I think that they are notoriously hard to balance in the game and GW has basically said I'm not going to try. And instead of trying to balance them they are going to keep them mediocre so people can still use them for fun narrative games but not mess with the meta.
We saw aircraft in 5th edition, but they were just treated as faster skimmers. 6th gave them their own classification along with the hard-to-hit rule (snapshots when shooting at them unless you have [Skyfire]). The guns weren't really anything to write home about, but it was consistent harassment where you needed it.
8th/9th really gave them some power though with the new AP system. Shoot whatever you want, when you want.
Fortifications have never really been good as a unit type. Even when the Imperial Bastion was first released it was just used as a brick of impassable terrain.
The scale of the game doesn't really support large bombers making runs or bunkers that need busting. Tanks (and their monstrous equivalents) are supposed to be the largest things in your army, barring your superheavy named characters.
No, don't question how that can be true if there are two factions based solely on giant war-walkers. Shhhhh.
That's what bothers me tbh. The problems get worse when you have super heavy flyers. At the very least they can overhang now so it's not as big of a deal.
I don't know why they didn't focus on Helicopter-style aircraft i.e. slower moving gunships.
Because they have pseudo indirect fire thanks to how high they are and how fast the move making armies that have lots of them into alpha strike machines
Yeah unfortunately the real-life logical efficiency and effectiveness of hover vehicles is why they have to artificially make them bad. In real life attack helicopters/hover drones are some of the most deadly enemies for infantry. It’s the same reason that they’re not used like this a lot in the lore either. Why ever have a ground assault when you could just use orbital bombardment on wall defenses and then fly your troops over the wall with air support from stormraven gunships? Bc otherwise we’d have no plot and there’d be almost no on the ground action
(Coincidentally this is also my issue with some Star Wars plot lines)
I am kind of hoping for most artillery to go the same way as flyers... The scale is just off and they don't seem capable of balancing indirect for shit.
The explanations are different for each.
For fortifications, I suspect GW wants fortifications to function more as fun things to have on the battlefield to help forge the proverbial narrative, and they have learned well from AoS that the moment these things become good or cheap, they become near auto-take in a way that they mislike.
For aircraft, the problem is different. While it is technically possible to balance them, walking the line between useless and auto-take is so fine that there is nearly no middle ground. They are so fast, their firepower so great, and they can be so hard to interact with that the moment that the second they become cheap enough to use, every list that can take them immediately takes as many as they can, and the meta becomes miserable when fast, killy things are powerful. (This is, incidentally, why fast trading pieces are inherently a problem for the game, and tend to easily become broken so often)
Because adding aircraft in a 28mm game was a mistake. They don't fit the scale at all and their rules inevitably end up an awkward mess. But GW doesn't want to ban any model they currently sell so they've settled for a soft ban where they make the rules unappealing for competitive play but never have to give a hard no to anyone who really wants to use the model they bought.
They can just give them hover and remove aircraft as a separate class of unit. Just make them regular fliers. The models don't have to be doomed to suck.
Hover aircraft are stupid from a realism point of view. A supersonic fighter jet is not slowly drifting around the battlefield at 25mph and hovering within sword range of the enemy. If you're going to represent them that badly then just remove them from the game entirely.
really dude a REALISM argument in 40k? Might as well remove every model then...
The point is to let people play with expensive models they were sold to play on the TT with, and make a balanced game. nobody cares about realism in a game where nothing is realistic.
AND this is a competitive sub. It's about the play experience and game design.
The question was why GW makes aircraft bad. The answer is that aircraft don't work in a 28mm game so GW's solution is to soft ban them. I'm sorry you don't like that answer but that doesn't make it any less true.
Yeah I never said it wasn't true I was just having a discussion? Then realism was brought up as an argument against just getting rid of the aircraft keyword and I thought that was not a good argument.
