Unit1126PLL wrote: You almost have to roll the wounds one-at-a-time to ensure they're applied in the correct order...
Yep. If double-damage triggers on a wound roll of 6, that means once you've fast-rolled to hit, you then have to slow-roll from to-wound onwards.
So allocate a hit, roll to wound, see if you get double damage or not, work all the way through saves, repeat...
In practice, I suspect most players are opting to batch the double-damage and just allocate it all at once, but in certain matchups this can dramatically reduce the effectiveness like Kitane said. And there's no RAW way to do so; it's a workaround for a very clunky mechanic.
By strict RAW, you can never fast roll hit wound damage and save, since you can technically CP reroll the dice.
I'm not going to pile on because a number of others have done a pretty good job of eviscerating you in this area, but I just wanted to point out this one part of your post because it's a reoccuring theme with you Daed.
You only ever see one solution, or, rather, you don't ever begin to look for other solutions. So many times when people have been debating 40k's rules over the past few months your standard response is basically "That's the way it is and there is no other way to do it!", then someone (usually Catbarf or Unit, but there are others) will come in with a litany of alternate solutions and the best you can usually muster is a miserly "Well, that's not really that different, is it?". I mean it's either that or you post a page of maths. Take your pick.
I mean, the chaff pod thing is easily the most indicative of this attitude that I've seen. You identified it as a problem, but despite how many times people have explained why making equipment into strats (and strats in general) are a problem in 40k, your "solution" is to make it like everything else and not entertain any other possible ways that could resolve any potential problems with that upgrade.
It's one thing to be happy with the way things are. It's another entirely to claim that any ideas against the current methodology aren't feasible because the current way is the "only" way.
I'm not blind to other solutions. I'm working within the system that we have and what I know works right now.
I expect "10th" to be in a year and a half with some further tweaks to the current system. Stratagems are a viable method to allow other interactions within the game that are too strong to exist regularly.
As much as you think I am intransigent I could say the same about posters from the other side ( "It isn't like old system X" or "this AA game does it better" ).
Hiding your army is the only thing that prevents damage in an IGOUGO system. You can make everything hit like a wet noodle and have long games that favor large numbers of models, because everything takes so much to kill. I don't know that it would be fun.
It's amazing to me how you can make a statement then immediately refute it in your very next sentence.
Nothing about IGOUGO means hiding is the only way to prevent damage. Even just using 40k as an example we've seen in previous editions that reducing overall range, effective range and volume of fire/attacks do a pretty good job of reducing damage. Previous editions have made it impossible to shoot from one deployment zone to the other with anything other than heavy weapons, for example. They also generally didn't have re-rolls except for twin-linked weapons. If you really wanted to have your basic troops do anything other than plink away with the odd plasma gun or missile launcher you had to actually move them up the board to engage the enemy at closer range, which carried obvious risks that you had to work to mitigate.
People want tactics, but what kind of tactic is it where you can put your guys in the open and it doesn't matter than your opponent went first? That seems antithetical.
If you're standing out of effective range it's not a bad tactic to be in the open to give you more movement options. Again, this happened in previous editions of 40k where you had the trade-off between moving through cover at a potentially slower rate or being in the open and being more vulnerable to shooting. Generally, once you got to about turn 2 you wanted to be in cover for the most part but starting out of cover had some tactical advantages.
The problem with 9th, and in 8th, is that if you don't literally completely hide everything there's a very good chance that whatever isn't 100% hidden will die because 9th is just far too lethal. As the LGT final demonstrated, even being hidden or in cover doesn't help when you can have 4 planes behind your lines in turn 1, along with a teleporting blob of infantry buffed up so much they can take down Dreadnoughts. If you look at the AdMech players movement in that game he had restricted targets for 2 of his infantry units but those units basically either killed their targets in one turn or cleaned up after they'd been softened up. There were then two Ironstriders that had to work a bit to get some shots at a good target but that didn't matter since the bulk of his firepower could shoot whatever it wanted.
Most of the 9th edition lists are prevalently melee with a bit of shooting. You can start out in the open without issues.
It just doesn't look like that, because right now you find Drukhari and Admech on all tables, and those don't allow you to do that. But playing against most marine lists, DG, many necron lists, most sisters and so on, you will hardly face a lot of long range firepower. This huge need for obscuring terrain is something fairly recent. Before the Admech release there really wans't that big of a need.
Admech is a mistake, plain and simple. Good thing is that we know that GW doesn't like it when a big tournament is dominated by a faction, so I expect a very harsh future for the mechanicus.
Spoletta wrote: Admech is a mistake, plain and simple. Good thing is that we know that GW doesn't like it when a big tournament is dominated by a faction, so I expect a very harsh future for the mechanicus.
Codex Drukhari came out in may. It is currently october. That hyper-fast nerfhammer doesnt seem to have fallen yet.
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Daedalus81 wrote: I'm not blind to other solutions. I'm working within the system that we have and what I know works right now.
I expect "10th" to be in a year and a half with some further tweaks to the current system. Stratagems are a viable method to allow other interactions within the game that are too strong to exist regularly.
As much as you think I am intransigent I could say the same about posters from the other side ( "It isn't like old system X" or "this AA game does it better" ).
There are tons of ways to decrease the problems of 9th edition currently that do not involve going to full AA or reducing the baseline level of lethality at 'optimal engagement range' that currently cause playing 40k to feel more like a card game than a wargame.
a few examples:
-Infinity has an even lower turn-count than 40k but couples a fairly option-rich reaction system for the inactive player with the ability to act multiple times with the same unit in one turn. This allows you to create cool, multi-action mini narratives surrounding your important units within the space of a single turn, but has the trade-off of each player having several units in their army that essentially just exist as bullet sponge mooks. Since that game is trying to replicate a cyberpunk action movie/anime type setting like Ghost in the Shell, that works in its favor.
-Age of Sigmar has IGOUGO turns but an alternating combat phase, and engagement range is a full 3" so effectively every unit in the game can heroically intervene. This means 'your turn' is really 'your turn to move and shoot' and units pay a premium for firepower that doesnt exist in 40k. Additionally, as the inactive player you get to do things like heal a critical injured hero, move a unit, or shoot with a small penalty on your opponent's turn using AOS' analogue to the stratagem system, which unlike 40k's that incentivizes blowing large loads at once for combo-wombos appears to have the primary purpose of giving commander-type units cool stuff they can do and also allowing you to act in your opponent's turn.
-Apocalypse has a nearly-IGOUGO system that solves first turn advantage simply by resolving damage at the end of the battle round, which further naturally reduces lethality by introducing a game of risk vs reward for the player, where ensuring a unit's death generally means expending far more resources than simply giving it a chance to die.
