My pet peeve is how the strategic depth has nothing to do with things like flanking, crossfires, high ground, pinning important units etc, and more with stacking buffs, removing the right models as casualties and placing your dudes the exact right distance from a wall.
Yup. Been playing since 3rd/3.5ish here. I remember back then I didn't like how pinning worked or how the game doesn't have rules for things like suppressing fire or reconnaissance. And instead of adding these to new editions, 40k has done more and more to remove real-world knowledge of warfare. It's turned into more of a card game like Magic: the Gathering, rather than a war game. Part of this is because a lot of the old designers who had backgrounds in history or played other war games are now gone. The newer rules designers have a background solely in Warhammer with their knowledge of warfare comes from movies and video games. It shows. One of the more obvious examples is how vehicles used to work (where tanks are invulnerable to small arms and require dedicated anti-tank weapons) to what's now in place (tanks can be blown up by being shot enough times which in real life would have made them obsolete even during WWI).
Hopefully the new GSC Crossfire rule will help with this. I kinda think cover should be stronger to incentivize flanking around it for all armies though.
There's not a lot of tabletop wargame left to 40k. They stripped those out and replaced them with card / rpg mechanics. Which wastes the potential that a physical battlefield and models provide.
One thing I've found very rare in 40k is comeback mechanics. There are a few, like sisters of battle getting miracle dice when their units are destroyed, but most mechanics are very much "win more", like morale checks and pretty much all objectives. This of course exacerbates the problem with overwhelming alpha strikes being so potent that other strategies become irrelevant.
Ive always thought a unit should get a buff for passing a moral check. Maybe higher leadership or a feel no pain as the are like "we will not go quietly!"
A rage mechanic (as seen in lots of MMOs) would be good. It would need to be for World Eaters, Blood Angels, or similar, but it would provide an interesting mechanic. Something like this, Aura: all friendly (WE, BA, etc) within 6 inches gain +1 to hit and +1 to wound for every 10 Allies who died this game. Maybe the BAs have it apply to only BAs and set it to 5, and the WE gain the bonus on all deaths - friendly or not (because Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, so long as the blood flows), but their bonus is for every 10 allies and every 20 enemies (so it’s both a decent comeback but also a weak win-more condition). Then put that aura on sanguinary priests and (not sure of the WE equivalent) so it provides a comeback mechanic, but one that you have to actively protect, maybe balance with a “this unit cannot be targeted by ranged attacks” so it’s at least manageable (and lots of variations on this rule, ex: can only be targeted if it’s the closest unit, can’t be targeted more than 9 inches away, can’t be charged, etc).
I would love to see 40K adopt a alternating activation game play. As an example I really like the way X-Wing handles it. Units move going from Lowest Initiative first to highest initiative last. Then the firing phase has the highest initiative shooting first and the lowest initiative firing last. I also like the way Malifaux gives the side with fewer units pass tokens so that the army with more units dose now get a bunch of activations at the end simply because they have more units.
A good idea in principle, but this style of system is significantly slower. I'd suggest switching an entire phase, like swapping the shooting phase around.
They did alternating activation in 40k's Killteam and its pretty great. I'd love to see it behave more like infinity, ditching the I go You go for sure.
The game of thrones miniatures game also has alternating and I find I feel like I have a more active role in the game. Nobody likes sitting around and watching your opponent disect your army; it feels crappy and doesn't do a good job at mirroring the chaos of a real fight.
It makes me miss Initiative from around 5th edition of 40k. Models in the fight phase used to strike from the fastest to the slowest, generally. A shame it was abandoned.
It is so rare to find someone who can actually understand and appreciate good game design in the wargaming community. Probably why GW games are so popular, people just don't know better.
As a gamedesigner for boardgames and tabletop games for 19 now, i have to strengthen your points here! Great video and understanding on the subject here. Its rare to see videos like this. Most of the time critics don’t have a clue about gamedesign.
I've been playing 40K on and off since 2nd edition and yeah, it was pretty awesome as a teen back in the early 90s, but the whole d6 IGYG system feels very dated today when compared to all the more recent skirmish games and board games. I've wished for years as a bandaid fix they simply change it from d6 to d10 based. Far more granularity and easier math. No more codex lore mismatch of these being veteran crackshots and then having the same BS as regular troops because there's no room between a 3+ troop and a 2+ character, etc. As to full on interesting mechanics, I do love your unit synergy ideas, but I also think that sounds like a ton of midgame complexity at current army sizes. I have to admit, part of what drew me to 40K over say Battletech to begin with was the idea I've got a whole army on the table instead of like 4 units. I know some people love herohammer style, but there's plenty of big hero type skirmish games already, I like the idea of my tabletop covered in models. I think removing 75% of the stratagems and adding in some more interesting armywide mechanics/alternate win conditions would go a long way to improving the game without bloating or causing a model reduction.
Another thing that would help is alternating activations. No more alpha striking with your entire army on the first turn. Going first becomes no more powerful than your heaviest hitting single unit. No dog-piling a player and wiping out a huge chunk of their army before they've had a chance to even play, no putting one player on a downward spiral with an alpha strike that reduces how much they have to fight back with so much, it usually isn't a fair fight. And both players get to do something every minute or so, instead of waiting around for half an hour having to stick around just to roll armor saves and monitor what the other player is doing.
@@Tiyev Bingo. Id say merge the two halfs of each "Round" of 40k. Make them like the old deployment used to be. I move a unit, you move a unit, I perform a Psychic Power/Action you then do the same, I shoot a unit you shoot a unit. It more accurately replicates the randomness and chaos of a battlefield then IGYG. Also this would up the tension and competition for Objectives. If they where scored simultaneously, aka since there would be only THE command phase, trying to push the opponent off and take a objective is less hot potato like now and more tug or war.
I'm the same as you, been playing on and off since the mid 90s. Ive been advocating for the D12 as the dice of choice. D12 makes the most sense because each side has the same chance of landing. The only dice that give every side equal chances are d4, d6, d8, D12. I think that's it.
This has become required viewing for me. This is exactly the kind of improvement 40k needs, more interesting *and* more flavorful. Synergies aren't just fun and cool rules, they're also ways to represent how *your* faction works with itself. As a guard player I hope someone at GW sees this video while they work on our codex, I believe it could make it the best one.
True. Imperial guard has so much potential with their orders and "chain of command" style. Plus, imagine all the ways they could reinforce combined arms lists with tank, transports, and artillery!
@@danielbrewster8642 Right? Modern combat has shown us that a guard-style army should have so many dimensions of combat available to them that they can adapt to any situation, but the IG are... not.
Fun fact about the I go-you go turn sequence, when the ynnari could do some actions during the opponents turn when their units would die, it broke the game. Since one specific fraction in the game was the only fraction who could play both "player turns" effectively. So it kind of broke the turn sequence as yes, you had much more chances to play than your opponent
As a former Warmahordes guy, I really appreciated seeing your overview of that Skorne list - and more importantly the differences in how resource management (Focus/Fury, Souls, spells etc) all effect both how you move and position your dudes and also how your opponent interacts with your models. That construct solo sometimes encourages you to bring "shitty" units to basically charge-block and become soul-fodder. There's very little like that in 40k...a unit is either a VolCon or it's Reivers.
I'd really like GW to lean into the LoTR rules for new ideas. It would be interesting to see how 40k (and AoS) would (or wouldn't) work with the Lord of the Rings turn system. For those who have never played LoTR, it works in phases, where one player does their phase, then the other player does theirs and the order is decided by a roll off at the start of the turn.
Great video, perfectly explains things that I can't stand about the game better than I ever could. 40K is probably the least fun game that I have ever been so interested in, and I often wish another company would challenge GW's throne so they are forced to actually get their game together. I hope your channel gets big and they hire you onto their development team ;)
@@GB-yt9sn I really like the alternation of those rules. And how there is a balance with weaker horse armies having more activations versus tougher elites.
Alternating activations make a world of difference. My friends and I tried a few games with alternative activations (surprisingly easy to shoehorn into 9th edition rules) and the boost to both balance and interactivity was glorious.
Did you find many problems around the power level/points value of the unit being activated? I can see balancing issues when playing battles between armies with lots of large units vs armies with only a hand full of massively expensive units…
@@joebody7198 The problem with alternating activations is that it rewards multi-small unit over few large units. But it's better than anything GW does.
@@danepatterson8107 yeah, I’ve considered whether units should have an initiative value in line with their power level or something to account for this, but it feels like a complex mechanic to introduce
@@joebody7198 it works well in one page rules. The horses have more activations, but much weaker units. So they can risk burning their first activations on weaker units to get the other player in position for the rest. As long as the armies and points are built with this in mind it's really cool and a lot more tactical thinking goes into not just how, but when you activate a unit.
As a player who has only recently picked up 40k I really liked this video as it did a fantastic job at concisely summarizing quite a few issues that I have found to be pervasive but haven't been able to put into words.
The first game WH40k game I ever played was also my opponents first game. I got turn 3 wiped as tyranids vs imperial guard, because he was in my deployment zone shooting before I even knew what had happened. Turn advantage was insane.
I enjoyed 40k more when each unit had a special ability and there was no strategems. Sure knowing what people would do with a unit wasent complex but strategems make it too complex and units without super good strats now never get to use their abilitys ever. I wish there was a system more like Warcry where your army was split into two or three, and there was more back and forth than I go you go.
Agreed wholeheartedly. Sadly I think they're here to stay, if for no other reason than GW can sell cheap to produce stratagem cards and the like. Why just sell a codex when you can add on accessories? It's crummy, but don't blame 'em, from a business perspective.
Always good to see some discussion that paints Warmahordes in a good light! Also, as I'm currently trying to learn 40k and am taking my first look at the new GSC... I'm very confused. Which armies would you say do what you want them to do the best? (I saw Sisters and their miracle dice for killing them mentioned. I assume also, possibly, Ynnari and their movement when something dies etc)
I like the miracle dice mechanic, but I feel it has a similar issue to Cabal points where basically everything generates it and everything spends it. It's also almost exclusively used for damage rolls with melta weapons. The new Eldar dice mechanic is slightly better, but i wish there were cool abilities in your opponents turn that could be activated by "sacrificing" miracle dice. I don't want them to just be a "melta guns do lots of damage, and I can't fail morale" mechanic.
Yeah its like a big pool they roll and then get to turn things into 6s when one of the dice values is rolled. Something like that but it was leaked a while ago
No. I have all my old Ret, Menoth, and Gatormen models but gave up that came early Mark 3 due to work, moving etc. More than happy to do some wh40k collaboration vids if you ever wanted
Very interesting… my two cents to help the algorithm! • Genuine question - why are games like Warmahordes miserably underplayed if the mechanics are better? Surely if it is a more tactically sound game then it would have a larger competition base? • Agree fully that armies should have really cool mechanics like Cabal points, but they still need to be easy to understand without endless paragraphs. • Finally, troops, and only ever troops, should have objective secured and nothing else should ever have access in any way.
Warmachine and Hordes had a huge manufacturing issue, and the main company undercut MSRP from local game stores. At one point they were the 2nd most played miniaturs game for a few years. But the manufacturing issues, a lack of community support, an IP that couldn't stand up against wh40k. The models are worse and they never really embraced the hobby aspect as much as GW did. Also because tabletop games are such a social thing, when GW finally got their stuff together after 7th edition, people flowed back to GW and kinda stuck there. Super hard to get into a minis game if no one else plays it. And gamestores stopped stocking warmachine/hordes stuff a long time ago. Maybe they tried to make it too competitive? PP ran all tournaments and the game was certainly more crunchy and intricate than wh40k.
I was a pressganger (community organizer) for WMH. The company has a lot of issues that have contributed to them losing market space. Here are a few: 1) They can't keep staff. They simply don't pay staff enough to even live in the area (Belleveu, Washington). They also treat staff quite poorly, which results in a complete guard change every few years like clockwork. This has a very negative impact on playtesting, game design, and model design. 2) The models are bad. Constant mispacks, mismolds, and generally just poor quality overall. 3) The "freerider" policy debacle... it's complicated, but the net result was that distributors don't want to carry their products anymore, which means stores must order directly from PP, a service that is both expensive and erratic. 4) Ending the pressgang-- we were volunteer organizers that ran events for PP and provided some "company presence" at all events. PP decided they didn't want to waste time and money on us anymore and this very quickly killed the local scene in many areas. It's a complicated game and there aren't many people who want to volunteer their time to teach beginners and run events. 5) Themes and Archons. Themes are like armies of renown, except you basically must take them or you lose serious competitive advantages. Archons are wildly overpowered models that are essentially auto-includes for any competitive list. The combination of these two things locked list design into a few optimal builds for each faction. Which is just... boring. 6) Destroying the fluff. They had an End Times style event that worked out about as well sticking your hand into a running blender. 7) Broken promises. PP has made a lot of absolute promises to the community over the years in the form of "We will always/never do X or Y." They haven't been very good at keeping those promises, and faith in the company suffered as a direct result. There's quite a bit more, but these are the major hits. So yeah, mechanically it's a great game with lots of strategic death. The company just mismanaged everything in truly epic fashion with predictable results.
@@johngianforte4654 i agree wholeheartedly with everything you said. Personally, my local scene all jumped ship in between Mark2 and Mark 3. Some poeple tried to hang on, but once people jumped to a new game lik Malifaux/Infinity, it was impossible to get them back
@@johngianforte4654 This makes me sad. I knew they didn't handle their game well after MKII but I was forced to quit wargaming in general before everything went that far south with WMH. I went to a number of 40k tournaments in my earlier days, but WMH is the only game where I actually have taken top spot at an event, so I have fond memories of that game. When I came back to 40k I wanted to look into WMH as well since I still own a large Cryx force, but my friend group has no interest in the game as it is now. They would need to return to the original days of Prime MKI and release a new line of plastics or downloadable STL's that compete with GW's models for us to get back into it, so everyone is just playing 40k. As soon as you involve metal figures it complicates peoples ability to actually build and paint the models - they are a lot less beginner friendly than the GW plastics.
GW capping players at 2 flyers and forcing you to take troops just reminds me of when Overwatch had its notorious GOATs meta. The game devolved into a boring strategy that the developers couldnt solve in an interesting way, so they just forced you to play a balanced team with evenly spread roles. It's basically admitting defeat.
Yup. I detest what my local community did to crusade. All they bring are competitive lists built around the net lists winning tournaments, and then use every little trick to give those lists the best buffs from earning crusade xp. Had a DA player bring the Raven Wing attack bikes with multi-meltas and a talon master body-guarded by veterans hidden in ruins out of los in a 25pp game. Gw needs to incentivise making the lists like the fluff, but they will not. That would not make people buy six $45 models to fill out the formation tax instead of one $50 box; better model costs more money, and they want you to use as many of the "best in slot" units as you can (not)afford. To hell with interesting and fun; you *must* win at all costs! Or maybe I have a really toxic game community in my city. When everyone you play is only interested in winning at all costs, this kind of ultra-competitiveness starts to take root.
