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It's far from perfect, in the various incarnations of the rules there has always been imbalance. I agree with many users here that there are issues with certain armies in this current incarnation of the rules...... actually that's unfair, there are ways to exploit and generally be unimaginative with lists and armies. I am fortunate enough to play with close friends and we leave cheese out of our games except to test a unit or tactic. Unbound lists can obviously be crazy so can't be taken into account.
If i were to criticise the current rules it would be to rebalance aspects like assaults, feel like assault units get a bad rap in a shooty rule set..... maybe I'm just bad at the game?
Rules aside, certain factions need a rebalance and their points costs revisiting.

 Verviedi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You're conflating 'effective' and 'quick & easy,' which are two completely different concepts.

If I have dirty bathwater with a baby in it, and I need to clean another baby, it would be more effective to just throw the bath water and the baby out simultaneously, and begin washing the next baby. My task is to wash babies. I care not for anything that happens after I complete my task.

This is a false equivalency. Throwing a baby out with the bathwater vs. not throwing a baby out with the bathwater is in no way equivalent to expending significant amounts of money, life (and valuable tanks and guns, this is the Imperium) vs. nuking something and not having to waste all of that valuable manpower, weapons, ammunition, aircraft/tanks, and the risk of failing to contain the threat by waiting to mass your forces instead of nuking the threat immediately.

Nuking the threat comes with an additional cost that you're not seeing. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is analogous to nuking the crap out of a forgeworld that still has tremendous value because simply because it's easier and faster - the whole point of deploying ground troops in the first place was that the potential destruction was unacceptable.

Overall, I like it... but it is overly complex. Particularly, I hate special rules that only serve to give a Universal Special Rule. I also think that weapons profiles need to be simplified. Specialist weapons, pistols, and number of attacks are needlessly complex. Vehicles (flyers specifically) are could also stand to be simplified.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You're conflating 'effective' and 'quick & easy,' which are two completely different concepts.

If I have dirty bathwater with a baby in it, and I need to clean another baby, it would be more effective to just throw the bath water and the baby out simultaneously, and begin washing the next baby. My task is to wash babies. I care not for anything that happens after I complete my task.

This is a false equivalency. Throwing a baby out with the bathwater vs. not throwing a baby out with the bathwater is in no way equivalent to expending significant amounts of money, life (and valuable tanks and guns, this is the Imperium) vs. nuking something and not having to waste all of that valuable manpower, weapons, ammunition, aircraft/tanks, and the risk of failing to contain the threat by waiting to mass your forces instead of nuking the threat immediately.

Nuking the threat comes with an additional cost that you're not seeing. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is analogous to nuking the crap out of a forgeworld that still has tremendous value because simply because it's easier and faster - the whole point of deploying ground troops in the first place was that the potential destruction was unacceptable.

That's why thermobarics. Most battles don't take place on a forgeworld. In fact, most of my games have a ton of RUINS.

 Verviedi wrote:

Spoiler:

 General Annoyance wrote:
I'm not - I thought you meant that everything else could be fought with aircraft and artillery. In the case of what you're saying, it could easily be a ship with its own capital weaponry that bombards the artillery unit or uses its regular guns on the approaching aircraft.

Oh, everything? No, some infantry and armour will always be needed to make sure everything's dead. Yes, nuking an area will destroy the vast majority of targets, and so will aerial and artillery bombardment, but it will never kill everything (a nuke, obviously, does not care about this rule) (Source: The Somme)

But I thought the point of this argument is that ground wars are unnecessary in 40k. Or am I missing the point?

No, the point of my argument is that the Imperium is stupid for using massive infantry and armour forces in cases where nukes will be far more effective. Obviously, not every situation calls for nukes, but in a majority of situations, a nuking would make the Imperium's job a LOT easier.

Sources:
Necropolis (in which a mass chaos infantry and tank force with no explicity anti-nuke technology and no aircraft is fought by... camping inside a fortress and shooting at it.(Seriously Dan Abnett, I love you, but those guys were in the middle of uninhabited salt flats. Why not just nuke them when the planet was explicitly stated to have nukes, (and one was ACTUALLY USED, but not on the Chaos forces!?)))

