New Warhammer 40,000 Edition announced!

[ZeroWolf]

2 hours ago, Antarius said:

I don't disagree with the points about control of your army, exactly, but I think it is in some ways more that people think they want not to be forced to do things. I think the target priority rules went away for the same reason, but I am not at all convinced that the game has actually been better or more enjoyable because of it.

I don't want to sound like I think all this newfangled stuff is bad and everything was golden back in the day, but I think morale and target priority are good examples of rules that meant you had to think about how to make your army perform well, even if everything didn't go your way - and it also meant you could outmaneuver/outsmart the enemy in ways that were less about pure firepower. To me, that made the game tactically satisfying in ways that seem difficult to replicate within the current dogma of "restrictions bad".

 

"But morale is very random" you might say. To which I would answer "yes, but how you plan for it/try to provoke morale tests isn't". Similarly, target priority rules might mean nothing if you rolled well on your leadership tests, but they did mean troop placement became a lot more tactical ("how do I move my troops so my opponent might have to fire on a less ideal target?" and "how do I move my troops so their shots aren't wasted if they fail their LD test?" etc.).

I'm not holding my breath for these types of rules to come back, but they were impactful, easy to keep track of and - at least to me - made the game feel both more "real" and more enjoyable.

You're still running into the same problems though of morale trying to be a one size fits all when really it only applies to armies with some common sense. Neurons, Tyranids, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, World Eaters, demons, and probably Orks should all straight up ignore it for instance.

 

Honestly didn't know where to put Emperor's Children in that mind, as I would imagine they would be too drugged up to care about morale?

[Antarius]

31 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

You're still running into the same problems though of morale trying to be a one size fits all when really it only applies to armies with some common sense. Neurons, Tyranids, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, World Eaters, demons, and probably Orks should all straight up ignore it for instance.

 

Honestly didn't know where to put Emperor's Children in that mind, as I would imagine they would be too drugged up to care about morale?

Well, in the past there were different rules to mitigate these things. Fearless, "And They Shall Know No Fear", "Daemonic Instability", "Mob Rule" (I think that's what the Ork variant was called, but I might be wrong) and "Synapse" all mitigated or ignored morale rules in different ways. Many of thee rules were pretty flavourful with e.g. Orks and Tyranids only ignoring morale in certain circumstances, which I think was a better way of doing it than just letting them ignore it altogether.

Honestly, a lager problem in previous editions was that so many armies had rules that meant morale didn't really affect them most of the time and so morale was kinda-sorta irrelevant in a lot of games, begging the question why it was such a big part of the core rules. That probably contributed to it being basically removed, I think.

Edited Thursday at 10:21 AM by Antarius

[01RTB01]

29 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

You're still running into the same problems though of morale trying to be a one size fits all when really it only applies to armies with some common sense. Neurons, Tyranids, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, World Eaters, demons, and probably Orks should all straight up ignore it for instance.

 

Honestly didn't know where to put Emperor's Children in that mind, as I would imagine they would be too drugged up to care about morale?

 

I think morale can be argued both ways for most forces. Although "immune" it's also representative of tactical withdrawals which can be argued for the majority of forces including some you've named.

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, ZeroWolf said:

You're still running into the same problems though of morale trying to be a one size fits all when really it only applies to armies with some common sense. Neurons, Tyranids, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, World Eaters, demons, and probably Orks should all straight up ignore it for instance.

 

Honestly didn't know where to put Emperor's Children in that mind, as I would imagine they would be too drugged up to care about morale?

 

Morale does not always represent a unit running away or cowering in fear. A Tyranid gaunt may get hit so hard it gets knocked down or temporarily stunned, or a Necron warrior may get turned around and confused and take a moment to get its bearings. Stuff like that.

[ChapterMasterGodfrey]

6 minutes ago, phandaal said:

Morale does not always represent a unit running away or cowering in fear. A Tyranid gaunt may get hit so hard it gets knocked down or temporarily stunned, or a Necron warrior may get turned around and confused and take a moment to get its bearings. Stuff like that.

So we should bring back Will, Intelligence and Wisdom a la HH 3.0? I vote yes I like granularity.

[DemonGSides]

35 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

Morale does not always represent a unit running away or cowering in fear. A Tyranid gaunt may get hit so hard it gets knocked down or temporarily stunned, or a Necron warrior may get turned around and confused and take a moment to get its bearings. Stuff like that.

