The argument being made (by me and others), is that SM have been good more often than most books. Specifically, which books are good the most often? CWE and SM.

SW have been far more consistent than vanilla marines.

To be fair, SWs have also had fewer releases, SM's have gotten a codex book for every single edition, SW's didnt get one for 4th or 6th, and went almost a decade between the 3E and 5E books. That said, most have been pretty strong, though Id only really call their 2E and 5E books OP and clearly superior to the vanilla book, in 7E I'm not sure Id say that pure SW were better than pure Vanilla marines, though superfriend deathstars certainly were a ridiculous thing that was all sorts of busted.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Scotsmen left out an important group.

Perpetual marine haters - They literally seek out posts about marines to undermine how bad they suck. Probably because they feel their army is historically worse off than marines. When In fact - marines have been near the bottom in terms of power in every edition relying on gimmicks to stay relevant with horrendously over-costed units in a game that is designed to make their units irrelevant. Typically they play orks or imperial guard almost exclusively.

That's right. How dare they fail to take into account the DEU canon that the poster hails from that informs the nature of their reality and determines the location of the goalposts of a given discussion.

Pro tip: if you're looking to construct an ad hominem line of attack on me specifically, it's not a smart idea to try and figure out "my army". As people from most of the tactics threads have learned, I've been in this hobby for 15+ years, and I play or have played nearly everything. Including marines. I just base my observations on relative faction power on a basis of reality that seems to be shared by a larger number of people.

Also, it may be possible to determine (maybe by looking at titles of posts) whether you are in fact being followed around by a posse of people aiming to attack Space Marine threads, or whether threads might become Space Marine threads when you enter them. Hypothetically of course.

Can you point out directly where I was deliberately targeting you with any of that? I too have been in the hobby for approximately the same amount of time and play a number of armies. I can tell you without a doubt that space marines have been the worst army I have owned in every edition I have played and it's been getting progressively worse since 4th eddition. In 7th They got Gladius which was silly but if that amount of silliness went to any other army it would have been a lot worse. Like - Imagine breachers with free devilfish...Imagine Wraithgaurd with free wave serpents or veterans with free chimeras...That kind of stuff would have been better than ynnari.

The core units in the space marine codex are terrible. They have always been terrible. I don't mean average ether - terrible. There isn't a single space marine option I would take over something else in another codex - they have had some OP forge world entries but who hasn't?

I know it doesn't mean a thing to most posters, but I'm still a bit traumatized by how bad vanilla/DA/BA were in 2nd. Most are probably leaving this data point out, but I can't.

Martel732 wrote:
SW have been far more consistent than vanilla marines.

This is definitely true. However for a ton of that time when Space Wolves were more powerful, I'm talking most of fifth, the units that were strong for them were just the very same units available in the marine 'dex, but better. It was extremely (and I mean almost universally) common practice for folks in the period of "lazplazrazspam plus Grey Hunters plus Long Fangs" to simply take their marine army, however they were painted, and declare them "space wolves." Pretty much in exactly the same way people currently declare all their Eldar to be Alaitoc. Same models, extra rules for free. It wasn't until the big Thunderwolf Cavalry meta where people actually had to start fielding Space Wolf models.

Many people did a really similar thing when Blood Angels were powerful.

I'm never going to claim that a powerful Grey Knight meta or a powerful Thunderwolf Cav meta is pretty much the same as those metas, but I've got a hard time feeling much sympathy for marines being "terrible" during the Long Fang/Razorback/Grey Hunters meta or the BA Rhino Rush meta...because you could just declare them as the other set of better rules without having to change a single model.

If they came out with Codex: Schmorks and it had all the same units as Orks but with better stats, and they left Orks in the index forever, I'd be pretty unjustified in complaining that I am a Codex Orks player and MY rules are terrible, only Shmorks are OP!

After all, when you're saying that Eldar are OP, exactly how much credence do you lend to people who say "no only Alaitoc is OP I'm a Biel-Tan player and my guys suck, zero lists in competitive games so far!"

I think vanilla marines were far more fearsome in 3rd than in 5th. 5th ed brought lists like 16 chimeras, and vanilla marines didn't have the AT to knock them out.

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Scotsmen left out an important group.

Perpetual marine haters - They literally seek out posts about marines to undermine how bad they suck. Probably because they feel their army is historically worse off than marines. When In fact - marines have been near the bottom in terms of power in every edition relying on gimmicks to stay relevant with horrendously over-costed units in a game that is designed to make their units irrelevant. Typically they play orks or imperial guard almost exclusively.

That's right. How dare they fail to take into account the DEU canon that the poster hails from that informs the nature of their reality and determines the location of the goalposts of a given discussion.

Pro tip: if you're looking to construct an ad hominem line of attack on me specifically, it's not a smart idea to try and figure out "my army". As people from most of the tactics threads have learned, I've been in this hobby for 15+ years, and I play or have played nearly everything. Including marines. I just base my observations on relative faction power on a basis of reality that seems to be shared by a larger number of people.

Also, it may be possible to determine (maybe by looking at titles of posts) whether you are in fact being followed around by a posse of people aiming to attack Space Marine threads, or whether threads might become Space Marine threads when you enter them. Hypothetically of course.

Can you point out directly where I was deliberately targeting you with any of that? I too have been in the hobby for approximately the same amount of time and play a number of armies. I can tell you without a doubt that space marines have been the worst army I have owned in every edition I have played and it's been getting progressively worse since 4th eddition. In 7th They got Gladius which was silly but if that amount of silliness went to any other army it would have been a lot worse. Like - Imagine breachers with free devilfish...Imagine Wraithgaurd with free wave serpents or veterans with free chimeras...That kind of stuff would have been better than ynnari.

The core units in the space marine codex are terrible. They have always been terrible. I don't mean average ether - terrible. There isn't a single space marine option I would take over something else in another codex - they have had some OP forge world entries but who hasn't?

I mean. Dark Eldar, Necrons, Orks, Nids, Admech, Harlequins etc...? Forgeworld pretty much only makes rules for three factions and then like 3-4 other things for every other faction in the game. The odds of getting something good are pretty slim if you're not Marines, CSM, or Guard just because there's so little of it. The one sisters thing is good I think, the eldar stuff is solidly terrible now but was good at one point, and the 3 tau things are ok. But to my knowledge the Necron Ork and Dark Eldar stuff has always been basically crap. Unless you think an alternate list that let you run the super powerhouse unit the Deff Dread as the troop for your ork army is super broken.

Yes, right, marines are terrible, I know your shtick.

the_scotsman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
SW have been far more consistent than vanilla marines.

This is definitely true. However for a ton of that time when Space Wolves were more powerful, I'm talking most of fifth, the units that were strong for them were just the very same units available in the marine 'dex, but better. It was extremely (and I mean almost universally) common practice for folks in the period of "lazplazrazspam plus Grey Hunters plus Long Fangs" to simply take their marine army, however they were painted, and declare them "space wolves." Pretty much in exactly the same way people currently declare all their Eldar to be Alaitoc. Same models, extra rules for free. It wasn't until the big Thunderwolf Cavalry meta where people actually had to start fielding Space Wolf models.

Many people did a really similar thing when Blood Angels were powerful.

I'm never going to claim that a powerful Grey Knight meta or a powerful Thunderwolf Cav meta is pretty much the same as those metas, but I've got a hard time feeling much sympathy for marines being "terrible" during the Long Fang/Razorback/Grey Hunters meta or the BA Rhino Rush meta...because you could just declare them as the other set of better rules without having to change a single model.

If they came out with Codex: Schmorks and it had all the same units as Orks but with better stats, and they left Orks in the index forever, I'd be pretty unjustified in complaining that I am a Codex Orks player and MY rules are terrible, only Shmorks are OP!

After all, when you're saying that Eldar are OP, exactly how much credence do you lend to people who say "no only Alaitoc is OP I'm a Biel-Tan player and my guys suck, zero lists in competitive games so far!"

Eldar units don't suck though - their bonuses are just insult to injury. I play Ulthwe and it's nearly as brutal as aloitoc and in a lot of cases it's better. My friend plays Siamhan which is actually the eldar spears that are recking people in tornaments because they can advance and charge and their autarch has an incredibly beast relic - plus their wave serpents can make really long charges with reroll charge and that ruins peoples day. Space marines have a lot of the same army traits as eldar but it does not win them games because their units suck and they have no stratagems and their army traits don't affect their tanks. It's all about the units.

Scottsmen are you not familiar with figures of speech?

Base marines were probably overpowered for most of 3rd ed, but I think it's gone back to almost 2nd ed levels of futility. We can debate the time in between, of course.

the_scotsman wrote:

If they came out with Codex: Schmorks and it had all the same units as Orks but with better stats, and they left Orks in the index forever, I'd be pretty unjustified in complaining that I am a Codex Orks player and MY rules are terrible, only Shmorks are OP!

After all, when you're saying that Eldar are OP, exactly how much credence do you lend to people who say "no only Alaitoc is OP I'm a Biel-Tan player and my guys suck, zero lists in competitive games so far!"

I will be quite happy when the game finds a happy middle ground between the overly fractured Imperium and the factions that lack any variants. Seeing both sides move towards the middle is one of my favorite bits of 8th edition.

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
SW have been far more consistent than vanilla marines.

This is definitely true. However for a ton of that time when Space Wolves were more powerful, I'm talking most of fifth, the units that were strong for them were just the very same units available in the marine 'dex, but better. It was extremely (and I mean almost universally) common practice for folks in the period of "lazplazrazspam plus Grey Hunters plus Long Fangs" to simply take their marine army, however they were painted, and declare them "space wolves." Pretty much in exactly the same way people currently declare all their Eldar to be Alaitoc. Same models, extra rules for free. It wasn't until the big Thunderwolf Cavalry meta where people actually had to start fielding Space Wolf models.

Many people did a really similar thing when Blood Angels were powerful.

I'm never going to claim that a powerful Grey Knight meta or a powerful Thunderwolf Cav meta is pretty much the same as those metas, but I've got a hard time feeling much sympathy for marines being "terrible" during the Long Fang/Razorback/Grey Hunters meta or the BA Rhino Rush meta...because you could just declare them as the other set of better rules without having to change a single model.

If they came out with Codex: Schmorks and it had all the same units as Orks but with better stats, and they left Orks in the index forever, I'd be pretty unjustified in complaining that I am a Codex Orks player and MY rules are terrible, only Shmorks are OP!

After all, when you're saying that Eldar are OP, exactly how much credence do you lend to people who say "no only Alaitoc is OP I'm a Biel-Tan player and my guys suck, zero lists in competitive games so far!"

Eldar units don't suck though - their bonuses are just insult to injury. I play Ulthwe and it's nearly as brutal as aloitoc and in a lot of cases it's better. My friend plays Siamhan which is actually the eldar spears that are recking people in tornaments because they can advance and charge and their autarch has an incredibly beast relic - plus their wave serpents can make really long charges with reroll charge and that ruins peoples day. Space marines have a lot of the same army traits as eldar but it does not win them games because their units suck and they have no stratagems and their army traits don't affect their tanks. It's all about the units.

Scottsmen are you not familiar with figures of speech?

The Saim-Hann shining spears used in tournament Eldar lists are Ynnari, not Eldar, which is a COMPLETELY different army. No similarities at all. Completely different. Eldar aren't OP they're just gimmicks tacked onto OP eldar soup lists.

Prove me wrong. Make sure you provide data or else I'm going to say you didn't provide data and disregard you, and make sure that data is from my particular playgroup and not from tournaments, because tournaments use houserules and are obviously not useful.

You have to do that, or I am right and Eldar are the worst army in the game.

Well not completely different. It's about the equivelent of SM + IG. But if the army functioned only because of IG's special rules.

