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Well, speaking personally, the reason I dislike ATSKNF is that it auto-ignores Fear (which a ton of my units pay for from various sources), and also auto-ignores Soulfright weapons (making them worthless unless I know for a fact that I won't be playing against marines).

Umm. Ever charged with naked BA tacs?

I mean, plenty of answers, but from a BA player?

Granted, IoM is quite light on mid-S attacks, but even they have a bunch of them.


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And you can take my ATSKNF from my Marines when you pry it from their cold, dead fingers! A nerf might be called for, though.

(I imagine the Black Carapace makes it much harder...)

Bharring wrote:
Umm. Ever charged with naked BA tacs?

I mean, plenty of answers, but from a BA player?

Granted, IoM is quite light on mid-S attacks, but even they have a bunch of them.


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And you can take my ATSKNF from my Marines when you pry it from their cold, dead fingers! A nerf might be called for, though.

(I imagine the Black Carapace makes it much harder...)

I meant shooting attacks. The kinds of attacks that really matter in 7th. No one lets me assault them with tacs, anyway. They are either dead or get spoiling assaulted.

Again, why have ATSKNF at all? It just gives Xeno players ammo against marine players.

How? If you ignore the part that lets you not get swept (Which is incredibly annoying) then you still need to kill every model for the kill point rather than every other army where you can make them fall back and they'll run off the board.

pm713 wrote:
How? If you ignore the part that lets you not get swept (Which is incredibly annoying) then you still need to kill every model for the kill point rather than every other army where you can make them fall back and they'll run off the board.

My opponents don't leave unit remnants. At least, not often enough to make me care about ATSKNF.

A large chunk of tournament players are winning games by dominating the melee end of the game. 6th ed being a shooting edition was arguable, but 7th ed is certainly not a skeet shoot. If that were the case, tau and eldar would still dominate everyone else, as opposed to the marines of various flavors, and tyranids.

Well, IoM doesn't have a lot of s5/6 shooting, that's true.

For S5, its mostly the AP4 things like Heavy Bolters and Heavy Flamers. The first doesn't see much use, because, why take it when s4 is so cheap and plentiful for then? The second? If I could take them on my Tacs... Oh, the barbeques I'd have...
Same could be said for S6, though, who's spam is your point.

But Xenos?
Tau. Like, wow. Almost all their small arms (basic weapons, standard tank arms, support missile systems, etc) are s5. Lots. Huge VoF.
Necrons. Not too familiar, Immortals are a good example. Troop s5ap4 rapid fire? Costly per model, but yowsa.
Orkz, like Necrons, always seem to be throwing it around quite a bit. Can't name the weapon, though.

Its not exactly rare. And usually much higher volume than s6.

 vipoid wrote:
Well, speaking personally, the reason I dislike ATSKNF is that it auto-ignores Fear (which a ton of my units pay for from various sources), and also auto-ignores Soulfright weapons (making them worthless unless I know for a fact that I won't be playing against marines).

I agree. GW I passing out Fear left and right (Which, some units it makes sense for them to have it, and I'm grateful from a fluff perspective), but having a huge chunk of armies out there that just outright ignore it is a pain in the butt.

I'm not finding the heavy flamer on tactical squads a very useful thing really. It basically forces them into a pod, of which I am very leery. I don't think BA are good drop list because they need to assault to take advantage of their chapter tactics.

Martel732 wrote:

pm713 wrote:
How? If you ignore the part that lets you not get swept (Which is incredibly annoying) then you still need to kill every model for the kill point rather than every other army where you can make them fall back and they'll run off the board.

My opponents don't leave unit remnants. At least, not often enough to make me care about ATSKNF.

Then maybe you should ask them to cut you some slack. Because it sounds to me like they're so determined to get the most out of each unit (which is fine) they're sucking the fun out of things for you (which is not fine). Although I'm struggling to envisage what army is capable of having that much firepower without using too much to kill a single unit.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
A large chunk of tournament players are winning games by dominating the melee end of the game. 6th ed being a shooting edition was arguable, but 7th ed is certainly not a skeet shoot. If that were the case, tau and eldar would still dominate everyone else, as opposed to the marines of various flavors, and tyranids.

Yah, after seeing the Necron dex, GW is trying to add more melee to the game. Necrons can pull it off now, that tells you something.

Heavy Flamers work great for Sisters. Even without pods.

Bharring wrote:
Well, IoM doesn't have a lot of s5/6 shooting, that's true.

