Flames of War is a far better thought out game than 40k, yeah, and it even still has 3+ saves! Flames of War's defensive fire mechanic, which 40k's overwatch(in the current edition) is based off of is a far better designed mechanic because it's something both players interact with- setting up machine guns in the right spot to support a defensive position, preparing the position by firing smoke and suppressing, etc.

Honestly though the best GW game is probably Epic 40k because not only is it better designed, it fits a lot better than trying to shove more 28mm men and bigger things onto the same table.

I still miss 2D6 terminators.I also remember Genestealers that would never let you an attack in melee because the sheer amount of attacks just overwhelmed.

Overly kitted out pre assassin minidex imperial assassins.

Harlequins.

Originally Terminators were just an unmodifiable armour save of 3+ if I recall, first ed?

Yep 3+ on two dice made them immune to small arms for all intents and purposes, and high ap weapons weren't spammed like they are today.

Originally Terminators were just an unmodifiable armour save of 3+ if I recall, first ed?

Originally Tactical Dreadnaught Armour (Terminators) were a 1pt dreadnaught so immune to personal weapons. You needed heavy weapons (or a Harlequin's Kiss) to take them out.

I have fond memories of my orc nob on mono wheel with a stasis grenade.

Really took out anything 'too cheesy' for 2nd ed. back then.

Anyhow. All my painted armies are collecting dust. Fewer and fewer play Warhammer (both sorts) including me.

Simply no longer interested in unbalanced games. For over a decade I had hopes they'd fix that eventually.

I know. Silly me. GW caring about balance.

My painted stuffs collecing dust:

40K: Tau, Emperors Children, Iron Warriors, White Scars, Black Templars., Imperial Fists and Flesh Tearers.

WHFB: Empire, Chaos , Greenskins, Undead.

epicA: Eldar, Loyal & Chaos Marines

Warmaster; Empire, Chaos, Undead

Bloodbowl; Dark Elves, Orcs, Humans, Wood Elves, Pro Elves, Chaos.

BFG: Chaos, Eldar, Tau

And I prolly forgot some stuff here & there.

You needed heavy weapons (or a Harlequin's Kiss) to take them out.

...which is another thing that made zero sense, as the fluff for the Harlequin's Kiss doesn't paint it as an awesome armour piercing weapon, but instead as a weapon which can instant kill pretty much anything with internal organs if stabbed with it.

Rending monofilament weapons? No. Instant Death monofilament weapons? That's more like it.

My painted stuffs collecing dust:

Black Templars.,

Most of my Templars have crusaded off to the multicoloured online auction site. I still have a couple of kitbashed squads (and two lovingly customised Dreads) tucked away somewhere though.

I will just no longer play a game where the lazy company expects me to do half the work for them.

Worse... Expect you to spend hundred of dollars buying scenery. Because let's face it, if to get a balanced game you have to effectively cut LoS between the two table edges something is very, very wrong.

Flames of War does it right, you can have as much or as little scenery on the table and still have a balanced game.

That said I'm fairly sure I'm going to be picking up the new Overkill box this weekend after the Armada tournament at my LGS. It's profit sharing day tomorrow and the stuff in that box just looks too good to pass up, plus Killteam actually looks fun to play.

Flames of War is a far better thought out game than 40k, yeah, and it even still has 3+ saves!

It has it's own doom

"Roll 6+ to hit concealed veterans

Roll 6+ firepower

and so on >_>

But tank mechanics is great, especially the turret part

I just don't understand how a rule set that needs to be extensively reworked in order to make tournaments viable can be compared to the X-Wing (or literally ANY other FFG property) competitive scene. The problems with GW have been catalogued extensively in this post, so I won't rehash them, but as far as competitive play, if you can play X-wing, you can play in tournaments. If you can 'play' 40k (I use quotes because I have believed for a long time that when you have fun in 40k you do so in spite of the rules rather than in part because of them), you still have to figure what tweaks the venue has adopted to make the game suitable for a balanced play experience.

