Siege of Cthonia thoughts

[Ripper.McGuirl]

8 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Yeah i think every edition of 30/40k has had some echo of the cityfight rules in it, but its never hit as well as the original 3rd ed book.

Hard to beat that era of Kopinski artwork, too. It really is a great book.

I was looking at my old deathworld codex recently too, and that would also be really fun.

[Noserenda]

Ooh yeah Jungle fighting was really good in the old Catachan codex too, got me to do a Catachan wing of my guard army of the time even :D 

 

[Ripper.McGuirl]

Anyway, is anyone thinking of building a new ZM force now that the rules are in hand? My Salamanders have enough options for them that I can get going with them as is, bit I am scheming a possibly ridiculous idea: A myrmidon host built from Eldar wraith constructs. Wraithguard/blades pretty easily proxy myrmidons and I am thinking wraithlords with missile launchers as domitars….not sure how it’ll be in-game as nothing is Line, but it’s gonna be fun as hell.

[Torbenos]

My own force of Word Bearers was made with ZM in mind at the end of the last edition and I think it still works. Mostly a lot of Breachers and Cataprachtii. 

[Yodhrin]

I've been mulling it over and just so my contribution isn't entirely grumbling, here's the house rules I'll be advocating for locally - hopefully I won't end up going back to two games a year when my old uni gaming buddies roll through town.

 

1. The Reinforcement system is only used in games of 1501pts or more. Below that you continue to use the deploy/reserve rules from the WD article even with the new missions.

2. Where the Reinforcement system is used:

-a. the Warlord can bring *any* single unit they'd ordinarily be allowed to join during deployment with them as part of their game-start discount RP cost, not just Retinues.

-b. HQs in other circumstances - including the Warlord if not deployed at game start for a discount - can bring *any* single unit they're ordinarily be allowed to join during deployment with them on to the board and will pay only the RP cost of the HQ for both it and the additional unit.

3. Reinstate full Deep Strike rules including mishaps, then let people choose whether to deploy using them or take the -1RP discount on a flank.

 

Reasoning being for 1, that RPs ruin lower point value games by radically narrowing the ways you can build your force that aren't the "correct" way RPs encourage; for 2, that there are plenty of unit/HQ combos which are good both thematically and tactically that are excluded by the Retinue caveat and shouldn't be because fewer choices in how Your Dudes show up to the table are always bad IMO, and that there's no incentive at all in the stock system to take anything other than a single Warlord HQ and deploy them at game-start which is boring, so letting your leaders bring other units with them goes some way towards justifying their otherwise silly 4RP deployment cost, and for 3; just cuz, or more seriously, because big honkin' terminators teleporting into the middle of a battle and letting rip has been a staple of 40K since terminators were a thing and the po-faced "nuh-uh you gotta be *sensible* and walk 'em on from a side room" approach in the official rules is lame, with the house rule you can take the nice safe RP discount or you can grow a pair of progenoids and roll the dice.

 

[bushman101]

4 hours ago, Ripper.McGuirl said:

Anyway, is anyone thinking of building a new ZM force now that the rules are in hand? 

At this rate, my new list will consist of a single HQ with Retinue and all the rest cheap Troop choices (Tact, Despoilers and Breechers). I should be able to get everything on the board quickly this way

[Noserenda]

51 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

I've been mulling it over and just so my contribution isn't entirely grumbling, here's the house rules I'll be advocating for locally - hopefully I won't end up going back to two games a year when my old uni gaming buddies roll through town.

 

1. The Reinforcement system is only used in games of 1501pts or more. Below that you continue to use the deploy/reserve rules from the WD article even with the new missions.

2. Where the Reinforcement system is used:

-a. the Warlord can bring *any* single unit they'd ordinarily be allowed to join during deployment with them as part of their game-start discount RP cost, not just Retinues.

-b. HQs in other circumstances - including the Warlord if not deployed at game start for a discount - can bring *any* single unit they're ordinarily be allowed to join during deployment with them on to the board and will pay only the RP cost of the HQ for both it and the additional unit.

3. Reinstate full Deep Strike rules including mishaps, then let people choose whether to deploy using them or take the -1RP discount on a flank.