 

And I think that would be cool to have in the game if it made sense and wasn't an immediate feels bad. But I don't know if "Every army reacts differently to their morale tests" is a worthwhile addition to the game. It could be! But I'm not sure.  Especially when just moments ago people were complaining about the mental load of knowing when a unit in their army had fired within the last turn. 

[Antarius]

11 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

And I think that would be cool to have in the game if it made sense and wasn't an immediate feels bad. But I don't know if "Every army reacts differently to their morale tests" is a worthwhile addition to the game. It could be! But I'm not sure.  Especially when just moments ago people were complaining about the mental load of knowing when a unit in their army had fired within the last turn. 

I think the point was that a generic "morale check" might represent all those situations, not that they needed to have a separate set of rules for each.

As for what forces should/shouldn't be immune to morale, I would argue that almost noone should. After all, leadership stats are there precisely to make sure forces who ought to ignore morale most of the time actually do ignore morale most of the time.
If it came down to choosing the lesser evil, I'd rather see Space Marines falling back a little more often than I'd like than I'd see everyone behaving like automatons.

[DemonGSides]

3 minutes ago, Antarius said:

I think the point was that a generic "morale check" might represent all those situations, not that they needed to have a separate set of rules for each.

As for what forces should/shouldn't be immune to morale, I would argue that almost noone should. After all, leadership stats are there precisely to make sure forces who ought to ignore morale most of the time actually do ignore morale most of the time.
If it came down to choosing the lesser evil, I'd rather see Space Marines falling back a little more often than I'd like than I'd see everyone behaving like automatons.

 

The check itself can be generic, but the conversation at hand is quite literally "most of these factions wouldn't suffer from 'morale' in the classical sense, so what would be the outcome of a morale check that isn't just 'ignore'?" Because there really hasnt ever been a 'great' morale system for 40k that makes sense to apply to everyone evenly, so there was the suggestion that each army reacts to morale check failure differently.

 

So like I said, it's more to remember. I have to remember that SM doesn't react the same as Necrons, who don't react the same as IG, and so on and so forth. I think that's Cool, but I don't think it's very practical.

 

The current version is basically just a gameplay binary that's tactically interesting but flavor and theme it's kinda meh.  The only army that really feels the battle shock is IG, and maybe sometimes Tyranids. Everyone else mostly doesn't care as the units can just pivot to doing damage or waiting a turn.

[Focslain]

5 hours ago, Karhedron said:

I can see pistol armed squads opting not to fire before charging if they are assaulting enemy in terrain. If they wipe the enemy and consolidate into terrain, they can claim the Hidden bonus in the next turn and avoid retaliatory fire. Of course there may be some rule further on which prevents this but as it stands, it feels a bit odd that enemies cannot shoot the squad of Beserkers that just massacred their buddie in the woods because the Beserkers didn't fire their pistols and are now invisible.

 

"Hey, where did they go?" 

Most melee focused tyranid units would really get a buff from this. Leapers would be closer to thier Lictor cousins, genestealers and hormaguants just boncing from terrain to terrian.

[Crimson Longinus]

I made paper templates of the new terrain areas and checked my existing based terrain. Unsurprisingly none of it is match. 

[DemonGSides]

Yeah I've got some cardboard templates from 10th and they're all just slightly out of alignment, which OF COURSE they are  Thankfully all the other deployment zones markers and stuff I have is still usable going forward.

[Lord Marshal]

Somebody over on Reddit set out their terrain according to the new maps. Looks pretty decent and dense, although I know the cardboard bases will make some people gasp in horror, but that doesn't seem like anything a bit of PVA and some flock or basing paste won't fix.

 

Edited Thursday at 03:30 PM by Lord Marshal

[Antarius]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

The check itself can be generic, but the conversation at hand is quite literally "most of these factions wouldn't suffer from 'morale' in the classical sense, so what would be the outcome of a morale check that isn't just 'ignore'?" Because there really hasnt ever been a 'great' morale system for 40k that makes sense to apply to everyone evenly, so there was the suggestion that each army reacts to morale check failure differently.

 

So like I said, it's more to remember. I have to remember that SM doesn't react the same as Necrons, who don't react the same as IG, and so on and so forth. I think that's Cool, but I don't think it's very practical.

