10th edition tournament results - it doesn't look good

[phandaal]

46 minutes ago, MoshJason said:

Honestly, I'm not sure why everyone is complaining now, since MW are not a new concept having existed since 2017 in 40k - and having played (and played against) Grey Knights and Thousand Sons its not like MW are particularly more prevalent - it's just changed which datasheets have access to them.

 

Having the effect spread around into other phases does seem to be the straw that broke the camel's back for many people.

 

However, people did in fact complain about Mortal Wounds before now. I do not know anyone who enjoyed playing against Grey Knights Librarians, Zoanthropes, Eldar shenanigans, Tsons, or any other form of Mortal Wound firehose.

 

GW seems to understand this on some level, since they used "watching your opponent roll dice and tell you how many models to pick up" as a selling point for the removal of the psychic phase.

[Karhedron]

13 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

I feel, may be wrong ofc, but a large part of the problem for Sisters and other AT weapons is the nerf to Melta etc..

Surely it should have remained at a Str relative to the T of the Heavy Vehicles it is famous for wrecking. 

Tank killer guns don't need shenanigans like Anti and DevWnds and Mortals,  they merely need high Str, AP and Damage.

 

It is a good theory but then GW kinda ruined it by allowing several factions to spam melta. Eradicators, Attack bikes and probably other units all contributed to the struggle vehicles had surviving in 9th edition. For vehicles to be worth taking, melta had to be made rarer or less powerful. Since the whole point of units like Eradicators was to spam melta, they couldn't really make it rarer so they nerfed it (at least relative to vehicles). 

 

Melta is still a good infantry AT weapon but a single squad is not likely to toast a tank with it anymore. The problem for armies like Sisters they they don't really have much else in the way of AT. Marines are fine with Devastators, Predators and Gladiators all providing solid ranged anti-tank. Sisters need help without going back to 9th ed levels of lethality.

[MoshJason]

1 hour ago, phandaal said:

GW seems to understand this on some level, since they used "watching your opponent roll dice and tell you how many models to pick up" as a selling point for the removal of the psychic phase.

 

The difference being, the psychic phase was always a phase were one player did nothing, as opposed to the other phases where you can generally use Strategems, or at least, roll dice - now there's overwatch as well.

 

Mortal Wounds already existed in the other phases - and they also had the psuedo-mortal weapons that bypassed Invuln saves. If anything, a lot of the weapons have been toned down from the previous edition - the T'au Railgun no longer just goes, "Oh, you dead" everytime it fires.

[phandaal]

4 minutes ago, MoshJason said:

 

The difference being, the psychic phase was always a phase were one player did nothing, as opposed to the other phases where you can generally use Strategems, or at least, roll dice - now there's overwatch as well.

 

Mortal Wounds already existed in the other phases - and they also had the psuedo-mortal weapons that bypassed Invuln saves. If anything, a lot of the weapons have been toned down from the previous edition - the T'au Railgun no longer just goes, "Oh, you dead" everytime it fires.

 

People disliked the pseudo Mortal Wounds as well. Votann Magna Rails were one of the most hated rules we had, for example. The mechanism is what people dislike.

 

We can "yes but" this until the end of time. This is not something people have ever enjoyed, unless they were on the dealing end of it, regardless of the phase or whether current conditions exactly replicate past conditions.

[Captain Idaho]

Seems GW agree that Eldar are borked:

 

 

Hopefully also they'll do something meaningful with points too.

 

[Blurf]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

It is a good theory but then GW kinda ruined it by allowing several factions to spam melta. Eradicators, Attack bikes and probably other units all contributed to the struggle vehicles had surviving in 9th edition. For vehicles to be worth taking, melta had to be made rarer or less powerful. Since the whole point of units like Eradicators was to spam melta, they couldn't really make it rarer so they nerfed it (at least relative to vehicles). 

 

Melta is still a good infantry AT weapon but a single squad is not likely to toast a tank with it anymore. The problem for armies like Sisters they they don't really have much else in the way of AT. Marines are fine with Devastators, Predators and Gladiators all providing solid ranged anti-tank. Sisters need help without going back to 9th ed levels of lethality.

Also, Retributors are only 10-20pts cheaper than gladiators and are 10pts more expensive than Devastators.

[Rain]

3 hours ago, MoshJason said:

This is how we ended up with Plasma being the only weapon type anyone (who had access to it) would bring.

