40K - could you make a game with less interesting factions?
Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 4:32 am
So, lets say you wanted to make a sci-fi wargame. Lets say you already have a nominally functional set of rules. Now it is time to put together faction lists. You have to competing perogatives. First, you have chrome - how do the factions look, what is their backstory etc. Second you have gears - how do they play on the table and what is their combat philosophy. You might put together a pair of lists like:
Combat Philosophies supported by our wargame:
Quality over Quantity
Quantity over Quality
High Mobility
High Specialization
Aggressive
Defensive
Faction Concepts for our wargame:
Bugs
Mecha
Lots of Tanks
Robots
Distinctly Alien
Space Knights/Space Roman Legionaries/Space Foreign Legion
You would then pair these off till you had 5 or 6 initial factions that were playable.
If, however, you are the designers of 40K you instead just build minis and slam them together making pew pew noises. This is how you end up with the imperium having 6 distintic model range factions (and several dozen sub factions) while the whole rest of the universe is 5 factions with less than a 5 sub factions.
Also, while I am complaining about 40k, would it freaking kill one of their paper-trash writers to actually read a military history book? The "incredible strategies" of the supposed brilliant military minds of 40k make Cobra Commander look like Napoleon Bonaparte. I listened to Helsreach on audible after seeing the animation and good lord is it filled with da stupid. Let me count the ways.
1) A huge hive city defending by nominally millions of guardsman and under the command of what can be approxmiated as staff officer of the black crusade and the highest ranking guardsman is...a colonel. WTF. The reason colonel is the highest ranking officer seen in rulebook for the guard is because thats the highest rank you can (un)reasonably expect to see front line action. They talk about multiple divisions of guard. There should be lots of staff officers.
2) The colonel has a personal baneblade tank. Hey numbnuts. How about setting up a CP in one of the bunkers that was described and doing an officers job and send that baneblade into the fighting. I get that high officers often get stupid stuff (Montgomery wanted his own B29 and eventually got one), but this is dumb as hell.
3) Also, the whole concept of imperial superheavy tanks is dumb as shit. 40k Tanks already suck at being tanks in the first place, a tank isn't better because you stick more pointless ass guns on it. 40K tanks are basically gun trucks. Also, super heavy tanks didn't last that long after WWII. By 1960 the US was not even building heavy tanks. The German Heavy tanks of WWII were constantly plagued by being broken. Also, they were a pain to transport and the key element in designing tanks is knowning what bridges they can cross without causing a collapse.
4) While the super heavy tanks are dumb as hell, the addition of titans to the lore in space marine/epic was a great way to make all models that everybody had purchased feel pointless. For fuck sake, just because battletech had building sized mecha does not mean that is the only way to go. The game already had reasonable sized mecha for all the factions. Making gianter versions was just made all your super cool space marines into insignifcant cannon fodder. At least you could ignore them in regular 40k, or just build them as scenery for your troops to fight around... oh wait, they added a faction that was just various out of scale imperial mecha and it is rapidly becoming the most played faction because it has the least cost investment. What a bunch of jack asses.
5) Also in Helsreach, the freaking grand priest of one of the black Templar, decides in the middle of the battle that his role was not to be the regional CO but instead to something something smash orcs in the face. WTF. You don't just get to decide that being in charge isn't fun anymore and walk away. That doesn't make you cool, that makes you seem like you are derelict in your duty. Also, with all the adjacent command structures in the imperium how the fuck do they decide who is in charge? Where exactly do spare marine captains and chapter grand masters slot in? I will buy that the custodites and the sisters don't really have to typically work with the other factions but the guard, marines, and mechanicus have to work closely ALL THE TIME. I would love a game where you were actually at a theater level command and actually had to make use of these desperate parts. They have 3 separate command structures. Its way worse than the Wehrmacht and those assholes gave the air force a freaking tank division (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Falls ... %C3%B6ring)
6) Also, we are 8 editions into this freaking game and our battles of the far future tend to play an awful lot like battles of the first world war. The game heavily punishes most movement and the vehicles, while now a lot tougher, still don't actually do anything like traditional armor. This is a list build wargame and the table decisions are mostly shitty zero-sum affairs.