 

The current version is basically just a gameplay binary that's tactically interesting but flavor and theme it's kinda meh.  The only army that really feels the battle shock is IG, and maybe sometimes Tyranids. Everyone else mostly doesn't care as the units can just pivot to doing damage or waiting a turn.

I can’t speak for phandaal, but my reading of their post wasn’t that models should react differently in game terms, but that the same result can be interpreted as representing different things. Sort of like how a model being removed due to having 0 wounds left might represent other things than being slain outright.

[Ahzek451]

I see an opportunity to make some clear acrylic see-through templates. I think a lot.of tournaments do that already to attempt to not mess too much with the board immersion. 

[Crimson Longinus]

5 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

I see an opportunity to make some clear acrylic see-through templates. I think a lot.of tournaments do that already to attempt to not mess too much with the board immersion. 

 

Probably. Those are ugly. 

 

I wish GW would release textured plastic templates that fit their terrain. 

[Mogger351]

31 minutes ago, Crimson Longinus said:

 

Probably. Those are ugly. 

 

I wish GW would release textured plastic templates that fit their terrain. 

Feelings on the layouts aside, that'd be a godsend of a hobby item

[DemonGSides]

54 minutes ago, Antarius said:

I can’t speak for phandaal, but my reading of their post wasn’t that models should react differently in game terms, but that the same result can be interpreted as representing different things. Sort of like how a model being removed due to having 0 wounds left might represent other things than being slain outright.

 

My first response to them wasn't in opposition in the sense of I don't agree, it was to say "and the opposite of this system would be one where everyone's got their own way of doing a morale check, and I don't know that that is a better option." I can see where this isn't obvious in my comment so my apologies.

 

I got what they were saying, I don't even disagree. I was saying that the current way (the abstract way) is boring and no one likes it any more than they did the system where entire units were wiped out.

 

There's a cooler way of doing morale tests (everyone has their own version of morale) that would become a memory nightmare of knowing how every factions going to interact with their morale failing.  Is that system "better" just because it's a lot more flavorful?  I don't know. I don't think so just because it's gonna be taxing and then it would also have knock on effects for any faction that does a bunch of battle shock chicanery.   I was more waxing on about this style than commentary on the abstract style we have. My apologies. 

[jaxom]

2 hours ago, Focslain said:

Most melee focused tyranid units would really get a buff from this. Leapers would be closer to thier Lictor cousins, genestealers and hormaguants just boncing from terrain to terrian.

I really like this. Very flavorful and it may prompt taking the flavorful counter: Flamer equipped units.

[Lexington]

5 hours ago, Antarius said:

Honestly, a lager problem in previous editions was that so many armies had rules that meant morale didn't really affect them most of the time and so morale was kinda-sorta irrelevant in a lot of games, begging the question why it was such a big part of the core rules.

 

"Morale: The Imperial Guard special rule that accidentally got printed in the rulebook" was something we used to say in my old 40K club a lot.

[Emperor Ming]

The thing is, will events/tornaments rule certain facings as cant see through as is currently or not

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, Crimson Longinus said:

I wish GW would release textured plastic templates that fit their terrain. 

 

The Warcomm article did imply that new terrain was coming to fit these templates (emphasis mine).

 

Quote

A set of Terrain Areas footprints will be available to purchase alongside the new edition. These already work well with some of the existing War Zone terrain sets, and future scenery sets are already being designed with these templates in mind.

 

Edited Thursday at 05:10 PM by Firedrake Cordova
Fixed illegible text

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

As someone looking to expand my small ork warband, I’m curious how they’re going to balance out ork shooting with this  -1 to hit/BS in cover

 

hitting on 5s this will destroy their shooting.

[Karhedron]

The changes to cover do seem like something that will benefit elite armies and penalise hordes.

[Mogger351]

7 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

As someone looking to expand my small ork warband, I’m curious how they’re going to balance out ork shooting with this  -1 to hit/BS in cover

 

hitting on 5s this will destroy their shooting.

I agree. For boyz they seemingly just went with "have all the loadouts" so it's more a minor buff for a choppa boy? I guess? But otherwise I just hope buckets of 100 dice resulting in 1 wound on a marine won't be normalised.

[DemonGSides]

3 hours ago, Emperor Ming said:

The thing is, will events/tornaments rule certain facings as cant see through as is currently or not

 

That's not a GW rule, that's a tournament organizer rule that's just propagated. It's easy enough to undo by just saying "that's not how this works anymore."