New Warhammer 40,000 Edition announced!

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

27 minutes ago, jaxom said:

Unknown people decided shooting was too deadly without that specific abstraction. There's a reason, just one where the solution was... not very elegant.

Did they decide shooting was too deadly, or did they decide they wanted a space fantasy game that was melee heavy, so they skewed it against shooting.

[RadioActiveJellyFish]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

And those abstractions are logically inconsistent.

if I can fit through a gap, I can shoot through a gap.

 

it’s an abstraction, that also severely skews the game towards melee for no real reason.

I don't think you can bring in logical consistency and melee in the same sentence without pointing out dedicated melee units would be worthless in 99% of actual military engagements that the games represent. A logically consistent game simply wouldn't let melee be good, so certain concessions have to be made. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

3 hours ago, RadioActiveJellyFish said:

I don't think you can bring in logical consistency and melee in the same sentence without pointing out dedicated melee units would be worthless in 99% of actual military engagements that the games represent. A logically consistent game simply wouldn't let melee be good, so certain concessions have to be made. 

The terrain rules have almost always been terrible. I would like to see TLoS and immersive rules for terrain with as little abstraction as possible. Eg, shoot through  windows/small gaps hets negative to hit, unit has cover, reduces damage to models out of sight. Models can move through walls if they have the correct equipment, like melta bombs or some other breaching equipment.

Make the ground make sense again.

 

But, to enable CC to be viable, we need better rules around the Fog of War: Grenades, Explosions, Smoke,  Warp shenanigans, Esoteric Xenos effects etc which allows CC units chance to approach and charge without being slaughtered.

Or, make some CC units cheaper so some of them can arrive intact to fight.

There are better ways to skin the cat than making terrain rules awful.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

5 hours ago, RadioActiveJellyFish said:

I don't think you can bring in logical consistency and melee in the same sentence without pointing out dedicated melee units would be worthless in 99% of actual military engagements that the games represent. A logically consistent game simply wouldn't let melee be good, so certain concessions have to be made. 

Not really.

most of the melee units are super human walking tanks, demons, giant alien monsters, etc.

no reason why they’d wither away under a hail of las fire or what ever the common tau weapon is, or even bolt guns (which if I’m not mistaken were intended for lightly armored baseline humans or equivalents.) if the game was primarily unaltered humans vs unaltered humans, you’d have a point, but it’s not.

Edited Saturday at 11:27 PM by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[jaxom]

5 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Did they decide shooting was too deadly, or did they decide they wanted a space fantasy game that was melee heavy, so they skewed it against shooting.

They decided the game was too deadly transitioning from 9th to 10th. The rules "balance" to counter to blocking LoS and letting charges happen through walls was that early melee armies were "pillow-fisted" with much more tame melee profiles compared to later (e.g. Tyranids).

[Xenith]

15 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Did they decide shooting was too deadly, or did they decide they wanted a space fantasy game that was melee heavy, so they skewed it against shooting.

 

They *know* that Shooting is too deadly, after a decade of tourney results and countless modifications to the rules to tone down shooting and boost melee armies. 

[Xenith]

17 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

And those abstractions are logically inconsistent.

if I can fit through a gap, I can shoot through a gap.

 

it’s an abstraction, that also severely skews the game towards melee for no real reason.

 

The physical terrain is also an abstraction, not a simulation, and is only a representation of the type of terrain armies fight over. This used to be described in the rulebook.

 

You'll notice that none of the ruins we fight over have internal walls, most don't even have four walls, and forests generally have more than three isolated trees, spaced to allow infantry to pass through. 

 

 

 

[SvenIronhand]

4 hours ago, Xenith said:

They *know* that Shooting is too deadly, after a decade of tourney results and countless modifications to the rules to tone down shooting and boost melee armies. 

Also, 40k is a 'space fantasy game' that is 'melee heavy'!

[Evil Eye]

4 hours ago, Xenith said:

 

The physical terrain is also an abstraction, not a simulation, and is only a representation of the type of terrain armies fight over. This used to be described in the rulebook.

 

You'll notice that none of the ruins we fight over have internal walls, most don't even have four walls, and forests generally have more than three isolated trees, spaced to allow infantry to pass through. 

 

 

 

Whilst I do agree that to some degree abstraction is necessary for wargaming (for example, even historicals tend to deliberately undersize vehicles a little to make the game more playable, and 4th edition made blast weapons have to roll to hit like regular guns to avoid "blast sniping") I also believe that half the appeal of wargames is the "battle simulation" aspect, and too much abstraction can really harm that and make it feel a bit too "gamey". As weird as that sounds!