Sorry to hear that, I enjoy crusade because you don't get to play the same copy paste lists every game. Sounds like you could do with finding a new group, where I am the crusade players are the opposite of the win at all cost tournament players, fluff is one of the main factors when choosing units and most players enjoy a fun loss when it happens. Maybe I'm just lucky though, I haven't looked at any crusade groups further away than my local one but I hope there's not a trend of the tournament mentality filtering into narrative games. There's always that one guy but it sounds like there's a few of them in your group.
This is great, thanks. For the most part, I do think the new Kill Team does a better job of evoking the feel of different factions while using standardized rules, even if the rulebook is poorly written. LOL just to the right of this comment as I type it is a thumbnail for another video titled, "ANOTHER 20 Of The Most Common Rules Mistakes In Warhammer 40K." Yeah, this game is WAY more complicated than it needs to be. It really is too much.
That will be a "weird take", but did you have a look on AOS V3 ? - Command point are generated each turn and dissapear each turn (No front load and incentive to actually use them every turn) - Generic reaction command to use in the opponent turn (Mainly : redeploy after an ennemi move, overwatch, enhancing you defense or your attack) - Limitation of one command. Only one occurence of each command per phase, can only apply one command on a unit, can only give one command per unit. It limit this effect of multiplication buff on one unit. - Keyword. Ex : FNP are called "ward" and are common everywhere. Same for prayer, endless spells and other stuff - Alternate activation in combat phase. - Diverse mechanic for armies. It's not as potent as your comparaison, but each armies got really specific stuff, or specific ressources, with "counterplay",or at least "counter build". (Idoneth, can only shoot the closest one and a system where you have different buff that really impact the game. Nurgle, poison the oppenent army with each unit in contact with yours. Stormcast, half your unit can be in the sky. Tzeentch, can decide the result of X dice and can summon with spells... etc.) - Really divisive take, double turn mechanic. It change the feeling of going first and being over agressive. (And you definitly need to learn about it or to create your list to avoid it by going low in drop to decide you will play in second) For the love of God commenters, don't take only this point to discuss. Thats divisive, everybody knows it. Other points will provide a better discussions. Not to say it's better, just to point that many of your points are used in another GW system. (And I feel that AOS is a bit of a testing ground for 40k where they allow themselves to go a bit wild)
I'm glad youtube decided to give me this video since I think in all the discussion of 40k it's really rare to actually hear someone talk about game design. I learned 40k as an adult and I only played very briefly, then learned warmachine and played a bit longer and even went to some tournaments. I'd say that both games ultimately have a lot of the same problems that make their other problems much smaller. 1) Moving the miniatures on the board is imprecise but the sizes of other measurements are precise, warmachine this is even more noticeable where it's not uncommon to have a game decided by 1/16th of an inch. This means that it's very hard to shake the feeling that you or your opponent at some point made enough micro errors to influence the course of the game. 2) Turns take too long and moving miniatures is a lot of it, because just moving your miniatures slightly too far could cost you the game by not being able to make a critical attack, or secure an objective, you need to be very careful about moving. This also means that some armies are just competitively non viable because you physically have to move tons of miniatures and still do so with precision. 3) Even though warmachine is much more strategic, it's still largely decided in the list building phase because of how easy optimal moves are to see. Usually combos have a specific lever unit that you remove first. In theory all those Skorne units have all this synergy to make things interesting, but the reality is most factions pretty much just pick one part to take out first and go down the list. This is why warmachine tournaments let you bring two lists, they even acknowledge the game is largely won before it even starts, warhammer is even worse for this and by a lot. 4) I never played with command points but I've watched battle reports and that command points are entirely "imaginary" as in they have no physical presence on the board I think they ruin a lot of the fun. Part of the fun of wargames is the aesthetic and having players cast imaginary "spells" on their units feels really bad. So I think now is a good time to think, what can GW actually change that still lets it sell models. So we can't really have much bigger boards because of how difficult it becomes to actually play. You don't want to reduce model counts because tournament players are a good source of income as they netlist whatever gets buffed and tons of mid tier players buy new armies. I think a good move to look into would be to copy Star Wars Legion's movement system where a special tool determines movement (extra widgets to sell) for the squad leader, and all ranges are determined from the squad leader only. This makes horde armies much easier to play and means it's easier to sell more models. Turns become much faster and give room for more time intensive mechanics to add depth. If warhammer continues to be a game decided almost entirely in the list building phase, then tournaments should look into some kind of system where side decks can be used, this means meta lists have to at least gamble vs. facing potential hard counters and also means GW can sell more models. Getting tabled by a much better list also won't be nearly as bad if it happens in 40 minutes vs. the two hours most 40k games seem to take. GW will always unfortunately have financial incentives to power creep the game, there is probably no getting around this.
Warmachine is an excellent game and from a strategic sense (strategic planning) it is far superior to 40K. It also has some more unforgiving aspects with movement and threat ranges all being based on the absolute position of the model. There are no charge rolls, pile ins, or consolidates like you see in 40K and I have frequently seen this turn off newer players because it seems “unfun”. There are a surprising amount of similarities between the 2 games but Warmachine has an extremely tight rules set, which lends itself well to tournaments and complex strategic play. And then, 40K is better in virtually all other aspects of the game and hobby. For the majority of gamers, 40K will be more accessible and easier to play. But WmH is a diamond in the rough
You've articulated issues in my mind that I couldn't put into words. My main army is Blood Angels and I'm not at all happy with my codex. It feels like a leftover 8th edition book, Meanwhile, I'm forced to watch other players get so much more out of theirs. I really hope GW doesn't have too much pride to go back and fix my mediocre codex.
@@inquisitorsneed2 if the rumors are right (and so far they have been), you're gonna get fixed up sometime in the next 6 months. And I'm guessing your shooting is about to get badass. They took all the special ammo away from Deathwatch right? I bet it's because they're giving it to you!
@@DustyLamp I have an Iron Warriors army that's in absolutely shambles right now. Somehow, I ended up with all this warp sorcerer crap that I didn't want. I wanted a real marine army, but somehow that sucked and the sorcery stuff was supposed to help out. Now it's about as lore-unfriendly as it gets. I don't see a Master of Posession staying alive in Perturabo's legion very long!
I've been having these thoughts for years/decades. Great job articulating it, I never would have been as eloquent. Games Workshop needs to hire you as a rules designer for 40k.
With regards to the complexity of 40k, I don't mind the base game rules and switch between what faction I use depending how complex I want a game to be. If I'm in the mood for a more complex game I'll use my sisters list that relies on a lot of overlapping auras, strats, miracle dice etc. and if I want a more relaxing, 'fun' game I'll use a 1 detachment freebooterz list for the simple +1 to hit clan mechanic, use a few cp on the get da loot strat or the occasional cp reroll. There's a lot of scope within 9th to make the game very different depending on faction choice and a lot of times the complexity is a player choice as we deep dive for new interactions to get an edge. I will admit terrain could be simpler though, coming back to 40k in 9th I gave that a few rereads and still made mistakes in game.
12:00 They should really adopt a Malifaux system where your alternate between units. I Move/Shoot/Assault with my Aggressors, you Move/Shoot/Assault with your Plague Marines, etc.
ynnari and counterspell stratagem in 8th was one of the few attempt at increasing the skill ceiling and strategic depth of 40k. and no one like it especially when 40k is already complex enough with all of it's basic mechanic, they basically stopped after the genestealer cult book with 4-arm emperor Vect and started to remove any form of out of turn interaction from the game, culminating in the ynnari rewrite and shafting. . - the thing about 40k is that because its a tabletop game not a video game thus making the burden of memorizing became extremely heavy if the player on the other side are forced to ask you to confirm any and all rule that they have no idea how it work or synergize. and that become tedious extremely fast as well as leading to feels bad moment even at top table and the highest level of play. trying to push the game in that direction will only kill the competitive scene on top of making it almost inaccessible to none but the most dedicated professional level gamer type. - you can only hope to achieve that level of complexity when the game is only a board with piece like chess or a TCG card game like yugioh-magic-etc... of equivalent. . - what 40k need is a mission specific terrain set up to balance out first/second turn advantage and simply better faction rule design + mission rule design to compliment the current system that is already good enough but lacking in key important area that is so crucial it drag down the game.
There is system that they criminally underutilized, and it had so much potential to upgrade this game. Action system. Now we cen basically move and attack with units. That is it. Maybe plant the baner, search ruins ect, but all those are tied to scoring. Imagine they gave us nonscoring actions. Like "Barrage", where you postpone unit shooting untill your opponent phase. Make "overwatch" action instead stratagem, in similar way that tau overwatch works now. Give us "Spot" action so our artillery can shoot more accurately. "Suppressing fire" so we can reduce opponent movement. "Bombardment" so we create hazard zones on battlefield. And finally give us Faction specific actions. So close to greatness.
What you described in the Turn 1 Mechanics portion of the video is exactly what happened to me. I’m pretty new to the game, only have 7 games under my belt. My 6th was a 1000 pt game against admech at my LGS tournament. I play sisters. The store did not have enough terrain on the table, which I didn’t really notice was an issue at first due to my lack of experience. I soon found out though. My opponent got first turn and unleashed hell with his metric tonne of skitarii and his dunecrawler. Paragon Warsuits? Dead turn one. 10 women squad of Retributors? Dead turn one. My backfield objective holders??? Dead turn one. All without my opponent needing to leave his deployment zone. I had nowhere at all to hide from that volume of fire. I’ve been studying that game in my mind since trying to figure out what I could’ve done better. In truth, I don’t know what I could’ve done better in a situation like that.
This is a great video. I think if there is one thing WMH did right it was the Focus/Fury mechanic. It worked in reverse for Warmachine, with the Warcaster generating the focus and either keeping it for spells, or feeding it to Warjacks for improved actions or attacks - I thought this was a cool way to differentiate Warlocks and Warcasters. They are opposite sides of a coin. If I had one wish for 40k it would be for them to improve the design and function of characters in the game, making the commander actually feel like they COMMAND the army rather than just acting as a glorified missile, or a Reroll mule. How many military commanders do you hear of suicide charging headlong into the enemy to do as much damage before their death as they can while the rest of their force goes for objectives? Usually the one in charge with the plan is supposed to make sure everyone else does their job, in addition to being a skilled combatant. If every army generated CP the way Warcasters generated Focus, and it was spent accordingly to boost results, play strats, or activate powers with a cap each turn, it would do a WHOLE lot to improve the tactical depth with a very simple change in mechanics. Of course the rest of the stuff about the overly complicated and un-generalized special rules, the swingy D6 mechanic and the bloated list of useless stratagems available to every faction in the name of "Supplements!!" is spot on, but in order for them to change much of this stuff, the community has to speak with a lot louder voice than we are now, cause their business model is making them money and they have no real incentive to change. As long as scalpers and meta chasers keep buying models at an alarming rate, they can basically do whatever they want with the rules given the profit margin on their models alone, and it shows.
Top video sir, and a forensic dismantling of the design issues at the core of 40k that really do hamper its playability. I considered these issues when developing the Warband Fantasy rules (published through Pendraken), and in particular the "advantage from game sequence" problem. My solution was to maintain a fairly tratitional play sequence, but to delay the resolution of action until the end of each turn.
Someone I know says 40K has "breadth of rules, not depth", and I think this sums it up quite well. The chassis isn't that complicated but GW heaps piles of extraneous rules on top to obfuscate how poor the core mechanics are.
Exactly, they make the game more complex due to adding extra rules where none are necessary. What is more they cut tactical aspects of the game (eg. Initiative, vehicle side/rear profiles) in favour of so-called "simplicity and faster gameplay" but it never really works the way it's supposed to do.
This mechanic has been a bug bear of mine for a while. I don't mind having buffs & strats (however, I would remove 90% of them in an ideal world), but there should be a negative to doing them to make it a choice. The cost of the CP doesn't represent a real negative as you'll likely have factored that in when building your list. Many times there is no counter. It's a shame that stratagums have replaced strategy.
Great video - a nice considered take with alternatives and examples - well laid out. One challenge I think exists for 40K is the breadth of the game - the number of factions is so wide that the more creative they get with the rules the harder it is to find interesting mechanics for each faction which remain relatively balanced (not implying the current game is balanced, of course). But ultimately whilst their thinking is “add +1 to a profile stat as a flat increase” I agree that there isn’t much to think about. I really like mechanics which bring out board positioning more - the new GSC crossfire rule I think is headed in a really interesting direction. Pairing the existing combat doctrines with more positional elements I think could make them really exciting.
Great points! Not sure if you play AOS, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the gameplay of it compared to 40K. Like how there are command traits tied to your leaders and if they die you get no access to it, and how command points are generated and used as well. There is some interaction on the opposing players turn in the command ability of redeploy that forces your opponent to really consider their movement. Just some thoughts I think there are some AOS gameplay rules that could be brought over or converted into 40k.
I think I prefer a lot of things from AOS! However I have some major gripes that come from the double turn and how wounds are allocated. Beautiful models. If I had a core group of friends that played AOS, I would do it in a heartbeat. Played WoodbElves in Warhammer Fantasy battles and sadly they aren't a real faction in AOS
I definitely agree on the point about phases and turns. While i do enjoy Strike Force games of 2000 points, depending on the opponent, it can just be kinda awkward when you gotta wait for your opponent to finish his whole turn before you can make yours. And it can also be made even longer if a player had some sort of pregame action like Necrons pregame armywide 6 inch move.
True, and there's a reason why in Apolocypse (large wh40k battles with like 10 points) you put a death marker on your guy, use him to shoot in your next turn, then he actually dies
Damn, now I really want to see a heavily homebrewed Wh40k with the army synergy and other fixes you made in this video. I might end up doing this cause I really hate how long it feels in game cause you are waiting so long for the opponent to do their turn, plus I LOVE your synergy idea. I have no idea why the hell these things aren't fully implemented in the game already.
As for things to do during your opponent's turn, there is one thing that I think would help tremendously, and that is to make the shooting phase interactive like the combat phase is. Even if it were just a matter of stratagems, I can think of two: 1) a "Return Fire" strat for 1 CP to have one of your units shoot back after the opponent resolves their first unit and 2) make Smokescreen usable by any unit and make it much stronger, or design a new strat to that effect. There's enough tech floating around to justify this in fluff if that's an issue. While that might seem like more of a band-aid, I think it's necessary to increase the odds that one key unit will still be standing on your turn, or at least make the opponent work for it instead of just trivially removing half of your army. Return Fire is the more interactive idea of course, and would actually take some thought to play around.
I've always wondered why they don't play with debuff mechanics. Every gum has to be very specially about damage. I don't really see why they can't have a debuff gun, for example SM grab weapons, rather than just yet another anti-tank gun to compete with the myriad of others, make it so it slows down vehicles, or makes them less accurate or something interesting and unique. Also commenting on the stratagem point, yep completely agree. Also allows interesting design space to vary the availability of CP between armies.