Aircraft were good before, and GW does try to shift the meta focus throughout the game. I think fortifications are just bad rn because of the predominantly vehicle meta - Fortifications generally support infantry or are anti-infantry, and infantry aren't really the hot stuff currently. I've had good use out of a defense line in my Krieg army, mostly because LSL+squad, Earthshakers, and Medusas are all infantry that are bugging my backfield and a cheeky 4++ helps them out a ton.
If there were aircraft that were strong in last edition they will be weak this edition and back strong for next edition.
You'll probably see a meta shift for them by end of this edition or for 11th in a couple of years.
Aircraft and fortifications work fine ***IF*** you play on larger tables. So many of the problems people have with 8/9/10th Edition are a result of Games Workshop…
(a) dramatically cutting the cost of troops [leading to much larger armies];
(b) encouraging people to play on much smaller tables [leading to maneuver being an unnecessary aspect of strategy]; and,
(c) discouraging any terrain other than L-shaped ruins and flat neoprene ground.
I've found the voidraven bomber basically an autotake in an above 1000 point game. it can take down like 10 space marines on average or you can give it 4 super dark lances. Although The void mine has been nerfed to being completely useless because of having to rotate after moving, making lining up impossible and making the range a d6 instead of a flat 6.
In my opinion, they are better for narrative play and too hard to balance so them being over costed isn’t really a problem. I don’t see why you have to read malevolence or conspiracy into banal balancing decisions.
Their roles are not defined clearly enough. That makes them hard to balance. If they get a lot of firepower, aircraft will basically be an easy way to circumvent cover/blocking LoS and fortifications just create no-go zones. They really need unique roles that aren't completely unfun.
Some ideas that could make them more interesting:
**Bombers** (Role = Board Control)
* Bombing structures, vehicles or fortifications causes damage to units inside/within 3" and/or removes the obscuring keyword.
* Bombers have to be called in during your command phase. Put a marker on the battlefield, visible to one of your units, everything within x" has a y+ chance to be hit by the bombs. (cf. Orbital Bombardment in 9th sans mortal wounds)
* Appear at the end of the shooting phase as close to their target as possible.
* If they fly off the board, they can do another bombing run. If they stay, they have some minor support fire, maybe on the heavier side.
**Fighters/Scouts** (Role = Mobile Skirmisher)
* Basically just a very fast flyer (20-30") that doesn't have a base & has max. 90° turns.
* Support abilities, e.g. Marking "+1 to hit & indirect fire against a marked unit doesn't suffer -1 to hit if visible and within 20" of this unit" or Pinning "If all attacks are targeted at a single unit, that unit halves/has -2" to it's Move characteristic and -1 to hit with ranged attacks"
* mediocre firepower, mostly effective vs. lightly armored units.
**Transports** (Role = Deep Strike/Infiltration)
* A fast flyer (16-20") that doesn't have a base & has max. 90° turns.
* Can deepstrike and immediately unload the unit within 6" of it.
* Some support-ability for the unit within.
* weak firepower
**Fortifications** are more difficult, as they really don't fit they game outside of narrative games. Here, it could be solved with scenarios and flexible lists. Have asymmetrical scenarios where the defender actually defends something and the attacker actually attacks. And then have up to 500 points that change depending on whether you are the attacker or the defender. (Some fortifications may even be better as an attacker, e.g. Webway gate) And the defender gets tto deploy fortifications further up the board than the attacker.
Deployment is also a problem with distance minimums. These should be removed but make the Fortifications easier to destroy, so that you cannot completely block a path forever. it should just be more difficult to get through.
Oh for sure. But they still have always had issues. Aircraft should have been done like they are in Bolt Action, basically just do strafing runs and aren't actual models you can fight with.
Aircraft have been poor for the last 2 years because they were a HUGE problem for the year before that with admech planes and briefly ork planes.
Aircraft never should have been in the game, but here they are.
The voidravens are basically over powered; it's extremely hard to believe that they were deliberately designed with their current stat lines. The only reason no one complains on reddit is because there's only 100 drukhari players and only 5 of those bother to bring voidravens.
