Hopes for book 3

[Interrogator Stobz]

1 hour ago, malika666 said:

In other words, it’s basically a 32mm scaled game but then with smaller miniatures?

Nope, that's not the issue, nor what I said. Please don't paraphrase incorrectly.

The basic game core rules mostly function correctly for epic scale.

 

There are a bunch of balance issues; the primary one is the OPness of Infantry. Unfortunately their issues mostly lay in the core rules for Infantry, like how they move, fight and interact with terrain. Their datasheets add to the problem, by giving them too much movement, but that also provides much of the solution. If they moved less much of their imbalance goes away.

 

Titans themselves don't perform in a balanced way between the small and the big is its own issue. Point for point little Titans and Knights are terrible vs large Titans, and they all suck to different degrees vs Infantry. 

 

 

[DuskRaider]

Don’t forget the issue where infantry can take out tanks, Knights and Titans in CC without any special equipment. Add this to the ridiculous movement that can be accomplished and you end up with a game that has a lot of potential but falls well short of the mark. 
 

This is why I think we need a tank-only mode, to completely eliminate the infantry problem from the equation. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

Yep, how they fight is a real issue.

 

I'm not keen on mode games.

Planning, buying, and painting armies takes too much time to be swapping around all the time.

 

Before we knew the imbalances, we planned and started buying our forces. I have a Drop Pod and air mobile infantry force, with only a few tanks, and my Lad has a tank heavy force with minimum infantry.

 

He also has an abundance of larger Titans with a couple of hounds. I have many smaller ones and only two Warlords. In AT they balance out fairly well. In LI, they're terribly imbalanced for their points.

 

The game needs a better balance between types of units, not exclusions. 

 

Starting with Infantry, we house rule nerfs, but something official needs doing.

Book three might well give us a tank/vehicle Mode, it's Tallarn after all. But I'm waiting for a more comprehensive fix.

Edited July 1 by Interrogator Stobz

[DuskRaider]

I have a lot of everything for LI alone, my AT collection is… a problem. I’ve kinda just shelved my Imperialis for the time being and went back to concentrating on Titanicus, even though I can’t find anyone to play with anymore. All the hassle of painting the little Astartes and the game isn’t even fun to me currently.

 

I do have a good amount of tanks though, so I would love to play World of Tanks: Imperialis Edition. That’s why I’m really hoping Astartes get super heavies soon, that’s the one thing they really need in an Armored Column. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

Yeah, Astartes Super Heavies will be my motivation to add a Tank Formation to my Air, Pod, Sky and Bastion ones.

[Valkyrion]

Just going back to infantry in combat - could a fix be introduced that is scale related? e.g, if there is 1 scale difference between the models, the model with the higher scale gets either a 6+/5+/4+/3+ save. So infantry (1) vs tanks (2), the tanks would get a 6+ save, but a titan (5) would get a 3+ save.

 

That way you could then introduce Krak Grenades (reduce the scale value by 1) or Melta Bombs (reduce the scale value by 2), for instance. 

 

Could probably be worded better, but hopefully I get my intent across. 

[DuskRaider]

That may work. I’m surprised that they didn’t use a Scale system in LI, they do in AT and there are certainly rules to do more damage to larger scale Titans for certain Legios / Titans / characters. 
 

Actually, I’ll say this… I don’t think a 6+ save would do much of anything for the tank issue. Maybe a 4+ for Rhino-sized tanks, 3+ for Land Raider size, and 2+ for Super Heavies, Knights and Titans with equipment upgrades giving infantry the ability to drop it down to an extent. 

Edited July 1 by DuskRaider

[Interrogator Stobz]

Lifting the CAF on Tanks a few points (maybe double) so a couple of infantry stands die before they do would help to show the risks of assaulting armour.

 

And making the maximum extra dice for outnumbering 3 instead of 6, but allowing +1 more for rend and specific weapons (crack and melta bombs etc.) would be an option. That would put big Titans almost always out of reach, but a fluke could do some damage.

 

Just brainstorming. Really, I don't hold out too much hope for substantial fixes in Book 3 or even 4, as it will already be somewhere in production.

[Crablezworth]

I think we need to allow stuff saves in combat, combat may have been designed to be deadly, but it's also very swingy and very complicated/contextual, so it's not like being able to take a save at the end is that that bad. In the case of inf it means a 5 or 6+, tanks obviously better, but arguably as it should be because they're paying for all that resilience that currently goes out the window with combat. 