You don't really see it in the computerized versions but Tabletop Space Hulk did command points well. Every turn you generate 1-6 of them and they are effectively action points that you can use on any of your own models, at nearly any time, *even during the opponents turn*. So for example, it was completely viable to have your heavy flamethrower terminator watching a hallway and and use two command points to burn it out when a genestealer rounds the corner. If you saved two command points to begin with. Even if you didn't save the command points, your opponent doesn't know how many command points you have so there is a built in bluff mechanic. You could also use them to sequence break on your own turn. In all the tabletop versions of the game, but none of the computer versions, once you activate a unit to move, it must finish it's whole turn and any unused action points are lost. You could, for example, use command points to move a marine out of the way without activating him. Anyways, this idea is very basic and simple and isn't necessarily directly relevant to regular 40k, but this sort of limited ability to do things out of sequence is definitely interesting and worth thinking about in other games.
On the bandaid fix, oh how it would help balance things if part of the scoring for a game wasnt painting but a good old friend long forgotten, Composition Score, or Comp Score. For those newer old 40k tourneys used to give you a Comp score, or Composition score. What this did is it heavily favored bringing a balanced amount of units. Basically a army with 1 HQ, 1 Elite, 2 Troops, 1 Fast Attack and 1 Heavy scored better Comp wise then a army with 1 HQ, 3 Elites, 2 Troops, 2 Fast Attack, and 3 Heavy. Or to put another way you where punished score wise for just spamming your "best/killy" units as opposed to bringing a all rounder. Now this is harder to do with the Detachment system. In the past when it was JUST the Force Organization Chart. It was simple, you bring 1 of each other thing before you start taking multiples, so a 2 HQ, 2 Elite, 3 Troop, 2 FA and 2 Heavy gets the same Comp as the 1/1/2/1/1, cause your army composition is balanced. I COULD see it being done as better score if you fill out your detachment fully versus spamming detachments just to get the slots, aka a Ork Outrider that takes the possible 2 HQs, 3 Troops, 2 Elites, 6 FA, 2 Heavy and 2 Flyers having a better Comp than the guy who spams 2 Outriders and just takes the 2 HQs, 6 FA, and some other things.
It's not something I've really thought about before but I agree with a lot of what you said and think you raise some good points. A big reason why I didn't respond to the community question was that I really couldn't think of many faction traits that are actually that interesting, and a lot of the time it does kind of just boil down into "x does more damage" type things. I'd really like sisters of battle miracles to be similar to the cabal points where miracles could be actual actions or effects rather than just replacing a dice roll with a guaranteed result, I think it's the sort of thing that would satisfy both competitive and casual players with it feeling better in game with it also feeling like it goes along with the lore of the faction a lot better, like automatically denying the witch feels more like a "miracle" than guaranteeing a multi-melta wound. Also I totally agree on stratagems, they feel like the worst offender for rules bloat nowadays, also it's a shame that they've decided to go the other way with making more unit abilities stratagems rather than the other way around. What's worst about it to me is other than causing more unnecessary bloat it's rarely balanced well, like there's no reason breakin' 'eds should still be doing d3 mortal wounds to a friendly unit whilst costing 2CP and needing a nob in 6". It's basically a worse, more restricted insane bravery that you have no reason to use except for the most niche scenarios where you've already used IB and need to guarantee a unit surviving but you can also somehow afford to take d3 mortals on it. Also codex secondaries have kind of been a problem since they were introduced, they seem to come in three varieties: do-nothings, situational, and useless. Do-nothings are the best as they basically exist for you to passively farm VP whilst you do what you were going to do anyway, situational aren't completely useless but also aren't as good as the do-nothings, and then you get the useless ones that are so bad that there's often a default secondary which is a better version. The issue is that a lot of codexes get a boost from the do-nothings, and are usually the better codexes anyway, whilst weaker codexes usually have only situational or useless secondaries.
Roulette works with a wheel, not dice. Great video. Speaking as a casual player rather than waiting for GW I’m personally interested in ways to patch the current system with house rules to make things more interesting.
I'd like to see alternating activations or even Apocalypse-style simultaneous resolution, as a solution to first turn advantage. I really like your examples for what Dark Eldar *could* look like, and the teasers shown for Genestealer Cults with their crossfire rules are a step in the right direction. Maybe just a step, but more than nothing - it adds synergies between a lot of units, lets you consider the trade-off for getting a fast unit on the other side of the enemy (putting itself in a vulnerable position, perhaps) and your opponent needs to keep this in mind when they spread their army out.
My biggest issue with 40k is the "I get to use all my attacks first thus killing the majority or your biggest threats before you get to!" Its why I think Star Wars Legion is superior.
Great topics you covered. I think you're very right in the counter-play area. When space marines get shot at by a heavily buffed unit they transhuman, a tyranids player just takes it. But is that really the only options we have for counter play? I like the idea of dragging a unit around or maybe forcing a direction of movement kinda like consolidate you have to end closer to a specific unit.
I have to disagree with your points from about @24:00 and forward. A unit that needs a strat everyturn costs you an army wide resource compared to warscroll units. It also prevents using multiple of that unit per turn. This is one of the few catch up mechanisms in the game, that thanks to strats, if you knock out 1/2 units, you don't loose half the unit effectiveness
On the point of general rules and keywords, it's really funny because it definitely used to exist in 5th ed. There was a few pages in the general rulebook with basically every keyword. Feel no pain, deepstrike, overheat, anti-grav etc... All codice used to not include any of those rules and they were just referenced.
To mitigate the 1st player-2nd player / low terrain-high terrain issue could you do something like in BattleTech. In BattleTech, after rolling for initiative, Player 1 shoots and Player 2 records damage to his unit and if any of his units are killed, however, they are not removed from the board. When Player 2 shoots on his turn, his units still exist until the end of his turn. The idea is that in combat, both sides are fighting at the same time. You resolve kills at the end of the round. This way in a turn 1 fight, you are both at full strength. You do bookkeeping and remove units at the end of the round. This way there is no advantage to going first and you do not need any messy and lengthy terrain rules either. Just a thought.
So are we developing some alternate activation rules in your discord then? :) could also try using simultaneous hidden orders, like you do in the game of thrones board game or Diplomacy
for me the main problem 40k ran onto was the introduction of all the vehicles and giant monsters, without changing the game scale 28mm is too big 1:72 or 1:300 would make for a better experience
Warhammer 40K does feel like a 80s-90s era game with I go you go and fixed movement. Not a lot of friction. I think Sharpe Practice (TooFatLardies) would be a great basis for Warhammer 40K. Units are activated by cards pulled from a deck. In addition, power cards are included to allow power ups or collecting multiple cards results in the ability to activate a unit out of turn or activate a unit again. One special card, when pulled, ends the turn allowing possibility of a unit not activating that turn (although remaining power ups allow units to activate). Movement would require die roll to see how far that unit can actually move. For a turn, I would only allow one actions: (fire, psycher, movement, movement/fire at reduced rate, charge/melee). This would add plenty of friction to the game and remove some predictability from it.
Me I'm a fan of the battletech initiative system. Each turn you roll for initiative, the highest moves last and attack first, with you move I move, the winner get to see where the other player moves, then if I have another unit I can counter that move, and so forth until all units are moved. Then the shooting phase, no real turn order as it all happens at the same time. The resolution phase, ammo marked off, heat checked, and casualties removed. If we applied this to Warhammer it would be initiative phase (loser moves first winner moves second) , command phase ( orders given, powers decided), movement phase( basic moves no charges or advances) powers phase (psychic, magic, tech, that buffs or debuffs units), shooting phase, shooting casualties removed, advanced move phase (charges/assault, fall back, over watch) still done in initiative order, close combat units that were caught engage, remove casualties, leadership and moral tests. I think this would give a better player envolvement, since each player would have to be there, and not just auto pilot the game.
Ive been playing since 3rd and there is a huge problem with making 40k "simple". Rules Lawyers. I dont mean all or specifically Tourney Players but Im talking in general. Ive found Rules Lawyers in both Tourney and casual players. And the more "simple" you wright the rules the more the Lawyers will bend and even break them to their advantage. The biggest example of this isnt even 40k but Hordes. Privateer Press already had a model with a single rule that was 2 paragraphs long when they released Bethanye and Belphagor, a caster who "merges" with her beast companion to become one. Well that rule was 3 paragraphs long, the longest in Hordes or Warmachine, and the Lawyers STILL found a way to be bellends about it. To elaborate for those that dont know a "Caster" has spells/powers, well by Warmahordes rules the model must be on the table for those rules/spells to be used. When you merged the models you take the Bethayne model off the table. Reading this with a RAI mindset, Rules as Intended, one knows even without the model the spells/abilities still work. Removing the model is just the best way to represent the abstract idea of them merging. BUT the RAW players, Rules as Written which most Rules Lawyers tend to be, they wanted to keep arguing that because Bethanye wasnt on the table her spells/abilities didnt work, even though its obvious they should. Privateer Press had to issue a errata adding a FOURTH PARAGRAPH to the models rules to "fix the issue". This is the ultimate issue with Simplicity and Complexity. A complex game means it has a high barrier to start, BUT it is less exploitable in the end due to everything being "spelled out". A simple game while easy to learn or pick up leaves so many things unanswered that disengenious people who only care about the W can and WILL exploit said loopholes to screw over others, making the game less fun and running people out. Now is this issue REALLY with the games? No. I like quoting a line from a page of guidelines from a old RPG book I have "Mining, Maxing, and Munchkinism is not a problem with the game, its a problem with the player". Now you can argue thats the designers passing the buck for bad design. OR it can be viewed as people realizing that NO ONE can ever write perfect rules, but that a player CAN decide not to do somthing that feels or is obviously NOT the designers intent. Almost every issue of Table Top or even RPGs or other hobby games is the players not aiming for "fun" as the first objective but Winning as the first objective. And being a WAAC, Win at all costs, player simply ruins the hobby as a whole for everyone.
18:22, yep, i play Tsons and I have a lot of shaningans to pull out. Lots of fun combos with Heroic Intervention, Bodyguard, teleport, regain models to make teleports easier. MWs spam. Cabal point. Move one unit to have it do spells and be teleported or moved by another. but i do recognize that not everyone plays with that level of complexity (and not everyone should, its a thinker to figure out how to play and can be confusing to figure out how to play against)
40K is not a bad game design its just very very old school. It's mechanics can be seen in very old rules played by the patriarchs of wargaming back in the 1960s. For example, you move and shoot, I take my saving throws, we melee I move and shoot etc etc. Nothing wrong with that but when you show a contemporary player who has only ever played 40k examples of innovative wargame rules they can be pleasantly surprised. For example strategic movement of troops outside of tactical range instead of the 6 inch shuffle. Opportunity fire whilst your opponent moves. Simultaneous movement, movement based on initiative with a bias towards quality. Simultaneous firing. The list goes on and on, admittedly its not all good. But 40k can be so frustrating at times, watching your army get slaughtered and not really being able to do anything until it is your turn and then it maybe too little too late. Thankfully 40K is much more than an old fashioned game mechanic and I embrace every aspect of the hobby and I get tremendous pleasure in doing so.
To be perfectly honest I'm not bothered by lack of clever synergy or deep gameplay too much. What makes me angry is imbalance in all its forms: imbalance between first player and second player, imbalance between factions and also imbalance within a faction. It Just makes me mad.
I like the overall idea of more interactive off turn rules but it goes against the earlier design tenant of simplicity. If you could remove some of the other complexity to add them I think that would be a welcome change. It also introduces the problem of REALLY needing to know what every army does to be able to play well. Which in theory is good but at least for me, maybe other people don't have this problem, I don't get to play many games. I don't know someone who has every army so actually being able to practice and learn these would be a big ask. Because of the time and money investment to build a new faction you kind of limit how well you can know all of them. Unlike a game like magic or hearthstone all you really need to do is own the cards (or know someone who does) and you can try things out more easily. Honestly I think alternate activations and using d10 would solve most every issue with the game.
Well if you want to do well you kinda have to know a lot of unit specific rules and stratagems that your opponent will likely use. I think its easier to learn each armies gimmick than each armies 5 most common units gimmick or so. Could be something simple like Khorne armies get points when anything dies and khorne units get stronger when they kill something, but weaker when they aren't in combat for a while. So you know that army wants to push as much forward as possible. Guard could be orders are given during command phase and you need to predict then what you think each unit does. Command units give flexibility to change things mid turn, but the enemy can target your command structure to weaken you.
Command Points should be changed to a Faction related ressource. In 1st Edition each Army had a Strategy Rating depending on its Tactical Warfare Knowledge. So certain armies are more quality over quantity or glass cannons but they have more points per turn to act and react in a strategic way. Also Strats should be changed and taken out of that ressource and become like once per game strategic ploys, which are more powerful and need either Warlords, Psykers or other Characters to be activated.
Thanks for a nice discussion. I come out of the Starcraft scene, and there is a lot to be learned from that in terms of game design in relation to Warhammer 40k. While there is a huge story about Starcraft mechanics and history, what I'd like to highlight is how few units there are and how few factions: three factions and they have less than 20 units less. How many exist in Warhammer 40k? The sheer amount of possible interactions in 40k is staggering with certainly hundreds of kinds of units all around. Does that necessarily create strategical depth? I don't think so. It can be compared to Adeptus Titanicus which has less than ten different sort of units but with an incredible depth, and I'd argue this is due to how few units there are. The second part is map-making. In Starcraft 1 the game had to be entirely balanced on map making due to the game not being patched since 2000. In SC2 the release of a new map with even minor adjustments creates huge new developments in the meta. WH40K seems to be moving a bit towards standardization, but it's really such a major factor that must be considered.
What I like about StarCraft is how much they keep trying to balance it. WH40k is older than most of its players and STILL isn't a balanced game. Like...how many Space Marine codices do there have to be before you get it right? GW can't seem to figure out how its game should be played on a 6'x4' table with 1,500 to 2,000 points.
Though to be fair, Warmahordes’ strategic depth also leads to a very long learn.ing curve. If you want to pick it up, expect to lose games for about 2 years before you figure it out.
Agreed, Horde/Warmachine plays like a skirmish game. That’s not wh40k. Plus I think it’s important to remember your audience/game design intent. Complexity isn’t bad, but it’s also not always good.
Universal rules would help a lot when it comes to simplifying things or just reducing wording, the only push back I've gotten is that "I dont like that it breaks the lore and should be called what its called" bruh there is no need to have like 8 different versions of deepstrike across every army and they all do the same thing till GW fucks up and makes things like drop pods.
Thanks for the breakdown! I'm new to WH40k and though I enjoy it, I've felt similarly about some of the mechanics. Do you have any other tabletop wargame recommendations that are enjoyable alternatives when you want to step away from WH?
