goonhammer article on 40k - that it's overwhelming now

[OldWherewolf]

working fine for me now.

[MARK0SIAN]

This new page looks fine but the previous page still looks like a mess I’m afraid :(

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

There's a tag that needs to be fixed in Jorin Helm-splitter's post from 12:30 pm (GMT -4) http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/372955-goonhammer-article-on-40k-that-its-overwhelming-now/?p=5785452

 

I deleted the quoted section of my post, I was trying to use spoiler tags to limit how big the post was and did it poorly. If people are still having an issue just go ahead and delete my post if it's the issue.

[Wulf Vengis]

I refreshed the page and it fixed everything.

[Brother Casman]

[snip]

 

I deleted the quoted section of my post, I was trying to use spoiler tags to limit how big the post was and did it poorly. If people are still having an issue just go ahead and delete my post if it's the issue.

Yeah, quotes and spoiler tags don't always work well together - but the previous page looks fine now.

[ThePenitentOne]

Lots of good suggestions: the creation of a simplified version in addition to what we have would totally work for me, and I've proposed the idea in several other similar threads. Kind of like KT 2018's Arena expansion. It would extremely limit strats, it could go the route of USR- it could really be just about anything, and I'd be content because I wouldn't be playing it. From my perspective, it would exist solely to make it easier for those feeling overwhelmed without ruining anything for the rest of us. As such, it's an ideal "everyone wins" kinda solution.

 

A few folks have talked about cards here are some thoughts on that:

 

I can't afford GW strat cards to go with my dexes and models, and even if I could, I wouldn't find them sufficient, because other resources (Campaign books, White Dwarf, etc) have the potential to generate new strats, leaving your deck incomplete or mismatched. That's why I make my own! This takes a bit of work up front, but there are ways you can minimize that amount of work. You could, for example, not bother creating cards for strats you absolutely know you will never use. You could also short hand the text on each card, but include a citation for the strat in case you get an opponent who doubts your shorthand.

 

If you do this, you eliminate so many of the things people complain about. I've heard people talk about THE GAME needing to be modified so that there are official rules about selecting a limited number of strats at the beginning of every game and using only those. I'm not sure why these people want GW to come up with a new rulebook and spend another two years rereleasing every codex for a tenth time when you can do this right now with a trip to the buckstore to buy index cards and an hour or so worth of time to copy out your favourite strats.

 

I suppose you could argue that making it an official rule would actually force EVERYONE to play that way. For folks who only have the option of pick-up games with strangers, I suppose I can see the value in that.

 

In practice, once you have a set of strat cards, home made or GW produced, this is pretty much how you end up playing the game anyway. Minimally, you're going to remove all the cards from the deck that you can't use- unit specific cards for units you haven't fielded, pregame strats you chose not to use, equipment strats that you don't have access to, etc. But you'll likely go further than that, just because it's so damned easy to do. I usually go into a game with 10-15 cards.

 

As for unit cards, I make those too. I didn't plan on it at first- it just ended up making sense. See, as a Crusade player, I need a card for every unit anyway so that I can track its tallies, experience, Battle Honours and scars, relics, etc. It just made sense to add the contents of the data slate to each of these cards. I store them in digital format so that I can update the Crusade portion between games, so I just print the ones I need before every game. If a unit gets FAQ'ed, I can modify the dataslate text. The cool thing about these dataslates is that they include only the options I actually use- no more details of vehicle upgrades I didn't select, and all the rules for the weapons I did select, even the common ones which often have to be looked up in a separate section of the dex since GW doesn't always include all stats for all weapon options on every dataslate. I also include the faction, subfaction and army wide rules on each card- again, obviously, only the ones I'm actually using.

 

Now if you have both customized unit cards and strat cards? You've solved almost every complaint in this thread. You show your opponent one of these cards? It contains EVERYTHING the unit has and NOTHING the unit doesn't have. Opponent is afraid of gotcha strats? Hey buddy, read this deck of 15- sure, there are twenty others in the dex but since I'm only picking from these, you can save yourself some time. Surprise: it didn't cost me a dime, nor did it require the purchase of a new BRB, a new dex, nor did it create any of the have/ vs. have not problems that come with EVERY new edition. It can even include Forgeworld units.

