40K Open Topic: Should The Movement Stat Return?
Everyone is starting to theorize what 40K 8th Edition will hold. Let’s talk about a classic banished 20 years ago – the Movement stat.
Way back in the day, we had a movement stat. Here’s an example of what units looked like back then:
Yup, the squats has Movement:3″
For years, races were differentiated by how fast they could get across the table. It made sense. Who would expect an army of Grots to be able to keep up the pace with Harlequins? The default movement stat was 4″ and some ranged 1-2 inches on either side of it.
But when 3rd came along, the movement stat went the way of the dodo in the name of steamlining an efficiency. Everyone got 6″ moves and the game became more mobile.
Now people are talking about a new edition of Warhammer 40,000 and thinking about what they think would improve the game.
Here are a couple of opinions on the movement stat:
I do think some simplification would be desired on one level (at least for everyone else’s armies), but I cannot think of how to do it without it coming across as a nerf by a good portion of the community. In some ways, think of it like every unit had a limit of 2 Special Rules. This is like the return of the Movement Characteristic. If done properly, there won’t be a problem. However, if the “standard” movement of the IG and Tau is 4″, those players will consider this as nothing but a hit against them.
I’ve always lamented the lack of movement stats. The ability of GW to effectively differentiate the factions and their “speed” has led to some pretty ridiculous outcomes IMO. For example, warp spiders. How many dice do I need again to move them? Why don’t they just have a static movement range? Oh because we need to somehow make them different that assault marines movement, and tau crisis suits.
AdvertisementWhich brings me to my next point – the move from 2nd to 3rd edition drove off a lot of the the “uniqueness” of many armies. I know that I felt it viscerally when tau were released and were basically anime Eldar.
If you trim the ruleset down, a lot of units start to play and feel like others from other factions. It’s something that I hope doesn’t happen but I know definitely will if they try to “streamline” the rule set.
Now I’m not saying that we should return to the dog-slow 3-5″ movement rates of the early days, but recalibrated Movement stats ranging between say 4 and 8 inches for the various races could add some interesting diversity to the game.
And that gets us off to races. On this Memorial day weekend, we want to hear from you.
~What do you think? would it return needed differentiation to the races of the game, or yet another layer of unneeded complexity?