Warmachine and Hordes was a big favorite of mine back in the day, but I can't (in good conscious) suggest it to anyone these days. I like Infinity, Malifaux and Kill team! I definitely prefer skirmish games -- I feel like it allows for much more unique and interesting mechanics for units and characters when you have 10-20 models instead of 50-100
* Chain of Command by Too Fat Lardies: WWII platoon-level war game that allows players to play like how things were done in real life (without being a grueling military simulator like Advanced Squad Leader). More historically accurate than Bolt Action, but not unreasonably complex * Grim Dark Future by One Page Rules: simple WH40k alternative. Rules are free and like the name suggests: all the rules fit on one or two pages. * Kings of War: Good alternative to WHFB that has some really neat mechanics on how units function. Essentially, each of your units can be built as a diorama and individual model removal is entirely optional. * God of Battles by Jake Thornton: I own the rulebook for this and haven't gotten to play it yet due to covid shutting down everything in my area. However, just based on what I've heard and from flipping through the rulebook, it's super comfy. Thornton worked on parts of WHFB 5th. and most of WHFB 6th. Edition. He's said God of Battles is basically what he would have done with Warhammer Fantasy if he could have designed the game from the ground up. It's an incredibly simple ruleset that allows for complex situations. My group and I always go back to Mordheim/Wyrd Wars (the community updated Mordheim) when we get bored of regular Warhammer games. It allows everyone to play without needing to buy new models.
@@nekrataali I found chain of command incredibly grindy and more swingy, riddled with uninteractive downtime& first turn dependant than 40K. I was left with the impression that it’s a really terrible game.
Signed!... That's why i love EPIC in the old days (2nd. Edi), or Games like AT-43... they are so deep in strategic with only a few rules in the main rules. The depth comes with Activation sequences, Terrain, Codex/Army books, and they were not complex or complicated.... Regards from Cologne, Germany
Great video! Really liked this discussion. A few things. KT21 gave me a lot a hope for the future of Warhammer overall, sure, the book isn't that well writen, but i think it's probably the best designed game from GW, and it's really good imo. D6 i think are still a good fit for 40k. Yes they lack granularity, but that can be an advantage. A +1 in d6 is very impactful, and i like that, i get very annoying with old d20 systems having to track 5 different buffs that each are a +1 that individually are meaningless. A comment on the siege tank thing as an ex sc player. The research was there to delay the tanks and impose a tax on that strategy. Basically so you couldn't rush them. That was removed after certain point because they accelerated the game, so delaying the tanks was pointless. Gating the function of a unit is not necessarily a bad thing. I think overall the problem 40k is a bit of unfocused discussion. The game has a lot of problems that probably should be addressed. But imo, there should be really be a focus on the next few things: Game length, off turn boredom, come back mechanics. We have a lot of uninspiring mechanics sure, but that isn't holding back the game, needing to schedule half a day for game is, waiting 30 minutes to an hour to do something is, the games being decided turn one is a problem. Besides the basic of rule unification (calling deep strike, deep strike, and things like that, and well the terrain thing you mentioned is huge imo). My fever dream of a solution could be something like this: -Every army has X activation points per round (probably relative to the size of battle). -Alternating activation of unit -Different units have different cost of activation points, probably custodes have higher activation cost than the imperial guard -When you activate an unit you can shoot or charge and move or fight (at lest initially i think this options are what looks best to me) -When both players run out of activation points, the turn is over. This does a lot of things. Ideally you wouldn't have activation points to use everything turn 1(unless your are playing knights or something like that i guess), this shorten turns, you don't have as much offtime. It gives another dimension for balance. For example activating troops could be cheaper than most alternatives, so they become ideal for moving up the field and holding up things. It could also work as an alternative to stratagems, x units could cost y to activate, or you pay z, a bit more and it has an extra ability. It also make in itself a comeback mechanic, even if you lose a chunk of your army, you still have the same amount of activation points, you can still fight. It could also add an overwatch mechanic like kt to balance horde vs elite. Idk, just though of that and i think it could be a viable path
20:34 I despise the Ultramarines secondaries. Oaths of Moment is a huge pain in the ass to keep track of, and one of the objectives essentially penalizes Ultramarines for using their Chapter ability of Falling Back and shooting, while Codex Warfare requires destroying 15 enemy units with specific weapons in specific turns in order to get max points. They’re both a complete and utter nightmare and I hate them both with the fury of a million suns.
You put in to words a lot of the thoughts I have about 40k. Very fun game but is lacking in a strategic complexity after you sort of figure out the basic rules. Probably the biggest things for me are the fact that armies tend to not have interesting ways to play beyond their models rules, like obviously a knight army will play differently than a IG army because the models are different but the actual faction rules do nothing to bolster that asymmetrical gameplay that makes 40k so interesting. Each army should feel completely unique imo. Also, with stratagems, I absolutely agree that there are too many useless ones. I think a great way to fix them is to make half of an armies stratagems specifically targeted towards effecting your opponent in some way. Like just straight up stuff like, 1CP: that guy gets -2 movement, 2CP: my tank gets to shoot something that moves into it’s line of sight. Great video.
Agreed with some of the points of the video, but I found it interesting that you criticised the game for its complexity and yet described a new army rule which was even more complicated than it is now. I would remove strategems completely to be honest and I would rather it be replaced with more interesting auras from HQ's. I think that with addition of some sort of overwatch action to allow you to shoot a unit in your opponents turn would help with interactivity (you perhaps make a rule so that an overwatch unit cannot shoot in your own shooting phase to balance it).
Yeah, that was kinda the whole point of the video! Complexity doesn't always equate to strategic depth. The example I made was certainly slightly more complicated than the current Dark Eldar rules, but its also less text and more straight forward than the designer's commentary just to explain fight order. Even still, the example I used was FAR less complex than what most other games like Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity, and Malifaux use. And yeah I like your second point a lot
@@danielbrewster8642 Ah I see what you mean. Keep the same level of complexity with more strategic depth. For me though warhammer strategic depth is at a good level, the issue is the complexity. It is so difficult for new players to approach, and I rather focus on growing the hobby. Great video though!
@@ArghMuffinMan One thing to keep in mind is that a slightly more complex game mechanic can balance the game better when there are much less models and units on the board. I find Skirmish level games with more interactive rules tend to be better balanced, play faster and are just more fun. GW made a statement during the launch of 9th that was their goal, however it seems like they lost control or forgot...or Sales got involved....
You know what faction had an AWESOME mechanic? The Ynnari Strength from Death. It was WAY over powered BUT it was cool, added a lot of strategy, and altered the way you played the game. I wish GW had, instead of removing it had just given other armies equally powerful mechanics
Also not to be a "well actually" but Deep Strike and FnP was not created by the community. Im guessing your a "New" 40k player, playing since 7th edition. There was in the old days, 4th/5th USRs, Universal Special Rules that worked the same on EVERY ARMY. That is where Deep Strike and Feel No Pain come from. They are old USRs that GW removed gave fancy coats of paint, Manta Strike/Tunneling Horrors, and we "Old Guard" just use the old USR names to describe what they are.
Yeah I understand that, I've played since 3rd edition. Similar to how we refer to deployment zones by their old edition names. The point is that newer player have to deal with this complexity and its unnecessary jargon.
good vid, i left 40k in 6th, 7th and 8th in favor of Warmachine. the tactical subtlety and variety of interplay is what drew me in. i still have my (mostly) painted Khador army. i like Warmahordes mechanics better, but 40k was my first tabletop as i started at the tail end of RT. i think they are on the right track with 9th, but there is still plenty that sticks in my craw about GW. i like your ideas.
40k used to have a lot of positional game play with vehicles having armor facings, line of sight being more realistic and complex, the scatter dice and no pre measuring. GW killed the realism of positioning mattering more for units for the sake of simplicity and preventing arguments between players over the inevitable subjectivity of trying to determine if a shot hit the side or the rear or if it can see the "body" of a model for LOS purposes.
Very interesting analysis. Have you tried running a game with alternate activations to see how it goes? The balance is not meant for it of course (for instance with the official rules melee activates twice as much) but it could still be a good learning experience to better understand issues and possible solutions.
There are too many factions for them to support properly. They should reduce the number of factions to Marines, Eldar, Nids, Tau, Necrons, Orks, Guard, Chaos. Any subfaction rules are inside these books. Each of these factions has a unique identity and could be supported a lot easier than having over 20 different codexs. They could really hone in and make better rules if they had less to write for. It would be sad for sisters players and genestealer cults players and any other faction being dropped, but it would greatly improve the game.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......I think they should keep the core factions and just remove sub-factions by making them something you build around in your list (like Blood Angels armies just use a bunch of jump-packs or Snakebites are Ork armies without any vehicles). Sisters of Battle should be rolled up into an Inquisition faction (along with Grey Knights and the Death Watch) with Genestealer Cults added to the Tyranid codex.
I think that one of my biggest issues with the game is how little interaction there actually is between the players. the fight phase and psychic phase have some nice back and fourth with who's fighting first and denying the witch etc but beyond that, nothing in the rules really make you interact further than just "removing models". This game would really gain a lot from having more strategic depth like flanking, suppression and the like to make the game feel more like you're affecting each-others armies more. The fact that terrain does so little in the game outside of block line of sight is another prime example. Infantry can move through it like it was nothing, there is no reason to ever get high-ground in the game aside from sight lines, melee is practically unaffected by most terrain that is less than 3" tall between stories (which is the vast majority), there's also no real variety in terrain effects aside from gaining -1 to hit which is so fucking boring. Something I understand why they removed but still miss is the impact of vehicle designs, I wish we had firing arcs like in 7th instead of being able to fire from the rear most link in your track with all your weapons. It's all so cookie cutter and dull. The game really doesnt need to become more complex with these kinds of mechanics either as you'd be able to cut some of the rules bloat from codexes and have armies be affected by their terrain more than now. I'd love to see something like the ghostkeels "cant be targeted outside 18" " effect on a terrain piece but only if the unit inside took an action before their shooting phase to hide so they cant shoot while having it. Stuff like that which all armies can use instantly make the game more interesting as now you need to consider what units to hide and where. Alternating activation would also improve the lack of interaction as the game would become more about deciding which units to use first and what enemy unit to either fire at or suppress.
I love the idea of the hypothetical rules. I do think that the depth is really shallow, but I don't know the rules as well as you do. I do see GW going through the process of becoming better, mainly because I play AOS. They are making new armies with crazy new mechanics, like the bad moon for gloomspite, or mightiest makes rightiest for SoB. Plus having the built in mechanics for certain legions which might allow you to have certain options for units is great, like Be'lakor has legion of the first prince which allows you to get all of the demon options for your warband. Meanwhile if you want him in a slaves to darkness army, he still plays awesome but with totally different units. They're going to a better place but slowly.
Played a couple of warm achievements games. Only one objective, to kill the leader. Potentially good game, poleaxed by only one thing to acheive. How about alternative activations or a random system like Bolt Action?
Have you tried playing for fun? I play space wolves with little to no range because i just love the theme of charging in with 00's of attacks. Never repeat a unit twice because they all serve a different purpose. Try it sometime.
I like your grid for Simplicity plotted vs strategic depth. Rock paper scissors is insanely simple, but strategically infinite. Similarly, Go is endlessly complex, and has still been understood through gradual deconstruction by pros. As a Pathfinder DM who has used homebrew systems mixed from Savage Worlds/GURPS and other die format strategies, and it is absolutely important. I would suggest that a third, "z axis" could be "fluff vs competitive", and i think this explains some of the swingyness and "must-take" if not balanced properly.
Go is the ultimate combination of being the most simple game while also having some of the most strategic depth. I wish GW would just steal Bolt Action rules. They handle things like templates, vehicle facing, etc. beautifully. I play Bolt Action with my dad on a regular basis. We tried a small game of 40k and it was a disaster. He just got frustrated with all the rules. Also, my kingdom for alternating activations. The activation dice mechanic in Bolt Action that randomizes who activates next simulates the fog of war so well and adds so much strategic depth on its own.
give only troop-choices and bikes the ability to capture objectives like in some Videogames. (Not ObSec. Capture the objective) I guess that would dramatically change listbuilding in 40k :D
Your hypothetical rules idea is very good. Positional mechanics are really good and we see at least the GSC get something like that in the new codex. I think in the meantime to reduce the multiplicative damage problem they should cap the number of buffs on units per turn. If you use a buff on a unit your turn you cant use a defensive one in your opponents next turn.
Yeah in World of Warcaft, you can only have 1 offensive potion and 1 defensive potion. We could call them a boon and a hex, and just limit it to one each per unit
Id also like to know if you have any ideas to put in additive buffs. And would that lead to MSU spam to increase damage vs multiplicative with Max size units.
If you want to reduce Cabal Points vs Tsons go after the rubrics, they usually give look out sir to chars and generate 2 with icon. also assimilate charcters, that really reduces Cabal Points
They certainly are the most cabal points per army point spent, but not by a lot. I just don't like how every unit in the army Ia both a generator and a spender of the same resource. It feels like an MMO where a button both generated combo points, then spent them.
100% agree with mechanics being boring right now. Mechanics should be representative of your armie and something that you can master, that have depth to it, and that a goog player should be able to use so we'll that it feels like he is playing a violin
The core of Warhammer’s problem is that it is still, at root, an early 80s game. Until outdated mechanics like IGOUGO and multi-layer attack resolution are removed that’s not going to get better.
My pet peeve is how the strategic depth has nothing to do with things like flanking, crossfires, high ground, pinning important units etc, and more with stacking buffs, removing the right models as casualties and placing your dudes the exact right distance from a wall.
That's why you play Epic!
Yup. Been playing since 3rd/3.5ish here. I remember back then I didn't like how pinning worked or how the game doesn't have rules for things like suppressing fire or reconnaissance. And instead of adding these to new editions, 40k has done more and more to remove real-world knowledge of warfare. It's turned into more of a card game like Magic: the Gathering, rather than a war game.
Part of this is because a lot of the old designers who had backgrounds in history or played other war games are now gone. The newer rules designers have a background solely in Warhammer with their knowledge of warfare comes from movies and video games. It shows. One of the more obvious examples is how vehicles used to work (where tanks are invulnerable to small arms and require dedicated anti-tank weapons) to what's now in place (tanks can be blown up by being shot enough times which in real life would have made them obsolete even during WWI).
Hopefully the new GSC Crossfire rule will help with this. I kinda think cover should be stronger to incentivize flanking around it for all armies though.
There's not a lot of tabletop wargame left to 40k. They stripped those out and replaced them with card / rpg mechanics. Which wastes the potential that a physical battlefield and models provide.
@@Matt-sf9ky in the sense of there being too many combos/special abilities? I agree with that.
One thing I've found very rare in 40k is comeback mechanics. There are a few, like sisters of battle getting miracle dice when their units are destroyed, but most mechanics are very much "win more", like morale checks and pretty much all objectives. This of course exacerbates the problem with overwhelming alpha strikes being so potent that other strategies become irrelevant.
Ive always thought a unit should get a buff for passing a moral check. Maybe higher leadership or a feel no pain as the are like "we will not go quietly!"
Haven't really thought about that, but kill team gives bonuses to the less model team in the form of overwatch, so gw might be considering that
@Hans Otterson “Never let Progress stand in the way of Tradition” US Navy modus operandi.
