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 Orock wrote:
Just because there are existing problems, does not mean new problems are forgiven because "stuffs boned anyway"

But this "first turn charge" thing isn't a problem at all.

 EnTyme wrote:

Orock wrote:Turn one charges were always a terrible rule. They invalidated many armies right away, really cutting down on the fun variety you could come across.

Now you see things like genestealer cults with MSU units and magus, running formations for 2 dice to go for that 6 on infiltrate, and the broodlord and 20 genestealer group. THEN you also have people allying coteaz in a corner by himself, just for rerolls for turn one steal, or to force a turn one steal reroll. Rolling on strategy for warlord trait to get +1 to sieze. Right away, with a list like this, you eliminate a ton of things. Non tank heavy guard lists get absolutley pooped on. Seen a top of turn one concede after there was only 15 models left on the board TOP OF TURN ONE. You cannot yourself infiltrate any units, so I hope you did not have your own, because you have to stay 18 inches away, where they can be as close as 3. If they deploy their large blob of genestealers first, theres no ROOM left on the board where you can be 18 inches away, sometimes not even in your own deployment zone.

In the past people complained about things like space wolf scouts charging from the enemies deployment zone unable to be stopped. Even space marine gladius strike force can cripple the enemy army when built right, with devastating turn one abilities.

Should games be all but decided on the top of turn one? Because there are games like these where you are guaranteed to lose or win, and its the poorest of poor game design.

Any army relying on getting a 1/6 result consistently for its strategy to work will lose 5/6 of the time. Simple math.

Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
This is the smallest fiddle in the world playing for shooting lists in 7th ed. 1st turn charges are necessary when you are losing 1/3 of your list every shooting phase. Plus speed bump units, plus overwatch, plus no sweeping advance, plus failed charges. Yeah assault is just taking over.

Which is also a problem.

Basically, the game has a fundamental "Alpha Strike" problem in which most armies will receive a huge bonus if they go first. Some armis become game breaking if they go first (Tau, Eldar, GSC). The entire "I Go, You Go" system needs to be scrapped in favor of an initiative based system more akin to X-Wing.

Because Eldar aren't powerful enough, right?

but its not 1/6th is it? the formation allows a reroll to get that 6, AND 2 dice to pick from, AND you can have a magus for 3 dice instead. 3 dice with rerolls, its closer to 5/6 to get it. And as for first turn, you can take coteaz to give you a reroll, and try for warlord traits to add one to that. if you get that warlord trait, its a rerollable 5 to steal, so that is more like 2/3 chance to steal. Lets not forget you could just straight up win the chance to go first. and coteaz makes your opponent reroll the chance to steal, so 1/6 goes to 1/36. that does not sound like 1/6 of a chance to work your plan to me.

 BBAP wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Just because there are existing problems, does not mean new problems are forgiven because "stuffs boned anyway"

But this "first turn charge" thing isn't a problem at all.

It's a matchup-dependent problem, and/or part of a problem rather than the whole story of the problem. It's a problem because shooty skew armies that can't do anything about it exist. If the Tau were less one-dimensional it'd be less of a problem, for instance.

 BBAP wrote:

Spoiler:

You know your army has made it when someone posts in GenDis bewailing the fact it's OP. I'd like it noted that I predicted this months ago.

Marmatag wrote:Out of curiosity, what point level does this start to happen?

With Genestealer Cults it'll happen at any points level, although you'd probably want an Insurrection detachment to make best use of it, and you can't really fit one of those in below 500pts.

andysonic1 wrote:OP: if GSC are ruining your day you can try taking some fortifications? I haven't played against them myself so I don't know how much this would help.

I don't really know what fortifications do, but if it's just extra terrain then it won't help much. Units that land a 6 on Cult Ambush can deploy anywhere within 3" of enemies, which cuts down the distance they have to charge, and aside from the Stealers themselves everything has grenades.

Dark_Apostle_Spartachris wrote:Basically, the game has a fundamental "Alpha Strike" problem in which most armies will receive a huge bonus if they go first. Some armis become game breaking if they go first (Tau, Eldar, GSC). The entire "I Go, You Go" system needs to be scrapped in favor of an initiative based system more akin to X-Wing.

Enthusiastic +1. I really hope they implement this in 8th.

EnTyme wrote:Any army relying on getting a 1/6 result consistently for its strategy to work will lose 5/6 of the time. Simple math.

Except the mathematics aren't that simple. Cult Ambush charges just aren't reliable enough to be a lynchpin of your strategy - most of the time you use it to redeploy or reinforce units rather than launch an assault - and nobody who plays GSC with a straight face is going to build an army that will lose if it doesn't get 6s. That's why MSU Morph builds are so powerful; partly because it means I'm rolling huge numbers of dice (and thus have an elevated chance to land 6s), and partly because it'll be difficult to kill enough of anything to matter before I get to bring my charges home.

There are a ton of fortifications, many of which allow you to stick units inside to shoot out of while coming with several upgrades to help the shooting and defend against assault units. No one ever takes them from what I've seen, but with the onset of Turn One charges they might start looking at them.

Losing a huge chunk of your army turn 1 would suck.

Just more reason to have additional units in reserves I suppose.

I do find it funny that people are upset with the shooty nature of this game. I mean, when we decided to start playing, it was under the expectation that a game set 40,000 years in the future would be focused very heavily on shooting, not punching.

