Battleground Games Forum
Games Workshop => Warhammer 40K => Topic started by: Sam on May 27, 2014, 06:18:36 PM
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So the new edition is out, and I've been devouring the book. There's a few big changes, and lots of little ones, but those are going to be covered amply in other threads. The topic I want to address now is how to take a game that seems to be more aimed at awesome explosions than at competitive play, and tweak it so that it can run well for tournaments.
Fortunately, 7th edition is written much more clearly than its predecessor, so finding the shaky spots is a bit easier. What I'd like is for anyone who's interesting in competitive play to offer feedback here, so we can start coming up with some ideas for making Battleground events compelling, challenging, and fun. So here's how I think we should start:
1. Point out a specific part of the new rulebook that might cause a problem in a tournament setting.
2. Briefly explain what about the rule makes it less than ideal for tournament play (too random, too unbalanced, etc.).
3. Offer a suggestion for a solution, or a general method of solving it.
Here's a few to get us started:
Daemonology (Conjuration powers)
1. The Malefic side of Daemonology, as written, allows for a Chaos Daemons player to generate a truly absurd amount of Warp Charge, then spend it to create ridiculous amounts of free models (potentially doubling an army's size).
2. Other methods of generating free units (such as tervigons) are limited and not especially reliable. This method, by contrast, can't really be stopped unless the opponent also has crazy amounts of Warp Charge (Daemons or Grey Knights), and even then the chance to Deny non-targeted powers is low. Players facing a daemon army will never know if they'll be up against 3000+ points of Daemons in a 1750-point tournament.
3. Warhammer Fantasy has solved this by limiting the number of dice that can be generated in the phase, and limiting how many dice can be spent to cast a power. I've also heard a suggestion that we limit the dice used for casting to Mastery level + 1; so a low-level psyker can only reliably cast powers that use 1 warp charge, unreliably cast ones that use 2, and are unable to cast anything more potent than that.
Tactical Objectives
1. These seem like a poor fit for tournament play.
2. Planning and strategy don't mean much if your objectives keep changing. One player could get lucky and be required to hold the same objective three turns in a row, while the other could be required to make his opponent fail leadership checks.
3. We should probably just stick to the Eternal War missions for serious tournaments, and leave tactical objectives to casual play and more laid-back formats (like doubles).
The Eternal War Mission "The Scouring"
1. This mission has objectives worth differing amounts, randomly placed.
2. One player could get completely hosed by objective placement, finding that 7 points worth of objectives are sitting in his opponent's deployment zone, while he's got 3. That's too divergent to make for a good test of skill.
3. Either change the objective rules so that they match Big Guns Never Tire, or just abandon this mission completely for tournament play.
That's what I've got so far. Comments on any of the above are more than welcome. And feel free to add any other issues that you've noticed, and ways we might fix them. Overall, I think 7th could be the edition that brings back competitive play, but it'll take a little work from us. Thanks, folks!
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Here are my thoughts to make things balanced.
Limit primary detachments to 2.
Cap the warp charge pool to 12 (or around here).
Ban Unbound lists
Ban maelstrom of war missions.
Ban Come the apocalypse allies.
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You're supposed to paragraph for each of those why it's a problem and what they fix.
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I don't think we should ban "Come the apocalypse" allies just because it may not be fluffy. Remember when 6th ed came out and a million people complained about Necrons & Blood Angel allies, just to find out that no one took "Desperate Allies" anyway?
There is a ton of niche fluff to draw from,
- Inquisitor Kryptman & Tyranids vs Orks
- Chaos Marines & "Mid Turn/Falling" Space Marines
- Rogue Dark Eldar Sorcerers summoning daemons
- Genestealer Infested Tau/Astra Miltiuram
I can't see how lists like this could hurt, especially since we probably won't see them anyway.
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1) GW suggests models should be painted.
2) Rulebook pictures in the past have suggested this, and tournaments at BG have awarded painting. But it's hard work and not everyone can paint and people are willing to pay other to paint for them.
3) Screw painting.
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Derek has been very clear on his rules and feelings about painting.
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1. The new version of the psychic power Invisibility is ridiculously powerful.
2. If it goes off, the target essentially become invulnerable. The unit is only hit on 6's in shooting or assault, and still gets whatever save it would normally get, and is immune to blast damage and template damage. As far as I know there is no "out" to it that lets you realistically kill something that is invisible? All psychic powers can be dispelled with a certain amount of effort but this is way too swingy. It's "6th edition deathstar in a box".
3. Tone it down? Make it work the way it worked in 6th?
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This hilariously sums it up http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/05/28/is-7th-ed-40k-a-new-beginning-or-the-beginning-of-the-end/
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It would be better if I hadn't seen the same kind of article every time GW release a book...
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I wish the title wasn't so doomy, but that's a solid article overall. Definitely points out some areas that need attention. Keep it up guys; this is some excellent feedback.
Except Ben, naturally.
-Sam
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I think the title was just to justify having a picture of Homer Simpson holding a doomsday sign :D
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We had a pretty good convo on Bill Souza's facebook page and came to the same basic conclusions as that FLG guy, who I'm beginning to dislike. Today Alex Fennell and Ben Mohlie chimed in saying:
Alexander Fennell
I don't think there needs to be a cap (yet) on warp dice. The chances of successfully casting without a perils vs 6th edition just got a lot worse. Summoning daemons is dumb and invisibility is stupid, otherwise nothing else seems game breaking at the moment
Ben Mohlie
Yeah Alex I agree, I think lots of warp dice is fine if you aren't summoning daemons. I think a ban or severe restriction on malefic power, a change to invisibility, and we are in business. I got some games in yesterday and loved the maelstrom of war missions. Also, command barges are now awesome!
It'll be interesting to see where it ends up. Several people have come to the conclusion that because everything has been more or less cleaned up, it's a lot easier to identify what's potentially problematic. That's good for everyone.
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I agree completely with your points Sam.
