Not sure where this is going - but ok - Lets play. Say 2000pts. Nw normally playing with my mates we all know what add ons, rulebooks and faq's we have access to - for instance none of us really have planetstrike, or cityfight, so we don't play them. Some of us have some of the other add ons, so we might arrange an escallatioin game. I'd suggest escalation, play the first mission, because I know you are dying to use your new knight. U can be the attacker and take ur Knight as the Lord of War (Yeah - I know it isn't one - but for our game it will be.) we'll agree to use a single codex each, excluding allies (except for the Knight obviously.)

There game arranged - We both craft our army to the game, then turn up ready to play what should be an enjoyable game. No need for a zillion rulebooks, no arguments about not knowing what to expect, and a narrow addition to the rules. I just think that works better than turning up for a pickup game of i'll kill you, u kill me and fighting an 'unbalanced' list.

I've been doing this with my mate jon - targetting specific game mechanics, or lists, and pitting them against each other, restricting the rest of the stuff we either havent got, or don't want to play, and it's been great fun!

The problem is Nige, as u said earlier, many of us like to be in control of the whole thing - to know ALL thre rules, to be in command of ALL of the system. I think we need to let that go, be slightly more specific about our games, and not worry about the stuff we don't have / cant remember etc. That way players can share their game ideas prior to a game, then play something with a better structure, and more balanced.

Don't get me wrong - I think that the game is very unwieldy 'as a whole' but we don't necessarily have to play elements of the 'whole' to enjoy ourselves. U don't like a rule - change it, u don't like a supplement - agree not to use it. Games need not take 3 weeks to plan. Most games I have had in this way recently have taken a 5 minute conversation to plan, 10 mnins to write a list, then onto the game.

I have personally enjoyed 6th edition but i agree with what others have said about the pricing of products, the codexes that seem to be updated on day one or something similar, the sheer amount of codexes (then some dont turn out to be codexes at all I mean seriously who the hell wants 3 codexes all belonging to the same army???), and (personal peeve here) the fact that the new "in thing" is flyers (Ork bombas/Chaos Heldrake/storm talon/raven, although granted the raven was around before 6th) and giant based creatures/machines (wraith knight/riptide/imperial knight (NIGE!!!!!!!) which in my mind is pushing it to the apocalypse style of game, which is fine if you like that sort of game. I don't
If i wanted to play an apocalypse game I'd have bought the apocalypse books/units but because these uber units now have their place in the codex it ruins it because people rely too much on them and takes away the tension of 2 armies clashing over a field and instead turns it into a small force and either a large walker OR a couple of flyers strafing over the field ripping everything to sugar, while staying at a suitable range that even though they are 3 inches away from what they are firing at you still need 6s to hit

It's a a difficult one tbh.

From my point of view, I've been trying my damnedest to get back in to 40k properly so that we can play with the stuff we've amassed.

The problem for us is that every time we try to play through the rules to learn (and this has been going on since 4th/5th ed I think) there seem to be far more exceptions-to-the-rule than rules themselves and we always seem to be referring to this table, or that table or trying to remember modifiers for the various interactions between models. With 40k as it stands, it always feels like you spend more time rolling dice and referring to rules than playing the game. And the number of dice needed seems astronomical, although with brothers who play orks and guard I can kinda understand why.

When I compare it the other games we play at the mo (2nd ed epic, blood bowl, xwing - with gorkamorka, necromunda, spacehulk, bolt action / FoW looming on the horizon) its a pretty unwieldy beast. Everyone here picked Xwing up in less than 30 minutes - generally how long the first game lasts - and have really enjoy the list building aspect and tactical side of the game - especially since introducing the extra ships. The fact that you can pick up and play in or around the hour mark also means you can have 2-3 decent games in an afternoon / evening. Blood Bowl and Epic were much the same - with epic taking a wee bit longer to play depending on the size of the game. My brother and brother in law both picked up epic in the first turn of a 2000 point game, and have said how much better it 'flows' as a wargame and that it feels more tactical than 40k - and they are both big 40k players. In our little group though, Lis is an exception having not been exposed to any of the systems before hand. It's funny, but she feels the same way about it 40k is her one bugbear. It doesn't feel like an open door. So many hoops to go through to get to the point where you are enjoying the game rather than having your nose in the rule book.

