Fresh topics edition

I actually haven't played either yet, there's a GSC list in one of my campaigns I'm hoping to play next week but no one has brought Skitarii.

I went down to Eldar and Grey Knights, but have come up against Space Marines, Harlequins, Tyranids, and Orks.

Good luck my dude, let us know how you go!

Freebootas are a diverse lot, from Goffs who want the bestest fight, to Evil suns who want to ride the fastes kroozers, Deffskulls on the cuttign' edge of lootin and Blood axes that see freebootin as a less judgemental of their kunnin' ways.

Most are Bad moons in it for the money, so yellow//gold is big with them, they are also a luck reliant lot so blue tends to feature.
Also yeah black.
Other colours apply as well though that tends to be klan markings or just snazzy decor.

Only Klan that don't really go all in for freebooter are Snakebites who like their swamp and distrust spaceships (though a few are the opposite and jump at the chance of ANY novelty), of course you can always include some Press-ganged "savages"

'Ere Kaptin Badrukk, da Freeboota king, he's yellow on the inside (no seriously, he supposed to wear a gold-plated power armour under the coat.)

Towards the end of the last thread, some folks were talking about Warriors with more than 2 pairs of Scything Talons. Problem with that is, how do you think that actually happens? They can't physically do that.
If you're going to go off of the,
>>A fighter with two pairs of scything talons adds 1 to its Weapon Skill in hand-to-hand combat.
>>A fighter with three pairs of scything talons adds 2 to its Weapon Skill in hand-to-hand combat instead.
I'll stop you there and direct you to the Ravener, whom starts with 3 sets of Scything Talons.
>>Wargear: A Ravener has three pairs of scything talons and a chitin carapace.
>>It may also do any of the following:
>>Exchange one pair of scything talons for a pair of rending claws.
>>Take a pair of spinefists, a deathspitter or a devourer.

The clause of having 3 or more is LITERALLY only there for the Ravener.

Are people really that stupid? Maybe they should look at the miniatures from time to time instead of blindly looking at the text in a PDF

It's been 15 years since 40k players last had to think, it's just been RAW/RAI/FAQ arguments.

yeah I noticed that, the whole Harlequin flip-belt discussion had shades of that as well.

The question is never, what makes sense and is 'fun', but what can I get away with or how can I deny my opponent advantages...

Makes me glad my meta is very reasonable, they unilaterally agreed that genestealers have flesh hooks no matter what the rules say.

>The question is never, what makes sense and is 'fun', but what can I get away with or how can I deny my opponent advantages...

Honestly, I saw it the other way. With one side arguing 'The rules allow this as-written, it should be fixed' and the other arguing 'No one would reasonably allow that' and just not getting what the others mean.

But some of the scenarios that are being argued about are very hypothetical and not based in any form of experience. People need to discuss less about rules and play more, and then discuss those specific experiences instead of 'potential scenarios' that might not be relevant at all for 80% of the players.

Eh, I'd disagree with that. White room talk is very important for finding edge case scenarios that may not turn up in regular play but still might require fixing.

>But some of the scenarios that are being argued about are very hypothetical and not based in any form of experience.

I think that covers '90% of everyone talking about anything in these threads'. The game is barely out, almost no one has had enough time for a full campaign.

That was just in the end. In the beginning the discussion was "blargh clowns can teleport omg op" vs "idiot, that can't possibly be what's intended".

Then once the "teleporting clowns" muppets calmed down, the discussion became "does this need clarification?", which it clearly does since a bunch of people couldn't interpret it in a sensible way. :)

Good to know. I was thinking about buying some conversion bits, but the fact that the bits come from two different manufacturers is a bit of a pain. Is there a good place that sells both spellcrow and maximini stuff online?

Ebay stores that buy from both and then re-sell at mark-up..

Yeah but it does skew the conversation. Why not start with things that are relevant to people actually playing? I understand arguing edge cases for a game that is already out for a while since they might start turning up more often.

Those hypothetical issues might turn into memes and 'accepted truths' that hardly have a basis in fact.

To use an example, some of the tacticas on 1d4chan are written by people who haven't played that army (by admission in the article itself). And yet, those resources are often used as a first place to start informing yourself. The spread of misinformation or irrelevant information thus starts at the source.

It's like the pre-emptive banning of the Harlequin kill-team. I'm not saying GW has a good track record with game balance, but why not evaluate that in an actual campaign first?

I think the difference is that this isn't really misinformation like 'This is a bad unit' so much as actual information about the core mechanic of a faction. It's hard to discuss them as a faction without discussing how this is interpreted.

I'm all for play test but the friendless no-gamers will of course vomit their standard "Anecdotal" response and continue jerking off to theorycrafting.