Titanicus (In which a massed Chaos force was discovered in a nice, compact, UNINHABITED area... and they sent incredibly expensive Titans to take it out, instead of just nuking it (keep in mind this is a mined-out, useless, desolate area of forge world))

I think I may have misunderstood your argument all this time - I was under the impression you thought that the wars across the Imperium could be fought only with nukes, artillery and aircraft. Apologies!

I'm in agreement that such weapons don't seem to be used enough when open ground battles are involved. Either GW doesn't properly disclose their use in the fluff, or hasn't disclosed why in their own eyes such weapons wouldn't work most of the time.

I'm just going to post the exact same thing Peregrine posted in this thread before.

Peregrine wrote:And, again, the planet itself will survive the use of nuclear weapons. Remember, there are strategic nuclear weapons and tactical nuclear weapons. Strategic weapons are the high-yield warheads designed to destroy entire cities, tactical nuclear weapons are smaller and aimed at destroying battlefield targets. An air burst tactical nuke over a company of infantry will kill all of them with a single shot while leaving the planet itself unharmed. On a planet like Armageddon, where the entire planet outside of the key strategic targets is empty wasteland, the Imperium should have won effortlessly with nuclear weapons. Any time the orks assembled a meaningful force they should have been targeted with tactical nuclear weapons and annihilated, with conventional air strikes and artillery to finish off any survivors. Mass human/xenos wave attacks do not work against modern weapons.

Also, please note. In all my previous arguments (if you bothered to read all of them) I specifically stated that in some situations, nukes were not necessary. You seem to lack understanding of the gap between "no nukes" and "full nuclear exterminatus".

One-shot super weapons have more value to the Imperium than hundreds of thousands of humans with tanks and guns.

That is the essence of 40k. The setting is not realistic on purpose.

 Matthew wrote:
I love how 40K is right now. Only problem I have is balance betweeb shooting and assault and balance between different armies, ptherwise I see no problems.
Change my view?

I couldn't help myself.

I hate 40k for a myriad of reasons.

You don't have to.

If you are enjoying the last thing you need is people telling you why you shouldn't enjoy it.

Have fun in your game, that is all ;-)

I recognize the inherent flaws in the system, but I houseruled every game I play to ensure my playgroup enjoys themselves.

So yes, for me 40k is fine. I have all the tools needed to level things out and my team is fine with what I've done to it

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I recognize the inherent flaws in the system, but I houseruled every game I play to ensure my playgroup enjoys themselves.

So yes, for me 40k is fine. I have all the tools needed to level things out and my team is fine with what I've done to it

And this works fine, until someone insists on playing RAW with a tournament list. Players making non-official patches to a ruleset to shore it up does not excuse a shoddy core ruleset.

I like 40K overall but right now I feel it's missing some limitations on things that really discourage players. For example, super heavies and gargantuan creatures having game breaking mechanics if taken in small point games. There needs to be some limitations allowing those nice expensive models in the right environment but not allowing them to be taken at lower point levels where they can effectively nuke entire armies off the table in one turn. I really need 40K to be streamlined a bit so that I can get a decent game in in less than 4 hours. That's probably not a problem most players face but it's the main reason I don't play much anymore.

Due to the fact that all my friends find 40k too complex to understand, we often play the One-Page Warhammer pdf.

40k is not fine for me because I want to play a game that doesn't just feature 2% of the entire model range because the balance is so skewed that if you aren't playing that 2% and someone shows up that does, you're going to have a bad time.

The complexity doesn't bother me.

The bloated rules bother me.

The need to cross reference a rulebook every 10 minutes bothers me.

The "meta" bothers me.

 Verviedi wrote:

Spoiler:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You're conflating 'effective' and 'quick & easy,' which are two completely different concepts.

If I have dirty bathwater with a baby in it, and I need to clean another baby, it would be more effective to just throw the bath water and the baby out simultaneously, and begin washing the next baby. My task is to wash babies. I care not for anything that happens after I complete my task.