 

Reasoning being for 1, that RPs ruin lower point value games by radically narrowing the ways you can build your force that aren't the "correct" way RPs encourage; for 2, that there are plenty of unit/HQ combos which are good both thematically and tactically that are excluded by the Retinue caveat and shouldn't be because fewer choices in how Your Dudes show up to the table are always bad IMO, and that there's no incentive at all in the stock system to take anything other than a single Warlord HQ and deploy them at game-start which is boring, so letting your leaders bring other units with them goes some way towards justifying their otherwise silly 4RP deployment cost, and for 3; just cuz, or more seriously, because big honkin' terminators teleporting into the middle of a battle and letting rip has been a staple of 40K since terminators were a thing and the po-faced "nuh-uh you gotta be *sensible* and walk 'em on from a side room" approach in the official rules is lame, with the house rule you can take the nice safe RP discount or you can grow a pair of progenoids and roll the dice.

 

Seems reasonable, safe deep strike is zzzzz. I would suggest that a character bringing in a unit makes that unit a retinue, or at least cant leave it. Reason being it keeps it to units you intend to run with the character rather than sneaking something in at a discount.

[sarabando]

 Kinda miffed about the deep strike into zm and the no joining units thing for inducttii because I had the idea of big blobs.of.them attached to warbrringers deep striking in with chain axes for my SOH

[Bitterman]

My thoughts on the book, for whatever it's worth:

 

Storyline / fluff

 

Obviously subjective, I strongly disliked it (full of painfully bad tactical decisions because "hOnOuR") but to each their own; but even those who did like it, did it still feel satisfying after the deus ex machina came out of nowhere at the end and made everything that had come before objectively, totally pointless? Why? How?

 

Artwork

 

Every picture (except one) is Mk VI. Don't get me started.

 

Campaign system

 

While the 1st Ed campaigns were mostly along the lines of "you need a gaming group of at least 69 people and will play at least 17 missions a week over a 4-year period" variety, and thus I've always suspected that almost no-one anywhere will have actually played them the way they were intended, this is the opposite extreme... keep playing missions (all the same size, no progression) until a dice roll tells you to stop. That's it. I haven't looked too closely at the "Apex" (finale) missions, though.

 

Core missions

 

While I appreciate a bit more clarity in the structure, and binning off the Ambush deployment zone which everyone hates... most of the new "core" missions strongly favour the player who gets the first turn to an embarrassing degree. The first two missions might as well say "the player with Strategic Advantage wins the game" and save yourself a couple of hours of precious time.

 

Zone Mortalis

 

The thing I was most looking forward to - and the biggest let-down in the book. Strategems? Gone. Attacker and defender FOCs? Gone. Missions? Only three. And although the rules encourage you to play 2000 points (hurray!) instead of 1000 like the previous edition... you won't be able to get most of your models on the table due to the completely unworkable new mechanic, Deployment Points. Want to take a Praetor Warlord and some kind of Consul as two of your HQ choices? Well, that's all you can deploy at the start of the game - two models, 6 DPs. You might only get 12 DPs in the whole game, and almost certainly won't get more than 16 unless mission rules give you extra, so that's a much tighter limit on the units you can take than the points value of the army. Therefore, some Rites of War (Pride of the Legion for example) become incredibly powerful - anything that lets you move powerful units to the Troops slot. There is a massive incentive to take as few large and powerful units as possible, including a Warlord, Troops, and maybe Elite only, Under this mechanic, 5 Scouts are worth the same as 15 Breachers with an Apothecary (1 DP in either case). Absolute madness. These rules just don't function on a basic level.

 

Legiones Astartes Rules Addenda

 

Imperial Fists / Sons of Horus added stuff - irrelevant to me, can't comment on how IF/SoH players will feel.

 

Decurions - two tank commanders, one of which is clearly better than the other. Might see it get some use sometimes... not that many people use vehicles at all in this edition.

 

Infernus Abomination - Chaos Assassin. Looks decent, not sure when I'll have an HQ slot spare to take it, but it looks OK. Melee weapon has three modes, of which one is obviously the best in almost every situation (and it's not close); this kind of thing seems to be par for the course in the new edition.