God I hate fixing GW's shite for them. But obviously giving heroes the bulk of "comeback mechanics" and basic units a few "long shots" would be good.
A rage mechanic (as seen in lots of MMOs) would be good. It would need to be for World Eaters, Blood Angels, or similar, but it would provide an interesting mechanic. Something like this, Aura: all friendly (WE, BA, etc) within 6 inches gain +1 to hit and +1 to wound for every 10 Allies who died this game. Maybe the BAs have it apply to only BAs and set it to 5, and the WE gain the bonus on all deaths - friendly or not (because Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, so long as the blood flows), but their bonus is for every 10 allies and every 20 enemies (so it’s both a decent comeback but also a weak win-more condition). Then put that aura on sanguinary priests and (not sure of the WE equivalent) so it provides a comeback mechanic, but one that you have to actively protect, maybe balance with a “this unit cannot be targeted by ranged attacks” so it’s at least manageable (and lots of variations on this rule, ex: can only be targeted if it’s the closest unit, can’t be targeted more than 9 inches away, can’t be charged, etc).
I would love to see 40K adopt a alternating activation game play.
As an example I really like the way X-Wing handles it. Units move going from Lowest Initiative first to highest initiative last. Then the firing phase has the highest initiative shooting first and the lowest initiative firing last.
I also like the way Malifaux gives the side with fewer units pass tokens so that the army with more units dose now get a bunch of activations at the end simply because they have more units.
A good idea in principle, but this style of system is significantly slower. I'd suggest switching an entire phase, like swapping the shooting phase around.
They did alternating activation in 40k's Killteam and its pretty great. I'd love to see it behave more like infinity, ditching the I go You go for sure.
The game of thrones miniatures game also has alternating and I find I feel like I have a more active role in the game. Nobody likes sitting around and watching your opponent disect your army; it feels crappy and doesn't do a good job at mirroring the chaos of a real fight.
It makes me miss Initiative from around 5th edition of 40k. Models in the fight phase used to strike from the fastest to the slowest, generally. A shame it was abandoned.
It is so rare to find someone who can actually understand and appreciate good game design in the wargaming community. Probably why GW games are so popular, people just don't know better.
As a gamedesigner for boardgames and tabletop games for 19 now, i have to strengthen your points here! Great video and understanding on the subject here.
Its rare to see videos like this. Most of the time critics don’t have a clue about gamedesign.
I've been playing 40K on and off since 2nd edition and yeah, it was pretty awesome as a teen back in the early 90s, but the whole d6 IGYG system feels very dated today when compared to all the more recent skirmish games and board games. I've wished for years as a bandaid fix they simply change it from d6 to d10 based. Far more granularity and easier math. No more codex lore mismatch of these being veteran crackshots and then having the same BS as regular troops because there's no room between a 3+ troop and a 2+ character, etc.
As to full on interesting mechanics, I do love your unit synergy ideas, but I also think that sounds like a ton of midgame complexity at current army sizes. I have to admit, part of what drew me to 40K over say Battletech to begin with was the idea I've got a whole army on the table instead of like 4 units. I know some people love herohammer style, but there's plenty of big hero type skirmish games already, I like the idea of my tabletop covered in models. I think removing 75% of the stratagems and adding in some more interesting armywide mechanics/alternate win conditions would go a long way to improving the game without bloating or causing a model reduction.
Another thing that would help is alternating activations. No more alpha striking with your entire army on the first turn. Going first becomes no more powerful than your heaviest hitting single unit. No dog-piling a player and wiping out a huge chunk of their army before they've had a chance to even play, no putting one player on a downward spiral with an alpha strike that reduces how much they have to fight back with so much, it usually isn't a fair fight. And both players get to do something every minute or so, instead of waiting around for half an hour having to stick around just to roll armor saves and monitor what the other player is doing.
@@Tiyev Bingo. Id say merge the two halfs of each "Round" of 40k. Make them like the old deployment used to be. I move a unit, you move a unit, I perform a Psychic Power/Action you then do the same, I shoot a unit you shoot a unit. It more accurately replicates the randomness and chaos of a battlefield then IGYG. Also this would up the tension and competition for Objectives. If they where scored simultaneously, aka since there would be only THE command phase, trying to push the opponent off and take a objective is less hot potato like now and more tug or war.
*IGYG (I Go You Go) for the uninitiated
Amazing how combat evolved from dice rolls to "auctions in disguise" like in Scythe
I'm the same as you, been playing on and off since the mid 90s.
Ive been advocating for the D12 as the dice of choice.
D12 makes the most sense because each side has the same chance of landing. The only dice that give every side equal chances are d4, d6, d8, D12. I think that's it.
This has become required viewing for me. This is exactly the kind of improvement 40k needs, more interesting *and* more flavorful. Synergies aren't just fun and cool rules, they're also ways to represent how *your* faction works with itself. As a guard player I hope someone at GW sees this video while they work on our codex, I believe it could make it the best one.
True. Imperial guard has so much potential with their orders and "chain of command" style. Plus, imagine all the ways they could reinforce combined arms lists with tank, transports, and artillery!
@@danielbrewster8642 Right? Modern combat has shown us that a guard-style army should have so many dimensions of combat available to them that they can adapt to any situation, but the IG are... not.
Sacrifice!!!
“Some of you may die…but it’s a risk I’m willing to take”
Fun fact about the I go-you go turn sequence, when the ynnari could do some actions during the opponents turn when their units would die, it broke the game. Since one specific fraction in the game was the only fraction who could play both "player turns" effectively. So it kind of broke the turn sequence as yes, you had much more chances to play than your opponent
As a former Warmahordes guy, I really appreciated seeing your overview of that Skorne list - and more importantly the differences in how resource management (Focus/Fury, Souls, spells etc) all effect both how you move and position your dudes and also how your opponent interacts with your models.
That construct solo sometimes encourages you to bring "shitty" units to basically charge-block and become soul-fodder. There's very little like that in 40k...a unit is either a VolCon or it's Reivers.
I'd really like GW to lean into the LoTR rules for new ideas. It would be interesting to see how 40k (and AoS) would (or wouldn't) work with the Lord of the Rings turn system. For those who have never played LoTR, it works in phases, where one player does their phase, then the other player does theirs and the order is decided by a roll off at the start of the turn.
Great video, perfectly explains things that I can't stand about the game better than I ever could. 40K is probably the least fun game that I have ever been so interested in, and I often wish another company would challenge GW's throne so they are forced to actually get their game together. I hope your channel gets big and they hire you onto their development team ;)
sponsor me GW!
One page rules: Grim Dark Future is quite good and it'a seeing a lot of traction due to 9ed shenanigans
@@GB-yt9sn I really like the alternation of those rules. And how there is a balance with weaker horse armies having more activations versus tougher elites.
Alternating activations make a world of difference. My friends and I tried a few games with alternative activations (surprisingly easy to shoehorn into 9th edition rules) and the boost to both balance and interactivity was glorious.
Did you find many problems around the power level/points value of the unit being activated? I can see balancing issues when playing battles between armies with lots of large units vs armies with only a hand full of massively expensive units…
@@joebody7198 The problem with alternating activations is that it rewards multi-small unit over few large units. But it's better than anything GW does.
@@danepatterson8107 yeah, I’ve considered whether units should have an initiative value in line with their power level or something to account for this, but it feels like a complex mechanic to introduce
@@joebody7198 it works well in one page rules. The horses have more activations, but much weaker units. So they can risk burning their first activations on weaker units to get the other player in position for the rest. As long as the armies and points are built with this in mind it's really cool and a lot more tactical thinking goes into not just how, but when you activate a unit.
As a player who has only recently picked up 40k I really liked this video as it did a fantastic job at concisely summarizing quite a few issues that I have found to be pervasive but haven't been able to put into words.
I like Apocalypse turn, activated, an damage control system. I almost want to see that way in 40k
Same
I swear that is going to be 10th edition.
The first game WH40k game I ever played was also my opponents first game. I got turn 3 wiped as tyranids vs imperial guard, because he was in my deployment zone shooting before I even knew what had happened. Turn advantage was insane.
Also we didn't really understand terrain mechanics, so despite my position I was taking insane hits.
I enjoyed 40k more when each unit had a special ability and there was no strategems. Sure knowing what people would do with a unit wasent complex but strategems make it too complex and units without super good strats now never get to use their abilitys ever.
I wish there was a system more like Warcry where your army was split into two or three, and there was more back and forth than I go you go.
Agreed wholeheartedly. Sadly I think they're here to stay, if for no other reason than GW can sell cheap to produce stratagem cards and the like. Why just sell a codex when you can add on accessories? It's crummy, but don't blame 'em, from a business perspective.
Just play it that way.
The results may surprise you
Always good to see some discussion that paints Warmahordes in a good light! Also, as I'm currently trying to learn 40k and am taking my first look at the new GSC... I'm very confused.
Which armies would you say do what you want them to do the best? (I saw Sisters and their miracle dice for killing them mentioned. I assume also, possibly, Ynnari and their movement when something dies etc)
I like the miracle dice mechanic, but I feel it has a similar issue to Cabal points where basically everything generates it and everything spends it. It's also almost exclusively used for damage rolls with melta weapons. The new Eldar dice mechanic is slightly better, but i wish there were cool abilities in your opponents turn that could be activated by "sacrificing" miracle dice. I don't want them to just be a "melta guns do lots of damage, and I can't fail morale" mechanic.
@@danielbrewster8642 Eldar dice mechanic? Has there been a leak I missed :O
Yeah its like a big pool they roll and then get to turn things into 6s when one of the dice values is rolled. Something like that but it was leaked a while ago
@@danielbrewster8642 oh yeah I think I remember that vaguely, my bad. Do you play/still play warmahordes?
No. I have all my old Ret, Menoth, and Gatormen models but gave up that came early Mark 3 due to work, moving etc. More than happy to do some wh40k collaboration vids if you ever wanted
Very interesting… my two cents to help the algorithm!
• Genuine question - why are games like Warmahordes miserably underplayed if the mechanics are better? Surely if it is a more tactically sound game then it would have a larger competition base?
• Agree fully that armies should have really cool mechanics like Cabal points, but they still need to be easy to understand without endless paragraphs.
• Finally, troops, and only ever troops, should have objective secured and nothing else should ever have access in any way.
Warmachine and Hordes had a huge manufacturing issue, and the main company undercut MSRP from local game stores. At one point they were the 2nd most played miniaturs game for a few years. But the manufacturing issues, a lack of community support, an IP that couldn't stand up against wh40k. The models are worse and they never really embraced the hobby aspect as much as GW did.
Also because tabletop games are such a social thing, when GW finally got their stuff together after 7th edition, people flowed back to GW and kinda stuck there. Super hard to get into a minis game if no one else plays it. And gamestores stopped stocking warmachine/hordes stuff a long time ago.
Maybe they tried to make it too competitive? PP ran all tournaments and the game was certainly more crunchy and intricate than wh40k.
I was a pressganger (community organizer) for WMH. The company has a lot of issues that have contributed to them losing market space. Here are a few: 1) They can't keep staff. They simply don't pay staff enough to even live in the area (Belleveu, Washington). They also treat staff quite poorly, which results in a complete guard change every few years like clockwork. This has a very negative impact on playtesting, game design, and model design. 2) The models are bad. Constant mispacks, mismolds, and generally just poor quality overall. 3) The "freerider" policy debacle... it's complicated, but the net result was that distributors don't want to carry their products anymore, which means stores must order directly from PP, a service that is both expensive and erratic. 4) Ending the pressgang-- we were volunteer organizers that ran events for PP and provided some "company presence" at all events. PP decided they didn't want to waste time and money on us anymore and this very quickly killed the local scene in many areas. It's a complicated game and there aren't many people who want to volunteer their time to teach beginners and run events. 5) Themes and Archons. Themes are like armies of renown, except you basically must take them or you lose serious competitive advantages. Archons are wildly overpowered models that are essentially auto-includes for any competitive list. The combination of these two things locked list design into a few optimal builds for each faction. Which is just... boring. 6) Destroying the fluff. They had an End Times style event that worked out about as well sticking your hand into a running blender. 7) Broken promises. PP has made a lot of absolute promises to the community over the years in the form of "We will always/never do X or Y." They haven't been very good at keeping those promises, and faith in the company suffered as a direct result. There's quite a bit more, but these are the major hits.
So yeah, mechanically it's a great game with lots of strategic death. The company just mismanaged everything in truly epic fashion with predictable results.
Depth* 🤣
@@johngianforte4654 i agree wholeheartedly with everything you said. Personally, my local scene all jumped ship in between Mark2 and Mark 3. Some poeple tried to hang on, but once people jumped to a new game lik Malifaux/Infinity, it was impossible to get them back
@@johngianforte4654 This makes me sad. I knew they didn't handle their game well after MKII but I was forced to quit wargaming in general before everything went that far south with WMH. I went to a number of 40k tournaments in my earlier days, but WMH is the only game where I actually have taken top spot at an event, so I have fond memories of that game. When I came back to 40k I wanted to look into WMH as well since I still own a large Cryx force, but my friend group has no interest in the game as it is now. They would need to return to the original days of Prime MKI and release a new line of plastics or downloadable STL's that compete with GW's models for us to get back into it, so everyone is just playing 40k. As soon as you involve metal figures it complicates peoples ability to actually build and paint the models - they are a lot less beginner friendly than the GW plastics.
GW capping players at 2 flyers and forcing you to take troops just reminds me of when Overwatch had its notorious GOATs meta. The game devolved into a boring strategy that the developers couldnt solve in an interesting way, so they just forced you to play a balanced team with evenly spread roles. It's basically admitting defeat.
Yup. I detest what my local community did to crusade. All they bring are competitive lists built around the net lists winning tournaments, and then use every little trick to give those lists the best buffs from earning crusade xp. Had a DA player bring the Raven Wing attack bikes with multi-meltas and a talon master body-guarded by veterans hidden in ruins out of los in a 25pp game.
Gw needs to incentivise making the lists like the fluff, but they will not. That would not make people buy six $45 models to fill out the formation tax instead of one $50 box; better model costs more money, and they want you to use as many of the "best in slot" units as you can (not)afford. To hell with interesting and fun; you *must* win at all costs!
Or maybe I have a really toxic game community in my city. When everyone you play is only interested in winning at all costs, this kind of ultra-competitiveness starts to take root.
Sorry to hear that, I enjoy crusade because you don't get to play the same copy paste lists every game. Sounds like you could do with finding a new group, where I am the crusade players are the opposite of the win at all cost tournament players, fluff is one of the main factors when choosing units and most players enjoy a fun loss when it happens. Maybe I'm just lucky though, I haven't looked at any crusade groups further away than my local one but I hope there's not a trend of the tournament mentality filtering into narrative games. There's always that one guy but it sounds like there's a few of them in your group.
This is great, thanks. For the most part, I do think the new Kill Team does a better job of evoking the feel of different factions while using standardized rules, even if the rulebook is poorly written.