(FTR, I am being sarcastic. I do understand that a Ynnari/Eldar soup list is 99.9% Eldar units and I consider it a pure Eldar list. Ynnari is just a really strong, very awkward to get at army trait available to all three eldar factions)

the_scotsman wrote:
(FTR, I am being sarcastic. I do understand that a Ynnari/Eldar soup list is 99.9% Eldar units and I consider it a pure Eldar list. Ynnari is just a really strong, very awkward to get at army trait available to all three eldar factions)

I don't disagree with that. Ynnari is a nice addition to an eldar list but it's far from required. It's a give and take situation. You get bonus damage at the lost of a defensive trait and the ability to advance and shoot assault weapons with no penalty. For a unit like spears - IMO they are better as CWE (esp after the beta deep strike rules). For a unit like reapers - they are better as ynnari (but they are still a lot easier to kill without fnp or -1 to hit.) I consider the ynnari list to be bugged though - there is no reason ynnari units should retain their faction keywords or be able to take eldar relics. The only reason the army is more successful than CWE in tournaments is because of the keyword interactions between ynnari and CWE codex. When the Ynnari codex comes out it's pretty much assumed this will be fixed.

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
(FTR, I am being sarcastic. I do understand that a Ynnari/Eldar soup list is 99.9% Eldar units and I consider it a pure Eldar list. Ynnari is just a really strong, very awkward to get at army trait available to all three eldar factions)

I don't disagree with that. Ynnari is a nice addition to an eldar list but it's far from required. It's a give and take situation. You get bonus damage at the lost of a defensive trait and the ability to advance and shoot assault weapons with no penalty. For a unit like spears - IMO they are better as CWE (esp after the beta deep strike rules). For a unit like reapers - they are better as ynnari (but they are still a lot easier to kill without fnp or -1 to hit.) I consider the ynnari list to be bugged though - there is no reason ynnari units should retain their faction keywords or be able to take eldar relics. The only reason the army is more successful than CWE in tournaments is because of the keyword interactions between ynnari and CWE codex. When the Ynnari codex comes out it's pretty much assumed this will be fixed.

What does the beta deep strike rule have to do with shining spears? The reason they're better as Ynnari is because you can pop the Saim-Hann stratagem and then charge and attack twice. Do you need CWE to get them to move twice with Quicken or something - weren't you just saying in another thread that a 22" move gets you into combat 100% always guaranteed?

You can consider it "bugged" if you want but it is exactly how the stratagem rules work. I can take a regular Heretic Astartes detachment and take some of my guys as Emperors Children and some others as Iron Warriors and get access to their stratagems. A ynnari detachment is exactly that, an Asuryani keyword that then exchanges that for the Ynnari keyword and keeps the <craftworld> keyword that you select. It's exactly how the rule works from the FAQ, there's zero ambiguity at this point.

You might as well consider it bugged that Guard in Genestealer Cult detachments dont get to pick <regiments>, or that <chapter> doesn't apply to vehicles. As you like to say, you can houserule if you like...

Humm since you can't really alpha strike with deep strike spears anymore and you have to start on the board - a defensive buff if more useful that the chance to attack twice. Since you are more than likely going to need to advance to get into CC - the no penalty to advance is also a really nice thing to have.

Ultimately - Ynarri will probably get a lot of the stratagems in the CWE codex anyways. I seriously doubt they will have access to their craftworld specific traits.

If you can't see how it is obviously unfair to have ynnari have access to chapter specific traits I will explain it to you. All other armies have to have pure detachments in order to maintain their detachment buff - ynnari maintain army trait even with multiple army keywords in them.

So ynnari gets to pick and chose in a single detachment whatever relic/or stratagem best suits a unit all in a single detachment. That's not going on anywhere in the game - I'm not sure GW even understands how this works. It's nothing like chapter tactics sucking (they literally spell out what units can use them - it is intended). GSC also has their own specific armies abilities - they should not maintain AM traits or be able to use their stratagems - this is how it should work

 Xenomancers wrote:
Humm since you can't really alpha strike with deep strike spears anymore and you have to start on the board - a defensive buff if more useful that the chance to attack twice. Since you are more than likely going to need to advance to get into CC - the no penalty to advance is also a really nice thing to have.

Ultimately - Ynarri will probably get a lot of the stratagems in the CWE codex anyways. I seriously doubt they will have access to their craftworld specific traits.

If you can't see how it is obviously unfair to have ynnari have access to chapter specific traits I will explain it to you. All other armies have to have pure detachments in order to maintain their detachment buff - ynnari maintain army trait even with multiple army keywords in them.

So ynnari gets to pick and chose in a single detachment whatever relic/or stratagem best suits a unit all in a single detachment. That's not going on anywhere in the game - I'm not sure GW even understands how this works. It's nothing like chapter tactics sucking (they literally spell out what units can use them - it is intended). GSC also has their own specific armies abilities - they should not maintain AM traits or be able to use their stratagems - this is how it should work

Obviously Unfair is different from Not Working As GW Intends it to Work.

it is obviously unfair that space marines dont get CTs on vehicles. But GW has released like 10 codexes now where marines dont get traits on vehicles.

As it stands in the game Ynnari is not a <keyword> and SfD is not an army trait, it is a special rule, like Rising Crescendo, And They Shall Know No fear, or Power from Pain. if I make a mixed Drukhari detachment, I can choose whatever stratagems and relics I like from the various <subfactions> just like a Ynnari detachment, and I still get Power from Pain. That's how the game works, the only difference youre perceiving is the strength of the ability, which is not an "its bugged" issue.

Ynnari, by the rules of the game, have no Army Trait, just a very powerful army wide special rule. Their detachment works identically to a subfaction-less Asuryani or Drukhari detachment otherwise.

the_scotsman wrote:

 ShredderShards wrote:
I'm not game to take the bait that is getting into an argument about it with some of the more vocal people on here, but I just want to say that I've seen way too many threads in my lifetime of people pretending Gladius wasn't a top tier formation. Why is it always one group of players so insistent on this fact...

You have to understand the canon of the Dakka Expanded Universe a little bit. When you read things by certain posters, you have to understand the perspective of the alternate reality that those posters exist in. You might read a post and say "wait, that has no bearing on objective reality" but remember this is the INTERNET, and everyone exists in their own reality (which you can't possibly disregard as unrealistic because You Dont Know Them)

Allow me to familiarize you with a few of the groups:

The Casual Police State Resistance: These players exist in a twisted universe where all tactical thought and competitive list-building has been banned with an irrevocable penalty of exile. Dakka is the only place where these poor individuals can exist in anonymity free of their oppressive overlords The Enforced Casual Gaming Group. If they were ever to display any hint of competitive acumen to this BeernPretzelstapo, they would be irrevocably exiled and unable to ever again play 40k (in fact, this may have already happened to some posters). Their only recourse is to attempt to spread the gospel of Why Powergaming Is Perfectly Good and Should Be Encouraged online, hoping one day to change the course of history.

The Eternal Victims of the Ninth Circle of Powergaming Hell: The mirror universe, if you will, of the Casual Police State, the Victims exist in an anarchic society where they have seen the utter collapse of any and all unspoken rules of conduct for gaming. They, alone in their world, adore and adhere to the fluff of their army, lovingly painting their collection which they slowly accumulate by saving up spare pennies scrounged from the couch cushions and found in the laundry. Once every decade when they can afford a GW kit, they assemble and permanently glue it based solely on the appearance and aesthetic of the model, knowing it would be dishonorable to think any impure thoughts about tactical use or in-game power while creating a work of art. Sadly, their gaming group does not share this sentiment. They ruthlessly exploit every rules loophole and broken unit combo solely for the joy of crushing the fluff and dreams of the Victim.

The Virtuous Paragon: Surrounded by a cackling legion of negative jackals who complain and jeer endlessly at every effort by GW to improve the game, the Virtuous Paragon must resort to vigiliante-style positivity online. He has seen his playerbase cut down from thousands of joyful, jovial lovers of the Great Games Workshop Hobby down to a mere handful of unjustifiably negative and bitter complainers. He is the last of his kind. He must warn those who may seek to create a community elsewhere, and he must take to the internet to do Battle with those who would ceaselessly kvetch and moan about every single problem with the game.

The Persecuted Faction Die-Hard: Similar to the Victim, but distinct in that this poster has chosen just one single faction to dedicate his life and existence to, and his evil gaming group have taken to exploiting every Unfair and Cruel counter that may exist within the game to destroy them. If they play a Marine faction, every game is against 500 plasma guns and army-wide AP-4. If they play orks, impenetrable gunlines bristling with high-rate of fire anti infantry weapons tear apart their army in two turns. All theoretical opponents possess all possible countermeasures to any suggested tactic that might be proposed or any change in strategy that could be conceived. it doesn't matter what some tournament players have managed, THEIRS is the worst faction in the game, and any that disagree are clearly and terribly wrong.

Damn, I should have checked this thread again sooner! What an incredible reply lol

Xenomancers wrote:Scotsmen left out an important group.

Perpetual marine haters - They literally seek out posts about marines to undermine how bad they suck. Probably because they feel their army is historically worse off than marines. When In fact - marines have been near the bottom in terms of power in every edition relying on gimmicks to stay relevant with horrendously over-costed units in a game that is designed to make their units irrelevant. Typically they play orks or imperial guard almost exclusively.

Ah nah, I think this is probably more your persecution complex, and sounds like its directly tied into that final group he mentioned

Martel732 wrote:
I know it doesn't mean a thing to most posters, but I'm still a bit traumatized by how bad vanilla/DA/BA were in 2nd. Most are probably leaving this data point out, but I can't.

2nd edition was 20+ years ago. Don't you think it is time to get over it?

I don't really get this mentality of picking a faction back in 1995 and then deciding you shall play it, and lament its performance every year thereafter, down until the breaking of the world.

Tyel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I know it doesn't mean a thing to most posters, but I'm still a bit traumatized by how bad vanilla/DA/BA were in 2nd. Most are probably leaving this data point out, but I can't.

2nd edition was 20+ years ago. Don't you think it is time to get over it?

I don't really get this mentality of picking a faction back in 1995 and then deciding you shall play it, and lament its performance every year thereafter, down until the breaking of the world.

Especially considering each one of those factions has been a top tier codex in at least one edition since 2nd. Big time persecution complex.

Leave your arm chair psychology at the door. I do not think i'm being persecuted. I just think gw can't do math.

Martel732 wrote:
Leave your arm chair psychology at the door. I do not think i'm being persecuted.

You have said you still feel traumatized from 2nd, which was what, two decades ago? The fact that you complain about marines because of that trauma but seem to be completely unaffected by the amazing vanilla marines books that came after, not to mention specifically for you when BA had a very strong codex in 5th.

If you're still bitching about marines being bad from 2nd, its because you're looking to be a victim.

The simple, undeniable truth of the matter is that marines, either as vanilla marines, or by and large the power armour forces of the Imperium, have been treated exceptionally well in rule, model, and fluff support, rivaled only by Eldar in rule support.

I just think gw can't do math.

Can't disagree there. Their ability to balance leaves much to be desired.

 Blacksails wrote:
The simple, undeniable truth of the matter is that marines, either as vanilla marines, or by and large the power armour forces of the Imperium, have been treated exceptionally well

Correction: marines, and only marines, both loyalist and traitor.

The other power armour factions consist of sisters, inquisition (sort of), and the SoS - and their combined releases over the past decade don't hold a candle to any one of the recent chaos or loyalist marine releases.

Doubling down, huh? I'm not a victim, either. Just stop.

 Blacksails wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Leave your arm chair psychology at the door. I do not think i'm being persecuted.

You have said you still feel traumatized from 2nd, which was what, two decades ago? The fact that you complain about marines because of that trauma but seem to be completely unaffected by the amazing vanilla marines books that came after, not to mention specifically for you when BA had a very strong codex in 5th.

If you're still bitching about marines being bad from 2nd, its because you're looking to be a victim.

The simple, undeniable truth of the matter is that marines, either as vanilla marines, or by and large the power armour forces of the Imperium, have been treated exceptionally well in rule, model, and fluff support, rivaled only by Eldar in rule support.

I just think gw can't do math.