 BBAP wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Just because there are existing problems, does not mean new problems are forgiven because "stuffs boned anyway"

But this "first turn charge" thing isn't a problem at all.

for the people using the strategy. But for the health of the game it absolutley is. Any posability of fun balanced take all comers lists dies even harder to the point everyone has to run a one sided gimmick list. It takes with it balanced armies that have variety, and throws them out the window in favor of every list having to be min max spam lists now. Take the cult example. What if my friend puts this army together and craps on everyone. Now people come with things like all ork walker lists, and suddenly he is tabled after killing a single kan. How is that fun? Where is the fun in setting up a board for 30 minutes, to have the game over in 25 from a turn one domination. And how do justify the death of any kind of actual game? Do you have to win so much with your turn one alpha strike any conversation to the effect of "this is bad for the game" is replyed with, to paraphrase you "nuh uh".


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 Marmatag wrote:
Losing a huge chunk of your army turn 1 would suck.

Just more reason to have additional units in reserves I suppose.

I do find it funny that people are upset with the shooty nature of this game. I mean, when we decided to start playing, it was under the expectation that a game set 40,000 years in the future would be focused very heavily on shooting, not punching.

but you cant keep reserves, because this is what happens.

6 units assault what you DO have on the field, and table that. Now your turn comes around, you cant roll for reserves, and you are tabled. good game. Sure marines with drop pods can do it, but everyone else takes it in the shorts.


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 Galef wrote:
I see this as a step in the right direction, honestly. Shooting armies were too easily a counter to every single CC-based army, either forcing those armies to be bottom tier, or to have to take unfluffy lists just to play.
And I don't mean win, I mean play in a manner that wasn't just moving their models for their opponent to subsequently remove them.

On a tactical note, you really need to make sure you understand HOW that turn 1 charge is possible, that way you can either mitigate the damage, or call out your opponent for not knowing their own rules.
For example, you mentioned the GSC Patriach + Genestealers, but did you know that only he and 2, yes 2 not 20, Genestealer Princelings are allowed to charge after infiltrate?
With their crap saves, a good overwatch can hurt them pretty bad. And they are both unique units, so you lose at best 2 units before the rest of your army shreds them to pieces.

no there is a formation where a bunch of hybrids and genestealers can get turn one. I wish what you said was true. I have seen a 20 strong group of genestealers with a leader, and 5 hybrid groups get the 6 on the infiltrate rules. its game over at that point for many armies.


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 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

Any army relying on getting a 1/6 result consistently for its strategy to work will lose 5/6 of the time. Simple math.

As a Cult player, there is a lot you can do too make the it more likely. You get 2 rolls on the warlord table looking to get that 6, the Subterranean assault units (powerful melee units all) get 2 dice each, any unit with a Primus (any primus, I take one in formation and one out of formation to give me two units with this bonus) gets to roll 3. First turn assaults isn't a possibility, it's a fact against GSC, it's only a question of do I get first turn to charge without counter play and what exact units get to charge.

And I've been put off Cult a little bit now, because 80% of my games are decided turn 1. Either they can handle my assault and I actually get a game, or they can't and they loose and they get upset and don't want to play anymore. Game design wise, I prefer my Run and Charge Harlequins. It feels like more of a game, where positioning and a good psychic phase gives my opponent more counter play. Winning turn 1 isn't fun, for the winner or the loser, at least in my opinion.

this exactly. Also it is the absolute last nail in the coffin for any kind of game diversity, with armies not hyper specialized in a field.

 Orock wrote:
...but its not 1/6th is it? the formation allows a reroll to get that 6, AND 2 dice to pick from, AND you can have a magus for 3 dice instead. 3 dice with rerolls, its closer to 5/6 to get it. And as for first turn, you can take coteaz to give you a reroll, and try for warlord traits to add one to that. if you get that warlord trait, its a rerollable 5 to steal, so that is more like 2/3 chance to steal. Lets not forget you could just straight up win the chance to go first. and coteaz makes your opponent reroll the chance to steal, so 1/6 goes to 1/36. that does not sound like 1/6 of a chance to work your plan to me.

Details in support: In a normal game both sides have a 50% chance to go first (1/2 * 1/6 to lose the roll-off and seize plus 1/2 * 5/6 to win the roll-off and not get seized on). Coteaz' reroll to your own failed seize rolls/your opponent's successful seize rolls changes that to 11/36 to successfully seize and 1/36 to get seized on, an army with Coteaz is going first closer to 64% of the time.

The Subterranean Uprising formation allows you to roll two dice and pick one on the Cult Ambush table, or roll three and pick one instead for the unit that's been joined by the Primus, so in that formation you've got about a 30% chance for any given unit to get the 6, 42% for the one with the Primus.

Useful Warlord Traits are Ambush Leader, which lets your Warlord and his unit pick their Cult Ambush result instead of rolling, and Strategic Genius, which adds +1 to your Seize roll (which has you going first 76% of the time).

So top-of-turn-one charges off of Cult Ambush are both more reliable than EnTyme seems to think and less likely than Orock seems to think. To my mind Cult Ambush is powerful in the same way Invisibility is powerful; quite, but if you don't get the right results on a few pre-game rolls much less so.

(If I've missed any effects that add to Cult Ambush let me know, I don't play the army and haven't seen them on the table so this is the result of a quick scan of the book.)

actually i put it at 66 precent, so higher than what I thought if 76 precent is the correct chance with coteaz and rerolling warlord trait looking for strategic genius.