 

It had Long (enough) range High (enough) STR high (enough) AP and dealt a reliable 2 damage, while firing 2 shots, with access to enough rerolls to prevent rolling ones. It was equally good at killing big stuff, small stuff, medium stuff and any other stuff you could think of. Sure, Melta might have been arguably better in a few fringe cases, but Plasma worked wonders against Marines and other infantry, so there was no opportunity cost.

 

But if GW very specifically goes "THIS WOUNDS VEHICLES ON A 2+" instead of "THIS IS STR 1000", it silos the weapons a little more. It's a solution that we used to have in 7th with Armorbane and Fleshbane. Honestly, I'm not sure why everyone is complaining now, since MW are not a new concept having existed since 2017 in 40k - and having played (and played against) Grey Knights and Thousand Sons its not like MW are particularly more prevalent - it's just changed which datasheets have access to them.

None of this would be a problem if GW had kept the armor value vehicle rules, or, if everything must have a T value, they made it so that a weapon cannot wound a model with a toughness that is, say, 4 higher than the strength of the weapon. Now, you can have something that is very good against infantry, say, with multiple shot at S6 AP -3, D2, but is useless against medium and heavy vehicles and really tough monsters.

 

Conversely, you can have single shot weapons at S10+ that deal multiple wounds to kill vehicles and tough monsters, but due to no wound spillover, such weapons would only kill 1 guy if shot at infantry, making them very inefficient in this role.

 

This would also remove immersion breaking nonsense like lasguns putting wounds on tanks. I feel like the idea of having 6’s always wound was added as a bandaid for Knights existing as their own army, as otherwise most normal all comers lists would be fielding multiple useless units that cannot touch the Knights. So, maybe for Knights specifically they could had added a “vulnerable servos” rule that made 6’s always wound against them to represent aiming at the leg joints and stabilizer servos, instead of kludging the entire game to compensate.

[Captain Idaho]

New edition was a great opportunity to use the keywords meaningfully with regards to weapons dedicated to anti-tank and vehicles/monsters being immune/resistant to small arms.

[MoshJason]

I feel like everyone forgets that Lasguns should be able to wound everything, from a lore perspective.

 

A lasgun is way more powerful than a modern assault rifle, and as a laser weapon, it should heat up the target it hits. So a single lasgun gun shouldn't take down a tank (and it really doesn't) but a massed horde of lasguns is going to burn through literally anything they hit, because your talking concentrated fire from hundreds of lasers that are more powerful than anything we have today. And a lot of these tanks we see in 40k (like the Leman Russ) are supposed to be less armored than what we have today, with the Leman Russ being repurposed from a tractor.

Edited June 30, 2023 by MoshJason

[TrawlingCleaner]

Models being immune to small arms is such a needless and unfun mechanic. Models being immune to anything for that matter is needless and unfun. 

"My Guys are immune to morale" "You can't target me with psychic powers" "My cool Boltgun heavy Imperial fist army literally cannot hurt your tanks" - yuck

 

A cultist stepping up and killing a dreadnought with a laspistol fun and memorable, you don't play 40k for realism. Just knock it up to blessings of whichever power they worship if you need a reason 

[Scribe]

8 minutes ago, TrawlingCleaner said:

Models being immune to small arms is such a needless and unfun mechanic. Models being immune to anything for that matter is needless and unfun. 

"My Guys are immune to morale" "You can't target me with psychic powers" "My cool Boltgun heavy Imperial fist army literally cannot hurt your tanks" - yuck

 

A cultist stepping up and killing a dreadnought with a laspistol fun and memorable, you don't play 40k for realism. Just knock it up to blessings of whichever power they worship if you need a reason 

 

I dont use the disagree lightly. The concept of an auto pistol hurting a Stormsurge, with the extremely poor variability of a D6, is just not going to work for me.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Scribe

[Captain Idaho]

We have Eldar using an entire faction wide army mechanic where they can ignore entire parts of the game at a whim... I think a lasgun being unable to wound a Land Raider is fine.

 

Besides that, Adeptus Titanicus has entire weapons that can't hurt a Titan until it is badly damaged. 40K never had a problem before with small arms being unable to damage vehicles. Horus Heresy does it fine.

[TrawlingCleaner]

14 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

I dont use the disagree lightly. The concept of an auto pistol hurting a Stormsurge, with the extremely poor variability of a D6, is just not going to work for me.

 

Fair enough, different strokes for different folks! 

 

[Warhead01]

32 minutes ago, MoshJason said:

I feel like everyone forgets that Lasguns should be able to wound everything, from a lore perspective.