Holy crap do I wish there was a good sci fi wargame in the 5-15 mm range that actually had a player base and a company that supported it.
Combat Philosophies supported by our wargame:
Quality over Quantity
Quantity over Quality
High Mobility
High Specialization
Aggressive
Defensive
Faction Concepts for our wargame:
Bugs
Mecha
Lots of Tanks
Robots
Distinctly Alien
Space Knights/Space Roman Legionaries/Space Foreign Legion
You would then pair these off till you had 5 or 6 initial factions that were playable.
If, however, you are the designers of 40K you instead just build minis and slam them together making pew pew noises. This is how you end up with the imperium having 6 distintic model range factions (and several dozen sub factions) while the whole rest of the universe is 5 factions with less than a 5 sub factions.
Also, while I am complaining about 40k, would it freaking kill one of their paper-trash writers to actually read a military history book? The "incredible strategies" of the supposed brilliant military minds of 40k make Cobra Commander look like Napoleon Bonaparte. I listened to Helsreach on audible after seeing the animation and good lord is it filled with da stupid. Let me count the ways.
1) A huge hive city defending by nominally millions of guardsman and under the command of what can be approxmiated as staff officer of the black crusade and the highest ranking guardsman is...a colonel. WTF. The reason colonel is the highest ranking officer seen in rulebook for the guard is because thats the highest rank you can (un)reasonably expect to see front line action. They talk about multiple divisions of guard. There should be lots of staff officers.
2) The colonel has a personal baneblade tank. Hey numbnuts. How about setting up a CP in one of the bunkers that was described and doing an officers job and send that baneblade into the fighting. I get that high officers often get stupid stuff (Montgomery wanted his own B29 and eventually got one), but this is dumb as hell.
3) Also, the whole concept of imperial superheavy tanks is dumb as shit. 40k Tanks already suck at being tanks in the first place, a tank isn't better because you stick more pointless ass guns on it. 40K tanks are basically gun trucks. Also, super heavy tanks didn't last that long after WWII. By 1960 the US was not even building heavy tanks. The German Heavy tanks of WWII were constantly plagued by being broken. Also, they were a pain to transport and the key element in designing tanks is knowning what bridges they can cross without causing a collapse.
4) While the super heavy tanks are dumb as hell, the addition of titans to the lore in space marine/epic was a great way to make all models that everybody had purchased feel pointless. For fuck sake, just because battletech had building sized mecha does not mean that is the only way to go. The game already had reasonable sized mecha for all the factions. Making gianter versions was just made all your super cool space marines into insignifcant cannon fodder. At least you could ignore them in regular 40k, or just build them as scenery for your troops to fight around... oh wait, they added a faction that was just various out of scale imperial mecha and it is rapidly becoming the most played faction because it has the least cost investment. What a bunch of jack asses.
5) Also in Helsreach, the freaking grand priest of one of the black Templar, decides in the middle of the battle that his role was not to be the regional CO but instead to something something smash orcs in the face. WTF. You don't just get to decide that being in charge isn't fun anymore and walk away. That doesn't make you cool, that makes you seem like you are derelict in your duty. Also, with all the adjacent command structures in the imperium how the fuck do they decide who is in charge? Where exactly do spare marine captains and chapter grand masters slot in? I will buy that the custodites and the sisters don't really have to typically work with the other factions but the guard, marines, and mechanicus have to work closely ALL THE TIME. I would love a game where you were actually at a theater level command and actually had to make use of these desperate parts. They have 3 separate command structures. Its way worse than the Wehrmacht and those assholes gave the air force a freaking tank division (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Falls ... %C3%B6ring)
6) Also, we are 8 editions into this freaking game and our battles of the far future tend to play an awful lot like battles of the first world war. The game heavily punishes most movement and the vehicles, while now a lot tougher, still don't actually do anything like traditional armor. This is a list build wargame and the table decisions are mostly shitty zero-sum affairs.
Holy crap do I wish there was a good sci fi wargame in the 5-15 mm range that actually had a player base and a company that supported it.