 

Another cool thing? When I'm watching my opponent's turn, and thinking about how I'm going to react in my own turn, I can often place my strat cards face down on the card of the unit who is going to use it. This is also where I keep all my tokens and counters so that they don't clutter my gaming table and I don't have to move them every time I move the unit.

 

It is a bit of work up front. Nowhere near as much as assembling and painting an army. 

 

For anyone who is overwhelmed: there has never been anything stopping you from doing this. Now it's true that because this isn't in a rule book, you can't force others to do the same. But you can lead by example, and when others in your community see the benefits, they might end up doing it themselves. 

[Vermintide]

The thing is, this is kind of always how Warhammer has worked.

At a casual level, knowledge of "the rules" (meaning, the specific abilities of units and factions, not simply the order of play) tends to matter more than your strategic ability, and always has. I certainly remember it being true when I was younger, getting stomped by other kids at the store because they knew how to anticipate what my stuff could do, whereas I didn't know the first thing about theirs. Simply having familiarity with your opponent's codex gave you a huge edge, but back then it seemed inconceivable to me that people would shell out the cash to obtain and familiarise themselves with rules for armies they didn't even play, just to win at toy soldiers- How naive I was

At some level this is kind of inseparable from the nature of the game, where you have one set of basic rules, and additional layers of rules for the exact playing pieces. But it is hard to deny, it's really got out of hand nowadays.

I will say that I think stratagems were a mistake. They seemed like a good idea at first, having "active abilities" like in video games, but by now, I just don't think it's a good fit for a tabletop game with dead trees and dice. I never had a problem with auras and buffs etc- Those are all nicely consolidated on the unit's datasheet, usually, so they don't become a hassle for book keeping. But stratagems, and especially, the Doctrine-type super-special-rules, are a big issue for the game IMO.

 

The command protocols for Necrons, for example, are just too much effort for the marginal benefit they seem to provide, and it just doesn't feel good to know I'm missing out on my army's abilities purely because I can't summon the mental energy to keep track of them. This is especially egregious when it's a considerable source of the army's power, as in some cases. Stuff like Dark Eldar and AdMech canticles in 8th was already pushing it a little for me, but tolerably so; but 9th has just doubled down on that for every faction.

[Kenzaburo]

Lots of wise words. :)

You are not wrong. As I said before, I always used to create cheat sheets to cope with the amount of information needed for the game. And it has always been a tremendous help.

 

But I, for one, feel that the amount of work I need to put into this to make the game flow more effortlessly has become too much. That's what I'd consider inelegant. The game requires a lot of work on the player side - it always has, that's why it is marketed as a hobby. Now I need to constantly change the cheat sheets, add a lot of info and I'm required to keep more ongoing effects in mind. That's what I meant with the game being more mentally exhausting to play. There's more depth, sure, but it's taxing and limits the fun I'm having. Also the more options you integrate into game design where the player is responsible to keep track of them, the more you set the player up for failure and ultimately a negative experience. If you lose a game and discover that you forgot several rules, that might have made a difference, you deny the player a rewarding experience.

 

A game should be a battle of wits and, to a lesser degree, luck between players. That still holds true for a wargame, where some strategic preparation is, of course required, but not this massive amount of homework.

 

Seriously, my wife keeps scratching her head why I love this game so much. Because every time I set up a game day I'll be occupied every night in the week running up to it, reading rules, making notes and trying to find ways to remember all the stuff I need to do. To her it seems so much like a chore that she probably considers me some kind of masochist, I think. :) And I can't fault her for that, because, to tell the truth, I hate all the preparation necessary for a game. I love the pure hobbying aspect, the building and painting. I like playing and putting it all on the table. But I absolutely loathe the prep phase before a game. I wanna build a list, play the several hours long game and enjoy the spectacle of the game itself.

 

Also I think adding these rather video gamey elements hurt, because that itself is the reason they don't work in a tabletop game. There my console or computer will do all the book keeping necessary, meaning the "not fun" aspects, letting me focus on the afore mentioned spectacle. If you just add these to a tabletop game you put that strain on the player, unless you provide a companion app or some very elegant and intuitive rules designs. Elements like these will also always limit the amount of new player influx into the game. The hobby with it's painting and building requirements was, in a way, a hard enough sell back in the 90s and early 2000s. But nowadays, where everyone is a digital native and some sort of casual video game player, these complicated mental puzzles of current tabletop wargaming appeal only to tiniest amount of people. Masochists, as my wife would put it. :D

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

 

That team could be bigger. Not like they cant afford it

Smaller team = all working o nthe same stuff = slower release schedule.