 

A lasgun is way more powerful than a modern assault rifle, and as a laser weapon, it should heat up the target it hits. So a single lasgun gun shouldn't take down a tank (and it really doesn't) but a massed horde of lasguns is going to burn through literally anything they hit, because your talking concentrated fire from hundreds of lasers that are more powerful than anything we have today. And a lot of these tanks we see in 40k (like the Leman Russ) are supposed to be less armored than what we have today, with the Leman Russ being repurposed from a tractor.

If there was a mechanic where it took at least one turn to recharge or was a once per game thing I might agree. I'm not sure that it fits with this edition, feels like something that would have worked as a mechanic during 2nd. Granted not very well because Armour penetration for some weapons , like the lasgun would have been ST + D6 at best so they wouldn't have pipped it up all that much, maybe 2D6 or a D8 best case would have been STx2 +2D6 and that could go after a Rhino but not a lot more. 
In 10th I'd see maybe a once per game strat at most but not expect it.  

[Rain]

43 minutes ago, MoshJason said:

I feel like everyone forgets that Lasguns should be able to wound everything, from a lore perspective.

 

A lasgun is way more powerful than a modern assault rifle, and as a laser weapon, it should heat up the target it hits. So a single lasgun gun shouldn't take down a tank (and it really doesn't) but a massed horde of lasguns is going to burn through literally anything they hit, because your talking concentrated fire from hundreds of lasers that are more powerful than anything we have today. And a lot of these tanks we see in 40k (like the Leman Russ) are supposed to be less armored than what we have today, with the Leman Russ being repurposed from a tractor.

 

Do you have a lore cite for this? I just read Lords of Silence, which goes out of its way to note how Imperial troops are demoralized by the fact that the Death Guard are not only barely affected by lasguns, but don't even bother trying to run through the fire to take less of it as they close with the Imperal lines, instead walking at an unhurried pace through lasgun fire. I get concessions for game mechanics, and I'm not saying that Plague Marines should be immune to lasguns, but I've never come across a lore mention of lasgun fire burning through a tank hull. It has always been described as a cheap, crappy mass produced weapon designed to kill unarmored or flak armored humans, and unarmored orks, which comprise 90% of what the Guard fight in lore. Anything heavier is a job for the heavy weapon teams and tanks, which is why Guard field so many of those.

 

Quote

Models being immune to small arms is such a needless and unfun mechanic. Models being immune to anything for that matter is needless and unfun. 

"My Guys are immune to morale" "You can't target me with psychic powers" "My cool Boltgun heavy Imperial fist army literally cannot hurt your tanks" - yuck

 

A cultist stepping up and killing a dreadnought with a laspistol fun and memorable, you don't play 40k for realism. Just knock it up to blessings of whichever power they worship if you need a reason

 

You are conflating multiple things. I agree that models just being straight up immune to morale a la the old Fearless rules is probably bad game design. This was later offset by combat resolution inflicting wounds, but I don't want to get off track. That said, some models should be immune to certain weapons, as this allows many different kinds of weapons to be necessary, which increases unit/loadout diversity, and better resembles real combined arms forces. You mention it being memorable when a cultist kills a dreadnaught, well, okay, but this one possible corner case creates many other problems for game mechanics, such as the proliferation of "anti-everything" weapons that then need special rules and other bloaty BS to rein in, as well as spam of such weapons instead of having a more balanced and varied force with different units for attacking different problems. 

 

As a minor aside, I actually think allowing 6's to always wound in close combat makes some sense. This represents infantry climbing on top of tanks and dropping grenades into air vents, or getting under a dreadnaught and jamming a grenade into its leg servos, or whatever. I don't know, I could go either way on this.

 

Finally, resorting to "you don't play 40k for realism" is a copout. When it comes to fantasy/sci fi the relevant factor is verisimilitude, not strict realism. This means that if the universe makes something up, like the Warp, or Eldar, that universe can dictate how such things function, and this can involve "magic" which works contrary to real world experience. However, for things that exist in the real world, such things should function largely the same. So, shooting a ballistic small arm (autogun) at a tank hull should just scratch the paint. Now, if you are talking about a lasgun, which is powered by space laser tech that doesn't exist in the real world, that can work however the designers want based on the particular space laser tech that they think up. However, once how it works is established in-universe, it should stay consistent. If it bounces off of power armor, it shouldn't suddenly penetrate a Land Raider. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Rain
Minor clarification/grammar

[Arkhanist]

48 minutes ago, MoshJason said:

I feel like everyone forgets that Lasguns should be able to wound everything, from a lore perspective.