Orock wrote:but its not 1/6th is it? the formation allows a reroll to get that 6

... since when? Far as I know there's no way to get rerolls on Cult Ambush dice. I wish there was, that would be awesome. Also, very broken.

AND 2 dice to pick from

The Subterranean Uprising (SubUp) Formation allows for that. It has a 7-unit maximum and the units can only be deployed by Cult Ambush (i.e. can't be placed in Reserve, i.e. can be shot at immediately).

AND you can have a magus for 3 dice instead.

That's a Primus. Attaching a Primus to a SubUp allows the unit he's attached to to roll 3d6 for their Cult Ambush. That's one unit that gets 3d6, and again, there's no way I know of to get Cult Ambush rerolls.

And as for first turn, you can take coteaz to give you a reroll, and try for warlord traits to add one to that. if you get that warlord trait, its a rerollable 5 to steal, so that is more like 2/3 chance to steal. Lets not forget you could just straight up win the chance to go first. and coteaz makes your opponent reroll the chance to steal, so 1/6 goes to 1/36. that does not sound like 1/6 of a chance to work your plan to me.

And on top of all that, it's perfectly possible to build and play GSC without bothering to alpha strike, and against a lot of opponents alpha strike isn't necessarily a good idea. It's an option, but it doesn't work against everyone in every game.

AnomanderRake wrote:It's a problem because shooty skew armies that can't do anything about it exist

Which is to say it's not a problem at all. Match-ups matter if and only if you're running an unbalanced, "soft" army. A problem is a problem if it can't be accounted for by building a balanced army and learning to play it effectively. I can't speak to KDK or World Eaters or whatever, but from a GSC perspective this isn't a problem at all.

If the Tau were less one-dimensional it'd be less of a problem, for instance.

Funny you should mention Tau, since the GSC tactica thread has come to the conclusion that they're one of the tougher opponents for GSC to face. That bears out, in my experience - they're not a hard counter, but they get a lot of free shooting at your dudes and can kill so many of them every turn that you can't depend on resilience in numbers the way you would against other opponents. Light mech shooty armies, like Sisters and Gladius, are a handful too, because I have no way to dismount opponents outside of assault, which leaves my dudes out in the open for an extra turn, and nothing kills GSC units like being stuck on the table.

Of course, this is all relevant if and only if you manage to avoid the alpha strike, which is much easier to do against an assault army than it would be against a shooting army.

 Orock wrote:
for the people using the strategy.

It's not a problem for anyone. I used to win most of my games back in November - now that my opponents have sussed out my army I'm down to maybe 50-50. The fact you can't cope with it says nothing about the health of the game.

Any posability of fun balanced take all comers lists dies even harder to the point everyone has to run a one sided gimmick list. It takes with it balanced armies that have variety, and throws them out the window in favor of every list having to be min max spam lists now. Take the cult example. What if my friend puts this army together and craps on everyone. Now people come with things like all ork walker lists, and suddenly he is tabled after killing a single kan. How is that fun? Where is the fun in setting up a board for 30 minutes, to have the game over in 25 from a turn one domination. And how do justify the death of any kind of actual game? Do you have to win so much with your turn one alpha strike any conversation to the effect of "this is bad for the game" is replyed with, to paraphrase you "nuh uh".

What point are you trying to make here?

 Orock wrote:
actually i put it at 66 precent, so higher than what I thought if 76 precent is the correct chance with coteaz and rerolling warlord trait looking for strategic genius.

I mean, given that you've only got a 30% chance of getting that Warlord Trait with a reroll you could write the actual chance of getting turn one as 25/36 * (1/2 * 11/36 + 1/2 * 35/36) + 11/36 * (1/2 * 5/9 + 1/2 * 35/36) for a combined chance of about 67.7%, so your initial 66% is pretty close to spot on.

The bit you were overestimating is the chance of a given unit getting a '6' on the Cult Ambush table; you can't actually get that higher than 42% and it's going to be 30% for almost everything if you're trying to saturate targets to get more rolls rather than dumping resources into 75pt ICs instead of more units.

 Marmatag wrote:

I do find it funny that people are upset with the shooty nature of this game. I mean, when we decided to start playing, it was under the expectation that a game set 40,000 years in the future would be focused very heavily on shooting, not punching.

This would be a reasonable assumption, except that so many armies in the game are completely dependent on punching, with little in the way of decent shooting.
Are those armies supposed to just be the joke options, only there to be targets in the shooting gallery for the sensible armies with their guns?
Trap choices, to trip up new players?

The game does indeed heavily favour shooting over assault right now. 'Realistic' as that may be, I'm happy to see the first hints that game balance might finally be swinging back in the other direction.

 BBAP wrote:

Orock wrote:but its not 1/6th is it? the formation allows a reroll to get that 6

... since when? Far as I know there's no way to get rerolls on Cult Ambush dice. I wish there was, that would be awesome. Also, very broken.

AND 2 dice to pick from

The Subterranean Uprising (SubUp) Formation allows for that. It has a 7-unit maximum and the units can only be deployed by Cult Ambush (i.e. can't be placed in Reserve, i.e. can be shot at immediately).

AND you can have a magus for 3 dice instead.

That's a Primus. Attaching a Primus to a SubUp allows the unit he's attached to to roll 3d6 for their Cult Ambush. That's one unit that gets 3d6, and again, there's no way I know of to get Cult Ambush rerolls.