Can't disagree there. Their ability to balance leaves much to be desired.

Agreed, someone who thinks that marines are perennial bottom feeder armies every edition clearly hasnt played other armies like orks, or cant make a decent list

 Vaktathi wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Thats never really been their thing, just like IG has never had bikers or beastly CC commanders. Thats what Powerklaws and Tank Hammas are for (though some assistance in their use could certainly have been warranted).

Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.

Lootas were absolute murder in 7th were they?

A unit of 5 Lootas (A Depleted squad) can dish out 10 shots on average, for 3.33 hit and against AV 11 that is 1/6th chance to Glance and a 1/3rd chance to Pen. They didn't have AP2 or 1 so no + to explode which means ZERO chance to kill it outright, So when you say they were murder what you mean is that they were capable of inflicting 1 HP of damage a turn with 5 of them.

Lets put that in some context. While they give up the 1/9 chance on any successful hit to explode that a Lascannon enjoys vs AV11, that depleted 5man unit is exceeding a trio of BS3 Lascannons for HP damage output by almost a third (1.66 HP's for the Lootas, 1.25 HP's for the Lascannons, and you sure weren't getting a trio of those for 75pts even for Guard), and odds are you'll kill the target through HP loss by the time you'd land an Explodes result with the Lascannons most of the time either way. Compared to an IG Heavy Weapons squad with autocannons for the same cost as 5 Lootas, the guardsmen are easier to kill and break, and are only averaging only 3 hits a turn vs the Lootas 3.33, and are more vulnerable to S6+ weaponry (a single S6+ hit forces an Ld7 break test), while 75pts gets you naked 5 Chaos Havocs wondering who looted their autocannons, a naked Predator Destructor, a "we forgot how to shoot at the ground" Hydra, a couple of Autocannon sentinels (not quite two armored ones), half a Russ Exterminator, Two thirds of a Rifleman Dread? Maybe two MP crisis suits or a single scatterlaserspamming War Walker?

Yeah the lack of Mob Rule sucked, but when they got to do their thing they were great long range fire support.

Conversely a unit of 15 Lootas was capable of putting out 30 shots on average, 10 hits and 5 glances/pens on an AV 11 vehicle, unless they had any number of bonuses like cover night fighting, or invuln saves. Against an AV12 vehicle that went down to 2.5 on average

Against AV12 that should average to 3.33 (30 shots, 10 hits, 1.66 glances, 1.66 pens, 3.33 total HP's), either way though we can average to 3. This means that, barring cover saves (which affects everything), on average such a unit would kill any light or medium 3HP vehicle (80%+ of vehicles in the game) in a single round of fire at up to 48". Relative to most other autocannon-esque platforms that's a pretty good damage output for the points invested, and, with snapshots, had more mitigation to the accuracy loss than other armies when moving.

Damn it you are right, i forgot that Lootas were kings of the battlefield and were used every single game by Ork players who were winning events because there damage output was AMAZING! wait...thats right....that never happened. Sorry but lootas sucked in 7th, but so did the entire codex so it didn't stand out as bad compared to everything else. Lootas are as durable as guardsmen, T4 6+ save is about equal to T3 5+ save. As for leadership issues, lootas suffered horribly since Mob rule didn't help them and I believe they were Leadership 7.

So yeah compared to other platforms for Autocannon style damage, lootas were ok for damage out put, but they folded as soon as they got shot at and everyone knew that. I stopped taking mine to competitive events because my opponents would just use 1-2 ignores cover weapons and kill ALL my models because 6+ saves were basically useless against ignores cover weapons.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Thats never really been their thing, just like IG has never had bikers or beastly CC commanders. Thats what Powerklaws and Tank Hammas are for (though some assistance in their use could certainly have been warranted).

Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.

Lootas were absolute murder in 7th were they?

A unit of 5 Lootas (A Depleted squad) can dish out 10 shots on average, for 3.33 hit and against AV 11 that is 1/6th chance to Glance and a 1/3rd chance to Pen. They didn't have AP2 or 1 so no + to explode which means ZERO chance to kill it outright, So when you say they were murder what you mean is that they were capable of inflicting 1 HP of damage a turn with 5 of them.

Lets put that in some context. While they give up the 1/9 chance on any successful hit to explode that a Lascannon enjoys vs AV11, that depleted 5man unit is exceeding a trio of BS3 Lascannons for HP damage output by almost a third (1.66 HP's for the Lootas, 1.25 HP's for the Lascannons, and you sure weren't getting a trio of those for 75pts even for Guard), and odds are you'll kill the target through HP loss by the time you'd land an Explodes result with the Lascannons most of the time either way. Compared to an IG Heavy Weapons squad with autocannons for the same cost as 5 Lootas, the guardsmen are easier to kill and break, and are only averaging only 3 hits a turn vs the Lootas 3.33, and are more vulnerable to S6+ weaponry (a single S6+ hit forces an Ld7 break test), while 75pts gets you naked 5 Chaos Havocs wondering who looted their autocannons, a naked Predator Destructor, a "we forgot how to shoot at the ground" Hydra, a couple of Autocannon sentinels (not quite two armored ones), half a Russ Exterminator, Two thirds of a Rifleman Dread? Maybe two MP crisis suits or a single scatterlaserspamming War Walker?

Yeah the lack of Mob Rule sucked, but when they got to do their thing they were great long range fire support.

Conversely a unit of 15 Lootas was capable of putting out 30 shots on average, 10 hits and 5 glances/pens on an AV 11 vehicle, unless they had any number of bonuses like cover night fighting, or invuln saves. Against an AV12 vehicle that went down to 2.5 on average

Against AV12 that should average to 3.33 (30 shots, 10 hits, 1.66 glances, 1.66 pens, 3.33 total HP's), either way though we can average to 3. This means that, barring cover saves (which affects everything), on average such a unit would kill any light or medium 3HP vehicle (80%+ of vehicles in the game) in a single round of fire at up to 48". Relative to most other autocannon-esque platforms that's a pretty good damage output for the points invested, and, with snapshots, had more mitigation to the accuracy loss than other armies when moving.

Damn it you are right, i forgot that Lootas were kings of the battlefield and were used every single game by Ork players who were winning events because there damage output was AMAZING! wait...thats right....that never happened.

I dont recall ever making such a statement. Such was never my argument. Not sure where that came from.

My point was that Lootas were effective light/medium vehicle killers. Nothing more.

Sorry but lootas sucked in 7th, but so did the entire codex so it didn't stand out as bad compared to everything else. Lootas are as durable as guardsmen, T4 6+ save is about equal to T3 5+ save. As for leadership issues, lootas suffered horribly since Mob rule didn't help them and I believe they were Leadership 7.

So yeah compared to other platforms for Autocannon style damage, lootas were ok for damage out put, but they folded as soon as they got shot at and everyone knew that.

So did just about all those other platforms I listed, at least on a point for point basis with Lootas.

Yeah, they werent Scatterbikes, but they were hardly garbage either.

I stopped taking mine to competitive events because my opponents would just use 1-2 ignores cover weapons and kill ALL my models because 6+ saves were basically useless against ignores cover weapons.

same with anything that didnt sport a 3+ save, I dont know what makes Lootas so unique there, especially when they had more range than most such Ignores Cover platforms (save for DS flamers and the like obviously). Glass cannons sure, but workable ones.

Im not saying that Lootas were gonna save Orks against a Decurion, Gladius, or Scatterbikes and Wraithknights. They were not. My point was that, at least for light and medium vehicles, Lootas were effective AT, not that they were a crutch to deadlift Orks to victory over the absurdity that reigned in 7th.

You called them "Absolute Murder" I believe, I was just pointing out that they were not in fact "absolute Murder" they were a good autocannon platform but Autocannons were by far not the kings of the battlefield in 7th, and while they did match IG for damage output point for point that wasn't saying much either since in 7th Guard were crap as well.

SemperMortis wrote:
You called them "Absolute Murder" I believe

Against light and medium vehicles.

Which I believe we showed, a unit of 10 would wipe most any AV10-12 vehicle in a single round of fire typically, which, for 150pts, outside of the most ridiculous things like Scatterbikes, was great firepower against such targets.

I was just pointing out that they were not in fact "absolute Murder" they were a good autocannon platform but Autocannons were by far not the kings of the battlefield in 7th

S6/7 weapons were pretty big in 7E, able to wound infantry on 2's and strip HP's through volume of firepower, that was a big grinding point about the edition, but ultimately I was never making the point that Lootas or Autocannons were the kings of the 7E battlefield in and of themselves, only that Lootas were really good at killing light and medium vehicles.

 Blacksails wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Leave your arm chair psychology at the door. I do not think i'm being persecuted.

You have said you still feel traumatized from 2nd, which was what, two decades ago? The fact that you complain about marines because of that trauma but seem to be completely unaffected by the amazing vanilla marines books that came after, not to mention specifically for you when BA had a very strong codex in 5th.

The 3rd ed codex was rocking as well.

To be fair, Lootas were absolute murder. If a 7th list was built with them and other threats like them, it would destroy things.

Unfortunately, nothing else in the book really synergizes with them or has a similar threat profile.

So Lootas were murder, but lists that included Lootas got murdered.

Bharring wrote:
To be fair, Lootas were absolute murder. If a 7th list was built with them and other threats like them, it would destroy things.

Unfortunately, nothing else in the book really synergizes with them or has a similar threat profile.

So Lootas were murder, but lists that included Lootas got murdered.

....Except against any vehicles with cover/armor saves Those 10 lootas average 20 shots, less then 7 hits and against AV12 they managed a grand total of 2 Pens/glances with no chance to explode. if they get a save of any kind its even lower. And what AV10-12 vehicles do you know of that cost 150pts? Rhinos (AV 11) were what? 40-50pts? A trukk was 35pts, so they were really good at killing 50pt vehicles. So 10 lootas (140pts) were able to reliably kill 50pts of a vehicle.

And against infantry like Space Marines? 10 lootas = 20 shots, 7 hits and 6 wounds for a grand total of 2 dead Space Marines. No, they were only good against AV10-11 and nothing else really...unless you had really expensive models with a 4+ save that needed to die


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And of course that isn't even touching on the fact that if any unit so much as sneezed at them and they weren't in cover they were dying in droves, or if they were in cover you just needed to hit them with any number of ignores cover weapons and watch them die.

SemperMortis wrote:

And of course that isn't even touching on the fact that if any unit so much as sneezed at them and they weren't in cover they were dying in droves, or if they were in cover you just needed to hit them with any number of ignores cover weapons and watch them die.

Or any number of anything to get them to fail morale

SemperMortis wrote:

Bharring wrote:
To be fair, Lootas were absolute murder. If a 7th list was built with them and other threats like them, it would destroy things.

Unfortunately, nothing else in the book really synergizes with them or has a similar threat profile.

So Lootas were murder, but lists that included Lootas got murdered.

....Except against any vehicles with cover/armor saves Those 10 lootas average 20 shots, less then 7 hits and against AV12 they managed a grand total of 2 Pens/glances with no chance to explode. if they get a save of any kind its even lower.

Which, if you look at the math, isn't bad at all, unless you're only comparing to the absolute most broken units.

Lets take a Trilas predator against an AV12 vehicle in 4+ cover, we get 2.2 hits, 1.48 glances/pen's, 0.74 HP's, and one explodes result about every 11 rounds of fire.

Ten Lootas against an AV12 vehicle in cover are averaging 20 shots, 6.66 hits, 2.22 glances/pens, 1.11HP's after cover.

So the Lootas are inflicting over 50% more HP damage in exchange for giving up one Explodes result every two games. The chance to explode is mostly a red-herring, most weapons couldn't explode vehicles, and of those that could, invariably the chance was so low, and the number of HP's most vehicles had was so low, that it rarely came up. With only 3HP's on most vehicles, and only 2HP's on many AV10/11 vehicles, Explodes results were too rare to count for much on any sort of consistent basis. Unless we're talking something like a drop podded Sternguard melta squad, but that's another matter. HP removal was the name of the game, and Lootas were really good at that.

