What you like / dislike in modern 40k?

[Maritn]

Having played two games of 11th edition, with the first one being ok and the second one being horrible, I was (again) thinking about what I don't like about modern 40k, specifically 11th edition as the latest iteration, and what all those happily playing modern 40k like about it, and to be honest, I couldn't think of anything. That's why I'd like to hear from the fraters here at the B&C, what do you like / dislike about modern 40k? 

 

I don't want people to "defend" why they enjoy playing, I just want to find some perspectives that are different from mine (which has become very negative).

 

For me, the biggest issues are the following ones:

- IGOUGO. It's just boring, stratagems are a bad bandaid for it, and it leads to other problems (alpha strikes, extreme sensitivity when it comes to terrain setup, ...).

- The terrain layouts. They are just so boring and the opposite of immersive. They don't make any sense, there are ruined buildings but no roads, and it's all mirrored.

- The missions. The primaries all boil down to mostly the same, and the secondaries feel like your commander is baby-in-chief. "Go, destroy an enemy tank. Which one? I don't care. Can you move two units as far apart as possible? But don't let them shoot! Take the building in the center! Forget that building in the center, spread your forces all over the battlefield! What?? The enemy commander said that I'd never dare take that one building he is sitting in, and made some chicken noises. YOU WILL TAKE THAT BUILDING, NOW!!1!"

- Some really unthematic rules, especially line of sight, and missing vehicle facing. I hate it how a tank can shoot when only the side of its rear is peeking out, and RAW even a gun barrel is a valid target.

- Too many rules, but this is probably a "me problem". From faction rules to unit rules, to detachment rules and stratagems, I can't keep them in my head for my army, much less those of my opponents army. That leads to gotchas for me, which feels bad.

- Edition churn. I'm starting to mix up rules with the way they were in previous editions...

Edited 12 hours ago by Maritn

[Lathe Biosas]

Two problems, both minor.

 

1. Social Interaction has diminished. In my last game, my opponent stared at his phone for 95% of the game, even while he was moving pieces and rolling dice.

 

2. The Warlord. There is no real use to have one model picked out as your Leader. The rules don't add anything. No extra CP generation when they are living, no extra benefits to keeping him alive.

 

Also, my opponent had an allied Imperial Agent as his Warlord who just sat in a building doing nothing for the entire game, until I sniped him on turn 4.

[Evil Eye]

You're not alone. I was considering getting back into the game for 11th but more and more I think I'm good. But for me personally...

 

>Every single weapon being its own unique profile on the unit that uses it. The universal armoury system made much, much more sense.

>The gutting of statlines (WS and BS, Strength, Initiative etc). Needlessly dumbs down the whole game.

>The mutilation of vehicle rules in general. No more facings or firing arcs, no more actually behaving like a vehicle with the strengths and weaknesses those would give, just a giant infantry model.

>Removing the FOC. Some degree of restriction on unit choices is necessary IMO, and the free-for-all we have at the moment, blech.

>Removing templates. They really weren't complicated and were a nice thematic way of resolving area-of-effect weapons.

>Removing wargear costs and massively cutting down on options. Just, why.

>Making every model a seasonal item with an expiration date before being rendered unplayable. Fundamentally at odds with what a tabletop game should be.

>The constant patches and reworks to the game. At this point it's quite clear GW have no idea what the hell they're doing with the rules (or worse are doing them badly on purpose) and expecting the next patch to suddenly make the game work (and not just invalidate the book you've already spent money on) is foolishness.

>Everything being able to wound everything. A Land Raider should not be able to be damaged by a lasgun. End of.

 

And that's just from the rules perspective...

[NovemberIX]

The homogeneity of marines, every army looks the same, all using the same few kits, with the same loadouts, and in the same few poses.  No one does a DIY anymore because the game has no soul for it. I don't even need to get into how 11th plays, because for all it's faults, I'd rather play 5th, Ward and all.

[Lathe Biosas]

The bit about the FOC chart being gone isnt really a concern for me. I started playing in 3rd Edition...