 

I think they've had bigger teams in the past, or at least journeyman writers, and you end up with people having pet projects, or more influence on a specific project that leads to stuff like one author producing terrible codexes like 5th ed guard and nids, another producing insane OP codexes like 4/6th ed eldar, and another producing mid tier strength, great codexes, but with some bad writing (5th ed Grey knights, blood angels, space marines).

 

------------------------------------

Correcting myself here, but we, including me, have gone off on a tangent. There's a great discussion on the complexity of the game in Amicus, so please feel free to discuss the complexity issues over there, but lets keep this topic purely related to the CA:2022 release.

 

=][=

Answering xenith from the redirect, but idk what you remember about 5th; the guard and nid books were very good.

 

5th guard lead to the advent of the "leaf blower" with things like triple manticore and triple vendetta and their scout-flat out across the board alpha strike. You also had things like straken and blobbing up to make a huge unit with hidden power weapons, that was fearless and could bully away a lot of medium melee threats to your line.

 

Nids were just good, not sure how else to put it. Venomthropes gave huge cover, hiveguard were always good, the pods made out of Zellers toys helped a lot with disruption, the Doom was broken mechanically, trygons and tervigons were super pushed, poison 4+ hormagaunts ate any non-vehicle. People hated the next nid book because it ruined everything the 5th book had provided.

[Xenith]

 

Answering xenith from the redirect, but idk what you remember about 5th; the guard and nid books were very good.

 

5th guard lead to the advent of the "leaf blower" with things like triple manticore and triple vendetta and their scout-flat out across the board alpha strike. You also had things like straken and blobbing up to make a huge unit with hidden power weapons, that was fearless and could bully away a lot of medium melee threats to your line.

 

Nids were just good, not sure how else to put it. Venomthropes gave huge cover, hiveguard were always good, the pods made out of Zellers toys helped a lot with disruption, the Doom was broken mechanically, trygons and tervigons were super pushed, poison 4+ hormagaunts ate any non-vehicle. People hated the next nid book because it ruined everything the 5th book had provided.

 

 

I might be having my editions wrong then - perhaps 4th? There was an edition where the two books written by Robin Cruddace (Nids and Guard) were miles behind other factions in the game. I recall the wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

 

For anyone joining, the Chapter approved topic in NRBA naturally moved onto the topic of keeping track of the millions of rules sources to have the most up to date information, which leads us to here.  

[apologist]

Some very good points in Kenzaburo's post above – just wanted to highlight these in particular:

 

But I, for one, feel that the amount of work I need to put into this to make the game flow more effortlessly has become too much. That's what I'd consider inelegant. The game requires a lot of work on the player side[...]the more options you integrate into game design where the player is responsible to keep track of them, the more you set the player up for failure and ultimately a negative experience. If you lose a game and discover that you forgot several rules, that might have made a difference, you deny the player a rewarding experience.

[...]

A game should be a battle of wits and, to a lesser degree, luck between players. That still holds true for a wargame, where some strategic preparation is, of course required, but not this massive amount of homework.

[...]

Also I think adding these rather video gamey elements hurt, because that itself is the reason they don't work in a tabletop game. There my console or computer will do all the book keeping necessary, meaning the "not fun" aspects, letting me focus on the afore mentioned spectacle. [...]

 

This really nicely encapsulates the point that somewhere along the line, the particular appeal of tabletop games and computer games has crossed over. I don't think it's necessarily bad to bring in some good aspects of computer gaming, but that should be balanced against the necessarily analogue and physical nature of 40k (and other wargames).

 

In the most basic sense, mechanics don't necessarily translate well from one to the other; but perhaps more importantly, the collaborative and cooperative nature of a wargame is different to the way one interacts with a computer game. Kenzaburo rightly points out that the computer does the bookkeeping – keeping the 'swan's legs' invisible – while the two tabletop players have to interpret the rules set.

 

The more complex the rule set, the more focus is needed for understanding it. The more complicated the rule set, the more likely that different interpretations come up, compounding the problem. Without a computer to deal with the non-intuitive interactions, the rules at least aim to make things happen as you think they might – to make things as intuitive as possible. 