And as for first turn, you can take coteaz to give you a reroll, and try for warlord traits to add one to that. if you get that warlord trait, its a rerollable 5 to steal, so that is more like 2/3 chance to steal. Lets not forget you could just straight up win the chance to go first. and coteaz makes your opponent reroll the chance to steal, so 1/6 goes to 1/36. that does not sound like 1/6 of a chance to work your plan to me.

And on top of all that, it's perfectly possible to build and play GSC without bothering to alpha strike, and against a lot of opponents alpha strike isn't necessarily a good idea. It's an option, but it doesn't work against everyone in every game.

AnomanderRake wrote:It's a problem because shooty skew armies that can't do anything about it exist

Which is to say it's not a problem at all. Match-ups matter if and only if you're running an unbalanced, "soft" army. A problem is a problem if it can't be accounted for by building a balanced army and learning to play it effectively. I can't speak to KDK or World Eaters or whatever, but from a GSC perspective this isn't a problem at all.

If the Tau were less one-dimensional it'd be less of a problem, for instance.

Funny you should mention Tau, since the GSC tactica thread has come to the conclusion that they're one of the tougher opponents for GSC to face. That bears out, in my experience - they're not a hard counter, but they get a lot of free shooting at your dudes and can kill so many of them every turn that you can't depend on resilience in numbers the way you would against other opponents. Light mech shooty armies, like Sisters and Gladius, are a handful too, because I have no way to dismount opponents outside of assault, which leaves my dudes out in the open for an extra turn, and nothing kills GSC units like being stuck on the table.

Of course, this is all relevant if and only if you manage to avoid the alpha strike, which is much easier to do against an assault army than it would be against a shooting army.

 Orock wrote:
for the people using the strategy.

It's not a problem for anyone. I used to win most of my games back in November - now that my opponents have sussed out my army I'm down to maybe 50-50. The fact you can't cope with it says nothing about the health of the game.

Any posability of fun balanced take all comers lists dies even harder to the point everyone has to run a one sided gimmick list. It takes with it balanced armies that have variety, and throws them out the window in favor of every list having to be min max spam lists now. Take the cult example. What if my friend puts this army together and craps on everyone. Now people come with things like all ork walker lists, and suddenly he is tabled after killing a single kan. How is that fun? Where is the fun in setting up a board for 30 minutes, to have the game over in 25 from a turn one domination. And how do justify the death of any kind of actual game? Do you have to win so much with your turn one alpha strike any conversation to the effect of "this is bad for the game" is replyed with, to paraphrase you "nuh uh".

What point are you trying to make here?

The point is limiting the game even farther to what is "safe" to take without being run over kills diversity, the very thing that made this game popular in the first place. Yes there were always dominant min max lists, but you have things like all vehicle, all knight, all flyer all extreme range and all immediate assault in the game, it becomes less of a skill game and more of rock paper scisors.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The bit you were overestimating is the chance of a given unit getting a '6' on the Cult Ambush table; you can't actually get that higher than 42% and it's going to be 30% for almost everything if you're trying to saturate targets to get more rolls rather than dumping resources into 75pt ICs instead of more units.

... 75pt ICs that are one-per-Insurrection, where "Insurrection" is the Detachment you need to take if you want to be able to Ambush anything other than SubUps and Genestealers (i.e. if you want an alpha strike that is actually scary as opposed to a bunch of T3 5+ dudes and some T4 5++ dudes with Stealth).

Not to mention the army's psykers are pretty important, and if you start taking Primuses outside your Insurrection you're cutting down on the number of powers you can roll in most comp regimes. Taking Coteaz in an ITC event is impossible, but if it were, you'd be losing two Magus slots and another 10 Acolytes/ 20 Neophytes for the sake of a silly gimmick that the army doesn't even need in order to function.

Arson Fire wrote:
This would be a reasonable assumption, except that so many armies in the game are completely dependent on punching, with little in the way of decent shooting.

Then fix the problem. Remove the idea of having armies with no realistic way to shoot anything.

 BBAP wrote:

AnomanderRake wrote:It's a problem because shooty skew armies that can't do anything about it exist

Which is to say it's not a problem at all. Match-ups matter if and only if you're running an unbalanced, "soft" army. A problem is a problem if it can't be accounted for by building a balanced army and learning to play it effectively. I can't speak to KDK or World Eaters or whatever, but from a GSC perspective this isn't a problem at all.

If the Tau were less one-dimensional it'd be less of a problem, for instance.

Funny you should mention Tau, since the GSC tactica thread has come to the conclusion that they're one of the tougher opponents for GSC to face. That bears out, in my experience - they're not a hard counter, but they get a lot of free shooting at your dudes and can kill so many of them every turn that you can't depend on resilience in numbers the way you would against other opponents. Light mech shooty armies, like Sisters and Gladius, are a handful too, because I have no way to dismount opponents outside of assault, which leaves my dudes out in the open for an extra turn, and nothing kills GSC units like being stuck on the table.

Of course, this is all relevant if and only if you manage to avoid the alpha strike, which is much easier to do against an assault army than it would be against a shooting army.

Yes and no. Matchup-dependency isn't the product of 'soft' lists so much as it is the problem of unbalanced army books in which the tools to counter all opponents don't actually exist, and army books that encourage skew (brief detour: 'skew' is the concept of taking a single unit, strategy, weapon, or other element that is good enough to deal with almost everything you're going to see, and building narrowly-focused lists around it. Scatterbike/Wraithknight spam, the IK Codex, and the Gladius are all skew lists.). Cult Ambush and the GSC book in general are the product of a design team that's (intentionally or not) pushing skew lists over generalist lists this edition (with formations/meta-detachments, miniature Codexes with built-in blindspots, and other synergistic benefits for taking lots of duplicates of the same thing).

