The Direction of Warhammer 40k

[house_cawdor]

I have been playing Warhammer 40k since mid 3rd edition, and I must say that since the release of 5th edition codicies (minus DE) I have been disappointing with the direction of the game. It seems that the rules and particular codex fluff have been taking backward steps. While I love 40k, I feel the general balance and tailor of the game as a whole has really changed quite a bit. I can't say I blame Mat Ward for his writings (though I hate his fluff), I do believe that the design team has been fumbling. This may have to do with me being used to the design team that was around 5 years ago (Andy Chambers, Gav Thorpe, etc.) and the vision they saw of 40k. So maybe that's what I don't like about the game now - the game's vision has changed. This is a difficult topic to focus on since there is no way to really prove the game has changed for worse/better, but does anyone who has been playing 40k since at least 3rd edition feel this way?

[Fellend]

I haven't played that long so I guess I'm not qualified to speak but having read your post in the other thread all I'd just like to point out that the world is changing for the darker and grittier.
Just look at the main rulebook. The current time is called the end times. (or something simular) the Imperium is faltering and getting weaker.

I can think of several reasons as to why the game has taken this turn.

1: The most obvious one is of course that the game has always been reported out of Mankinds view, and if the enemies don't step up their game what is there to fear?
Come on, there's been 13 black crusades now with little to no effect on the whole, sure some worlds destroyed but we got more of those.
3 battles for armageddon. At least 6 major tyranid invasions, 3 tau expansions and the necrons eat a planet every now and then.
If it doesn't get worse then it's laughable, how fun is the fluff saying "It's okay, we are winning this, you can rest easy tonight"

2: While the earlier editions fleshed out the general story and characters (races) they can't just reprint that. They need to add more and more detail to add new things, and the more detail you add in a world where there is only war the darker it's going to get.

3: The game probably started out as just that, a game, with some fluff to it. Now it has it's own books, lots of them. It's own story and fan fiction, it's own wiki and god knows what else. Things need to be more specific. We don't buy "and the space marine stood there for 20 days holding back the tides with just his bolter"
We know he can't carry that much ammo and that a single rending wound would bring him down

[Image]

Specifically in terms of gameplay, it has changed significantly even between 4th ed. and 5th ed. For the most part, I'm satisfied with the changes as the battlefield has become a more dynamic place where mobility and survivability are much more prevalent factors. With that said, this is comparing one 5th ed. codex to another. My concern for the balance in the game currently is when you compare a 4th ed. codex to a 5th ed. codex. The imbalances become quickly apparent, imo, where 4th ed. codexes haven't been designed for the current scope of the game. Some have fared better than others, notably orks, but other codexes like Tau, Necrons, and Chaos are just not properly designed for framework that the 5th ed. codexes have been.

The fluff, as far as I can tell, is all but useless. GW doesn't design it's fluff to translate all that well to the tabletop, though they try. For me, style and appearance is far more important than the background an army is provided.

So, let go of fluff unless it's a major part of your interest in this universe, and make sure you're playing a 5th ed. codex against another. Those two factors should help ensure you're having a better time with the ruleset. If those don't work, then I'm not sure what else you might want to consider.

[SotonShades]

I've been playing since a couple of months after the 3rd Ed Box game came out (with a big rulebook, bad jungle trees, wierd ruins, Space Marines and Dark Eldar), so I'd guess I do qualify :P

I do agree that the direction of 40k has changed, in many ways for the better. Back then the game was focussed on small armies, barely a few squads and maybe a vehicle in most cases, playing what was essentially a skirmish. GW got around this not matching the fluff by saying a model didn't represent an individual, but a squad or battalionb or... well, some kind of xenos equivalent. There were very few places outside of the Warhammer World museum that you would find so much as a full company of Marines, let alone an entire chapter. This was a throw back to how and why GW originally started writing rules for minitures; to allow them to be used in games similar to D&D where a player would only have a single miniature. Bourne out of 80's recession England, almost noone would afford more than a handful of models, so thats what the game suited. As First became Second edition, more people could afford more stuff, larger armies and more powerful characters. GW tipped the balance too far and made psykers too powerful for example, reigning in much of the more eccentric aspects of the game for 3rd Ed.

Since then, GW has taken a much more measured approach to expanding the game, slowly increasing the size to match the collections of the 'average' imaginary hobbyist. Of course, during this time the number of hobbyists in the UK and slowly around the world has grown almost exponentially, so an average hobbyist is quite an abstract quantity now. However, with the slow release of expansions such as Cities of Death, Planetstrike and Spearhead gently teasing us to increase the size of our collections (not games I hasten to add) and Apocolypse giving us permission, if ever it were needed, to go mad and throw down everything we had at once and still have a fun game without getting bogged down too much by slow turns, we've generally increased our games from skirmishes to full size battles.