-Battlegroup takes a twofold approach of limiting the number of units per turn that can act via an orders system (Commander type units increase the number of available orders you have, which makes them an important resource to protect while not causing them to unrealistically impact the combat performance of other units nearby) and by allowing you to defer action until your opponent's turn with Reaction orders. This also neatly solves the First Turn Problem by granting the second player a couple of free Reaction order chits in the first turn to make up for the loss of initiative.
40k currently takes the laziest, most basic approach to this incredibly old pair of problems, high lethality and low player agency in the opponent's turn by just. doing. nothing. Just hoping it works out. Units generally have EXACTLY the same effectiveness firing at max range as 2" away, and when firing at a unit they can see 1% as a unit they can see 100% of. Extremely high movement, deep strike and extremely high ranges relative to the tiny board size mean the table state generally means nothing when it comes to your deadliness. Morale just ADDS MOAR LETHALITY. Stratagems are 90% designed to be used only in your turn. Objectives depend on your units getting through your entire opponent's turn unmolested.
on a competitive level, the game is essentially a formality. We look at lists, and hardly have to ask any questions about what kinds of opponents the list faced off against. We know what the list is going to do....basically every game. It's going to execute its strategy, the one it has picked out in the list-building stage.
Galas wrote: I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.
And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.
As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.
Insectum7 wrote: I agree in general, but this also brings up my issues with Primaris and 2w marines. The troops of other factions struggle hard to dent them, making the on-table interactions much less rewarding. See Banshees/Guardians/Genestealers/Current CSM ( )/Necron Warriors etc vs. Intercessors.
For me, I always thought that SM's (and by extension CSM's) should be the one faction that was really hard to kill. When I played the older editions one of the things I disliked was how fast they died and how wildly inconsistent it was with the lore. Personally, I've always thought that the Space Marine army should have been designed kind of like the current Custodes style where you have a couple of super strong squads trying to take on a much larger army. But then GW wouldn't be able to sell anywhere near as many marine models and they are their flagship army so...
See, I can't get behind this at all because many of those units from other factions were originally set up to have certain advantages/balance points when contesting to Marines, so much so as to be defining features of said units.
Genestealers are a prime example. In Space Hulk they took Terminators apart in CC, and for the first 15(?) years of their existence in the lore they continued to be extremely lethal against Marines in CC, the balancing factor being that they had to get there through a torrent of shooting. Genestealers aren't half as dangerous to Marines as they used to be, and it's a sad, sad state.
For a long, long time, Eldar Aspect Warriors were balanced around roughly equal in value to Marines, but with their own specialist skew. Banshees would slaughter Marines in CC, but Marines would slaughter Banshees with shooting. Dark Reapers would slaughter Marines with shooting, but Marines would slaughter Reapers in CC. Shoot the punchy stuff and punch the shooty stuff. It's an ideal balance. But no more. Individually a Banshee is a shadow of her former self against Marines. Like Genestealers, Banshees used to butcher Terminators ffs.
Marines simply being all uber is just gross, imo. It is a blight on the game.
I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.
Galas wrote: I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.
And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.
As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.
Yep, hard agree, and I wish the doubling of marines' durability didnt also correspond with the doubling of seemingly everybody's firepower RIP.
At the end of the day, people who play 40k want to be playing a game where their units feel like super space soldiers. being tough is part of the fantasy of almost every faction - tyranids and orks fighting with their limbs blown off, necrons rising from the dead, eldar dodging and weaving out of the way of enemy bullets, marines and sisters with bullets bouncing off of foot-thick ceramite armor.
People are just not going to accept a single-turn lifespan on the battlefield for their 10,000 year old uber warriors forever. It's not satisfying to play, it's not satisfying to watch. The streams at competitive events make this incredibly obvious, everyone is laughing about how comical it is to watch these space super heroes huddle all their units behind the hunks of available obscuring terrain, because anything else would result in them getting absolutely instantly exploded.
I would love to see the game adopt more of what they've gone for with Apoc and Kill Team with alternating activations. I'm hoping that seeing how well these games work will be the inspiration to make some kind of big change. While I'm not holding my breath, a 10th edition full revamp away from the IGOUGO system would be most welcome from me.
I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.
Like maybe some kind of system whereby little gribbly units of goblins, or orks, or guardsmen or genestealer cults could be objectively worse for the points than marines, but could easily win battles of attrition by being cycled back onto the battlefield fairly easily via a variety of abilities. You could also give them bonuses for their weight of numbers.
Hmmm im trying to think of a system that has stuff like this in it, maybe one that the exact same single man James Workshop creates and produces.
Galas wrote: I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.
And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.
As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.
Yep, hard agree, and I wish the doubling of marines' durability didnt also correspond with the doubling of seemingly everybody's firepower RIP.
At the end of the day, people who play 40k want to be playing a game where their units feel like super space soldiers. being tough is part of the fantasy of almost every faction - tyranids and orks fighting with their limbs blown off, necrons rising from the dead, eldar dodging and weaving out of the way of enemy bullets, marines and sisters with bullets bouncing off of foot-thick ceramite armor.
People are just not going to accept a single-turn lifespan on the battlefield for their 10,000 year old uber warriors forever. It's not satisfying to play, it's not satisfying to watch. The streams at competitive events make this incredibly obvious, everyone is laughing about how comical it is to watch these space super heroes huddle all their units behind the hunks of available obscuring terrain, because anything else would result in them getting absolutely instantly exploded.
Yeah, I think that the best option IMHO would have been the wound increase to Marines that we got, and other rules to accommodate the things you mentioned with the other races while keeping most of the weapons the same. Only anti-tank weapons' like Melta's, Lascannon, ect should have been able to cause multiple wounds (overcharged plasma at 2 D is prob still fine since it's risk vs reward).
In 3rd Ed it took a whole squad of Guardsmen remaining stationary rapid firing at under half range to kill a single Marine, and two full squads to kill a Terminator. To lose a couple of Terminators to lasgun fire realistically meant either your opponent's entire army was shooting at them, or you made a real bad roll (and could just as easily have those Terminators tank all that fire without issue).
If you start amping up the durability much beyond that, then either the lower-end models become completely worthless, or they have to get obnoxious power-boosters (like doubling their shots on orders) to compensate.
To give Marines a lopsided advantage without expecting the Guard player to show up with 300 models painted you have to start getting more creative with scenario and gameplay design than, essentially, putting a platoon of Navy Seals up against a Russian tank formation on open terrain and being surprised that the grizzled best-of-the-best tip-of-the-spear operators get blown up. The standard Matched Play equal-points pitched battle scenario is not a good format for showcasing Marines as they are in the fluff.
In any case, the reason Marines and Terminators felt weak was never Guardsmen with lasguns. It was Guardsmen with as many plasma guns and lascannons as they could stuff into a list, because building a TAC list meant optimizing to kill Marines. That sense of vulnerability is never, ever going away so long as Marines represent a majority of opponents any given player is likely to face.
I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.
