New Editorial - Are Armies Actually Getting Bigger?

[Jukkiz]

to be honest, wasn´t 10th supposed to be "the simple way to play"? 

Then we keep getting all kinda strats, command point re-rolls with everything and dozen units with different abilities. ETC...

and with every new release of the army, we keep getting new units, so of course it would bloat any army that keeps getting new codex and rules, right?

[ZeroWolf]

52 minutes ago, Jukkiz said:

to be honest, wasn´t 10th supposed to be "the simple way to play"? 

Then we keep getting all kinda strats, command point re-rolls with everything and dozen units with different abilities. ETC...

and with every new release of the army, we keep getting new units, so of course it would bloat any army that keeps getting new codex and rules, right?

It was simpler as you no longer had the layered rules instead going for army rule, detachment rule and then any enhancements you bought. So effective a paragraph or two. It gets even easier if you ignore strats like i do, funnily enough GW does that too on the beginner Sundays my kids go to. Amazingly the game plays just fine without them, and command re-rolls come to think of it.

 

Unit abilities, I think are fine for the most part, especially when you realise that despite different names some share the exact same ability.

 

Of course, worth noting that these days because of time constraints and what not, I pretty much play 1000pts.

[Kallas]

2 hours ago, ZeroWolf said:

It gets even easier if you ignore strats like i do, funnily enough GW does that too on the beginner Sundays my kids go to. Amazingly the game plays just fine without them, and command re-rolls come to think of it.

Kind of a weird way to sell an edition being "simpler" though. "If you ignore a not-insignificant part of the game, it's easier!" Sure, so is ignoring all Detachments and half of each army's datasheets, but then are you still playing the game? Especially when some units have abilities tied in to using Stratagems and things (eg, Captains).

[Arikel]

6 hours ago, Xenith said:

 

Interesting to see! Was it 4th ed in which all models got free grenades and pistols, or 5th? In 3rd, tacs didnt have pistols and you had to buy them separately, so this tac squad in 3rd, identically armed, would be 203pts (15ppm, 1ppm for frags, 2ppm for kraks, 10pts for the ML, 3pts for the flamer, 10pts to make the serge veteran for an extra attack like 4th onwards, otherwise he had an identical profile to the squad).

Not sure about 4th, but 5th had free wargear and vet sgt’s included in the base cost. 6th had vet sgt’s as 10 pts each for any non veteran squad, my points include that option, grenades and boltpistols were free.  Melta bombs were extra in the non Primaris editions, not included in any pricing shown, but i did take them on occasion (5-10 points depending what they went on). Could shave 50-60 points off the 6th total if I went with basic sgt stats for the base squads.

[Tawnis]

1 hour ago, Kallas said:

Kind of a weird way to sell an edition being "simpler" though. "If you ignore a not-insignificant part of the game, it's easier!" Sure, so is ignoring all Detachments and half of each army's datasheets, but then are you still playing the game? Especially when some units have abilities tied in to using Stratagems and things (eg, Captains).

It still is compared to 9th, where in Space Marines for instance, you had 13 Faction Specific rules, a few of them like Bolter Discipline and Combat Doctrine with their own sub rules. Then you had your detachment, and your chapter tactics, and you could custom mix your own chapter tactics if you didn't like the default ones. Then you had over 20 base stratagems, plus the default stratagems that everyone had, plus the ones from your specific chapter. Then you had the rules for your Army of Renown, and the stratagems that gave you. Than in the units you have all the points related Wargear options (which I personally like, but was more complex), and then the Force Organization chart to partially restrict what units you could take in a list. And all of that is not counting all the balance changes and errata, which still happen now, there were so many more things that could change in 9th. 

So yeah, 10th is a lot simpler when all your faction rules are on two pages of text and all the unit information is on their cards. 

[Kallas]

52 minutes ago, Tawnis said:

So yeah, 10th is a lot simpler when all your faction rules are on two pages of text and all the unit information is on their cards. 