Skew lists can still do fine when plonked down against each other when neither one is hitting the other's blind spot, but when a list that you can't efficiently counter or just don't have the tools to counter shows up on the other side of the table you're going to get casually mangled and there's very little you can do about it. Scatterbikes/Wraithknights are very strong, but plonk a Chaos flying circus down opposite them and they'll get ground away by an army they're fundamentally not equipped to do anything to, no matter how hard they'll crush most opposing lists.

 Orock wrote:
The point is limiting the game even farther to what is "safe" to take without being run over kills diversity

Forcing you to think about what you put in your army list is not a deficiency in the game system, as far as I'm concerned. The fact there are so many worthless unit options is a deficiency in the design room, not the game system.

diversity, the very thing that made this game popular in the first place.

Citation needed. I play for the beer, pretzels, competition, models and fluff. I don't care that I can't run Aberrants or Penitent Engines or 5-model Fenrisian Wolf units or Daemonhosts. Diversity is less interesting to me than meaningful competition.

Yes there were always dominant min max lists, but you have things like all vehicle, all knight, all flyer all extreme range and all immediate assault in the game, it becomes less of a skill game and more of rock paper scisors.

It's only RPS until you actually learn what these lists are capable of and how to shut them out. Doing this is more difficult if you want to bring an army full of stuff you think is cool rather than stuff that will be effective. Don't do that. Instead, build a balanced army with distributed damage and the ability to handle anything your opponent deploys. If you don't want to do that, that's fine - it's your dollar - but you don't get to complain about zomgop rules or whatever.

 Peregrine wrote:

Arson Fire wrote:
This would be a reasonable assumption, except that so many armies in the game are completely dependent on punching, with little in the way of decent shooting.

Then fix the problem. Remove the idea of having armies with no realistic way to shoot anything.

Squat half the armies in the game? Yep. Sounds like a great plan.

 BBAP wrote:

Yes there were always dominant min max lists, but you have things like all vehicle, all knight, all flyer all extreme range and all immediate assault in the game, it becomes less of a skill game and more of rock paper scisors.

It's only RPS until you actually learn what these lists are capable of and how to shut them out. Doing this is more difficult if you want to bring an army full of stuff you think is cool rather than stuff that will be effective. Don't do that. Instead, build a balanced army with distributed damage and the ability to handle anything your opponent deploys. If you don't want to do that, that's fine - it's your dollar - but you don't get to complain about zomgop rules or whatever.

Part of the problem with this discussion is that the skew list/RPS game exists at a level somewhere between hard RPS where you don't actually need to bother deploying because I've got the hard-counters to your stuff and a balanced game where my performance doesn't vary much based on which list archetype I've run into; skew is a problem, but it's not a big enough problem to reduce the entire game to list-building RPS. The things that cause more serious problems and get people complaining about 'zomgop rules' are outliers, either in being skew lists that are too good against too many things (e.g. Wraithknight/Scatterbikes) or in being skew elements that are needlessly punishing to plan to counter (e.g. massed Flyers, because ground-based AA is so incredibly useless if you're not fighting massed Flyers and ground-based weapons almost always kill ground-based targets more cheaply/effectively than Flyers do).


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Arson Fire wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Arson Fire wrote:
This would be a reasonable assumption, except that so many armies in the game are completely dependent on punching, with little in the way of decent shooting.

Then fix the problem. Remove the idea of having armies with no realistic way to shoot anything.

Squat half the armies in the game? Yep. Sounds like a great plan.

A better plan (and/or a better creative interpretation of that sentence) might be to take them off the list of armies with no realistic way to shoot anything and put them on the list of armies with a realistic way to shoot anything. Standardize kit across Marine books a bit more, bring back Daemon shooting weapons instead of making all the guns psychic powers, that sort of thing.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A better plan (and/or a better creative interpretation of that sentence) might be to take them off the list of armies with no realistic way to shoot anything and put them on the list of armies with a realistic way to shoot anything. Standardize kit across Marine books a bit more, bring back Daemon shooting weapons instead of making all the guns psychic powers, that sort of thing.

Exactly. The problem is not that shooting is more powerful than throwing a bunch of screaming idiots with chainsaws at the problem, it's that GW has created one-dimensional armies and reduced the depth of their concept to "WAAAAAAAAGH". CSM are supposed to be traitor marines, not orks in power armor. They might invest more in melee combat than a loyalist army, but they're still going to have most of the same shooting units as C:SM available. And if a player ignores the tools they have in favor of WAAAAAAAAGH-marines it's entirely ok for them to lose the game as a result.

The only codices that would need to see major changes/squatting are demons and tyranids. Tyranids are a terrible idea that should be squatted for many other reasons, and demons never should have been an independent army in the first place. Put them back to being support units for a C:SM army and get rid of the idiotic "LOL GUYS YOU CAN PLAY YOUR WHFB ARMY IN 40K" concept of demons as a separate army and their melee-only restrictions are no longer a problem. Orks would probably need some significant rule updates because the codex is so obsolete at this point, but their fluff concept already includes plenty of shooting so it's more of a power level update than a meaningful change of identity.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
(brief detour: 'skew' is the concept of taking a single unit, strategy, weapon, or other element that is good enough to deal with almost everything you're going to see, and building narrowly-focused lists around it. Scatterbike/Wraithknight spam, the IK Codex, and the Gladius are all skew lists.).

