9th edition is on the way!

[Karantu]

Extra-unhygienic unclean ones.

I'm pretty excited about the crusade system but I think they basically said something along the lines of it being a part of each faction's codex so you might need to wait a while. It might be hard for them to have a generic campaign too. Individual plaguebearers might not get upgrades but maybe as a unit they'll get something special? Or maybe it'll just be focused on more elite units or characters?

[Jye Nicolson]

You *can* do a generic system ala Warcry (which has faction specific stuff and generic stuff), and I expect it'll be closer to that level of detail rather than Mordheim/Necromunda, but you might at most track units outside of individual characters.

[The Other Dave]

An extremely dedicated fan (seriously, guys, if you're not reading goonhammer you have to start) transcribed the recent Q&A about 9e:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pLk ... oGoWt8ch8g

More robust terrain rules are huge, it's always been one of the weaknesses of 8th.

Crusade is sounding good - it starts at 500 points and is Escalation league-ish, then each army has a tailored goal in their crusade (which sounds, and this is a good thing, a lot like the system in WarCry). Sounds like you keep track of things at the unit level (gaining veteran status, and they mention a captain getting interred in a dreadnought a couple times).

Modifiers are capped at +/-1, sorry Eldar fliers!

They're going to move towards updating Power Level like they do with points, which would make me *very* interested in using it.

[Karantu]

Thanks for the link, that helped give me a clearer picture of the changes for sure. I might still go and watch the VoD later and see if there's anything that they missed though.

The terrain rules sound like they're going to be a lot more interesting and also it seems to remove silly situations like barely being able to see a model between layers of terrains.

Crusade sounds fun but ultimately I'm not sure how different factions' crusade systems will be balanced against each other. I'd be willing to kick 9th off with some crusading though (if all factions get at least a generic crusade.)

Modifiers capping is for the best. It also seems that 6s always hit (We're all halfway to being Orks now.)

Other than that, list building rules are changing so I can't cheese out 18+ Command points in a 1000pt list anymore I guess. Instead the number of command points are going to be linked to the points limit so you don't need to worry about trying to maximize command points from detachments and instead just take the units you want to take. Things like adding detachments from other codexes and outflanking with units also costs CP so it'll be interesting to see how that all works out. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that there are still going to be ways to generate CP as well as units that give you a bonus CP or so for just being included in your list so they're going to become a bit more useful given the limited amount of CP and the increased uses for them.

They also seem to be back tracking from 8th not having a rules reference/universal rules section in books which I think is going to be helpful.
The main rule writers writing rules for Forgeworld units sounds like an improvement too but I'm going to miss some of the wild FW units.

P.S. I called it on the chainswords, but apparently all Astartes chainswords are getting buffed. This should obviously apply to CSM too so I'm pretty excited about fielding regular CSM with chainswords and bolt pistols.

[The Other Dave]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... ge-post-1/

Still very bare-bones, but a basic description of Crusade, and I like what I see. It uses PL (and, since there are whispers that GW will actually be updating PL for balance periodically like they currently do with points, this is doubleplus good), starting at 50, and it sounds like it is, in fact, basically WarCry's campaign system - you can periodically boost your total PL by 5, and each army has its own campaign story that you run through without having to worry about what everybody else is doing. With the added addition (that WC does not really have) of experience and such for individual units in your force.

Sounds right up my alley, really - I like smaller, narrative games of 40K, I like the idea of PL, especially if they keep them balanced, and I really like my experience with WarCry's campaign system. Knock on wood!

[Jye Nicolson]

PL should work better here I think

- If it's anything like Warcry the loser experience should be pretty good. I think Dave and I have both looked at losing our convergance battles multiple times as perfectly acceptable farming opportunities rather than a source of frustration That's not only more fun but gives some scope to chill out even for points lovers like me

- For the most part it's older units that can create a big gap between points and PL, more and more units have less customisation within the unit (hence dozens of Primaris units rather than the same models being a handful of customiseable squads in the rules), or rely on CP for their main upgrades. So as time goes on switching between the two has less impact on your incentives.