 

A lasgun is way more powerful than a modern assault rifle, and as a laser weapon, it should heat up the target it hits. So a single lasgun gun shouldn't take down a tank (and it really doesn't) but a massed horde of lasguns is going to burn through literally anything they hit, because your talking concentrated fire from hundreds of lasers that are more powerful than anything we have today. And a lot of these tanks we see in 40k (like the Leman Russ) are supposed to be less armored than what we have today, with the Leman Russ being repurposed from a tractor.

 

A Dark Age of Technology tractor intended for barely colonised settlements though! (clearly they were expecting some... interesting wildlife)

 

Plasteel and ceramite aren't super thick armour, but they are substantially stronger than anything current, just as modern composite armour is significantly thinner and lighter than the equivalent protection of WWII-era RHA steel armour. And they have to be, given the penetrative power of neutron lasers, magna-melta etc, and even infantry portable multi-meltas and lascannons.

[Scribe]

42 minutes ago, TrawlingCleaner said:

 

Fair enough, different strokes for different folks! 

 

 

Sir, how dare you amicably diffuse the matter! I will have justice, and a 10 page discussion over this extremely important game design choice.

 

(Seriously though, its one of the minor things I think detracts from this edition...but yes, different strokes I suppose...)

[Evil Eye]

A friend of mine told me of an entertaining moment in a 2E game where he managed to take out a Predator with a laspistol, IIRC by getting a lucky roll and shooting through a vision slit. Which sounds great and fun and memorable- the problem being (as he said himself) that for such moments to exist and be fun and memorable, they need to be the statistically unlikely "freak moments" they should be, and thus necessitate more complex rules to facilitate them. With GW having gone the other way and abandoned vehicles having dedicated rules at all, that's borderline impossible. Myself I'm of the opinion that without separate rules for vehicles that properly represent their fundamentally different functionality from a regular model, the problem is never going to go away.

 

It's also worth noting that earlier editions which used AV didn't necessarily make vehicles unconquerable death machines if you weren't packing large amounts of melta and lascannons. Lighter vehicles (AV 10-11) could in theory be shredded by heavy bolter fire after all, and even a Leman Russ would be in major trouble if Genestealers got behind it. And if a Carnifex got in contact with a tank, to quote the meme, "It's over". I'd argue 4E had the best balance of toughness to not being invincible re: the damage chart, but anyway.

 

The biggest problem I think is the oversaturation of vehicles in modern 40K that really have no business being in non-Apocalypse games- for the sake of ease we'll refer to these as "Non-Apocalypse Superunits Takeable In Everyday Scenarios" (N.A.S.T.I.E.S). For my money, a single Knight in a larger game is OK (providing it takes up enough resources that it's not backed up by 9 Leman Russes); I actually think making Knights (and Chaos Knights) their own army was a mistake. If you look back at earlier editions, there weren't many N.A.S.T.I.E.S but the ones that did exist were notoriously horrible to fight against; looking at you, pre-5th Monolith.

 

So as a TLDR to all that I think the solution is to re-introduce actual vehicle rules and reduce the number of fieldable N.A.S.T.I.E.S in sub-Apocalypse games...which is never going to happen because GW loves to sell superunits.

[Interrogator Stobz]

As soon as they drop 6s always wound nearly all AT problems with Inf vs Tank vs Huge Gribblies go away. I like that it remains in CC.

Nearly all the other problems go away with dropping MW. Nothing should penetrate everything. Nothing, it's a lazy mechanic.

The ones that are left can be done by adjustment of S,T,W and Sv. Sv++ stats.

Examples: Tanks should have high regular Save and T, so only high S good AP weapons can effectively wound them, but lower ish W because once penetrated they cook the contents.

Make Melta and dedicated AT have enough S to only wound on 5s and/or 6s to avoid the spam units issue. But give them enough Damage to make a difference once in.

Make Plasma only strong enough to pen on 6s but slay elite troops. And tone down hazardous, dying 1 in 6 is ridiculous. 

Knights etc can have good Sv, with a Sv++ because tech, slightly lower T but more W because they've more solid internals.

Big Bugs etc can have variable Sv and Sv++, lower T than Tanks but many more W for similar reasons to Knights. They be Chonky.

 

No Anti, dev wounds or MW needed.

But first lose 6s alway wound for shooting.

Simplified, not Simple.

 

Bring on 13th Edition tournaments. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Interrogator Stobz

[Squark]

13 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

I have no issue with something that can wreck a tank also wrecking a massive bug.

But a skilful difference in saves, invulnerable saves and wounds can go a long way to providing the difference between them.

No need for all these special rules.