For S5, its mostly the AP4 things like Heavy Bolters and Heavy Flamers. The first doesn't see much use, because, why take it when s4 is so cheap and plentiful for then? The second? If I could take them on my Tacs... Oh, the barbeques I'd have...
Same could be said for S6, though, who's spam is your point.

But Xenos?
Tau. Like, wow. Almost all their small arms (basic weapons, standard tank arms, support missile systems, etc) are s5. Lots. Huge VoF.
Necrons. Not too familiar, Immortals are a good example. Troop s5ap4 rapid fire? Costly per model, but yowsa.
Orkz, like Necrons, always seem to be throwing it around quite a bit. Can't name the weapon, though.

Its not exactly rare. And usually much higher volume than s6.

Don't forget Destroyers, AP3 S5 with PE. =P If Necrons can do anything, it's certainly spam S5 shooting.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Heavy Flamers work great for Sisters. Even without pods.

How do you get close enough? Why don't enemy units move away?


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pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

pm713 wrote:
How? If you ignore the part that lets you not get swept (Which is incredibly annoying) then you still need to kill every model for the kill point rather than every other army where you can make them fall back and they'll run off the board.

My opponents don't leave unit remnants. At least, not often enough to make me care about ATSKNF.

Then maybe you should ask them to cut you some slack. Because it sounds to me like they're so determined to get the most out of each unit (which is fine) they're sucking the fun out of things for you (which is not fine). Although I'm struggling to envisage what army is capable of having that much firepower without using too much to kill a single unit.

According to ClockworkZion, my generalists can't be given a break because they might run up and use their S6 greandes. Why should they give me the chance?

Martel732 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Heavy Flamers work great for Sisters. Even without pods.

How do you get close enough? Why don't enemy units move away?

By constantly working to close the gap when I can. And not always. I mean they want to hang out in their cover or hold objectives too or don't have places to go making it possible to cook them out of cover.

Movement is paramount in this game and capitalizing on it matters. I can get 18" turn one from my Rhinos, 6" turn 2 + 6" dismount. I can reach out and touch the my opponent's backline if need be in most games.


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In short I play very aggressive and try and leverage threats in too many places at the same time to be easily countered.

Martel732 wrote:
I'm not finding the heavy flamer on tactical squads a very useful thing really.

I'd be happy to trade you my Liquifier Guns for them.

 vipoid wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I'm not finding the heavy flamer on tactical squads a very useful thing really.

I'd be happy to trade you my Liquifier Guns for them.

I'm sure there are worse weapons out there. Also, I'm sure that sisters players have way more experience with heavy flamers than I do. The range is just so short.

Sisters heavy flamers were good in third edition until the nerf to acts of faith, because of rending on the wounds. But IIRC that rending never applied to vehicles, only to infantry or MC armor, so meh.

 Melissia wrote:
Sisters heavy flamers were good in third edition until the nerf to acts of faith, because of rending on the wounds. But IIRC that rending never applied to vehicles, only to infantry or MC armor, so meh.

They're still good. Mostly because they wound T4 on 3s and kill T3/4+ on 2s. Get PE off on Battle Sisters vs T3 models and you get to re-roll the 1s.

Not as good as rending on Retributors, but Retributors in general are just not as good as they used to be.

Which is sad considering they were still one of the worst units in the codex.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
A large chunk of tournament players are winning games by dominating the melee end of the game. 6th ed being a shooting edition was arguable, but 7th ed is certainly not a skeet shoot. If that were the case, tau and eldar would still dominate everyone else, as opposed to the marines of various flavors, and tyranids.

But the marines and tyranids that are competing with the tau and eldar are using their own awesome shooty units to do so. Centurions and dakka flyrants to be specific.

I mean, yeah melee is still in the game and it can still matter, but going so far as to say 7th is not a shooty edition is a stretch too far for me.

 Melissia wrote:
Which is sad considering they were still one of the worst units in the codex.

They were better in 5th when you could throw them a die to rend every turn.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Which is sad considering they were still one of the worst units in the codex.

They were better in 5th when you could throw them a die to rend every turn.

True. I still can't help but think that 3rd was the best era for Sisters though....

