Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on Jul 14, 2017 9:08:18 GMT
I keep reading here about many WM&H players dissatisified with the game and going back to their old love, WH40K, with its new, fresh, better version. I admit, I also dream of being able to use again all my wonderful 7 armies packed up in the wardrobe. And I will as my group has plans to play some new WH40K soon. But...
But after experiencing WM&H for some time and finding out it's a wargame with the level of balance and control over randomness incomparable to GW games (which I remember as one of the least balanced games I've ever played - even including pen&paper RPGs ;P - and being dice driven through and through in an attempt to cover said imbalances) I still think I will find it infantile and lacking.
Because, even though new WH40K is said to be so fresh and new, from what info I've gathered over the net, it doesn't sound so much like that. Yes, there's a lot of state-of-the-art marketing from GW selling the game like that, but is it really the truth ?
The rules aren't really free. All you get for free is an online brochure which doesn't even allow you to play full games as it is lacking info on many aspects of the game. Indexes have to be bought and even then parts of them are going to become obsolete in weeks.
Crazy, uncontrolable randomness replacing player's decisions is still there with some of its aspects thankfully removed (LD tests aka 'toss a coin to see if you lose a unit or not' or vehicle damage table aka 'fire the entire army at my tank for no effect or kill it with the first shot') but others are added (d6 damage rolls for example which work similarly to aforementioned vehicle damage table.
As for game balance I still don't have enough info on that, but, despite great news about hiring top tournament players to help, I am reluctant to believe the early hype and I am more likely to believe it's going to turn out as it has always been, the shopping list trumping tactics on the battlefield every single time.
So, apart from the always wonderful models (which I often use for my WM&H as they are better quality, prettier and cheaper oO), I really fail to see where this pull of the new (?) WH40K really is. Especially with WM&H crowd, which seems to appreciate little and controlled randomness, tight balance in tiniest aspects and currently enjoying 100% free rules for the game.
(I hope this thread can stay in the General Discussion, as I ask specifically in the context of people supposedly leaving WM&H for new, "better" Wh40k)
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wishing
Junior Strategist
Posts: 353
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Post by wishing on Jul 14, 2017 11:06:19 GMT
I haven't tried the new 40k, so I can't answer your questions, but I agree with your assumptions. I would assume that 40k is still vaguely the same game as it was before, or rather, that GW's core design style hasn't changed. 40k might be different in this edition than it was in last edition, but it still comes from the same approximate culture that creates all of GW's games.
The people that want sharp, precise, consistent, streamlined, tournament-focused and competitive rules will most likely be better off staying with WM I imagine. It would really really really surprise me if anyone insists that the new 40k is a more sharply balanced tournament game than WM.
I assume that if anyone wants to go back to 40k, then they will do it because they find the GW style more *fun*. More creative. Which I can relate to. But then I don't understand why they would have migrated from 40k to WM in the first place.
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Post by dazzla on Jul 14, 2017 11:18:39 GMT
I migrated from 40K to Warmachine and now for the first time I am thinking of migrating back. The thing I disliked most about 40K was what I viewed as the power creep. Now, having just seen a Khador list using the recently released Old Witch (proxied) being able to use 14 focus a turn to fuel jacks, and having read the CID version of Eilish (admitedly not likely to stay that way) I am seriously thinking of a return to 40K about which I have heard good things.
Edit: I retract the above. The CID process seems good and overall Warmachine seems pretty balanced. However, the Old Witch.....
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Post by smoothcriminal on Jul 14, 2017 11:28:51 GMT
No in short.
In long. Remove focus/fury and assassinate mechanic from WMH, up the pts limit to 150-200 to get a logistical nightmare, and 40k 8th edition is what you'll get. You place your armies, roll dice and then who has better stats per point\rolls better wins. That's it, that's the game.
