair enough, but I think right now, the missions are too neglible. I want the missions to have a higher impact on how the game will play that missiom.

[Warhead01]

I don't care for secondaries. I wouldn't way remove them so much as give players some option to win strictly by playing a main mission. Some way to adjust points for actively trying to fulfill the mission requirements. Secondaries are tedious. If anything they should be randomly determined for both players instead of letting players pick the optimal ones.  But opting out of secondaries should be an option.
I never enjoyed the itc format and don't enjoy it being forced on me via secondaries. I can't very well opt out when it's the only way games are being played, to opt out is to just not play. 
9th would probably be more fun with out secondaries and if games could go out to 7 turns. 


 

[phandaal]

 

Morale seems like on of those vestiges of Ye Olde games design that they just can’t seem to shake off.

It’s like GW spend ages building this world and these factions like Space Marines (whose literal tag line is “They shall know no fear”) and emphasise how tough, unbreakable, heroic they are. How they face the darkest horrors of the galaxy and don’t flinch. And in the same breath they then say “and here’s the part of the game where these same guys get scared and run away because four of their comrades died.”

 

 

In my head it is a measure of combat effectiveness. Maybe one of my Marines did not get killed outright but his injuries were so severe that he was unable to continue fighting. Or the last man standing went down in a pile of enemy combatants. Armor severely damaged and locked up. Et cetera. It is never "the Space Marine ran away."

 

 

I don't care for secondaries. I wouldn't way remove them so much as give players some option to win strictly by playing a main mission. Some way to adjust points for actively trying to fulfill the mission requirements. Secondaries are tedious. If anything they should be randomly determined for both players instead of letting players pick the optimal ones.  But opting out of secondaries should be an option.

I never enjoyed the itc format and don't enjoy it being forced on me via secondaries. I can't very well opt out when it's the only way games are being played, to opt out is to just not play. 

9th would probably be more fun with out secondaries and if games could go out to 7 turns. 

 

 

 

 

The Open War mission pack is a fun way to generate missions without secondaries. Crusade mission packs also have a ton of missions that can be played without ever actually doing Crusade; just play those as Open War and use the missions' victory conditions. Personally, those are much more fun than scoring points for having a servitor standing in a table corner or retrieving one of the apparently endless number of planet-hopping Octarius servo skulls.

 

A friend of mine even told me that the entire Pariah Nexus mission pack is available on a certain website-that-shall-not-be-named if you want to try some of those without an upfront cost. Not that I would know anything about that as a good honest paying customer. 

Edited October 25, 2021 by phandaal

[Warhead01]

 

 

 

I don't care for secondaries. I wouldn't way remove them so much as give players some option to win strictly by playing a main mission. Some way to adjust points for actively trying to fulfill the mission requirements. Secondaries are tedious. If anything they should be randomly determined for both players instead of letting players pick the optimal ones.  But opting out of secondaries should be an option.

I never enjoyed the itc format and don't enjoy it being forced on me via secondaries. I can't very well opt out when it's the only way games are being played, to opt out is to just not play. 

9th would probably be more fun with out secondaries and if games could go out to 7 turns. 

 

 

 

 

The Open War mission pack is a fun way to generate missions without secondaries. Crusade mission packs also have a ton of missions that can be played without ever actually doing Crusade; just play those as Open War and use the missions' victory conditions. Personally, those are much more fun than scoring points for having a servitor standing in a table corner or retrieving one of the apparently endless number of planet-hopping Octarius servo skulls.

 

A friend of mine even told me that the entire Pariah Nexus mission pack is available on a certain website-that-shall-not-be-named if you want to try some of those without an upfront cost. Not that I would know anything about that as a good honest paying customer. 

 

That sounds fine. I even have the open war cards set. the issues is that it is outside the comfort zone of the person I usually manage to game with. He is only interested in getting ready for that next tournament. Which brings me back to wanting yet another way to keep score in matched play/GT missions, which is all I get to play. I know from lots and lots of threads over the years that I am not the only person who has the choice of either just play whatever's "popular" or don't play/don't have the best time possible. 

 

I do hope to some day use those open war cards. Maybe, one day.  

[phandaal]

 

That sounds fine. I even have the open war cards set. the issues is that it is outside the comfort zone of the person I usually manage to game with. He is only interested in getting ready for that next tournament. Which brings me back to wanting yet another way to keep score in matched play/GT missions, which is all I get to play. I know from lots and lots of threads over the years that I am not the only person who has the choice of either just play whatever's "popular" or don't play/don't have the best time possible. 