Yeah I don't really take the harley whiners too seriously, considering quite a lot of players with different teams have claimed it's not all that bad through the threads here.

Sensible isn't really the same thing as 'What the rules say' so it ends up 'How far does your local group go with houserules' as that's what said interpretation is.

How did theorycrafting become such a dirty word on Veeky Forums? It's a cornerstone of game design and done before playtesting to identify initial problems.

On a side note, the computer game of Space Marines, Tau and Tyranids goes free today, including the Brood War expansion. :)

If a rule doesn't make sense it needs to be interpreted. There's nothing sensible about interpreting the rule as harleys being able to teleport.

>Tau
>Psionic race with melee as the basic troops.

You don't seem to be capable of being more wrong.

Yes but that does make it houserules. Sensible houserules but houserules.

Right, and it's also the reason for post game release discussion on what went wrong, without taking into account that playtesting before release most likely have been conducted, and without having conducted playtesting of your own that confirm your fears.

Honestly, I generally don't like the design of the Harlequin kill team (Way more special rules than any other faction/ignore a lot of the games base rules. Would have done well as Eldar/Dark Eldar spec ops) independent of power level as I don't consider them a well designed team. They fill basically the same area as Raptors/Stealth Suits in the 'Fuck you terrain' assassin special model after all.

Haha, I'm just basing it on their likeness. I know it's not a carbon copy.

Because of the armchair generals that declare playing is superfluous, all games are determined at deployment, so rolling dice and setting up models is for chumps.

The ones that find a much better use of time is arguing about their hard counters that are always in their army, on the board, in range and always succeeds their dice rolls.

It's also RAI.

Yes but that doesn't make it any less valuable than playtesting. Playtesting is good for finding issues that you were not expecting but theorycrafting is what you use to find out why it's an issue once playtesting has pointed at something.

Yeah but on the same token we have the people who bitch that the game is broken because they bottled turn 1 because they set up everything in the open and thus it's the game's fault that the other guy is playing an OP group. Both have a lot of use.

I'm not disputing that. However, RAI is houserules rather than the default. That's kinda the entire point of RAI, houserules to get closer to what was intended rather than how the game actually plays.

>Protoss are Tau
>Not Eldar

Got a load of this catastrophic pleb.

It's completely useless for post game release discussion *without* additional playtesting. My point is that prior to the release of the rule set it's valuable because the discussions complement actual playtesting. But once the rules are released it's completely pointless to discuss theoretical lackings in said rules without at the same time playtesting.

Because a theory is normally vetted in practice. And that hardly happens anymore in Warhammer threads. Assumptions, become facts, become basis for further assumptions.

Updated this with better wording for some stuff. Also scrapped chainswords in favor of a more fitting melee weapon.

I disagree. RAI is common sense. RAW is "not being able to read between the lines", or "autistic" as it would be labeled here on Veeky Forums.

Dude, they look like Tau visually. That's all I was basing that on. I know they don't play like them.

While I'd dispute that. Math is very easy to check and that's a form of theorycrafting to help identify if something has issues.

Like an example from this very game: Genestealer cultists pay a surcharge on las weapons that the imperial guard do not, despite them being almost identical to autoweapons. It's pretty easy to theorycraft that las weapons are horribly overpriced for genestealer cultists.

>I disagree. RAI is common sense. RAW is "not being able to read between the lines", or "autistic" as it would be labeled here on Veeky Forums.

And do you expect everyone to read between the lines in exactly the same way? The issue with common sense is that it's inherently subjective. It often overlaps but it's assumptions and subjective. RAI is changing from the actual rules of the game in favour of what you believe (As the writer hasn't said either way most of the time) to be correct.

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that it's houserules and the default state of the game is also worth discussing.

>Math is very easy to check

Yes. Checked by *playtesting*, but it's not checked. Hence it's pointless to discuss.

You can check math without playtesting. That's what actually running math tests and probability is for.

Again, it's common sense. People using common sense to interpret a rule in the most common sensical way will more often than not arrive at the same conclusion (possibly with minor differences that can easily be resolved by a compromise). That's what common sense is. Common sense is something that doesn't develop in humans until about the age of 25, so no, I don't expect everyone to be able to use common sense when interpreting the rules.

What game?

That doesn't make it reality though. You have to apply it for it to not remain theoretical.

Starcraft with the Brood War expansion is released for free today.

gamespot.com/articles/starcraft-goes-free-today-with-new-patch-its-first/1100-6449431/

The issue there is that playtesting is taking only a single probability set. Playtesting can give you very anomalous results.

Math however, can give you the actual probabilities of things happening, rather than it just being 'Well in this case, X happened'.

Are the rule difficult to understand ?

That's why they complement each other. As I previously said. One without the other however is fairly useless.

For some.

