Post by Geifer on May 8, 2014 9:03:04 GMT
I don't agree with you. First of all in the current WHF edition magic is more powerful than in 7th. There is too much irresistable force in this edition and the top spells are game winning instead of something that can help you winning a game (black sun can easily destroy half your army when the mage is positioned right).
That's ok. I don't agree with you either.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing here. The reason why 7th ed magic is weaker than 8th ed has nothing to do with the presence of a magic phase or irresistable force. 8th ed spells are simply more powerful, and you can only buy a single dispell scroll now. In 7th you either built an army around the most powerful magic you could gather in the hope to overpower your opponent and do something, or ddidn't even bother. Because everyone assumed the former and brought an equally high amount of magic defense. 8th ed turned this around by making magic more random, allowing for level 4 wizards to do not a damn thing if your rolls are bad and you don't get enough power, but if you get enough power dice, things go spectacularly your way. This has nothing to do with the presence of the magic phase. If 40k psychic powers were as powerful as Fantasy magic, you'get the exact same problems there.
And with regard to power, let's not kid ourselves into believing purple sun would do a damn thing against 40k armies. The reason why magic works in Fantasy is because you either have a template on models arranged in base to base with their buddies, or spells that affect every single model in the unit via a characteristic test. Both of these simply do not exist in 40k, which is why at the moment psychics are not seen as a huge problem while magic is.
This has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a magic phase.
What 40k concerns, in 4th, 5th and even 6th psychic powers are/were at least not game winning. They are or at least can be very helpful, but not more than other things can be in the game (shooting, etc.).
6th ed? Early 6th ed? The I'd iron arm the crap out of my Tyranids and there's not a damn thing you can do about it edition? Double lash prince 5th ed? MC Hammer 3rd and 4th ed with Slaaneshi daemon bombs that won because you couldn't touch their Daemon Prince?
Yeah, psychic powers created lists and won games all on their own. The only edition free of that was the first half of 3rd ed because the designers stepped away from the Librarian versus Farseer duels that decided 2nd ed games regardless of what else was on the table. There have almost always been powers that extended beyond useful into game winning territory.
We also don't have anything to stop shooting or close combat attacks by the way, so why would we need something to stop psychic powers? What would stop a psychic power attack like a mental lighting bolt? A natural army aura resistance versus psychic lightning bolts?? What would help a Guardsman from getting hit by it? Suddenly some magical defence aura protects him (= the army's dispel attempt). It is just stupid.
Why do we need psychic powers if they don't do anything shooting already doesn't do?
More importantly, these always the background that one may reflect in the rules. What helps a Guardsman stop an ethereal lightning bolt? The natural resistance of his soul to the corrupting power of the warp and faith in the Emperor. Just like the shadow in the warp disperses directed warp energy. protecting Tyranids, or technological devices protecting Necrons. And those races with psykers have the ability to counteract enemy psykers by manipulating the warp themselves. It's in the background and already has some application in the game. It's already happenening, and has been in every edition of the game. Consoldidating psychics into their own phase does nothing to change the principle, only the implementation
The reason why you need a dispel chance in Fantasy is because magic is too powerful and so it has to be made unreliable by having to bypass a minimum casting value, a dispell attempt by your opponent, and risks of miscasting. You only 'really' need something (a dispel attempt) to stop it when it is too good for the points you pay for it. This already implies that psychic powers will be a lot more powerful in 7th than they were in 6th. And so that an other phase can be spammed and so unbalance the game. An allround army that previously only needed to deal with nfantry and vehicles, already suddenly had to be able to deal with flyers as well, and now will have to handle a psychic phase too. And will psychic powers be too powerful?
Again, you don't need the phase to spam psychic powers. Imperial Guard? Less than 300pts gives you five psykers with which you can use to hand out shooting re-rolls to five different units via divination. Space Wolf tournmanet armies regularly bring four Rune Priests because they are so good. I'm not even going to count how many psykers Tzeentchian armies can have. Spam? Already a possibility. Already happening.
It's nothing new, just presented in a different way.
I don't necessarily disagree with you on the potential power level of psychic powers in 7th ed. I don't know. GW was not so kind as to give me an advance copy of the rules (shame on them!), so I'll have to wait like anybody else to find out the facts of 7th ed psychics. But I don't agree that everything was wonderful before and now everything is (potentially) ruined. That potential is there, but only in that things are more ruined than they are now.
Librarians can sacrifice themself to become a Bloodthirster? I agree they really needed that as no one was taking any psykers untill now, and it will definitely not unbalance the game at all.
www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=8727&d=1399467257
Powergamer not interested in the background. Your point is? We all know GW's only motivation is to increase sales. If it means allowing people to do something that is not supported by the background, they'll do it.Come on. This is White Dwarf, GW's only way of communicating with us. They hire (or don't fire) those who will do the bidding of the sales department. If you read it for anything but the comedy value, you may want to rethink your approach.