And what AV10-12 vehicles do you know of that cost 150pts? Rhinos (AV 11) were what? 40-50pts? A trukk was 35pts, so they were really good at killing 50pt vehicles. So 10 lootas (140pts) were able to reliably kill 50pts of a vehicle.

These AV values compose 80%+ of the vehicles in the game. Everything from 35pt Rhinos to 200+pt Stormravens, and everything in between. Dreadnoughts, Basilisks, Hellhounds, Fire Prisms, Hunters, Raiders, Chimeras, Killa Kans, Defilers, Helldrakes, Taurox Primes, Stormravens, Ravagers Wave Serpents, Stalkers, Forgefiends, Devilfish, Wyverns, Manticores, Falcons, Night Scythes, etc.

And against infantry like Space Marines? 10 lootas = 20 shots, 7 hits and 6 wounds for a grand total of 2 dead Space Marines.

So, about as many as Leman Russ Exterminator sporting triple heavy bolters and a twin linked 4 shot autocannon for the same price (debatable whether a single AV14/13/10 tank or 10 T4 6+ infantry are more survivable in 7E), or one with an actual AP3 battlecannon given the variability involved in that thing

And of course that isn't even touching on the fact that if any unit so much as sneezed at them and they weren't in cover they were dying in droves or if they were in cover you just needed to hit them with any number of ignores cover weapons and watch them die.

Same thing applied to basically all infantry in 7E, there's nothing unique about Lootas there.

What I meant was that, if properly complemented and supported in the right army build, that's a scary threat, and should be one of many with a similar profile. Glass cannon, and can pack quite a punch over a long range. So if there are lots of threats, the opponent needs to pick which threats they would shoot at.

Unfortunately, Orkz don't/didn't have units that can complement the Lootas. So the enemy can just blast the one threat off the table. Well, 3, you could take 3 squads - which is small enough that the enemy could just blast them away. And nothing else in your list had anywhere near that threat potential.

S7 was scary for AV12 and below. It wounded almost everything but vehicles and MCs on 2s. Piled wounds even on high-T MCs (which typically had decend ++ saves, so spammed high-S bad-AP was great in those days).

But how are some glass cannon backfielders going to complement a durable mob of da Boyz or high-AV vehicles or high-T Bikes? They don't.

 Vaktathi wrote:


Lets take a Trilas predator against an AV12 vehicle in 4+ cover, we get 2.2 hits, 1.48 glances/pen's, 0.74 HP's, and one explodes result about every 11 rounds of fire.

Ten Lootas against an AV12 vehicle in cover are averaging 20 shots, 6.66 hits, 2.22 glances/pens, 1.11HP's after cover.

So the Lootas are inflicting over 50% more HP damage in exchange for giving up one Explodes result every two games. The chance to explode is mostly a red-herring, most weapons couldn't explode vehicles, and of those that could, invariably the chance was so low, and the number of HP's most vehicles had was so low, that it rarely came up. With only 3HP's on most vehicles, and only 2HP's on many AV10/11 vehicles, Explodes results were too rare to count for much on any sort of consistent basis. Unless we're talking something like a drop podded Sternguard melta squad, but that's another matter. HP removal was the name of the game, and Lootas were really good at that.

No, they are inflicting 50% more HP damage in exchange for giving up 1 explodes every 2 games AND durability, but that doesn't factor into your calculations because its drastically in favor of the pred right?

These AV values compose 80%+ of the vehicles in the game. Everything from 35pt Rhinos to 200+pt Stormravens, and everything in between. Dreadnoughts, Basilisks, Hellhounds, Fire Prisms, Hunters, Raiders, Chimeras, Killa Kans, Defilers, Helldrakes, Taurox Primes, Stormravens, Ravagers Wave Serpents, Stalkers, Forgefiends, Devilfish, Wyverns, Manticores, Falcons, Night Scythes, etc.

All the flyers you just named are also only being hit on a 6+, Nobody even took half the vehicles in competitive lists because they were crap, Kanz for example, and of the remainder, most were significantly long ranged and sat in cover all game OR had a built in invuln. Again, they were good at killing light vehicles....that didn't have a save, so those 30-60pt vehicles were dying turn 1. But so were the lootas.

So, about as many as Leman Russ Exterminator sporting triple heavy bolters and a twin linked 4 shot autocannon for the same price (debatable whether a single AV14/13/10 tank or 10 T4 6+ infantry are more survivable in 7E), or one with an actual AP3 battlecannon given the variability involved in that thing

How about versus a true anti-infantry weapon then instead of yet another example of a unit not taken in competitive lists that won tournaments. Hell, even IG guardsmen for the same points cost put out a lot more damage then that.

Same thing applied to basically all infantry in 7E, there's nothing unique about Lootas there.

Really? I don't remember space Marines, necrons or even eldar warriors folding nearly as rapidly as a 6+ save T4 model that costs about the same as a tactical Space Marine.


You keep comparing lootas to crappy units and then going "see they were awesome". yes compared to other crap they were ok. Compare them to a good unit and magically they suck. Compared to almost any other factions premier anti-vehicle weapons and they sucked, compared to almost any other factions premier anti-infantry weapons and they sucked. They were expensive and lacked meaningful damage output beyond a single turn or two, and even then only if they rolled average or above average and didn't die before they got a chance to shoot, and since there were no other long ranged threats, lootas tended to receive more then their fair share of dakka on turn 1.

How do they compare to Scat bikes for Eldar, how about sternguard for Marines or even centurions? how about necron infantry who could kill a Land raider faster then Lootas could kill a predator. How about vs tau broadsides? who wins those contests?

SemperMortis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


Lets take a Trilas predator against an AV12 vehicle in 4+ cover, we get 2.2 hits, 1.48 glances/pen's, 0.74 HP's, and one explodes result about every 11 rounds of fire.

Ten Lootas against an AV12 vehicle in cover are averaging 20 shots, 6.66 hits, 2.22 glances/pens, 1.11HP's after cover.

So the Lootas are inflicting over 50% more HP damage in exchange for giving up one Explodes result every two games. The chance to explode is mostly a red-herring, most weapons couldn't explode vehicles, and of those that could, invariably the chance was so low, and the number of HP's most vehicles had was so low, that it rarely came up. With only 3HP's on most vehicles, and only 2HP's on many AV10/11 vehicles, Explodes results were too rare to count for much on any sort of consistent basis. Unless we're talking something like a drop podded Sternguard melta squad, but that's another matter. HP removal was the name of the game, and Lootas were really good at that.

No, they are inflicting 50% more HP damage in exchange for giving up 1 explodes every 2 games AND durability, but that doesn't factor into your calculations because its drastically in favor of the pred right?

Well, again, my original statement was in regards to their ability to kill light and medium vehicles, but even getting into durability, a single AV13/11/10 3HP vehicle in 7E wasn't particularly more resilient than a unit of 10 T4 6+sv infantry. It's got decent front armor, but not so impressive side armor, only 3 "wounds", can be crippled or killed by damage table results, and has no armor or invul save, it's not exactly the sturdiest thing in a the universe, especially in 7E where so much stuff ignored AV or T or just had gobs of volume of fire. The tank doesn't have to worry about Morale and has higher Toughness. The Lootas have far more wounds and don't have to deal with a damage table or facing concerns. Neither has a meaningful armor or invul save. What's more durable in 7E? Broadly I think neither.

These AV values compose 80%+ of the vehicles in the game. Everything from 35pt Rhinos to 200+pt Stormravens, and everything in between. Dreadnoughts, Basilisks, Hellhounds, Fire Prisms, Hunters, Raiders, Chimeras, Killa Kans, Defilers, Helldrakes, Taurox Primes, Stormravens, Ravagers Wave Serpents, Stalkers, Forgefiends, Devilfish, Wyverns, Manticores, Falcons, Night Scythes, etc.

All the flyers you just named are also only being hit on a 6+

Sure, but that's mitigated much more in the Orks favor than for other factions, as being naturally built around BS2 they had a lot more shots than other units when they're all hitting on 6's.

, Nobody even took half the vehicles in competitive lists because they were crap, Kanz for example,

Sure, not all of those were great competitively, but many were.

and of the remainder, most were significantly long ranged

The Lootas were outranged by few vehicles in this list to be fair.

and sat in cover all game

Sure, the enemy gets a say in some things, but that's not unique to Lootas.

OR had a built in invuln

Sure, but these were also the more expensive vehicles, a Defiler's got 4HP and a 5+ invul, but it's also like 205pts, A Forgefiend's sporting around at 175-200pts, yeah that tricksy Eldar tank has a 5+/Jink4+, but it's 150pts and broken as **** anyway.


Either way, there's a lot of AV10-12 units in the game that aren't just 35pt Rhinos.

So, about as many as Leman Russ Exterminator sporting triple heavy bolters and a twin linked 4 shot autocannon for the same price (debatable whether a single AV14/13/10 tank or 10 T4 6+ infantry are more survivable in 7E), or one with an actual AP3 battlecannon given the variability involved in that thing

How about versus a true anti-infantry weapon then instead of yet another example of a unit not taken in competitive lists that won tournaments.

I ran exterminators almost exclusively in 7E, hell I even won a couple of podunk local events with them. They were better anti-medium-tank than the battlecannon as volume of fire mattered more than Strength and the Battlecannon's ability to hurt bigger things than the Autocannons could was bad enough to not be worth trying if there was *anything* else to shoot at in most cases. Between cover, scatter, multi-wound models, and coherency spread, it's not like Battlecannon Russ tanks were terribly threatening to most of the metagame, certainly not Demolishers either. To say nothing of the fact that an Ordnance weapon would preclude effective usage of hull/sponson weapons.

There's the Eradicator, which gets to ignore cover, but is half the range of a Battlecannon, less than the the Lootas, is worthless against vehicles, and still suffers all the rest of the Battlecannon downsides.

About the only other option is the Punisher, which yes is quite a bit more effective against infantry, but lacks the ability to engage and defeat medium vehicles with the main armament, and has only half the range of the Exterminator/Lootas, it's a much more specialized platform.

Hell, even IG guardsmen for the same points cost put out a lot more damage then that.

Hrm, 10 Lootas average 20 shots with 6.66 hits and 5.55 wounds and 1.85 failed saves. 30 lasgun wielding guardsmen shooting at up to 24" gets 15 hits and 5 wounds and 1.66 failed saves. Only when we're talking at 12" and under do we see the Guardsmen pull ahead, getting 30 hits and 10 wounds and 3.33 failed saves. So, basically, yes, the guardsmen put out more damage point for point...when within imminent assault range at 12" and under. Beyond that at up to 48" across the board, the Lootas are better, far beyond the range of what those guardsmen can threaten.

Same thing applied to basically all infantry in 7E, there's nothing unique about Lootas there.

Really? I don't remember space Marines, necrons or even eldar warriors folding nearly as rapidly as a 6+ save T4 model that costs about the same as a tactical Space Marine.

There were many threads bemoaning how worthless 3+ saves have become in 7E and how AP3 and Ignores Cover had become so widespread. Regardless, armor/cover or no, not much was going to emerge in a functional state after a blast from a full sized scatterbike squad

You keep comparing lootas to crappy units and then going "see they were awesome".

I've explained my choices and decisions and shown my work quite clearly, and you keep moving the goalposts.

yes compared to other crap they were ok. Compare them to a good unit and magically they suck.

Would you propose any to look at? I mean, unless we're only going to compare them to Scatterbikes....

Compared to almost any other factions premier anti-vehicle weapons and they sucked,

Such as? And against what kind of target? And why are we comparing a multirole unit like Lootas (equipped with a ubiquitously multirole Autocannon equivalent), to the game's best dedicated AT units in broad strokes without any context?

I'm not arguing that Lootas are "the best AT unit in the game evar!!!"

My point was that they're pretty rad at killing light and medium tanks, which they are.

compared to almost any other factions premier anti-infantry weapons and they sucked.