In my eyes, I've always seen 40k (and the 28mm scale in general) as more of a skirmish-type game although the current GW strategy of everything getting bigger and badder makes it look like they are trying to cram the mass battles that epic lent itself to in to the 28mm scale. I'm all for more choice, but the lack of a clear focus in 40k makes it seem a little unwieldy actually adding this in. The hodge-podge of rulebook / dataslate / supplement / armybook / forgeworld / 30k etc really just compounds the problem. As a new player, its bad enough having to constantly thumb through one book, but half a dozen? No thanks, I'll just play something else. I know people will say 'well just play vanilla', but the real strength of 40k is the IP - that's something everyone here agrees on - I WANT to get my Marines on the table, purging anything and everything that gets in my way, just like they do in the books. And that means variety. The mechanics of this; for me anyway, should be fluid and almost transparently guiding the gameplay rather than restricting it. With Epic, I shoot and roll a dice to hit. If I hit, the opponent gets a save (or not). It makes sense and you can easily rationalise the process ( If I shoot a bullet at you, I either hit you or miss you. And the bullet will either bounce off your tank, or pop you in the squishy bits) and because of this its easy to teach a new player. For anyone that plays xwing, the way in which combat works using attack/defend dice is another good example of allowing pretty diverse results from an easily explained system that includes modifiers. Balance is another massive thing for me. 40k just doesnt seem to have the level of balance that it needs. In theory, two equally pointed armies **should** be fairly equally matched. I see lots of talk on 40k forums of certain lists or combos almost being an auto-win button. Shifting goal posts is bad enough, but an army using a 5-a-side goal rather than a standard Premier League one? As a sub-rookie player, it's hard for me to comment much further on that, but a balanced system should really make most combos equally viable. At that point it comes back to player skill, which is the aim of any game (and why I don't class F1 as a sport tbh)

The 40k rules - at least in their current form - don't quite do it for me. Maybe pulling things together in to one comprehensive tome that guides me through the rules and allows my understanding of the game to evolve as it introduces new concepts would help. Maybe it wouldn't. With all these rumours of a 6.5 release, I'm certainly willing to give it a go. In the meantime though I'll probably keep buying models that take my fancy, and painting them.

I dunno, maybe I could just do with some proper tuition to get the rules down properly.

*perplexed*

Price is not an issue for me, hell I just gave GW (via FW) £291 at Salute, 95% of which was for rules. I mean ofc I'd like to spend less money and I think they're taking the piss, but it's within my means to tweak my armies quite happily if I choose to do so. I'm actually more offended by their incompetence in a professional capacity then I am as a customer.

I don't play the game because it's a bad game.

@_stu_: Phil and I had exactly the same issue with Fantasy. We couldn't get through less than 1500pt games of 8th in the 2-3 hours we have at the club because we were spending so much time looking stuff up - and Fantasy doesn't have a billion rule sources either! I've played a fraction of the number of KoW games and I reckon there's a good chance I could play a game without having to refer to anything other than the profiles.

I do not have a problem with the price of stuff it boils down to wether or not I get enjoyment out of the game. My personal reason is the way the rules have developed over the past few years is that to be competetive you now have to have the latest tank/vehicle/flyer to stand any chance of winning. Whilst I don't mind losing I do enjoy a balanced game were the victor is the one with the best tactics and or luck on the day. I was talking to a few independant traders and the general opinion is GW still think they are the only games system out there that people play. Whilst GW still make some of the best models in the business I feel its the rule sets that are letting them down and driving a lot of players to other systems. I used to enjoy play APOC as it was played as a special game when you could get all the big toys out to play on a big board but being able to field them in standard games of 40K they are just too powerfull and on a standard 6ft x 4ft table they are too big.

Ok stu. . Back up a bit. An imperial knight as a LoW. Mmm that's gonna raise a few queries for our game isnt it? For example do u get the warlord traits for an army fancying a LoW even though it's not one?
Do u get 1 vp for three of my HPs or for 2 of them?
You said no allies. But what if I turned up with a FW model that's 40k approved. Apparently you don't need to pre warn your opponent anymore about that?
I'm sure there would be other great areas too, but you said your regular opponents know some ground rules already, which probably eliminates a lot of them.
The issue for me though us this:
You go to your gaming club, to find out that your buddy can't make. John though has turned up, with his army and hasn't arranged a game...... Lol. Now what. He's got Belokor and lord of skulls. Do you play him?