 

At least to me, abstraction should be used to help the simulationist elements work without either A: becoming awkward/abusable (blasts being able to miss altogether) or B: being hamstrung by the static nature of miniatures (not using completely literal TLOS to account for the fact a Space Marine can duck, crouch, move around etc). Walls being more like bulletproof curtains is at least to me a step too far.

[Lord Marshal]

 

WarCom article confirming Armageddon next week (shocker).

[The Lost Son]

Don't they usually throw in some extra stuff with the pre orders or is that long gone?

[Xenith]

3 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

Walls being more like bulletproof curtains is at least to me a step too far.

Remember that just as three trees on a base represents a forest, a ruin on a base represents a whole building, with internal walls, furniture, doors, etc. The whole building is not modelled for ease of gaming.

 

Older editions used to have random movement through terrain features to represent them being more or less dense/filled with obstacles as models moved through them.

 

I know that this style of terrain rule isn't to everyone's taste, but it is how it is, feel free to house rule the game to whatever you think makes sense and is the most fun!

 

On another note, do we have a price confirmation on this yet?

Edited Sunday at 06:30 PM by Xenith

[Blindhamster]

8 minutes ago, Xenith said:

On another note, do we have a price confirmation on this yet?

doesn't look like it :(

[phoenix01]

Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon will be available strictly while stocks last – but don’t worry, we have made a LOT!

 

Here we go again.

[GenerationTerrorist]

I don't really fancy any of the models from the box set, so will just keep an eye out for the Rulebook.

[Interrogator Stobz]

1 hour ago, Xenith said:

Remember that just as three trees on a base represents a forest, a ruin on a base represents a whole building, with internal walls, furniture, doors, etc. The whole building is not modelled for ease of gaming.

 

Older editions used to have random movement through terrain features to represent them being more or less dense/filled with obstacles as models moved through them.

 

I know that this style of terrain rule isn't to everyone's taste, but it is how it is, feel free to house rule the game to whatever you think makes sense and is the most fun!

 

On another note, do we have a price confirmation on this yet?

 

I heard trade price is £98.50

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Xenith said:

Remember that just as three trees on a base represents a forest, a ruin on a base represents a whole building, with internal walls, furniture, doors, etc. The whole building is not modelled for ease of gaming.

 

Older editions used to have random movement through terrain features to represent them being more or less dense/filled with obstacles as models moved through them.

 

I know that this style of terrain rule isn't to everyone's taste, but it is how it is, feel free to house rule the game to whatever you think makes sense and is the most fun!

 

On another note, do we have a price confirmation on this yet?

Yeah, and yet, moving through a building has 0 effect on movement. 
No matter how you cut it, the terrain rules of this edition has been logically inconsistent. 
we’re abstracting setting demo charges as an excuse to walk through a solid wall, we’re abstracting interior walls and other obstacles to explain  not being able to see all the way through or not shooting through, but were not abstracting the time it takes to set a demo charge, or picking through the rubble of the ruins, or single filing through doors, or room clearing(which is very slow if done properly.) all of which should reduce movement speed for the turn.

 

so even then the abstractions to justify the current melee skew still aren’t logically consistent

 

edit

and as for trees and forests, i don’t think anyone is abstracting 3 trees on a base as a whole forest or woods. It’s just those are common words for areas with multiple trees in an area, compared to a word like copse which is very uncommon, but a much accurate descriptor, since no one thinks a full forest or woods only covers 20-50 yards.

i live in a pretty standard American neighborhood and between my yard, and two of my neighbors we have nearly 20 trees with plenty of room to move around and do stuff. No one would say that my neighborhood is a forest or woods.

Edited Sunday at 08:54 PM by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Xenith]

7 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

i don’t think anyone is abstracting 3 trees on a base as a whole forest or woods. No one would say that... is a forest or woods.

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 03:51 AM by Xenith

[BadgersinHills]

10 hours ago, The Lost Son said:

Don't they usually throw in some extra stuff with the pre orders or is that long gone?

 

They threw in metal objective markers with Saturnine for FLGSes last year. 

[Antarius]

8 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Yeah, and yet, moving through a building has 0 effect on movement. 
No matter how you cut it, the terrain rules of this edition has been logically inconsistent. 
we’re abstracting setting demo charges as an excuse to walk through a solid wall, we’re abstracting interior walls and other obstacles to explain  not being able to see all the way through or not shooting through, but were not abstracting the time it takes to set a demo charge, or picking through the rubble of the ruins, or single filing through doors, or room clearing(which is very slow if done properly.) all of which should reduce movement speed for the turn.