Again, same as above, why? I never claimed they were the best anti-infantry unit in the game. Even if we indulge this however We can go back to the Russ example. Sure, they're not as good as the most absolutely dedicated anti-infantry close-range specialist anti-infantry variant within it's ideal range, but the Lootas can engage from triple the distance and are effective against a wider array of targets, and they're equal to or better basically all the other Russ variants against infantry targets to boot.

How do they compare to Scat bikes for Eldar, how about sternguard for Marines or even centurions? how about necron infantry who could kill a Land raider faster then Lootas could kill a predator. How about vs tau broadsides? who wins those contests?

Oh...we've actually gotten here...we're now demanding the ridiculous Scatterbike comparison.

Lets to back to my original point, which was that Lootas were effective anti-light/medium AT. I believe I've shown their firepower is adequate to match my statement.

I'm not going to compare them to Scatterbikes in a pointless contest against what was possibly the most broken unit of all time, I'm not going to compare them to Sternguard with zero context, or how Necron Gauss infantry kill Land Raiders, or other absurd arguments with zero relation to that original argument, just as I'm not going to argue my opinions on the Schlieffen Plan or Chinese Monetary Policy of the 1990's.

 Billagio wrote:
I love how people saying that Marines are terrible is only comparing them against top tier armies like Guard and Eldar, and no the bottom feeders like orks, DE/nids (depending on edition), GKs outside of 5th

It was probably the worst written codex in history to be fair. Run a fluffy list under 2 CAD compared to a Battle Demi-Company Gladius and see how far that swings. It was pretty silly. Same way that Tyranids were competitive but only had 3 units at all worth using.

Gladius was definitely busted competitively until everyone starting countering Rhino-equivalent armor. Then they just became still super strong. If you need free models to compete, there's something a bit off with balance wouldn't you agree?


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Bharring wrote:
You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?

We would like to without having to do it a particular way to get 400+ free points of stuff was the main complaint.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
As I've said before, never has there been a Necron player who whined about how bad Necrons were in 7th because we relied on the Decurion to work.

I was pretty vocal about that, actually. Taking ANY of the troops in a CAD were basically super automatically bad. Nobody cares about giving up OS when you get a 4+++, Relentless, AND Move Through Cover instead. Then you get armies that don't need their troops shoved into a formation for them to work, and just use the formations on the other elite units to make them even better.

"It was probably the worst written codex in history to be fair. Run a fluffy list under 2 CAD compared to a Battle Demi-Company Gladius and see how far that swings. It was pretty silly."

Lets compare SM using demi-companies instead of Gladius to CWE using DAs instead of DAVU, as those are the two most comparable OP lists. Sure, the Battle Companies aren't great. They're very similar to the pre-codex Obsec Spam list, but the Devs and ASM don't bring ObSec. PA Marines might have been bad, but they were *much* better than CAD-spammed DAs. And that PA Marine list certainly had much more variety.

"We would like to without having to do it a particular way to get 400+ free points of stuff was the main complaint." And CWE players would like to play with things beside DAVU/WK/ScatBikes.

I really don't get the argument that the SM OP lists - some even with scads of different units, focusing primarily on what is the backbone of the SM book - is so much less of what SM players want to play than DAVU is what CWE want to play. Could you flesh out that argument there? I'm not getting it. It keeps getting said. Counterpoints get brought up, but no supporting points or discussion.

"I was pretty vocal about that, actually. Taking ANY of the troops in a CAD were basically super automatically bad."
Then how was ObSec spam such a good list pre-Gladius? Especially at the start of the edition?
How was White Scars (Bikes in a CAD) such a good list pre-Gladius?
Even Scouts had a winning build that spammed them, although not as common or successful.

Bharring wrote:

"We would like to without having to do it a particular way to get 400+ free points of stuff was the main complaint." And CWE players would like to play with things beside DAVU/WK/ScatBikes.

I really don't get the argument that the SM OP lists - some even with scads of different units, focusing primarily on what is the backbone of the SM book - is so much less of what SM players want to play than DAVU is what CWE want to play. Could you flesh out that argument there? I'm not getting it. It keeps getting said. Counterpoints get brought up, but no supporting points or discussion.

It's like this. There is weak army, Tyranids, which have super-weak unit, Pyrovore. How to make them good? Well, how about you get free Pyrovores for your army? Say you make this 1500p FOC and get 500 points of Pyrovores on top of it. Now, the army is suddenly effective and Pyrovores are major part of it! Great game design, no?

No.

I'm not disagreeing that Gladius was bad game design. I'm not seeing how it's worse game design than the Serpent Shield from the 6e codex.

It's because giving units free is poor idea on several levels. First, whole idea of points system is to 'equalize' armies to a degree which supposedly reflects the units real-world value. You want these infantry platoons to be veterans? Sure thing, but experienced veterans aren't so common. It's going to cost you. You want elephants to support that Punic army? Doable, but elephants are rare and hard to acquire even for Carthage.
You want these Space Marine squads to be supported by Rhino transports? Go nuts, Rhinos are common as dirt and cost Imperium practically nothing, totally throwaway equipment which the Space Marines couldn't care less for. Right...? No...

Also, whole idea of giving 'free' stuff for Space Marines particularly flies in the face of how the army is described in lore. Space Marines are few in number and most of their equipment is specialized and valuable for the Imperium. Now, suddenly, the way to make them effective is to make them a horde army which buries the enemy under waves of cheap, disposable units? That doesn't sound right either.

Backfire wrote:

Bharring wrote:

"We would like to without having to do it a particular way to get 400+ free points of stuff was the main complaint." And CWE players would like to play with things beside DAVU/WK/ScatBikes.

I really don't get the argument that the SM OP lists - some even with scads of different units, focusing primarily on what is the backbone of the SM book - is so much less of what SM players want to play than DAVU is what CWE want to play. Could you flesh out that argument there? I'm not getting it. It keeps getting said. Counterpoints get brought up, but no supporting points or discussion.

It's like this. There is weak army, Tyranids, which have super-weak unit, Pyrovore. How to make them good? Well, how about you get free Pyrovores for your army? Say you make this 1500p FOC and get 500 points of Pyrovores on top of it. Now, the army is suddenly effective and Pyrovores are major part of it! Great game design, no?

No.

I get the point you're trying to make and your right, but thats a terrible example. 500pts of free Pyrovores last edition would still have been absolutely worthless.

 Vaktathi wrote:


Lets to back to my original point, which was that Lootas were effective anti-light/medium AT. I believe I've shown their firepower is adequate to match my statement.

I'm not going to compare them to Scatterbikes in a pointless contest against what was possibly the most broken unit of all time, I'm not going to compare them to Sternguard with zero context, or how Necron Gauss infantry kill Land Raiders, or other absurd arguments with zero relation to that original argument, just as I'm not going to argue my opinions on the Schlieffen Plan or Chinese Monetary Policy of the 1990's.

They were decent at killing AV10-11. Against AV 12 they needed a lot of models or a great roll to kill one. So again, 14pt models means you need a great roll on 10 to reliably kill a AV12 vehicle, or 15 models and an average roll to kill the AV12 vehicle (based on 3HP and no saves of any kind)

So we can't use Scatbikes because they were great, we can't use sternguard because there's no context? the context would be them appearing by deepstrike and melta killing basically any vehicle in the game, Can't use Necron Gause because they can kill landraiders as easily as a AV12 vehicle. Those aren't "absurd arguments with zero relation to the original argument" they are examples of other factions doing THE EXACT SAME MISSION with different units which are either cheaper or far better at the job. We could also Talk about Tau with their plethora of better platforms and weapons that do the same job, hell even the Broadside was better last edition then Lootas, T4 2+ save 4 S7 shots that hit on 4s rerolling (without markerlight support) and 4 S5 shots that ignore cover and LOS that hit on 4s rerolling. Not to mention being immune to nightfighting and blind. Same thing for a Tau Commander, or even a riptide to not even touch on the tri riptide abuse which happened.

What about Chaos Marines which you wrote off completely. A unit of havocs armed with Autocannons were putting out 8 shots with about 5-6 hits a turn for 115pts, Orkz could get 8 Lootas for about the same price,they put out 16 shots on average for about 5 hits, so right off the bat they hit less, damage would be right about the same but the difference is that hose Lootas have a 6+ save the havocs have a 3+ and better leadership. So when shot those Havocs have a chance to survive and at least fight back another turn, the lootas need to lose 3 models and they are most likely running away.

We could bring up Grav weapons in general for Space Marine factions, nothing like watching a unit of centurions or even regular Devestators armed with Grav Cannons and amps just kill a vehicle with immobilization results, regardless of what kind of vehicle it is.

We could also bring up haywire weapons of which Tau Mechanicus and DE had lots of, they had the same effect as Grav weapons but even worse. Kataphron Breachers and Destroyers would just lay waste to ANY vehicle they looked at.

I can keep going if you want me to break down the lists further, but the point is obvious, compared to the HUGE number of units that did the same job, Lootas were crap.

However, don't Companies usually have enough transports - between Rhinos, Razors, and Drop Pods - to have one per squad? And isn't that what it worked out to?

Marines being spammed sure, it's unfluffy. But isn't a Wave Serpent being such a terrifying gunboat just as unfluffy?

Space Marines are few in number. Dire Avengers in DAVU are few in number. Bringing Space Marines to bring a Razorback, sure, it's unfluffy. How is it less fluffy than bringing an Aspect Shrine (DAs) to bring a Serpent? At least with Gladius, the Marines still did some of the lifting - far more so than DAs in DAVU.

I'm still not seeing how Gladius was wrong in ways DAVU was not? If it's just the 'free points', sure, that is different. The DAVU side of that equation was "basically free super-autocannon-battery" instead of "free razorbacks" - how is that any better?

Bharring wrote:
I'm not disagreeing that Gladius was bad game design. I'm not seeing how it's worse game design than the Serpent Shield from the 6e codex.

Ultimately it comes down to free points in both situations. If everyone is getting free points it will all balance out in the end. In a situation like gladius though - you don't have any list building freedom - which makes it pretty unfun - and also takes the most important factor in player skill out of the game too. List design is the most important part of the game.

Edit: I'm starting to see what you're saying about "free" being the problem. I agree it's a problem, although I don't see it as as much worse as some of the other offenders.

But why is the same logic used on the other SM power builds?
Skyhammer?
CentStars?
SuperBestFriends?
ObsecSpam?
GravBikers?

Synergies are another problem. 6 inch bubble buffs are impossible to balance because they scale exponentially based on whats in the bubble. Same thing the old characters joining units thing in 7th.

IMO all abilities/auras should only affect a given amount of units.
For example A Lieutenant could give a single marine unit reroll 1's to wound. A captain could give 3 units reroll 1's to hit. A chapter master could give 3 units reroll all hits. Guilliman could give 4 units access to his buff beit imperial or ultra marines. (not saying this is exactly how it should be or something like it)

Then you can cost them appropriately. Plus maybe give armies a little more freedom in movement.

Exponential scaling is very bad from a balance perspective. This is why spells like Invis and endurance were so freaking OP. You could make your whole army indestructible if you made it just 1 unit.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Synergies are another problem. 6 inch bubble buffs are impossible to balance because they scale exponentially based on whats in the bubble. Same thing the old characters joining units thing in 7th.

IMO all abilities/auras should only affect a given amount of units.
For example A Lieutenant could give a single marine unit reroll 1's to wound. A captain could give 3 units reroll 1's to hit. A chapter master could give 3 units reroll all hits. Guilliman could give 4 units access to his buff beit imperial or ultra marines. (not saying this is exactly how it should be or something like it)

Then you can cost them appropriately. Plus maybe give armies a little more freedom in movement.

Exponential scaling is very bad from a balance perspective. This is why spells like Invis and endurance were so freaking OP. You could make your whole army indestructible if you made it just 1 unit.

...but you can still do that if buffs only affect one unit.

Ok my one unit is 10 grots.