Beyond that, I think an important factor is that FFG does so much more than just X-Wing, and these figures show that their business model and fan loyalty pay off. I know it's a bit of a fallacy, but I would love to see more people fall into FFG's other fantastic games. And as a final thought, I look at Forbidden Stars, Conquest, Warhammer Quest, Chaos in the Old World, and I realize that FFG does better games in the engaging and interesting GW universes than GW does!

Originally Terminators were just an unmodifiable armour save of 3+ if I recall, first ed?

3+ save with a 6+ invulnerable roll (edit: I believe), back when power armour was 4+ and just after marines where upped from S3 & T3 to S4 & T4

I played 40k in second, when men were real men. When my Marines could take a couple of virus grenades and a few vortex grensdes and kill 100 orks in turn 2. And then start shooting. You youngsters have no idea what unfair and dumb rules really are.

Take a few smoke grenades and your marines could see and the orks couldn't

One of my biggest pet peeves about 40k... How the Fluff was soooo far away from the rules.

Lore always has to be secondary to balance/rules. But in a game like X-Wing FFG has to figure out how to make a balanced ship based on someone else's lore, someone for whom game balance doesn't factor into it at all.

None of the writers for Rebels gave a single thought to how well balanced the Ghost would be in X-Wing. So FFG has to work with in the frame of what the Ghost can do in the show and somehow make it a balanced ship while still trying to capture the spirit of the ship.

But for 40k, they wrote the lore themselves, they aren't taking it from a movie or some other outside source, they wrote the lore for the game. Yet it seemed to me that a tactical marine in the game is so far from lore that it's just silly.

That's one thing that looks promising about killteam, in that game it seems like the Marines are actually the Angels of Death they should be, rather than stock troops only slightly better than the stock troops in other factions.

But for 40k, they wrote the lore themselves, they aren't taking it from a movie or some other outside source, they wrote the lore for the game. Yet it seemed to me that a tactical marine in the game is so far from lore that it's just silly.

What a marine can do varies so wildly between authors that it's exceedingly hard to establish a baseline for how good a marine really is.

My favorite reaction to AoS was:

"This is not a game by any definition I'm comfortable with"

My favorite reaction was this:

It really sais it all doesn't it? I mean how bad does a game have to be that you would voluntarily burn down your entire collection? Not give them to your buddy. Not sell them on E-bay. Not throw them away. No, he made the aditional effort to BURN THEM.

If anything that reaction shows how juvenile/assanine the fans were and that they deserve to have their toys taken away anyway.

I've been in a mood today. Does it show? Sorry not sorry.

Yeah I remember the days when terminators laughed off fire and rolled 2D6.

I still lost some to gretchen. Lol.

The good old days!

Originally Terminators were just an unmodifiable armour save of 3+ if I recall, first ed?

3+ save with a 6+ invulnerable roll (edit: I believe), back when power armour was 4+ and just after marines where upped from S3 & T3 to S4 & T4

I played 40k in second, when men were real men. When my Marines could take a couple of virus grenades and a few vortex grensdes and kill 100 orks in turn 2. And then start shooting. You youngsters have no idea what unfair and dumb rules really are.

Take a few smoke grenades and your marines could see and the orks couldn't

If I remember termies were originally 2+ save that couldnt be modified past a roll of 6 and they came with refractor fields. So on top of the 2+ they had a 5 or 6 unmodified save.

I believe they went to 2d6 3+ in 3rd ed.

And smoke + auto sensors, orks just loved that combo!

Yeah I remember the days when terminators laughed off fire and rolled 2D6.

I still lost some to gretchen. Lol.

The good old days!

Dude shokatack gunz teleporting gretchin into your armour is no joke.

Okay it's a really good one aslong as it's not your armour they get into.

My favorite reaction to AoS was:

"This is not a game by any definition I'm comfortable with"

My favorite reaction was this:

It really sais it all doesn't it? I mean how bad does a game have to be that you would voluntarily burn down your entire collection? Not give them to your buddy. Not sell them on E-bay. Not throw them away. No, he made the aditional effort to BURN THEM.

WTF!? How wussy does a fan base have to be too get so butt hurt as to throw a tantrum in which they literally set their toys on fire just because change happens? Puberty must have been so hard for them. If they ever got to be that grown up.