This has only lead to more profit for GW, so they have continued this approach. Maybe the marketting direction has changed, but I think the overall direction of GW has stayed fairly constant for the last couple of decades, possibly just accelerating over the past 5 to 8 years or so. Do I think this is a bad thing? When i was 10 and just starting out in 40k I remember having a conversation about how cool it would be to own a whole company of leman russ tanks. Now I have fulfilled that dream, taken it a few steps further with support vehicles and superheavies and even built myself a Warlord Titan! If my 10-year old self could see what we are capable of doing in the modern hobby, he'd probably wet himself with excitement. I think its great that the game is constantly evolving and am excited for the future. Maybe in another 10+ years, we'll see stuff that will make my current 23 year-ols self wet myself with excitement... hopefully not too much though.

[templarboy]

I have played since 1st edition. Not bragging, just old. I like the direction the game has taken. The rules are simple and straight forward. The minis have never looked better. I love the new emphasis on transports and tanks. The Apocalypse side of the game is amazing. Many hard core gamers miss the complex codices. I do not. I used to play Star Fleet Battles. Any of you old timers out there remember how impossibly complex war games used to be? I do and I hated it. When WHFB, WH40K, Epic40k and Blood Bowl came out I fell in love. I even liked the WHFB sea based game (Name? old age makes you forgetful). The rules lawyers and min-maxers may miss 4th edition but I sure don't. I hated the mess the last Chaos and Tyranid codices were. The fluff? I always read it. Do I like it always? No. The more heroic and OTT bend it has taken is good for the game. We need new gamers and they need to start young. Youngsters like the OTT stuff.

Just my 2 coppers worth.....

[Corvus-Master-of-The-4th]

I have no idea why I don't prefer the direction of Warhammer 40k... But I guess it's my artistic opinion, that everything is really BRIGHT, when before all the models looked as dark and as gritty as the Warhammer 40k world I had always imagined, this is coming from a player that started in the 4th edition, which of course makes me a youngen', but ahh well. Other wise I think the gaming style has made it more fair tbh :D... I don't like the new fluff, but I guess I have read to many of the older Black Libary books D:

[Paul]

I don't like the meta-direction it is going. To clarify:

I like the direction of the fluff: the faltering Imperium gives my Armored Company reasons to fight the Space Marines, for example, due to the extreme paranoia and miscommunication which is ubiquitous.

As far as the rules go, the larger games are fine too, but the increasing ubiquity of Special Characters and the emphasis on competitive play rather than narrative play is astounding.

DISCLAIMER: I do not mean that competitive play is bad, in fact, I rather enjoy it (each game DOES have a winner and a loser). But when every game I play is either a Tournament Game or Practice for a Tournament Game, I get a little irked.

Fortunately, that has changed just recently (last two months or so), so it isn't nearly as bad as it felt right after fifth edition dropped. I think now that everyone knows the rules and the meta, practicing for tournaments is less imperative, and one can lay back and play that narrative you've always said in your head.

So, I suppose I am content with the status quo, and would welcome increased competitive play provided that there is room left for us narrative goons.

BEST DIRECTION FOR 40K TO TAKE RIGHT NOW:
Make an Imperial Guard armored company list legal in tournaments, or allow the Forge World one. It really isn't that unbalanced, what with CQB hitting rear armor and all.

[elmir]

I even liked the WHFB sea based game (Name? old age makes you forgetful).

That would be man-o-war. :)

I have recently come back to 40k, having taken a longish break at the start of 4th ed. up till this point. I have been playing since 2nd edition though. I've always been more of a modeller/collector then a gamer anyway. In that regards, GW has increased a great big deal over the last 5 or so years.

I actually quit 40k because there were other gaming systems out there that had WAY better looking mini's then the GW ones at that time (like rackham, or even some of the PP stuff). The new plastics they are releasing now though, are really great... if a little pricey. But GW and cheap was never a good match...

[Lucidum]

I've been playing since 3rd Edition and I'm still annoyed that the game keeps getting dumbed down for the sake of younger audiences. No longer are Tyranids horrific and monstrous models like their 2nd-Ed selves, no longer are daemonettes six-breasted and topless (save for the Forge World Keeper of Secrets), no longer are the Necrons industrial-looking and minimal, etc. It seems like GW is trying to make everything more prevalent and kid-friendly, moving farther and farther away from their 2nd edition and Rogue Trader roots, all the while including bizarre choices in armies just to get some more background fluff into Codex armies (Jokaero in Grey Knights, Barghesi in Dark Eldar, etc). Call me nostalgic, but it seems like the game just keeps getter further from its roots.

On another note entirely, the background of the game is getting too specific. With Warhammer 40,000, when it comes to writing background fluff for new Codexes and editions, the writers have exactly 1,000 years of history to fill (the entire 41st millenium), which, with some of the choices that writers have made, limits the scope of certain races. For example, the Necrons, a relatively new presence in the storyline, were introduced with the Battle of Sanctuary 101 in 897.M41, which means that Necrons only have 103 years of recent galactic history of which they can be a part. Likewise, the Tau, which first fought the empire during the damocles gulf crusade in 742.M41, only have 258 years of history which can be written. Conversely, Abbadon's 12th black crusade was in 139.M41. See where I'm going with this? Some races have FAR less history to be written, which limits the scope that they can be updated and their story told.