Surely every one of these arguments is settled by a 30 second conversation, or a quick list rewrite? I'm not sure I'm seeing a problem here?! 40k ain't so great for pick up games anymore, but if u channel thinking and agree on ground rules all is well.

i am enjoying the new way of things. for years it was marines, marines followed by more marines. now there is a fair bit more flavor and thanks to things like allies you never know what you will face so taking a good rounded list is important.
we have not had to face lords of war yet mind but a house rule of agreeing to take them or not before hand is in place. forge world has always been a bit of a letdown with typos and books going out of sync with the rest of the system in quick order as well as some truly overpowered units but they are normally limited to bigger apoc games.
all in all i am loving 40k and you don't need to use the addons if you don't want to

Just a quick OT one I'm tempted to get into BA but no nothing at all about rules/army books - is it like FoW but 28mm with books for different parts of the war/fronts or is it codex style army books?

You have a BA rulebook. That comes with standard basic army lists in them to allow you to play straight off the bat.
If you buy an army book you get the latest updated unit rules and other choices. There are theatres of operation lists in there to represent the different units seen throughout the war. Eg the m3 lee tank used at the start of WWII is no where to be seen at the end of it. These theatre lists show this. Also, in the American book some units weren't seen in Europe while being used in the pacific. So that is how the difference is represented.
So really you need the army book to be able to have more choice and allow you to field a list with some historical accuracy when your opponent is using Japanese for example. We tend to just turn up with any list, and so we can just throw down with anyone, those lists are usually from the end of the war lists/theatres where the good stuff is.
And yes, u can always pre arrange a game of 40k and quickly limit what u can take from the great choices out there. So sky walker should still be able to have a good game if they agree to just make a list all from one codex. Everyone can always do that. In fact that is how I prefer to make a list. Then you can use it vs anyone's list. So I make a list that can have a good go at a big monster/tank while not fielding anything like that itself. Hence the DA list I took to that tournament. More of a challenge that way too.
Never the less, I still love BA for the random turns, and the good models and the fact it is way more balanced and can easily grab a pick up game with anyone at the club. Oh, and it all fits in a single box from KR presently with books and aides in the side pockets, as oppose to my da and ig that require the 4boxes and bag from kR.

Herne wrote: There's a wealth of missions, sub-games and campaign materials that take all that into account, and if you play the supplementary missions in the new codex;s, supplements etc then the games become more balanced and make a feature of the 'beardy new units' If you just turn up for a pick up game with your 6 units of tac marines and a captain vanilla fluff list, and face off against a taudar knight titan beardmeister list YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE. But is that the fault of the game, or the gamer for not arranging suitable limitations. (Lets use escallation, but not stronghold...)
Rock thrown into pool - Discuss...

I disagree that this is the best edition of 40k. 5th was, in my eyes, infinitely better. It was well balanced (up to GK release anyway), was streamlined, and everyone knew what was going on.

And balanced doesn't need to mean "perfectly balanced". A lot of people whinge and whine that 40k has never been balanced. And that is true. But in 5th you knew which armies were "bad" against the "meta", and you could make a choice as to what to play. For example, I played DeathWing throughout 5th edition, despite it being objectively a bad army - I knew that, but I used it as an exercise in improving my own game play by pitting it againt better lists. I could develop stratagies that would work against known archetypes in the "meta" (i.e. the good armies) and those could be fallen back on against other similar armies.

The game as it is now is barely a game, never mind balanced. Whoever spent the most/has the most time has the advantage in buying the latest dataslate/ knowing every possible configuration of broken allies. I can't build a competent list (any list), take it to a shop & play a game with a posibility of winning against any other army. Again, there are those who'll say you couldn't do that in 5th - again, I disagree - I took DeathWing to many victories against the netlist kids and beat them, I had people call my DeathWing cheesy - this was an objectively bad army, but being able to play it well meant you could have a chance against anything.

The game is so vast now, that a balanced army is impossible. In 5th ed the "take all comers" army needed to be able to deal with:
1) Monsterous creatures
2) AV14
3) AV11/12
4) 3+ armour
5) hordes
That was difficult to blend all of those in, but it was doable.

In 6th ed, the "take all comers" list need to be able to deal with
1) Monsterous creatures
2) AV14
3) AV11/12
4) 3+ armour
5) hordes
6) AV12 flyers
7) Flying monsterous creatures
Psychic powers
9) Strength D
10) Lords of war (Mostly AV12 ish, I think, but needing far more guns to remove)
11) Cover denial
That is not doable, not at 2000 points, and cetainly not at 1500 points.