Like maybe some kind of system whereby little gribbly units of goblins, or orks, or guardsmen or genestealer cults could be objectively worse for the points than marines, but could easily win battles of attrition by being cycled back onto the battlefield fairly easily via a variety of abilities. You could also give them bonuses for their weight of numbers.
Hmmm im trying to think of a system that has stuff like this in it, maybe one that the exact same single man James Workshop creates and produces.
I've heard that there was a Starship Troopers tabletop game that did this, but I've never played it.
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catbarf wrote: In 3rd Ed it took a whole squad of Guardsmen remaining stationary rapid firing at under half range to kill a single Marine, and two full squads to kill a Terminator. To lose a couple of Terminators to lasgun fire realistically meant either your opponent's entire army was shooting at them, or you made a real bad roll (and could just as easily have those Terminators tank all that fire without issue).
If you start amping up the durability much beyond that, then either the lower-end models become completely worthless, or they have to get obnoxious power-boosters (like doubling their shots on orders) to compensate.
The reason Marines and Terminators felt weak was never Guardsmen with lasguns. It was Guardsmen with as many plasma guns and lascannons as they could stuff into a list, because building a TAC list meant optimizing to kill Marines. That sense of vulnerability is never, ever going away so long as Marines represent a majority of opponents any given player is likely to face.
Maybe it was just my personal experience vs what it should have been mathematically, but every time I put my terminators on the table, they ended up dying fast to a surprisingly small amount of firepower T4 just didn't feel like enough, even with 2+/5+. They just felt way more RNG reliant than any other unit I played and where one bad roll could make your massive points investment worthless, especially given how much smaller games were back in the day. I basically stopped playing them until 9th (I skipped 8th because of non-game reasons) because they just never felt even close to worth it for me.
The problem with making Marines 2 wounds apiece is that they're the most ubiquitous troops in the game.
There's a reason MEQ is the standard of comparison for anti-infantry weapons. Because, unlike in the actual 40k lore, you're far more likely to encounter Marines than, say, Guardsmen.
Hence, you're not just improving one army or one unit - you're effectively raising the floor for the most common units that other armies can expect to have to fight against. Thus, a lot of anti-infantry weapons inevitably had to get significant boots in damage output (usually going to D2), because the alternative would be for them to be inefficient and ineffective against what is (like it or not) their primary target.
This is why Marines cannot (and should not) be super-duper-mega-elites whilst also being the most-played army in the game. Because they inevitably form the baseline for the troops anti-infantry weapons need to kill to be worthwhile. If you make them more elite then you don't actually make them feel more elite, you just encourage people to leave behind any weapons/units incapable of killing them.
And this is before we get into the other issues this causes - like Marines being able to out-fight dedicated melee units in other armies, and supposedly-elite armies basically having to be turned into hordes in order to keep up with the ridiculous level of Marine buffs.
vipoid wrote: The problem with making Marines 2 wounds apiece is that they're the most ubiquitous troops in the game.
There's a reason MEQ is the standard of comparison for anti-infantry weapons. Because, unlike in the actual 40k lore, you're far more likely to encounter Marines than, say, Guardsmen.
Hence, you're not just improving one army or one unit - you're effectively raising the floor for the most common units that other armies can expect to have to fight against. Thus, a lot of anti-infantry weapons inevitably had to get significant boots in damage output (usually going to D2), because the alternative would be for them to be inefficient and ineffective against what is (like it or not) their primary target.
This is why Marines cannot (and should not) be super-duper-mega-elites whilst also being the most-played army in the game. Because they inevitably form the baseline for the troops anti-infantry weapons need to kill to be worthwhile. If you make them more elite then you don't actually make them feel more elite, you just encourage people to leave behind any weapons/units incapable of killing them.
And this is before we get into the other issues this causes - like Marines being able to out-fight dedicated melee units in other armies, and supposedly-elite armies basically having to be turned into hordes in order to keep up with the ridiculous level of Marine buffs.
That's a balance issue though, not a problem with how strong marines feel; it shouldn't be that weapons become 2 damage, it should be that you have twice as many shots to shoot at them. If they were a smaller more "elite" style army (similar to what the Custodes actually are on the table which is a whole other thing in and of itself) then it wouldn't matter if they were far more durable because you'd filed less of them. By nature, you're opponent would have lots more firepower to throw at them because you would always be drastically outnumbered. Circling back to the one of the first things I said on the matter, I think it's more an issue that GW wants people to buy a lot of marines and having them as a small elite army to match the lore, wouldn't be that good for sales.
In any case, the reason Marines and Terminators felt weak was never Guardsmen with lasguns. It was Guardsmen with as many plasma guns and lascannons as they could stuff into a list, because building a TAC list meant optimizing to kill Marines. That sense of vulnerability is never, ever going away so long as Marines represent a majority of opponents any given player is likely to face.
The IG's ability to optimize with as many plasma guns and lascannons as it wants is also part of the problem. The process that eventually lead to Marines getting 2 wound started with the mess that was the 5th edition IG codex.
That's a balance issue though, not a problem with how strong marines feel; it shouldn't be that weapons become 2 damage, it should be that you have twice as many shots to shoot at them. If they were a smaller more "elite" style army (similar to what the Custodes actually are on the table which is a whole other thing in and of itself) then it wouldn't matter if they were far more durable because you'd filed less of them. By nature, you're opponent would have lots more firepower to throw at them because you would always be drastically outnumbered. Circling back to the one of the first things I said on the matter, I think it's more an issue that GW wants people to buy a lot of marines and having them as a small elite army to match the lore, wouldn't be that good for sales.
I actually prefer the 2D weapons over the twice as many shots, simply because it's faster.
The general lethality is similar, but rolling buckets of AP0 dice and hope to kill one or two 20pts marines in cover can be a fun once in a while, but not on a regular basis.
That's a balance issue though, not a problem with how strong marines feel; it shouldn't be that weapons become 2 damage, it should be that you have twice as many shots to shoot at them. If they were a smaller more "elite" style army (similar to what the Custodes actually are on the table which is a whole other thing in and of itself) then it wouldn't matter if they were far more durable because you'd filed less of them. By nature, you're opponent would have lots more firepower to throw at them because you would always be drastically outnumbered. Circling back to the one of the first things I said on the matter, I think it's more an issue that GW wants people to buy a lot of marines and having them as a small elite army to match the lore, wouldn't be that good for sales.
I actually prefer the 2D weapons over the twice as many shots, simply because it's faster.
The general lethality is similar, but rolling buckets of AP0 dice and hope to kill one or two 20pts marines in cover can be a fun once in a while, but not on a regular basis.
I guess I didn't explain that very well. It's not that every other army would have twice as much shooting, they'd have the same as they do now just with less power to each shot, the marines would have about half the forces we are seeing now to compensate (would probably be more like 2/3rds when you think of how it would be default reduce their shooting power, but I'm just talking broad strokes here). Dice roles would be about what we are seeing now, you would just kill a lot less marines. That wouldn't change too much of the balance though as there would be far less marines to kill. That's what I was trying to get at with the comparison to Custodes.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think I've gone WAY off of what we were originally talking about on this thread so, if people want to keep talking about this, we can make something new. Let's get back on topic. XD
Galas wrote: I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.