This is a false equivalency. Throwing a baby out with the bathwater vs. not throwing a baby out with the bathwater is in no way equivalent to expending significant amounts of money, life (and valuable tanks and guns, this is the Imperium) vs. nuking something and not having to waste all of that valuable manpower, weapons, ammunition, aircraft/tanks, and the risk of failing to contain the threat by waiting to mass your forces instead of nuking the threat immediately.

Nuking the threat comes with an additional cost that you're not seeing. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is analogous to nuking the crap out of a forgeworld that still has tremendous value because simply because it's easier and faster - the whole point of deploying ground troops in the first place was that the potential destruction was unacceptable.

I'm just going to post the exact same thing Peregrine posted in this thread before.

Peregrine wrote:And, again, the planet itself will survive the use of nuclear weapons. Remember, there are strategic nuclear weapons and tactical nuclear weapons. Strategic weapons are the high-yield warheads designed to destroy entire cities, tactical nuclear weapons are smaller and aimed at destroying battlefield targets. An air burst tactical nuke over a company of infantry will kill all of them with a single shot while leaving the planet itself unharmed. On a planet like Armageddon, where the entire planet outside of the key strategic targets is empty wasteland, the Imperium should have won effortlessly with nuclear weapons. Any time the orks assembled a meaningful force they should have been targeted with tactical nuclear weapons and annihilated, with conventional air strikes and artillery to finish off any survivors. Mass human/xenos wave attacks do not work against modern weapons.

Also, please note. In all my previous arguments (if you bothered to read all of them) I specifically stated that in some situations, nukes were not necessary. You seem to lack understanding of the gap between "no nukes" and "full nuclear exterminatus".

Don't be combative; I read your posts. It's possible to read & understand your opinion, yet still disagree. This is obviously a touchy subject for you so i'll just bow out.

Touchy subject? No, it's the way that I write my arguments online. Looking over my post again, it was a bit dickish.

There is so much delusion in this thread it is sad.

Just because your army does not have the ability to counter every single other army out there does not make the game "broke".

If list building is hard because of all the formations, ok fine that's a valid excuse.

If your army is woefully out of date? (Sisters....csm got an awesome update) Fine, you probably have beef.

But the rest of you really need to buck up.

Some doozies in here:
"Assault does not work"
Assault armies work ALL THE TIME, between KDK, deathstars, and knights (And soon to be world eaters mwahahaha); that's a metric ton of close combat in the game.

"X army is cheesy"
No. You do not want to adapt to beat said army, OR you want your army to be able to beat everyone out there, that does not make the game "suck".

"Gunlines are too good"
BULL-CRAP. The issue 99% of you face is you want your super-duper-humoungous-awesome unit that cannot be killed. What you SHOULD do to beat gunlines is spread out, min squad up. Those gun lines can only shoot so many things before you hit them like a ton of bricks. Again DO something about it, don't try to out gun line a gun line army.


Yeessh, take a couple minutes to look at ITC results and it becomes clear there is no SINGLE "good" army, there are multitudes including ones many of you consider "bad".

/rant off

Go have fun guys, this is a fun game.

Some doozies in here:
"Assault does not work"
Assault armies work ALL THE TIME, between KDK, deathstars, and knights (And soon to be world eaters mwahahaha); that's a metric ton of close combat in the game.

That.. is not a metric ton of close combat, it tends towards very specific armies with either cheap assault that can easily reach combat (GSC) high fast strong units (Thunderwolves, deathstars) and Knights (Superheavies of course).

Eldar are the definition of too good. What are you talking about man?

I have specifically list tailored against Eldar, and I couldn't do anything about them, and that was with Space Wolves, one of the stronger armies in the game right now. In a tourney environment, they can be beat, but they need incredibly amounts of tailoring to do so, and in a casual environment, they have more good units than any other codex, and more overpowered units than any other codex.

" Again DO something about it, don't try to out gun line a gun line army. "

Amusingly, I've had more success shooting the Tau than trying to assault them.