Ok well my one unit is a warlord titan.

How do you cost the guy that can give a buff to 10 grots or the same buff to a warlord titan in a balanced way?

It's still linear though - which is better than exponetial.True the buff is only as strong as the unit it is buffing - the way you balance this is by making sure all armies have viable ways to buff units. Or that other armies are capable of dealing with such buffs through other means at comparable point levels.

How do you do that?

Well - you can't have 2 armies where they have a similar ability for the same cost but one is clearly better. Like in the forwarned/auspex scan situation.

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's still linear though - which is better than exponetial.True the buff is only as strong as the unit it is buffing - the way you balance this is by making sure all armies have viable ways to buff units. Or that other armies are capable of dealing with such buffs through other means at comparable point levels.

How do you do that?

Well - you can't have 2 armies where they have a similar ability for the same cost but one is clearly better. Like in the forwarned/auspex scan situation.

but sometimes the same thing for the same armies are even more imbalanced.

Riddle me this, xeno - the stygies VIII buff and the Alaitoc buff are completely identical. Every unit gets it, its exactly the same.

Does that make Alaitoc and Stygies identically balanced, or does the fact that the Eldar codex contains a shitton of units that also have built in -1s make Alaitoc way stronger?

Making the rules the same just makes the rules the same. it does not make them more balanced, just more rigid and difficult to change if they do become imbalanced, because suddenly if Brimstone Horrors are super busted because they have Daemon unit type and Tzeentch unit type giving them a 4++ while they're three points, you can't just decide "ehhhh they only get a 6++" unless you change those two unit types, which also nerfs a ton of other tzeentch or daemon units that aren't broken.

How did your Tactical Terminators and your Land Raiders and your Dreadnoughts like having their assault cannons nerfed because Razorbacks were strong with them?

SemperMortis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


Lets to back to my original point, which was that Lootas were effective anti-light/medium AT. I believe I've shown their firepower is adequate to match my statement.

I'm not going to compare them to Scatterbikes in a pointless contest against what was possibly the most broken unit of all time, I'm not going to compare them to Sternguard with zero context, or how Necron Gauss infantry kill Land Raiders, or other absurd arguments with zero relation to that original argument, just as I'm not going to argue my opinions on the Schlieffen Plan or Chinese Monetary Policy of the 1990's.

They were decent at killing AV10-11. Against AV 12 they needed a lot of models or a great roll to kill one.

Which goes for most units if you only run them at 2/3rd full strength, Scatterbikes included.

So we can't use Scatbikes because they were great,

Because theyre obscenely broken and nobody is going to argue the comparison. Just because Scatterbikes are insanely broken doesn't mean Lootas are bad at killing light/medium vehicles.

we can't use sternguard because there's no context? the context would be them appearing by deepstrike and melta killing basically any vehicle in the game

Which is an entirely different type of unit and engagement range. Those Sternguard arent killing squat from 48" away, theyre kitted out to be specialized for a one-use suicide antitank role at distance of 6" and even at minimum size cost more than a unit of 10 Lootas to boot (if Im remembering correctly, 5 melta sternguard in a pod should be 160pts in 7E, 20pts per dude, 5pts per combi, 35 for pod?).

Can't use Necron Gause because they can kill landraiders as easily as a AV12 vehicle.

Because Land Raiders werent what we were talking about...and theyre not doing it from up to 48" away. Against AV12 and lower vehicles, theyre at best matching the Lootas (and only against AV12), and even then only at 12" and under.

Those aren't "absurd arguments with zero relation to the original argument" they are examples of other factions doing THE EXACT SAME MISSION

Gaussing Land Raiders at close ranges isnt the same mission as engaging medium armor from across the table. Deep striking specialist melta units arent the same role either unless your taking an extremely expansive view of "AT".

with different units which are either cheaper or far better at the job.

So far you've proposed Scatterbikes, Sternguard, and Necron Warriors. Of these, the Sternguard arent cheaper, theyre better at AT but only get to try it once and have to be at point blank range and are largely useless for anything else. The Scatterbikes beat literally everything so Im not sure what their point is in the comparison. The Necron Warriors are cheaper than the Lootas but absolutely are not more effective in the light/medium AT role.

We could also Talk about Tau with their plethora of better platforms and weapons that do the same job, hell even the Broadside was better last edition then Lootas, T4 2+ save 4 S7 shots that hit on 4s rerolling (without markerlight support) and 4 S5 shots that ignore cover and LOS that hit on 4s rerolling.

Sure, at what, 60-70pts each IIRC? 1 per 5 Lootas? Theyre still not matching the anti-AV12 damage output (at least without Markerlight support), nor have the same 48" range, and are only superior against AV10/11 at 24" and under.


Are they more resilient than the Lootas? Again, debateable, particularly given the different threat ranges. At close ranges and against small arms fire, especially in the open, the Lootas are easier to kill, but they can stay out of range better and spend the game in a protected firing position, and arent gonna risk a single Lascannon blamming half the unit and forcing a Morale test either. Drones can shift that, but also increase cost.

I'd buy that they fit the rest of the army better and are able to be supported more effectively, that I'll grant.

What about Chaos Marines which you wrote off completely. A unit of havocs armed with Autocannons were putting out 8 shots with about 5-6 hits a turn for 115pts

Orkz could get 8 Lootas for about the same price,they put out 16 shots on average for about 5 hits, so right off the bat they hit less, damage would be right about the same but the difference is that hose Lootas have a 6+ save the havocs have a 3+ and better leadership. So when shot those Havocs have a chance to survive and at least fight back another turn, the lootas need to lose 3 models and they are most likely running away.

In a strict vacuum, sure. In practice, both units are generally going to be in cover and that durability gap will be greatly mitigated, and each casualty is costing the Havocs more firepower than the Lootas, and once that gets factored in the Lootas dont come out too bad. Nobody ran Havocs that way for a reason. Min/maxing like that is also about the only way to make the Havocs look good next to the Lootas.

We could bring up Grav weapons in general for Space Marine factions, nothing like watching a unit of centurions or even regular Devestators armed with Grav Cannons and amps just kill a vehicle with immobilization results, regardless of what kind of vehicle it is.

This is another super unit that just about everyone thought was super busted. However, even indulging this, how much do those Centurions cost, at what range are they engaging, and what *couldn't* they kill?

We could also bring up haywire weapons of which Tau Mechanicus and DE had lots of, they had the same effect as Grav weapons but even worse. Kataphron Breachers and Destroyers would just lay waste to ANY vehicle they looked at.

I can keep going if you want me to break down the lists further, but the point is obvious, compared to the HUGE number of units that did the same job, Lootas were crap.

If we're just going to scroll through a list of the most broken stuff in the game or units that have entirely different threat envelopes and functions, Im not sure what we're going to learn

Generally ive been trying to equate like ranges and engagements with like, not comparing weapons with fractions of the range against each other. Deffguns to Autocannons, Lootas engaging medium tanks from the same threat ranges as Lascannon equipped units, etc.

However, going back to my original statement again...

Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.

I'm not sure where I'm so far off the mark here. Lootas will do exactly what I claimed here.

I did not claim that Lootas were the best AT unit in the game. I did not claim that Lootas were gonna deadlift Orks over the barrage of insane power creep of 7E. Only that they were effective light and medium vehicle killers. I dont see where the above is an inaccurate statement in such a light. A full unit will on average kill any AV12 or lower vehicle in one round of fire. A depleted unit stands a good chance of doing so with a little luck. I'm not seeing where my original statement was egregiously inaccurate here...

Perhaps I guess I could have added the caveat "at long ranges" in there, but I had figured that didnt need to be pointed out explicitly given the inherently long ranged nature of the unit. I didnt think we were gonna go down the rabbit hole of comparing 48" range weapons to Drop melta.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.

I'm not sure where I'm so far off the mark here. Lootas will do exactly what I claimed here.

I did not claim that Lootas were the best AT unit in the game. I did not claim that Lootas were gonna deadlift Orks over the barrage of insane power creep of 7E. Only that they were effective light and medium vehicle killers. I dont see where the above is an inaccurate statement in such a light. A full unit will on average kill any AV12 or lower vehicle in one round of fire. A depleted unit stands a good chance of doing so with a little luck. I'm not seeing where my original statement was egregiously inaccurate here...

Perhaps I guess I could have added the caveat "at long ranges" in there, but I had figured that didnt need to be pointed out explicitly given the inherently long ranged nature of the unit. I didnt think we were gonna go down the rabbit hole of comparing 48" range weapons to Drop melta.

Again, we just showed that Lootas could not murder AV12 in a "Depleted unit" they needed a full unit and they needed to roll average or above average to even get the kill...and even then only if the vehicle wasn't in cover or didn't have a save of some kind.

You can't claim that I am moving the goal posts when the original comment was that they were absolute murder and then I showed you how a bunch of other units were significantly better at that job then Lootas, and comparing like to like specifically Ranged 48 and/or Autocannons wasn't the original point so telling me not to compare Lootas to other faction units is ridiculous. If you want to talk about moving goal posts, you are the one who just said "Can't compare to Scat Bikes, Can't compare to Grav, Can't compare to Haywire" Basically you are saying that anything good can't be used as a comparison because it
ruins your point. Lootas were trash, they were good at killing AV10-11 vehicles IN THE OPEN and only if they didn't have a built in save or Jink. They were not good at killing infantry and were incredibly fragile. Trust me on this one, I don't remember if you play orkz or not, but I have 30 Lootas and they were sadly one of the better units in my 7th edition codex, but they were by no means good at what they did. Good being a relative term, one in which you compare it to other units in the game with a similar function...like haywire units....and grav.

As for "going down the rabbit hole" the entire point is comparing function not range. If you really want to compare Range things instead we can go down that road, of course I am sure you will limit me to only comparing Lootas to units with S7 weapons that don't have special rules.

If you really think Lootas were "good" then there isn't much I can do to change your mind since you keep coming up with all sorts of new rules to judge how good they are. But let me end it with this, how many top performing lists included lootas? I'll give you a hint, Not one ork player managed to break into the top 50 in ITC and the ones who came closest were using Trukk Boyz and Green Tide, not lootas.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's still linear though - which is better than exponetial.True the buff is only as strong as the unit it is buffing - the way you balance this is by making sure all armies have viable ways to buff units. Or that other armies are capable of dealing with such buffs through other means at comparable point levels.

How do you do that?

Well - you can't have 2 armies where they have a similar ability for the same cost but one is clearly better. Like in the forwarned/auspex scan situation.

but sometimes the same thing for the same armies are even more imbalanced.

Riddle me this, xeno - the stygies VIII buff and the Alaitoc buff are completely identical. Every unit gets it, its exactly the same.

Does that make Alaitoc and Stygies identically balanced, or does the fact that the Eldar codex contains a shitton of units that also have built in -1s make Alaitoc way stronger?

Making the rules the same just makes the rules the same. it does not make them more balanced, just more rigid and difficult to change if they do become imbalanced, because suddenly if Brimstone Horrors are super busted because they have Daemon unit type and Tzeentch unit type giving them a 4++ while they're three points, you can't just decide "ehhhh they only get a 6++" unless you change those two unit types, which also nerfs a ton of other tzeentch or daemon units that aren't broken.

How did your Tactical Terminators and your Land Raiders and your Dreadnoughts like having their assault cannons nerfed because Razorbacks were strong with them?

Let's get real. -1 to hit army traits should not be in the game and like you said it scales way to hard with other -1 to hit modifiers.

Brimstone's and blue horrors specifically reduce their invo save from 4++ pink to 5++ blue to 6++ brim. They did specifically fix these units. You can make concessions in individual cases. You have to if you want a balanced game. Otherwise - you have what we have now. Aliotoc flyers running around with 7th eddition invis for free every turn against the most common BS in the game and for 2 CP can actually be immune to damage from shooting.