 

Inductii - ...is this it? Some of them are probably alright, others useless. My main army is World Eaters, and World Eaters are practically the iconic Legion for the Inductii archetype, and they're shockingly low-impact: 3% less chance of being wounded by other MEq in the Assault Phase. Is that all? Not only is it boring (just changing the number you need to roll), it doesn't change the tactical usage of the unit or any decisions you might make involving the unit, and they can't even be joined by an Apothecary which would make an actual meaningful difference to survivability, so that's what I'll keep doing with normal Despoilers. Not all Legions' Inductii are that low-impact, but as if to really emphasise how badly thought out the whole concept is, they don't even bother providing a Rite of War to remove Support Squad from Inductii, so those entire Inductii-only formations they keep mentioning on the fluff pages? Yeah, you can't do that on the tabletop. And why do Thousand Sons Inductii even exist? And where are the Raven Guard Raptors, or Fabius' wild experiments on Emperor's Children? Nowhere to be seen. This entire approach seems like a fundamental mis-step.

 

Conclusion

 

As you can probably tell... I'm not keen. I've got 12000 points of Traitors and 6000 points of Loyalists, and about all I might ever use from this book is the Chaos Assassin, maybe. I should have been interested in Zone Mortalis, but they've made a mess of it, and if some of the other bits had been done well I might have been curious to try those out too, but they weren't. Frankly, it all feels half-arsed and ill-thought-out... and that's a fair summary of the whole of second edition so far IMO.

 

Clearly some people in this thread seem happier about it. Good luck to you. To me, this book was a wasted opportunity.

Edited June 5, 2023 by Bitterman

[SkimaskMohawk]

3 hours ago, Bitterman said:

Storyline / fluff

 

Obviously subjective, I strongly disliked it (full of painfully bad tactical decisions because "hOnOuR") but to each their own; but even those who did like it, did it still feel satisfying after the deus ex machina came out of nowhere at the end and made everything that had come before objectively, totally pointless? Why? How?

 

Yea I'm still making my way through the story (at the point where the outer wall is about to be attacked) and it's like....everyone is super terrible at strategy because they're proud? Like Horus Rising Lord Commander Eidolon energy is being channeled by the entire strategic cast, and that includes Horus and Dorn. We know that both see the siege of terra as an all-in commitment; with the need to break the defences before guilliman and the lion show up, but there's 10s of thousands of marines at cthonia because...? And titans. And a glorianna. 

 

That being said, I do like actually like learning about cthonia and it's culture. It does a really good job at explaining the particular gang sub-culture of the planet and how it can result in both the noble Luna Wolves and the degenerate Sons of Horus.

 

[Marshal Rohr]

6 hours ago, Bitterman said:

My thoughts on the book, for whatever it's worth:

 

Storyline / fluff

 

Obviously subjective, I strongly disliked it (full of painfully bad tactical decisions because "hOnOuR") but to each their own; but even those who did like it, did it still feel satisfying after the deus ex machina came out of nowhere at the end and made everything that had come before objectively, totally pointless? Why? How?

 

Artwork

 

Every picture (except one) is Mk VI. Don't get me started.

 

Campaign system

 

While the 1st Ed campaigns were mostly along the lines of "you need a gaming group of at least 69 people and will play at least 17 missions a week over a 4-year period" variety, and thus I've always suspected that almost no-one anywhere will have actually played them the way they were intended, this is the opposite extreme... keep playing missions (all the same size, no progression) until a dice roll tells you to stop. That's it. I haven't looked too closely at the "Apex" (finale) missions, though.

 

Core missions

 

While I appreciate a bit more clarity in the structure, and binning off the Ambush deployment zone which everyone hates... most of the new "core" missions strongly favour the player who gets the first turn to an embarrassing degree. The first two missions might as well say "the player with Strategic Advantage wins the game" and save yourself a couple of hours of precious time.

 

Zone Mortalis

 

The thing I was most looking forward to - and the biggest let-down in the book. Strategems? Gone. Attacker and defender FOCs? Gone. Missions? Only three. And although the rules encourage you to play 2000 points (hurray!) instead of 1000 like the previous edition... you won't be able to get most of your models on the table due to the completely unworkable new mechanic, Deployment Points. Want to take a Praetor Warlord and some kind of Consul as two of your HQ choices? Well, that's all you can deploy at the start of the game - two models, 6 DPs. You might only get 12 DPs in the whole game, and almost certainly won't get more than 16 unless mission rules give you extra, so that's a much tighter limit on the units you can take than the points value of the army. Therefore, some Rites of War (Pride of the Legion for example) become incredibly powerful - anything that lets you move powerful units to the Troops slot. There is a massive incentive to take as few large and powerful units as possible, including a Warlord, Troops, and maybe Elite only, Under this mechanic, 5 Scouts are worth the same as 15 Breachers with an Apothecary (1 DP in either case). Absolute madness. These rules just don't function on a basic level.