Wyldhunt wrote:

Bharring wrote:
So, the answer to 'is Bladestorm broken' 'Tac Marines suck'? Doesn't seem to address the question. We're going in circles:

-Is Bladestorm OP
-They would shred Marines (and tags)
-That's not what we see/what the math says
-But WS OP
-But, if I'm not fielding WS, is Bladestorm OP?
-GOTO 1

Thank you for pulling us back on track. That's a pretty good summary of the relevant parts of the discussion so far. Based on what we've discussed so far, I'm leaning towards my original stance that bladestorm is not, in fact, a problem. Could bladestorm be represented differently? Sure. Would avengers be worthless without bladestorm? Not really. They'd just be more cowardly and encourage people to spam serpents more since the avengers/guardians couldn't carry their own weight as well. Based on the numbers we've been pushing around, it seems like bladestorm is a noticable but minor advantage over certain targets. The only potential for it being OP that I'm seeing is that you might get lucky or pyschically manipulate your dice rolls into being too much stronger as a result of bladestorm.

If a unit had a 1 in 3 chance of generating 6 rends, for instance, that would be too much, but I'm pretty sure the likelihood of that happening is much lower. And again, bladestorm is mostly useful against heavily-armored targets who, if they're really noticing that bladestorm is causing them trouble, can go for some cover like the rest of us. Stick your toes on some ruins, and bladestorm goes from being a 1/9 chance per shot of killing you to a 1/9 chance per shot of making your save slightly worse.

To further nudge this back on track (since it seems to have taken a slight detour on HF uses in Sisters/BA armies), I would contend that the bolded part is part of the problem. That's not to say that DAs/Guardians "pulling their own weight" is bad, it by far isn't, IMO. It's to say that Eldar troops actually can do so. It unfortunately seems that Eldar Troops choices rely heavily on Bladestorm to do so, but that key fact that they can actually pull their own weight, instead of being a Troops tax, is the "big thing" if you will.

The reason it's a "problem" is because most armies don't have Troops choices that can actually contribute useful capability beyond "more bodies" or "Troops tax" status.

IG? Spam bodies till the Emprah wakes up, because it will at the very least take ages to kill all of them.
Orks? Same deal.
DE? Well, Warriors get Poison basic weapons, so they can contribute some against MCs, and they're kind of cheap (Wyches are terrible, unfortunately).
Tau? Yeah, FWs are pretty much there to hold a home objective, and maybe stuff a min-size squad into a Devilfish for some quick late-game objective grabs.
'Crons? They're ultra-durable by dint of WBB/RP (whatever it's called these days), and both Gauss and Tesla are pretty boss.
'Nids? I actually have no idea, as I've not even gone through whatever the most recent 'Nid book is.
Sisters? Not really sure; they have PA, so it seems like they'd get hurt by Bladestorm a lot... and I don't think Sisters are really that killy per point, but you can get a big blob of 20 PA bodies that's theoretically somewhat difficult to dig out.
Various flavors of Marines? Scouts are good because they're ultra-cheap, and of passable durability in cover with camo cloaks. Bikers are boss because they're T5, Bikes, and get Relentless grav weapons. Tactical Marines (and their equivalents) are lackluster because they aren't particularly killy (bolters are waaaay down on the spectrum of killy guns), they generally only get one special/heavy per 5 guys, that they always have to pay for if they pick one up, and any combi-weapons included are for all practical consideration a single-shot weapon.

It really seems like most Troops units are lackluster- they aren't very deadly, and they aren't very tough. Some armies compensate by being able to flood the board with bodies (IG/Orks), while most seem to kind of just get stuck with being 'meh'. Necrons and Eldar feel like the outliers- Crons have very durable and flexible dudes, but said dudes are also only Initiative 2, don't have much in the way of very-long-range firepower to back them up, and also don't carry the potential to invalidate any infantry armor in the game. Eldar, OTOH... a good counter-Troops unit for fighting Eldar comes down to "bring more mans than they can kill in a practical timeframe".

I'm not entirely sure of how to fix this, but I do think that there's a reason that even in 5th Edition a tourney build for vanilla Marines usually started with the mandatory two Troops units, which were two "meltabunker" Tac squads, and only ever two of those. Of course, a lot has changed since 5th, but the concept of taking the minimum number of Troops before filling out the rest of a list seems to have stuck around for a reason.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Heavy Flamers work great for Sisters. Even without pods.

How do you get close enough? Why don't enemy units move away?

By constantly working to close the gap when I can. And not always. I mean they want to hang out in their cover or hold objectives too or don't have places to go making it possible to cook them out of cover.

Movement is paramount in this game and capitalizing on it matters. I can get 18" turn one from my Rhinos, 6" turn 2 + 6" dismount. I can reach out and touch the my opponent's backline if need be in most games.


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In short I play very aggressive and try and leverage threats in too many places at the same time to be easily countered.

Except Rhinos die to a stiff breeze, seriously. you either have the best luck ever, or your opponents haven't heard of prioritizing targets properly.