I was referring to the whole "ignore half the rules and it's simpler!" thing that I quoted.

[DemonGSides]

34 minutes ago, Kallas said:

I was referring to the whole "ignore half the rules and it's simpler!" thing that I quoted.

Which wasn't being used as a selling point for why it's a simpler edition, but was given as an anecdote on how it could be even simpler if you find the other stuff too complex; it's literally right in the post you quoted. 

 

It's a simpler edition for sure. That's half of people's complaints with it; it simplified a lot of rules that people think bring flavor. I don't think that's a bad argument, but it isn't the argument you're making.

 

Trying to argue that older editions were simpler from a rules perspective is just funny to be seen done. It happens, but usually from people who aren't experienced with one of the systems. 

Edited February 25 by DemonGSides

[Evil Eye]

Speaking for myself on simplicity vs complexity, as someone who actually likes more involved systems and thinks there needs to be a baseline level of complexity for the system to be satisfying and immersive (lest the game devolve into "bang your guy is dead" with extra steps), the problem with 8th, 9th and 10th isn't that they're inherently more simple or complex than older editions, it's that the complexities are in the wrong places, and tend to be added in layers on top of a very barebones core system. Case in point, 10th having the various detachments, keyword bingo, stratagems etc but mushing various weapons (combi-weapons, Tyranid Warrior melee weapons etc) into a single profile. Likewise, removing the separate rules for vehicles because they were "too complex" but then adding back more involved vehicle movement rules later when they realized they'd made a mistake. Or trying to simulate the effects of blast/template weapons whilst refusing to just do the obvious thing and bring back templates because "oh well they can cause arguments" or something ridiculous. Or whatever's going on with LoS rules vs the old "If your model can see it, it's in LoS" system.

 

With older systems, there was an expected element of complexity to the core rules that you had to engage with if you wanted to play the game, but once you'd gotten the hang of those core rules everything else fell pretty neatly into place. Now, the effort to make the game more approachable to people not interested in learning the base mechanics has meant that, to support the menagerie of different units and weapons and such that exist within the 40K universe, a thousand additional layers of rules and exceptions have had to be added that have ended up with the game being arguably more confusing than it was even in the dark days of 7th. At least with 7th the core rules were fairly familiar to anyone who'd played 3rd through 6th, the real problem being the barrage of USRs and the horrors of formations- wait, huge amounts of extra rules and special bonuses given to certain collections of units in an army? That sounds oddly familiar...

 

You can absolutely write a simple and quick to learn wargame, but you will have to make sacrifices to what you can field to make it work. If you want a 28mm scale game where you're fielding various shapes and sizes of infantry with varieties of weapons alongside multi-turreted tanks and towering alien monstrosities, it's going to require more complex rules than one where 90% of units fall into three different categories.

 

Looping back to the original topic, game scope creep has absolutely had a hand in making things worse. Bigger games means more room for things like super-heavies, which need more complex rules to handle (and also skew the game towards bigger and bigger units, but that's another topic altogether).

[Kallas]

47 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

Which wasn't being used as a selling point for why it's a simpler edition, but was given as an anecdote on how it could be even simpler if you find the other stuff too complex; it's literally right in the post you quoted. 

Yes, but them saying, "It's easier if you ignore half the rules" is not a good way to sell an edition being simpler, which they're doing by saying 'even easier'. They did say that it is simpler, but they also said it's even more simple when you ignore rules which is...just a weird thing to say. You could just roll a dice off and decide a winner from that: simplest game ever! But it's not 40k at that point, and it's sort of the same if you're just removing a bunch of rules (especially ones that are referenced by other units).