 

Legiones Astartes Rules Addenda

 

Imperial Fists / Sons of Horus added stuff - irrelevant to me, can't comment on how IF/SoH players will feel.

 

Decurions - two tank commanders, one of which is clearly better than the other. Might see it get some use sometimes... not that many people use vehicles at all in this edition.

 

Infernus Abomination - Chaos Assassin. Looks decent, not sure when I'll have an HQ slot spare to take it, but it looks OK. Melee weapon has three modes, of which one is obviously the best in almost every situation (and it's not close); this kind of thing seems to be par for the course in the new edition.

 

Inductii - ...is this it? Some of them are probably alright, others useless. My main army is World Eaters, and World Eaters are practically the iconic Legion for the Inductii archetype, and they're shockingly low-impact: 3% less chance of being wounded by other MEq in the Assault Phase. Is that all? Not only is it boring (just changing the number you need to roll), it doesn't change the tactical usage of the unit or any decisions you might make involving the unit, and they can't even be joined by an Apothecary which would make an actual meaningful difference to survivability, so that's what I'll keep doing with normal Despoilers. Not all Legions' Inductii are that low-impact, but as if to really emphasise how badly thought out the whole concept is, they don't even bother providing a Rite of War to remove Support Squad from Inductii, so those entire Inductii-only formations they keep mentioning on the fluff pages? Yeah, you can't do that on the tabletop. And why do Thousand Sons Inductii even exist? And where are the Raven Guard Raptors, or Fabius' wild experiments on Emperor's Children? Nowhere to be seen. This entire approach seems like a fundamental mis-step.

 

Conclusion

 

As you can probably tell... I'm not keen. I've got 12000 points of Traitors and 6000 points of Loyalists, and about all I might ever use from this book is the Chaos Assassin, maybe. I should have been interested in Zone Mortalis, but they've made a mess of it, and if some of the other bits had been done well I might have been curious to try those out too, but they weren't. Frankly, it all feels half-arsed and ill-thought-out... and that's a fair summary of the whole of second edition so far IMO.

 

Clearly some people in this thread seem happier about it. Good luck to you. To me, this book was a wasted opportunity.

I feel like that is a fairly shallow reading of the lore section. It’s seven years into the worst civil war and largest, most costly war in mankind’s entire history or future. Making decisions based on passion as one side sees the empire they built brick by brick get turned into ash and the other watches the empire they are rightly or wrongly convinced betrayed them to obsolescence makes plenty of narrative sense. Combined with the personal culture of the legions (one is acting out their version of a honor code they weren’t raised in and the other is famous for its uncompromising creed) it isn’t far off the mark. 

[Stitch5000]

13 hours ago, Bitterman said:

Therefore, some Rites of War (Pride of the Legion for example) become incredibly powerful - anything that lets you move powerful units to the Troops slot. There is a massive incentive to take as few large and powerful units as possible, including a Warlord, Troops, and maybe Elite only, Under this mechanic, 5 Scouts are worth the same as 15 Breachers with an Apothecary (1 DP in either case). Absolute madness. These rules just don't function on a basic level.

It's almost like terminators and breachers are patterns of troops DESIGNED to be used in ZM, right?

[Bitterman]

28 minutes ago, Stitch5000 said:

It's almost like terminators and breachers are patterns of troops DESIGNED to be used in ZM, right?

 

That's fine.

 

Why does it mean OTHER armies are unable to even function?

 

If those troop types are most suitable for that environment, they should perform well in the game. That's how it's supposed to work. It shouldn't be that if you want to even put anything different on the table, you're not allowed to field anything else.

 

Your Warlord Praetor and a Consul... six Deployment Points. That's all you're allowed to deploy, two models. Explain that to me. Justify it, without snark like "Breachers are supposed to be good in ZM". If Breachers are supposed to be good in ZM, they should be good in ZM, not say "oh you're allowed to try taking all this other stuff, but we'll arbitrarily stop you from using it if you do".