 

My first army was Colonel Schaeffer's Last Chancers. I had 12 models (285 points) and you had 1,000 or 1,500 or whatever you wanted.

 

 

My second force was as an Armoured Company (Artillery) from Chapter Approved. My Basilisks were Troops, HQ were Leman Russ Vanquishers, Griffin Mortar Carriers were Heavy Support, Hellhounds were Fast Attack... and I think my 1 Chimera was Elite... oh and I had the greatest block of cheese in the game: Lord Solar Macharius. And his greatest special rule ever. I go first. So I would just pie plate all the marines away.

 

Then I moved on to Dark Angels, where I had all Bikes and Terminators. 

 

There were always, "Take this guy or this list, and X count as Troops."

 

☆☆☆

 

But I do agree with the lack of conversions these days. I picked up the last bit of Custodes on pre-order and didn't realise that they took monopose to the next level.

 

There are bits of cape or fingers or armour that are all over the place, so each piece fits in exactly one spot... the only conversions I can do are head swaps.

 

☆☆☆

 

But conversions are frowned upon in certain game stores... by a certain type of player.

 

I was testing out my list a week ago and had a player suggest I was "modeling for advantage" because my captain isn't on the rock she came on, making her less than an ⅛ inch shorter than usual.

 

It's bizarre to me. I was under the impression the game was supposed to be fun. 

[Kommisar_K]

Likes:

- Army building. The new detachment system is a welcome change. A given faction is no longer strictly limited to a certain playstyle if it wants to be good for anything but narrative games. Mix & Match is good too. 

- Primary Missions. Not all sunshine and rainbows, but the variety and the fact not every battle is a mirror matchup is nice. 

- CLEAVE. Blast for melee. What's not to love? And I don't even run anything that has it 

 

Dislikes: 

- Terrain. The more GW defines terrain rules, and especially layouts, the less fun this game becomes. True line of sight is effectively a thing of the past, we've got flat outlines that apparently block LOS even with a bloody brick sitting on them. And nobody can agree on how titanic & aircraft interact with the big pieces.

- Objectives. Linked to terrain. Placement is harder, it's more difficult to set up, every base outline has to be measured at 3 different points because everything's sitting on a lopsided triangle instead of a nice easy circle. Seriously, we could've just set up ruins over/around the circles and the "narrative" link would still be there. My first couple 11th ed games setup took an obscene amount of time because of this new thing. 

- Melee. I like games where an engagement can take a while. Not everything goes to plan, and everyone gets a chance to fight back. At range or melee, or just in tactical repositioning. This doesn't happen except in the smallest games, & melee armies are a big part. Nowadays they're all super fast, like 2-turns-to-cross-the-table fast, and melee units have insane profiles that pretty much instakill anything they touch. That speed means they always get first strike. T1 a player can move up & hide all his dudes behind the terrain outlines in the middle of the field. If his opponent already moved up, then let the charges begin! If not, wait in complete cover til BR2, then steamroller him and enjoy the benefits of having full access to all the no man's land objectives. Only against another fast melee army will this be difficult. 

    The way of melee has become too easy, and ranged combat is insanely difficult. I feel for tau, no matter how good their shooting is. Almost every army I see this edition plays the fast-melee style, and they do altogether too well. I think what I'm trying to say here is melee has become too powerful, so everyone's forced to play melee... and that's just taking away flavor. 

- Player Mindset: A tougher one to talk about. I don't think people are showing the imagination that made this hobby so fun when I started. No longer can we build stories from our battles - it's official layouts, force dispositions, card-drawn missions and the Holy WH40K App all the way. Oh and Crusade is no longer supported by G-dubs so nobody around wants that.

 

Yeah, mostly complaints, unfortunately. Here's hoping for some good Narrative material sometime soon!

 

Remember scratch-built terrain anyone? Lol

[Lathe Biosas]

Do you remember when we had lakes and rivers? You either had to jump over it, be a skimmer (ie. Eldar) or be a Chimera (with amphibious).