The problem is now AT guns are good against heavy infantry when previously using them this way was to inefficient. But as more and more things have multiple wounds, meltaguns became coat effective vs. Heavy infantry while Plasma stopped working because Terminators now had 3 wounds and Gravis infatry became more common. It's very much a case of the old lady who swallowed a fly* with regards to weapons, toughness, and wounds changing.

 

 

*https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=06k8Eaj9dM4

(An old children's song. Link to the Muppet rendition provided for context)

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

As soon as they drop 6s always wound nearly all AT problems with Inf vs Tank vs Huge Gribblies go away.

 

It will never happen as long as factions like Knights exist and armies can run tank companies etc. GW removed the Psychic phase because it was unfun to have a phase where one side could just remove the other side's models with no interaction. Imagine how much worse it would be to have an entire game where all of your basic infantry could not damage the enemy unless they had special weapons. Their only job was to try and die as slowly as possible.

 

Now you could argue that entire armies of Knights should not exist in 40K but that is a moot point. The genie is well and truly out of that particular bottle and the game mechanics need to deal with the units that exist.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

6 hours ago, Blurf said:

Also, Retributors are only 10-20pts cheaper than gladiators and are 10pts more expensive than Devastators.

Yeah retributors are the worst unit in the game in my opinion. They either need to give them more wounds or probably drop them about 45 points. Cause fire prisms and desolation marines are also cheaper lol.

[Interrogator Stobz]

43 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

It will never happen as long as factions like Knights exist and armies can run tank companies etc. GW removed the Psychic phase because it was unfun to have a phase where one side could just remove the other side's models with no interaction. Imagine how much worse it would be to have an entire game where all of your basic infantry could not damage the enemy unless they had special weapons. Their only job was to try and die as slowly as possible.

 

Now you could argue that entire armies of Knights should not exist in 40K but that is a moot point. The genie is well and truly out of that particular bottle and the game mechanics need to deal with the units that exist.

Luckily Every army has special and heavy weapons. My solution works for your infantry heavy example too. Also, note what I said about CC.

Now if you choose to not take any special or heavy weapons then that's on your build.

Psychic weapons can emulate the same stats as regular bullets, so they aren't penalised either.

Simple is good, 9th sucked, 10th is heading there already and it's only a week old.

 

And think about objective control, your hypothetical mass basic infantry will hold them better than Knights. It's the eternal trade off.

 

Still zero need for keyword shenanigans if GeeDub had actually managed simplified, not simple better.

[Squark]

22 minutes ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

Luckily Every army has special and heavy weapons. My solution works for your infantry heavy example too. Also, note what I said about CC.

Now if you choose to not take any special or heavy weapons then that's on your build.

Psychic weapons can emulate the same stats as regular bullets, so they aren't penalised either.

Simple is good, 9th sucked, 10th is heading there already and it's only a week old.

 

And think about objective control, your hypothetical mass basic infantry will hold them better than Knights. It's the eternal trade off.

 

Still zero need for keyword shenanigans if GeeDub had actually managed simplified, not simple better.

Sure, every army has special weapons/AT. But there's a big difference in the amount needed to take on a list that's 20% Armoured Vehicles vs. one that's 50% Armour*, especially since the latter will prioritize your AT. And then there's Knights, who are 100% Armour. Bring back force organization charts doesn't help either, and not just because of knights- Mechanized Infantry is also problematic, especially if it's all heavy vehicles like land raiders**.

 

 

Lasguns/boltguns wounding vehicles isn't actually a big impact on balance, though. The number of shots to wound one armiger/rhino means that shooting at them is so inefficient that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. If just feels a bit better for the infantry player if they get to scratch the paint.

 

*The other 50% being infantry inside said Armour.

 

** Is it still skew if I just wanted freaking assault ramps?

Edited June 30, 2023 by Squark

[Interrogator Stobz]

5 minutes ago, Squark said:

Sure, every army has special weapons/AT. But there's a big difference in the amount needed to take on a list that's 20% Armoured Vehicles vs. one that's 50% Armour*, especially since the latter will prioritize your AT. And then there's Knights, who are 100% Armour. Bring back force organization charts doesn't help either, and not just because of knights- Mechanized Infantry is also problematic, especially if it's all heavy vehicles**.

 

*The other 50% being infantry inside said Armour.

 

** Is it still skew if I just wanted freaking assault ramps?

Did you read my first post on this?

Creating problems for the solution seems backwards.

But specifically to your obvious concern, what army will struggle to deal with a 50% or 100% Armoured Opponent?

Deal with, not necessarily kill.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Interrogator Stobz