What should 11th look like?

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Tyran said:

They have mostly avoided codex creep so hopefully 11th is just a continuation of 10th with rules errata and balance patches included. 

 

While at it just abandon the entire concept of printed rules and move to online rules because no one that I know uses codexes anymore. Codexes should be just collectionist stuff with lore and pretty pictures.

Why would you take codexes away from those who do use them?

 

I really don’t get this.

if you don’t want to buy one, don’t.

[Tyran]

Which is why I stated codexes should be collectionist stuff with lore and pretty pictures for people that still like to buy them. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

21 minutes ago, Tyran said:

Which is why I stated codexes should be collectionist stuff with lore and pretty pictures for people that still like to buy them. 

Some people literally still use them for gaming.

youre trying to take something away from others for absolutely no good reason.

[Tyran]

Ok fine: codexes should be collectionist stuff with lore and pretty picture and rules that will likely be outdated in half a year at most for people that still like to buy them.

Edited July 16 by Tyran

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Tyran said:

Ok fine: codexes should be collectionist stuff with lore and pretty picture and rules that will likely be outdated in half a year at most for people that still like to buy them.

That’s literally what they are right now…

[HeadlessCross]

3 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Some people literally still use them for gaming.

youre trying to take something away from others for absolutely no good reason.

They shouldn't BE used for gaming is the point. Online rules should've been the norm ages ago. Age of Sigmar proved this correct. 

[Aarik]

34 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

That’s literally what they are right now…

 

I think the ultimate point is that rules balance is poorer because of GW's decision to tie the rules to codexes that have to be finalized and sent to the printers well in advance of release.  If GW moved to fully digital rules, then they could react to the current "meta" rather than what the meta was 6+ months ago when the codex was finalized.  And it would hopefully be less of a sticking point for GW to tweak datasheets that need it (rather than just trying to balance with points) because the data sheets could all be updated digitally and would not conflict with what is in the codexes (because the rules would not be in the codexes).

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

56 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

They shouldn't BE used for gaming is the point. Online rules should've been the norm ages ago. Age of Sigmar proved this correct. 

Not your place to tell people if they should or shouldn’t be used for gaming.

 

what you want already exists now. Don’t want a codex? Pay for access on the app.

56 minutes ago, Aarik said:

 

I think the ultimate point is that rules balance is poorer because of GW's decision to tie the rules to codexes that have to be finalized and sent to the printers well in advance of release.  If GW moved to fully digital rules, then they could react to the current "meta" rather than what the meta was 6+ months ago when the codex was finalized.  And it would hopefully be less of a sticking point for GW to tweak datasheets that need it (rather than just trying to balance with points) because the data sheets could all be updated digitally and would not conflict with what is in the codexes (because the rules would not be in the codexes).

Or they could write the books, and release them all at once.

[phandaal]

2 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Or they could write the books, and release them all at once.

 

Yeah, the staggered release schedule just does not work with their rules update schedule and physical rulebooks. Physical rulebooks are not to blame here. Physical books only serve to highlight the problem with writing and releasing things months out of sync, endlessly for three years, then turning around and doing it again and again and again.

 

With that thought, I can sympathize with people who don't even want to acknowledge that 11th edition is not that far away, because the rules really do need some time to just sit once everything finally stabilizes in a year or so.

 

Also, what is with these brand new accounts coming in hot for PvP? Did this thread get linked on Reddit or something?

[Tyran]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

That’s literally what they are right now…

Of course not, current codexes are painfully lacking in lore and pretty pictures.

 

[Ahzek451]

1 hour ago, Tyran said:

Of course not, current codexes are painfully lacking in lore and pretty pictures.

 

Pretty much 1 of 2 main reasons I stopped collecting every codex every edition. I miss the section where each unit had a dedicated page of lore. 

 

The 2nd is just the short lived edition cycles. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

40 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

Pretty much 1 of 2 main reasons I stopped collecting every codex every edition. I miss the section where each unit had a dedicated page of lore. 

 

The 2nd is just the short lived edition cycles. 

Miss the modeling/hobby pages :’(

[Evil Eye]

I don't like digital-only rules. My phone is too puny to be reliable as a rules-reading device, GW would almost certainly do it badly with a really badly done app instead of just using PDFs (which I can at least print) and I like treeware. Wargaming is a fundamentally analogue medium and trying to work in digital elements rarely goes well.

 

No, the solution is to spend the extra time to write rules that don't NEED constant rewriting and balance updates every five seconds. They did it before, they can do it again. And if they can't do it again, they need to outsource the rules to someone who can.