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

4 hours ago, Tawnis said:

It still is compared to 9th, where in Space Marines for instance, you had 13 Faction Specific rules, a few of them like Bolter Discipline and Combat Doctrine with their own sub rules. Then you had your detachment, and your chapter tactics, and you could custom mix your own chapter tactics if you didn't like the default ones. Then you had over 20 base stratagems, plus the default stratagems that everyone had, plus the ones from your specific chapter. Then you had the rules for your Army of Renown, and the stratagems that gave you. Than in the units you have all the points related Wargear options (which I personally like, but was more complex), and then the Force Organization chart to partially restrict what units you could take in a list. And all of that is not counting all the balance changes and errata, which still happen now, there were so many more things that could change in 9th. 

So yeah, 10th is a lot simpler when all your faction rules are on two pages of text and all the unit information is on their cards. 

Chapter tactics is no different from detachments except there’s no fun ‘make your own’ option. 

 

the part of the game that makes it complicated is every datasheet having its own special rule, and all the Strats.

 

the removal of the to hit and to wound/damage chart was the biggest simplification the game has seen, and i like that, but the Strats, unit abilities, enhancements etc, added the same level of complexity if not more.

[DemonGSides]

8 hours ago, Kallas said:

Yes, but them saying, "It's easier if you ignore half the rules" is not a good way to sell an edition being simpler, which they're doing by saying 'even easier'. They did say that it is simpler, but they also said it's even more simple when you ignore rules which is...just a weird thing to say. You could just roll a dice off and decide a winner from that: simplest game ever! But it's not 40k at that point, and it's sort of the same if you're just removing a bunch of rules (especially ones that are referenced by other units).

 

Just seems like a bit of a disingenuous reading of the other person's comment.

 

I'm sure you've never left off a part of a game that got annoying for you. Always played every game exactly as it was written to be played by a designer.  Never once played a house rule anywhere.

 

Like you couldn't read their post as "Even when I removed certain rules the game is still super fun and playable"?

Edited February 26 by DemonGSides

[phandaal]

11 hours ago, Kallas said:

Kind of a weird way to sell an edition being "simpler" though. "If you ignore a not-insignificant part of the game, it's easier!" Sure, so is ignoring all Detachments and half of each army's datasheets, but then are you still playing the game? Especially when some units have abilities tied in to using Stratagems and things (eg, Captains).

 

Ignoring a bunch of the rules does sound like it could make the experience better though (although at that point maybe just play a different set of rules). 

 

Is 10th actually simpler? It seemed that way from the start, but then rerolls and strategems and all that stayed in, and the net result seems pretty much the same. Maybe you are not selecting from 13 different faction rules, but you do have a faction (detachment) rule once you start actually playing the game.

 

Anyway, on topic - my Votann army definitely got bigger in 10th, because the units had to become cheap as Skittles to make up for the unfinished Index. It was one of the main reasons I stopped using current edition rules for my games. To hell with spending twice as much time building an army just to play with crappy rules.

 

That is a very recent example of course, not over the same time frame as 2nd to 10th.

Edited February 26 by phandaal

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

25 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

Ignoring a bunch of the rules does sound like it could make the experience better though (although at that point maybe just play a different set of rules). 

 

Is 10th actually simpler? It seemed that way from the start, but then rerolls and strategems and all that stayed in, and the net result seems pretty much the same. Maybe you are not selecting from 13 different faction rules, but you do have a faction (detachment) rule once you start actually playing the game.

 

Anyway, on topic - my Votann army definitely got bigger in 10th, because the units had to become cheap as Skittles to make up for the unfinished Index. It was one of the main reasons I stopped using current edition rules for my games. To hell with spending twice as much time building an army just to play with crappy rules.

 

That is a very recent example of course, not over the same time frame as 2nd to 10th.

Right? For marines we have like 20 detachment rules we can choose from now.

 

8 main dex, and 4 for each supplement for 16 more and a total of 24 total.

each has unique enhancements and stratagems  to go with it. It seems like 6 Strats and 4 enhancements per detachment. For a grand total of 240 special rules available to marine players.

 

it is indeed more complicated than 9th imho

Edited February 26 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Arikel]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Right? For marines we have like 20 detachment rules we can choose from now.