LOL just to the right of this comment as I type it is a thumbnail for another video titled, "ANOTHER 20 Of The Most Common Rules Mistakes In Warhammer 40K." Yeah, this game is WAY more complicated than it needs to be. It really is too much.
That will be a "weird take", but did you have a look on AOS V3 ?
- Command point are generated each turn and dissapear each turn (No front load and incentive to actually use them every turn)
- Generic reaction command to use in the opponent turn (Mainly : redeploy after an ennemi move, overwatch, enhancing you defense or your attack)
- Limitation of one command. Only one occurence of each command per phase, can only apply one command on a unit, can only give one command per unit. It limit this effect of multiplication buff on one unit.
- Keyword. Ex : FNP are called "ward" and are common everywhere. Same for prayer, endless spells and other stuff
- Alternate activation in combat phase.
- Diverse mechanic for armies. It's not as potent as your comparaison, but each armies got really specific stuff, or specific ressources, with "counterplay",or at least "counter build". (Idoneth, can only shoot the closest one and a system where you have different buff that really impact the game. Nurgle, poison the oppenent army with each unit in contact with yours. Stormcast, half your unit can be in the sky. Tzeentch, can decide the result of X dice and can summon with spells... etc.)
- Really divisive take, double turn mechanic. It change the feeling of going first and being over agressive. (And you definitly need to learn about it or to create your list to avoid it by going low in drop to decide you will play in second)
For the love of God commenters, don't take only this point to discuss. Thats divisive, everybody knows it. Other points will provide a better discussions.
Not to say it's better, just to point that many of your points are used in another GW system. (And I feel that AOS is a bit of a testing ground for 40k where they allow themselves to go a bit wild)
I'm glad youtube decided to give me this video since I think in all the discussion of 40k it's really rare to actually hear someone talk about game design. I learned 40k as an adult and I only played very briefly, then learned warmachine and played a bit longer and even went to some tournaments. I'd say that both games ultimately have a lot of the same problems that make their other problems much smaller.
1) Moving the miniatures on the board is imprecise but the sizes of other measurements are precise, warmachine this is even more noticeable where it's not uncommon to have a game decided by 1/16th of an inch. This means that it's very hard to shake the feeling that you or your opponent at some point made enough micro errors to influence the course of the game.
2) Turns take too long and moving miniatures is a lot of it, because just moving your miniatures slightly too far could cost you the game by not being able to make a critical attack, or secure an objective, you need to be very careful about moving. This also means that some armies are just competitively non viable because you physically have to move tons of miniatures and still do so with precision.
3) Even though warmachine is much more strategic, it's still largely decided in the list building phase because of how easy optimal moves are to see. Usually combos have a specific lever unit that you remove first. In theory all those Skorne units have all this synergy to make things interesting, but the reality is most factions pretty much just pick one part to take out first and go down the list. This is why warmachine tournaments let you bring two lists, they even acknowledge the game is largely won before it even starts, warhammer is even worse for this and by a lot.
4) I never played with command points but I've watched battle reports and that command points are entirely "imaginary" as in they have no physical presence on the board I think they ruin a lot of the fun. Part of the fun of wargames is the aesthetic and having players cast imaginary "spells" on their units feels really bad.
So I think now is a good time to think, what can GW actually change that still lets it sell models. So we can't really have much bigger boards because of how difficult it becomes to actually play. You don't want to reduce model counts because tournament players are a good source of income as they netlist whatever gets buffed and tons of mid tier players buy new armies. I think a good move to look into would be to copy Star Wars Legion's movement system where a special tool determines movement (extra widgets to sell) for the squad leader, and all ranges are determined from the squad leader only. This makes horde armies much easier to play and means it's easier to sell more models. Turns become much faster and give room for more time intensive mechanics to add depth. If warhammer continues to be a game decided almost entirely in the list building phase, then tournaments should look into some kind of system where side decks can be used, this means meta lists have to at least gamble vs. facing potential hard counters and also means GW can sell more models. Getting tabled by a much better list also won't be nearly as bad if it happens in 40 minutes vs. the two hours most 40k games seem to take. GW will always unfortunately have financial incentives to power creep the game, there is probably no getting around this.
Warmachine is an excellent game and from a strategic sense (strategic planning) it is far superior to 40K. It also has some more unforgiving aspects with movement and threat ranges all being based on the absolute position of the model. There are no charge rolls, pile ins, or consolidates like you see in 40K and I have frequently seen this turn off newer players because it seems “unfun”.
There are a surprising amount of similarities between the 2 games but Warmachine has an extremely tight rules set, which lends itself well to tournaments and complex strategic play. And then, 40K is better in virtually all other aspects of the game and hobby. For the majority of gamers, 40K will be more accessible and easier to play. But WmH is a diamond in the rough
You've articulated issues in my mind that I couldn't put into words. My main army is Blood Angels and I'm not at all happy with my codex. It feels like a leftover 8th edition book, Meanwhile, I'm forced to watch other players get so much more out of theirs. I really hope GW doesn't have too much pride to go back and fix my mediocre codex.
I'm a imperial fists player... be thankful your not as bad as us 😂
As a csm player, I can't hear you over the sound of your 2 wounds and new units dropping every 20 days.
@@inquisitorsneed2 if the rumors are right (and so far they have been), you're gonna get fixed up sometime in the next 6 months. And I'm guessing your shooting is about to get badass. They took all the special ammo away from Deathwatch right? I bet it's because they're giving it to you!
@@DustyLamp I have an Iron Warriors army that's in absolutely shambles right now. Somehow, I ended up with all this warp sorcerer crap that I didn't want. I wanted a real marine army, but somehow that sucked and the sorcery stuff was supposed to help out. Now it's about as lore-unfriendly as it gets. I don't see a Master of Posession staying alive in Perturabo's legion very long!
@@RSBurgener ooohhhhhh I bloody hope so, any links to those links? You have me excited haha 😄
I've been having these thoughts for years/decades. Great job articulating it, I never would have been as eloquent. Games Workshop needs to hire you as a rules designer for 40k.
With regards to the complexity of 40k, I don't mind the base game rules and switch between what faction I use depending how complex I want a game to be. If I'm in the mood for a more complex game I'll use my sisters list that relies on a lot of overlapping auras, strats, miracle dice etc. and if I want a more relaxing, 'fun' game I'll use a 1 detachment freebooterz list for the simple +1 to hit clan mechanic, use a few cp on the get da loot strat or the occasional cp reroll.
There's a lot of scope within 9th to make the game very different depending on faction choice and a lot of times the complexity is a player choice as we deep dive for new interactions to get an edge.
I will admit terrain could be simpler though, coming back to 40k in 9th I gave that a few rereads and still made mistakes in game.
12:00 They should really adopt a Malifaux system where your alternate between units. I Move/Shoot/Assault with my Aggressors, you Move/Shoot/Assault with your Plague Marines, etc.
ynnari and counterspell stratagem in 8th was one of the few attempt at increasing the skill ceiling and strategic depth of 40k.
and no one like it especially when 40k is already complex enough with all of it's basic mechanic, they basically stopped after the genestealer cult book with 4-arm emperor Vect and started to remove any form of out of turn interaction from the game, culminating in the ynnari rewrite and shafting.
.
- the thing about 40k is that because its a tabletop game not a video game thus making the burden of memorizing became extremely heavy if the player on the other side are forced to ask you to confirm any and all rule that they have no idea how it work or synergize. and that become tedious extremely fast as well as leading to feels bad moment even at top table and the highest level of play. trying to push the game in that direction will only kill the competitive scene on top of making it almost inaccessible to none but the most dedicated professional level gamer type.
- you can only hope to achieve that level of complexity when the game is only a board with piece like chess or a TCG card game like yugioh-magic-etc... of equivalent.
.
- what 40k need is a mission specific terrain set up to balance out first/second turn advantage and simply better faction rule design + mission rule design to compliment the current system that is already good enough but lacking in key important area that is so crucial it drag down the game.
There is system that they criminally underutilized, and it had so much potential to upgrade this game. Action system. Now we cen basically move and attack with units. That is it. Maybe plant the baner, search ruins ect, but all those are tied to scoring. Imagine they gave us nonscoring actions. Like "Barrage", where you postpone unit shooting untill your opponent phase. Make "overwatch" action instead stratagem, in similar way that tau overwatch works now. Give us "Spot" action so our artillery can shoot more accurately. "Suppressing fire" so we can reduce opponent movement. "Bombardment" so we create hazard zones on battlefield.
And finally give us Faction specific actions. So close to greatness.
I like those ideas a lot!
What you described in the Turn 1 Mechanics portion of the video is exactly what happened to me.
I’m pretty new to the game, only have 7 games under my belt. My 6th was a 1000 pt game against admech at my LGS tournament. I play sisters. The store did not have enough terrain on the table, which I didn’t really notice was an issue at first due to my lack of experience. I soon found out though. My opponent got first turn and unleashed hell with his metric tonne of skitarii and his dunecrawler. Paragon Warsuits? Dead turn one. 10 women squad of Retributors? Dead turn one. My backfield objective holders??? Dead turn one. All without my opponent needing to leave his deployment zone. I had nowhere at all to hide from that volume of fire.
I’ve been studying that game in my mind since trying to figure out what I could’ve done better. In truth, I don’t know what I could’ve done better in a situation like that.
This is a great video. I think if there is one thing WMH did right it was the Focus/Fury mechanic. It worked in reverse for Warmachine, with the Warcaster generating the focus and either keeping it for spells, or feeding it to Warjacks for improved actions or attacks - I thought this was a cool way to differentiate Warlocks and Warcasters. They are opposite sides of a coin. If I had one wish for 40k it would be for them to improve the design and function of characters in the game, making the commander actually feel like they COMMAND the army rather than just acting as a glorified missile, or a Reroll mule. How many military commanders do you hear of suicide charging headlong into the enemy to do as much damage before their death as they can while the rest of their force goes for objectives? Usually the one in charge with the plan is supposed to make sure everyone else does their job, in addition to being a skilled combatant. If every army generated CP the way Warcasters generated Focus, and it was spent accordingly to boost results, play strats, or activate powers with a cap each turn, it would do a WHOLE lot to improve the tactical depth with a very simple change in mechanics. Of course the rest of the stuff about the overly complicated and un-generalized special rules, the swingy D6 mechanic and the bloated list of useless stratagems available to every faction in the name of "Supplements!!" is spot on, but in order for them to change much of this stuff, the community has to speak with a lot louder voice than we are now, cause their business model is making them money and they have no real incentive to change. As long as scalpers and meta chasers keep buying models at an alarming rate, they can basically do whatever they want with the rules given the profit margin on their models alone, and it shows.
Top video sir, and a forensic dismantling of the design issues at the core of 40k that really do hamper its playability. I considered these issues when developing the Warband Fantasy rules (published through Pendraken), and in particular the "advantage from game sequence" problem. My solution was to maintain a fairly tratitional play sequence, but to delay the resolution of action until the end of each turn.
Someone I know says 40K has "breadth of rules, not depth", and I think this sums it up quite well. The chassis isn't that complicated but GW heaps piles of extraneous rules on top to obfuscate how poor the core mechanics are.
Exactly, they make the game more complex due to adding extra rules where none are necessary. What is more they cut tactical aspects of the game (eg. Initiative, vehicle side/rear profiles) in favour of so-called "simplicity and faster gameplay" but it never really works the way it's supposed to do.
This mechanic has been a bug bear of mine for a while. I don't mind having buffs & strats (however, I would remove 90% of them in an ideal world), but there should be a negative to doing them to make it a choice. The cost of the CP doesn't represent a real negative as you'll likely have factored that in when building your list. Many times there is no counter.
It's a shame that stratagums have replaced strategy.
Great video - a nice considered take with alternatives and examples - well laid out.
One challenge I think exists for 40K is the breadth of the game - the number of factions is so wide that the more creative they get with the rules the harder it is to find interesting mechanics for each faction which remain relatively balanced (not implying the current game is balanced, of course). But ultimately whilst their thinking is “add +1 to a profile stat as a flat increase” I agree that there isn’t much to think about.
I really like mechanics which bring out board positioning more - the new GSC crossfire rule I think is headed in a really interesting direction. Pairing the existing combat doctrines with more positional elements I think could make them really exciting.
Wow it's 2:30 and Christmas, so yes I must watch this absolutely right now.
Hopefully it's worth your watch
Great points! Not sure if you play AOS, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the gameplay of it compared to 40K. Like how there are command traits tied to your leaders and if they die you get no access to it, and how command points are generated and used as well. There is some interaction on the opposing players turn in the command ability of redeploy that forces your opponent to really consider their movement. Just some thoughts I think there are some AOS gameplay rules that could be brought over or converted into 40k.
I think I prefer a lot of things from AOS! However I have some major gripes that come from the double turn and how wounds are allocated. Beautiful models. If I had a core group of friends that played AOS, I would do it in a heartbeat. Played WoodbElves in Warhammer Fantasy battles and sadly they aren't a real faction in AOS
I definitely agree on the point about phases and turns. While i do enjoy Strike Force games of 2000 points, depending on the opponent, it can just be kinda awkward when you gotta wait for your opponent to finish his whole turn before you can make yours. And it can also be made even longer if a player had some sort of pregame action like Necrons pregame armywide 6 inch move.
True, and there's a reason why in Apolocypse (large wh40k battles with like 10 points) you put a death marker on your guy, use him to shoot in your next turn, then he actually dies
Damn, now I really want to see a heavily homebrewed Wh40k with the army synergy and other fixes you made in this video. I might end up doing this cause I really hate how long it feels in game cause you are waiting so long for the opponent to do their turn, plus I LOVE your synergy idea. I have no idea why the hell these things aren't fully implemented in the game already.
As for things to do during your opponent's turn, there is one thing that I think would help tremendously, and that is to make the shooting phase interactive like the combat phase is. Even if it were just a matter of stratagems, I can think of two: 1) a "Return Fire" strat for 1 CP to have one of your units shoot back after the opponent resolves their first unit and 2) make Smokescreen usable by any unit and make it much stronger, or design a new strat to that effect. There's enough tech floating around to justify this in fluff if that's an issue. While that might seem like more of a band-aid, I think it's necessary to increase the odds that one key unit will still be standing on your turn, or at least make the opponent work for it instead of just trivially removing half of your army. Return Fire is the more interactive idea of course, and would actually take some thought to play around.
I've always wondered why they don't play with debuff mechanics. Every gum has to be very specially about damage. I don't really see why they can't have a debuff gun, for example SM grab weapons, rather than just yet another anti-tank gun to compete with the myriad of others, make it so it slows down vehicles, or makes them less accurate or something interesting and unique. Also commenting on the stratagem point, yep completely agree. Also allows interesting design space to vary the availability of CP between armies.
You don't really see it in the computerized versions but Tabletop Space Hulk did command points well. Every turn you generate 1-6 of them and they are effectively action points that you can use on any of your own models, at nearly any time, *even during the opponents turn*.
So for example, it was completely viable to have your heavy flamethrower terminator watching a hallway and and use two command points to burn it out when a genestealer rounds the corner. If you saved two command points to begin with. Even if you didn't save the command points, your opponent doesn't know how many command points you have so there is a built in bluff mechanic.