 

If there's a concern it will render infantry too weak in combat let them purchase krak or melta bombs for like -1 or -2 to enemy vehicles saves. How this would be done though is the trick as the wysiwyg of wargear is always going to be a :cuss: show at this scale, my thought would be something like the whole formation needs to purchase them or something. 

 

Infantry should have triple move axed and their charge range should only be 10 with los, if they're charging blind around a corner  or out of a structure or transport it should only be 5. This may sound punitive but if you look at the terrain density of average boards, I really don't think it will hurt infantry that much tbh. 

 

It's strange, I think the thought of an all tank mode would have turned me off a few months ago, but now with infantry where they are at I almost welcome it, because I remind myself that's where the game seems to run at its smoothest, when units are merely exchanging fire and rolling saves, where the game doesn't feel pleasant is like endless turn 1 or 2 that feel like way too much of it is taken up by reaction fire like overwatch and endless far too lengthy to resolve combats. So if an armour focused mode means decent point sized games that actually get to turn 4-5 and aren't all bogged down in combat, I'm all for it. 

[DuskRaider]

I would say that a simple token to indicate which unit has Krak or Melta would be sufficient, and I do agree that it should be a unit-wide upgrade unless you say it’s for the unit sergeant or what have you (so one per unit). I would make them a -1 on tank armor saves, you don’t want to go crazy and render the whole fix useless. 
 

I would say that if they do a tank mode, Legion rules would need to be changed to reflect this, as many would be unfit for a vehicle only mode. 

[Crablezworth]

12 hours ago, DuskRaider said:

I would say that a simple token to indicate which unit has Krak or Melta would be sufficient, and I do agree that it should be a unit-wide upgrade unless you say it’s for the unit sergeant or what have you (so one per unit). I would make them a -1 on tank armor saves, you don’t want to go crazy and render the whole fix useless. 
 

I would say that if they do a tank mode, Legion rules would need to be changed to reflect this, as many would be unfit for a vehicle only mode. 

 

I'd avoid a token as there are so many order tokens already. 

 

I think krak being -1 is fine, but there should be some melta, if even just to future proof for more infantry units. 

 

I think the biggest legion rule that needs re-working is the wolves because pushing back on infiltrate should not be something so hyper specific/niche, that and infiltrate needs a massive limit, possible distance reduction and I have no idea what you can assault but I guess I can live with the last part assuming its capped. I don't really like how the legion rules work currently, also its a lack of faith thing because gw always screws up a bunch of them, some get hyper useful constantly applicable abilities or buffs and others get incredibly specific hyper rare once in a blue moon things like night lords. I wouldn't want to see more of that but for tanks. 

 

I also sorta wish planes and aa got a re-working. For starters I dislike how many units can even target planes, I get that it's more for balance than realism but that combined with 6's always hitting it gets a bit too easy to dump fire and hope for 6's when a detachment has a lot of firepower. Similarly I think planes should be able to always take their jink BUT it should mess up their ability to hit that turn. I also honestly wonder in general about the 6's always hitting thing, it tends to make cover less useful, there are times when a titan or knight being 50% or more behind cover doesn't matter because the extra -1 doesn't turn a 6 into 7 like in titanicus. I doubt book 3 would address any of this but dare to dream. 

 

 

 

Edited July 2 by Crablezworth

[DuskRaider]

Yeah, my concern would be for Legions such as Space Wolves, Night Lords, and even my own Death Guard. Some of the abilities are infantry-based and would be nigh useless in a tank-only scenario, so I would hope they would get rules that would benefit that mode of play. 
 

Then again, I was hoping they would give Legios specific rules for The Great Slaughter and was left wanting, so I would assume this would be a similar situation. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

Looking at SM2, combat still had a lot of the same mechanics. Pair off, gang up gave bonus dice, loser doesn't get armour. There was some huge swings in CAF coming out of the eldar, as well as some super dumb abilities like rend on scorpions, roll before combat and auto-win on a 5+ from banshees, and reroll lost combats on harlequins. Your infantry would still punk most vehicles in combat.

 

But, the differences really come down to how the rest of the rules interacted. Movement was short for infantry at 3.9"; you could charge up to double that to 7.8", but thats about it. The slowest battle tank moved that same 7.8" while still being able to shoot, with rhinos and preds and stuff going 9.8". 