Eh, I'd say that same to same theorycrafting is fine without playtesting. Comparing two completely different things (Like a melee weapon and a ranged weapon) without playtesting is very difficult and likely to fail to produce anything of value but same to same (A melee weapon to a melee weapon or two ranged weapons with a similar purpose) is fine.

The issue comes when people go 'I am going to theorycraft only this exact factor, rather than going for a holistic approach to it'. Like comparing a weapon you can't move and shoot with to a weapon you can move and shoot with. Yes, the former may be more efficient at shooting if you only mathhammer it's offence as you are ignoring factors.

tl:dr - A lot of people theorycraft badly and it annoys me.

It's got a few grey areas (Can you choose which fire mode for plasma pistols in melee?) but the core is pretty easy to understand.

That's why you need to playtest is multiple times.

Theory/Math is for the quantitative testing
Playtesting is for the qualitative testing

Well ok, that I can agree with. But as you say, and with which I agree, people are not capable of taking into account all the little details that add up in a holistic approach. I suspect that's in part the reason for people complaining about Necrons for example. Or any other faction for that matter, that have been complained about. Because I've read through all the threads and seen players of pretty much every faction say their faction isn't too bad. Yet some theorycrafting people show up and start to complain about a faction being underpowered or whatever. So what's the difference between the two? The former has experience from playtesting it and the latter has not.

This. You locate a potential problem with theory/math. Then you test that in application over and over to see if it's actually a problem that breaks the game.

Just locating potential problems and complaining about them without testing them in application however is what most theorycrafters here seem to be doing.

So, orks, melee or shooty or a bit of both?

I'm leaning towards shooty because it fits in with the conversions I want to make but hitting enemies in cover on 6s doesn't sound great even with sustained fire

but maybe I'll just do melee boyz with shooty yoofs providing cover fire

Compared to the 40k rules how hard are they ?
Because I had a hard time understanding the core rule of the 7th edition

Orks are switch hitters. An ork with a shoota is still a viable threat in melee (What with 2 attacks and +1 on charges they'll kick the crap out almost everyone but clowns if they get the charge) and they get ranged weapons other armies would love (Shootas are amazing).

You want choppy and dakka to be properly orky.

I think you can get some shooty in there. Orks can shoot a lot even though not good. But taking advantage of their melee power is something that you should do imo, even if you don't focus completely on it.

I've been loving the Guard, I started with two plasmas and a toxic sniper. Only issue I had was game 2 tau ambush bottled me out first turn, but we've filled out the roster since then. I've been really enjoying the names and narrative I can give this small team of developing vets.

Shoot the choppy, chop the shooty.

Between sustained fire and simply having more grunts you'll be throwing, on average, 4x more bullets than the other guy, which easily balances out the lousy BS.

>2 attacks, +1 on charges, AND a buddy
>against clowns it's 3 buddies
If you can bring your numbers to bear even the clowns get scared.

So I found my old Necromunda rulebook and I was just wondering, are there major departures from the core rules to SWA?

Yeah. The issue with clowns is that whole 'They all cause fear'. You'll get your leadership bonus but it makes each charge a bit less sure.

About ready to make a commitment to purchase, but before I do:
Are Deldar fun to play?
Or will I just wind up frustrated and want to change army, if not quit?

83% to pass each test?
Unlucky dice happen and nothing is certain in the game, but it's not that bad.
I still consider the harlies as the underdog.
They can't win without engaging at all, but if they engage they'll do some damage and go out of action. It's a bad match for the long-term wellbeing of the orky team, but even worse for the harlequins.

Oh yeah. Not saying it's a bad option. It's one of the best options but it adds a bit more uncertainty.

Guy in 40kg dropped this

mega.nz/#!0tcUTSLI!CbZfDWqYYe0C2sIDLNlHCh1Wj9I6uihERaaGEb6wk3c

SWA rules scanned neatly.

A few to-hit modifiers are different.
A few familiar weapons are different. Notably Plasma got even better (no recharge on max power) and shotguns got awful (no manstoppers or bolts)
The meta is obvs a lot different with a lot more BS4, T4, armour, and cover-downgrading gear around. Actually scratch armour, armour's still shit.
Pre/Postgame is HEAVILY gutted. Can't tell if i appreciate it because this isn't Necromunda where you care about losing 3 fingers, or if I hate it because I really want to be rolling on d66 tables and scragging bitches over a vents system.

People are literally morons. The only model that the "if a fighter has more than two pairs of arms" rule can ever apply to is a ravener, since warriors have exactly two pairs of arms, no more, no less.

A warrior with two boneswords or two pairs of scything talons gets +1 attack dice for having two hand-to-hand weapons like every other model in the game, but gets no further bonuses whatsoever for additional weapons.

