Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Damage Reduction is Out of Control
Goatboy here. I want to talk about how 40K has painted itself into a corner with damage reduction rules.
We all know 40k is pretty brutal right now with a ton of weapon options that seem to go above and beyond the old days of being scared of a bolter round. You have stacks of abilities, compounding rules, and dataslate updates all gumming up the works of the damage system.
Look How Nuts It’s Gotten
It’s all just kinda jumped off the rails a bit hasn’t it? The new edition brought in more wounds to try and toughen things up. We started to get stacks of -1 damage as well to give you more ways to survive the brutal battlefield of 40k. At the same time, weapon AP’s started to get out of wack a bit and GW had to even invent a rule to make some armies’ armor viable. All of this in order to keep up with the rising wave of damage that still even poked out when a new book was released.
Heck they even invented a new rule that just ignores those damage and other modifiers on top of giving that army a new save that ignored all the other ignore saves options. All of this stuff starts to get crazy. Heck, they even gave some things a limit-to-damage rule and then gave an option to ignore that to high-damage potential flying jerks. So how the heck are you supposed to even judge if something is tough anymore?
Does tough mean you ignore damage somehow, always have a save somehow, and have limits to how much you can take at any given time? Does even going into some kind of toughness option matter at all anymore? I thought Mortal Wounds were there to get around super tough things but that simple system wasn’t elegant enough.
The Rules Need to Calm Down
I am hoping we see a big tone down of AP of weapons in the new edition. I want a 3+ armor save to actually mean something without having to change rules to make it viable. I don’t want multiple layers of increased AP value or other rules that just turn off your army’s abilities. Paying for a lot of Aura rerolls and facing someone that doesn’t care is a big slap to your army build. It makes building things in that direction less exciting as you could all of a sudden have all your army rules turned off when facing an enemy. I remember the days of fearing the 4+ roll on a warlord trait to watch my Knights not have an option to stomp out a death star.
I like the idea of Malefic weapons with the idea they are not of the 40k reality so rules don’t work against them. I like the idea of making things tougher with damage reduction in some way, as it doesn’t really turn off your opponent’s rules. I don’t like things that invalidate your army’s options. Removing abilities that work in your army makes that army choice a poor one. Why would you even build around something that doesn’t work all the time? We all have to fight against dice rolls but the whims of fate are what we dash against when we play and it is an expected enemy.
Hopes for 10th Edition
I really hope 10th Edition tries to figure out a better way instead of always just one-upping the next book with either bigger damage, better saves, or some other weird rule to somehow make their attacks unique. Part of me wishes we went the AOS way where damage goes to the unit and you keep pulling wounds till all are done. This would let big guns be scary and thus have a chance to be pointed correctly. It also means those big weapons that are good versus big targets are still usable.
What are you hoping for in the new edition? Heck, what about the upcoming Dataslate update that will surely go after Nids again and Harlies per the article? Will we see some things removed that feel abusable? Armor of Contempt is surely staying especially with Daemons getting a nice buff when rolling into a unit of power-armored jerks. Heck, we’ll see how the Astra Miliatrum fares too with a lot of their stuff loving being all contempt on the battlefield. We will just have to wait and see. Maybe we’ll end up with even more Armours of Contempt variations to take us into late 9th Edition!
~Do you think damage reduction has gotten out of control in 9th?