You could also use them to sequence break on your own turn. In all the tabletop versions of the game, but none of the computer versions, once you activate a unit to move, it must finish it's whole turn and any unused action points are lost. You could, for example, use command points to move a marine out of the way without activating him.
Anyways, this idea is very basic and simple and isn't necessarily directly relevant to regular 40k, but this sort of limited ability to do things out of sequence is definitely interesting and worth thinking about in other games.
On the bandaid fix, oh how it would help balance things if part of the scoring for a game wasnt painting but a good old friend long forgotten, Composition Score, or Comp Score.
For those newer old 40k tourneys used to give you a Comp score, or Composition score. What this did is it heavily favored bringing a balanced amount of units. Basically a army with 1 HQ, 1 Elite, 2 Troops, 1 Fast Attack and 1 Heavy scored better Comp wise then a army with 1 HQ, 3 Elites, 2 Troops, 2 Fast Attack, and 3 Heavy. Or to put another way you where punished score wise for just spamming your "best/killy" units as opposed to bringing a all rounder.
Now this is harder to do with the Detachment system. In the past when it was JUST the Force Organization Chart. It was simple, you bring 1 of each other thing before you start taking multiples, so a 2 HQ, 2 Elite, 3 Troop, 2 FA and 2 Heavy gets the same Comp as the 1/1/2/1/1, cause your army composition is balanced. I COULD see it being done as better score if you fill out your detachment fully versus spamming detachments just to get the slots, aka a Ork Outrider that takes the possible 2 HQs, 3 Troops, 2 Elites, 6 FA, 2 Heavy and 2 Flyers having a better Comp than the guy who spams 2 Outriders and just takes the 2 HQs, 6 FA, and some other things.
It's not something I've really thought about before but I agree with a lot of what you said and think you raise some good points. A big reason why I didn't respond to the community question was that I really couldn't think of many faction traits that are actually that interesting, and a lot of the time it does kind of just boil down into "x does more damage" type things. I'd really like sisters of battle miracles to be similar to the cabal points where miracles could be actual actions or effects rather than just replacing a dice roll with a guaranteed result, I think it's the sort of thing that would satisfy both competitive and casual players with it feeling better in game with it also feeling like it goes along with the lore of the faction a lot better, like automatically denying the witch feels more like a "miracle" than guaranteeing a multi-melta wound. Also I totally agree on stratagems, they feel like the worst offender for rules bloat nowadays, also it's a shame that they've decided to go the other way with making more unit abilities stratagems rather than the other way around. What's worst about it to me is other than causing more unnecessary bloat it's rarely balanced well, like there's no reason breakin' 'eds should still be doing d3 mortal wounds to a friendly unit whilst costing 2CP and needing a nob in 6". It's basically a worse, more restricted insane bravery that you have no reason to use except for the most niche scenarios where you've already used IB and need to guarantee a unit surviving but you can also somehow afford to take d3 mortals on it. Also codex secondaries have kind of been a problem since they were introduced, they seem to come in three varieties: do-nothings, situational, and useless. Do-nothings are the best as they basically exist for you to passively farm VP whilst you do what you were going to do anyway, situational aren't completely useless but also aren't as good as the do-nothings, and then you get the useless ones that are so bad that there's often a default secondary which is a better version. The issue is that a lot of codexes get a boost from the do-nothings, and are usually the better codexes anyway, whilst weaker codexes usually have only situational or useless secondaries.
Roulette works with a wheel, not dice. Great video. Speaking as a casual player rather than waiting for GW I’m personally interested in ways to patch the current system with house rules to make things more interesting.
Oops I think I meant craps. The one where you have to hit the other side of the table. Still relevant though!
Warmahordes was such a good game. Too bad everyone stopped playing in my area. Great Analysis of game design.
I'd like to see alternating activations or even Apocalypse-style simultaneous resolution, as a solution to first turn advantage. I really like your examples for what Dark Eldar *could* look like, and the teasers shown for Genestealer Cults with their crossfire rules are a step in the right direction. Maybe just a step, but more than nothing - it adds synergies between a lot of units, lets you consider the trade-off for getting a fast unit on the other side of the enemy (putting itself in a vulnerable position, perhaps) and your opponent needs to keep this in mind when they spread their army out.
My biggest issue with 40k is the "I get to use all my attacks first thus killing the majority or your biggest threats before you get to!" Its why I think Star Wars Legion is superior.
Great topics you covered. I think you're very right in the counter-play area. When space marines get shot at by a heavily buffed unit they transhuman, a tyranids player just takes it. But is that really the only options we have for counter play? I like the idea of dragging a unit around or maybe forcing a direction of movement kinda like consolidate you have to end closer to a specific unit.
I have to disagree with your points from about @24:00 and forward. A unit that needs a strat everyturn costs you an army wide resource compared to warscroll units. It also prevents using multiple of that unit per turn. This is one of the few catch up mechanisms in the game, that thanks to strats, if you knock out 1/2 units, you don't loose half the unit effectiveness
On the point of general rules and keywords, it's really funny because it definitely used to exist in 5th ed. There was a few pages in the general rulebook with basically every keyword. Feel no pain, deepstrike, overheat, anti-grav etc... All codice used to not include any of those rules and they were just referenced.
To mitigate the 1st player-2nd player / low terrain-high terrain issue could you do something like in BattleTech. In BattleTech, after rolling for initiative, Player 1 shoots and Player 2 records damage to his unit and if any of his units are killed, however, they are not removed from the board. When Player 2 shoots on his turn, his units still exist until the end of his turn. The idea is that in combat, both sides are fighting at the same time. You resolve kills at the end of the round. This way in a turn 1 fight, you are both at full strength. You do bookkeeping and remove units at the end of the round. This way there is no advantage to going first and you do not need any messy and lengthy terrain rules either. Just a thought.
So are we developing some alternate activation rules in your discord then? :) could also try using simultaneous hidden orders, like you do in the game of thrones board game or Diplomacy
I really do like the Game of Thrones Board game. I do like the idea of hidden secondaries though
I'd love to see you make a video of what warhammers next edition should do.
Just wanted to say hi, I just found this channel and it is great. I mainly play AOS but I'm eyeing getting back into 40k and I love the game.
So glad to have you here
for me the main problem 40k ran onto was the introduction of all the vehicles and giant monsters, without changing the game scale 28mm is too big 1:72 or 1:300 would make for a better experience
Warhammer 40K does feel like a 80s-90s era game with I go you go and fixed movement. Not a lot of friction. I think Sharpe Practice (TooFatLardies) would be a great basis for Warhammer 40K. Units are activated by cards pulled from a deck. In addition, power cards are included to allow power ups or collecting multiple cards results in the ability to activate a unit out of turn or activate a unit again. One special card, when pulled, ends the turn allowing possibility of a unit not activating that turn (although remaining power ups allow units to activate). Movement would require die roll to see how far that unit can actually move. For a turn, I would only allow one actions: (fire, psycher, movement, movement/fire at reduced rate, charge/melee). This would add plenty of friction to the game and remove some predictability from it.
Me I'm a fan of the battletech initiative system. Each turn you roll for initiative, the highest moves last and attack first, with you move I move, the winner get to see where the other player moves, then if I have another unit I can counter that move, and so forth until all units are moved. Then the shooting phase, no real turn order as it all happens at the same time. The resolution phase, ammo marked off, heat checked, and casualties removed. If we applied this to Warhammer it would be initiative phase (loser moves first winner moves second) , command phase ( orders given, powers decided), movement phase( basic moves no charges or advances) powers phase (psychic, magic, tech, that buffs or debuffs units), shooting phase, shooting casualties removed, advanced move phase (charges/assault, fall back, over watch) still done in initiative order, close combat units that were caught engage, remove casualties, leadership and moral tests. I think this would give a better player envolvement, since each player would have to be there, and not just auto pilot the game.
Never played but I like the system
Ive been playing since 3rd and there is a huge problem with making 40k "simple". Rules Lawyers. I dont mean all or specifically Tourney Players but Im talking in general. Ive found Rules Lawyers in both Tourney and casual players. And the more "simple" you wright the rules the more the Lawyers will bend and even break them to their advantage. The biggest example of this isnt even 40k but Hordes. Privateer Press already had a model with a single rule that was 2 paragraphs long when they released Bethanye and Belphagor, a caster who "merges" with her beast companion to become one. Well that rule was 3 paragraphs long, the longest in Hordes or Warmachine, and the Lawyers STILL found a way to be bellends about it. To elaborate for those that dont know a "Caster" has spells/powers, well by Warmahordes rules the model must be on the table for those rules/spells to be used. When you merged the models you take the Bethayne model off the table. Reading this with a RAI mindset, Rules as Intended, one knows even without the model the spells/abilities still work. Removing the model is just the best way to represent the abstract idea of them merging. BUT the RAW players, Rules as Written which most Rules Lawyers tend to be, they wanted to keep arguing that because Bethanye wasnt on the table her spells/abilities didnt work, even though its obvious they should. Privateer Press had to issue a errata adding a FOURTH PARAGRAPH to the models rules to "fix the issue".
This is the ultimate issue with Simplicity and Complexity. A complex game means it has a high barrier to start, BUT it is less exploitable in the end due to everything being "spelled out". A simple game while easy to learn or pick up leaves so many things unanswered that disengenious people who only care about the W can and WILL exploit said loopholes to screw over others, making the game less fun and running people out.
Now is this issue REALLY with the games? No. I like quoting a line from a page of guidelines from a old RPG book I have "Mining, Maxing, and Munchkinism is not a problem with the game, its a problem with the player". Now you can argue thats the designers passing the buck for bad design. OR it can be viewed as people realizing that NO ONE can ever write perfect rules, but that a player CAN decide not to do somthing that feels or is obviously NOT the designers intent. Almost every issue of Table Top or even RPGs or other hobby games is the players not aiming for "fun" as the first objective but Winning as the first objective. And being a WAAC, Win at all costs, player simply ruins the hobby as a whole for everyone.
Very good comment here. It's a shame but there's always going to be people who angle shoot wording of rules.
18:22, yep, i play Tsons and I have a lot of shaningans to pull out. Lots of fun combos with Heroic Intervention, Bodyguard, teleport, regain models to make teleports easier. MWs spam. Cabal point. Move one unit to have it do spells and be teleported or moved by another.
but i do recognize that not everyone plays with that level of complexity (and not everyone should, its a thinker to figure out how to play and can be confusing to figure out how to play against)
40K is not a bad game design its just very very old school. It's mechanics can be seen in very old rules played by the patriarchs of wargaming back in the 1960s. For example, you move and shoot, I take my saving throws, we melee I move and shoot etc etc. Nothing wrong with that but when you show a contemporary player who has only ever played 40k examples of innovative wargame rules they can be pleasantly surprised. For example strategic movement of troops outside of tactical range instead of the 6 inch shuffle. Opportunity fire whilst your opponent moves. Simultaneous movement, movement based on initiative with a bias towards quality. Simultaneous firing. The list goes on and on, admittedly its not all good. But 40k can be so frustrating at times, watching your army get slaughtered and not really being able to do anything until it is your turn and then it maybe too little too late. Thankfully 40K is much more than an old fashioned game mechanic and I embrace every aspect of the hobby and I get tremendous pleasure in doing so.
To be perfectly honest I'm not bothered by lack of clever synergy or deep gameplay too much. What makes me angry is imbalance in all its forms: imbalance between first player and second player, imbalance between factions and also imbalance within a faction. It Just makes me mad.
I like the overall idea of more interactive off turn rules but it goes against the earlier design tenant of simplicity. If you could remove some of the other complexity to add them I think that would be a welcome change. It also introduces the problem of REALLY needing to know what every army does to be able to play well. Which in theory is good but at least for me, maybe other people don't have this problem, I don't get to play many games. I don't know someone who has every army so actually being able to practice and learn these would be a big ask. Because of the time and money investment to build a new faction you kind of limit how well you can know all of them. Unlike a game like magic or hearthstone all you really need to do is own the cards (or know someone who does) and you can try things out more easily. Honestly I think alternate activations and using d10 would solve most every issue with the game.
Well if you want to do well you kinda have to know a lot of unit specific rules and stratagems that your opponent will likely use. I think its easier to learn each armies gimmick than each armies 5 most common units gimmick or so. Could be something simple like Khorne armies get points when anything dies and khorne units get stronger when they kill something, but weaker when they aren't in combat for a while. So you know that army wants to push as much forward as possible. Guard could be orders are given during command phase and you need to predict then what you think each unit does. Command units give flexibility to change things mid turn, but the enemy can target your command structure to weaken you.
Command Points should be changed to a Faction related ressource. In 1st Edition each Army had a Strategy Rating depending on its Tactical Warfare Knowledge. So certain armies are more quality over quantity or glass cannons but they have more points per turn to act and react in a strategic way.
Also Strats should be changed and taken out of that ressource and become like once per game strategic ploys, which are more powerful and need either Warlords, Psykers or other Characters to be activated.
Thanks for a nice discussion. I come out of the Starcraft scene, and there is a lot to be learned from that in terms of game design in relation to Warhammer 40k. While there is a huge story about Starcraft mechanics and history, what I'd like to highlight is how few units there are and how few factions: three factions and they have less than 20 units less. How many exist in Warhammer 40k? The sheer amount of possible interactions in 40k is staggering with certainly hundreds of kinds of units all around. Does that necessarily create strategical depth? I don't think so. It can be compared to Adeptus Titanicus which has less than ten different sort of units but with an incredible depth, and I'd argue this is due to how few units there are.
The second part is map-making. In Starcraft 1 the game had to be entirely balanced on map making due to the game not being patched since 2000. In SC2 the release of a new map with even minor adjustments creates huge new developments in the meta. WH40K seems to be moving a bit towards standardization, but it's really such a major factor that must be considered.
What I like about StarCraft is how much they keep trying to balance it. WH40k is older than most of its players and STILL isn't a balanced game. Like...how many Space Marine codices do there have to be before you get it right? GW can't seem to figure out how its game should be played on a 6'x4' table with 1,500 to 2,000 points.
@@nekrataali can they balance it? And do they want to or do they want creep to push sales?
"Fear points" sound similar to blood tithe.
GW knows how to make interesting resource generation+payoff mechanics, they just put them all in AoS
Sad but true
Though to be fair, Warmahordes’ strategic depth also leads to a very long learn.ing curve. If you want to pick it up, expect to lose games for about 2 years before you figure it out.
Agreed, Horde/Warmachine plays like a skirmish game. That’s not wh40k. Plus I think it’s important to remember your audience/game design intent. Complexity isn’t bad, but it’s also not always good.
Universal rules would help a lot when it comes to simplifying things or just reducing wording, the only push back I've gotten is that "I dont like that it breaks the lore and should be called what its called" bruh there is no need to have like 8 different versions of deepstrike across every army and they all do the same thing till GW fucks up and makes things like drop pods.
