GW News: BIG N' SMALL WAAAGH! COMIN'

you are also talking within the framework of the rules of 8th edition. I was speculating mostly what I’d like to see changed/made viable.

for example you are 100% correct that there is little point fielding multiple, small, easy to kill units if you are a horde army in 8th edition, but it would be nice to have other options if a new rules framework allowed it.

 

But the fact that it would still make a 20-wide frontage viable at all is still something of concern.

I think they need to employ a maximum frontage to stop this becoming the new Horde rule. Perhaps 8-wide as most TOW infantry units in the picture seem to be capped at 8 models wide...

Deathstars are just hordes made up of elite units that have been cheesed up as much as possible.

The only way to make hordes balanced would be to give a 'Horde' special rule to units of weak troops that would be more likely to fight in hordes and would benefit from them without breaking the game.

Now...

 

Chaos Warriors are on 25mm bases. One inch is equal to 25.4mm. Let's ignore the 0.4mm and assume that each Chaos Warrior base is 1 inch wide. On a 6 foot table, that allows you to go 72 models wide. If we use your much loathed MoK Chaos Warriors with AHW, that's 288 attacks, regardless of the frontage of the enemy. That's before you factor in a champion, supporting ranks, characters, spell effects, etc.


Let's consider a horde of 50 Witch Elves in 8th edition (fielded typically in a 10X5 formation). That unit gets 50 attacks (30 from the first rank, 10 supporting attacks from the second rank and 10 from the third rank due to the horde special rule). That same unit under TOW, with this special rule, fielded 50 wide, would get 150 attacks. I'd take an extra 100 attacks over rank bonus and steadfast any day.


These are all extreme examples to simply illustrate a point; namely that such a rule (in isolation) incentivizes larger and wider units. You are unlikely to see unit frontages approach such extremes, but you may see 15 or 20 model wide units (if no other rule negates or minimizes it). Units relying on small frontages (chariots, monsters, lone characters) would be severely impacted by such a rule.


With all that said, there is absolutely nothing to worry about at this point (for those of you interested in TOW). We know so very little. I doubt even GW would make such an obvious blunder. There are probably rules in place to minimize, neutralize, forbid or otherwise account for such strategies. This is just a bit of speculative fun.

Since I am sticking with 8th, you by default will choose the opposite. (in reality you'll simply dabble in both as well as a whole slew of other games).

 

You guys run the risk of showing no reasonable discussion can be had here ha

 

How so? We are exploring the potential impact of a specific rule while acknowledging that without access to the full picture, our analysis is limited to speculation at best.

What kind of reasonable discussion were you hoping for?

 

I guess I assumed there would be more positivity on the whole, and to expand on that I mean every discussion is shrouded in a deep deep skepticism which is probably granted by the past behaviour of the company but the very fact it’s being reversed should be cause for celebration

 

Yeah, always have had to be in range. Except for the Slann who got a board-wide dispell.

I mean, sure, they can use the space marines as the starter faction, but they can still put it in "modern" 40K and slowly expand it.
Especially for Adeptus titanicus it's weird given that they don't need to deal with as much variations since you only have to worry about titans and knights so you should probably be able to reuse some assets relativly easily.

I'd assume they just make a max width for units, that's the obvious and easiest solution.
Then again, it's GW, so who knows how they screw it up

Honestly, horde units should just get a bonus for total models on the field, not for total models within a unit.
As long as horde-like rules are done on a unit-basis they'll always encourage deathstar-like behaviour.

 

Just because the framework of the rules allows you to do something does not make it necessarily viable.

 

It isn't important if it's viable competitivly.
What's important is that it's possible at all, and now someone has to deal with silly congaline nonsense, and all the potentially frustrating scenarios (and potentially degenerate gameplay) that comes with it.

It's kind of a stupid discussion though. Just put in a sensible limit on the width of a unit and prevent any problems from occuring to begin with.

 

Like I said, they're doing the minimal effort stuff first. It's for the same reason that Horus Heresy players got annoyed by the deluge of plastic tank and dreadnought releases since the start of 2.0 - it's cheaper and easier to spam variations of the same modular tank kit over and over again than it is to pump out new infantry models ("Plastic breacher squads when?" "Plastic recon squads when?" "Plastic Mk III/IV/VI assault squads when?"), despite vehicles being a limited quantity tabletop-wise even in mechanized and armoured lists.

AT at least has the excuse that you're only playing with the modular kits, but its problem is more about being an experimental test-bed for NuEpic first and foremost, and the fact that it had already been slapped with the Horus Heresy label likely hadn't helped matters in their decision-making. The writing was also on the wall for Aeronautica Imperialis the moment that GW released the Horus Heresy supplement, despite AI's potential to be an interesting specialist side game to vanilla 40k on its own.

 

I think analyzing a topic based on the evidence available (while acknowledging the limitations from information that is unavailable) is the most reasonable approach to any discussion. My philosophy is to let the data guide the tone of the discussion, whether that be positive, negative or somewhere in between.

I've never been a fan of the mindset that a discussion must remain positive regardless of the information at hand. In this case though, the discussion wasn't even all that negative as the consensus seemed to be "this rule runs the risk of being problematic, however there is much that we don't know and there are probably rules in place to inhibit misuse".

Overall, I have become soured toward TOW. However, it isn't due to this potential "super horde" rule, but rather GW not fully supporting most of my favourite factions.

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

@Killer Angel is correct and summed it up perfectly...

 

The new Vanguard box is announced:

https://www.warhammer-community.com...-for-the-throat-in-a-display-of-saurian-fury/

Carnosaur, Kroxigors and Saurus Warriors... good stuff to get more of. Wonder what the pricing will be like.

Grrr, !mrahil

 

If it's like the other vanguard boxes were looking roughly $120