And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.
As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.
Insectum7 wrote: I agree in general, but this also brings up my issues with Primaris and 2w marines. The troops of other factions struggle hard to dent them, making the on-table interactions much less rewarding. See Banshees/Guardians/Genestealers/Current CSM ( )/Necron Warriors etc vs. Intercessors.
For me, I always thought that SM's (and by extension CSM's) should be the one faction that was really hard to kill. When I played the older editions one of the things I disliked was how fast they died and how wildly inconsistent it was with the lore. Personally, I've always thought that the Space Marine army should have been designed kind of like the current Custodes style where you have a couple of super strong squads trying to take on a much larger army. But then GW wouldn't be able to sell anywhere near as many marine models and they are their flagship army so...
See, I can't get behind this at all because many of those units from other factions were originally set up to have certain advantages/balance points when contesting to Marines, so much so as to be defining features of said units.
Genestealers are a prime example. In Space Hulk they took Terminators apart in CC, and for the first 15(?) years of their existence in the lore they continued to be extremely lethal against Marines in CC, the balancing factor being that they had to get there through a torrent of shooting. Genestealers aren't half as dangerous to Marines as they used to be, and it's a sad, sad state.
For a long, long time, Eldar Aspect Warriors were balanced around roughly equal in value to Marines, but with their own specialist skew. Banshees would slaughter Marines in CC, but Marines would slaughter Banshees with shooting. Dark Reapers would slaughter Marines with shooting, but Marines would slaughter Reapers in CC. Shoot the punchy stuff and punch the shooty stuff. It's an ideal balance. But no more. Individually a Banshee is a shadow of her former self against Marines. Like Genestealers, Banshees used to butcher Terminators ffs.
Marines simply being all uber is just gross, imo. It is a blight on the game.
I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.
Right right, so to be clear I'm totally sympathetic, especially when it comes to Terminators which have a history of being particularly susceptible to rolling a couple 1's and suffering hard. But let's set Terminators aside for a moment though (since we probably agree more on that) and focus on Marines to start with (because they are the baseline), and they're relationship to Guard/GEQs, because that's sort of a fundamental relationship to Marines feeling elite.
Going all the way back to third I think overall Marine toughness gets muddied by Starcannons and Choppas being around but I think when you're talking about strictly Marines with Bolters vs. GEQ with Lasguns, the relationship was -reasonable-, with the primary issues being that Marines didn't receive any benefit from cover in the exchange, and probably the fact that Boltguns could only fire once on the move (which was changed in 4th). As catbarf points out it did take a lot of effort from basic Guardsmen to take out marines, and Marines firing twice against Guardsmen did pretty well, especially in the open. But the real important bit about Marines vs. GEQ during 3-7th was the potential offensive capability of Marines once you started looking at dedicated anti-GEQ weapons, and Morale. Marines, even the basic Tacs, with the right weapons and useage could absolutely butcher GEQ. One flamer and a round of Assault could easily mean a wiped-out Guardsmen squad and further shennanigans as the Marines started contacting more units through consolidation. Like, Marines could trade comfortably with lasgun GEQ in the open and that could generally work out ok to a point for point exchange that was reasonable, (favorable to the side with the right supporting elements), but once Marines actually contacted GEQ lines in CC, it could easily become a massacre.
I can remember a game where an Assault squad of mine took some casualties, and maybe was down to 6-7 guys, but it had two flamers and the opponent was doin the classic Guard-Gunline thing. The Assault Squad (which everybody poopoohs) landed close, flamed through one squad and into another, killing members of two or three squads in the process. Then they charged into two units, handily won the combat, Sweeping Advanced through them and into two more units (some already damaged from the flamers) won the following round of combat in the opponents turn and Sweeping Advanced through them. 6 or 7 marines killing 40ish Guardsmen in one round of shooting and two rounds of combat. Marines, even 'regular' ones armed appropriately and attacking in the right ways could just absolutely annihilate GEQ becuase they could ignore GEQ armor in the open with Bolters, in cover with Flamers (and later Whirlwinds), and pummel GEQ through Assault and Morale. To me, all this meant that it was ok for GEQ to occasionally kill a Marine with a Lasgun because. . . I mean if someone is going to buy a bunch of Guardsmen and paint them all up, the basic troops shouldn't feel totally ineffective. In addition, for the Marine side of things it's good to have a reason to bring Flamers and Whirlwinds, the weapons purposefully built to handle lightly armored hordes.
. . .
8th edition . . .
8th edition brought three brutal changes to the Marine vs. GEQ thing.
1. The first was the change to Morale mechanics. Morale is nowhere near as decisive a mechanic (vs. GEQ specifically) as it was.
2. Removal of blasts/templates. Marines could no longer take advantage of the tendency for more numerous armies to clump up, especially in cover.
3. GEQ got a 5+ save against bolters in the open under the new paradigm, immediately cutting the effectiveness of a Bolter against a GEQ out of cover by 33%.
The fix for all this from GW was that twin linked weapons got to fire twice as much and rerolls (and a new type of marine and a tank that could shoot like 50 fuggin shots in a turn), but all the extra dice/bullets also meant that Marines themselves died faster too. The older paradigm at least had this class of weapons that was genuinely fantastic at killing GEQ (and not MEQ), plus Morale mechanics that were extremely rewarding if you were able to leverage them to your favor. Post 8th just raised the amount of bullets involved, which hurts everybody equally, and downplays the more dynamic mechanics of pre-8th Assault vs. "mook" infantry. Not only that, but now the more effective solutions for dealing with GEQ (which was once flamers and Assault) were taken out of the basic Marine Squads (I'm talking Tacticals, since we're talking about 1W Marines) and given to TLAC Razorbacks or similar platforms. Which, while effective, is just not as exciting or "spech-mahreens OOH RAH" as having your basic Marine squad slaughter GEQ by boltering them in the open, burninating them by the bushell with flamers, and then murdering them in CC before turning to their terrified comrades and threatening the same.
Of course you got new Intercessors with Assault Bolters (?) that had two wounds and rolled more dice per turn for shooting and in CC, but MOAR shots/attacks hurts everybody and *yawn*.
The Marine vs. GEQ thing was eventually addressed again with Bolter Discipline and whatever the +1 attack thing is called, which from my perspective put Marines and GEQ closer to the right spot in terms of balance, but again was just a MOAR dice fix which affects everybody. And then of course we got Supplements and 9th, etc.