The Pulse Rifle costs 0 pts. The Lasgun costs 0 points. Same cost. Same purpose. The Pulse Rifle is stronger. The Lasgun army is stronger.

weapon profiles that cost 0 are included in the base cost of the model. Unfortunately this is inconsistent accross the game - you even have the same weapon costing points in some armies and being free in others. I don't care what the reasoning behind it is. It is unacceptable.

GW even charges you points for having options like in the case of the predator vs rhino. Can't even explain the razorbacks base cost.

Also, Single unit vs area of units would be linear vs polynomial (most likely 2nd power) at most, you're a long way short of linear vs exponential.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm not so sure they shouldn't be different. If you gave the Rhino to CWE, it should go up in points, as they have a lot more uses for it. The Devilfish would have to cost a lot less to Tau to be worthwhile than it'd have to cost for SM to field it.

Bharring wrote:
Also, Single unit vs area of units would be linear vs polynomial (most likely 2nd power) at most, you're a long way short of linear vs exponential.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm not so sure they shouldn't be different. If you gave the Rhino to CWE, it should go up in points, as they have a lot more uses for it. The Devilfish would have to cost a lot less to Tau to be worthwhile than it'd have to cost for SM to field it.

I speaking more in the sense of unlimited vs limited and the look of the curve as you add more units into the bubble in terms of efficiency.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
Also, Single unit vs area of units would be linear vs polynomial (most likely 2nd power) at most, you're a long way short of linear vs exponential.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm not so sure they shouldn't be different. If you gave the Rhino to CWE, it should go up in points, as they have a lot more uses for it. The Devilfish would have to cost a lot less to Tau to be worthwhile than it'd have to cost for SM to field it.

While technically you are correct - units can not be costed in this way from a balance perspective. Some armies having better options to put into a transport is entirely on the units going inside of the transport not being worth their cost or being to good for their cost - or not needing/needing the function provided by a transport.

Look at it this way.

In 6e/7e, a Shuriken Cat would be better/worth more points on Tac Marines than a boltgun.

In 6e/7e, a boltgun would be better/worth more points on a Guardian than a boltgun.

How do you point it to make that appropriate?

Or again, lets look at old Commisar rule. You lose at most 1 model to Morale checks. How much is that worth to an army full of large Conscript squads? How much is that worth to an army full of 5-man LD8 units?

Clearly, there is no constant value that is fair to both forces.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And back on the "Some armies having better options to put into a transport is entirely on the units going inside of the transport not being worth their cost". I'm sure you'd say Fire Warriors are worth more value per point than Tac Marines. Don't Tac Marines get more out of transports than Fire Warriors?

Some units inherently have more value in different things even at the same value point. A glass cannon unit that focuses on shooting things inside 12" is going to get more mileage out of a transport than a fairly tanky unit that engages things at 48" range.

The game might be too simple as is, but you're oversimplifying the considerations.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.

I'm not sure where I'm so far off the mark here. Lootas will do exactly what I claimed here.

I did not claim that Lootas were the best AT unit in the game. I did not claim that Lootas were gonna deadlift Orks over the barrage of insane power creep of 7E. Only that they were effective light and medium vehicle killers. I dont see where the above is an inaccurate statement in such a light. A full unit will on average kill any AV12 or lower vehicle in one round of fire. A depleted unit stands a good chance of doing so with a little luck. I'm not seeing where my original statement was egregiously inaccurate here...

Perhaps I guess I could have added the caveat "at long ranges" in there, but I had figured that didnt need to be pointed out explicitly given the inherently long ranged nature of the unit. I didnt think we were gonna go down the rabbit hole of comparing 48" range weapons to Drop melta.

Again, we just showed that Lootas could not murder AV12 in a "Depleted unit"

I said they stood a good chance, you're conflating two different statements here. More to the point, you seem irrationally focused on my simple use of the word "murder", above and beyond literally everything else I have said. If the subjective meaning of one word is all thats driving this, can we drop it?

they needed a full unit and they needed to roll average or above average to even get the kill...

Average is 3.33 HP's, even rolling a couple extra misses they should do it on a 2 shot volley. More than anything, its that one shot volley that hoses them, but they also get 3 shot volleys just as often.

and even then only if the vehicle wasn't in cover or didn't have a save of some kind.

I didnt claim otherwise, but for 210pts, not much was going to oneshot an AV12 unit in cover from any sort of distance. Units that could generally required more setup and preparation and dramitcally closer range and threat to themselves. Thats a pretty normal tradeoff, broken Scatterbikes excepted.

You can't claim that I am moving the goal posts when the original comment was that they were absolute murder and then I showed you how a bunch of other units were significantly better at that job then Lootas,

Which turned out not to be the case in most instances except under specific optimal (and dramatically shorter) range conditions...

and comparing like to like specifically Ranged 48 and/or Autocannons wasn't the original point

I apologize that when referencing a long range fire support unit's capabilities at engaging light and medium armor, I didnt specify that range played a role, especially when the army in question has other, numerous close range tank kill options that are more effective at such ranges.

so telling me not to compare Lootas to other faction units is ridiculous.

I made no such statement that you could not compared Lootas to other faction's units, lets just keep in mind role and function and target. I dont care about how well Necron Warriors do against Land Raiders. I will accept the superiority of Scatterbikes over Lootas, but theyre superior to damn near everything and were a widely acknowledged major problem and as such comparing them is rather pointless. Suicide Sternguard are so specialized, short ranged, and one use that their battlefield use is and role is extremely difficult to compare to Lootas in a meaningful way. Broadside HYMP's were a great comparison however.

As for "going down the rabbit hole" the entire point is comparing function not range.

Range is an inherent part of function. Generally speaking, we dont lump Devastators into the same comparison as Melta Sternguard either, or Vendettas and Maulerfiends. We accept that drop pod Sternguard are probably going to outperform a Predator Annihilator the turn they drop in. Just as a Lascannon didnt pack the same wallop as a Meltagun at 6" but got to play out at up 48", this not only allows greater target choice and threat radius, but means that you likely have more turns to be shooting as well as your opponent has to close range with you rather than you just appearing in the middle of their lines, and combiweapons only ever got one shot.

If you really want to compare Range things instead we can go down that road, of course I am sure you will limit me to only comparing Lootas to units with S7 weapons that don't have special rules.

Not at all, I compared them to Lascannons earlier. But lets be real about the fact that a unit with a 48" range and able to reach out an touch almost anything on the table plays a different role than a melta squads thats gonna drop on and engage one target and be done or dead after one turn.

If you really think Lootas were "good" then there isn't much I can do to change your mind since you keep coming up with all sorts of new rules to judge how good they are.

If we're going to compare them to some of the most broken things the game has ever had, or talk about effectiveness against units like Land Raiders that were not part of the original assertion, well, there are issues with that.

But let me end it with this, how many top performing lists included lootas? I'll give you a hint, Not one ork player managed to break into the top 50 in ITC and the ones who came closest were using Trukk Boyz and Green Tide, not lootas.

Given how poor Orks fared in tournaments in general, I'm not sure what there is to be gleaned there. Our data set of tournament winning ork lists for 7E is too small to judge basically anything. I only played 2 games in 7E with my Orks so I cant comment too much from that end, but I used Lootas in those two games, and they appeared in every Ork list I faced during 7E except two. I just dont have much data beyond that, if we have a source for 7E Ork tournament lists Id be happy to go over them, but I cant find any with a quick google search.

However, once again, im also not claiming that Lootas were gonna overcome the mass insanity that reigned in 7E and suddenly make Orks viable against the worst there was to be faced.

Bharring wrote:
Look at it this way.

In 6e/7e, a Shuriken Cat would be better/worth more points on Tac Marines than a boltgun.

In 6e/7e, a boltgun would be better/worth more points on a Guardian than a boltgun.

How do you point it to make that appropriate?

Or again, lets look at old Commisar rule. You lose at most 1 model to Morale checks. How much is that worth to an army full of large Conscript squads? How much is that worth to an army full of 5-man LD8 units?

Clearly, there is no constant value that is fair to both forces.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And back on the "Some armies having better options to put into a transport is entirely on the units going inside of the transport not being worth their cost". I'm sure you'd say Fire Warriors are worth more value per point than Tac Marines. Don't Tac Marines get more out of transports than Fire Warriors?

Some units inherently have more value in different things even at the same value point. A glass cannon unit that focuses on shooting things inside 12" is going to get more mileage out of a transport than a fairly tanky unit that engages things at 48" range.

The game might be too simple as is, but you're oversimplifying the considerations.

By that logic it should cost more point to take a rhino for a vet squad with 10 combi plasmas than a tac squad with bolters. It can't work that way though. Plus - transports have their own issues right now. They aren't worth it for any army that isn't eldar.

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's still linear though - which is better than exponetial.True the buff is only as strong as the unit it is buffing - the way you balance this is by making sure all armies have viable ways to buff units. Or that other armies are capable of dealing with such buffs through other means at comparable point levels.

How do you do that?

Well - you can't have 2 armies where they have a similar ability for the same cost but one is clearly better. Like in the forwarned/auspex scan situation.

but sometimes the same thing for the same armies are even more imbalanced.

Riddle me this, xeno - the stygies VIII buff and the Alaitoc buff are completely identical. Every unit gets it, its exactly the same.

Does that make Alaitoc and Stygies identically balanced, or does the fact that the Eldar codex contains a shitton of units that also have built in -1s make Alaitoc way stronger?

Making the rules the same just makes the rules the same. it does not make them more balanced, just more rigid and difficult to change if they do become imbalanced, because suddenly if Brimstone Horrors are super busted because they have Daemon unit type and Tzeentch unit type giving them a 4++ while they're three points, you can't just decide "ehhhh they only get a 6++" unless you change those two unit types, which also nerfs a ton of other tzeentch or daemon units that aren't broken.

How did your Tactical Terminators and your Land Raiders and your Dreadnoughts like having their assault cannons nerfed because Razorbacks were strong with them?

Let's get real. -1 to hit army traits should not be in the game and like you said it scales way to hard with other -1 to hit modifiers.

Brimstone's and blue horrors specifically reduce their invo save from 4++ pink to 5++ blue to 6++ brim. They did specifically fix these units. You can make concessions in individual cases. You have to if you want a balanced game. Otherwise - you have what we have now. Aliotoc flyers running around with 7th eddition invis for free every turn against the most common BS in the game and for 2 CP can actually be immune to damage from shooting.

So what you're saying is that universal rules applied to too many things blindly create numerous specific balance problems and by necessity you need to have a granular balancing system with rules costed for individual units or factions in order to achieve anything close to balance?

Almost any instance where the same balancing decision applied to multiple units results in unintended consequences. "Astra Militarum units with BS3+ pay more for their guns!" instead of "Tempestus Scions and Scion Command Squads pay more for their guns!" gets you broken, terrible Veterans. "commissar buff nerfed!" instead of "Commissar interaction with Conscripts nerfed!" gives you commissars useless in 99% of army builds.

The best constructed and balanced army traits are the ones with high impact and limited scope where GW knows exactly what weapons they're buffing and how, and the worst are the ones that just apply a big blanket buff to a gigantic codex full of units blindly and hope for the best.

Right now isn't a great indicative of what armies have always been bad or always been good.

Ideally, yes, a sternie drop would pay more for a droppod (for a classical example that was relevant over multiple editions) than a Tac squad should. That said, the rules don't currently work that way. Different units within a codex can certainly value transports differently. That shouldn't be a surprise.

Could you imagine if 6e/7e CWE got 35pt DropPods? They essentially got 100-200pt droppods (WWP Archons + kabs in an Allied, maybe a Raider for Fragons), and it was clearly worth more than that. Yet Drop Pods were still 35pts for Marines, and that pricepoint wasn't greatly complained about. The WWP version, despite costing a heck of a lot more, was much more complained about.

Do you disagree a droppod shouldn't have cost more than 35pts for Vanilla Marines, but should cost more than 35pts if CWE had them?