 

I only even mentioned Breachers as they happen to be the most expensive Troops choice and thus the most obvious disparity between points and Deployment Points, but you seemed to miss that... uh... point. I could have said how 5 Seekers are as deployable as 3 units of 15 Assault Marines, which can't even use their Jump Packs and therefore can't possibly be argued to be intended for ZM. Does that make sense too?

Edited June 6, 2023 by Bitterman

[Bitterman]

8 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

I feel like that is a fairly shallow reading of the lore section. It’s seven years into the worst civil war and largest, most costly war in mankind’s entire history or future. Making decisions based on passion as one side sees the empire they built brick by brick get turned into ash and the other watches the empire they are rightly or wrongly convinced betrayed them to obsolescence makes plenty of narrative sense. Combined with the personal culture of the legions (one is acting out their version of a honor code they weren’t raised in and the other is famous for its uncompromising creed) it isn’t far off the mark. 

 

OK, I mean, as I say, it's a subjective matter, I strongly disagree but that's fine, it's personal preference.

 

So you got a story that you liked, with characters acting in a way that was satisfying to you, great. Then an unstoppable deus ex machina came out of nowhere, destroyed everything (except not killing named characters, who all miraculously survived), and made everything that those characters had been trying to achieve completely worthless. Did you still like that bit? Why, when it totally neutralizes the entire story you'd liked up until that point?

Edited June 6, 2023 by Bitterman

[Gorgoff]

13 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

.

 

Your Warlord Praetor and a Consul... six Deployment Points. That's all you're allowed to deploy, two models. Explain that to me. Justify it, 

Nobody wants to play Herohammer.

HH 2ed is about units not about MSU with the hardest stuff you can muster which crush anyone who is stupid enough to play an army made of tacticals. That wasn't fun either. Allowing these things in ZM means that you have to had a stern conversation with your players that they please don't bring this because one wanted to play with tacticals und stuff like that.

Now you have to have the same conversation if you think bringing a Praetor and a consul as part of your starting force is fun. 

It is the same thing just from different directions. 

Is this system perfect?

Nope.

But does it make people play troops more? I would say so. And that is the idea behind it.

Plus the whole reinforcement system should force people to make some hard  decisions in the game based on what's happening on the table.

 

I guess they want players to play around 1000-1500 points worth of models in the ZM even if you have an 2500 points game. You just have more options what to bring.

They changed the way the game functiones and made reinforcements part of the utilities a player has up in their sleeves. 

I don't know how good that will work and I do see some problems just like you but I'll give it a shot before I make my final judgement. 

 

That they removed stratagems is a crime though. 

[Stitch5000]

32 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

 

That's fine.

 

Why does it mean OTHER armies are unable to even function?

 

If those troop types are most suitable for that environment, they should perform well in the game. 

Isn't the argument that you are making that the units in question perform well in the game and people won't take anything else?

[Noserenda]

Yeah thats pretty obviously not what hes saying guys? 

So at best its more of the teams crappy punitive game design that only vaguely works because the most expensive unit choices are coincidentally kinda fluffy?

MSU on the other hand, which is extremely fluffy in ZM, to the extent that in 1st edition some big squads got options to split down and its only been expanded in the current 40k version, is awful and you are punished for running them?  This doesn't feel intentional, quite the opposite.

So like, i can see what they were aiming for, selling more models, obviously, i dont think 2k ZM games were a thing that was on anyones radar really (as a pretty big ZM enthusiast) but it feels like someone was trying to bring in tournament sideboards like some Magic formats (Im well out of touch on that front though!) but didnt want to say thats what they were doing. 

Thats not really how people build armies though?

Whole thing is a mess really.

[dickyelsdon]

1 hour ago, Bitterman said:

 

That's fine.

 

Why does it mean OTHER armies are unable to even function?

 

If those troop types are most suitable for that environment, they should perform well in the game. That's how it's supposed to work. It shouldn't be that if you want to even put anything different on the table, you're not allowed to field anything else.

 

Your Warlord Praetor and a Consul... six Deployment Points. That's all you're allowed to deploy, two models. Explain that to me. Justify it, without snark like "Breachers are supposed to be good in ZM". If Breachers are supposed to be good in ZM, they should be good in ZM, not say "oh you're allowed to try taking all this other stuff, but we'll arbitrarily stop you from using it if you do".

