New Warhammer 40,000 Edition announced!

[SkimaskMohawk]

Re terrain not being fair to certain unit types trying to score objectives, that used to be the point.

 

Back in the day, one of the inherent ways that punished lopsided builds was that if you took too many monsters, cavalry and vehicles your opponent could just put objectives on the top floors of ruins and you wouldn't be able to contest them (or score if your plan was to dump troops out of devilfish or serpents). 

 

Now I know being penalized for making wrong decisions is a big taboo these days (see heavy weapons giving the extra bonus even if you still move up from literally can't do anything if you move of the past), but maybe not everything should be viable for every occasion?

[Evil Eye]

33 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Re terrain not being fair to certain unit types trying to score objectives, that used to be the point.

 

Back in the day, one of the inherent ways that punished lopsided builds was that if you took too many monsters, cavalry and vehicles your opponent could just put objectives on the top floors of ruins and you wouldn't be able to contest them (or score if your plan was to dump troops out of devilfish or serpents). 

 

Now I know being penalized for making wrong decisions is a big taboo these days (see heavy weapons giving the extra bonus even if you still move up from literally can't do anything if you move of the past), but maybe not everything should be viable for every occasion?

This! All of this! Thank you!

[Mogger351]

2 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

I think the answer is to just apply creative liberty to the rules and exercise basic judgement/pre-game discussion on non-square objectives. Realistically, a piece of area terrain that is roughly within the right dimensions for the recommended guidelines for objective sizes and has some kind of relatively clear border/boundary will be fine, regardless of if it's rectangular, oval or even a more natural squiggly shape (as in the case of a forest). The impact it will have on the function of the game will be microscopic and unless you're playing in a big-league tournament (in which case, Emperor help you) it won't impact the game in any meaningful way other than allowing for more variety and a more aesthetically pleasing battlefield. This is a tabletop game played between two people who presumably are on good terms judging by them wanting to play a game together; the game won't glitch or crash if you try and load non-quadrilateral objectives into the map.

There's the same to be said for objective placement, although that has a notably larger impact on the game.

 

However I suspect anything that does crop up negatively, the standard response will be "well you should use the recommended layout and terrain".

[gideon stargreave]

1 hour ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Re terrain not being fair to certain unit types trying to score objectives, that used to be the point.

 

Back in the day, one of the inherent ways that punished lopsided builds was that if you took too many monsters, cavalry and vehicles your opponent could just put objectives on the top floors of ruins and you wouldn't be able to contest them (or score if your plan was to dump troops out of devilfish or serpents). 

 

Now I know being penalized for making wrong decisions is a big taboo these days (see heavy weapons giving the extra bonus even if you still move up from literally can't do anything if you move of the past), but maybe not everything should be viable for every occasion?

I absolutely agree. Monibuilds should be punished, the fun of playing one is the risk. 
 

similarly, it is depressing how much people are complaining about terrain templates. The lack of gaming creativity is miserable

[Mogger351]

21 minutes ago, gideon stargreave said:

I absolutely agree. Monibuilds should be punished, the fun of playing one is the risk. 
 

similarly, it is depressing how much people are complaining about terrain templates. The lack of gaming creativity is miserable

You're stating it's good to be punished for gaming creativity right?

[Brother Carpenter]

4 hours ago, Lord Blacksteel said:

No, no - a square forest is "overgrown ruins", a square crater is "flattened ruins", and a square pond is "submerged ruins" - it all works!

No a square forest is a Dutch forest. Only here do trees grow exactly 25 meters apart.

[Evil Eye]

13 hours ago, Mogger351 said:

You're stating it's good to be punished for gaming creativity right?

I don't think that's what was being said at all. The point is more that highly specialised "skew lists" will (or should) play differently with different strengths and weaknesses compared to both more conventional lists and other, differently specialised lists. An infantry horde will be weak to blasts and fast firing weapons but will render anti-tank guns that use single high-strength shots pretty useless. An army mostly made of tanks or monsters will shrug off small arms fire but be vulnerable to big guns and the destruction of one unit will be a bigger loss. It also depends on the theatre of war; in a city fight large vehicles will be at a disadvantage, with the tight confines of an urban environment restricting their mobility and rendering long range weapons redundant. By contrast in a more open battlefield with little cover, unprotected infantry is highly susceptible to artillery, and some means of protection (transports, cover save generating units like Venomthropes etc) are essential for their survival.