There are some rough edges. Again, in 7e, podding Cents was looked at as ugly and stupid, but effective. It probably would have been better if Tacs paid less for one than Sternies or Cents. Storm Guardians in a droppod wouldn't have changed much. But Fire Dragons or Wraithguard would have.

Several times this edition, even, Transports (Razorbacks and StormRavens) have been great for Space Marines. Drop Pods were amazing in 7th and really good in 6th. Rhino Rush has been a thing. Even ignoring Gladius, SM transports have often been strong.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's still linear though - which is better than exponetial.True the buff is only as strong as the unit it is buffing - the way you balance this is by making sure all armies have viable ways to buff units. Or that other armies are capable of dealing with such buffs through other means at comparable point levels.

How do you do that?

Well - you can't have 2 armies where they have a similar ability for the same cost but one is clearly better. Like in the forwarned/auspex scan situation.

but sometimes the same thing for the same armies are even more imbalanced.

Riddle me this, xeno - the stygies VIII buff and the Alaitoc buff are completely identical. Every unit gets it, its exactly the same.

Does that make Alaitoc and Stygies identically balanced, or does the fact that the Eldar codex contains a shitton of units that also have built in -1s make Alaitoc way stronger?

Making the rules the same just makes the rules the same. it does not make them more balanced, just more rigid and difficult to change if they do become imbalanced, because suddenly if Brimstone Horrors are super busted because they have Daemon unit type and Tzeentch unit type giving them a 4++ while they're three points, you can't just decide "ehhhh they only get a 6++" unless you change those two unit types, which also nerfs a ton of other tzeentch or daemon units that aren't broken.

How did your Tactical Terminators and your Land Raiders and your Dreadnoughts like having their assault cannons nerfed because Razorbacks were strong with them?

Let's get real. -1 to hit army traits should not be in the game and like you said it scales way to hard with other -1 to hit modifiers.

Brimstone's and blue horrors specifically reduce their invo save from 4++ pink to 5++ blue to 6++ brim. They did specifically fix these units. You can make concessions in individual cases. You have to if you want a balanced game. Otherwise - you have what we have now. Aliotoc flyers running around with 7th eddition invis for free every turn against the most common BS in the game and for 2 CP can actually be immune to damage from shooting.

So what you're saying is that universal rules applied to too many things blindly create numerous specific balance problems and by necessity you need to have a granular balancing system with rules costed for individual units or factions in order to achieve anything close to balance?

Almost any instance where the same balancing decision applied to multiple units results in unintended consequences. "Astra Militarum units with BS3+ pay more for their guns!" instead of "Tempestus Scions and Scion Command Squads pay more for their guns!" gets you broken, terrible Veterans. "commissar buff nerfed!" instead of "Commissar interaction with Conscripts nerfed!" gives you commissars useless in 99% of army builds.

The best constructed and balanced army traits are the ones with high impact and limited scope where GW knows exactly what weapons they're buffing and how, and the worst are the ones that just apply a big blanket buff to a gigantic codex full of units blindly and hope for the best.

It seems to me that GW when they make a change don't even understand the problem they are trying to fix.

With smite spam the issue was obvious. 30 point malefic lords. They raised them to over double their price - then simultaneously nerfed smite so it couldn't be spammed (unnecessary - spamming smite was only good because of 30 point malefic lords) now most psykers aren't worth their cost. Unless they have a good support ability and if you have a lot of psykers in your army - they are just sitting around doing nothing after you smite 3 times.

The commisar nerf is the same thing. They quad nerfed the problem. Nerf commisars...make conscripts cost equal to infantry when they are far inferior and have to take orders on a 4+ and nerfed max squad size and took away the leadership ability (it's actually worse than not taking one now).

So I agree with you - blanket fixes are really bad. I am opposed to blanket fixes.

Are we really into "but imagine how bad X army would be with Y army's toys and play styles"? Why don't CSM have access to Drop Pods? Technically it should be part of their armory, but it's not part of their play style so they only got the FW CSM version of it instead of boxing a different Drop Pod with a Chaos bits sprue. It's kind of like asking what if Tau got basilisks that could benefit from Markerlights.

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's still linear though - which is better than exponetial.True the buff is only as strong as the unit it is buffing - the way you balance this is by making sure all armies have viable ways to buff units. Or that other armies are capable of dealing with such buffs through other means at comparable point levels.

How do you do that?

Well - you can't have 2 armies where they have a similar ability for the same cost but one is clearly better. Like in the forwarned/auspex scan situation.

but sometimes the same thing for the same armies are even more imbalanced.

Riddle me this, xeno - the stygies VIII buff and the Alaitoc buff are completely identical. Every unit gets it, its exactly the same.

Does that make Alaitoc and Stygies identically balanced, or does the fact that the Eldar codex contains a shitton of units that also have built in -1s make Alaitoc way stronger?

Making the rules the same just makes the rules the same. it does not make them more balanced, just more rigid and difficult to change if they do become imbalanced, because suddenly if Brimstone Horrors are super busted because they have Daemon unit type and Tzeentch unit type giving them a 4++ while they're three points, you can't just decide "ehhhh they only get a 6++" unless you change those two unit types, which also nerfs a ton of other tzeentch or daemon units that aren't broken.

How did your Tactical Terminators and your Land Raiders and your Dreadnoughts like having their assault cannons nerfed because Razorbacks were strong with them?

Let's get real. -1 to hit army traits should not be in the game and like you said it scales way to hard with other -1 to hit modifiers.

Brimstone's and blue horrors specifically reduce their invo save from 4++ pink to 5++ blue to 6++ brim. They did specifically fix these units. You can make concessions in individual cases. You have to if you want a balanced game. Otherwise - you have what we have now. Aliotoc flyers running around with 7th eddition invis for free every turn against the most common BS in the game and for 2 CP can actually be immune to damage from shooting.

So what you're saying is that universal rules applied to too many things blindly create numerous specific balance problems and by necessity you need to have a granular balancing system with rules costed for individual units or factions in order to achieve anything close to balance?

Almost any instance where the same balancing decision applied to multiple units results in unintended consequences. "Astra Militarum units with BS3+ pay more for their guns!" instead of "Tempestus Scions and Scion Command Squads pay more for their guns!" gets you broken, terrible Veterans. "commissar buff nerfed!" instead of "Commissar interaction with Conscripts nerfed!" gives you commissars useless in 99% of army builds.

The best constructed and balanced army traits are the ones with high impact and limited scope where GW knows exactly what weapons they're buffing and how, and the worst are the ones that just apply a big blanket buff to a gigantic codex full of units blindly and hope for the best.

It seems to me that GW when they make a change don't even understand the problem they are trying to fix.

With smite spam the issue was obvious. 30 point malefic lords. They raised them to over double their price - then simultaneously nerfed smite so it couldn't be spammed (unnecessary - spamming smite was only good because of 30 point malefic lords) now most psykers aren't worth their cost. Unless they have a good support ability and if you have a lot of psykers in your army - they are just sitting around doing nothing after you smite 3 times.

The commisar nerf is the same thing. They quad nerfed the problem. Nerf commisars...make conscripts cost equal to infantry when they are far inferior and have to take orders on a 4+ and nerfed max squad size and took away the leadership ability (it's actually worse than not taking one now).

So I agree with you - blanket fixes are really bad. I am opposed to blanket fixes.

OK. So in that case, why are you for blanket/universal rules in other instances? Why is "the eldar have a stratagem that works similarly but is usually better" a balancing criteria for Auspex Scan? You could give Forewarned to Orks and it'd be terrible - exact same stratagem substituting weirdboy for farseer. Auspex scan is bad because it's overcosted for the restrictions it has, not because Forewarned exists.

This is why every time "the rules should be more universal" posts come up, I'm so opposed. Almost all the balance issues with 8th as a whole are caused by rules being too universal and GW saying "well if we fix this thing that was broken in the Marine codex then all the marines won't have the same stuff so we HAVE to keep it the same so it'll be fair!"

I didn't suggest that forewarned is too strong of should be fixed with a blanket rule. Only that it is clearly better than other similar abilities in space marines/ admech. Stratagems that fill the same purpose should have similar access, restrictions, and cost. I am of the opinion that the space marine and admech 1s are too weak - and should be buffed to eldar level.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I didn't suggest that forewarned is too strong of should be fixed with a blanket rule. Only that it is clearly better than other similar abilities in space marines/ admech. Stratagems that fill the same purpose should have similar access, restrictions, and cost. I am of the opinion that the space marine and admech 1s are too weak - and should be buffed to eldar level.

I agree to a point. The problem that you're not considering is the constituent armies that a stratagem enhances. The guard "Crush Them" stratagem would be insanely broken if Imperial Knights had it, with their vehicles that are actuallly designed for melee combat. Forewarned would be underpowered if it was a Guard infantry unit or an Ork infantry unit using it.

I agree that the marine and admech stratagems are overly limited for the cost and need a bump. It has nothing to do with Forewarned, despite their similarity - Auspex and Infoslave are just not worth the CPs in most cases.

Crush them is insane on a baneblade. I see what you are saying though. I guess my argument should be that armies should be getting similar performance out of their command point expenditures as well as their point expenditures. That is a blanket statement but it doesn't require a blanket solution. It requires in depth play testing and math hammering - which is something GW does not do - or ever have done. Which is why there has been such bad game balance through out the years.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Crush them is insane on a baneblade. I see what you are saying though. I guess my argument should be that armies should be getting similar performance out of their command point expenditures as well as their point expenditures. That is a blanket statement but it doesn't require a blanket solution. It requires in depth play testing and math hammering - which is something GW does not do - or ever have done. Which is why there has been such bad game balance through out the years.

For something like stratagems the problem is also that they are new. GW are experimenting with what abilities they can hand out to see if they are "Fun". This is why later books tend to have more powerful and interesting abilities - often at a lower price, or with a more clearly worked through system.

So for instance every new codex now includes a CP farm ability - because this is something GW have decided should be available. After all people like using stratagems. They probably hadn't decided this would be a thing when they were first drafting the system 18 months or however long ago.

Well - space marines have CP farm too. A rather decent one. Regen your own expenditure on a 5+. For some reason IG have the ability to get on a 5+ for them and opponents.
Not disagreeing that they aren't sure what the power level of stratagems should be yet. It should have been figured at the start of the edition though.

In theory, yes. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

There's a reason why most disciplines prefer methods that can adjust the target over the lifecylce of what they're building. You can't know everything up front. It may be painfully obvious after it's out there, but hindsight is 20/20. The idea that they could put out the game and it be perfect is a feverdream. Noone could. So, they have to adapt.

Unfortunately, adapting isn't free. Every FAQ change they make complicates the games. A new player will read the codex and say "I can do X!". Well, a more well-read player will say "Actually, the FAQ on 3.17 as applied to the FAQ from January, which replaces the FAQ from last year, which changed that rule...". And suddenly maybe WH40k isn't the game that player wants to play. So there is certainly downward pressure on the scope and scale of the FAQing/repointing they do.

Note that I'm *not* disagreeing that Forewarned is stronger than Auspex Scan.

Bharring wrote:
In theory, yes. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

There's a reason why most disciplines prefer methods that can adjust the target over the lifecylce of what they're building. You can't know everything up front. It may be painfully obvious after it's out there, but hindsight is 20/20. The idea that they could put out the game and it be perfect is a feverdream. Noone could. So, they have to adapt.

Unfortunately, adapting isn't free. Every FAQ change they make complicates the games. A new player will read the codex and say "I can do X!". Well, a more well-read player will say "Actually, the FAQ on 3.17 as applied to the FAQ from January, which replaces the FAQ from last year, which changed that rule...". And suddenly maybe WH40k isn't the game that player wants to play. So there is certainly downward pressure on the scope and scale of the FAQing/repointing they do.

Note that I'm *not* disagreeing that Forewarned is stronger than Auspex Scan.

This is why I expect an 8.1 or 8.5 edition with updated books as it's already starting to feel a bit of a mess and we have CA2018 and the fall FAQ and that only leaves sister's of battle to be Codex and FAQ'd