 

On a simple level, that's things like vehicles generally moving faster than people, or more powerful weapons causing more damage. Where relatable things like that are true, the interpretations players make are more likely to agree. This makes for an enjoyable experience where intuition can help guide understanding of the rules.

 

Secondly, if the mechanics of the game are coherent – i.e. that strange, unknowable things like future weapons operate on game mechanics comparable and similar to the more mundane – then that also helps. I think the basic rulebook of 9th is actually very good at being more intuitive than previous editions, but that the expansions and options overwhelm a decent core game.

 

***

 

On a related note, 40k has long been becoming less like a 'future war simulation' in favour of making a smoother, more abstract play experience. That's not a problem in itself, but the direction of travel makes clear that the coherency of the game is increasingly less tethered.

 

The clearest example is the stat block. Where all physical resilience was tied up in the relationship of the T, W and Sv stats of a figure, it was easy for players to draw conclusions on relative likelihoods. It's become far more difficult to do that as an individual player, as there are now multiple – often redundant – complementary mechanics, from transhuman physiology to disgustingly resilient to only being able to take a certain amount of damage in a turn. Further, these are layered by being optional or changing from turn to turn by another set of related mechanics.

 

That complexity requires more focus – drawing attention away from the interaction with the board and the other player – and in turn leads to more chance of something being missed or misinterpreted.

 

***

 

As an example of what I mean, we can look at the stat line. Historically, GW was extremely conservative with the statline of core troops prior to 9th. With a few notable exceptions, changes in the basic stats have been minor and over extremely long periods. Their approach tended to be layering special rules to give extra resilience, rather than simply adjusting stats.

 

9th has seen quite a few changes and exceptions to that; but rather than discarding the exceptions and returning to the core mechanic of T, W and Sv,  they've simply done both. That leads to more unintentional exceptions, and makes things less intuitive.

 

Plague Marines are a good example. Space Marines are tough, so they get a base statline of 4. Plague Marines are exceptionally tougher than marines, so got +1T. Occasional interactions (spells, characters, equipment) could alter this further.

 

In later editions of the game, increased damage potential made that worth less, but rather than bump them to T6 (the intuitive answer), a second mechanic was added – the universal feel no pain.

 

Today, Plague Marines retain their additional T bonus and the layered resilience mechanic (now a unique 'disgustingly resilient' that's similar to, but subtly different from, other similar mechanics), and this can be further altered or affected by the Stratagem system.

 

I'm not arguing that's right or wrong, but it's a symptom of the willingness to layer mechanics rather than adhere to one system.

Edited January 18, 2022 by apologist

[Xenith]

 

9th has seen quite a few changes and exceptions to that; but rather than discarding the exceptions and returning to the core mechanic of T, W and Sv,  they've simply done both. That leads to more unintentional exceptions, and makes things less intuitive.

 

Agree, GW freed themselves from the self imposed shackles of the 1-10 Stat system, only to ignore it and return to special rule based gameplay. A T6/2W or T5/3W plague marine is way easier to keep track of than a T5/2W-1D one. 

[Noserenda]

Yeah i was actually really excited to see them updating statlines instead of rules but then theyve, as you said, just done both, whilst being super conservative with toughness, which is particularly weird now that an extreme of toughness is less valuable than it used to be now everything could still hurt you and s16 guns are out there... Like, why is T8 still the ceiling? Use that granularity GW!

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

 

 

Answering xenith from the redirect, but idk what you remember about 5th; the guard and nid books were very good.

 

5th guard lead to the advent of the "leaf blower" with things like triple manticore and triple vendetta and their scout-flat out across the board alpha strike. You also had things like straken and blobbing up to make a huge unit with hidden power weapons, that was fearless and could bully away a lot of medium melee threats to your line.

 

Nids were just good, not sure how else to put it. Venomthropes gave huge cover, hiveguard were always good, the pods made out of Zellers toys helped a lot with disruption, the Doom was broken mechanically, trygons and tervigons were super pushed, poison 4+ hormagaunts ate any non-vehicle. People hated the next nid book because it ruined everything the 5th book had provided.

