Primarch wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 2:17 pmSo a Critical Wound causes a Devastating Wound which causes a Mortal Wound? And they say that they have simplified things?
Every time I read one of these articles it seems like they are claiming one thing, but then the reveal shows the opposite to be true.
All your stratagems and rules will be on a two page spread. - There are also more stratagems in the book.
Re-rolls are very rare now. - The basic rule for marines gives them rerolls every turn.
Characters no longer have auras. - Lone operative characters have auras.
Most guns have not increased in strength. - Melta and Railguns have increased in strength.
All of this kind of undermines the message about the changes they have made IMHO. Are these the only exceptions or just the tip of the iceberg. And if they have made exceptions already, it is much easier to make more in the future. Overall, the changes sound good, but how long the changes last is anyone's guess.
I think the reality is probably somewhere between what you were getting from initial marketing and what you're fearing now
I don't think it's going to be *that* dramatic a change from 9th, so when they say "less of X, more of Y!" there's still going to be a fair bit of X and maybe only a moderate amount of Y.In context I think most of the reveals still track with what they've said, from the point of view of a 9th edition player.
- All your strats and special rules are on the two page spread. Not core stuff, and we've had core strats for two full editions now so not much expectation that would change. If you only have ~8 strats anyway you don't want them eaten up by reprints of the basics.
- Rerolls are rare. That can still be true even with the Marine special rule granting them (against one unit a turn, so most useful against other elite armies). If anything Marines having consistent access to rerolls through an army rule makes it less likely that rerolls are the default buff handed out by Captain and Lieutenant level characters.
- Lone operatives might have auras, but if they're the exception that doesn't join units they will need some sort of alternate mechanic if they want to hand out buffs, and auras aren't a bad mechanic. We just have tons of them in 9th. So if Morvenn Vahl has an aura but Canonesses, Palatines, Repentia Superiors, Dialogus, Imagifiers etc join units you're still cutting way down on the amount of aura measuring you do for a Sisters army, for example.
- Melta increased in strength but looks like a net nerf - it only wounds Rhinos on 4s and most other Marine vehicles on 5s. The specific rail guns they're talking about will be the main weapons of Hammerhead Tanks and Votann Land Fortresses - so a big investment with a low rate of fire; keeping them wounding on 2s for almost everything makes sense because they'd otherwise feel very swingy (well, more so, I still roll plenty of 1s). I think we're seeing more of a smear across the scale, as Grant was talking about upthread. These are exactly the sort of weapons that shouldn't go dramatically backwards vs tanks, and I expect melta's lack of a significant Strenth buff reflects it keeping a high AP when many weapons are getting that wound back.
I don't think we're going to see a radically simplified game, and we are definitely not going to see GW put out *less* rules. 9th isn't an excessively heavy game in essence (note how many simplifying abstractions it uses compared to 30K), and I don't think 10th is trying to be rules-light, so you're still going to end up somewhere in the middle. The hope would be that they're serious about the extent to which you're swapping out exceptions rather than layering them - and there are going to be a *lot* of exceptions ultimately, so you're not off-base being concerned about how water tight that principle is. You will definitely need to deal with core rules + units + two page spread. Units are the place that net complexity is likely to grow; if it's limited to that and we don't get extra army wide layering rules (ie more than two pages) it should be fine.
I'm personally not too fussed about any of this shooting stuff, what I'm really hanging out to learn is:
- How does Combat Patrol work? (ie how easy is it to learn the game)
- How do the Charge/Fight phases work? (the most complex part of the current core rules)
- How do Terrain rules work? (the most *impactful* rules)