I don't see a problem with this. Sure, spam for spam's sake is one of the best ways to ensure your army sucks, but what you're describing isn't that. Nothing wrong with building an army around a competent core, is there?

Cult Ambush and the GSC book in general are the product of a design team that's (intentionally or not) pushing skew lists over generalist lists this edition (with formations/meta-detachments, miniature Codexes with built-in blindspots, and other synergistic benefits for taking lots of duplicates of the same thing).

Define "generalist". The only thing my GSC can't run down are Zooming/ Swooping Flyers, and even against those I have options - none of which include bringing crumby Allies that mess up my RttS cycle and potentially my psychic phase. The army has a very acute focus - close combat - but they're equipped to

Skew lists can still do fine when plonked down against each other when neither one is hitting the other's blind spot, but when a list that you can't efficiently counter or just don't have the tools to counter shows up on the other side of the table you're going to get casually mangled and there's very little you can do about it. Scatterbikes/Wraithknights are very strong, but plonk a Chaos flying circus down opposite them and they'll get ground away by an army they're fundamentally not equipped to do anything to, no matter how hard they'll crush most opposing lists.

In what way do Scatbike Eldar not have the tools to deal with a Flying Circus? I know there's a more general principle here, but this specific example is a good illustration of what I don't understand about the stuff you're saying. Flying Circus armies have, like, 30 models in them, with perhaps 50-odd wounds. Scatbiker Eldar are pumping out 120+ shots a turn, and they have D weapons. I'm not seeing the "skew" here.

 BBAP wrote:

 Orock wrote:
The point is limiting the game even farther to what is "safe" to take without being run over kills diversity

Forcing you to think about what you put in your army list is not a deficiency in the game system, as far as I'm concerned. The fact there are so many worthless unit options is a deficiency in the design room, not the game system.

diversity, the very thing that made this game popular in the first place.

Citation needed. I play for the beer, pretzels, competition, models and fluff. I don't care that I can't run Aberrants or Penitent Engines or 5-model Fenrisian Wolf units or Daemonhosts. Diversity is less interesting to me than meaningful competition.

Yes there were always dominant min max lists, but you have things like all vehicle, all knight, all flyer all extreme range and all immediate assault in the game, it becomes less of a skill game and more of rock paper scisors.

It's only RPS until you actually learn what these lists are capable of and how to shut them out. Doing this is more difficult if you want to bring an army full of stuff you think is cool rather than stuff that will be effective. Don't do that. Instead, build a balanced army with distributed damage and the ability to handle anything your opponent deploys. If you don't want to do that, that's fine - it's your dollar - but you don't get to complain about zomgop rules or whatever.

Army lists USED to make you think about what to put into them. Your version is built for you, with hard counters that make it a non game. As a typical alpha strike GSC list, what do you do when you plop down for your "competative" game and the other guy brings 5 knights. You go on to say you play for beer and pretzels, and competition. Those are two completely different play styles. You say you play for the models, but if all thats left effective is flyrant spam, knight spam, fotm spam, where is your model enjoyment then. You cant tell me you dont enjoy seeing a diverse ork list across the board for example, with fun conversions all around. In the game you profess to prefer, these dont exist, as they are non competative. I guess you can enjoy painting 30 genestealers and 30 hybrids, with bare minimume cultists.

Your idea of balanced army building is funny, because you say adjust to the tactics. Tell me, how do you build a balanced army for a tournament where your opponents are as follows: all knights, followed by demon flying circus, followed by heavy ranged tau, then heavy turn one assault oriented GSC, then mabye space marine gladius for fun. All skew lists, you build to stop one or two, the other 3 eat you alive.

And dont use citation needed. That is the fallback I cant think of any good retort, so I will goalpost and ask something impossible to prove, even though my counter arguement is equally impossible to prove. You also need to prove that the game is more popular due to the beer and pretzels aspect as opposed to the model diversity, which if you see most anticdotal replies when asking what got you into the game in the first place is the reason. There are already hundreds of beer and pretzel free time hobbies. That is not the reason you got into this one.

 BBAP wrote:
I don't see a problem with this. Sure, spam for spam's sake is one of the best ways to ensure your army sucks, but what you're describing isn't that. Nothing wrong with building an army around a competent core, is there?

The problem is that when it's a common thing it drives the game overwhelmingly into a rock/paper/scissors meta where 90% of the game is determined by "did my opponent bring the counter for my list". If they did, you lose. If they didn't you win. You very rarely get games with meaningful interaction beyond playing out the expected outcome of the matchup and desperately hoping for the dice to give you an opportunity.

Problem is that even if you do give those armies more shooting options is that those armies are still losing the numbers game. There's no drawback to being bad at assault, and because you're not paying for those assault stats they're cheaper too. Armies that pay anything into assault basically lose to cost effectiveness. It becomes a game of the minmaxers vs everyone else trying to play catch up.

You need to give SOME kind of concession and purpose to assault in a game that has the rules for it. Yes, it's not "realistic", but realism has never had correlation with a good game.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Problem is that even if you do give those armies more shooting options is that those armies are still losing the numbers game. There's no drawback to being bad at assault, and because you're not paying for those assault stats they're cheaper too. Armies that pay anything into assault basically lose to cost effectiveness. It becomes a game of the minmaxers vs everyone else trying to play catch up.

