Unpopular opinion: I like USRs

You still will have common rules that various armies will share, and that all units in given armies will share (check out the article today on Datasheets - all thousand sons units have the All Is Dust rule). The difference is that they're right smack in front of your face like on battlescribe, rather than in an index of a giant rulebook.

The whole point isn't to make every unit unique and thereby artificially inflate the number of "USRs" in the game - the point is to consolidate them to each datasheet, so you only have to bring a 12 page print out of the rules and a handful of data sheets to a game in order to have literally every rule you need, vs a rulebook and a codex and a supplement and a campaign book and a FW book etc.

You'll still see a LOT of common elements among units - like giving them the ability to ignore the -1 BS when moving with heavy weapons (relentless), or getting +1 save in cover (stealth) - they're just going to be flavored for the faction in question in the text of their datasheet.

Everyone who shares your opinion on USRs is freaking out, but every single edition GW has altered the USRs in the game in drastic ways that require the entire community to re-learn what they mean and how the interact with the larger rules of the game and specific armies. This is no different from that - the special rules on each units datasheet might have a name like "All is dust" or whatever, but what the rule *means* will still be familiar (in this case, relentless).

One game against an army of thousand sons will have their "USRs" cemented in your brain, same as with any other army you will face. Every edition change is a learning curve to some degree, but I think this edition change will actually be easier to learn than we anticipate, thanks to them leaking pieces of info every day. By the time the edition comes out, we'll have basically been discussing the rules for over a month.

I mean hell, we already have enough to play test (to some degree...not knowing the special rules for Astartes hampers it slightly) skirmishes of tacticals and dreadnoughts vs thousand sons using all phases of the game. We're building our understanding of the game piece by piece every day - when it actually drops, you'll be better equipped than you might think to play a full game quickly.

In fairness, I think this is the inherent problem.

While I absolutely love the idea of condensed rules, quick reference (as you say, 12 pages of rules + a few datasheets), etc - the idea that each faction can have a different name for "relentless" instead of "relentless" being a key USR that each faction has access to is kind of just silly.

As you point out, we'll just be thinking of them in terms of the old rules.  "Oh, all is dust?  They get a bonus vs single-dmg wounds and relentless" instead of spelling out "they don't suffer the -1 bs penalty when moving".  The fact that we continue to think along those terms - because it's easier and more natural - is the reason that this was a (very slight) move in the wrong direction.  There's no benefit to having multiple names for the same effect, and there are a few inconveniences.

Nothing that will shatter the game, obviously, but it gets a definite eyebrow-quirk from me, considering all of the great moves the game seems to be making for this edition.

I'm among my people. USR's are generally a good concept and I wish they'd hold on to them. I'm not going to cry over their passing, but I like the way that they streamline the game thematically and give you a shorthand for discussing how units function. The new system is better overall than the one from 5th-7th, but Joel's example with the 1k sons and the 1k different ways to say relentless is exactly the kind of work I don't want to do with this game (I will and that's fine). It also gives you a better chance to name your rules intuitively relative to the mechanics because you don't have to come up with a unique way to say a unit is relentless for each instance.

mcsardo is also right that even with USR's they still would screw up making them simple and intuitive (what the hell does hammer of wrath mean? why does knowing know fear mean something different than being fearless?). The USR's shouldn't be nested within each other/cross reference each other or have long superfluous names. Then beyond USR's there were plenty of SR's scattered to the wind as well.

Oh and also I'm on the fence about USR-gate. I don't like how bloated they got with nested rules. I do think there will be some growing pains but before we know it we'll have every datasheet memorized anyway because we're all just a bunch of nerds.

So, one potential benefit of having USRs is the ability for individual special rules to overrule USRs. For example, it was revealed that Ratlings would be able to snipe independent characters even if they aren't the closest units and it's been speculated that other units would be able do to the same (other Guard snipers, Rangers/Pathfinders, Marine Scouts, Shoota Boyz). If Sniper was a USR it would be easy to have certain characters or wargear ignore Sniper. But if each unit has its own special rules, in order for a character to ignore Sniper, its rule would need to be written in such a way that it's clear that this rule overrules a bunch of other units' individual special rules without referring to any of them by name. The same could be said for rules that ignore Rending vs. rules that ignore any special attacks that on certain roles to hit get bonuses to AP, and so forth.

That said, I don't think the loss of USRs will really be that huge a deal.

In theory I suppose they could have gone the same way as MTG and use both USRs and the description on a dataslate. In MTG any card with space will list the USR, but also its definition.