SkimaskMohawk

Uh, there was very little squad tactics in the campaigns. The seargents had all the abilities and damage output, and were what got revived; the squadies were largely incidental. It got really obvious too if you were trying to get extra deployments per day in vanilla, as you just plowed through the levels using all the seargents abilities. And got extra extra obvious once you got Thule and solod levels with him. It was effectively a 4 hero, realtime, isometric rpg. Multiplayer actually...used squads. And tactics. Smart positioning and unit combinations really played a big part through a match.

People loved dow1 because it let them go off the rails with huge 40k armies mixed with RTS Sim city. The campaigns were also all really memorable for both good and bad reasons. Dow2s campaign was very hero and rpg focussed without the grand scale of 1, and that threw a lot of people off. But the multiplayer...man that was something special. The escalation of early tactical skirmishes into what felt like a full game of 1500 points was really fun.

It's pretty obvious they're doing the strategy of not making the game for pre-existing players. They want those big 8th-10th edition sales and the cross over from 40k players, and are starting to apply a lot of the same concepts to their book writing. It's really not meant for old players, even less than 2nd.

That was also a common occurrence for legion units that went to legacies in 2nd. Ultramarines units broadly escaped, but the majority were...iffy. Especially if it was an exemplary battle unit.

Stuff that had models went into legacy in 2nd too. It wasn't very consistent and speaks to them not really having a firm plan.

I'm glad most stuff made it back in. It was always irksome to have long standing units removed for no reason. Im less glad to see a lot of the exemplary battle units are just...3rdified versions of the terrible 2nd incarnations. Fulmentaris got their nerf reapplied and the missiles are basically plasma guns? The tartaros siege can have a very similar output (albeit at shorter range) for 200? Also it's funny seeing the stats for a Medusa and basilisk now and comparing it to goonhammers coverage of them. Pinning (1) drastically improves their lethality! Drop str 10 pie plates as a reaction on tactical squads, it's terrifyingly good! Str 5 isn't good, but a str 10 large blast is terrifying and powerful. Am I missing what barrage does, or is not killing a rhino and only killing an average of 50% power armour hits really bad in terms of lethality. Like I'm sure removing scoring through pinning is useful, they're just very far from being lethal.

Ya I was going to say something similar. They suck at the roadmaps and PDFs. I remember when they promised a chaos cult list for 2nd and then...never delivered it lol

I remember adding purity seals or medals from the force commander plastic kit to models after they did something sick (like a seargent surviving two rounds against a daemon prince and getting his last wound with his chain sword in 5th). Or kill marks on a plasma cannon gunners backpack after each game. The old-old-old site had some really great articles on it back in the day. One of my favorites was a black templars progression and all the different free handed badges, script and icons at the end point of that progression.

But they definitely weren't balanced to be a takeable choice or with the rest of the printed stuff in mind lol. 2nds legacy units were very much token supported by having rules, but the rules being so bad the units had no impact on the game or design space.

Ehhhh.....they definitely weren't in 2nd lol

Very happy to be wrong. Very happy they're not binning people's collections 40k 10th style, and I'm hopeful that the usability of legacies is better than 2nds track record. I'm personally still not a fan of the army building structure and super not a fan of how they wrote the rules, but I'm interested in at least looking at the edition and glad for the people who don't share my particularities.

I read legislation daily, this definitely reminds me of EULAs.

But dawn breakers were an objectively better unit lol

Re terrain blocking LOS and leading to some odd situations where people can't charge and stuff. It's interesting to note that what I've heard about medium terrain (having not read the rules) is very, very similar to how area terrain worked in 4th. You couldn't see through it, and could only see into it a set distance. This also applied if both units were in the terrain. Sound familiar? The issue is that the set distance now is 3" when it was previously 6", and 6" was the maximum charge range to start with; 3" is less than the minimum charge range so it feels bad. But also, the main complainers about how bad it feels (goonhammer) also found being locked in combat to feel bad, or a tank getting one shot from a lascannon. So maybe it's a genius decision after all.

Listen, I've read the script. Its the same one from 2nds launch. I will be more than happy to go on an apology tour if the magic legacies PDF restores all the options and enables people's collections to be played. It certainly didn't 3 years ago though.