You need to give SOME kind of concession and purpose to assault in a game that has the rules for it. Yes, it's not "realistic", but realism has never had correlation with a good game.

Deciding the game top of turn one is not a concession. Proper terrain can compensate for armies that accomplish this thru shooting. Nothing can compensate for turn one assault armies that does not directly force you to build a certain way.

 BBAP wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Skew lists can still do fine when plonked down against each other when neither one is hitting the other's blind spot, but when a list that you can't efficiently counter or just don't have the tools to counter shows up on the other side of the table you're going to get casually mangled and there's very little you can do about it. Scatterbikes/Wraithknights are very strong, but plonk a Chaos flying circus down opposite them and they'll get ground away by an army they're fundamentally not equipped to do anything to, no matter how hard they'll crush most opposing lists.

In what way do Scatbike Eldar not have the tools to deal with a Flying Circus? I know there's a more general principle here, but this specific example is a good illustration of what I don't understand about the stuff you're saying. Flying Circus armies have, like, 30 models in them, with perhaps 50-odd wounds. Scatbiker Eldar are pumping out 120+ shots a turn, and they have D weapons. I'm not seeing the "skew" here.

Just wanted to explain this example. Take 120 and divide it by 6, since the non-flier warp batteries are probably going to hide outside line of sight. That's only 20 hits a turn. Most of the time, those Scatterlasers are only going to wound the flying daemons on a 4+ or 5+. So cut it in half and you get 10. The Daemons pretty easily run 2+ invulnerable or 2+ jink saves. So divide it by 6 again. That's 3.3 wounds inflicted by the bikes per turn.

Now just imagine the psychic explosion of damage that gets inflicted back on the bikes. It's almost certainly going to be higher than 3.3.

Yeah the Eldar have D, but not with Skyfire and not in sufficient quantity to get much in past that first 6 division over the course of a whole game.

So it's a good example for his point.

On the main topic, assault definitely needed a buff and with Overwatch being what it is, especially an army like Tau, I don't think it's out of hand. The Grey Knight player in the OP followed the wrong strategy. Against an army like GSC, he should be relying much more heavily on 1st turn Deep Strike with the Incinerators and free Run that GK's have with it.

 BBAP wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
(brief detour: 'skew' is the concept of taking a single unit, strategy, weapon, or other element that is good enough to deal with almost everything you're going to see, and building narrowly-focused lists around it. Scatterbike/Wraithknight spam, the IK Codex, and the Gladius are all skew lists.).

I don't see a problem with this. Sure, spam for spam's sake is one of the best ways to ensure your army sucks, but what you're describing isn't that. Nothing wrong with building an army around a competent core, is there?

The problem is that the way formations, detachments, and army books are set up even a competent all-comers army is going to be fine against 70-80% of lists, utterly demolish 10-15% of lists because you're approaching squarely out of their blind spot, and get steamrolled without effort by the remaining 10-15% of lists because they happen to have your hard counter in reliable quantity. List-building should be important, but it shouldn't overwrite the rest of the game, and the fact that it can even in a few matchups is a problem.

Cult Ambush and the GSC book in general are the product of a design team that's (intentionally or not) pushing skew lists over generalist lists this edition (with formations/meta-detachments, miniature Codexes with built-in blindspots, and other synergistic benefits for taking lots of duplicates of the same thing).

Define "generalist". The only thing my GSC can't run down are Zooming/ Swooping Flyers, and even against those I have options - none of which include bringing crumby Allies that mess up my RttS cycle and potentially my psychic phase. The army has a very acute focus - close combat - but they're equipped to

I don't have the information to discuss the GSC in great depth since I haven't seen them on the table and I don't know their book all that well. From what I have read I'd expect summon-happy Daemons, armies with access to cheap/widespread template weapons, armies with lots of flying targets, Drop Pods, Superheavies, and people who are fast enough to evade melee to present difficulty, but without seeing more games that's a list of where I'd look to find the GSC's counters, not a list of what they are.

Skew lists can still do fine when plonked down against each other when neither one is hitting the other's blind spot, but when a list that you can't efficiently counter or just don't have the tools to counter shows up on the other side of the table you're going to get casually mangled and there's very little you can do about it. Scatterbikes/Wraithknights are very strong, but plonk a Chaos flying circus down opposite them and they'll get ground away by an army they're fundamentally not equipped to do anything to, no matter how hard they'll crush most opposing lists.

In what way do Scatbike Eldar not have the tools to deal with a Flying Circus? I know there's a more general principle here, but this specific example is a good illustration of what I don't understand about the stuff you're saying. Flying Circus armies have, like, 30 models in them, with perhaps 50-odd wounds. Scatbiker Eldar are pumping out 120+ shots a turn, and they have D weapons. I'm not seeing the "skew" here.

When 120+ shots a turn are hitting on 6s, wounding on 4s-6s (depending on whether you're shooting an FMC or a vehicle, and on what buffs are in place), and have to batter past Jink saves or Daemon Invul shenanigans to do anything they're worth less than you think. As for D-weapons Wraithknights may be good but 295pts for one hit every three turns that has to roll another '6' or risk getting shut down again by save shenanigans is far from an efficient use of them, Wraithguard have to catch said Flyer with their 6" movement and 12" range guns to do anything, and the rest are blast/templates and can't hit flyers.

As for the attacks coming the other way hellchickens get to RFP scatterbikes with almost no chance of failure, and there are plenty of psychic powers capable of slowly grinding down a Wraithknight over six turns of flying around in lazy circles watching it not do anything to you.