 

The idea that one army list should be equally effective against all foes on all battlefields just isn't workable. That's not how warfare works; technically and numerically superior forces have been humbled by bringing the wrong tool for the job, such as in Vietnam. An extreme example as there were other factors at play but the US's technological advantage was of no help as their war materiel was not suited to the war they ended up fighting; heavy tanks were basically useless in the dense jungle and the best rifle in the world was of no use when your opponent is disguised as a tree or a civilian.

 

Point being, army composition should have some impact on its suitability to different scenarios, opponents and terrain. 

[Maritn]

17 hours ago, Kommisar_K said:

So I don't know if it's been discussed yet (too much backlog to read through) but I'd like to express my appreciation for the new Fly rule. -2" to movement and ignore everything in your path. Way simpler. Way more effective. Like the updated Heavy rule, this is a major improvement on datasheet rules. The Kommisar is most pleased 

 

I like that it's simpler, but I hate how this renders terrain more "2D"... I also hate that the general vibe of terrain in 40K is more like curtains than ruins. Having them restrict movement for every unit (also infantry) in a meaningful way would make the game way more interesting IMHO. 

[Silvereyes]

From a casual standpoint, I actually really like the new objectives. At my gaming club, we keep our terrain in storage at the place we game. We have lots of terrain, some of it recent 40K, some of it old 40K, some of it from stuff like Warhammer Fantasy and AoS, a decent amount of MDF terrain, and lots of odd bits and ends. The idea that objectives aren't just a standard set size, but can be any size or shape you want works well when you don't have access to the exact terrain GW has in mind, or going to the effort of making transparent terrain plates. I can just take the terrain I have available for my game, make rough footprints, and just say "that building footprint is the objective", "that area between the 2 pieces of tree terrain is the objective" etc.

[Rhavien]

So GW is squaring the circle. Congratulations on that, took long enough to be figured out.

 

Jokes aside, I'm okay with what this will become. I don't care if tournaments will agree about rectangle shapes with ruins or whatever on it as I don't expect a narrative table on a tournament. At home I can use whatever I see fitting in whatever shape that doesn't disadvantage one side too much.

For 10th I had some 3d printed markers which incorporated the 3" circle as well and honestly I'm tired seeing them on every battlefield for the last years.

[Antarius]

I'm just going to ignore the terrain measurements and do something that seems reasonable with the terrain we have. I honestly don't see that as being a problem for "at home" games. I do think the fixed terrain might impact the game negatively when it comes to pick-up games, however (and by extension, it might impact the game as a whole, going forward. But that remains to be seen, so I won't panic on that account).

Now, this is obviously partly a community problem, but at the same time it's an incontrovertible fact that the "official" line does impact games quite a bit (I mean, I've had people on this forum insist that a Kill Team that was one day "too old" would be unplayable in pick-up games because people would simply refuse to play against it. Now, I would tend to doubt that that's true, but if that's the mentality, then it's pretty obvious that people aren't going to deviate from the prescribed terrain "rules", either because they themselves will refuse to deviate or because they're sure other people will refuse to). At the end of the day, it's not really possible to say how things will eventually shake out, except that it seems obvious that it will change how most people approach terrain and terrain layouts.

[Mogger351]

2 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

I don't think that's what was being said at all. The point is more that highly specialised "skew lists" will (or should) play differently with different strengths and weaknesses compared to both more conventional lists and other, differently specialised lists. An infantry horde will be weak to blasts and fast firing weapons but will render anti-tank guns that use single high-strength shots pretty useless. An army mostly made of tanks or monsters will shrug off small arms fire but be vulnerable to big guns and the destruction of one unit will be a bigger loss. It also depends on the theatre of war; in a city fight large vehicles will be at a disadvantage, with the tight confines of an urban environment restricting their mobility and rendering long range weapons redundant. By contrast in a more open battlefield with little cover, unprotected infantry is highly susceptible to artillery, and some means of protection (transports, cover save generating units like Venomthropes etc) are essential for their survival.

