New Edition, or Just Horus Hearsay?

[Marshal Rohr]

I’d like to think I have built a reputation for being a lore purist brick by brick over 18 years but even I sincerely do not care how Saturnine is introduced. 
 

Here is what is happening and will continue to happen. Every single piece of space marine art, lore, and sculpted asset prior to the Primaris will now be the purview of Specialist Games. Every odd Rogue Trader reference, every boxnaught design, ever weird gun or robot in collected visions. If you are going through something from second edition and you see, say the perfected spherical drop pod or thunderbolt star destro… sorry Thunderbolt Dropship, SGDS is more that aware of it and it may come back. 
 

When they finally do get around to updating Cataphractii because they realize people will buy it, everyone is going to need to keep their [redacted] together when they’ve got big old plumes and massive axes like collected visions. The old Furibundus with big boots and massive hands? Guess what. Probably get that too. And it will sell. 
 

Hate what you want, love what you want, but for the love of nine pound six ounce baby Sanguinius stop talking about if it fits or is a retcon or doesn’t make sense or looks like trash. They will Make it. There’s nothing you can do but accept it or pretend it doesn’t exist.

[SkimaskMohawk]

7 hours ago, Matcap86 said:

Just the "ZOMG worst game of all time" seems a bit much

 

But that's not what I said, is it? I said it was the worst GW game they made that uses points. Maybe I should have specified it as a "continuously model supported GW game".

 

It's basically only balanced around how they package the models for sale and how ruinous it is to collect a lot of something specific direct from GW. Once you take that out of the equation and start looking at how a list that's primarily all infantry translates to the game, it gets rather obvious. The detachment system doesn't actually limit anything, the points costs on infantry in a 3000 point recommended game might as well not exist, and the lethality from both range and melee that you can output renders it into a game of units either scoop something or be scooped in return.

 

Past that, we can see their efforts to tinker with SM2s rules to modernize them and see the results. The original rules suggested 1500 points with units encompassing a pretty substantial baseline amount of stands; a unit of "eldar guardians" was 3 transports and 6 stands of infantry for 300 points and one activation, or three support platforms for 300 and one activation. Activation count was relatively low, but impactful; an environment alternate activation thrives in. Now the suggested points is 3000 and the units look like this: 4 stands of infantry for 35 points and one activation, 1 rhino for 10 points and one activation, 2 rapiers for 40 points and one activation, 3 scimitars for 35 points and one activation (you can make an infuriating 85 activation army). You get these enormous activation counts that bog down turns and ruin the point of alternate activations. You know what else ruins the entire point of them? Interrupt mechanics. They added in the ability to interrupt any move with a shooting attack, slowing down the turn further. But far worse than that, to make overwatch work, they had to break first fire and remove it's functionality to shoot the unit that charged them. The order basically serves no purpose in LI, as you discard it when activated while engaged in melee; advance can move, overwatch and even still shoot if their melee attacks killed the base contact models. Oh, and they also swapped out the sudden death tug of war for progressive scoring that starts from turn 1 (and access to infinite infiltrate to really make that fun).

 

They made a rules sandbox that's effectively 6mm apocalypse, where the best weapons completely overshadow the others and turn the game into a glass cannon off, infantry disproportionately steam roll everything, but the game still takes forever because of the activation count and book keeping with detachment break points.

 

So bringing this back to my original comment: what, exactly, would be the benefit of having the LI rules mashed up into heresy's? The team couldn't handle adding stuff to SM2. If anything, they should mash up the rules of SM2 and cut reactions; first fire order to lock movement and allow the unit to shoot first and shoot their charging unit.

Edited 5 hours ago by SkimaskMohawk

[DuskRaider]

4 hours ago, Matcap86 said:

The Mk6 was also retconned from: 'in testing in small units in early heresy, prevalent in late heresy' to: 'Everyone gets Mk6 all the time cause that's what we're selling right now!'. Curious to see if that gets ret-retconned now MK2 is in the spotlight and we're going back to Isstvan.