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 Luke_Prowler wrote:
...There's no drawback to being bad at assault...

...How about getting mangled when someone who is good at assault catches you?

I think 40k could learn something from games where you cannot (or very rarely) interact meaningfully with your opponent first turn. For all it's flaws, the fact you can't decimate an opposing army first turn in Warmachine is a good thing. Even Epic used to have it, with tons of stuff being out of range first turn, save perhaps for artillery or titan weapons. Early 40k has so few weapons (on the table) that even if you could fire off a shot or two.. well it was a shot or two.

Fixing that though would require a ground up rebuild of the game though.

 Orock wrote:
Deciding the game top of turn one is not a concession. Proper terrain can compensate for armies that accomplish this thru shooting. Nothing can compensate for turn one assault armies that does not directly force you to build a certain way.

A) Oh, I agree that games decided at turn one is bad, but I'm annoyed that some people's solution to that is "lets make the game even more of a boring one sided shoot fest".
B) Back in the day when you could assault out of outflank, Boss Snikrot was quite the terror. He made many a gunline quake in their booties, with ork players remarking "Fear the sides!"
Except all you had to do was move your units 12" away from the board edge and he was basicly useless. Now he IS useless

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
...There's no drawback to being bad at assault...

...How about getting mangled when someone who is good at assault catches you?

m
To paraphrase the old joke "But good luck getting there". 60% of the time assault is decided by who gets the charge off, even tau hit marines on a 4+. So Being good at assault has some terrible deminishing gains problems and those units that are genuinely good at assault you have to pay out the nose to get and that's not including the power weapon you have to shell out for. So your 300pt amazing elites killed a 100pt meltavet squad, big whoop, and you will probably lose a guy from overwatch on top of it.

 Kojiro wrote:
I think 40k could learn something from games where you cannot (or very rarely) interact meaningfully with your opponent first turn. For all it's flaws, the fact you can't decimate an opposing army first turn in Warmachine is a good thing. Even Epic used to have it, with tons of stuff being out of range first turn, save perhaps for artillery or titan weapons. Early 40k has so few weapons (on the table) that even if you could fire off a shot or two.. well it was a shot or two.

Fixing that though would require a ground up rebuild of the game though.

Not really. Remove spammable big guns (multiple-big-thing formations, heavy tank squadrons, etc), shrink deployment zones, take away turn one Reserves, and make the really big guns run on the Bolt Action indirect-fire scheme and you'd get much closer.

Not saying a ground-up overhaul wouldn't be a good idea, or that it wouldn't be a better/cleaner way to make said changes, but it's far from intrinsic to the fix.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
even tau hit marines on a 4+.

Which is only a very small part of it. They hit on a 4+, but they only wound on a 5+ and have nothing to ignore the 5+ armor saves. The marines hit on a 3+, wound on a 3+, only face a 4+ save, and can take power weapons that ignore saves entirely. Then, once the marines win the combat, they're likely to make the Tau fall back and likely to turn that attempt at running into a sweeping advance that wipes out the entire unit. The Tau, should they by some miracle win, have a much smaller chance of forcing the marines to run and can not kill the unit with a sweeping advance. And that's just tactical marines, a shooting unit that is vaguely capable of melee combat. If you're talking about actual assault units the Tau get wiped off the table effortlessly. In fact, the biggest challenge is making sure you don't kill the Tau too quickly since being locked in combat during their shooting phase is the safest place to be.

This of course is the problem with turn 1 charges: on turn 1 a lot of your army simply disappears, most of the assault units are locked in combat during your turn so you can't do anything about them, then on the following turn they charge the rest of your army and repeat the process. The game is effectively over before you get a turn if you don't win the roll to go first and then roll well with your own attacks. Shooting armies (with the exception of a handful of overpowered units) can't do this on a table with a proper amount of terrain.

So your 300pt amazing elites killed a 100pt meltavet squad, big whoop, and you will probably lose a guy from overwatch on top of it.

And then it killed another 100 point unit in exchange for one overwatch loss, then another 100 point unit, and so on. Or maybe this isn't a world in which 100 point melta vet squads are the only unit on the table, and the 300-point assault unit eats a 500 point LRBT squadron. Or maybe this is a world in which scoring objectives matters, and the 300 point unit wipes out the melta vet squad then locks down the nearby objective with a "come within range to score and you die" bubble (using LOS-blocking terrain to avoid being sniped from a distance).

Then of course there's the question of how things work in return. If you want to kill a 100 point assault unit in one turn you're probably going to have to spend something like 300 points to do it. The issue is not melee vs. shooting, it's that killing a unit in a single turn usually requires spending more than that unit's point cost to do it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kojiro wrote:
I think 40k could learn something from games where you cannot (or very rarely) interact meaningfully with your opponent first turn.

IMO this doesn't really help much, since it makes the first turn a wasted turn that isn't very interesting. The way to fix the alpha strike problem is to remove the combos that allow turn 1 charges and play with sufficient terrain to prevent shooting alpha strikes from dominating. If there's a proper amount of terrain on the table even shooting-heavy armies aren't going to do all that much damage unless you make stupid deployment choices. Spots with no LOS are available, and most of the units that are exposed to LOS should be able to get cover saves. The shooting army will have to move up to get clear shots around the terrain if they want to counter your defensive positions, which won't happen until later in the game. But there's still interaction on turn 1 and pressure to care about denying shots instead of being able to sit out in the open without fearing your opponent's 12" threat range.