On the topic of limiting Warp Charges (WC) available to a player (dice pool) I think that limiting total dice any psyker can use when attempting to manifest a power to Mastery Level (ML) +1 is a much better fix.
Firstly, it limits the ability of any Malefic Daemonology player to summon hordes of daemons on command, the percentage chance of a ML 3 herald of tzeentch to pass a WC 3 conjuring power is a measly 31% while also having a 13% chance to perils. A ML 4 caster has a 50% chance of casting a WC3 power with a 20% chance of perils when using 5 warp charges. A ML 4 caster with the ability to reroll failed psychic checks will have a 75% chance of success (there is only 1 of these in the game that I am aware of that is also a daemon). All peril chances are for Daemon models only, for non daemons the chance of perils on 4 dice is 72% and on 5 dice is 90%.
This will severely limit the total number of successful summonings whilst also allowing players to still play with their new powers.
With other psykers with this limitation you are really going to be just taking away the "auto" success of overpowered psychic powers (I am looking at you Invisibility/Fortune) whilst also allowing players to still use their psykers to good effect. Every psyker will know more powers than they can conceivably cast in a single turn, given the new psychic focus rule. Limiting the total number of dice will just force players to cast more powers and not just throw 8 dice at invisibility each turn.
If we were to try out the "limit total warp charges" route than that would do absolutely nothing to players who are banking on getting a single power off each turn to make their deathstar invulnerable. For example, if we go to the much beloved beastpack/farseer combo, even with just 2 farseers I will have 7-12 dice to throw at either invisibility/fortune each turn while saving 1 die to prevent perils with my ghosthelm. limiting the total dice in the pool to 12 would do absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening while limiting the total dice to 4 to attempt to cast fortune/invisibility would reduce the chance to success each turn to 68%, still great but not guaranteed and much more fun to play against.
This also would be in the spirit of the game imho, where a more powerful psyker (read higher ML) would have a greater chance of success of casting a psychic power than a less powerful psyker.
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I agree with Ryan, under duress :P
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Speaking personally (and to the wall, I suppose, but what the hell, why not?), I would rather see conjurations capped to a points value or banned outright, than an all-psykers nerf.
Nerfing all the psykers for the problems with one discipline's conjurations seems a bit over the top. It will introduce issues and generally weaken a lot of units, particularly those that rely on it for shooting. Also, you want to try and stay as close to the book as possible; simply banning Daemonology or Conjurations is a lot less of a jump from 40k's current core, than a blanket change to the Psychic phase would be. Taking things away is better than modifying them and causing far-spread unforeseen repercussions (which will surely be brought up the day after an event by the usual pitchfork-toting crowd that gathers after such things in this game).
I know there has been some outcry about how an army with lots of warp charge has an unfair advantage, etc., but it is not generally true. Historically you could cast powers to your hearts' content, Perils almost never happened or mattered much, and the "non-psychic" armies had no real chance to stop the powers anyway. So other than the fact that some powers have been strengthened to make up for the danger in casting them, not much has changed in that regard (except that the psychic powers might even be less superfluous, as previously easy casts now take 3-5 Warp Charges to cast reliably...previous ML2 psykers might not not even cast both their powers a turn, something which was practically automatic...so there's that).
Either way, re-writing Malefic or Conjurations would be more effective/less sweeping than changing the entire psychic phase. Limiting warp charge is just ham-fisted (especially since there have been very few games played so far). I'd just limit the amount of summoned models to a certain number of points and be done with it.
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I think maelfic is mostly fine as is, no one is scared of lesser daemons. The fear comes mostly from the possession spell that might be used to summon 100 bloodthirsters, but even a ML3 only has a 50% to get that spell. Last edition FMC were the bread and butter of the Daemon army, but now they have to wait a whole turn to land then assault.
The buff to Invisibility and nerf to FMC means that we might actually see more Keepers of Secrets in the meta, as last ed Bloodthirsters were the obvious combat choice for players. Biomancy also received a nice buff, and I think internal balance amongst the greater daemons is more competitive within the Daemon codex now more then ever.
The new rules have only been out for a week, I'd like to at least see some games played before any changes are put into place.
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Speaking personally (and to the wall, I suppose, but what the hell, why not?), I would rather see conjurations capped to a points value or banned outright, than an all-psykers nerf.
I get this and used to agree with this sort of thing. It's a simpler fix and doesn't "mess" with any of the rules except to outright exclude them.
In my experience people do not react well to having their options completely taken away.
I am not opposed to limiting the total amount of points people can summon, but to "fix things" something clearly has to be done about Invis too.
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Limiting total dice any psyker can use when attempting to manifest a power to Mastery Level (ML) +1
One thing I really like about this idea is that the percentages of success seem to be more or less right where *I think* they should be. It also provides a built in fail-safe in the case that everyone has missed something crazy.
Play devil's advocate and create examples of what may happen when this solution is applied to the weaker psychic armies. What units go from being "good enough" to "not good enough." Basically, show me why we shouldn't use this.
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Well, off the top of my head, there are a few things.
Last edition you re-rolled if you got a power beyond your master level, but in this edition that isn't the case.The main reason is that many of the tables include ML2 and ML3 powers, which is just going to end up causing people to roll powers they can't even realistically cast. So you will need to further alter the core game to deal with that (I guess it would be you are only able to roll powers you could possibly cast with the ML+1 ruling).
Generally, you need 4's to succeed on psychic tests and 6s to deny them. Any Mastery Level 1 powers don't take much of a hit; you only need one 4+ to get the power off and rolling two dice is fairly safe and will probably be common because of extra warp charges.
The ML2 and up powers suffer more. To reliably cast a spell with 2 Warp Charges (some of which are popular, like Prescience), your ML1 psyker can still try but needs to pass on both dice. I don't know strict percentages on this, but if each die has a 50% change of being a failure, it seems pretty unlikely. Adding the third die adds some insurance, but not much.