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Post by guillotine on Jul 14, 2017 11:41:53 GMT
As someone who moved from 40k to warmachine and plays both, warmachine is infinitely better when it comes to rules. 40k is still a game where you can win at the list building stage and who ever has spent more money into the game wins. There is very little strategy into the game, where warmachine requires strategy and planning.
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Haight
Junior Strategist
Posts: 396
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Post by Haight on Jul 14, 2017 11:46:37 GMT
I've played a couple games. Its far, far better than 7th, but there's still some very goofy stuff. Tank Shock is gone, and tanks can now flee from melee - which, if you partially like the theatricality of 40k (a large portion of its appeal, imho), seeing a landraider run from a swarm of gaunts is kind of stupid. There's narrative justifications for why its good or bad, but its just a little odd to me. Targeting is still very, very abstract. A sliver of your model can see its target? Good to go for shooting. Terrain is as loosey goosey as ever. Rules as written, tanks can go up sheer surfaces of certain terrain if they have movement to get completely to the flat section beyond the sheer surface. That requires a very literal and liberal application of the RAW, but it is indeed, arguably RAW. Former template weapons now just doing singular target masses of multiple wounds makes crowd control difficult. I forsee swarm armies being pretty decent for the forseable future in 8th, or until counter-crowd control comes out. THat's most of the bad that i can tell from the very small samples of games i have played. There's also a lot to like. Mortal Wounds vs. normal wounds is a good mitigator to invulnerable save craziness as long as mortal wounds stay prevalent on stuff that requires a roll of a 6 to invoke mortal. Of course promulgation of mortal wounds incautiously would be bad. The allies matrix is gone and replaced by a sense making, intuitive, and fluff aligned keyword matrix for force composition. Armor penetration modifier system is back rather than 4th? 5th? through 7th AP threshold system. If you're an old salt that still chases the halcyon days of 2nd ed like me, this makes you smile. THey are listening to fans and giving them what they are asking for (... crazy i know!). THe game is a lot ore streamlined, and the various forms of play do make for quite a lot of options to play the kind of game you're in the mood for. I'm on the fence... a part of me still loves the Dark Angels that got me into wargaming in the mid nineties, but i'm still just a teency bit cautious when it comes to GW. They've been making a lot of really good moves recently and its getting hard er and harder to keep on ignoring them. There's other stuff that is good or bad depending on your take. Silly stuff and min/maxing is still present - Taking Rouboute Guillieman allows for all to hit and wound rolls to be re-rolled coming from any unit within 6" of him (yes partial unit = still counts, so this enormous bubble of re-rolls is larger than it appears). Deathwatch has a terminator dude that passes out a 5++ to every model in his unit rather than just to himself. I do not believe he's a character, though i forget if the item that does this is unique or not. I played marines vs. marines so i'm naturally picking out stuff only from that context, at the risk of someone invoking SPEHS MUREENS or something similar. All the games i tested were marine vs. marine, but i'm sure like shit exists from other codices or indices or whatever the hell they call them. You can quickly get this up to stupidly abusive levels by taking lots of small model count, but high shot yield troops and bubble-wrapping Guillieman in it. Some people like this combolicious sort of thing, some dont. Its still very much present. My take on it is this: If i had existing WH armies, i'd probably like. Not sure if i would love it, but i'd like it, particularly if i were of a mind that i liked AoS. I didn't particularly love AoS, but this is better done than that was and certainly better done pre-general's handbook. It still has issues, and i'm not sure i like it to invest in a 40k army again. The depths of tactics and strategy seemed deeper, but still not anywhere as deep as WM/H. I did not get the feeling that the game was decided at list generation step, but then, i played a few games with not very much diversity in force, so that's really a tough call.