 Melissia wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Which is sad considering they were still one of the worst units in the codex.

They were better in 5th when you could throw them a die to rend every turn.

True. I still can't help but think that 3rd was the best era for Sisters though....

AoF where their closest to broken broken then, but the high cost for everything helped balanced that out because we couldn't take too much of anything and run too much of a muck.


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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Heavy Flamers work great for Sisters. Even without pods.

How do you get close enough? Why don't enemy units move away?

By constantly working to close the gap when I can. And not always. I mean they want to hang out in their cover or hold objectives too or don't have places to go making it possible to cook them out of cover.

Movement is paramount in this game and capitalizing on it matters. I can get 18" turn one from my Rhinos, 6" turn 2 + 6" dismount. I can reach out and touch the my opponent's backline if need be in most games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In short I play very aggressive and try and leverage threats in too many places at the same time to be easily countered.

Except Rhinos die to a stiff breeze, seriously. you either have the best luck ever, or your opponents haven't heard of prioritizing targets properly.

Rhinos only die easily when properly focused on and even 12" of movement and then losing it is better than 6" of walking. Also move 12", pop smoke is a pretty decent option for turn 1. Especially if you use one Rhino to screen a second (meaning the second needs doesn't need to pop smoke as it has a 5+ cover save from the potential burning wreck in front of it). ALSO, Sisters pay 5 more points for their vehicles for a reason: a 6++ standard. It doesn't always help, but negating even one glance can make a different sometimes.

But like I mentioned, I play aggressive. It's never 1 Rhino running up on it's own. It's 2-3 Rhinos, a unit of Seraphim with Celestine and 3 Exorcists (basically 3 Predators for the statline) threatening my opponent at the same time (that's basically my 1.5k list).

I'd rather play aggressive and watch my army go down in flames then playing it safe and get picked apart because I didn't even try to bring my army into range.

Whiskey144 wrote:

I'm not entirely sure of how to fix this, but I do think that there's a reason that even in 5th Edition a tourney build for vanilla Marines usually started with the mandatory two Troops units, which were two "meltabunker" Tac squads, and only ever two of those. Of course, a lot has changed since 5th, but the concept of taking the minimum number of Troops before filling out the rest of a list seems to have stuck around for a reason.

I think there are a couple of problems that apply to most of the 'bad' troops:

- Their weapons don't scale. The troops generally regarded as 'good' have weapons that scale in some way (as in. they can affect more than just infantry) - Eldar can hurt MCs and TEQ thanks to Bladestorm, DE warriors can hurt MCs and bikes, Necrons can torrent down vehicles, Tau have long-range S5, GK terminators have force weapons etc. In contrast, most 'bad' troops are stuck with weapons that have little utility outside of killing infantry (some aren't even good at that role). So, they're reliant on special weapons for versatility, and can usually only take one per squad. It generally just makes them very inefficient of their Elite versions, who can typically take multiple special weapons. Or, they compete with vehicles and/or MCs - which are durable, often fast, and can not only take powerful weapons but also fire them on the move.

- They serve very little purpose outside of firepower. In 5th and 6th, only troops could score - so all troops automatically had a purpose that didn't relate to their damage output. And, by taking few troops, you were both limiting the number of objectives you could capture and also making it easier for your opponent to focus fire and wipe them out. But, now that every unit is scoring, there's very little advantage to taking troops if your other units have better damage output.

Basically:
-Good troops can do something to the big threats in the meta
-Big threats in the meta need to be immune to small arms, or they wouldn't be a big threat

A noticeable problem with the meta, IMO. But if Bladestorm units *were* a threat, wouldn't other troops become not-bad?

The eldar are one of a few armies that perform better, the more powerful the enemy army(dark eldar and necrons are the others). The primary counter to these armies are horde armies. The reason people don't take those is time limits in tournaments. If I am toughness 7or lower, and have 5+ armor, then bladestorm does absolutely nothing to me. Also, eldar struggle with msu. They are elite costed units, but, don't have the survivability to withstand return fire. So small units can more than earn their points back with a single round of shooting.

Now,in regards to internal balance, the blade storm rule is there to allow other craft world's to be able to compete with Iyanden due to them being impossible to kill without it.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The eldar are one of a few armies that perform better, the more powerful the enemy army(dark eldar and necrons are the others).

Not sure about that with regard to DE.

They're good against *some* tough armies (bikes, MCs with 3+ saves), but really bad against others. Mechanised lists are a real struggle, and WS-spam will eat them alive.