[Kommisar_K]

1 minute ago, Lathe Biosas said:

Do you remember when we had lakes and rivers? You either had to jump over it, be a skimmer (ie. Eldar) or be a Chimera (with amphibious).

 

Yeah! I got just the tale end of this stuff but I miss it like heck 

 

And I was what? 12?

Edited 9 hours ago by Kommisar_K

[Lathe Biosas]

I saw some of the terrain rules (like dangerous terrain!) make a comeback in Horus Heresy for a bit (including the Mechanicum having a unit that could blow up terrain pieces)... 

 

But this is what House Rules are for. Playing with the fun stuff you remember. 

 

We still play with a bunch of the old missions that were really fun and had bizarre rules (Remember Dusk and Dawn? It's dark outside, unless you got a searchlight, you can't see very far.) 

 

I remember one of my favorite missions was a Halloween mission, based around the Mechanicus digging up Necron artifacts. It was a Night Fighting mission. There are 6 40mm objective markers (3 placed by each player). When you got to an objective marker (you would search it automatically at the end of your turn), you rolled a d6. On a 6, you got the artifacts and they attached to your unit (they would drop in place if the unit was destroyed). On 2-5 nothing happened, and on a 1, a Squad of Necron Warriors appeared, controlled by your opponent for 1 turn *and then they would phase out.

 

Whoever had the most artifacts at the end of the ganlme under their control won.

 

It was fun and totally not balanced in any way.

 

[Tawnis]

So far my thoughts are: 

Pros: 
- List Building: While not perfect, it's a step up from 10th and I do like the new DP system brining back a bit of the feel of mixed force armies without all the soup nonsense that dominated previous editions which tried to do that. 

- Variable Missions: While again not perfect (I still prefer asymmetric and narrative missions in general) they are again an improvement over the previous versions. I've been talking about players having different mission requirements being a good thing for a long time and it's nice to see some of that. 
- Cleave feels much more thematic than Sustained Hits for melee. 

- Lethal Hits changes: Light weaponry to be non-monsters and vehicles (as seen in Ork codex and assuming it's going to roll out to others over time.) 

- Terrain as objectives: While a little more fiddley sometimes, it actually feels like your fighting over something / trying to secure a valuable position. I much prefer it to "go stand on that circle out in the open" 

- The addition of Upgrades to the enhancement system. 

Cons: 

- Balancing everything around competitive: We don't wany a little extra narrative flair in our competitive matches, we want actual narrative gameplay. 

- Terrain Layouts: Everything is still designed mostly around L-shaped ruins. Yeah we "can" make missions without them, but it's still pretty much all you'll see at hobby stores. As mentioned above, where are the rivers and trench networks of old? 

- They still haven't figured out the sweet spot for Fights First, it's either busted or useless. I'm not saying initiative needs to come back, that certainly had it's own issues, but some more nuanced middle ground would be appreciated. 
- It felt like 11th edition missed a few rounds of quality checks before it went out the door: (GSC army rules not working at all RAW at launch ect...) They're patching it decently enough after the fact, but it feels very much like a AAA video game mentality. Sell everyone on a buggy mess and fix it over the next six months. These are things that anyone giving a reasonable look at the edition should have seen a mile away. 

- Some armies being VERY limited in detachment combos: Tau can play all of 8 possible combinations for their total of 7 detachments because of all the restrictions. I know we're probably going to get our codex pretty early on, but still... yikes. 

Some things I don't think are 11th's fault and/or general responses to other people's thoughts:

- LOS / Vehicle Facing: I don't see this as an issue. If we're looking at the game from a realism standpoint, these vehicles aren't moving while doing nothing, stopping and then shooting. Everything is happening at once in theory. While a vehicles rolls between one building and another, it should be shooting during that movement, but it's not something that can work in a game system like this, so they say so long as a tiny bit of the vehicle is showing, that represents it having moved into a position in which it could have attacked. It's not perfect, but it's never broken my immersion. 
- Social Interaction: This is sadly just the times we live in and not the fault of any game system. Maybe an alternating activation system would keep people more engaged, but even in IGOUGO, you should be spending your opponent's time strategizing and planning for your next turn. Someone not really invested in the game isn't going to be invested no matter the ruleset. 