If anything that reaction shows how juvenile/assanine the fans were and that they deserve to have their toys taken away anyway.

I've been in a mood today. Does it show? Sorry not sorry.

Well, to be honest, first of all I see this as a stunt for views more than anything else. An expensive one, but a stunt nonetheless.

All that being said, the sentiment (if not the actions) are 100% relatable. WFB was dying a long, slow death for a long time. Players dropped the game, venues dropped support, and finally the kicker is that the entire universe and system was shredded. AoS is not anything that closely resembles the old game, which means that it isn't like there will ever be a new influx of new players to WFB. Couple that with the fact that a lot of older armies don't mesh with the scale or visual dynamic of the new game at all, and it's clearly frustrating. You can't even buy new models to use with the old rules thanks to changing the bases that they come packaged with. You could perhaps buy bases online, but this is a move almost guaranteed to drive fans away.

Look at it this way. In the first edition of the game of thrones LCG, if you started back in the beginning (14 years ago), and bought one core and one of every deluxe expansion and card pack at MSRP, you would have paid around $1300 in USD. Then FFG came along and announced a second edition, invalidating all of the old cards. You can still play games of the old edition, but new players (especially anyone sucked in through the show) will play the new game. It stings. Now in this scenario you spent that money on EVERY SINGLE CARD AVAILABLE. Imagine if you spent that money on 1/10 of the available pool of cards, and every couple years a new edition either nerfs/buffs some cards so badly you need to adjust, or in some cases totally invalidates and removes a card from the game, necessitating that you buy another card for $60 just to fill the gap in your deck? Oh, and the FAQ and rules updates aren't free, they cost $30-$60 and you have to buy one for every type of deck. And they get updated on a totally nonsensical schedule.

Now you are seeing the frustration that caused a lot of formerly die hard GW fans to just throw in the towel. I personally have thought about getting back in. I stay up on 40k editions, I check out codices, I even went so far as to buy some dark angels and considered some skitarii and necrons. But then I look at the grey plastic in a box, remember that I have a job, school and a wife, and I just don't have the bandwidth or the disposable income to get back into that. So then I buy my plastic spaceships, spend 1/4 of the time playing a game, and have an absolute blast.

Am I going to torch my space marines? No. Do I understand what drove someone to it? Hell yes.

I still miss 2D6 terminators.I also remember Genestealers that would never let you an attack in melee because the sheer amount of attacks just overwhelmed.

Overly kitted out pre assassin minidex imperial assassins.

Harlequins.

Originally Terminators were just an unmodifiable armour save of 3+ if I recall, first ed?

Harlequins.

I didn't play around that time, but I've heard stories of 10 harlequins murdering an entire army and stuff.

I forgot if this was cheating or legit-but-frowned upon: using polymorphine to reveal your assassin... wearing terminator armor!

I still miss 2D6 terminators.I also remember Genestealers that would never let you an attack in melee because the sheer amount of attacks just overwhelmed.

Overly kitted out pre assassin minidex imperial assassins.

Harlequins.

Originally Terminators were just an unmodifiable armour save of 3+ if I recall, first ed?

Yep 3+ on two dice made them immune to small arms for all intents and purposes, and high ap weapons weren't spammed like they are today.

And later in fantasy you got gromril (?) armour with a 1+ armor save.

Ahh good old herohammer where one guy could gut your entire force, don't miss that even a little.

Yeah I remember the days when terminators laughed off fire and rolled 2D6.

I still lost some to gretchen. Lol.

The good old days!

shokk attack gun! (from the terminator damage table:) "Snotlings materialise inside the body of the suit's occupant. A horrible way to die.The model stands omniously upright for the rest of the battle."

Ahh good old herohammer where one guy could gut your entire force, don't miss that even a little.

Oh yeah I remember! You could spend like what? 50% of your army points on characters. So with chaos it would be chaos lord+ all the gifts, atributes, wargear, magic items, etc...+ a chaos dragon and spend what was left on some daemons and chaos Knights. End result: a kickass army with only slightly more models than a Mordheim warband.