 

I only even mentioned Breachers as they happen to be the most expensive Troops choice and thus the most obvious disparity between points and Deployment Points, but you seemed to miss that... uh... point. I could have said how 5 Seekers are as deployable as 3 units of 15 Assault Marines, which can't even use their Jump Packs and therefore can't possibly be argued to be intended for ZM. Does that make sense too?

 

It seems like they have redesigned the game so it feels more of a boarding action than a game of 30k in corridors. So some armies people have made for 30k, just wont work for ZM.

 

When deploying the intention of reinforcement points seems to be to tailor forces based on how they would be deployed in a ship.  So encouraging you to set up a defending force with troops spread around prepared to block an opponent, with more elite units in reinforcement.  You certainly could setup as a more elite force, representing something like a counterstrike or prepared defense, but that would then be restricted to less units as its more representative of available units in a boarding action.  

 

As an attacker you could deploy as a speartip of elites and first contact with the enemy would be limited to that small number of speartip units, with the rest flooding in as a path was forged.  Or you could deploy as an advancing wave of troops trying to overwhelm the enemy position with numbers.   

 

What units to deploy when is your choice, yes there are options available that are bad, no surprise there, those exist in every game. What do you want them to do, specifically restrict certain options so people dont make stupid decisions?

 

For your whole army, if you bring a force to play ZM, and you have more units than you could possibly bring into the game based on available reinforcement points, why?  Its entirely possible to work out before the game what you can bring into the game.

 

Like a lot of 30k design decisions, its heavily weighted for narrative and yes that impacts your choices and options. Unless they re-point stuff for ZM i dont think there is a way to make everything from normal 30k fit in a balanced way, its such a different game.

 

[Mardi]

As a SoH player, it was kinda ok, but nothing special.

 

The lore was ok. There wasn’t a lot of boneheaded decisions that make no military sense. People like to think that brute forcing through problems is never the best way, but often a frontal attack with diversionary assaults are the only way to move forward. Luckily, a lot of the unnecessary detail was abstracted and didn’t overtly complicate things. I liked that the troops sang marching songs.

 

Core missions and ZM look ok with some head scratchers tho.

 

IF and SoH special units are a bit meh, but not overpowered for the points cost. The decurions are a bit weird since you cannot take them in a lot of tanks such as many of the sicaran models and super heavies, why?

 

Inductii are a bit of hit and miss with some being quite efficient and others you would never take outside fluff reasons. Why are they support troops, if they are the majority of troops in every legion? I don’t get it.

 

SoH and IF special weapons are meh. Ferromag shotgun is ok, but probably not worth it over normal astartes shotgun. Carsoran power tabar is fine but lacks oomph. Maybe sergeants and veterans can make good use of it. If it was rending 4+ it would be a lot better. Really hoped for something more to lift SoH from the bottom of the pile. The reavers are still objectively bad due to premium for power weapons and lack of 2+.

 

Warlord traits are fluffy, but only the True Son is pretty good. IF have the Solar Marshall, which is just about the best WT in game, and the new ones do very little to change that, rendering them redundant.

 

I’m disappointed that there were no new rites of war. I hoped that both sides or every legion would get some tank focused rite. I guess the other stuff makes The Long March more viable, but not by much.

[Stitch5000]

1 hour ago, Bitterman said:

 

No.

 

Which you'd know if you read what I wrote instead of aiming to score internet points by making snarky comments about something I didn't write.

I literally don't really know what you are trying to say at this point then. Scouts are not a great choice... OK... I mean that's not a HUGE surprise, apart from the fact they are a cheap troosp choice with both Scout and Infiltrate and might be a good way of denying some early objectives, maybe taking out some critical doorways to allow the main force through and create firelanes? Just examples here... 

 

1 hour ago, Noserenda said:

Yeah thats pretty obviously not what hes saying guys? 

So at best its more of the teams crappy punitive game design that only vaguely works because the most expensive unit choices are coincidentally kinda fluffy?

MSU on the other hand, which is extremely fluffy in ZM, to the extent that in 1st edition some big squads got options to split down and its only been expanded in the current 40k version, is awful and you are punished for running them?  This doesn't feel intentional, quite the opposite.

