Because NOW it's just Relgious + Veteran. There was a time (oh my oldness...) when there was another benefit, a higher retreat threshold. Then, removing the rule Morat from a Morat... You're welcome to try that...
Morat being a nested rule is a question of flavor. if you change that, you kinda take away the effect of them having a skill with their name like the shasvastii do. I do agree some nested rules are dumb, and I see the point of removing nested rules altogether. However, I don't think that would make things any less complicated, as you'd end up with some profiles showing several rules where there was only one in the past. For example, every model with NWI would show courage in it. And every model with martial arts would show stealth AND courage and so on. If you take a model that has both, it can easily start to look bloated.
In fairness from the combination of those two rules they still have that, the courage from religious means that they can ignore retreat criteria and the veteran rule means they ignore the loss of Lt that comes from being in retreat, I'd say it's a slightly more elegant way of doing it that the N2 version where having one morat somewhere magically stopped your entire force from running. On a separate note, whatever quibbles I've got with the costing of the Morat rule it adds something to the game to have a morat and a shas rule, underlines that they are entirely different troops to humans.
The Morat rule helps differentiate Morats from religious zealots like Haqq. Religious in Haqq has a particular connotation, nesting it under the Morat rule allows the connotation to be altered without writing a new rule that does the same thing with a different title.
If you already know most miniature games I guess you already know many games close to Infinity. But I would say WFB was a good example of shorter and clearer rules, good complexity and countless (and tasty) posibilities. I think I had to ask two times ever in my life about a rule misunderstood. Funny thing, I'm sure when simplification of Infinity rules hits (and it's going to happen), most of the people here denying about bloating will say that the changes have been for good.
Personally I'd be hard pressed to name a game that has the same depth in the core mechanics. Some come close by virtue of having a million different individual units but those games generally rely on memorizing a bunch of units to be played. For WFB I think the game play mechanics were interesting, but every single game of it I played seemed to have armies that just ignored the core mechanics and made the game unbalanced/unfun. Of course that was just my experience and I only played for one chunk of the game's life. Thats not to say Infinity couldn't be tidied up of course. N3 proved that the game still has lots of room to be made simpler and cleaner.
You could make bizarre lists in Warhammer, that's for sure, but I played tactical battles most of the time. Besides, that ain't only a WFB problem, I see pretty much the same in Infinity: core mechanics are good order expenditure, AROs and FtF rolls, but if you face a 20 order list with 4 muttah + 4 daylami you will have a hell expending orders, if you face a camo list there won't be FtF rolls and a good link will make your AROs almost imposible
That's not how it works. Maybe in the beginning it did, but not anymore. It did start with Haqq and MO and then spread out. Why would Thorakitai or Hollow Men be religious and Morats can't? Also, this kind of flavour is hollow flavour - it only serves to have rules bloat. It is better bot for the veteran and the newbie to have Morat be Religious+whatever else it does, can't remember as no one around seems to play them anymore.
To be fair, it was mentioned at the top of this page... You even said it (albeit in a different context) earlier in your post.
It has been long enough since I played Warhammer Fantasy Battle, that I can't clearly remember which edition it was, (6th? 7th?) but my personal experience was almost exactly the opposite. Shorter games? yup I know those. Clearer games? yeah probably a few. Just as complex, and as deep? I know a couple. All three together? If I knew of such a game, I would be playing it instead.
I used to play alot of chess. The thing that astounds me about chess is a huge chunk of high level play is just about memorization skills. Learning openings and counter openings. The higher you get the less interesting the game is unfortunately.
And the difference in Infinity is that almost all the different abilities are universal rules, not model-specific. (though WarmaHordes did work through a lot of that going to icons for abilities, there are still a lot of model-specific abilities)
I don't necessarily mind non-universal special rules, and Infinity certainly has some skills/equipment/weapons that are not evenly distributed. They just put them all in the common list, even if not everyone has access. It was quite a few years before generic human armies got access to symbiont armor (Armand), Morat (Krakot), or Shasvastii (Aida). G: Mnemonica, G: Autotool, and G: Jumper are all still limited to their respective armies, and other rules like AI Beacon or Plasma weaponry are severely restricted. Even fairly mundane (from a technological perspective) rules like Explode are hard to come by, and some items (like the Jammer or Haris) spend an extended period unique to one unit before getting wider availability. Some things in Infinity that would be special rules in other games are just folded into the statline with no comment. MI or WB with STR (Skiavoro, Chimera), or non-HI/TAG with 2+ W (the Yadu character, Wulvers, etc).
Sure, but they're all in the standard toolbox. Also, Open Information applies here, a player can simply ask, "OK, what's that do?" I think I'd have to add the various camo/TO and AD troops to everyone's study list, though, since those are all Private Information units. For the first time I faced an army, I'd want to ask the opponent 'what can be a camo marker in your army?' and I would extend that courtesy to anyone playing an army of mine for the first time. But because they're already universal rules it's pretty obvious how to handle them, even seeing it for the first time. OK, that has 2W, or the Chimera is so weird that it needs an Engineer to heal it instead of a doc.
Sure, my point was more that another game might have a special rule "bionic implants: due to the advanced nature of its cybernetic augmentations, the Chimera must be healed by an engineer instead of a doctor, as if it were a mechanized unit" And as the local Combined Army player (probably the faction with the highest concentration of unique rules) I've had as many conversations about "what bullshit can my models even do" as I ever did in a game that had per-faction or per-unit special rules text.
I was merely exaggerating an excessively fastidious interpretation of the rules. (But actually you're right about the arc of 180 °) Anyway in my entourage we consider that the rules have answered the question of lines of views by the following point: "En Infinity la LDT se considera recíproca, aplicando la regla de “si yo te veo, tú me ves”. Esto significa que, si una tropa puede trazar LDT hacia su objetivo, entonces éste podrá a su vez trazar LDT hacia la tropa atacante (siempre y cuando el atacante se encuentre dentro de los 180º frontales del objetivo)." so you have LOF on me you're in my arc of 180 °: I see you. (Even though I can't actually draw a LOF) This justifies IMHO that a troop facing the wall can secure both corners. Going back to the about: I also think that the rules have become too complex because of successive additions. There are very good ideas for simplification and clarification in the previous answers. Just look at the number of open topics about rule points to be convinced that there is a great need for simplification.