In general, any game engine that every requires a specific side of a D6 (generally a 1 or a 6) will falter to high variance. Large dice pools just don't produce a specific result with any sort of reliability and the averages become more about the extreme results than producing a consistent average (mass successes/failures instead of a true 1 out of 6) and small dice pools are just highly reliant on the timing of success (getting it on the first try and 10th are roughly as likely but are too variably to base a strategy around).

It's actually sort of problem with success based die results in general, but the issue gets worse as the chance of success drops. It's honestly one of the weaker aspects of X-Wing, though FFG has put a lot of work into minimizing the effect on the game. Even then, there's a user pretty dedicated to the issues with 37.5% success rate dice, so...

In general, any game engine that every requires a specific side of a D6 (generally a 1 or a 6) will falter to high variance. Large dice pools just don't produce a specific result with any sort of reliability and the averages become more about the extreme results than producing a consistent average (mass successes/failures instead of a true 1 out of 6) and small dice pools are just highly reliant on the timing of success (getting it on the first try and 10th are roughly as likely but are too variably to base a strategy around).

It's actually sort of problem with success based die results in general, but the issue gets worse as the chance of success drops. It's honestly one of the weaker aspects of X-Wing, though FFG has put a lot of work into minimizing the effect on the game. Even then, there's a user pretty dedicated to the issues with 37.5% success rate dice, so...

Oh yeah. A buddy of mine who played Vampire the masquerade ( 6's are success, 1's are fail and cancel a success) back in the days had the same problem. the better you got, the more dice you rolled, wich increased the odds of rolling more 1's thereby making you actually worse at higher leves.

Originally Terminators were just an unmodifiable armour save of 3+ if I recall, first ed?

3+ save with a 6+ invulnerable roll (edit: I believe), back when power armour was 4+ and just after marines where upped from S3 & T3 to S4 & T4

I played 40k in second, when men were real men. When my Marines could take a couple of virus grenades and a few vortex grensdes and kill 100 orks in turn 2. And then start shooting. You youngsters have no idea what unfair and dumb rules really are.

Take a few smoke grenades and your marines could see and the orks couldn't

If I remember termies were originally 2+ save that couldnt be modified past a roll of 6 and they came with refractor fields. So on top of the 2+ they had a 5 or 6 unmodified save.

I believe they went to 2d6 3+ in 3rd ed.

And smoke + auto sensors, orks just loved that combo!

Terminators had a 3+ save on 2D6 in 2nd edition. With 3rd edition they were moved to a simple 2+ save as the game introduced Armour Piercing in its current form. Later in 3rd edition they gave Terminator Armour a 5+ Invulnerable save because it was found out that only having a 2+ was was not justifying the point cost.

Doesn't anyone miss Squats? .... no?

I do. Squats are awesome.

If I remember termies were originally 2+ save that couldnt be modified past a roll of 6 and they came with refractor fields. So on top of the 2+ they had a 5 or 6 unmodified save.

I believe they went to 2d6 3+ in 3rd ed.

2d6 3+ was 2nd Edition. 3rd Edition got rid of to-hit and save modifiers, so they dropped to a 2+.

2nd Edition really was the high point of 40K, which is kinda sad when you think about it. It was the last time it was truly a wargame, rather than a dice-rolling and model-moving exercise. GW had the opportunity to refine that system, get rid of some of the cheese and list-building imbalance, and create a solid wargame. Instead, they basically scrapped everything and built an entirely new system designed around playing games as quickly as possible. 3rd Edition also invented the idea of a "close combat" army (even Tyranids could shoot fairly well in 2nd Edition), which forever threw the game into imbalance by trying to have armies on the table which were trying to fight in two different eras. Imagine trying to balance the rules and points costs for a Dark Ages Frankish army against WW2 Germans, lol. That's what 40K has tried to do for 15 years and why people always complain about the rules. If you're playing a shooty army in an edition that favors H2H, you're going to be frustrated by 40K. If you're playing a choppy army in an edition that favors shooting, you're going to be frustrated. And such has been the long developmental struggle for Games Workshop since that fateful day in the late 90s when somebody at GW said "Let's figure out how to make this game go faster by making close combat more brutal". Trying to balance those kinds of playstyles in a system where one side doesn't have to buy three times more models than the other one is a Herculean, if not impossible, task.