So like, i can see what they were aiming for, selling more models, obviously, i dont think 2k ZM games were a thing that was on anyones radar really (as a pretty big ZM enthusiast) but it feels like someone was trying to bring in tournament sideboards like some Magic formats (Im well out of touch on that front though!) but didnt want to say thats what they were doing. 

Thats not really how people build armies though?

Whole thing is a mess really.

You're saying it;s punative but I think you are probably forgetting what the 1st Ed Zone Mortalis turned into... 

[Marshal Rohr]

3 hours ago, Bitterman said:

 

OK, I mean, as I say, it's a subjective matter, I strongly disagree but that's fine, it's personal preference.

 

So you got a story that you liked, with characters acting in a way that was satisfying to you, great. Then an unstoppable deus ex machina came out of nowhere, destroyed everything (except not killing named characters, who all miraculously survived), and made everything that those characters had been trying to achieve completely worthless. Did you still like that bit? Why, when it totally neutralizes the entire story you'd liked up until that point?

The destruction of Cthonia was lore before this book. This is just them detailing something with an existing resolution. That was established as far back as 3rd or 4th Edition, iirc. You’re hyperbolically mischaracterizing what happens in the book. You should attempt to read the Black Books, Titanicus, Epic Space Marine rulebook, and old White Dwarf articles before you continue to engage with Horus Heresy so you aren’t surprised or disappointed in future releases. 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Marshal Rohr
Cthonia was destroyed in the Heresy, but the planet was strip mined and produces Guard regiments in M41. There’s an example of Cthonian guardsmen in the 3rd Ed IG Codex.

[Runefyre]

One thing I'm thankful for with the new ZM rules is I no longer have to face Mhara Ghal phase-shifting through walls. Especially with how...reaaallly good they are in 2nd edition...I'd rather not be trapped in a hallway with one lmao. Dreads in general being limited to 1 per 1k is also a really nice rule, nobody wants to play against FoTA in ZM.

 

I did play a match this past Sunday, and I gotta say the Reinforcement Point system is not it. I really just prefer traditional deployment, and my group may end up just ignoring that mechanic entirely and just using traditional reserves (also so outlfank assaults and deep strikes can still happen). Other than that I did enjoy the new ruleset, I like the reactions a lot and the mission objectives feel good. 

 

4 hours ago, Bitterman said:

 

OK, I mean, as I say, it's a subjective matter, I strongly disagree but that's fine, it's personal preference.

 

So you got a story that you liked, with characters acting in a way that was satisfying to you, great. Then an unstoppable deus ex machina came out of nowhere, destroyed everything (except not killing named characters, who all miraculously survived), and made everything that those characters had been trying to achieve completely worthless. Did you still like that bit? Why, when it totally neutralizes the entire story you'd liked up until that point?

The ending of SoC really did leave me a bit bitter about the whole thing, more so because I did enjoy the whole campaign lore up to the end. 

[Stitch5000]

26 minutes ago, Runefyre said:

I did play a match this past Sunday, and I gotta say the Reinforcement Point system is not it. I really just prefer traditional deployment, and my group may end up just ignoring that mechanic entirely and just using traditional reserves (also so outlfank assaults and deep strikes can still happen). Other than that I did enjoy the new ruleset, I like the reactions a lot and the mission objectives feel good. 

It appears to be written in such a manner that it is a modular mechanic... A scenario can simply give you sufficient points to deploy your entire force and gain more points for other "stuff" based on different conditions. 

This does remind me of when HH2 first dropped and for a few weeks people were insistent that Reactions weren't a good addition.

[Ripper.McGuirl]

Got a ZM game in last night and loved it. The main thing I take away is that this is a completely different game mode that is just as complicated and requires just as much thought and forward thinking as the full game. The problems you face are totally different, and the forces you bring are going to be totally different. You can't just take as much of the best stuff you can afford in a given points value, because it's not all going to be useful or necessarily even be able to deploy.
I know some people here are bummed about that, but I love that it's a totally different way to play. There are different standouts Legion, unit, and weapon wise, and I think there are more trade offs to consider (for instance, template weapons are savage, but there are a lot of heavy units on the board with breachers and cataphractii....but also those units can't run or sweep).
I'm realllly stoked and can't wait to dig in more.

[SalamandersBro]

Still waiting for my shop to get my copy in..