Insectum7 wrote: Going all the way back to third I think overall Marine toughness gets muddied by Starcannons and Choppas being around but I think when you're talking about strictly Marines with Bolters vs. GEQ with Lasguns, the relationship was -reasonable-, with the primary issues being that Marines didn't receive any benefit from cover in the exchange, and probably the fact that Boltguns could only fire once on the move (which was changed in 4th).
I know I keep talking about ProHammer (can't help myself) but we have a rule where if the weapons AP = Sv, then instead of your save being negated you take it with a -1 penalty. AP3 weapons means marines save on a 3+. The proliferation of AP2 weapons at least lets terminators save on a 3+, etc.
The bane of terminators is volume of fire against them. Even back in 2nd edition with their armor save being a 3+ on a 2D6, there was still a chance to fail and even with just a -1 or -2 their saves drop down to a similar 1/6 chance fail level that they had in 3rd-7th edition. Terminators are tough and expensive and pack a punch - but they are specialized and need to be deployed carefully and protected as they close range. You can't just plop them down on the table and march towards the enemy. I think strong units SHOULD require careful use and consideration.
Does this fit the lore? Maybe, maybe not. Everything in 40K is the strongest thing ever until the next thing comes along. The lore has always been a saga of one-upping the competition. The irony also being that the imperium "maybe isn't as strong as its propaganda claims to be" with regard to its units.
Anyway, the ProHammer AP/Sv tweak works well and helps reduce lethality a little bit across the board for everyone.
Insectum7 wrote: Going all the way back to third I think overall Marine toughness gets muddied by Starcannons and Choppas being around but I think when you're talking about strictly Marines with Bolters vs. GEQ with Lasguns, the relationship was -reasonable-, with the primary issues being that Marines didn't receive any benefit from cover in the exchange, and probably the fact that Boltguns could only fire once on the move (which was changed in 4th).
I know I keep talking about ProHammer (can't help myself) but we have a rule where if the weapons AP = Sv, then instead of your save being negated you take it with a -1 penalty. AP3 weapons means marines save on a 3+. The proliferation of AP2 weapons at least lets terminators save on a 3+, etc.
The bane of terminators is volume of fire against them. Even back in 2nd edition with their armor save being a 3+ on a 2D6, there was still a chance to fail and even with just a -1 or -2 their saves drop down to a similar 1/6 chance fail level that they had in 3rd-7th edition. Terminators are tough and expensive and pack a punch - but they are specialized and need to be deployed carefully and protected as they close range. You can't just plop them down on the table and march towards the enemy. I think strong units SHOULD require careful use and consideration.
Does this fit the lore? Maybe, maybe not. Everything in 40K is the strongest thing ever until the next thing comes along. The lore has always been a saga of one-upping the competition. The irony also being that the imperium "maybe isn't as strong as its propaganda claims to be" with regard to its units.
Anyway, the ProHammer AP/Sv tweak works well and helps reduce lethality a little bit across the board for everyone.
@Prohammer , although even there Terminators suffer from the advent of rolling a couple 1's.
Terminators are almost their own special case, and I'd almost go the other route and say that I'm ok with AP 2 knocking Terminators out while the issue Tawnis brought up was about the fact that massed Lasgun fire would still knock out Terminators if the target player rolled one bad set of 1's. For the 3-7 Paradigm it might have made more sense for Terminators to be T5, which would have Lasguns wound on 6+ rather than 5+, and Boltguns wounding on 5+, reducing the effect of small arms rather considerably. The proliferation of AP 2 was also an issue of course, but I don't know if having Lascannons only kill a Terminator on a 1 or 2 (Prohammer) feels right either.
There might be some mechanic that takes the strength of the weapon into account. Like if the Strength is +3 over the Targets toughness then the full AP is in effect. It's a little sloppy, but it helps Terminators (if they were T5) sustain hits from Plasma and Starcannons, while still letting true AT weapons do their thing.
There you go, there's my fix for Terminators for 3-7. T5 base, Prohammer rules for AP until attacker S is +3 over target. Ship it!
I do remember playing Necrons in 4th (whi had very limited high AP options) that Terminators actually felt pretty resilient and took a lot of effort to remove if I didn't have Heavy Destroyers around.
One that's been interesting in our ProHammer games is seeing how wildly the points cost swing around from edition to edition.
3rd edition jump pack troops (e.g. Assault marines, Chaos Raptors), biker units, and terminators were REALLY freaking expensive. To the point, I think, that if you're going to run a list heavy on those in ProHammer you should probably use at least the 5th edition books.
That said - we haven't found too much power creep in our games, even when armies draw from different editions. I played a series of 3rd Edition Feral Orks vs 6th edition imperial guard (and lost) but then won against 7th edition Tau with nearly the same list.
I think playing to the mission objective (which are fairly varied) is more critical than the relative "power" of your lists. At least to a certain point.
Slipspace wrote: It's amazing to me how you can make a statement then immediately refute it in your very next sentence.
Sorry, I worded that very poorly. I mean to say in this current edition as an IGOUGO system.
If you're standing out of effective range it's not a bad tactic to be in the open to give you more movement options. Again, this happened in previous editions of 40k where you had the trade-off between moving through cover at a potentially slower rate or being in the open and being more vulnerable to shooting. Generally, once you got to about turn 2 you wanted to be in cover for the most part but starting out of cover had some tactical advantages.
I think in general if we all went back to those old editions with the mindset we had now it wouldn't be that straightforward. Kind of like how athletes today are incredibly more honed in than their predecessors.
The problem with 9th, and in 8th, is that if you don't literally completely hide everything there's a very good chance that whatever isn't 100% hidden will die because 9th is just far too lethal. As the LGT final demonstrated, even being hidden or in cover doesn't help when you can have 4 planes behind your lines in turn 1, along with a teleporting blob of infantry buffed up so much they can take down Dreadnoughts. If you look at the AdMech players movement in that game he had restricted targets for 2 of his infantry units but those units basically either killed their targets in one turn or cleaned up after they'd been softened up. There were then two Ironstriders that had to work a bit to get some shots at a good target but that didn't matter since the bulk of his firepower could shoot whatever it wanted.
There's a third option that no one wants to use. He had enough CP to stuff his Redemptors into reserves and stick everything else out of range of all but the teleporting blob and the planes, but he wanted to gamble on getting first turn. If you're know you're going to get spanked why wouldn't you spend that resource? It's like people playing Magic that don't look at life as a resource.
He still would have lost, because Admech and DE still have things that are a bit much, but then he'd also still have a good hard fought game. Just because a couple of factions are on the edge doesn't mean the whole game is a trash fire.
One that's been interesting in our ProHammer games is seeing how wildly the points cost swing around from edition to edition.
3rd edition jump pack troops (e.g. Assault marines, Chaos Raptors), biker units, and terminators were REALLY freaking expensive. To the point, I think, that if you're going to run a list heavy on those in ProHammer you should probably use at least the 5th edition books.