 

so even then the abstractions to justify the current melee skew still aren’t logically consistent

 

edit

and as for trees and forests, i don’t think anyone is abstracting 3 trees on a base as a whole forest or woods. It’s just those are common words for areas with multiple trees in an area, compared to a word like copse which is very uncommon, but a much accurate descriptor, since no one thinks a full forest or woods only covers 20-50 yards.

i live in a pretty standard American neighborhood and between my yard, and two of my neighbors we have nearly 20 trees with plenty of room to move around and do stuff. No one would say that my neighborhood is a forest or woods.

I agree that it would be nice if terrain impacted movement, but you're really not doing your case any favours with this line of reasoning.
As Xenith has pointed out, the terrain kit for woods is literally three trees (and the old one was literally three trees on a base - just like all the homemade woods terrain basically is). No one has ever modelled woods as actual woods dense enough to do what their rules suggest(ed) they should do. After all, there has never been an edition where ruins terrain has impacted movement, but woods have not, so they're clearly intended to be a lot denser than depicted - or maybe they're supposed to represent a denser patch in a bigger area of woodland. And of course, noone has ever believed that models are frozen in the poses they are modelled in, so terrain rules, units and LOS are all abstractions by their very definition.

Now, would it be nice if the terrain rules were better? Probably, but if so, it's because they're not doing a good enough job of depicting what the concept of "ruins" or "woods" should do, not because they're not simulating the actual terrain kits closely enough (in which case we almost wouldn't need any terrain rules, as LOS would pretty much be the only effect terrain would be likely to have on 40K armies - and that's assuming they don't have more advanced targeting systems than their eyes and ears).

As for melee being unrealistically good, it has already been pointed out that it's supposed to be. But I think if we really get down to it, so is shooting. An autopistol wouldn't be able to damage a knight or a tank and in an actual, factual future that employed the kind of  technology 40K supposedly has, I don't think we'd see a lot of engagements where small arms fire at close range was even a thing, but it's an abstraction to make the game playable in the way the designers want it to. And that's just hitting power and targeting; we haven't even mentioned the ranges of weapons, which are obviously not intended to be literal either. Ranges, especially for tanks and artillery are completely off, compared to real life. Their engagement range in the game doesn't even match a modern rifle, so it's clearly abstracted to make ranges and manouevering matter on a playing area small enough that you can actually play on it.

 

As for the time something takes, well, movements and what units can do is clearly also abstractions to make the game fit the turn structure and playing area. The distances covered by units are laughably small, unless the whole game is supposed to represent at most a couple of minutes of fighting. Even so, units would still be able to pump out a lot more shots than they do in those few minutes. The reason, of course, is that the events portrayed are not literal, but abstractions. A unit of intercessors moving 6" and then shooting 4 shots each (a quite respectable amount of shots in the game, but very little compared to the rate of fire of actual automatic weapons) would take seconds, if those 6" inches of space only represented the 10 or so yards it would be if you take distances to be literal and an intercessor is supposed to be around 7 ft. tall.
Instead, the game is supposed to represent the ebb and flow of a much more protracted battle and so, time is very malleable and a turn must obviously be a non-fixed amount of time that represents lots of things happening other than just "move a couple of yards and shoot". In that sense, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say that a unit can e.g. place some breaching charges or similar without "realism" being a problem.

But I still agree that it would be nice if terrain impacted movement, because I like terrain to do something.

[Matcap86]

Just talked to my FLGS owner, RRP in euros is going to be 240. Which... doesn't seem to bad considering the enormous amount of minis you get. Still not sure if I'm going to pick it up. I like a bunch of the contents, but almost all other starters have lauguished on my shelf and then got sold on after a year or so. 

[Doghouse]

I saw UK is being said to be £185 and US 295.

[Lord Marshal]

Goonhammer's put up a review of the core rules, so the PDF's probably dropping today. 

[Emperor Ming]

So maybe 150 on discount

[Antarius]

45 minutes ago, Matcap86 said:

Just talked to my FLGS owner, RRP in euros is going to be 240. Which... doesn't seem to bad considering the enormous amount of minis you get. Still not sure if I'm going to pick it up. I like a bunch of the contents, but almost all other starters have lauguished on my shelf and then got sold on after a year or so. 

That's a spicy meatball, but I guess we knew it would be. Still, I will pick it up (and maybe even use some of the contents...)