 

8 main dex, and 4 for each supplement for 16 more and a total of 24 total.

each has unique enhancements and stratagems  to go with it. It seems like 6 Strats and 4 enhancements per detachment. For a grand total of 240 special rules available to marine players.

 

it is indeed more complicated than 9th imho

Is it though? While army building might be more complex, if you are into min/max and number crunching, once you’ve chosen the detachment and are actually playing it feels more streamlined. Apart from the general stratagems, you just have to worry about your detachment rules, and can completely ignore the 230 others. Less mental stress while playing, I suppose, perhaps more work in prepping.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

41 minutes ago, Arikel said:

Is it though? While army building might be more complex, if you are into min/max and number crunching, once you’ve chosen the detachment and are actually playing it feels more streamlined. Apart from the general stratagems, you just have to worry about your detachment rules, and can completely ignore the 230 others. Less mental stress while playing, I suppose, perhaps more work in prepping.

Ok, so I have to make learning the game a full time job or a full blown college course for it to be simple and streamlined?

 

thats the hottest hot take about how simple this game is I’ve ever heard.

 

and what happens in 3 months or less when they change a detachment rule, or a unit ability that was the lynchpin to making a list meta.

but also that attitude only works for one kind of player. The meta chasing nerds who can’t stand not running the most optimized cheeses sweaty list there is.

 

that doesn’t work for any other type of player, and definitely not casual players with other things going on in their lives like other hobbies, jobs, family, friends etc

how about people with more than one army? Am I supposed to memorize all this for every army I have? What if the most meta army out there just doesn’t tickle my fancy for units and play style? Just feth me and every player like me, we have to be stuck with a complicated mess of a game?

Edited February 26 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Kallas]

4 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

Just seems like a bit of a disingenuous reading of the other person's comment.

 

I'm sure you've never left off a part of a game that got annoying for you. Always played every game exactly as it was written to be played by a designer.  Never once played a house rule anywhere.

Whatever you say man.

 

Houseruling something depends on the severity, and it's one of the reasons why houseruling is done relatively rarely outside of small, tight knight groups - houseruling something as severe as "no Stratagems" is quite significant: it's part of the balancing (attempt) of each detachment and it also ties into some unit rules (as mentioned before, things like Captains have part of their rules based on the existence of Stratagems). Houseruling an interaction that's unclear so that everyone is on the same page? Yeah, totally understandable and reasonable; ditching a not-insignificant part of the army composition and interactions is a lot more impactful and a lot more of a departure.

 

Quote

Like you couldn't read their post as "Even when I removed certain rules the game is still super fun and playable"?

So now it's my fault that they said what they said and not something else entirely?

 

4 hours ago, phandaal said:

Ignoring a bunch of the rules does sound like it could make the experience better though (although at that point maybe just play a different set of rules). 

I mean, I don't disagree, just that wasn't the thing being said - it was saying that it makes the game simpler (which it does) but then removing rules in general is going to make any system simpler (hence my reducto ad absurdum argument about just making a single dice off to see who wins). 10th was built with Stratagems involved from the start (again, some units have abilities tied to Strats), so it's not really reasonable to state that the edition is easier/simpler when you ignore a big chunk of it - if you ignore significant parts of the edition, you're not really selling that that edition is simpler.

[Xenith]

=][= This topic is about the size of armies, now how you use them/complexity, let's get back on track please, we'll think about whether it's worth splitting off the simplification discussion - PM me if you think it has merit =][=

[Antarius]

On 2/25/2025 at 10:48 AM, Jukkiz said:

with every new release of the army, we keep getting new units, so of course it would bloat any army that keeps getting new codex and rules, right?