 

I might be having my editions wrong then - perhaps 4th? There was an edition where the two books written by Robin Cruddace (Nids and Guard) were miles behind other factions in the game. I recall the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

 

For anyone joining, the Chapter approved topic in NRBA naturally moved onto the topic of keeping track of the millions of rules sources to have the most up to date information, which leads us to here.

That'd be the 6th edition ones lol. While I personally liked the core of 6ths rules, the change in a lot of USRs and the design philosophy of the codexes/micro supplements was terrible and resulted in some very stripped out and uninspiring books.

[Indefragable]

I and my core "warhammer friends" have all shifted almost entirely to 30k after a few games when 9th ed came out. It wasn't a conscious thing, but it just became abundantly clear that none of us were motivated to play 9th but 30k was keeping our interest with a vengeance, even after some of us had played it for years. That's not to start a "which game is better" war, but just pointing out an anecdote that ties into the background of this article.

 

My first thought is Deep Strike.

 

Remember that term? A simple term and concept that applied to a whole host of options yet is simple enough that a two-word phrase instantaneously communicates what a unit can do (in some fashion) without the need to discuss it. In 8th + it's ".....so do those guys have Deep Strike?" "uh....no they have a Teleportarium Timepass Ticket...." "......so Deep Strike, got it." 

I get the flavor angle of having certain things named differently on unit data sheets, but one small step to cleaning up would be to make game abilities and concepts as simple as "Deep Strike" again. 

IMHO. 

[Blindhamster]

40k would be much better if it moved to d10s or even d20s and they further differentiated the different creatures stats accordingly with the wider range of possible results, couple that with bringing back universal special rules and limiting the number of unique datasheet specific rules where possible. It would probably also be good for the game for objectives to be randomly drawn from a deck rather than chosen and having alternating activations.

[Kenzaburo]

40k would be much better if it moved to d10s or even d20s and they further differentiated the different creatures stats accordingly with the wider range of possible results, couple that with bringing back universal special rules and limiting the number of unique datasheet specific rules where possible. It would probably also be good for the game for objectives to be randomly drawn from a deck rather than chosen and having alternating activations.

So, Infinity then? ;) Great game, really. Again, a bit too complex for my beer and pretzels spectacle game with friends, but great game.

[ThePenitentOne]

40k would be much better if it moved to d10s or even d20s and they further differentiated the different creatures stats accordingly with the wider range of possible results, couple that with bringing back universal special rules and limiting the number of unique datasheet specific rules where possible. It would probably also be good for the game for objectives to be randomly drawn from a deck rather than chosen and having alternating activations.

 

It would also be more expensive. I can get 6 sided dice as cheap as 4 cents each by ordering bulk.

 

Go ahead. Price out 100 d10's. D20's cost even more because they are primarily used by systems that require only one. At least d10's are needed in multiples for Whitewolf games.

 

(At least they used to be- edition churn killed Whitewolf games for me, just like it risks killing 40k)

[spessmarine]

Thinking about it, I just don't like stratagem bloat, like looking at the Harlequin leaks and they've made the weapons identical but each has a keyword associated with it to correspond to strategems. I do not like it. Even what to expect from weapons ends up forked off into a different section.

Like the aforementioned smokescreen ability, it was fine as a tradeoff of shooting for a turn for the hit malus. Strategems are just too many and too often carved out of datasheets.

[Scribe]

40k would be much better if it moved to d10s or even d20s and they further differentiated the different creatures stats accordingly with the wider range of possible results, couple that with bringing back universal special rules and limiting the number of unique datasheet specific rules where possible. It would probably also be good for the game for objectives to be randomly drawn from a deck rather than chosen and having alternating activations.

 

I really dont think it needs to be over complicated, like at all.

 

Units

M, WS, BS, S, T, W, A, LD, SV (9 Stats)

 

Weapons

Range, Type, S, AP, D (5 Stats)

 

Special Rules

USR's

 

D6, D3, Fixed Values, or a combination.

 

You already have a ton of variability. A literal TON of ranges. Do we REALLY need statagems to temp buff units? Why?

 

Why do we need another system of resource to track?

 

Why do we need random (I've hated random crap since they tried to keep pushing it on us in like 6th or something!) objectives?

 

What do these things add, that having variance in the dice doesnt already provide?

 

 

Thinking about it, I just don't like stratagem bloat, like looking at the Harlequin leaks and they've made the weapons identical but each has a keyword associated with it to correspond to strategems. I do not like it. Even what to expect from weapons ends up forked off into a different section.