[apologist]

The model being taken in The Old World for their army book/Codex equivalents seems a good one. There, everything you need to play Matched Play-style games is in one of two books that cover multiple armies, while the Codex-equivalent supplements are primarily sources of background, colour schemes and so forth, with rules limited to supplementary material like magic items or particular thematic lists.

 

To put this into 40k terms, you could have a big Imperial book (Guard, Space Marines, Talons, Adeptus Mechanicus etc), a big Chaos book (Chaos Marines, Daemons, Lost and the Damned etc.), and a Xenos book (Eldar, Orks, Tau, Necrons, Tyranids etc.). Each would include the full army lists and points for the various armies, including wargear and options. The Codex supplements could then cover particular forces (e.g. Blood Angels or Thousand Sons) or particular campaign settings (e.g. Badab, Nachmund, Armageddon).

 

One advantage of this approach to Narrative Play or Open Play is that the Codex supplements could create the sort of forces we see in the settings – Black Legion being a mix of Chaos Marines, Daemons and Guard, for example – as you'd have all the info in the big books already. 

 

Another approach is that by having campaign supplements, you don't need to rehash the same background over and over again – you can focus on characters and forces from a particular campaign or setting without worrying about them imbalancing the Matched Play tournaments. (Plus lore-junkies can pore with glee over the 'historical' forces shown or battles to re-enact!)

 

+++

 

Anyway, my real hopes for 11th are:

• Scalability  I would like to see some way of properly scaling the game so I can have a fun, engaging game with just 20 or so models and a tank on each side. I'd like to see a bit more crunch in the game at smaller scales (currently called Incursion), and gradually getting more abstract at Strike Force and Onslaught, to better fit those big games. Examples of this could be the reintroduction of vehicle facings, blast markers and psychology in small games, where such things matter, and for the big games to partially do away with rules that require book-keeping (which is so easily forgotten), and allow armies like Knights, which just don't work well in skirmishes. If this sounds a big weird, it's essentially an extension of what GW are already doing with Combat Patrol's bespoke rules compared with 'normal' 40k.
• Make the models and their interaction central  The game is becoming more and more abstract and reliant on cards and off-table surprises. For whatever reason, and I'm not sure why, the models seem less and less relevant to the game, and more and more like mere tokens than 'my soldiers'. I'd like to see the physical nature of the models made more central and relatable somehow.
• More stability  I'm happy with tweaks and refinements, but if GW are going to reinvent the wheel every three years, then I'd rather a single 'mid-edition' supplement than changes every six months. 

Edited July 17 by apologist

[Wormwoods]

I think my main request is that whatever happens, they don't split power weapons up again. 

 

Making combi-weapons unwieldy and weird again so they fill out the entire page for Sternguard? Hell yeah, that was fun! 

 

But it is VITALLY important to me that I can still mix and match mauls, hammers, axes, and swords as 'power weapons', it's just such a quality of life issue for a conversion and kitbashing freak like myself. Yeah, there's some over-streamlining in bits of 10th, but some of it was sorely needed. 

 

 

[Brother Captain Vakarian]

1 hour ago, Wormwoods said:

I think my main request is that whatever happens, they don't split power weapons up again. 

 

Making combi-weapons unwieldy and weird again so they fill out the entire page for Sternguard? Hell yeah, that was fun! 

 

But it is VITALLY important to me that I can still mix and match mauls, hammers, axes, and swords as 'power weapons', it's just such a quality of life issue for a conversion and kitbashing freak like myself. Yeah, there's some over-streamlining in bits of 10th, but some of it was sorely needed. 

 

 

It’s hard to articulate strong reasons for this but I agree completely… combi-weapons should have unique profiles (flamer =/= melta!) but power weapon profiles should absolutely stay merged. It’s very frustrating when my character with a power sword is objectively worse because axes are better, for example. I am *not* changing them or making new models all the time to address that!
 

The power weapon profile merge was one of the best examples of things 10th does right, while the combi-weapon merge is a great example of it going too far. 

[apologist]

See, there's a perfect example of the sort of detail that could be scaled/varied. (The following example is an illustration, rather than thought-out in depth)

 

• Combat patrol – combi-weapons and power weapons have unique stats.
• Incursion – combi-weapons and power weapons have unique stats.
• Strike force – swords, axes and mauls abstracted to 'power weapons'; thunder hammers and power fists likewise grouped; combi-weapons divided into anti-armour and anti-personnel.
• Onslaught – swords, axes and mauls abstracted to 'power weapons'; thunder hammers and power fists likewise grouped; combi-weapons have just one statline.