 

The idea that one army list should be equally effective against all foes on all battlefields just isn't workable. That's not how warfare works; technically and numerically superior forces have been humbled by bringing the wrong tool for the job, such as in Vietnam. An extreme example as there were other factors at play but the US's technological advantage was of no help as their war materiel was not suited to the war they ended up fighting; heavy tanks were basically useless in the dense jungle and the best rifle in the world was of no use when your opponent is disguised as a tree or a civilian.

 

Point being, army composition should have some impact on its suitability to different scenarios, opponents and terrain. 

Conceptually I agree.

 

Being clear though the lack of creativity stated was in using none-gw-stamped terrain, footprints and layouts as a reflection of poor state of the community etc.

 

But if I don't get creative, those skew lists aren't punished by the mission.

 

Objectively the point made was "be creative with your terrain, btw it's good if your skew army now had a harder time as a result". Which isn't always a happy take.

[Karhedron]

17 hours ago, gideon stargreave said:

I absolutely agree. Monibuilds should be punished, the fun of playing one is the risk.

 

That boat sailed once Knights became a standalone faction. For better or worse, skew-lists are a standard part of the meta now.

[Kommisar_K]

5 hours ago, Maritn said:

 

I like that it's simpler, but I hate how this renders terrain more "2D"... I also hate that the general vibe of terrain in 40K is more like curtains than ruins. Having them restrict movement for every unit (also infantry) in a meaningful way would make the game way more interesting IMHO. 

 

Very true. Ever since infantry started going through walls terrain has gotten a little less effective. The balance between 'meaningful unit' and 'meaningful terrain' has been hard to achieve. I personally appreciate flying units actually becoming relevant again, but definitely get your point. 

 

What do you think might work? Maybe a movement penalty for infantry units that do go through? Like - 2" to movement if a model passes through a wall/other terrain feature. Kinda like some of the old crater/woods rules. This way let's infantry maintain that tactical ability while hopefully keeping ruins relevant. Also the - 2" could be narratively explained as everyone lining up to go through a door, window, etc.

[Lexington]

23 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

I think the answer is to just apply creative liberty to the rules and exercise basic judgement/pre-game discussion on non-square objectives. Realistically, a piece of area terrain that is roughly within the right dimensions for the recommended guidelines for objective sizes and has some kind of relatively clear border/boundary will be fine, regardless of if it's rectangular, oval or even a more natural squiggly shape (as in the case of a forest).

 

Heartily agreed. Also of note, if one want to play an obsessively well-balanced tabletop miniatures wargame, you're living in probably the best time in the history of the universe to do so. Warhammer 40,000 just isn't one of them. In its 30+ years, 40K has only ever achieved "good enough," and that's been a rare enough occurrence. If you want to have fun with it, then you're probably going to do just fine, but if you want to try and push the system as far as possible in a competitive manner, no amount of pre-designed terrain is going to magically make the game very good at that.

[Maritn]

5 hours ago, Kommisar_K said:

 

Very true. Ever since infantry started going through walls terrain has gotten a little less effective. The balance between 'meaningful unit' and 'meaningful terrain' has been hard to achieve. I personally appreciate flying units actually becoming relevant again, but definitely get your point. 

 

What do you think might work? Maybe a movement penalty for infantry units that do go through? Like - 2" to movement if a model passes through a wall/other terrain feature. Kinda like some of the old crater/woods rules. This way let's infantry maintain that tactical ability while hopefully keeping ruins relevant. Also the - 2" could be narratively explained as everyone lining up to go through a door, window, etc.

 

The way I play with one of my best friends back at home is no moves through walls at all. Depending on the ruins we might say that a door is usable, but otherwise it's blocking movement completely. It's so much more interesting that way, and I wish this was the default so I could play it like this with anyone. You really have to make commitments when moving into bigger buildings. 

Regarding the "Fly" keyword, I'd prefer the bonus only being able to move over any unit and small obstacles, and ignoring difficult terrain, as most of these units are not really planes anyway. Let moving over buildings be what makes aircraft special.

[phandaal]

6 hours ago, Lexington said:

if you want to try and push the system as far as possible in a competitive manner, no amount of pre-designed terrain is going to magically make the game very good at that.

 

This is a really great point, and it applies to everything about 40k, not just terrain.