The ML3 powers really take a hit. Only the most heavily upgraded psykers can even attempt them, and with 4 dice and needing 4+ on three of them, they are unlikely to even work a decent amount of the time. These powers also were previously balanced out by the risk of more dice meaning more perils, so there will be less Perils of the Warp instances as well.
Also, probably a huge amount of Warp Charge will be pointlessly wasted every turn. Even in an army with one ML1 psyker, it is potentially a pool of 7 Warp Charge, which he can only use 2 of.
Finally...this doesn't really resolve the (perceived) problem, as the Conjuration to make new Heralds with awesome wargear options for free is only Mastery Level 1 and can be cast pretty easily by any Joe Schmoe anyway. So you would just end up with a table full of AP2-toting Heralds with Greater Gift rolls making them beefier upon being born. This is probably worse than the million Bloodthirster problem because each of these guys is a psyker in their own right a lot of the time, and can also be represented by a slightly different standard model (which, as far as your concerned, means a player could technically buy a ton more "Heralds" with ease - 10 to a box, prime a different color, "the blue ones are heralds", and voila...). And because it's ML1, you can attempt this power very safely, as you can't perils on 1 die.
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If you limit it to ML+1 dice thrown, that is kinda like banning level 3 spells from being cast at all.
If my army has only level 2 psykers, i'm going to have a 1 in 8 chance of casting any level 3 spell I may have rolled, prior to the dispel attempt. No one will ever do this.
If I have a level 3 psyker, and throw 4 dice at it, I have a 5/16 (less than 1/3) chance of success. Same thing really. No one will just throw away all their dice like that.
If I have a level 4 psyker (not many of these in the game) I have about a 40% chance of casting a level 3 spell. Maybe not a TOTAL waste of time I suppose, but really I'm probably better off just casting 3 level 1 spells.
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For the point where you will have powers you cant cast, you could simply make it so that you can reroll powers that are greater than your ML if so desired.
Chase, if you think that ML + 1 is too low, due to the warp charge pool etc, even going to ML + 2 would still really help with the overall balance. It would also ensure that even armies with only 1 ML2/ 2 ML1 psykers will be able to utilise all of their warp charge dice almost every turn.
We should all also remember that this is a new edition and that we are now able to counter psychic powers that we could never counter in the past. All psykers are weaker in comparison to 6th edition and inherently a single librarian facing off against a horde of psychic daemons or grey knights will be much weaker than before.
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Another possible solution is that dice generated can only be used by the unit/model that generated them, Then have a separate pool for the d6 dice that are generated can be used by anyone.
Then if you try to stack an absurd amount of Dice, many will be stuck on units/models that didn't roll the right powers.
Also, don't ban come of the apoc allies. There isn't that much more allowed than before, and give it a chance to see if it is broken.
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I've seen this ML+1 thing thrown around a bit on the interwebs... i think it underscores that playtesting is probably a key part of deciding what rules to use for an event that people are going to pay for.
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Play devil's advocate and create examples of what may happen when this solution is applied to the weaker psychic armies. What units go from being "good enough" to "not good enough." Basically, show me why we shouldn't use this.
zoanthropes take a real nasty hit, since old warp blast (their only possible offensive capability, a wc2 spell) was balanced around being nearly an auto-cast, but also having to roll to hit. with these casting rules, they're basically only useful as a synapse bubble. they have to drain a die from somewhere else and then end up with a 1/3 chance to actually land a hit (since they have to successfully cast first, then roll to hit). i suspect this will be similarly the case with a lot of witchfire spells, where the old balancing was around rolling to hit, more than rolling to cast (though i don't know any other specific examples as i'm not really familiar with much outside nids :P).
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The solution I have suggested was directly from Warhammer Fantasy 7th edition. It seemed to work really well for the most part.
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Play devil's advocate and create examples of what may happen when this solution is applied to the weaker psychic armies. What units go from being "good enough" to "not good enough." Basically, show me why we shouldn't use this.
zoanthropes take a real nasty hit, since old warp blast (their only possible offensive capability, a wc2 spell) was balanced around being nearly an auto-cast, but also having to roll to hit. with these casting rules, they're basically only useful as a synapse bubble. they have to drain a die from somewhere else and then end up with a 1/3 chance to actually land a hit (since they have to successfully cast first, then roll to hit). i suspect this will be similarly the case with a lot of witchfire spells, where the old balancing was around rolling to hit, more than rolling to cast (though i don't know any other specific examples as i'm not really familiar with much outside nids :P).
Nids seem pretty screwed right now. Sadly, I don't think any "global" changes should take them into consideration. Nids need a new codex basically.
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Play devil's advocate and create examples of what may happen when this solution is applied to the weaker psychic armies. What units go from being "good enough" to "not good enough." Basically, show me why we shouldn't use this.
zoanthropes take a real nasty hit, since old warp blast (their only possible offensive capability, a wc2 spell) was balanced around being nearly an auto-cast, but also having to roll to hit. with these casting rules, they're basically only useful as a synapse bubble. they have to drain a die from somewhere else and then end up with a 1/3 chance to actually land a hit (since they have to successfully cast first, then roll to hit). i suspect this will be similarly the case with a lot of witchfire spells, where the old balancing was around rolling to hit, more than rolling to cast (though i don't know any other specific examples as i'm not really familiar with much outside nids :P).
Nids seem pretty screwed right now. Sadly, I don't think any "global" changes should take them into consideration. Nids need a new codex basically.
Soo.... read the nid FAQ... did I miss the part where they updated Shadow in the Warp to do something in 7th edition?
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Nids seem pretty screwed right now. Sadly, I don't think any "global" changes should take them into consideration. Nids need a new codex basically.
nids are mostly fine, the only one of their powers they really cared about before was catalyst (the other stuff is cool, but by no means the core of the army) and with the new rules, they'll just pool extra dice into it (2-3 depending on how bad you want it). the flying monster changes don't really hurt them (you basically only came down to finish off units anyway, assault wasn't their primary use). the only thing that really hurts is the new smash rules, since they don't have any other natural way to kill heavy tanks (unless you count gargantuans, which are 'officially' in the game now). disclaimer, that should probably go with most of the posts here: this is my opinion having played exactly zero 7th ed games.