Thanks for the breakdown! I'm new to WH40k and though I enjoy it, I've felt similarly about some of the mechanics. Do you have any other tabletop wargame recommendations that are enjoyable alternatives when you want to step away from WH?
Warmachine and Hordes was a big favorite of mine back in the day, but I can't (in good conscious) suggest it to anyone these days. I like Infinity, Malifaux and Kill team! I definitely prefer skirmish games -- I feel like it allows for much more unique and interesting mechanics for units and characters when you have 10-20 models instead of 50-100
Star Wars: Legion if you want a game on the same scale as 40K.
* Chain of Command by Too Fat Lardies: WWII platoon-level war game that allows players to play like how things were done in real life (without being a grueling military simulator like Advanced Squad Leader). More historically accurate than Bolt Action, but not unreasonably complex
* Grim Dark Future by One Page Rules: simple WH40k alternative. Rules are free and like the name suggests: all the rules fit on one or two pages.
* Kings of War: Good alternative to WHFB that has some really neat mechanics on how units function. Essentially, each of your units can be built as a diorama and individual model removal is entirely optional.
* God of Battles by Jake Thornton: I own the rulebook for this and haven't gotten to play it yet due to covid shutting down everything in my area. However, just based on what I've heard and from flipping through the rulebook, it's super comfy. Thornton worked on parts of WHFB 5th. and most of WHFB 6th. Edition. He's said God of Battles is basically what he would have done with Warhammer Fantasy if he could have designed the game from the ground up. It's an incredibly simple ruleset that allows for complex situations.
My group and I always go back to Mordheim/Wyrd Wars (the community updated Mordheim) when we get bored of regular Warhammer games. It allows everyone to play without needing to buy new models.
@@nekrataali I found chain of command incredibly grindy and more swingy, riddled with uninteractive downtime& first turn dependant than 40K. I was left with the impression that it’s a really terrible game.
Signed!... That's why i love EPIC in the old days (2nd. Edi), or Games like AT-43... they are so deep in strategic with only a few rules in the main rules. The depth comes with Activation sequences, Terrain, Codex/Army books, and they were not complex or complicated.... Regards from Cologne, Germany
Spent some time there. Nice city :) beautiful architecture
Great video! Really liked this discussion.
A few things.
KT21 gave me a lot a hope for the future of Warhammer overall, sure, the book isn't that well writen, but i think it's probably the best designed game from GW, and it's really good imo.
D6 i think are still a good fit for 40k. Yes they lack granularity, but that can be an advantage. A +1 in d6 is very impactful, and i like that, i get very annoying with old d20 systems having to track 5 different buffs that each are a +1 that individually are meaningless.
A comment on the siege tank thing as an ex sc player. The research was there to delay the tanks and impose a tax on that strategy. Basically so you couldn't rush them. That was removed after certain point because they accelerated the game, so delaying the tanks was pointless. Gating the function of a unit is not necessarily a bad thing.
I think overall the problem 40k is a bit of unfocused discussion. The game has a lot of problems that probably should be addressed. But imo, there should be really be a focus on the next few things: Game length, off turn boredom, come back mechanics. We have a lot of uninspiring mechanics sure, but that isn't holding back the game, needing to schedule half a day for game is, waiting 30 minutes to an hour to do something is, the games being decided turn one is a problem.
Besides the basic of rule unification (calling deep strike, deep strike, and things like that, and well the terrain thing you mentioned is huge imo). My fever dream of a solution could be something like this:
-Every army has X activation points per round (probably relative to the size of battle).
-Alternating activation of unit
-Different units have different cost of activation points, probably custodes have higher activation cost than the imperial guard
-When you activate an unit you can shoot or charge and move or fight (at lest initially i think this options are what looks best to me)
-When both players run out of activation points, the turn is over.
This does a lot of things. Ideally you wouldn't have activation points to use everything turn 1(unless your are playing knights or something like that i guess), this shorten turns, you don't have as much offtime. It gives another dimension for balance. For example activating troops could be cheaper than most alternatives, so they become ideal for moving up the field and holding up things. It could also work as an alternative to stratagems, x units could cost y to activate, or you pay z, a bit more and it has an extra ability.
It also make in itself a comeback mechanic, even if you lose a chunk of your army, you still have the same amount of activation points, you can still fight. It could also add an overwatch mechanic like kt to balance horde vs elite. Idk, just though of that and i think it could be a viable path
20:34 I despise the Ultramarines secondaries. Oaths of Moment is a huge pain in the ass to keep track of, and one of the objectives essentially penalizes Ultramarines for using their Chapter ability of Falling Back and shooting, while Codex Warfare requires destroying 15 enemy units with specific weapons in specific turns in order to get max points. They’re both a complete and utter nightmare and I hate them both with the fury of a million suns.
Damnit. You just make me miss playing Warmachine with that synergy comparison.
You put in to words a lot of the thoughts I have about 40k. Very fun game but is lacking in a strategic complexity after you sort of figure out the basic rules. Probably the biggest things for me are the fact that armies tend to not have interesting ways to play beyond their models rules, like obviously a knight army will play differently than a IG army because the models are different but the actual faction rules do nothing to bolster that asymmetrical gameplay that makes 40k so interesting. Each army should feel completely unique imo. Also, with stratagems, I absolutely agree that there are too many useless ones. I think a great way to fix them is to make half of an armies stratagems specifically targeted towards effecting your opponent in some way. Like just straight up stuff like, 1CP: that guy gets -2 movement, 2CP: my tank gets to shoot something that moves into it’s line of sight. Great video.
Excellent content.
Agreed with some of the points of the video, but I found it interesting that you criticised the game for its complexity and yet described a new army rule which was even more complicated than it is now.
I would remove strategems completely to be honest and I would rather it be replaced with more interesting auras from HQ's. I think that with addition of some sort of overwatch action to allow you to shoot a unit in your opponents turn would help with interactivity (you perhaps make a rule so that an overwatch unit cannot shoot in your own shooting phase to balance it).
Yeah, that was kinda the whole point of the video! Complexity doesn't always equate to strategic depth. The example I made was certainly slightly more complicated than the current Dark Eldar rules, but its also less text and more straight forward than the designer's commentary just to explain fight order. Even still, the example I used was FAR less complex than what most other games like Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity, and Malifaux use.
And yeah I like your second point a lot
@@danielbrewster8642 Ah I see what you mean. Keep the same level of complexity with more strategic depth. For me though warhammer strategic depth is at a good level, the issue is the complexity. It is so difficult for new players to approach, and I rather focus on growing the hobby.
Great video though!
@@ArghMuffinMan One thing to keep in mind is that a slightly more complex game mechanic can balance the game better when there are much less models and units on the board. I find Skirmish level games with more interactive rules tend to be better balanced, play faster and are just more fun. GW made a statement during the launch of 9th that was their goal, however it seems like they lost control or forgot...or Sales got involved....
You know what faction had an AWESOME mechanic? The Ynnari Strength from Death. It was WAY over powered BUT it was cool, added a lot of strategy, and altered the way you played the game.
I wish GW had, instead of removing it had just given other armies equally powerful mechanics
Also not to be a "well actually" but Deep Strike and FnP was not created by the community. Im guessing your a "New" 40k player, playing since 7th edition. There was in the old days, 4th/5th USRs, Universal Special Rules that worked the same on EVERY ARMY. That is where Deep Strike and Feel No Pain come from. They are old USRs that GW removed gave fancy coats of paint, Manta Strike/Tunneling Horrors, and we "Old Guard" just use the old USR names to describe what they are.
Yeah I understand that, I've played since 3rd edition. Similar to how we refer to deployment zones by their old edition names. The point is that newer player have to deal with this complexity and its unnecessary jargon.
Good analysis. Just breaking up pure I Go You Go with any of numerous approaches to sequencing and overwatch would go a long way.
One Page Rules. Same depth…Simpler rules…faster games….cheaper…. and doesn’t go obsolete. Win all around!
good vid, i left 40k in 6th, 7th and 8th in favor of Warmachine. the tactical subtlety and variety of interplay is what drew me in. i still have my (mostly) painted Khador army. i like Warmahordes mechanics better, but 40k was my first tabletop as i started at the tail end of RT. i think they are on the right track with 9th, but there is still plenty that sticks in my craw about GW.
i like your ideas.
40k used to have a lot of positional game play with vehicles having armor facings, line of sight being more realistic and complex, the scatter dice and no pre measuring.
GW killed the realism of positioning mattering more for units for the sake of simplicity and preventing arguments between players over the inevitable subjectivity of trying to determine if a shot hit the side or the rear or if it can see the "body" of a model for LOS purposes.
Very interesting analysis. Have you tried running a game with alternate activations to see how it goes? The balance is not meant for it of course (for instance with the official rules melee activates twice as much) but it could still be a good learning experience to better understand issues and possible solutions.
never done alternating activations with wh40k proper.
There are too many factions for them to support properly.
They should reduce the number of factions to
Marines, Eldar, Nids, Tau, Necrons, Orks, Guard, Chaos.
Any subfaction rules are inside these books.
Each of these factions has a unique identity and could be supported a lot easier than having over 20 different codexs.
They could really hone in and make better rules if they had less to write for.
It would be sad for sisters players and genestealer cults players and any other faction being dropped, but it would greatly improve the game.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......I think they should keep the core factions and just remove sub-factions by making them something you build around in your list (like Blood Angels armies just use a bunch of jump-packs or Snakebites are Ork armies without any vehicles). Sisters of Battle should be rolled up into an Inquisition faction (along with Grey Knights and the Death Watch) with Genestealer Cults added to the Tyranid codex.
I think that one of my biggest issues with the game is how little interaction there actually is between the players. the fight phase and psychic phase have some nice back and fourth with who's fighting first and denying the witch etc but beyond that, nothing in the rules really make you interact further than just "removing models".
This game would really gain a lot from having more strategic depth like flanking, suppression and the like to make the game feel more like you're affecting each-others armies more. The fact that terrain does so little in the game outside of block line of sight is another prime example. Infantry can move through it like it was nothing, there is no reason to ever get high-ground in the game aside from sight lines, melee is practically unaffected by most terrain that is less than 3" tall between stories (which is the vast majority), there's also no real variety in terrain effects aside from gaining -1 to hit which is so fucking boring. Something I understand why they removed but still miss is the impact of vehicle designs, I wish we had firing arcs like in 7th instead of being able to fire from the rear most link in your track with all your weapons. It's all so cookie cutter and dull.
The game really doesnt need to become more complex with these kinds of mechanics either as you'd be able to cut some of the rules bloat from codexes and have armies be affected by their terrain more than now. I'd love to see something like the ghostkeels "cant be targeted outside 18" " effect on a terrain piece but only if the unit inside took an action before their shooting phase to hide so they cant shoot while having it. Stuff like that which all armies can use instantly make the game more interesting as now you need to consider what units to hide and where.
Alternating activation would also improve the lack of interaction as the game would become more about deciding which units to use first and what enemy unit to either fire at or suppress.
I love the idea of the hypothetical rules. I do think that the depth is really shallow, but I don't know the rules as well as you do. I do see GW going through the process of becoming better, mainly because I play AOS. They are making new armies with crazy new mechanics, like the bad moon for gloomspite, or mightiest makes rightiest for SoB. Plus having the built in mechanics for certain legions which might allow you to have certain options for units is great, like Be'lakor has legion of the first prince which allows you to get all of the demon options for your warband. Meanwhile if you want him in a slaves to darkness army, he still plays awesome but with totally different units. They're going to a better place but slowly.
Played a couple of warm achievements games. Only one objective, to kill the leader. Potentially good game, poleaxed by only one thing to acheive.
How about alternative activations or a random system like Bolt Action?
I like alternating !
Wow this was a fantastic video. Now I sad that 40K isn’t this other better version you hypothesized
Have you tried playing for fun? I play space wolves with little to no range because i just love the theme of charging in with 00's of attacks. Never repeat a unit twice because they all serve a different purpose. Try it sometime.
I always play for fun :)
I like your grid for Simplicity plotted vs strategic depth.
Rock paper scissors is insanely simple, but strategically infinite.
Similarly, Go is endlessly complex, and has still been understood through gradual deconstruction by pros.
As a Pathfinder DM who has used homebrew systems mixed from Savage Worlds/GURPS and other die format strategies, and it is absolutely important.
I would suggest that a third, "z axis" could be "fluff vs competitive", and i think this explains some of the swingyness and "must-take" if not balanced properly.
A good game would make the way the faction plays in the lore the most powerful way to play the faction.
Apocalypse 40k 8th edition came with D12 dice ! Why cant we use the D12 dice system?
Go is the ultimate combination of being the most simple game while also having some of the most strategic depth. I wish GW would just steal Bolt Action rules. They handle things like templates, vehicle facing, etc. beautifully. I play Bolt Action with my dad on a regular basis. We tried a small game of 40k and it was a disaster. He just got frustrated with all the rules. Also, my kingdom for alternating activations. The activation dice mechanic in Bolt Action that randomizes who activates next simulates the fog of war so well and adds so much strategic depth on its own.
I love Bolt action! Have a US paratroopers team
give only troop-choices and bikes the ability to capture objectives like in some Videogames. (Not ObSec. Capture the objective)
I guess that would dramatically change listbuilding in 40k :D
Very much so
Your hypothetical rules idea is very good. Positional mechanics are really good and we see at least the GSC get something like that in the new codex. I think in the meantime to reduce the multiplicative damage problem they should cap the number of buffs on units per turn. If you use a buff on a unit your turn you cant use a defensive one in your opponents next turn.
Yeah in World of Warcaft, you can only have 1 offensive potion and 1 defensive potion. We could call them a boon and a hex, and just limit it to one each per unit
Id also like to know if you have any ideas to put in additive buffs. And would that lead to MSU spam to increase damage vs multiplicative with Max size units.
If you want to reduce Cabal Points vs Tsons go after the rubrics, they usually give look out sir to chars and generate 2 with icon. also assimilate charcters, that really reduces Cabal Points
They certainly are the most cabal points per army point spent, but not by a lot. I just don't like how every unit in the army Ia both a generator and a spender of the same resource. It feels like an MMO where a button both generated combo points, then spent them.
@@danielbrewster8642 they are units. They are there to do things and play the game.
@@danielbrewster8642 like yeah i get what u mean, but its not that type of game.
Either way, thanks for the views and engagement. Always appreciated fleshed out replies to the content I make!
@@danielbrewster8642 anytime!
100% agree with mechanics being boring right now. Mechanics should be representative of your armie and something that you can master, that have depth to it, and that a goog player should be able to use so we'll that it feels like he is playing a violin
gr8 vid, wht about if gw just made different game modes like alt turns? if a gt did that right now wht would that be like? would it change the meta?
I think GW did something really great with the new Killteam system
Agreed
Indeed! I loved the prior edition and can't wait to play the new version. The new rules look fantastic.
The core of Warhammer’s problem is that it is still, at root, an early 80s game. Until outdated mechanics like IGOUGO and multi-layer attack resolution are removed that’s not going to get better.