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Post by Morganstern on Jul 14, 2017 12:57:11 GMT
I haven't tried the new 40k, so I can't answer your questions, but I agree with your assumptions. I would assume that 40k is still vaguely the same game as it was before, or rather, that GW's core design style hasn't changed. 40k might be different in this edition than it was in last edition, but it still comes from the same approximate culture that creates all of GW's games. The people that want sharp, precise, consistent, streamlined, tournament-focused and competitive rules will most likely be better off staying with WM I imagine. It would really really really surprise me if anyone insists that the new 40k is a more sharply balanced tournament game than WM. I assume that if anyone wants to go back to 40k, then they will do it because they find the GW style more *fun*. More creative. Which I can relate to. But then I don't understand why they would have migrated from 40k to WM in the first place. I have been playing Warmachine for 6 years. During that time I have continued to dabble with 40k. (although until 8th ed came out I hadn't played for 2 years). When I first started playing Warmachine what I found appealing was a combination of tight rules, welcoming community and obvious support and respect for the player base from the company. I don't play in tournaments as I can't devote enough time to play to practice and the scene doesn't appeal to me that much. What I have found is that over the years the focus on competitive play over all other types has gotten stronger and stronger and the community as a whole has felt very dismissive of those who don't get involved that way. I think that the other thing is that the current edition of 40k is much more streamlined and easy to pick up than the last edition. There may well be the situation that Warmachine has become so intense and focused that people may want to step away from that and just play some relaxed games with their friends. Finally GW seem to be in touch with the community at the moment and seem to have a good focus on what direction they are going. whereas PP seem to be spinning out of control a little and don't seem to know where they are going as a company. Everything they do seems to be reactionary at the moment. Also PP models are so expensive at the moment and the quality is so far behind GWs.
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Post by Gaston on Jul 14, 2017 13:06:08 GMT
Everything they do seems to be reactionary at the moment. Oh snap I literally just said this exact thing the other day! I looked long and hard at 8th ed. I came to the conclusion that while it was a step up from 7th, it was still too shallow to hold my interest for long, so the monetary investment was best spent elsewhere. But the models are gorgeous. But I hate painting.
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Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on Jul 14, 2017 13:25:33 GMT
Thanks for the opinions , guys. I had a feeling, that the supposed freshness of new 40k is more of marketing slogan than actual revolution in game design philosophy. No in short. In long. Remove focus/fury and assassinate mechanic from WMH, up the pts limit to 150-200 to get a logistical nightmare, and 40k 8th edition is what you'll get. You place your armies, roll dice and then who has better stats per point\rolls better wins. That's it, that's the game. This I actually disagree with. I have experience in both bigger WM&H games (150pts/side, non-Unbound) and bigger WH40K games (up to 10.000pts/side, non-Apocalypse) and all of those games felt far more strategic and balanced than their smaller versions. I think it may be natural in all wargames for some objective reasons: - overpowered stuff, like a broken feat or a 40k deathstar affects only a tiny portion of the HUGE battlefield instead of the entirety of it. Getting an advantage thanks to them helps on a limited front but doesn't win the game single-handedly. - the same can be said about a string of extreme dice rolls. Instead of deciding the outcome of the game it makes , for example, only 1/4 of the entire frontline being affected. - player collections are limited so if they want to field huge armies, they can't make them the newest hot spam in their entirety. They will have to fill the points with more varied stuff of all power levels. Also, limitations like FA or FOC force inclusion of a larger variety of units.