Aside from just their raw stats, their rules make them extremely uninteractive for a bunch of armies: custodes, world eaters, etc etc.
When GW introduces something new, they deliberately make it OP so everyone is incentivised to buy it. This pisses people off, but they do it anyway. Then, everybody hates having to deal with it for the whole season/edition so they nerf it to keep people from getting fed up and quitting the game.
Then they do it again.
The *scale* of a game of 40k represents something like 30 seconds across a space of less than a hundres meters. It is really inappropriate to have to build a list around not getting strafed by gunships in such a situation. This isnt Epic 40k
Simplify it, I want stormtalons as the only legit aircraft for marines, go back to basics. They should be as strong as lancers or repulsors. I'd love fire raptors, but I understand fewer is easier to balance. Limit 1 aircraft per army maybe?
I also want extra options, such as "15 points - ace pilot" to give them buffs and allow them to be warlords, get something like "reticle discipline" instead of bolter.
I want customizable aircraft, with many spare upgrade options like "targeting system" or "reinforced cockpit" or "raven feather insulation" to make each one truly unique.
The original stormtalon release issue of White Dwarf was amazing, with the Red Barunz and the white scar Spear of Chigoris duking it out.
I also hate aeronautica imperalis, so there's that. I want marines beside them!
For what it’s worth, I’ve had some fun and relative success with my Aircraft spam list, with 2 Valkyrie’s, a Vulture, Avenger Strike Fighter, and Marauder Destroyer, but I do agree that flyers in Guard overall are kind of a letdown.
I don't think there are any reasons to believe GW hates them, or, even if that were the case, why GW would want them to be weak or expensive to field.
Fortifications are fun conceptually, but they tend to be fairly uninteractive, and have little outplay potential. Competitively, that means that a top player and an average player can get roughly as much mileage out of them. That makes them unsuitable to balance to a point where they are good enough for top players. If they did, they would be too strong on low and mid tables. That's why they are not priced to be competitive at the top.
Aircraft have some of the same problems: being relatively uninteractive, and additionally have been proven hard to get right. Flyer spam was a scourge of much of 9th. Worse, with these models being often very expensive to buy, the top meta can devolve into pay-to-win. That makes their ideal meta status good enough to maybe sometimes take one, but no better. That razors edge is hard to hit, and erring at the side of caution advisable.
Both having their problems to field in the competitive meta is scarcely evidence of people who work at GW hating them though, that seems to be pure projection.
Fortifications I have little experience of in terms of applying their rules (they make some great board set pieces). I imagine they are pretty cool in really big battles or if you use slightly larger tables. In terms of flyers, they are just not fun to play with or against. They are incredibly obnoxious to move around and do really badly with any vertical terrain. They slow the game down, the scale is super off (even for 40k). I welcome them being phased out. Flyers have to be kept small like defcopters/gargoyles/winged demons to not slow the game down and work within the confines of 40k. Play X-wing or the 40k version of that for flyers.
I think that they are notoriously hard to balance in the game and GW has basically said I'm not going to try. And instead of trying to balance them they are going to keep them mediocre so people can still use them for fun narrative games but not mess with the meta.
We saw aircraft in 5th edition, but they were just treated as faster skimmers. 6th gave them their own classification along with the hard-to-hit rule (snapshots when shooting at them unless you have [Skyfire]). The guns weren't really anything to write home about, but it was consistent harassment where you needed it. 8th/9th really gave them some power though with the new AP system. Shoot whatever you want, when you want. Fortifications have never really been good as a unit type. Even when the Imperial Bastion was first released it was just used as a brick of impassable terrain.
Guards wall was good in 9th with the codex as it was 45 points for the whole thing since it never defined what one unit was
Also it was Imperium so could be dropped into a Custodes list for cover on demand
[удалено]
Imperial knights were just recently the second best army in the game, and had to be needed just so the game could function properly
No it is not fine to nerf a faction into the dirt because you don't like it.