 

You wouldn't need to tie these to game size, either – it would be just as easy to do it by game mode:

 

• Matched play – abstraction for clarity and ease of balance; granularity of points.
• Narrative play – maximum flavour with complete individuality of stat lines for different weapons.
• Open play – partial abstraction for balance of ease and flavour; points irrelevant.

Edited July 17 by apologist

[Wormwoods]

1 minute ago, apologist said:

See, there's a perfect example of the sort of detail that could be scaled/varied. (The following example is an illustration, rather than thought-out in depth)

 

Combat patrol – combi-weapons and power weapons have unique stats.

Incursion – combi-weapons and power weapons have unique stats.

Strike force – swords, axes and mauls abstracted to 'power weapons'; thunder hammers and power fists likewise grouped; combi-weapons divided into anti-armour and anti-personnel.

Onslaught – swords, axes and mauls abstracted to 'power weapons'; thunder hammers and power fists likewise grouped; combi-weapons have just one statline.

 

I could get behind something like that. It's almost how some killteams work between games, with some of the weapon or equipment options merged together when you run that killteam as a squad in a normal 40K game. 

[DemonGSides]

 

 

Combat patrol is supposed to be easy and quick. Adding extra weapon profiles and vehicle facings is just doubling crunch for no benefit.

 

Adding in rules that change based on the points sizes just feels like MORE busy work to play the game, and that's literally been a complaint repeated constantly in this thread. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

14 minutes ago, Brother Captain Vakarian said:

It’s hard to articulate strong reasons for this but I agree completely… combi-weapons should have unique profiles (flamer =/= melta!) but power weapon profiles should absolutely stay merged. It’s very frustrating when my character with a power sword is objectively worse because axes are better, for example. I am *not* changing them or making new models all the time to address that!
 

The power weapon profile merge was one of the best examples of things 10th does right, while the combi-weapon merge is a great example of it going too far. 

It’s not hard for me to articulate.

 

if the difference in strength between a guardsmen and a marine is only 1, then the difference in effects between an axe, sword, spear, maul, etc will be minimal when surrounded by an energy field that makes getting through armor much easier.

 

 

whereas a combi flamer and a combi plasma are two fundamentally different things aside from the bolter part.

 

same for the orks and their kombi-weapons. A skorcha and a rokkit launcher are fundamentally different 

[DuskRaider]

11 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Miss the modeling/hobby pages :’(

Kinda hard to model when everything is monopose now and they don’t have options that aren’t included with said model. Kinda really sad. 

[Arikel]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

It’s not hard for me to articulate.

 

if the difference in strength between a guardsmen and a marine is only 1, then the difference in effects between an axe, sword, spear, maul, etc will be minimal when surrounded by an energy field that makes getting through armor much easier.

 

 

whereas a combi flamer and a combi plasma are two fundamentally different things aside from the bolter part.

 

same for the orks and their kombi-weapons. A skorcha and a rokkit launcher are fundamentally different 

Totally agree here. One issue that I had is that they distinguished between power weapons based on type, but all non powered weapons were essentially still just considered close combat weapons, with no differences. If they are going to bother with splitting up power weapons based on shape, than they should do that for ccw also, as it is the shape that is driving the stat differences, not just the energy field. 
 

For combi weapons, originally they were one shot weapons of the specific type chosen, to give extra oomph to a squad for a single turn’s shooting.  In recent editions, they were instead used as an alternate profile with unlimited uses, and even being able to be fired along with the main profile with a small penalty. One could see how this might be a bit overpowering, especially with squads that can take multiple combis like sternguard.

 

Instead of reverting to a single shot weapon, they instead have been nerfed into some sort of special weapon that doesn’t reflect what combi weapons actually are. Hoping to see that change again in the future , since we are talking changes.

 

In regards to narrative campaigns , the whole point is you are supposed to have prepped  for the fact that either side could win. If you already have a fixed ending in mind, that’s just railroading if the campaign results don’t matter at all, and are the signs of a poor game master/designer. Being able to incorporate the results into the narrative properly should have been planned for right from the beginning.

[HeadlessCross]

8 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

No, the solution is to spend the extra time to write rules that don't NEED constant rewriting and balance updates every five seconds. They did it before, 

They most certainly did not. Game was hugely imbalanced in prior editions, and some armies could go entire editions without a new codex. 

[DuskRaider]

17 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

They most certainly did not. Game was hugely imbalanced in prior editions, and some armies could go entire editions without a new codex. 

I do agree with this. I remember going two editions without a codex for Chaos and it was miserable. 

[SvenIronhand]

You should have to list how many games of the current edition you've played in your profile.