Power Levels: 8th edition’s single major benefit and why it scares me to death

Warhammer 40k 8^th Edition.  You might Love it, and you might hate it.  You might hate to love it or love to hate it.

Regardless of your position it has quantifiable merits and flaws.  As a whole, I rate it around a C-/D+ in what has been a steady B+ for 40k’s entire lifecycle.  It is summed up by a methodology of simplifying without streamlining.  It employs a few enjoyable gimmicks to cover the fact that the game system as a whole has been reduced to a resource less Real-Time Strategy Game. That is not to say it will be a terrible game.  a game is only a set of guidelines in a contract of 2 or more people in an effort to have fun. I've had hilarious fun playing games with Terrible rules.

There are some good things in the new rules as well. Modified Die Rolls bring variety and lessen the Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanics found in the old AP system.  i'm sure there are many others.  My focus in this article is one the game concept I'm most excited about AND most afraid of.... Polwer Levels and Narrative style play.

Power Level: My new favorite thing

That said, there is a major merit that I find highly appealing, and that is the concept of Narrative Gaming using armies based on Power level.  The Power level is a very powerful system that allows players to build an army quickly with their existing models with very simple math.  The idea of Power level is relative rather than detailed, so the minutiae of selecting and accounting for individual pieces of wargear is unnecessary (and is general such, the games run on such a high grade of variability that such granular decisions generally do not have a typically large outcome on victory).  Army build to me is the least interesting and most time consuming portion of the game.  The Power Level methodology seems aware of this and just works to get players into throwing down armies quickly.

The weakness of the Power Level Mechanic is that we have not real idea of how well balanced the units are.  Power Level itself, is only modified by unit size and occasionally some wargear (like Jump packs) that change the units core rules.  Weaponry is never factored in (on the assumption the power levels control a median rating based on weapon choice)  This is okay when the Delta shift of units is fairly small (such as the 3 options slots of a tactical squad(Sergent/Assualt Weapons/Heavy Weapon))  There are some units that have large deltas in their combat effectiveness based on their unit choices (for example a Sternguard unit with no upgrades is only generally powerfully, but 10 models now  with Combi-weapons is nearly game breaking).  I think GW was lazy in their approach to building Unit Datasheets that accommodate SOME level of weaponry choice.  I can find a great many instances in the Army lists so far that indicate that their generation was not fully vetted or playtested for what a Majog edition change affecting all armies should have entailed.

GW expects that you’ll only modify SOME of your SternGuard with weapon updgrades, but now that combiweapons aren’t one-use weapons (and free), one can expect that 10 Combi-weapons will be the Power-gamed standard of the unit in Power Level based play.

 

It seems to me that for some units with high model counts that can make dynamic upgrades across the entire unit that has drastic changes in their effecteness. (Sternguard will be my current posterchild). A unit containing 5 combi-flamers and 5 combi-meltas would be nearly unassailable and capable of annihilating nearly anything it set its mind to (probably annihilating a FEW things a turn).  It becomes clear fairly easily that this unit only being about 40% more costly than a tactical marine squad seems like the bargain of a century.  Units like these allows a scary level of Min/Max and Power Gamers will be quick to exploit these obvious game balancing holes in the rules.  The Datasheets could have made some,however small, attempt to account for these types of weapon/upgrade excesses. (5 Sternguard  weapon upgrades cost an additional Power Level or Scouts select Cameoline cloaks cost an additional Power level).  This would still have allowed for quick simple army building without Certain units exploiting their free stuff or non-brainer choices (like the scout cameoline cloak upgrade)

These guys should have brought their free Camo cloaks!

I’m not generally afraid of my usual gaming cohorts moving to this (like to use the units they’ve already built who through previous edition balancing limited their excess of wargear base on point cost effectiveness).  It will be the dreaded “Others” who will jump to taking awful advantage of these rules.  Because of this, the “Match play” point system is the only true way to keep these types of abuses in check (though we have no actual idea if the point values in Match play are balance and more than the power level.

In the face of the Power Level Narrative play, game design, I pretty much hate the “Match play“ point value system.  It chooses to retain the most time consuming and complicated (and mistake prone) part of the hobby after providing a simpler method to build armies, mainly because they didn’t put their full effort into ensuring the Power Level system was  solidly constructed.  Neither system is. What we essentially have is GW giving us their word that these are “balanced”, these points values were derived through a system that ensured they are “better”. They are obviously more granular, but the same could be said about the 6pt plasma gun in the early 3^rd edition codices.  6pts was a very granular and incorrect point value that infested the 40k gamescape for YEARS!!!!  I have nigh-zero confidence that what has been provided is anything more than the SAME as what we’ve had forever… but probably worse…. They did the absolute minimum to push these lists out to the public and obfuscated the lackluster effort with “2 tiers of play” that define mechanics for army building what should be a fairly simple process.  I don’t think this is necessarily intentional and I respects the Game Developers in the company.   But when the accountants walk into the Game Dev office and start talking about the “bottom line” and “diminishing returns on investment”, I firmly expect GW as an organization to fail in bringing us a better more balanced game.

Of course, what GW intended for a given unit in their Power Level Rating is subjective and prone to debate.  Some people won’t find 10 Combi weapons unbalancing, some player will find abuse in taking all lascannons and powerfist toting sergeants in their squads as game breaking. Those discussions will be had and always will.  But hopefully in that discussion we come closer to approaching balance.

Going forward

  I like the Power Level System, and my hope is that my gaming group will adopts it and that the overall abuse of game breaking builds will be small. I know I intend to. I take responsibility to the fun and wellbeing of myself and my opponent while in game and I consider not bringing the biggest broken rifts in the Gameplay universe to be a part of that.   My laziness certainly already pushes myself towards sticking to the Power Level type of design. And in the end hopefully, most players I deal with will realize that one does not need every tweak at their disposal to have a good time playing with little toy dolls.