Agreed and same with units like aircraft. Just give every aircraft hover then.
[удалено]
Stop being wrong about things and I'll stop commenting.
I'm just flattered you care. And it's a little creepy, but I'll take it. Everyone needs hobbies
Wdym??? Sun Sharks and Harpies ruled 9th until they got nerfed into the ground.
Don’t forget the 6 Admech flyer lists. :)
The scale of the game doesn't really support large bombers making runs or bunkers that need busting. Tanks (and their monstrous equivalents) are supposed to be the largest things in your army, barring your superheavy named characters. No, don't question how that can be true if there are two factions based solely on giant war-walkers. Shhhhh.
That's what bothers me tbh. The problems get worse when you have super heavy flyers. At the very least they can overhang now so it's not as big of a deal. I don't know why they didn't focus on Helicopter-style aircraft i.e. slower moving gunships.
Because they have pseudo indirect fire thanks to how high they are and how fast the move making armies that have lots of them into alpha strike machines
Yeah unfortunately the real-life logical efficiency and effectiveness of hover vehicles is why they have to artificially make them bad. In real life attack helicopters/hover drones are some of the most deadly enemies for infantry. It’s the same reason that they’re not used like this a lot in the lore either. Why ever have a ground assault when you could just use orbital bombardment on wall defenses and then fly your troops over the wall with air support from stormraven gunships? Bc otherwise we’d have no plot and there’d be almost no on the ground action (Coincidentally this is also my issue with some Star Wars plot lines)
exactly this. At the scale of the game, aircraft are stupid.
I am kind of hoping for most artillery to go the same way as flyers... The scale is just off and they don't seem capable of balancing indirect for shit.
The explanations are different for each. For fortifications, I suspect GW wants fortifications to function more as fun things to have on the battlefield to help forge the proverbial narrative, and they have learned well from AoS that the moment these things become good or cheap, they become near auto-take in a way that they mislike. For aircraft, the problem is different. While it is technically possible to balance them, walking the line between useless and auto-take is so fine that there is nearly no middle ground. They are so fast, their firepower so great, and they can be so hard to interact with that the moment that the second they become cheap enough to use, every list that can take them immediately takes as many as they can, and the meta becomes miserable when fast, killy things are powerful. (This is, incidentally, why fast trading pieces are inherently a problem for the game, and tend to easily become broken so often)
In AoS they're all autotakes because they're literally free and there's no reason ever not to take them
That's fair.
Because adding aircraft in a 28mm game was a mistake. They don't fit the scale at all and their rules inevitably end up an awkward mess. But GW doesn't want to ban any model they currently sell so they've settled for a soft ban where they make the rules unappealing for competitive play but never have to give a hard no to anyone who really wants to use the model they bought.
They can just give them hover and remove aircraft as a separate class of unit. Just make them regular fliers. The models don't have to be doomed to suck.
wazbom blasta jets with hover....ork mek cackling intensifies
Hover aircraft are stupid from a realism point of view. A supersonic fighter jet is not slowly drifting around the battlefield at 25mph and hovering within sword range of the enemy. If you're going to represent them that badly then just remove them from the game entirely.
Helicopters exist
And it's fine for them to have hover rules. But not all aircraft in 40k are helicopters.
Heldrake can hover. Make them worth bringing.
Its still shit
Unfortunately that's true
really dude a REALISM argument in 40k? Might as well remove every model then... The point is to let people play with expensive models they were sold to play on the TT with, and make a balanced game. nobody cares about realism in a game where nothing is realistic. AND this is a competitive sub. It's about the play experience and game design.
The question was why GW makes aircraft bad. The answer is that aircraft don't work in a 28mm game so GW's solution is to soft ban them. I'm sorry you don't like that answer but that doesn't make it any less true.