Soo.... read the nid FAQ... did I miss the part where they updated Shadow in the Warp to do something in 7th edition?
no, it doesn't really do anything. all it does is make perils worse and potentially make certain units more susceptible to morale tests.
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so, their psychic phase got worse.
Other armies psychic phase got better,
Shadows now does less.
Nids already weren't doing well.
Nids still can't ally with any except in 'come the apoc'
Fliers now take an extra turn to be able to assault to finish units off.
Taking a Jink save now means that you can only shoot snapshots.
Vector strikes now do less to ground targets.
One of their powers got nerfed, as did one of their unique items.
Where exactly are they 'fine'?
If you mean they can play a fun game against someone who purposely doesn't bring the best list, they yes, they are fine.
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Nids still can't ally with any except in 'come the apoc'
Incorrect, Nids (like everyone else in 7th) can ally with themselves. That means 3 flyrants and 4 exocrines. Also everything can score now.
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so, their psychic phase got worse.
it's not significantly worse, you're likely to get catalyst off just as frequently as you used to by dumping dice into it, and it's the only spell that really matters.
Other armies psychic phase got better,
arguable, the casting %s are down across the board and the perils %s are up (which are affected by shadows). some of the powers are better but largely you're seeing the same nasty stuff as before with lower cast %s. invis being the exception.
Shadows now does less.
it was only important before because it made psychic tests non-auto-cast, they're now more like that by default. i'd like an faq to make it do more, but i'm not holding my breath :P
Nids already weren't doing well.
they were competitive with skyblight, and now that's a standard part of the game.
Nids still can't ally with any except in 'come the apoc'
pure upside. i can now ally where i couldn't (including self-ally), don't see an issue here.
Taking a Jink save now means that you can only shoot snapshots.
that was already like that, and the jink went from 5+ to 4+, again pure upside.
Vector strikes now do less to ground targets.
gotta give you this one, weaker vector hurts.
One of their powers got nerfed, as did one of their unique items.
if you're referring to warp blast, i agree it's worse, but it doesn't really matter that much, not a lynchpin for the army and it technically did get a minor buff as well since my flyrants can now cast it and still shoot all their guns. all their unique items were already terrible so that's moot anyway.
realistically the army got a few huge buffs: the grounding changes are massive, formations being in is massive, lords of war being in (assuming they stick in competitive) is massive especially since the nids gargantuans never had d to begin with so the d nerf is pure upside. combining the grounding buff with a t8 flying gargantuan makes for a really hard model to kill (granted, 735 is pricey).
all that combined with the fact that the deathstars are generally harder to build or less reliable (invis aside) and the fact that the fmc changes probably hurt daemon flying circus more than nids since they were more reliant on assault than nids, the likely meta shift will probably be favorable for nids (again, same caveat as above about the number of 7th ed games i've played :P)
while it's too early to say nids are top tier (realistically, they probably aren't), i think it's also too early to say they're trashcan.
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Yeah I don't think the Tyranids are going to have a problem, and if they are it isn't apparent yet.
Broodlords and other models are now more desirable for adding dice to the psychic pool, so I don't think it got worse (especially as, since all Nids use one table, the whole army all have the Primaris power for free now due to Psychic Focus). Plus ol' Broody will get to rip the character apart in a challenge and then his extra hits will spill over to the unit. As a result they'll have pretty decent psychic defense, at least (if you build for it).
Taking a Jink save is a boon to an FMC armed for nothing but melee combat (where things will have improved, due to aforementioned challenge changes). Just cross the board as a jump MC and jink all the time. When you add in a nearby Venomthrope it's a really good save.
Shadows makes Perils hurt more and there will definitely be more Perils than before.
It's really not a certainty but we'll see, long-term.
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Please explain how catalyst got better when it is likely the only power your opponent will care about stopping and now actually has a chance to stopping it instead of just not being able to stop it?
Many commenters and TOs are already discussing banning 'come the apoc' allies. so this may not help.
All the talk about broodlords being useful needs to take into account how point inefficent genestealers are right now.
I was not talking about any nerf to warp blast. Look at FAQ for what I am talking about.
Tyranids have only one CC FMC, and it is a lynchpin model for the army.
Also, can we not pretend that only being able to move 12 instead of 24 the turn before you assault is nbd?
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Can we also not pretend that just because some things in the army took a hit, it is doomed to obscurity?
You can list probably 10 bad things about every book in this game, it does not mean they are irreparably ruined and that you need to go grab a pitchfork and torch. Things Changed =/= Book Ruined. Why not focus on positive changes or potential ways to adapt, instead of dismissing them out of hand?
For example...if Nids only have one viable melee FMC...then...I guess the changes to FMCs weren't so bad for them, no (besides...don't tell me there are melee flyrants running around...I haven't seen one without a set of shooting weapons in a minute). Either way, man, there is no need to declare the whole army is in the trash because one/some unit(s) changed (and I say CHANGED, not got nerfed, because we don't know long-term how this change fits into the rest of the edition yet).
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Many commenters and TOs are already discussing banning 'come the apoc' allies. so this may not help.
I was going over this today with Doubles in mind. I'm not sure "Come the Apoc" allies need to be banned, but without just ignoring the rules it seems to me like they'd essentially exclude themselves as super viable options. Then again, you never know.
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Please explain how catalyst got better when it is likely the only power your opponent will care about stopping and now actually has a chance to stopping it instead of just not being able to stop it?
pretty sure i never said it got better, it didn't. it's obviously worse, just like most psychic powers, because it's harder to get off. there are a lot of armies who needed their psychic powers to go off reliably a lot more than nids need theirs.
All the talk about broodlords being useful needs to take into account how point inefficent genestealers are right now.
agree, broodlords weren't worth taking before and still aren't. they're probably less worth taking now that you need more warp charges than they generate to reliably cast the horror.