" ITC results"

Not the best metric, I think.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
General army balance- If hearing your opponent say 'I play tau' seriously makes you regret signing up for the match, that's badly unbalanced.

To be fair, us Tau players have earned that cheese. For many years we had to cope with a very mediocre codex:

Only one of our Unique characters was competitive and his entire force lost its fluffy abilities if you played at under 1500 points.
The Hammerhead was pretty much the only beefy unit in the codex.
We had two HQ choices- one of which was only worth bringing to the table if you killed him for the martyrdom effect.

Our only real friend at that time was Forgeworld.

 sfshilo wrote:
ITC result

ITC is not 40k. Thank you for admitting that 40k is broken.

 Matthew wrote:
I love how 40K is right now. Only problem I have is balance betweeb shooting and assault and balance between different armies, ptherwise I see no problems.
Change my view?

I shall change you view. 40k is not fine for a competitive game, its about as balanced and stable as the Balkans, and easier to game than the U.S.A and Russia during the cold war. On the other hand if you are playing with GLORIOUS COMMUNIST COMRADES who play 40k for the fun of it (bringing fluffy armies, no WAAC) then it can be enjoyable, even if a suffer of chronic rules bloat.

 SDFarsight wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
General army balance- If hearing your opponent say 'I play tau' seriously makes you regret signing up for the match, that's badly unbalanced.

To be fair, us Tau players have earned that cheese. For many years we had to cope with a very mediocre codex:

Tau were only ever on the lower end of the spectrum for one edition in their existence, 5th. Theu were on the top or higher end of 3E, 4E, 6E and 7E. A whole lot of other armies have had it a whole lot worse for a whole lot more time

Sisters, CSM's, IG, Orks, Tyranids, etc.

 Matthew wrote:
I love how 40K is right now. Only problem I have is balance betweeb shooting and assault and balance between different armies, ptherwise I see no problems.
Change my view?

So besides two of the 4 phases of the game Shooting and assaulting. And Besides the huge balance issues between the factions you see no problems........

That's like saying "Besides the giant holes in the side of the boat and the rust everywhere this ship is pretty good."

Shooting Trumps Assault in every single situation that doesn't involve an invisible deathstar. There are a few good CC units, SW have most of them, and they are good because they have a lot of durability and choppy abilities teamed with a VERY low cost, but they still get swept off the table by good rates of Fire.


Faction balance at this point is a joke. An Eldar or Tau army can take there average units and without adding in the cheese (Stormsurge/riptide, Wraithknight/Scat Bikes) can easily win if not table most Ork/DE armies in the game.



I think if you are talking about the rules of the game I would tend to agree, there are a lot of good rules and they fit wel into the game, but the problem is that there are TO MANY! And they made it worse by combining special rules and calling it something new.

No, I would say that at this point in time 40K is fine to play for fun but at the competitive level its very lopsided and even in casual games its hard to figure out how to play because of the huge power disparity. I think the game is playable but in need of a fairly large overhaul.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Tau were only ever on the lower end of the spectrum for one edition in their existence, 5th. Theu were on the top or higher end of 3E, 4E, 6E and 7E. A whole lot of other armies have had it a whole lot worse for a whole lot more time

Sisters, CSM's, IG, Orks, Tyranids, etc.

Disagree. Tau were on the power to mid tier of power levels in every edition up to sixth.

Tau came about in third edition with a reasonably powered codex at thst time. It could certainly do its job, but it wasn't anywhere close to the power builds of the era.

Tau during fourth did ok during the first year or two. The birth of 'mech tau' was a thing (I was in on the ground floor with that one!) and they ceetainly held their own for a while, and even briefly shaped the meta with 'fish of fury' but it was very misleading. The power was illusory. Theirs was a codex that was defined exclusively by a single niche build and abusing skimmers moving fast and the IC rules of thst edition. It did not scale well (once you bought the 3 hammerheads, you were buying chaff), it aged very, very quickly during fourth and got left behind rapidly once the power builds defined by the chaos space marine codex of that era (Pete Haines iron warriors), holostone falcon eldar and various other builds stepped out and left its far, far behind. They were nowhere near the top of the pack, or even the middle, I'm afraid. Very much on a par (at best) with all the other codices you mention.