 

So we got: way slower infantry, faster vehicles, way longer gun ranges, no transport slingshot, less infantry durability, and shooting while engaged with first fire. Kinda makes sense why melee would ignore armour

in the original system. It totally doesn't make sense in LI, where you can infiltrate right beside people, or slingshot from a rhino or drop pod with master tactician, or march 21" and then charge from out of LoS. A copy-paste of the old material in the middle of their changed unit statlines turning out really lopsided, classic specialist game studio lol 

Edited July 2 by SkimaskMohawk

[Crablezworth]

23 hours ago, DuskRaider said:

Yeah, my concern would be for Legions such as Space Wolves, Night Lords, and even my own Death Guard. Some of the abilities are infantry-based and would be nigh useless in a tank-only scenario, so I would hope they would get rules that would benefit that mode of play. 
 

Then again, I was hoping they would give Legios specific rules for The Great Slaughter and was left wanting, so I would assume this would be a similar situation. 

 

Well I don't have much sympathy, I have RG for marines and it'd honestly just be nice to have a reason to take a tank with their trait being so insanely broken. I'd honestly rather they didn't even attempt additional legion rules because they've shown they just can't make on a fairly even basis, its always all over the map and that trend would likely just have some marines have super tanks etc. I don't trust them, seeing as we haven't gotten faq's and they haven't even attempted to address why book 2's point system differs from the rulebook and now with the preview of book 3, they're going back to point savings but not a peep out of why they just forgot about it entirely for book 2, so the same people I can't trust to take on the task of adding more legion rules. I already worry we'll get more units that are just eye candy but redundant or overcoated like outriders. 

 

 

[Crablezworth]

22 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Looking at SM2, combat still had a lot of the same mechanics. Pair off, gang up gave bonus dice, loser doesn't get armour. There was some huge swings in CAF coming out of the eldar, as well as some super dumb abilities like rend on scorpions, roll before combat and auto-win on a 5+ from banshees, and reroll lost combats on harlequins. Your infantry would still punk most vehicles in combat.

 

But, the differences really come down to how the rest of the rules interacted. Movement was short for infantry at 3.9"; you could charge up to double that to 7.8", but thats about it. The slowest battle tank moved that same 7.8" while still being able to shoot, with rhinos and preds and stuff going 9.8". 

 

So we got: way slower infantry, faster vehicles, way longer gun ranges, no transport slingshot, less infantry durability, and shooting while engaged with first fire. Kinda makes sense why melee would ignore armour

in the original system. It totally doesn't make sense in LI, where you can infiltrate right beside people, or slingshot from a rhino or drop pod with master tactician, or march 21" and then charge from out of LoS. A copy-paste of the old material in the middle of their changed unit statlines turning out really lopsided, classic specialist game studio lol 

 

It just leads to feel bad moments when like 100-200pts of tank disappear to like 8 infantry bases, similarly it didn't feel right to have ogryns beat up armigers given the points difference alone. 

 

Infantry really do need slowing tf down, even with some transports being dirty cheap they often just take them and don't even go in them like the rhinos as fast ifv's marching around shooting their havocs. 

[Pacific81]

On 7/1/2024 at 4:04 AM, DuskRaider said:

I have a lot of everything for LI alone, my AT collection is… a problem. I’ve kinda just shelved my Imperialis for the time being and went back to concentrating on Titanicus, even though I can’t find anyone to play with anymore. All the hassle of painting the little Astartes and the game isn’t even fun to me currently.

 

I do have a good amount of tanks though, so I would love to play World of Tanks: Imperialis Edition. That’s why I’m really hoping Astartes get super heavies soon, that’s the one thing they really need in an Armored Column. 

 

I have heard of this happening to a few people - using their Titan collections for a big Legions battle (using the rules from the last book), realising how simple (unsatisfying?) the titan rules are in Legions and how good Titanicus was, and then basically jumping back to Titanicus again!

 

@SkimaskMohawk yes I agree with that assessment of SM2 Vs Legions. I can see why they sped up infantry (so they aren't dawdling as in SM2 and get stuck in, and there is less need to differentiate the marine advantage  - mobility - as everyone is now marines!) but there should have been some counterbalance.

Again I think it's a sign of GW's policy of not really playtesting stuff thoroughly as a lot of this stuff should have come out in the wash immediately. Having the community playtest and then release FAQs is fine for unit stat tweaks (as they do for 40k/AoS) but really doesn't work well when some of the base mechanics need correcting.

 

@Crablezworth if they introduce different types of missiles for this game, and having to track that, honestly my head is going to explode. Jesus wept..

[Interrogator Stobz]

In the weekend just gone I had a game in which we implemented a couple of house rules to balance Infantry and Cavalry. 

We couldn't decide on allowing saves in CC because we couldn't agree on AP for things.

So we went with 4" move for foot Infantry, with no triple move unless on a road. That worked well for the movement side. The extra time to shoot thinned all but my outflanking Cavalry units. 