 

I do hope to some day use those open war cards. Maybe, one day.  

 

 

 

Yeah it is hard when your gaming partner does not want to try different game modes. I dipped out on Matched Play in 9th edition around the beginning of the summer, and the majority of the events at my FLGS are Matched Play. So it came down to finding games through other means like local Facebook or Meetup groups.

 

Matched Play just focuses so much on secondaries that have nothing to do with the mission, and it seems like it brings out the worst in people. When the expectation is that the game is being played for fun, it is (big surprise) a lot more fun!

[Warhead01]

 

 

That sounds fine. I even have the open war cards set. the issues is that it is outside the comfort zone of the person I usually manage to game with. He is only interested in getting ready for that next tournament. Which brings me back to wanting yet another way to keep score in matched play/GT missions, which is all I get to play. I know from lots and lots of threads over the years that I am not the only person who has the choice of either just play whatever's "popular" or don't play/don't have the best time possible. 

 

I do hope to some day use those open war cards. Maybe, one day.  

 

 

 

Yeah it is hard when your gaming partner does not want to try different game modes. I dipped out on Matched Play in 9th edition around the beginning of the summer, and the majority of the events at my FLGS are Matched Play. So it came down to finding games through other means like local Facebook or Meetup groups.

 

Matched Play just focuses so much on secondaries that have nothing to do with the mission, and it seems like it brings out the worst in people. When the expectation is that the game is being played for fun, it is (big surprise) a lot more fun!

 

I can agree. 9th it self isn't really a bad rule set. None are ever perfect, 4th was my favorite.  I wish my group would be more of a group, it's difficult to get he band back together let alone decide what we want to do.   Maybe next year. 

9th is more or less jest a social thing for me. Better than not playing at all regardless of what I don't like about it.  Do wish some one out there with more brain power and XP, would make a fan scoring system for filthy casuals like myself.  I believe I could get my competitive friend to go for something like that because it would not change how he decides to play his army for tournament prep. Off the top of my head though I can't exactly see how to adjust the missions fairly. first thought would just be to raise the score for objectives with a cap of some kind but even with that I don't want that to be a system I can game. Sadly it's probably easier to adjust than I can see .  

 

So, have to ask. these Pariah Nexus missions, are they completely compatible or is there a max points size or unit cap to play then with 9th? 

[phandaal]

 

So, have to ask. these Pariah Nexus missions, are they completely compatible or is there a max points size or unit cap to play then with 9th? 

 

 

Combat Patrol, Incursion, Strike Force, and Onslaught get 6 missions each. That is the standard for Crusade mission pack books.

 

The Charadon book, Amidst the Ashes, feels like it has the coolest set of missions to me, but as far as I know that one is not online anywhere for easy viewing.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I believe Geedub said one CP is roughly equivalent to 30 points. Would be interesting if you had to pay for them.

 

That's interesting that they had a value in mind for them. That said some of the strongest stratagems in the game only cost one command point, which doesn't make sense. I'm more of a fan of getting rid them and adding some abilities back to data sheets.

 

Drop strategems.

Bring back templates.

Drop bubbles.

Bring back joining characters to units, but make the unit die first.

Drop character targeting rules.

Drop secondaries.

Drop overwatch.

Bring back CC skill comparison tables.

- Edit in support of Cheex below:

Fix terrain rules.

No flamers hitting planes.

Damage like Kill Team is awesome.

Use more variable Toughness stats.

 

For the most part I agree with list.

 

That said I don't ever want deal with templates ever again. For the most part they were fine, but then you had to play against that guy and he made it a nightmare. On the one hand you knew who not play against if you could help it, but on the other hand even with reasonable people trying to bend over a table and accurately follow the path of a scatter die was tough. I'm glad there gone in skirmish games with smaller boards they work a lot better.

 

edit: The other thing with templates is how much it slowed the game down against horde armies, I never finished a game against them in a tournament before they got rid of them. The amount of time they spent spreading out their units to make sure they were spaced out as much as possible was miserable for both players.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Jorin Helm-splitter

[sairence]

Honestly, I find it the morale does actually make more of an impact than what I felt in the past. But then, I play Guard, my normal squad size is 10 and my norrnal Ld-ship there is 7. When morale is something you need to consider it is relevant now without being crippling. The issue isn't so much for that the system applied doesn't work but rather that everyone and their mum has ways of ignoring it.