Tau during fifth were essentially an irrelevance. Very much bottom of the heap.

So that's tau on the top end for sixth and seventh, essentially.

Tau did very well in 3E and 4E, not Eldar invincifalcon well, but they were definitely top 5 in both editions between Eldar, Necrons, Chaos, and SM's. Tau were a very solid army then (I built my Tau army in 4E).

They certainly were better than Orks, IG, SW's, BA's (once transport rules nixed assaults from Rhinos), DA's, Tyranids (barring maybe a couple MC builds), Dark Eldar, Daemonhunters, and Witch Hunters.

They were even pretty ok for the first part of 5E when their disruption pods gave them "always on" 4+ saves on tanks before we started getting some of the more outlandish 5E stuff like 5pt psybolts on BS5 tl autocannons making them S8

Ultimately, Tau have only ever really had a single "bad" edition, and have been on the upper end of the power level in all the others they have existed in. They have, overall, been a very well treated army.

Deadnight wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Tau were only ever on the lower end of the spectrum for one edition in their existence, 5th. Theu were on the top or higher end of 3E, 4E, 6E and 7E. A whole lot of other armies have had it a whole lot worse for a whole lot more time

Sisters, CSM's, IG, Orks, Tyranids, etc.

Disagree. Tau were on the power to mid tier of power levels in every edition up to sixth.

Tau came about in third edition with a reasonably powered codex at thst time. It could certainly do its job, but it wasn't anywhere close to the power builds of the era.

Tau during fourth did ok during the first year or two. The birth of 'mech tau' was a thing (I was in on the ground floor with that one!) and they ceetainly held their own for a while, and even briefly shaped the meta with 'fish of fury' but it was very misleading. The power was illusory. Theirs was a codex that was defined exclusively by a single niche build and abusing skimmers moving fast and the IC rules of thst edition. It did not scale well (once you bought the 3 hammerheads, you were buying chaff), it aged very, very quickly during fourth and got left behind rapidly once the power builds defined by the chaos space marine codex of that era (Pete Haines iron warriors), holostone falcon eldar and various other builds stepped out and left its far, far behind. They were nowhere near the top of the pack, or even the middle, I'm afraid. Very much on a par (at best) with all the other codices you mention.

Tau during fifth were essentially an irrelevance. Very much bottom of the heap.

So that's tau on the top end for sixth and seventh, essentially.

You explained it very well! Tau were very much the red-haired child of GW which was forgotten about almost as much as Dark Eldar with their ancient (2nd, 3rd ed?) codex. All the while the Spash Mareeeens were getting Chapter Codex after Chapter Codex. The only places the Tau were getting any love was in Dawn of War and Forgeworld. And since Forgeworld was new back then, not alot of people accepted their models. Now in 7th ed, we're getting so many supplements and super-heavies it feels practically decadent. "No I won't field a Tri-Tide, a Tau's job is to fire his Pulse rifle until he gets curb-stomped by a Guardsman in close-combat. That's the Tau way, son. None of this 'winning' malarkey...

Again, their "down" time was pretty much just 5E. Outside of 5E, Tau have always been on the upper end of the power curve, They have never been a long downtrodden army and have historically done very well and received regular releases.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Again, their "down" time was pretty much just 5E. Outside of 5E, Tau have always been on the upper end of the power curve, They have never been a long downtrodden army and have historically done very well and received regular releases.

Regular releases like what exactly? For years we had to make do with sub-par units until the Riptides etc came out. And I'm not just talking about the big units- even simple but efficient units like the Tetra Skimmer were from Forgeworld.

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Again, their "down" time was pretty much just 5E. Outside of 5E, Tau have always been on the upper end of the power curve, They have never been a long downtrodden army and have historically done very well and received regular releases.

Regular releases like what exactly? For years we had to make do with sub-par units until the Riptides etc came out.

Does past underpoweredness justify future overpoweredness?