[scadugenga]

I've been playing since RT days as well. Though I'll use the term veteran as opposed to "old." ;P

I like the "overall" fluff that has been going on. I like that after thousands of years of stagnation, the Imperium is starting to falter. It's like the latter days of the Roman Empire, only much grander in scale. :)

I hated the transition from 2nd ed to 3rd ed. I don't know if it was the "great dumbing down" of the game, or the fact that the 3rd ed eldar codex not only castrated my beloved eldar army, but they did it without the benefit of anesthesia to boot.

I saw 4th edition as an improvement overall. I loved the variability of the IG, Tyranid & SM codices (Doctrines--so full of awesome!) and the still decent variability of armies and HQ choices through the wargear sections. When the 4th ed eldar codex came out, I could find almost no fault with it at all. (Save, perhaps, that Swooping Hawks were still substandard.)

When 5th edition came out--I was okay with the rules set, and the fluff of the main book, but am a little disappointed at the mech-mindset of the game.

Then the codices starting hitting the shelves, and I noticed a bad trend:

1) Lack of variability in the basic army. No doctrines, etc. No wargear section. HQ's became more cookie-cutter, and any 'alt-build' capability required the use of a named special (now "unique") character*.

2) The general points decrease (save for D-Eldar vehicles) for all units creates a big gap between 3rd/4th codices and 5th ed ones. There's even some disparity betwixt 5th ed codices (SM and variants) that makes little sense.

3) Special/Unique characters are seemingly heavily biased given their inexpensive points cost compared to their non-unique counterparts within each codex.

4) The codex fluff (save, perhaps Phil Kelly's) has shown a marked decrease in general quality, favoring poor pulp-like writing with a marked trend of Grendel syndrome. One would think that they've all been reading too much Laurel K. Hamilton, except for the distinct lack of sex in the codices. ;)

5) Naming. Conventions. For the love of all that's holy, please gods, stop them from writing complete tripe "blood" this and "nemesis/psi" that.

However, there is a lot to be said for 5th edition:

1) The models have been getting better and better. Sculpting is at an all-time high.

2) Codices within 5th edition seem to actually be balanced with one another. (gasp!)

3) Close combat is more decisive.

4) Changing special CC weapon requirements for the bonus attack was much needed.

5) The simplification of the vehicle damage charts was much needed.

6) Ramming. About time this returned to the game. :)

So it's not all bad, but it's not all it's cranked up to be either.

I think my overall biggest gripe with 5th edition has nothing to do with the writing, but rather with GW's insanely "bend-you-over-without-a-reacharound" attitude with pricing troops choices.

Their sly tactic has them reboxing troop choices (particularly for hordes-esque armies) into smaller packages and pricing them at a sharp percentage increase with the illusion that you're actually getting a bargain.

EG: Cadian infantry box. It's over a 70% markup when you do the math. (original box: 20 guys for $35.00. New box: 10 guys for $24.75.) The kicker? They did absolutely nothing to alter the contents of the sprues--they just cut the number in half. It seems like they prefer to do this to basic troops choices, as if the GK are any example, the elites (Terminators) haven't changed in price.

*Can one really be said to be "unique" when he's used in countless small battles and even in "counts-as" armies? Really? Vulkan must've been cloned or something...

[Brettila]

I've been playing since the middle of 2nd, and I think I see the OP's point. The game used to be 'herohammer', then it moved to a trooper-based game, now we are back to ridiculous characters again. Even worse, practically EVERY game has to use special characters. I HATE that. Lord So-and-So of the Hideous Slaughter Angels has nothing better to do than show up to every single little skirmish his forces take part in. I know I am the only player on Earth that misses the days when you had to ask to play special characters, but some aspects of the game are moving backwards. I don't miss the Psychic phase and its death-monkey psykers. Now we have armies like SW and GK...say no more. :cool:

[Lord Castellan]

Perhaps the design team is to blame? Maybe not blame but it makes a difference. I am by no means a fan of Matt Ward. I detest the man and his work, and yes I think I could do better so dont use that argument.

The armies are taking a new direction. But its for the better. In my opinion they are almost going from bland to interesting. Depending on the army. Blood Angels, much as I dislike them, are unique in the entirety of their list, and arent just Marines with a handful of extra rules. New, exciting, and interesting units, fun games, dynamic rules.

It may not be going in a good direction per se, but its working. That much is obvious with every game we play.

[chromedog]

I've also been playing since RT.

The game has moved away from the skirmish game it started as, to herohammer, dumbed down and now finally, some of the spark that made it good is returning. Ok, some of the fluff (OK, a LOT of it post 3rd ed) is crap, but that's ok. Where it clashes with what I used pre-3rd ed, the older stuff trumps it in my eyes (so BA do not have spa parties with necrons, BA do not name EVERYTHING BLOODxxxxx, the space wolves do not call everything WOLFxxxx, the grey knights do not call everything whatever they call it.

The game has improved from 3rd ed, but the fluff needs less mary-stu and more epic stuff (but not epic as it appeals to 6 year olds.).

I preferred my SM as brainwiped and reindoctrinated warriors of a corrupt imperium, not religous zealots on a damn-fool idealistic crusade.