I maintain that the option needs to be there even for armies typically not associated with Chaos, because it helps represent radical or traitor forces. That doesn't mean proven loyalists should take the powers just because they can.
]I actually know some players that stopped playing WHF because they didn't like the magic phase and so started 40k. No escape now. Why was is so horrible that 40k had it's own system of psychic effects that meant each psyker had 1 psychic power that almost always got cast, that couldn't be dispelled by your opponent and didn't need to as it they were all quite balanced. Why do WHF and WH40k have to become more and more copycats of each other?
I'll repeat what I said above. Why do you need psychic powers if they use the exact same mechanic as weapons and wargear? Which is contrary to the background to boot?
40k is Fantasy in space. Always has been. 3rd ed attempted to move away from this, and with every edition GW has moved back a little. But as far as I'm concerned, every edition was also an improvement on the last one, proving them right, in my mind at least. The real issue here is that 40k has its wonderful background and the implementation in the game is shaped by what their is. This is simply how psychic power worked in the first decade of the game's edition. 3rd ed did away with this and a good number of other things. But the background never changed. At that point GW created a game that was disconnected from its setting, and with every edition they brought more of the background back into the game to rectify this.
If you disagree with the implementation of psyker powers in 7th (going by the rumors we have), I hope you don't mind retcons, because the only possible alternative to not finding the background reflected in gameplay is to change the background. And we all know how well that is received, right?
]Maybe it will be okay, but more chance to it that it will further unbalance the game. It will definitely not make it more balanced.
Maybe, that's pessimism speaking, and probably not.
]And if one reason 40K could have needed a new edition it would be to add more balance and structure to the game.
Yeah. 7th ed is released because GW needs money. Let's not kid ourselves into believing there is any other reason for it.
]I love (or loved) GW games because, though they weren't 100% balanced, they were balanced enough to play a tactical interesting game with two armies that even when minmax still backgroundwise still more or less made sense. And if your opponent played a powerlist and you a good list you still could win if you were the better player. The current edition allies and add-ons have already lead to powergamers to field the most unfluffy lists ever, and that have never been harder to beat with a 'normal' list. The gap between casual gamers with a good list and powergamers have already never been bigger.
Alright, I sympathize that 7th ed is not what you want, but this is simply not true.
3rd and 4th ed Eldar were an abomination whose holo-Falcons were indestructible with many armies at the time lacking the mobility to get into a position to do something slighty more effective against them.
3rd ed Deceiver and Monolith wall couldn't be countered by half the armies in the game.
3rd ed and 4th ed Iron Warriors never found their match. Same with Slaaneshi daemon bomb.
3rd ed Blood Angels Rhino rush and berserker glaive Khorne couldn't be countered by many armies.
3rd ed Wraithlord spam and 4th ed Nidzilla were unbeatable by many armies.
5th ed Imperial Guard leafblower, Draigowing, should still be in everyone's memory.
6th ed has Night Scythe spam, Heldrake spam and Tyranid and Daemon flying circuses.
Dedicated power gamers could always take options that made balanced lists completely ineffective and only had one or two hard counters that they rarely had to fear because these didn't do as well against all other lists, making them a problem to bring. Many of these lists aren't even all that removed from the background and emphasize units that you would typically see, and the only problem in background terms is that the absence of a suitable number of troops makes the armies appear less like armies and more like the assortment of powerful models that they are.
But if your opponent wanted to ruin the game for you, they could do so in every single edition of 40k.
]And more options to take whatever you want and a new phase that definitely will not add balance to the game will only mean armylists will never have looked more incoherent and as casual gamer with your fun, but nice list will already know that either you'll have to bend and start making cheesy lists yourself or know starting the game is pointless unless you like to put away your models.
Two things. If play knowing full well that you're just going to set up and put your models away again, don't play. You're not helping yourself, you're just catering to your opponent's desire for a quick victory. That doesn't give you an enjoyable time and it doesn't teach them to respect the other person on the table. You shouldn't feel obliged to play the game if you know that it will not be fun and that you won't actually be playing the game.
Second, if you take the point I made above about balance throughout the editions you'll see why I prefer to look at the chances of an open system provides for players that don't look to abuse the system. I don't think GW can make the game any worse in terms of balance. Providing more options to break the game will not result in more players trying to break the game, in my opinion. If you were so inclined before, you would have made your choice of army already based on which gives you the broken option.
So yeah, bring on 7th and let's have all the rules we need in one place...
That would be good, but we'll have to see how far GW takes this. Apparently Escalation and Stronghold Assault are still on sale, suggesting that the rulebook will cover all the building rules and super heavy rules, but if you want the actual rules for the models, you buy these books. Kind of like Codex Super Heavy Vehicles and Codex Fortifications. I'd be ok with that. I think tidying up the rules and putting them in the main rulebook so every player is on the same page is one of the things that are desperately needed.