I was not talking about any nerf to warp blast. Look at FAQ for what I am talking about.
what'd i miss? everything looks the same aside from a marginal buff to dominion.
Tyranids have only one CC FMC, and it is a lynchpin model for the army.
Also, can we not pretend that only being able to move 12 instead of 24 the turn before you assault is nbd?
the flying hive tyrant is still a lynchpin, and isn't all that much worse than before. you bought them for the on average 11 s6 hits in shooting before, and they're just as good at doing that. you bought the wings before to get them into 18" range and make them harder to kill. they still do the first part and they do the second part better than they did before. not being able to assault the turn you switch modes sucks for sure, i won't disagree with that, but i also typically only brought them down to assault in situations where i was either already winning handily, or in situations where i badly needed something to go my way because i was getting wrecked. going into assault was a major risk reward situation before and not doing it as often doesn't bother me that much.
the one situation that i really wanted to assault with them frequently was killing heavy vehicles, but that got killed more by the smash nerf than the fmc changes.
the meta game is going to shift with the rules changes, especially if the proposed changes for the psychic phase in competitive play go through (which i'm fine with, we were asked for specific examples of things that are nerfed by those changes, which is why i mentioned zoanthropes. i don't have a problem with the proposed changes as i generally only bring zoanthropes as synapse nodes anyway and typically only when i have leftover points that aren't enough to fit another monster). we'll have to wait and see where nids fall in the new meta, i think counting them out before we see some competitive results is premature.
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Thread became about Tyranids, and not about tournaments. Meh.
My two cents here, that banning certain schools, such as the sexy new Daemonology, should not be an option at this point at all. It's new, people want to see it and more importantly people want to know if it will really work in a real-game situation. So far I know of one YouTube video making people sad, so sad they ignore the fact the 4000 point spawned army actually lost the game. For now, let it ride, so we can say we tried.
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How would it be if the dice limit towards any one psychic power were ML*2? That would give the higher mastery levels a geometric, rather than linear, advantage.
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Thread became about Tyranids, and not about tournaments. Meh.
My two cents here, that banning certain schools, such as the sexy new Daemonology, should not be an option at this point at all. It's new, people want to see it and more Tester people want to know if it will really work in a real-game situation. So far I know of one YouTube video making people sad, so sad they ignore the fact the 4000 point spawned army actually lost the game. For now, let it ride, so we can say we tried.
Not mention banning Deamonolgy would ban the only psychic discipline Orks currently have access to. Also on the subject of the three Tervigon list is back thanks to the multiple detachments / unbound armies.
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What about ML+WC cost as the max you can throw? A level 1 wizard could throw 4 dice at a WC3 spell, which males it possible but unlikely to cast, while there's still a decent chance to cast WC1-2 SPELLS.
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How would it be if the dice limit towards any one psychic power were ML*2? That would give the higher mastery levels a geometric, rather than linear, advantage.
6 dice might well be the ideal amount of dice to throw at a ml3 power anyway.
Basically, I don't understand why people like this whole line of thought. If you can't throw enough dice at a power to cast it more than half the time, the power becomes useless. And throwing LOTS of dice at a single psychic power is redundant and will just make you perils, nobody would consider throwing 15 dice at a ml3 power to be "abusive"... I don't think this is the right angle of attack here. I like the idea of limiting the TOTAL warp pool to 12 or so better (but that might also have problems, definitely needs more testing & talking).
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What makes people think casting a psychic power should be easy? My thoughts on the new system is it should be extremely hard to use powers. This is supported by fluff as well. Not that I care about that angle but some might.
After some testing I did ML+2 looks to be a good sweet spot. Nothing in this game says casting powers should be easy or should have a 50% chance etc..
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Many commenters and TOs are already discussing banning 'come the apoc' allies. so this may not help.
I was going over this today with Doubles in mind. I'm not sure "Come the Apoc" allies need to be banned, but without just ignoring the rules it seems to me like they'd essentially exclude themselves as super viable options. Then again, you never know.
I wouldn't ban them. you pay a penalty to do it, and there are plenty of great combos out there, most of which are battle brothers.
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What makes people think casting a psychic power should be easy? [...] Nothing in this game says casting powers should be easy or should have a 50% chance etc..
Well, the default rules imply as much, just for the sake of playing Devil's Advocate. But if you have to go a route, ML+2 is probably not a bad one. I'd still rather see stuff deal directly with the powers in question, though -- some of these powers are as weak as a heavy flamer, for example. Making them harder to cast or less likely to succeed is going to basically turn a guy who rolls a crappy power, into a guy who has no powers, for all intents and purposes.
On another note, I don't think banning Come the Apoc allies makes sense either. Other than during deployment, they are the same as Desperate allies. So to me it doesn't make a lot of sense to restrict them, if you think about it.
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Default rules actually dont. That is an opinion on how you see it. Being able to throw many dice at a power will ensure it goes off yes but in doing so will kill the psyker.
In my opinion that isnt easy and isnt something that should be counted as easy either.
But this comes from a seasoned tourny player looking to mitigate thigs that can be taken advantage of and ruin the tourny experience for some. Take from my opinion what you will.
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Troy ruined my tourney scene so hard I couldn't sit for a week!
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Troy ruined my tourney scene so hard I couldn't sit for a week!
Only because I care bro!
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It's been near 100% success rate for psychic powers for years and years now. I think them suddenly being less viable (even moreso than the new edition's rules might make them at times) would be a little off-putting. No?
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No. :) Psychic powers should of never been easy to begin with. LOL
I cant believe I am about to do this but if you read any of the 40k novels or fluff psychic powers are hard and have consequences.
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I think people are over obsessing about the psychic phase, it won't be long until players realize that bullets and bombs are still the #1 weapon of choice.
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After some testing I did ML+2 looks to be a good sweet spot. Nothing in this game says casting powers should be easy or should have a 50% chance etc..