That said - we haven't found too much power creep in our games, even when armies draw from different editions. I played a series of 3rd Edition Feral Orks vs 6th edition imperial guard (and lost) but then won against 7th edition Tau with nearly the same list.
I think playing to the mission objective (which are fairly varied) is more critical than the relative "power" of your lists. At least to a certain point.
The goofy thing when I look back at those editions is that Marines didn't have Bolt Pistols for two editions.
Also the points for Heavy Weapons are balanced around squads being unable to Split fire (I forget, can squads shoot freely at multiple units in Prohammer?). That limitation is something I'd drop from earlier editions. It made for some very critical decision making, but it also felt a bit too artificial for most people, imo.
Hiding your army is the only thing that prevents damage in an IGOUGO system. You can make everything hit like a wet noodle and have long games that favor large numbers of models, because everything takes so much to kill. I don't know that it would be fun.
It's amazing to me how you can make a statement then immediately refute it in your very next sentence.
Nothing about IGOUGO means hiding is the only way to prevent damage. Even just using 40k as an example we've seen in previous editions that reducing overall range, effective range and volume of fire/attacks do a pretty good job of reducing damage. Previous editions have made it impossible to shoot from one deployment zone to the other with anything other than heavy weapons, for example. They also generally didn't have re-rolls except for twin-linked weapons. If you really wanted to have your basic troops do anything other than plink away with the odd plasma gun or missile launcher you had to actually move them up the board to engage the enemy at closer range, which carried obvious risks that you had to work to mitigate.
People want tactics, but what kind of tactic is it where you can put your guys in the open and it doesn't matter than your opponent went first? That seems antithetical.
If you're standing out of effective range it's not a bad tactic to be in the open to give you more movement options.
Spoiler:
Again, this happened in previous editions of 40k where you had the trade-off between moving through cover at a potentially slower rate or being in the open and being more vulnerable to shooting. Generally, once you got to about turn 2 you wanted to be in cover for the most part but starting out of cover had some tactical advantages.
The problem with 9th, and in 8th, is that if you don't literally completely hide everything there's a very good chance that whatever isn't 100% hidden will die because 9th is just far too lethal.
Spoiler:
As the LGT final demonstrated, even being hidden or in cover doesn't help when you can have 4 planes behind your lines in turn 1, along with a teleporting blob of infantry buffed up so much they can take down Dreadnoughts. If you look at the AdMech players movement in that game he had restricted targets for 2 of his infantry units but those units basically either killed their targets in one turn or cleaned up after they'd been softened up. There were then two Ironstriders that had to work a bit to get some shots at a good target but that didn't matter since the bulk of his firepower could shoot whatever it wanted.
One of the smartest posts I have read since probably something that unit wrote… exalted.
The Prohammer phenom is amazing. Encyclopaedic… yeah I agree about the split fire limitation. Never made sense. I mean, why not have most of the unit tie down the infantry with cover fire while the missile launcher takes aim at the turret of the predator poking over the ruined wall, the very turret of the tank that the targeted infantry may be supporting? Just… weird.
Racerguy180 wrote: Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.
You want to roll 30+ saves individually, be my guest. I don’t. And that can be from ONE unit-and at AP-1, so you can’t even use the reroll trick to get the same math.
Racerguy180 wrote: Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.
You want to roll 30+ saves individually, be my guest. I don’t. And that can be from ONE unit-and at AP-1, so you can’t even use the reroll trick to get the same math.
there are ways to sorta fast roll 2d6 if the -AP isn't to high.
If you need to roll 30 saves you roll 30 dice and any that are not high enough to already be saved you individually (or in groups) add another dice.
Racerguy180 wrote: Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.
You want to roll 30+ saves individually, be my guest. I don’t. And that can be from ONE unit-and at AP-1, so you can’t even use the reroll trick to get the same math.
there are ways to sorta fast roll 2d6 if the -AP isn't to high.
If you need to roll 30 saves you roll 30 dice and any that are not high enough to already be saved you individually (or in groups) add another dice.
So...you want to give Terminators a FNP that's dependent not only on the AP of the attack but on what their armor save rolled?
Racerguy180 wrote: Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.
You want to roll 30+ saves individually, be my guest. I don’t. And that can be from ONE unit-and at AP-1, so you can’t even use the reroll trick to get the same math.
there are ways to sorta fast roll 2d6 if the -AP isn't to high.
If you need to roll 30 saves you roll 30 dice and any that are not high enough to already be saved you individually (or in groups) add another dice.
So...you want to give Terminators a FNP that's dependent not only on the AP of the attack but on what their armor save rolled?
I mentioned how you might somewhat fast roll a 2d6 save, nothing more.
You seem to have quoted the wrong person. Please try again.
Racerguy180 wrote: Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.
You want to roll 30+ saves individually, be my guest. I don’t. And that can be from ONE unit-and at AP-1, so you can’t even use the reroll trick to get the same math.
there are ways to sorta fast roll 2d6 if the -AP isn't to high.
If you need to roll 30 saves you roll 30 dice and any that are not high enough to already be saved you individually (or in groups) add another dice.
So...you want to give Terminators a FNP that's dependent not only on the AP of the attack but on what their armor save rolled?
I mentioned how you might somewhat fast roll a 2d6 save, nothing more.
You seem to have quoted the wrong person. Please try again.
They’re pointing out that that’s STILL a huge hassle to do.
No to more dice rolling, or alternatives that involve the same amount of dice rolling of the current version of terminators.
If you want to make termies durable but without rolling thousands of dice, I think the right solution could be making them T4 2W but 1+ save. Of course getting rid of the whole "rolls of 1 always fail". Maybe even ignoring AP-1 vs low S weapons, for example S4 or S5. This way they'll be extremely durable against light firepower but still vulnerable to weapons with high AP and/or high S.
Of course same solution would apply for other armored infantries and even vehicles. 1+ saves worked well for WHFB years ago and there's no need to differentiate infantries/bikes/cavarly/monsters and vehicles with two different systems, like the AV system of older editions of 40k.
Firing AP0 weapons against stuff like termis or LRs is already quite pointless in most of the circumstances, but 1+ saves would help against those units/armies that can have a massive amount of those shots for cheap which is the reason why termies went for the route of stats creep in the first place.
Blackie wrote: No to more dice rolling, or alternatives that involve the same amount of dice rolling of the current version of terminators.
If you want to make termies durable but without rolling thousands of dice, I think the right solution could be making them T4 2W but 1+ save. Of course getting rid of the whole "rolls of 1 always fail". Maybe even ignoring AP-1 vs low S weapons, for example S4 or S5. This way they'll be extremely durable against light firepower but still vulnerable to weapons with high AP and/or high S.
Of course same solution would apply for other armored infantries and even vehicles. 1+ saves worked well for WHFB years ago and there's no need to differentiate infantries/bikes/cavarly/monsters and vehicles with two different systems, like the AV system of older editions of 40k.