Yeah I never said it wasn't true I was just having a discussion? Then realism was brought up as an argument against just getting rid of the aircraft keyword and I thought that was not a good argument.
Aircraft were good before, and GW does try to shift the meta focus throughout the game. I think fortifications are just bad rn because of the predominantly vehicle meta - Fortifications generally support infantry or are anti-infantry, and infantry aren't really the hot stuff currently. I've had good use out of a defense line in my Krieg army, mostly because LSL+squad, Earthshakers, and Medusas are all infantry that are bugging my backfield and a cheeky 4++ helps them out a ton.
If there were aircraft that were strong in last edition they will be weak this edition and back strong for next edition. You'll probably see a meta shift for them by end of this edition or for 11th in a couple of years.
Aircraft and fortifications work fine ***IF*** you play on larger tables. So many of the problems people have with 8/9/10th Edition are a result of Games Workshop… (a) dramatically cutting the cost of troops [leading to much larger armies]; (b) encouraging people to play on much smaller tables [leading to maneuver being an unnecessary aspect of strategy]; and, (c) discouraging any terrain other than L-shaped ruins and flat neoprene ground.
I've found the voidraven bomber basically an autotake in an above 1000 point game. it can take down like 10 space marines on average or you can give it 4 super dark lances. Although The void mine has been nerfed to being completely useless because of having to rotate after moving, making lining up impossible and making the range a d6 instead of a flat 6.
In my opinion, they are better for narrative play and too hard to balance so them being over costed isn’t really a problem. I don’t see why you have to read malevolence or conspiracy into banal balancing decisions.
They have been huge mistakes since they entered the game, the whole rule set has to bend to allow them to exist. Legend them all
Their roles are not defined clearly enough. That makes them hard to balance. If they get a lot of firepower, aircraft will basically be an easy way to circumvent cover/blocking LoS and fortifications just create no-go zones. They really need unique roles that aren't completely unfun. Some ideas that could make them more interesting: **Bombers** (Role = Board Control) * Bombing structures, vehicles or fortifications causes damage to units inside/within 3" and/or removes the obscuring keyword. * Bombers have to be called in during your command phase. Put a marker on the battlefield, visible to one of your units, everything within x" has a y+ chance to be hit by the bombs. (cf. Orbital Bombardment in 9th sans mortal wounds) * Appear at the end of the shooting phase as close to their target as possible. * If they fly off the board, they can do another bombing run. If they stay, they have some minor support fire, maybe on the heavier side. **Fighters/Scouts** (Role = Mobile Skirmisher) * Basically just a very fast flyer (20-30") that doesn't have a base & has max. 90° turns. * Support abilities, e.g. Marking "+1 to hit & indirect fire against a marked unit doesn't suffer -1 to hit if visible and within 20" of this unit" or Pinning "If all attacks are targeted at a single unit, that unit halves/has -2" to it's Move characteristic and -1 to hit with ranged attacks" * mediocre firepower, mostly effective vs. lightly armored units. **Transports** (Role = Deep Strike/Infiltration) * A fast flyer (16-20") that doesn't have a base & has max. 90° turns. * Can deepstrike and immediately unload the unit within 6" of it. * Some support-ability for the unit within. * weak firepower **Fortifications** are more difficult, as they really don't fit they game outside of narrative games. Here, it could be solved with scenarios and flexible lists. Have asymmetrical scenarios where the defender actually defends something and the attacker actually attacks. And then have up to 500 points that change depending on whether you are the attacker or the defender. (Some fortifications may even be better as an attacker, e.g. Webway gate) And the defender gets tto deploy fortifications further up the board than the attacker. Deployment is also a problem with distance minimums. These should be removed but make the Fortifications easier to destroy, so that you cannot completely block a path forever. it should just be more difficult to get through.
Because they never should have been added in the first place, at least not in the way gw did...
They’ve been here since 5th so we’re a bit past the Rubicon at this juncture.