Sooo.... here is the effect of limiting dice to ML+2:
- Almost no affect at all on level 1 powers (you really shouldn't be needing more than 3 dice)
- Sometimes a bit of a drag on level 2 powers (you'll get em off about 2/3 of the time throwing 4 dice if you're a level 2 psyker)
- Makes casting level 3 powers quite difficult (you'll get em off half the time if you have a ml3 psyker, and much less than that if you don't have a ml3 psyker).
Is this what you are going for? What's the reasoning? Are there specific level 3 powers which you think are more of a problem than casting mutliple level 1 and level 2 powers? What problems do those powers cause in the absence of this mastery-level based dice limit per cast?
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Im not seeing your math here. Being able to throw 5 dice at a lvl 3 power if you are ML 3 is a descent chance of getting off. ML 4 even better.
On the flip side being a ML 1 psycher, this still gives you the chance to cast that WC 3 power but at the cost of efficiency and the risk of perils. But you still have a chance.
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Im not seeing your math here. Being able to throw 5 dice at a lvl 3 power if you are ML 3 is a descent chance of getting off. ML 4 even better.
On the flip side being a ML 1 psycher, this still gives you the chance to cast that WC 3 power but at the cost of efficiency and the risk of perils. But you still have a chance.
Yeah, 5 dice is a 50% chance to cast a level 3 spell. So, it makes casting level 3 spells specifically risky business.
My point is not that 50% is too low or too high. It is more that the effect of this system is precisely to punish level 3 spells MORE than other spells. What I am not understanding is exactly why this universal change is desired. Is it just because the daemonology spells are mostly level 3?
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If you want the math...
Each roll hoping for a 4+ is just like a d2, or a coin flip hoping it to come up heads.
So, with 5 dice, there are 2^5 permutations, or 32 permutations. 16 of those (half) have 2 or fewer heads.
all the possible failures:
N N N N N
N N N N Y
N N N Y N
N N N Y Y
N N Y N N
N N Y N Y
N N Y Y N
N Y N N N
N Y N N Y
N Y N Y N
N Y Y N N
Y N N N N
Y N N N Y
Y N N Y N
Y N Y N N
Y Y N N N
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I would say the change is wanted because the most powerful stuff tends to be WC3. Daemonology is the driving factor for sure since that is the most prevalent right now. A WC 3 power should be hard to get off regardless of who is casting it.
Granted these are my opinions so I figured i would share.
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I think hampering the WC3 spells is only going to make people buy a box of Lesser Daemons and use them as 10 summoned Heralds anyway (each of whom will also have psychic powers in turn).
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I dont see an issue with that. Being t 4 they can be doubled out etc.
Overall though ML +2 doesnt hinder much. ML 3 casters can still throw 5 dice. ML 1 can still throw 3. What it does stop is a guaranteed ML 1 being able to cast a WC 3 spell as a sacrifice. Makes it much harder for that ML 1 caster to abuse the system.
While keeping WC1 spells still easy to cast easy to DTW.
Thoughts?
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This reminds me when 6th came out and everyone wanted to ban flyers and flying monsters.
Let's just get rid of everything and go back and play 2nd edition where you had 50 dice in hand to hand, cards for the psychic phase, and terminators got a 3+ save on 2d6.
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Jared I got all the books. Im down!
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Right ban everything! Let's all just play Chess, it's balanced and the rules never changed!!
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I would highly suggest those that play 40k to play chess. It will make your game much better. The strategy involved will help allot when it comes to tabletop warfare.
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I would highly suggest those that play 40k to play chess. It will make your game much better. The strategy involved will help allot when it comes to tabletop warfare.
What?? You mean I can't just push-broom my space men forward and expect to win?!? ;)
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If the major problem with the new psychic phase is demons summoning demons summoning demons. Why not just limit it to each psyker can only summon one new unit and the summoned units can't summon more units. Even if you have everyone take Demonology and you have 20+ warp dice its unlikely you are going to get 2000 points of demons turn one unless the dice gods are with you. I feel the ML+ thing restricts armies with low level psykers like Astra Militarum and Orks too much. If someone wants to recklessly throw their mastery lvl 1 psyker's life away summoning demons they should be able to.
Other alternatives might be auto perils on any conjuration power if it fails to go off. Limiting the number of attempts at summoning.
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Right ban everything! Let's all just play Chess, it's balanced and the rules never changed!!
Is someone here saying we should ban the psychic phase? I haven't read it anywhere. Why can't we stop taking GW's word as divine and have a rational conversation about the game we enjoy playing and have invested a lot of time and money in. We are trying to balance the game and give everyone as close to a fair game as possible, why some people fail to see is beyond me.
I, personally, would like to see ML+2 power dice per cast at least tried out. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not but it seems some would disagree. This restrains the ability to cast WC 3 spells from anyone and I see those spells as being the most broken when able to be cast by anyone every time because you have a ton of psychers.
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We got a Doubles event coming up at the end of June.
We will not be limiting the Psychic Phase or any Psychic Powers in any major way at all.
There will be slight differences in the way we're requiring the two, 1000 point armies be built, but we feel like people will be pretty happy with what we've done (or not done) for the first 7th edition event.
I've got to have a final talk with Sam and hope to have the event post up tomorrow evening.
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We will not be limiting the Psychic Phase or any Psychic Powers in any major way at all.
I like this approach. I suspect that we'll discover that at least Malefic and Invisibility will need to be curbed. But I think that it's important to observe the specific way in which they harm the game, and then make the smallest possible change that will fix any specific problems. That seems better to me than making an overarching change to the whole nature of the psychic phase which will change other stuff that isn't actually a problem anyway and would remove some of the fun decisions that could come up (deciding how many dice to throw, etc).
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Another thing I'd point out in general is that as more books come out for an edition, most of the time, less comp is needed. 8th edition fantasy got better as more and more books from 6th and 7th got replaced.
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Another thing I'd point out in general is that as more books come out for an edition, most of the time, less comp is needed. 8th edition fantasy got better as more and more books from 6th and 7th got replaced.