 

That retcon didn't sit well with me. I know lore was always subservient to the business side of things but that was so blatantly linked to facilitate the relaunch that banked hard on beakie nostalgia. 

At the end of the day they’re just trying to sell overpriced plastic models to an increasing audience, the lore is most certainly not sacred to them. Or at least not how it used to be or should be. 
 

I absolutely despise the proliferation of Mk. VI armor, especially when one of the major subplots during the Martian Civil War (and even referenced in the LI book) was the Alpha Legion infiltrating not only Mars but the Raven Guard to get their hands on it… and ruining the XIX geneseed / fast travel to Astarteshood. 
 

Back to LI… one of the biggest issues is that the factions themselves aren’t even close to internally balanced with the exception of perhaps Mechanicum / Dark Mechanicum. There are units that are such no-brainers in both the Auxilia and Astartes factions that they are (or should be) considered auto-includes. Coupled with  the stupid points system where some (or most) weapons options don’t actually have a point value, even when some are so absolute trash when compared to others that take the same exact slot, it makes for very cookie cutter games unless you’re playing against someone who is very hell bent on playing for the lore. 
 

There’s also the issue with their “inclusion” of both Knight Households and Titan Legios as their own specific factions while doing literally nothing to make them function as such. They were vastly overcosted and underpowered when they debuted, they could have fixed these issues and given points values to their weaponry, but instead of doing literally anything they just copy and pasted their poor and unbalanced stats into their own factions. It’s so lazy and unimaginative that it borders on incompetence. 

Edited 5 hours ago by DuskRaider

[Marshal Loss]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

When they finally do get around to updating Cataphractii because they realize people will buy it, everyone is going to need to keep their [redacted] together when they’ve got big old plumes and massive axes like collected visions.

 

This never occurred to me and now I am chomping at the bit for a Cataphractii refresh. Hope they go that route.

 

[Marshal Rohr]

1 hour ago, Marshal Loss said:

 

This never occurred to me and now I am chomping at the bit for a Cataphractii refresh. Hope they go that route.

 

 

 

It will be glorious, but I can already see the Crusade and Heresy posts in my mind. 

[MoriyaSchism]

5 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

I’d like to think I have built a reputation for being a lore purist brick by brick over 18 years but even I sincerely do not care how Saturnine is introduced. 
 

Here is what is happening and will continue to happen. Every single piece of space marine art, lore, and sculpted asset prior to the Primaris will now be the purview of Specialist Games. Every odd Rogue Trader reference, every boxnaught design, ever weird gun or robot in collected visions. If you are going through something from second edition and you see, say the perfected spherical drop pod or thunderbolt star destro… sorry Thunderbolt Dropship, SGDS is more that aware of it and it may come back. 
 

When they finally do get around to updating Cataphractii because they realize people will buy it, everyone is going to need to keep their [redacted] together when they’ve got big old plumes and massive axes like collected visions. The old Furibundus with big boots and massive hands? Guess what. Probably get that too. And it will sell. 

Didn't the Heresy from before already do this but with a much better aesthetic? Granted some of the early Heresy stuff came from Imperial Armour releases made for the Badab War. I wouldn't have any issue with stuff looking like Collected Visions, I just find it difficult to find anything in my copy of Collected Visions that looks exactly like some of the recent Heresy releases I don't like (new plastic Mark III, the new Phobos pattern bolter, some of the consuls and now the Saturnine pattern portion of this box). For example a lot of the helmet upgrades that replaced the old sets feel a lot softer and cartoony than what was established before, the updated plastic Mk VI and Mark III helmets don't seem to have the same sort of "mean" look to them as past iterations with only the Mark II helmet retaining the same style as before. Some of the recent releases look exactly like the old stuff (Contemptor dreadnought, most of the vehicles, the Mark IV and Mark V characters), but others I mentioned just have this strange soft look to them and the detailing on them doesn't match the image of the Heresy time period built by the Black Books, collected visions and returning Rogue Trader units. I just find it strange that my personal taste is being characterized as "toxic rivet counting" by some or I see people like Leaky Cheese make generalized statements by calling anyone who dislikes the new Mark IIIs "stupid".