>Can't tell if i appreciate it because this isn't Necromunda where you care about losing 3 fingers

I appreciate that part imo. I think that they could have done a bigger table though without going heavy on permanent injury though. Permanent injury is harder to justify with most factions that have either excellent medical options or just don't care and heal super well.

Well one of the main things I've noticed gone is the underdog rules, which I think make necromunda one of the most balanced skirmish games ever made.

Now it feels like there's less motivation for new teams or teams that have been unlucky to face more veteran teams, which can kill campaigns prematurely.

Another thing that the lack of XP proper kills is the vying for power element, which would've been cool in gangs like orks for example. Where if a boy was to gain more experience than the nob they would challenge them for control of the gang, which more often than not left one of them dead or kicked out (and in necromunda that meant other gangs could recruit them), but the other with a big boost (IIRC the lowest thing a surviving leader could get from the challenge was +1 LD).

>Another thing that the lack of XP proper kills is the vying for power element

That one is hard to justify for most teams other than orks sadly.

I think I'd have been fine with the 1d6 chart if it didn't feel like 50% of casualties walked away with Frenzy or something. I don't think there's any -ve stat penalties at all, only increases through the advances table.

Murder elves would appreciate it too I think, but yeah it would be fairly niche in the grand scheme.

So.. would it be better or worse to run Necromunda with SWA teams, or SWA vanilla?

Oh yeah, I meant that the game doesn't have permanent injuries like necromunda (Which I don't really see as a bad thing) but yeah, a bigger table would have been very nice.

I'd have likely gone with (if I was designing it), injuries having a duration. After that amount of time you've either healed or you've gotten an augmentation to fix you up.

Also helps prevent the 'Well, this guy has been buttfucked into uselessness. Might as well get rid of him' that necromunda sometimes has as I'll admit I never found that very fun.

Too much Frenzy is a pain though, especially for anyone set up for short range shooting. Better hope you can shoot further than you can charge.

Eh, both have upsides and downsides. Not all necromunda rules make a heap of fluff sense in SWA but they are more expansive.

SWA vanilla. There's enough 40kids calling this "Necromunda 2.0" instead of a Kill Team game as-is.

That being said, friends don't let friends play Tau. Everything else seems reasonable but Tau somehow got BS3-only dudes with no camo gear, no photovisors, and a (only) basic weapon that's arguably worse than their (only) pistol weapon.

I am having so much fun thinking up crazy ideas for teams, but I wish GW had allowed for more variety in models. Maybe the HoR rules have just spoiled me.

Do you mean homebrew or modeling?

So when is the rules going to be reprinted?

For example: I want to play Dark Eldar, I get to bring Wyches. No Warriors, Wracks, Reavers, Mandrakes, Hellions or Incubi, even though all of those could be used to make a cool and thematic force.

I homebrewed a Kabalite force since I had a squad of finished squad of kabalites that I'd love to use.

It *is* the latest in a series of standalone skirmish games from gw though. Started with Confrontation. Then Necromunda. And so on. This is the latest entry in that genre.

Also that everyone's speaking from anecdotal local meta experience.

Some people are playing with one other person and between the two of them may have a major skill imbalance. Some people are playing with eight other people and between the eight of them have a major skill imbalance. Some people are playing with three other roughly equally skilled people but one guy made poor decisions in his initial list build when they didn't know the rules well yet. And that's not to mention which armies may or may not be represented in said groups.

Preorder for the printed book starts on the 22nd, and carries on about a week into May so soon-ish?

I hope the rules in the book include more options, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

Yes. The rulebook is poorly written, often implying things without outright stating them, or stating them in a roundabout way without clear examples. Like a math professor who can't remember what's it like to not understand math.

The (nonexistent) section explaining how pistols in melee work, for example.

I doubt it, the idea (And one that isn't really a bad thing) seems to have been 'You can play with a single box of models' rather than it being mostly for people with a heap of other existing models. Which is good for getting new players into 40k.

It does, however, mean that options are lower than they could be.

It just seems dumb, because now I can only buy specific boxes. I would have legit bought a couple of boxes to start a Dark Eldar team, but Wyches are my least favourite unit.

>It just seems dumb, because now I can only buy specific boxes. I would have legit bought a couple of boxes to start a Dark Eldar team, but Wyches are my least favourite unit.

I think a lot of it is well...they down't want someone who's never played 40k before to have to invest too much money in it. Keeping start up costs low to broaden appeal.

Not all armies line up with that though, as Necrons simply couldn't make a full force out of one box.

I think the idea of one box of miniatures and one rulebook and now you're a wargamer is a strong approach, and one GW should embrace. I just think they should expand the rules so anyone can walk into a store, pick a box they like the look of, get the rules and play. Right now you can only do this with select boxes.