- Templates: They may have been thematic but I do not miss the days of my opponent's moving every single one of their freaking models in their 20 man blobs exactly 2" apart to make me hit one less target with my single blast weapon. Blech, no thanks. 

I'm actually working on a custom generating narrative system to overlay onto 40k games. I'm actually in the final stages and hope to be able to release something to everyone in a month or two. TLDR it's kinda like the Twist system, but turned up to 11 and the knob broken off. It's not meant to be balanced, but to provide thematic and narrative building blocks for all kinds of missions and is built to essentially be nearly infinitely repayable with different outcomes. 

[Adeptekon]

Sounds like this is just about competitive. That said Total War should solve a lot of these issues and be cheaper to get started.

[Kommisar_K]

19 minutes ago, Adeptekon said:

Sounds like this is just about competitive. That said Total War should solve a lot of these issues and be cheaper to get started.

 

This is actually a particularly notable comment IMHO because yes, it actually is just about competitive. Because sadly, competitive is just about all that's left. It's very rare now that you go to your flgs, or even hang out with a friend, and everyone's willing to just drop some stuff on a table and start rolling dice. And Crusade is gone, so nobody's interested in setting up a narrative game, let alone a campaign. What GW suggests becomes law, and the only thing left is competition. 

 

It's not all bad though  A couple of my opponents aren't enjoying the edition much, so we may find an outlet in the more creative ways of gaming.

 

And yeah the TW comment is actually true lol 

[Adeptekon]

38 minutes ago, Kommisar_K said:

 

This is actually a particularly notable comment IMHO because yes, it actually is just about competitive. Because sadly, competitive is just about all that's left. It's very rare now that you go to your flgs, or even hang out with a friend, and everyone's willing to just drop some stuff on a table and start rolling dice. And Crusade is gone, so nobody's interested in setting up a narrative game, let alone a campaign. What GW suggests becomes law, and the only thing left is competition. 

 

It's not all bad though  A couple of my opponents aren't enjoying the edition much, so we may find an outlet in the more creative ways of gaming.

 

And yeah the TW comment is actually true lol 

Getting with friends to throw dice is the only way I would.

 

What I dislike is competitive no offensive, but it looks completely hallow to me. The games as have been noted earlier in this thread are little skirmish matches taking place around objects nothing like what actual 40k battles would be except for a some special missions, but that's every game.

 

Walk into the competitive location, bright lights, folding tables, folding chairs, cheap terrain, chatter going on all around. Just doesn't look fun at all. Then there's the commentary channels of large "Opens" which remind me a lot of competitive sports casting. I _______ hate competitive sports casting. It's like tuning into a ball game on the radio I just can't do it.

 

Play on TableTop (great/funny people), but sports casters...

 

There was only one commentary competitive channel that I did stop religiously to check out and that was Tabletop Tactics. I'll admit I'm an imersion whore. I mostly just stopped for the intros, occasionally I would sit through half a match. Sadly now that Beard has gone I don't think The Spider can match what he brought to those opening cuts. Beard had the voice, and picked all the right music. Just what I expect of 40k if I was going to introduce someone to it.

 

That said all they have to do is take it one step further and show the minis more and create a visual squences that don't focus on chatter and jokes, but the actual play and ambience, the music, the visuals, the terrian, and the minis. Make it a movie? 

 

I get some people want to crunch the numbers, and hear the witty banter. I don't.

 

I want to be imersed in the battle. You've got great painters, you've got the sets, take it to the next level.

 

[Lathe Biosas]

Ugh. I've never been a great tournament player (back in 5th Edition, I fell asleep at the Adepticon 40k Team Tourney in Chicago. In the end we came in dead last... we lost to the ringer team ).

 

Give me a fun group game with zany missions and gonzo rules (remind me to tell you about Tau Zombies sometime) and I'll have the time of my life.

 

I've been wanting to recreate some of those moments for a long time.