I'll speculate that the new Dark Eldar & Necron books get cool anti-psyker wargear, as those two factions seem to have fluff to support it.
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Another thing I'd point out in general is that as more books come out for an edition, most of the time, less comp is needed. 8th edition fantasy got better as more and more books from 6th and 7th got replaced.
I'll speculate that the new Dark Eldar & Necron books get cool anti-psyker wargear, as those two factions seem to have fluff to support it.
Necrons did until GW went "yo dawg I heard you like Pariahs so we got rid of them".
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Another thing I'd point out in general is that as more books come out for an edition, most of the time, less comp is needed. 8th edition fantasy got better as more and more books from 6th and 7th got replaced.
I'll speculate that the new Dark Eldar & Necron books get cool anti-psyker wargear, as those two factions seem to have fluff to support it.
Dark eldar can get more psykers than orks right now.
On the whole psy phase, I think people need to really try it out and play with it more before changing anything. I have had two games so far. In the first I had 7 levels of psykers with my blood angels vs 4 levels of IG psykers. One the whole, my psykets were able to successfully manifest half the powers they used to. Mephiston was still very scary with biomancy, but his buffs weren't guaranteed like they used to be. The second game saw my 5 levels of IG psykers vs. 30+ levels of demons. Yes he did summon a lot of demons, but he was focusing all his dice on it. The buffs and wichfire powers that demons rely on were ignored. As a result I was able to fight him to a stand still. The game ended with a 1 point victory for me, thanks to massed pie plates (tank commanders are fantastic).
The point of my ramble is to give it time and try it out before you start restricting things.
Oh ya, invisibility is completely broken.
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Typing up the Doubles event post now, in between entering results for the Magic tournament and selling a bajillion single cards. I'll get it up ASAP, although small parts may be incomplete.
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At some point, I'd expect Invisibility either to be officially FAQ'd or altered. Put on a Deathstar, it's just too much, far out of sync with the other ML2 powers.
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Invisibility now works like the way it works in real life. It makes it difficult to see, it doesn't increase the amount of plant life that is growing in the area.
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Invisibility now works like the way it works in real life. It makes it difficult to see, it doesn't increase the amount of plant life that is growing in the area.
Uh, wot? How many times in real life are you shot at by 60 million years old robot pharaohs or gigantic insects from another galaxy or flying wizard demon lords?
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I also never heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger complaining about an invisible predator thingy either.
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Invisibility in real life wouldn't prevent flamethrowers and large munition blasts from damaging you either, but it does in 40k. So let's stop with the fluff justifications, because it goes both ways and ultimately goes nowhere.
From a purely math perspective, Invisibility is grossly potent. It functions like a malediction that affects your opponent's entire army, while being difficult to dispel because it's a blessing. Then imagine the durability of the new Deathstars that can only be hit on 6s, whether being shot at or in close combat. This shouldn't be rocket science. This is the go-to mechanic to start mercilessly abusing until someone stops it.
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It got nerfed for this first event.
We decided that we'd take SOME caution with Invis instead of asking people to abuse it / potentially ruin the experience some players have.
We think the vast majority of people will be happy with the change.
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Yup, I just read the Doubles tournament posting, rolling Invisibility back to 6th Edition for the event. I think that's fine for now, until we get a handle on it.
Two alternate ideas for the future that have bounced around.
Invisibility could be changed to "Enemies targeting a unit with Invisibility are treated as having BS1 and WS1." Clean, simple, we get the point while cleaning up some strange loopholes that arise from Snap Shots.
Invisibility could remain the same, just bumped to a Mastery Level 3.
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Sam was talking about the WS and BS 1 thing. He had what seemed like a good reason not to do that at the time, but I forget what it was.
I don't think we considered bumping it up to ML 3.
Edit: I sort of like bumping it to ML 3.
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I also never heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger complaining about an invisible predator thingy either.
I haven't either. I heard he was in a movie where something like that happened, though.
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I don't think ML3 would be an effective fix. An army that is built around getting invisibility off on a 1000 point unit will still get it off.
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I don't think ML3 would be an effective fix. An army that is built around getting invisibility off on a 1000 point unit will still get it off.
This is true. But we didn't want the idea to be "Mastery Level OVER 9000!" I mean, there's a certain degree to which we'd basically make it so difficult to cast that we may as well not even allow it as written in the rulebook. The concept of ML3 is a baby step. If somebody were to build their whole army to pull this off, well, what can you do? It's not the first nor sadly will it be the last time.
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I don't think ML3 would be an effective fix. An army that is built around getting invisibility off on a 1000 point unit will still get it off.
This is true. But we didn't want the idea to be "Mastery Level OVER 9000!" I mean, there's a certain degree to which we'd basically make it so difficult to cast that we may as well not even allow it as written in the rulebook. The concept of ML3 is a baby step. If somebody were to build their whole army to pull this off, well, what can you do? It's not the first nor sadly will it be the last time.
Definitely true.
My take is, I think the spell is so powerful that even if you made it level 4, someone who was really trying to win might well build a whole army around casting it, and would therefore consistently be able to do so, and you'd end up with the same sort of deathstar-centric game that we know pretty well after the tail end of 6th. So rather than making it harder to cast, making the spell DO less might be a more effective change if that's what we want to avoid.
I fully endorse the idea of baby steps tho - even just leaving it how it is and seeing what happens to give a better perspective on what might be needed.
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Yup, the approach for now is baby steps. Invisibility is clearly a problem, so that's a good place to start.
Summoning Daemons, we'll definitely need to see if that's really a problem, or just too much worry.
And is that it? I mean, those are the only two significant problems I've been hearing about 7th. I may not be listening in the right places, but on the whole, reviews seem positive.
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Out of curiosity, if summoning units which in turn summon more units is one of the problems with the psychic stuff, why not make it so summoned units cannot generate more summoned units? It prevents the terrifying exponential growth with no side effects hitting less exploitable disciplines.
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That would seem to be the common sense solution, if one is needed. (And it probably will be needed.)