For CC, we made outnumbering only ever gives one extra dice, except rend units who got that too, but they died before getting there.

It was excellent; Tanks won occasionally, and it balanced the combats up a bit. The tanks still lost, but they took some bases down with them. A much closer game than previously played with similar armies.

 

Next time, we will double CAF for vehicles to see how that goes. It might be a step too far, but as they're almost always outnumbered we're pretty sure it will be good.

[Crablezworth]

3 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

 

@Crablezworth if they introduce different types of missiles for this game, and having to track that, honestly my head is going to explode. Jesus wept..

 

Nah taking about grenades for the infantry. But I agree tracking wargear could get silly, my thought was more like detachment wide or formation wide upgrade. 

 

In 30k/40k, at least the better versions, you needed krak grenades or meltabombs to even attempt to swing on something with an armour value. But its a good mechanic in that you need to pay to even be able to assault a tank or dreadnought, and to be able to do it well was rare, like a whole unit with each model having krak wasn't uncommon, less so with meltabombs. Point being infantry in LI basically have meltabombs for free and its just too much. 

[Pacific81]

I think it's just introducing a level of detail that has no place in a game played at this scale. In my view, the crazy number of unit and weapon profiles already went too far - what is even worse is that they had a mechanism that worked perfectly in Armageddon (anti infantry and anti armour profiles - the weapon itself doesn't matter) and then chose to completely ignore it in this game. Instead, we have unit profiles, for a 2cm long tank, that fill an entire page!

I think 28mm is there if you want to choose specific types of wargear and go down to that level of granularity. You also then don't need telephoto eyes to be able to see on the tabletop..

 

So, I think they need to look at the base mechanics (as was discussed above) to either make tanks more survivable or infantry less so - less mobility would be one way of doing that, and then you increase the cost of Rhinos along with that. This would also have another benefit of stopping people zerg-rushing Rhino units into tanks to melee them (apparently some events have limited Rhino access because of this). While I find the thought of this suicide demolition derby thing really funny, I must say I can't remember reading about it in the HH series

 

Other ideas might be some sort of 'tank shock' rule (FoW uses this - have to pass a morale test to assault tanks) or make the tanks themselves more survivable. Although I think a saving throw would be taking it too far.

Edited July 9 by Pacific81

[DuskRaider]

On 7/3/2024 at 10:53 AM, Crablezworth said:

 

It just leads to feel bad moments when like 100-200pts of tank disappear to like 8 infantry bases, similarly it didn't feel right to have ogryns beat up armigers given the points difference alone. 

 

Infantry really do need slowing tf down, even with some transports being dirty cheap they often just take them and don't even go in them like the rhinos as fast ifv's marching around shooting their havocs. 

It’s play styles like this that sadden me. It seems a lot of folks are more interested in just winning than they are playing a narrative game, which is what this should be. I get that you’ll see it in just about any tabletop game, but man… it just seems to go against what the spirit of the game should be. 
 

Games Workshop has to take the brunt of the blame on this one. They made rules and units extremely unbalanced and just assumed folks would play it more like an historical game than an outright WAAC style game. 
 

A few points… I understand it’s an unpopular opinion, but I do think Legions need more granularity as far as specific rules, not just for more flavor but as a counter to those who currently have what could be considered OP traits (such as Raven Guard and Alpha Legion). The profiles of the units themselves need to be streamlined and each Legion needs to have its own feel to it, otherwise we’re just fielding the same army across from one another in a different color scheme. 
 

One more thing I thought of for Book 3… a Terminator heavy formation. I could see it happening, as I believe TDA was the only armor that could survive in the hell that was Tallarn for extended periods of time. Obviously the biggest issue currently is that Terminators are only sold in the Infantry box and are quite limited at that. 
 

Also speaking of Armigers… GW needs to make them in plastic really bad. They’ve put an emphasis on them in LI, yet they’re still overpriced resin kits that come 3 to a box and can’t even form a cohesive Banner. If they made them in plastic and 6 to a box, they’d sell them pretty easily. 

[Deschenus Maximus]

I think having a hard cap on how many models you're allowed to bring as part of your force (either as a gentleman's agreement or as part of a tournament pack) is a simple way to curb the OPness of infantry. If you can only bring say 60 models per 1000 pts, you'd be hard pressed to fill more than around half your points allocation if you only took infantry.