Firing AP0 weapons against stuff like termis or LRs is already quite pointless in most of the circumstances, but 1+ saves would help against those units/armies that can have a massive amount of those shots for cheap which is the reason why termies went for the route of stats creep in the first place.
So feth Nurgle Daemons, right? They don’t ever need to handle Terminators.
I think that the current defensive profile for terminators is fine. If you want to kill them, you either need to bring some "big guns", or a LOT of small ones. That feels right.
Blackie wrote: No to more dice rolling, or alternatives that involve the same amount of dice rolling of the current version of terminators.
If you want to make termies durable but without rolling thousands of dice, I think the right solution could be making them T4 2W but 1+ save. Of course getting rid of the whole "rolls of 1 always fail". Maybe even ignoring AP-1 vs low S weapons, for example S4 or S5. This way they'll be extremely durable against light firepower but still vulnerable to weapons with high AP and/or high S.
Of course same solution would apply for other armored infantries and even vehicles. 1+ saves worked well for WHFB years ago and there's no need to differentiate infantries/bikes/cavarly/monsters and vehicles with two different systems, like the AV system of older editions of 40k.
Firing AP0 weapons against stuff like termis or LRs is already quite pointless in most of the circumstances, but 1+ saves would help against those units/armies that can have a massive amount of those shots for cheap which is the reason why termies went for the route of stats creep in the first place.
So feth Nurgle Daemons, right? They don’t ever need to handle Terminators.
Well, Nurgle daemons do have access to mortal wound output, so it's not like the only tool they have is low strength, low ap weapons...
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
It's almost like designing tiny one-dimensional armies that can't engage with large portions of the game severely restricts how you design everything else!
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
It's almost like designing tiny one-dimensional armies that can't engage with large portions of the game severely restricts how you design everything else!
To which I say, given GW’s history, Nurgle Daemons (and other gods too) should get more varied support.
Especially since Daemons in one fight can outnumber all Loyalist Marines across the entire galaxy.
It would make sense to me that termies in space worthy suits might be resistant to infectious disease, which might be represented with high strength low ap, or poison I guess something like that.
Then there might be mental or emotional disease or contagion, which might be represented with mortal wounds or other mechanics as psychic powers, something like that.
So, Nurgle may have have to be resourceful facing termies, highly armoured space suited dudes… why should every army be equally good at every thing?
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
It's almost like designing tiny one-dimensional armies that can't engage with large portions of the game severely restricts how you design everything else!
To which I say, given GW’s history, Nurgle Daemons (and other gods too) should get more varied support.
Especially since Daemons in one fight can outnumber all Loyalist Marines across the entire galaxy.
Gadzilla666 wrote:I think that the current defensive profile for terminators is fine. If you want to kill them, you either need to bring some "big guns", or a LOT of small ones. That feels right.
Agreed. I feel the same way about vehicles. The dedicated anti-armor stuff is more efficient at killing them, but the weaker, low-AP stuff is still allowed to chip away at them.
jeff white wrote:
So, Nurgle may have have to be resourceful facing termies, highly armoured space suited dudes… why should every army be equally good at every thing?
We're not talking about being "equally good at everything," though. We're talking about how it would stink for the majority of your army to not be allowed to hurt portions of your opponent's army. In the same way 7th edition imperial knights were a pain because they were immune to everything with a bolter or lasgun, making terminators immune to anything without AP-1 or better risks creating very frustrating skew matchups.
Some people are okay with having units that are literally immune to big chunks of their opponent's army. Reasonable people can feel that way. Some of us think it sounds miserable.
Yeah - I don't really see why Terminators (or other things) having multiple wounds is a problem.
I can sort of understand the dislike that "Marines" have been set on this pedestal above lots of other factions. But by degree, that ship has sailed. Its good I think for the game to try and drive people towards TAC lists, rather than highly skewed ones. The best way to do that is to have a variety of different defensive profiles that should, in theory, encourage a variety of offensive profiles.
I'm not sure GW have managed this yet - and indeed I think made some obvious errors in points - but I think its progress in the right direction.
Gadzilla666 wrote:I think that the current defensive profile for terminators is fine. If you want to kill them, you either need to bring some "big guns", or a LOT of small ones. That feels right.
Agreed. I feel the same way about vehicles. The dedicated anti-armor stuff is more efficient at killing them, but the weaker, low-AP stuff is still allowed to chip away at them.
jeff white wrote:
So, Nurgle may have have to be resourceful facing termies, highly armoured space suited dudes… why should every army be equally good at every thing?
We're not talking about being "equally good at everything," though. We're talking about how it would stink for the majority of your army to not be allowed to hurt portions of your opponent's army. In the same way 7th edition imperial knights were a pain because they were immune to everything with a bolter or lasgun, making terminators immune to anything without AP-1 or better risks creating very frustrating skew matchups.
Some people are okay with having units that are literally immune to big chunks of their opponent's army. Reasonable people can feel that way. Some of us think it sounds miserable.
Yeah. And two things to note:
1) These attacks can, potentially, be wounding them on 2s for two, three, or even five damage. These aren't chump change hits-they just lack AP.
2) I have, not once, ever seen someone propose "Make Terminators immune to AP0 weapons!" alongside "And here's how to make it work for armies that'd be screwed by that!" This is not the first time this suggestion has shown up.
JNAProductions wrote: ...2) I have, not once, ever seen someone propose "Make Terminators immune to AP0 weapons!" alongside "And here's how to make it work for armies that'd be screwed by that!" This is not the first time this suggestion has shown up.
AP0 weapons aren't Terminators' problem. The problem is overly-generous access to easily spammable AP-1/-2.
JNAProductions wrote: ...2) I have, not once, ever seen someone propose "Make Terminators immune to AP0 weapons!" alongside "And here's how to make it work for armies that'd be screwed by that!" This is not the first time this suggestion has shown up.
AP0 weapons aren't Terminators' problem. The problem is overly-generous access to easily spammable AP-1/-2.
Which is all the more reason that proposal is dumb then, wouldn't you say?
Racerguy180 wrote: Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.
I dunno. I really like the W1/W2/W3 dynamic.
Agreed. Anything that makes it more difficult to just spam the "best weapon" is a good thing.
Wyldhunt wrote:
Gadzilla666 wrote:I think that the current defensive profile for terminators is fine. If you want to kill them, you either need to bring some "big guns", or a LOT of small ones. That feels right.
Agreed. I feel the same way about vehicles. The dedicated anti-armor stuff is more efficient at killing them, but the weaker, low-AP stuff is still allowed to chip away at them.
Some of the "new" AT weapons are a bit too efficient though. Not in their actual profiles, a tank should be terrified of a multi-melta or Dark Lance, but in their price. They're just too cheap on some platforms, while many vehicles are overpriced.
Gadzilla666 wrote:I think that the current defensive profile for terminators is fine. If you want to kill them, you either need to bring some "big guns", or a LOT of small ones. That feels right.