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Post by Charistoph on Jul 14, 2017 13:45:23 GMT
I haven't tried the new 40k, so I can't answer your questions, but I agree with your assumptions. I would assume that 40k is still vaguely the same game as it was before, or rather, that GW's core design style hasn't changed. 40k might be different in this edition than it was in last edition, but it still comes from the same approximate culture that creates all of GW's games. The people that want sharp, precise, consistent, streamlined, tournament-focused and competitive rules will most likely be better off staying with WM I imagine. It would really really really surprise me if anyone insists that the new 40k is a more sharply balanced tournament game than WM. I assume that if anyone wants to go back to 40k, then they will do it because they find the GW style more *fun*. More creative. Which I can relate to. But then I don't understand why they would have migrated from 40k to WM in the first place. I have been playing Warmachine for 6 years. During that time I have continued to dabble with 40k. (although until 8th ed came out I hadn't played for 2 years). When I first started playing Warmachine what I found appealing was a combination of tight rules, welcoming community and obvious support and respect for the player base from the company. I don't play in tournaments as I can't devote enough time to play to practice and the scene doesn't appeal to me that much. What I have found is that over the years the focus on competitive play over all other types has gotten stronger and stronger and the community as a whole has felt very dismissive of those who don't get involved that way. I think that the other thing is that the current edition of 40k is much more streamlined and easy to pick up than the last edition. There may well be the situation that Warmachine has become so intense and focused that people may want to step away from that and just play some relaxed games with their friends. Finally GW seem to be in touch with the community at the moment and seem to have a good focus on what direction they are going. whereas PP seem to be spinning out of control a little and don't seem to know where they are going as a company. Everything they do seems to be reactionary at the moment. Also PP models are so expensive at the moment and the quality is so far behind GWs. I agree with both of you. WMH has a tighter ruleset, but has a very tournament/league focused core, at least locally. 40K also is very competitive locally, but GW is still loosey-goosey with it's writing style. The fact that so much required FAQ on launch is a good indication of this. The sad part is that there are people who are willing to overlook the fact that GW still doesn't care enough about the game to be tight with their rules that it seems Stokholmish. I've read the rules for 8e, and while simpler and easier to get in to, it does nothing to convince me I should redevote any purchasing power to it. I might if the community's attitude changes (they have been as tournament-focused as much as the WMH crown) to it being about having a fun game. But that's more about enjoying a game with friends over root beer than any actual desire to play 40K in general.
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Post by Stormsmith Dropout on Jul 14, 2017 13:56:13 GMT
I like 40k lore, and the models look pretty neat. But I doubt I'll play it. The game rules are notoriously derpy, and even with the new edition, I'm not convinced it has reached any sort of comparable balance to WMH. I play games for the rules, and haven't encountered any that resonate with me like WMH. I've tried several other systems: Guildball, Battle Tech, X-wing. And I've watched a few games of 40k. None of them really do it for me. I'm not trying to insult those games, I know they have merit. But I'm gonna keep going with what I know.
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cain
Junior Strategist
Posts: 243
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Post by cain on Jul 14, 2017 14:15:19 GMT
From someone who played 40k for over 10 years and then went over to warmachine at the end of MRK.2. And having tried the new 40k:
The new 8ed are better then ever, and GW is into a positive trend with better and faster faq, and trying to be more active with the community.
The same old different are there though;
- warmachine have better clear tight rules, better balance and are just supurb for competetiv play.
- 40k have the greatest and deepest fluff (may be some subjective ) and supurb models. Overall looks better on tabletop with all the 3D terrain.
I still think you have to choose between; competitive play with dull metal models on dull playing field with 2D terrain. Or Great looking models on nice tables, but with some cluncky rules and balancing issues.
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Post by The 1336 on Jul 14, 2017 15:11:50 GMT
I was just wanting to some buddies of mine about this. The launch of the new edition seems to be a series of "it's a trap!" moments. They release all in one rules indexes for a reasonable price. Sounds good until you find out half of it is getting replaced by Christmas. The starter box is expensive, but you suck it up and buy it anyway. Then they announce a cheaper version completely out of the blue. Great...wish you'd told us that earlier...
Feel free to disagree with me, because I'm sure I'm not being fully rational here. Thing is, I want to like 8th ed. Its the most hope I've had for 40k in a LONG time. But at this rate I think if I want a 40k fix, I'll just dig out my 3rd edition book, even with its plentiful faults, because at least it's the devil I know.
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Post by Swampmist on Jul 14, 2017 15:37:02 GMT
Moving this to the area made for Non-WMH games
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Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on Jul 14, 2017 18:49:07 GMT
A pity Nobody discusses anything here and I was specifically interested what makes WM&H players want to return to 40k (as it is said many do).
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