[DuskRaider]

17 minutes ago, Deschenus Maximus said:

I think having a hard cap on how many models you're allowed to bring as part of your force (either as a gentleman's agreement or as part of a tournament pack) is a simple way to curb the OPness of infantry. If you can only bring say 60 models per 1000 pts, you'd be hard pressed to fill more than around half your points allocation if you only took infantry.

That may work, though it would also penalize those who want to play more fluffy and field an infantry-centric army. There has to be a change to infantry itself, and as mentioned previously the biggest problems are their ridiculous movement as well as their ability to basically just punch a tank to death. On the flipside, I think tanks and Dreadnoughts need a bit of a buff to make them as terrifying as they should be to infantry. I SHOULD be afraid of approaching a Contemptor because it SHOULD wipe out swaths of infantry, but in reality they’re a push over. I should NOT be able to walk a few bases of infantry into a Land Raider or Malcador and beat it to death with Chainswords or whatever. 

[Deschenus Maximus]

20 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

That may work, though it would also penalize those who want to play more fluffy and field an infantry-centric army. 

 

Yeah I understand this sucks for people who enjoy fielding a lore-accurate RG army but that's an acceptable trade-off, imo. Absent an indepth FAQ making a bunch of changes to the core rules, mediated limits on what people can bring is about as good a solution as one can hope for.

[DuskRaider]

23 minutes ago, Deschenus Maximus said:

 

Yeah I understand this sucks for people who enjoy fielding a lore-accurate RG army but that's an acceptable trade-off, imo. Absent an indepth FAQ making a bunch of changes to the core rules, mediated limits on what people can bring is about as good a solution as one can hope for.

I play Death Guard which are very infantry-centric. I’m actually okay with taking a penalty to my movement and ability to punch tanks to death if it meant they felt more like Death Guard. Give enemies a CAF penalty in CC or allow them to make Devastators Destroyers or something, I don’t know. 
 

I lose hope more with each passing day that we will receive a FAQ, let alone one that changes core rules to such an extent. That would more so require a completely new BRB and I highly doubt they’ll do that anytime soon… or at all, if their other Specialist Games of a similar vain are any indication. At this point, Titanicus is going on 6 years old, has yet to receive an updated version and I doubt we’ll ever even see an expansion again. That does not bode well for the hope of a comprehensive FAQ affecting the core rules or a new, improved (and hopefully actually play tested this time) edition of LI. 

[Crablezworth]

4 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

I think it's just introducing a level of detail that has no place in a game played at this scale. In my view, the crazy number of unit and weapon profiles already went too far - what is even worse is that they had a mechanism that worked perfectly in Armageddon (anti infantry and anti armour profiles - the weapon itself doesn't matter) and then chose to completely ignore it in this game. Instead, we have unit profiles, for a 2cm long tank, that fill an entire page!

I think 28mm is there if you want to choose specific types of wargear and go down to that level of granularity. You also then don't need telephoto eyes to be able to see on the tabletop..

 

So, I think they need to look at the base mechanics (as was discussed above) to either make tanks more survivable or infantry less so - less mobility would be one way of doing that, and then you increase the cost of Rhinos along with that. This would also have another benefit of stopping people zerg-rushing Rhino units into tanks to melee them (apparently some events have limited Rhino access because of this). While I find the thought of this suicide demolition derby thing really funny, I must say I can't remember reading about it in the HH series

 

Other ideas might be some sort of 'tank shock' rule (FoW uses this - have to pass a morale test to assault tanks) or make the tanks themselves more survivable. Although I think a saving throw would be taking it too far.

 

I just mean the wargear grenade/melta as more of yes/no switch for if infantry even can charge a vehicle or walker, non infantry and so on. And really it could be a mission wide rule like for this scenario infantry don't have the usual gear that would allow them to assault that stuff so they can't. That or the allowing saves in combat idea. 

 

I'd say this in addition to slowing them down with agreed upon additional terrain rules like as simple as saying "difficult terrain now also slow infantry for this game" sorta agreement. We've done that and it helped make walkers feel a bit more special on account of being one of the few units now slowed. 

4 hours ago, DuskRaider said:

 

A few points… I understand it’s an unpopular opinion, but I do think Legions need more granularity as far as specific rules, not just for more flavor but as a counter to those who currently have what could be considered OP traits (such as Raven Guard and Alpha Legion). The profiles of the units themselves need to be streamlined and each Legion needs to have its own feel to it, otherwise we’re just fielding the same army across from one another in a different color scheme. 
 

 

 

Ya they've gone this far with all the weapon profiles its hard to roll that back. I agree raven guard need a massive limit, but I feel like that's tied into infiltrate needing a massive limit in general, if not a total re-write.