Like the aforementioned smokescreen ability, it was fine as a tradeoff of shooting for a turn for the hit malus. Strategems are just too many and too often carved out of datasheets.

 

They have done what now?! UGH.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Scribe

[Slave to Darkness]

 

I really dont think it needs to be over complicated, like at all.

 

Units

M, WS, BS, S, T, W, A, LD, SV (9 Stats)

 

Weapons

Range, Type, S, AP, D (5 Stats)

 

 

 

 

 

Almost sounds like Rogue Trader! :lol: 

[Scribe]

 

 

I really dont think it needs to be over complicated, like at all.

 

Units

M, WS, BS, S, T, W, A, LD, SV (9 Stats)

 

Weapons

Range, Type, S, AP, D (5 Stats)

 

 

 

 

 

Almost sounds like Rogue Trader!

 

 

I mean thats the thing right? One would have to try quite hard to be able to convince me that with just those stats alone, a D6/D3, and fixed values, that we somehow are going to run out of variety in 40K.

 

We dont need more than that and some USR's, I just dont see it.

[Slave to Darkness]

 

 

 

I really dont think it needs to be over complicated, like at all.

 

Units

M, WS, BS, S, T, W, A, LD, SV (9 Stats)

 

Weapons

Range, Type, S, AP, D (5 Stats)

 

 

 

 

 

Almost sounds like Rogue Trader!

 

 

I mean thats the thing right? One would have to try quite hard to be able to convince me that with just those stats alone, a D6/D3, and fixed values, that we somehow are going to run out of variety in 40K.

 

We dont need more than that and some USR's, I just dont see it.

 

NGL, Id be happy if they did a 1st ed reset for the rules, they have already reintroduced movement (still think humans should be M4) and variable damage for the weapons, all they need to do is fix the psychic stuff and rework the vehicle rules (2nd ed vehicle rules were the best imho) and the game would be perfect. People say Im only championing Rogue Trader for nostalgic reasons, having played every edition so far I can say its not nostalgia, I believe its superior to current editions (core rules, 1st ed had issues with the army lists, Im not denying that). 

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

 

40k would be much better if it moved to d10s or even d20s and they further differentiated the different creatures stats accordingly with the wider range of possible results, couple that with bringing back universal special rules and limiting the number of unique datasheet specific rules where possible. It would probably also be good for the game for objectives to be randomly drawn from a deck rather than chosen and having alternating activations.

 

It would also be more expensive. I can get 6 sided dice as cheap as 4 cents each by ordering bulk.

 

Go ahead. Price out 100 d10's. D20's cost even more because they are primarily used by systems that require only one. At least d10's are needed in multiples for Whitewolf games.

 

(At least they used to be- edition churn killed Whitewolf games for me, just like it risks killing 40k)

 

 

I think the price of the die would change if 40k made it their standard, but I don't really see a need to switch. I think Blindhamster is right in that they could/should increase stat values.

 

As far your last point about edition churn, that is something that you're going to have to make peace with. Since 6th edition we've pretty much moved to a three-year edition life cycle, and nothing about 9th suggests it will be around longer. The good thing is that 9th has a really good chance of being like 8th where every fraction has an update so it can be a forever edition. That said I think part of why we're as vocal as we are as a community is that we've accepted GW is going to change things up fairly often. For me 10th will be my 7th edition and honestly if the releases don't slow down I'll probably start selling parts of my collection.

[Noserenda]

2nd edition vehicle rules were fun but they would be totally unfit for purpose these days when you could easily be fielding a dozen vehicles a side in some armies, not to mention needing a full set of poly dice for armour penetration :D (Though with D&D surging in popularity thats a lot more dooable lol) though i would quite like a spin off using that system for a revamped Spearhead supplement/tank war for armour clashes!

I never really saw the appeal of switching to bigger dice if you arent going to completely redo the system to make use of that increased variety and at that point you are just playing a different game (That probably exists somewhere). Again with other games out there it may not be as cost ineffective to do these days but certainly early gw credited using a common D6 as a selling point due to familiarity and the odds folk already had a few around.

Looking back isnt the worst idea though, i think every edition had some strong ideas since abandoned. Well... most of them anyway.