That means that a "take all comers" list is not avaiable to be built. As soon as that goes, then the game devolves into rock paper scissors. Or you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to pair armies up. Neither of those options, to me, is fun.

In addition, the changes to the rules between 5th and 6th added a number of rules that add nothing to gameplay, but simply add complexity and randomness which do nothing of enhance the game. I'm thinking of random psychic powers (which are either laughably crap, or eye-wateringly overpowered), random terrain, random objectives, look out sir, precision shots, and challenges as the main offenders. In a game where you can have 200 models on the board, this is (1) too hard to keep track of, and (2) takes so long that they are removed, forgotten, or slow play down to such an extent that you spend more time looking at a hand written spreadsheet than playing the game. Those rules are ok in a skirmish game, but 40k resembles Epic more and more with every passing release.


To answer the question set by Herne, this is the fault of the accountants. The fundamental underlying game is ok - as we saw in 5th, and 4th. The tweaks to 6th, while not my cup of tea are ok (if only made to make you buy a new book), so long as the army scale doesn't increase from 5th, which shows that the game designers aren't that bad. The accountants (generic term for the money men in GW) want more money, and have ramped up the scale to 11 and the release schedule to over 9000, they are forcing point reductions to increase the scale, they are forcing an epic scale system ino a skirmish rule set, and they are preventing the game designers from doing their job properly.

It is fundamentally absurd to blame the player. Why should I have to do GWs job for them? I can pick up any other game, and just play it. Warmachine, Infinity, Wing, blood bowl, Dread ball, KoW - these games are playable out of the box in a competitive system (well, not out of the box, but with a sensible spending plan). 40k simply isn't. The players are the same, so where's the issue?

Whilst I agree with the points in your penultimate paragraph about profiteering in the company, once again everything in your post brings me back to the original point I made. Play it all in one go and it is too random and wide. Select restrictions and play the specific missions and the game is great.

Additionally I am NOT 'blaming the player' for the game, THAT is absurd, my point is that to get more out of the current game, you need to put a very little more in. No the game doesn't suit power gaming control behaviour where every element had to be controlled, and yes the over complicated width of the game can be overpowering, but I feel some players are too much keeping one foot in the past. 'Its not like it used to be so it must be bad'

Don't get me wrong I'm not defending gw or their bloated rule system, rather saying that there's an awful lot of fun in the game, even if u can't control every element and meta the meta.

Herne wrote:Additionally I am NOT 'blaming the player' for the game, THAT is absurd, my point is that to get more out of the current game, you need to put a very little more in. No the game doesn't suit power gaming control behaviour where every element had to be controlled, and yes the over complicated width of the game can be overpowering, but I feel some players are too much keeping one foot in the past. 'Its not like it used to be so it must be bad'

I'm not worried about it not being like it used to be. I'm bothered because it's not like any other game out there. Which wouln't be bad if this game was good, and the other games weren't. But that's not the case.

I've invested an awful lot of cash into this game over the last 24 years (I started when I was 12!), but I can see that where the game is now, and where I want it to be are far apart. That's a personal shame, because I love the 40k fluff, and i still enjoy that part of it.

If people are happy with where the game is, that's fine, and I have no axe to grind with GW or gamers who play their games. I was just explaining where I think the game is, which is repeated to me by a number of other gamers I talk to. But, as I like to say, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Ljundhammer wrote:
I've invested an awful lot of cash into this game over the last 24 years (I started when I was 12!), but I can see that where the game is now, and where I want it to be are far apart. That's a personal shame, because I love the 40k fluff, and i still enjoy that part of it.
.

Tru Tru. I've spent a fortune over the years. I've seen the system go thru it's changes and as a lifer I'll see more in the future, for good or ill. But I shall continue to make the most of the game whatever it's shape because I've invested so much and I love the fluff. It may mean adapting gameplay, changing styles etc but I'm determined to have fun. Don't forget we all still have our previous rule sets. If 5th was better - it can still be played. (God how I miss the black chaos dex lol:) bunch of guys at my club are currently dusting off 2nd ed.

Ljundhammer wrote:If people are happy with where the game is, that's fine, and I have no axe to grind with GW or gamers who play their games. I was just explaining where I think the game is, which is repeated to me by a number of other gamers I talk to. But, as I like to say, the plural of anecdote is not data.

lol: that's Tru and opinion divided is good. It generates discussion. We just need enough of it aimed at the accountants to make sure the next revision doesn't get even wider but streamlines the system.

I wish people wouldn't confuse accountants with management