 

Reduce those abilities and you'll start to feel it chipping away. Limiting Insane Bravery to once per game was a good start, personally I would remove it entirely. And abilites can be changed to mitigate losses when you fail morale, but to not outright ignore it entirely. Also, very few armies should just ignore it by defauly, especially not swarm or horde armies.

[Aarik]

I'd like to see initiative come back.  All the fights first/fights last, etc. stuff just gets too confusing.  Charging units could get +1 initiative, and "fights last" could be changed to -1 or -2, for example.

 

I would also like to see the stratagems in the codex at minimum organized by phase, rather than the loose organization by stratagem "type" (which rarely, if ever, is relevant).  Just seeing the stratagems organized by phase order on a certain Russian Wikipedia-like website (that I'm not sure if we're allowed to name here) made it so much easier to keep track of them for me.  I'd also like to see stratagems that only affect one or two units be turned into datasheet abilities activated by command points too.  I think that would help people keep track of them better.

[ThePenitentOne]

I'd put out an FAQ for CSM the day the marine dex dropped; I'd have waited to release campaign books til all dexes were out. I'd replace every White dwarf Marine army list index Astartes article with a microfaction article such as Ynarri, Inquisition, Cult of the Abyss, Starstriders etc; all would include Crusade content and all would make the faction in question playable (if not competitive) rather than being a reprint; I'd have gotten the Fallen right.

 

I'm mostly happy with 9th, so changes are minor but meaningful.

[Interrogator Stobz]

 

 

Drop strategems.

Bring back templates.

Drop bubbles.

Bring back joining characters to units, but make the unit die first.

Drop character targeting rules.

Drop secondaries.

Drop overwatch.

Bring back CC skill comparison tables.

- Edit in support of Cheex below:

Fix terrain rules.

No flamers hitting planes.

Damage like Kill Team is awesome.

Use more variable Toughness stats.

For the most part I agree with list.

 

That said I don't ever want deal with templates ever again. For the most part they were fine, but then you had to play against that guy and he made it a nightmare. On the one hand you knew who not play against if you could help it, but on the other hand even with reasonable people trying to bend over a table and accurately follow the path of a scatter die was tough. I'm glad there gone in skirmish games with smaller boards they work a lot better.

 

edit: The other thing with templates is how much it slowed the game down against horde armies, I never finished a game against them in a tournament before they got rid of them. The amount of time they spent spreading out their units to make sure they were spaced out as much as possible was miserable for both players.

I feel your pain when dealing with 'that guy' but I enjoyed them for basically seven Editions (RT? Can'tremember) and never had them slow a game down enough to worry. When playing hordes speed the game up by taking even more templates lolz, kill them faster.

I don't do tournaments so maybe that's a thing but I love the mechanic. That's why I love Titanicus I guess.

Maybe they could adopt the Kill Team blast mechanic, it's freaken fantastic too and no templates. I wonder how it would scale up???

[Noserenda]

Blasts were good while they were ubiquitous, as soon as they got replaced it was a load off though, honestly i dont see what they add to the game that they dont subtract tenfold. They can work in skirmish games but even then i would rather just be getting on with the game, at least in titanicus you can usually "math it out" and rarely need the actual template, but half the blast weapons in the game would be better without for various reasons.

[MegaVolt87]

I'd like to see initiative come back.  All the fights first/fights last, etc. stuff just gets too confusing.  Charging units could get +1 initiative, and "fights last" could be changed to -1 or -2, for example.

 

I would also like to see the stratagems in the codex at minimum organized by phase, rather than the loose organization by stratagem "type" (which rarely, if ever, is relevant).  Just seeing the stratagems organized by phase order on a certain Russian Wikipedia-like website (that I'm not sure if we're allowed to name here) made it so much easier to keep track of them for me.  I'd also like to see stratagems that only affect one or two units be turned into datasheet abilities activated by command points too.  I think that would help people keep track of them better.

 

I don't see the value of the initiative system returning unless accompanied by duels/ challenges, locked in combat and sweeping advances. A house rule for challenges I used to use with my friends in the old days was, if you ducked one, you got a -1 Ld penalty for the rest of the combat until resolution and the opponent got +1 Ld if you ducked the challenge BUT you could still attack the unit instead of missing out entirely. It was a very popular rule amongst my old 40k group. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

@ Nosrenda: As stated, I disagree and never had any problems with them and love the spacial aspect they allowed. I am also pretty good with mathing things and I find just doing calculations for hobby time boring.

But that's cool to like different mechanics so we should agree to disagree :)

Edited October 25, 2021 by Interrogator Stobz