Just as a data point, in the 4th ed. Tyranid Codex there were 15 units in total. In 10th there's 47(!)
Now, admittedly, a couple of those are due to stuff like the Hive Tyrant/Winged Hive Tyrant  being split into two datasheets, where wings was just an upgrade option before. But still...
I suspect that a lot of these added options are actually about recognizing that some wargear options are too impactful to just be included in the price (i.e. a Winged Hive Tyrant is worth more than one without wings, so in order to account for this it's split off into a more expensive unit, since the new paradigm is that wargear is free). Edit: Argh, it seems like a Winged Hive Tyrant is actually cheaper, because it has fewer weapons, I guess. But I hope the point still stands  

Edited February 26 by Antarius

[Evil Eye]

1 hour ago, Antarius said:

Just as a data point, in the 4th ed. Tyranid Codex there were 15 units in total. In 10th there's 47(!)
Now, admittedly, a couple of those are due to stuff like the Hive Tyrant/Winged Hive Tyrant  being split into two datasheets, where wings was just an upgrade option before. But still...
I suspect that a lot of these added options are actually about recognizing that some wargear options are too impactful to just be included in the price (i.e. a Winged Hive Tyrant is worth more than one without wings, so in order to account for this it's split off into a more expensive unit, since the new paradigm is that wargear is free). Edit: Argh, it seems like a Winged Hive Tyrant is actually cheaper, because it has fewer weapons, I guess. But I hope the point still stands  

Crikey, I had no idea the sheet-inflation was THAT bad! But yeah, there's a lot of that; Tyranid Warriors used to be one highly-customizable unit as opposed to two barely customizable ones. Likewise the Carnifex was one datasheet with a metric tonne of options, rather than however many builds it got split into + the Screamer-Killer. And don't get me started on what happened with Marines (HQ choices like the Chaplain getting split into datasheets for EVERY SINGLE LOADOUT).

 

It feels particularly bad because in spite of the vast increase in datasheets, armies feel less customizable now. Looping back to Tyranids, 4E gaunts could be outfitted as everything from endless swarms of cannon fodder (spinegaunts with "without number" being 8 points a model) to surprisingly effective super-bugs (for 10 points you could give a gaunt a fleshborer, toxin sacs and scuttlers, giving you critters with S5 guns and the scout USR).

[Jscarlos18]

One factor that adds to the bloat is GW folding small factions into bigger ones, like Deathwatch or Harlequins/Ynnari.

 

Space Marines get many releases in each edition since the pattern is usually like this: Edition Box+Second Wave with multipart kits+Insular releases. I imagine the normal Codex will eventually decrease in size as Primarchs return and their Legions get individual supplements.

 

Chaos Space Marines is similar to them but to a lesser degree. The mono-God Legions are now split. Time will tell if WB, IW, NL and AL will also be getting their own book, while leaving Black Legion and normal Chaos/Renegades in the main CSM codex.

 

As Antarius mentioned, in 10th edition many datasheets were split based on their wargear options. Looking at some examples, the pattern seem to be when the unit has wings/jetpack they divide them in grounded and flying datasheets. But there's also outliers like the Crisis Suits becoming 3 different units with specific weapons.

 

But there has been some units that had been deleted. Tyranids for example lost Trygon Prime or the Neurothrope that became part of the normal Zoanthrope unit and Tyranid Prime that is now the squad leader of Tyranid Warriors evne though the Winged Prime is a unique model. This last one gives me hope GW will update the kit and make the Prime an individual unit someday.

Edited February 26 by Jscarlos18

[m_r_parker]

Honestly, this thread made me go back and revisit an older army from ‘back in the day’ and see how it translates to 10th Ed.

The army in question was my 4th / 5th Ed Dark Angels (4th Ed codex written with 5th in mind) and my base 1500 list. Quite simple, 15 models total: Belial, 2x Deathwing Squads (one with Apothecary and Deathwing Standard), 2x Venerable Dreadnoughts, Land Raider and Land Raider Crusader. 
For 10th Ed this isn’t a direct transfer because of the Apothecary and Standard (paid upgrades in 4th), but running the numbers in the 40K app this list comes in at 1175 without those upgrades. I can throw in a dedicated Ancient in Termi Armour and still have enough points for another squad or another Land Raider. That’s a solid 20-30% bigger over the editions.