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Prediction: Much of the malefic tree will need to be adjusted beyond the "recursive summoning". It's just too much flexibility and too much extra bookkeeping to be anything other than annoying in a timed environment. We already had daemon players taking 15 mins or so to roll and record all their gifts powers at the beginning of the game. Now we add the ability for NEW units with their own gifts and powers to be added in the middle of the game (a LOT of them).
The herald summoning power..
1. Decide what God herald you want
2. Decide on what balance of powers or gifts
3. Decide which trees of powers you want
4. Roll on the powers and record it somewhere
5. Roll on the gifts and also write it down
6. From that point on both players will need to remember which of the heralds is which and which powers and gifts they each have.
Now imagine doing that a few times and building up a stack of generated heralds on top of all the cards or whatever you're hopefully already using for the daemons that were actually in your army list originally. We've never had anything like that before. Maybe it'll be ok but seems problematic to me.
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If for no other reason than time constraints, I agree.
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I don't think ML3 would be an effective fix. An army that is built around getting invisibility off on a 1000 point unit will still get it off.
A 1000 point deathstar can still only ever be in one place at one time. MSU(multiple small units) will still win the game since they can cover more ground, thus capture more objectives.
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A 1000 point deathstar can still only ever be in one place at one time. MSU(multiple small units) will still win the game since they can cover more ground, thus capture more objectives.
Still? They didn't do well in 6th Edition at all.
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A 1000 point deathstar can still only ever be in one place at one time. MSU(multiple small units) will still win the game since they can cover more ground, thus capture more objectives.
Still? They didn't do well in 6th Edition at all.
I believe in 7th, objectives are captured per turn.. not end game. I'll have to double check, but that makes a huge difference.
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Interesting stuff here:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/06/08/bao-40k-poll-results-are-in-the-people-have-spoken/
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That's a good link. I've been waiting or the results.
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Prediction: Much of the malefic tree will need to be adjusted beyond the "recursive summoning". It's just too much flexibility and too much extra bookkeeping to be anything other than annoying in a timed environment. We already had daemon players taking 15 mins or so to roll and record all their gifts powers at the beginning of the game. Now we add the ability for NEW units with their own gifts and powers to be added in the middle of the game (a LOT of them).
The herald summoning power..
1. Decide what God herald you want
2. Decide on what balance of powers or gifts
3. Decide which trees of powers you want
4. Roll on the powers and record it somewhere
5. Roll on the gifts and also write it down
6. From that point on both players will need to remember which of the heralds is which and which powers and gifts they each have.
Now imagine doing that a few times and building up a stack of generated heralds on top of all the cards or whatever you're hopefully already using for the daemons that were actually in your army list originally. We've never had anything like that before. Maybe it'll be ok but seems problematic to me.
In that respect it's incredibly annoying, but there's other, easier powers to use in it that balance out.
I play Pat H. up in Plainville on Thursdays, and since 7th came out he's run at least two Wierdboyz with malefic powers in each game. Summoning a unit of 5 Fleshhounds near every turn from each one is quite terrifying to be on the receiving end of, but 1) they die easily and 2) since any doubles rolled are insta-Peril, they usually only manage to spawn one unit before coming down with a case of exploding head.
It really depends in my opinion. It's a fun power to use but i can see it causing a lot of headaches if used to spawn anything more complex than a basic daemon unit
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Prediction: Much of the malefic tree will need to be adjusted beyond the "recursive summoning". It's just too much flexibility and too much extra bookkeeping to be anything other than annoying in a timed environment. We already had daemon players taking 15 mins or so to roll and record all their gifts powers at the beginning of the game. Now we add the ability for NEW units with their own gifts and powers to be added in the middle of the game (a LOT of them).
The herald summoning power..
1. Decide what God herald you want
2. Decide on what balance of powers or gifts
3. Decide which trees of powers you want
4. Roll on the powers and record it somewhere
5. Roll on the gifts and also write it down
6. From that point on both players will need to remember which of the heralds is which and which powers and gifts they each have.
Now imagine doing that a few times and building up a stack of generated heralds on top of all the cards or whatever you're hopefully already using for the daemons that were actually in your army list originally. We've never had anything like that before. Maybe it'll be ok but seems problematic to me.
In that respect it's incredibly annoying, but there's other, easier powers to use in it that balance out.
I had forgotten already this power exists. I think this is the singular worst (in terms of rules writing) power not only in this field, but in the entire game. It's built in a way that MASSIVELY slows down a game unless you have your heralds already pre-built and ready to plop on the table without having to build their loadouts. Unfortunately there's not really anything you can do about this power in a tournament setting except *require* players to have their heralds prebuilt with stats and all. Sure it reduces the tactical flexibility of the power, but it at least overcomes the massive game-slowing effect it would have otherwise.
Without pre-planned heralds for this power, I forsee it stalling tournament games if it gets used a lot, and I think that's something that should be avoided.
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It really isn't going to be an issue for a variety of reasons.
1.) The Herald is born alone, and is an easy kill detached from a unit.
2.) He has to deep strike in when summoned and it has to be within 6" range of the psyker, so a mishap is pretty likely compared to the other powers.
3.) People don't own that many Herald models (and if you don't count boxes of regular daemons people CALL Heralds, this matters more, of course).
One thing to remember here is that even if one or two people did this, it's not really a big deal, regardless -- it's not worth reacting to just for one or two corner cases, I think.
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I'm not arguing the strength of the power, it's perfectly balanced IMHO
My issue is the possibility of it slowing down the game due to picking wargear for each situation. I don't care that they have adaptability, but unless you know what the points and gear of all of your heralds are ahead of time, you're going to have to look it up and "build on the fly", which could slow the game down. not as much of an issue in casual play, if a bit annoying, but in tournament play when you're on the clock, that's a problem
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One thing to remember here is that even if one or two people did this, it's not really a big deal, regardless -- it's not worth reacting to just for one or two corner cases, I think.
Completely agree.