- Unit value won't be static given upgrades, injuries etc so "close enough" is probably as good as it gets anyway

- Crusade's interface with costs should be pretty static so just applying a multiplier to PL to get points would work fine anyway

[The Other Dave]

- If it's anything like Warcry the loser experience should be pretty good. I think Dave and I have both looked at losing our convergance battles multiple times as perfectly acceptable farming opportunities rather than a source of frustration

Definitely. I should clarify, for people who haven't interacted with it, the difference in victory point thingies you get between winning and losing a battle is not large - like you might get 6 or 7 for losing and 10 for winning? Something like that. And while individual fighters can get experience, if they die you can replace them with their inexperienced twin for free - you might lose a once-per-game reroll or a magic item, but you'll never be "down a fighter". The biggest "punishment" for not winning a campaign game is explicitly not dropping into a death spiral as you lag behind and lose fighters, but rather that you don't get to progress the story of the campaign.

Crusade looks like it might be a bit more granular than WarCry in terms of experience, battle injuries and so on, but as WarCry's system is nearly nonexistent that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[Karantu]

The crusade system sounds good so far. If they update PL in the future converting back and forth shouldn't be too much of an issue. Personally I want to try managing your campaign roster using PL and planning each game using points. I'm not sure how weapon options and upgrades work with with persistent units though.

Also the wording on the article makes it sound like everyone gets to play Crusade from the start with each codex release adding more options so it's time to start that 40k campaign I pitched a while ago. I'll update that thread later once we have more information.

Having played an unhealthy amount of Dawn of War growing up, Requisition Points floats all sorts of boats for me.

[Jye Nicolson]

- If it's anything like Warcry the loser experience should be pretty good. I think Dave and I have both looked at losing our convergance battles multiple times as perfectly acceptable farming opportunities rather than a source of frustration

Definitely. I should clarify, for people who haven't interacted with it, the difference in victory point thingies you get between winning and losing a battle is not large - like you might get 6 or 7 for losing and 10 for winning? Something like that. And while individual fighters can get experience, if they die you can replace them with their inexperienced twin for free - you might lose a once-per-game reroll or a magic item, but you'll never be "down a fighter". The biggest "punishment" for not winning a campaign game is explicitly not dropping into a death spiral as you lag behind and lose fighters, but rather that you don't get to progress the story of the campaign.

Other thing to note is your warband doesn't keep getting bigger forever, when you reach the end of your quest there's a soft reset where you keep your loot/skills but go back to your starting point limit. So if someone is going through their quest faster than you due to winning a lot, they'll loop around and you'll have the advantage (they'll have at least one really sweet artifact, but you'll have more bodies on the field).

If Crusade does something like that it'll limit the discrepancies caused by people playing at different rates.

Crusade looks like it might be a bit more granular than WarCry in terms of experience, battle injuries and so on, but as WarCry's system is nearly nonexistent that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Challenge Mode has more serious injuries and more loot, but even then it's not really troubling Necromunda/Mordheim for the crunch crown I expect Crusade won't either.

[The Other Dave]

As for points vs power level - the main reason I moved away from PL towards points when i was playing a lot of 40K was simply that the initial PL balance turned out to be pretty bad, especially for some space marine units (I'm looking at you, Inceptors). I honestly don't think that most wargames need any more granularity than "this unit of 10 guys is, oh, 5 points." I talked about it when 8th first dropped, but the idea that, say, a bolt pistol in the hands of a space marine is worth exactly as much as 1/5th of a guardsman (or whatever, I don't feel like looking it up) on the battlefield is patently silly. Yes, there are edge cases like giving every model in a unit thunder hammers versus... not, but as Jye notes the lack of flexibility in current unit design means this is less of an issue anyway.

That said, the latest twitch stream (discussion here) suggests it'll even be possible to play matched play games with your Crusade army, so they're building the game with switching between PL and points in mind. *shrug*