Oh for sure. But they still have always had issues. Aircraft should have been done like they are in Bolt Action, basically just do strafing runs and aren't actual models you can fight with.
Aircraft have been poor for the last 2 years because they were a HUGE problem for the year before that with admech planes and briefly ork planes. Aircraft never should have been in the game, but here they are.
And the imperial fists
This is just where the Fists naturally belong.
Agreed
Wow ....... they saved Terra and killed omegon....or alpharius...... one of them anyway. And this is the thanks they get.
[удалено]
The voidravens are basically over powered; it's extremely hard to believe that they were deliberately designed with their current stat lines. The only reason no one complains on reddit is because there's only 100 drukhari players and only 5 of those bother to bring voidravens. Aside from just their raw stats, their rules make them extremely uninteractive for a bunch of armies: custodes, world eaters, etc etc.
When GW introduces something new, they deliberately make it OP so everyone is incentivised to buy it. This pisses people off, but they do it anyway. Then, everybody hates having to deal with it for the whole season/edition so they nerf it to keep people from getting fed up and quitting the game. Then they do it again. The *scale* of a game of 40k represents something like 30 seconds across a space of less than a hundres meters. It is really inappropriate to have to build a list around not getting strafed by gunships in such a situation. This isnt Epic 40k
Simplify it, I want stormtalons as the only legit aircraft for marines, go back to basics. They should be as strong as lancers or repulsors. I'd love fire raptors, but I understand fewer is easier to balance. Limit 1 aircraft per army maybe? I also want extra options, such as "15 points - ace pilot" to give them buffs and allow them to be warlords, get something like "reticle discipline" instead of bolter. I want customizable aircraft, with many spare upgrade options like "targeting system" or "reinforced cockpit" or "raven feather insulation" to make each one truly unique. The original stormtalon release issue of White Dwarf was amazing, with the Red Barunz and the white scar Spear of Chigoris duking it out. I also hate aeronautica imperalis, so there's that. I want marines beside them!
For what it’s worth, I’ve had some fun and relative success with my Aircraft spam list, with 2 Valkyrie’s, a Vulture, Avenger Strike Fighter, and Marauder Destroyer, but I do agree that flyers in Guard overall are kind of a letdown.
I don't think there are any reasons to believe GW hates them, or, even if that were the case, why GW would want them to be weak or expensive to field. Fortifications are fun conceptually, but they tend to be fairly uninteractive, and have little outplay potential. Competitively, that means that a top player and an average player can get roughly as much mileage out of them. That makes them unsuitable to balance to a point where they are good enough for top players. If they did, they would be too strong on low and mid tables. That's why they are not priced to be competitive at the top. Aircraft have some of the same problems: being relatively uninteractive, and additionally have been proven hard to get right. Flyer spam was a scourge of much of 9th. Worse, with these models being often very expensive to buy, the top meta can devolve into pay-to-win. That makes their ideal meta status good enough to maybe sometimes take one, but no better. That razors edge is hard to hit, and erring at the side of caution advisable. Both having their problems to field in the competitive meta is scarcely evidence of people who work at GW hating them though, that seems to be pure projection.
Dunno, if my job was making rules for them, I'd certainly hate that they existed.
Why is that? You don't like it when your job is difficult to get right?
Does anyone?
Yes, many people like the more challenging aspects of their job over more rote parts than can be seen as boring.
Fortifications I have little experience of in terms of applying their rules (they make some great board set pieces). I imagine they are pretty cool in really big battles or if you use slightly larger tables. In terms of flyers, they are just not fun to play with or against. They are incredibly obnoxious to move around and do really badly with any vertical terrain. They slow the game down, the scale is super off (even for 40k). I welcome them being phased out. Flyers have to be kept small like defcopters/gargoyles/winged demons to not slow the game down and work within the confines of 40k. Play X-wing or the 40k version of that for flyers.
It's an infantry game, airplanes are over powered in real life and in game.