Agreed. I feel the same way about vehicles. The dedicated anti-armor stuff is more efficient at killing them, but the weaker, low-AP stuff is still allowed to chip away at them.
Some of the "new" AT weapons are a bit too efficient though. Not in their actual profiles, a tank should be terrified of a multi-melta or Dark Lance, but in their price. They're just too cheap on some platforms, while many vehicles are overpriced.
I'm not in the loop enough to agree or disagree with that sentiment, but it sounds like it's pretty easily addressed with some point adjustments rather than more complicated rule changes.
GW took 9th to readjust the profiles from the Index era.
They changed the profiles of Many weapons, good. (The only problemátic one being multimeltas)
And the defensive profiles of Many units (also good)
But they díd not changed the defensive profile of a single vehicle for some reason.
That has to change.
Remove all access to rerolls, to bonus to hit and to wound, AP and damage and just playing with baseline 9th profiles (and stratagems with other, more interesting effects than raw firepower) youll find a much better Game.
Hiding your army is the only thing that prevents damage in an IGOUGO system. You can make everything hit like a wet noodle and have long games that favor large numbers of models, because everything takes so much to kill. I don't know that it would be fun.
It's amazing to me how you can make a statement then immediately refute it in your very next sentence.
Nothing about IGOUGO means hiding is the only way to prevent damage. Even just using 40k as an example we've seen in previous editions that reducing overall range, effective range and volume of fire/attacks do a pretty good job of reducing damage. Previous editions have made it impossible to shoot from one deployment zone to the other with anything other than heavy weapons, for example. They also generally didn't have re-rolls except for twin-linked weapons. If you really wanted to have your basic troops do anything other than plink away with the odd plasma gun or missile launcher you had to actually move them up the board to engage the enemy at closer range, which carried obvious risks that you had to work to mitigate.
People want tactics, but what kind of tactic is it where you can put your guys in the open and it doesn't matter than your opponent went first? That seems antithetical.
If you're standing out of effective range it's not a bad tactic to be in the open to give you more movement options.
Spoiler:
Again, this happened in previous editions of 40k where you had the trade-off between moving through cover at a potentially slower rate or being in the open and being more vulnerable to shooting. Generally, once you got to about turn 2 you wanted to be in cover for the most part but starting out of cover had some tactical advantages.
The problem with 9th, and in 8th, is that if you don't literally completely hide everything there's a very good chance that whatever isn't 100% hidden will die because 9th is just far too lethal.
Spoiler:
As the LGT final demonstrated, even being hidden or in cover doesn't help when you can have 4 planes behind your lines in turn 1, along with a teleporting blob of infantry buffed up so much they can take down Dreadnoughts. If you look at the AdMech players movement in that game he had restricted targets for 2 of his infantry units but those units basically either killed their targets in one turn or cleaned up after they'd been softened up. There were then two Ironstriders that had to work a bit to get some shots at a good target but that didn't matter since the bulk of his firepower could shoot whatever it wanted.
One of the smartest posts I have read since probably something that unit wrote… exalted.
The Prohammer phenom is amazing. Encyclopaedic… yeah I agree about the split fire limitation. Never made sense. I mean, why not have most of the unit tie down the infantry with cover fire while the missile launcher takes aim at the turret of the predator poking over the ruined wall, the very turret of the tank that the targeted infantry may be supporting? Just… weird.
Basically my only problem with it is just...not every unit is designed to have one single weapon that doesnt want to shoot the same target as the rest of the squad.
You're just kind of kicking the can down the road a little ways, and going "problem solved, now your 4 boltgun 1 missile launcher squad can function usefully" but the second someone goes "say, what about my Special Weapon Squad with 3 lasguns and 3 melta guns?" you just have to go 'welp, sucks for them!'
Split firing restriction is not something that the game did better in previous editions. Many, many, many builds were so laughably unviable because of it that you'd never choose to arm units a particular way unless you had a railroad spike through your head. It exacerbated the problem of the game being shoved into the strategy layer rather than the tactical layer, it didnt reduce it.
Heres a leman russ.
OK, i'll put this heavy bolter, storm bolter, battlecannon and plasma cannons on it like the kit allows me to....
no not like that.
OK I'll put this demolisher cannon, these plasma cannons,
no not like that, that's an ordnance weapon and now your plasma cannons wont even work, idiot.
OK i guess a combi-melta, a vanquisher cannon, a lascannon and multi-meltas, all anti-tank
those weapons all have different ranges, so it still sucks, also the vanquisher cannon is just weaker than all the others.
Gadzilla666 wrote:I think that the current defensive profile for terminators is fine. If you want to kill them, you either need to bring some "big guns", or a LOT of small ones. That feels right.
Agreed. I feel the same way about vehicles. The dedicated anti-armor stuff is more efficient at killing them, but the weaker, low-AP stuff is still allowed to chip away at them.
Some of the "new" AT weapons are a bit too efficient though. Not in their actual profiles, a tank should be terrified of a multi-melta or Dark Lance, but in their price. They're just too cheap on some platforms, while many vehicles are overpriced.
I'm not in the loop enough to agree or disagree with that sentiment, but it sounds like it's pretty easily addressed with some point adjustments rather than more complicated rule changes.
Agreed.
Galas wrote:GW took 9th to readjust the profiles from the Index era.
They changed the profiles of Many weapons, good. (The only problemátic one being multimeltas)
And the defensive profiles of Many units (also good)
But they díd not changed the defensive profile of a single vehicle for some reason.
That has to change.
Remove all access to rerolls, to bonus to hit and to wound, AP and damage and just playing with baseline 9th profiles (and stratagems with other, more interesting effects than raw firepower) youll find a much better Game.
Ummm....they've changed quite a few vehicle's defensive profiles. Every vehicle that I currently use was changed in some way defensively. They don't seem interested in helping stuff like basic Land Raiders and Predators though.
Daedalus81 wrote: I have a gut feeling 10th edition will do something for that.
Not on a Codex level. We're too deep into the cross-compatible rabbit hole for the Codices to make any worthwhile changes, unless they make a complete paradigm shift in the way they design them. That would be worse, as now we'd have two distinct 'eras' of Codex - pre-change and after-change - both simultaneously trying to work with the same base ruleset whilst also trying to jury rig a solution to vehicles in some of the books, but not all. This, in turn, would just leave AdMech/DE atop the pile against Codices that have been written to fix a problem that exists with the core rules.
It would have to be at the core rules level, and in a way that works with all existing Codices. If it's something like "Units with the 'Vehicle' Keyword reduce all damage by 1 to a minimum of 1", I'm not sure that'll help.
And yes, I know, someone is going to come along and say "They could just do Indices again!". Yeah. Everyone wants to buy an Index at the start of 10th, completely invalidating their only-recently-bought 9th Ed books. Indices are for when your core rules change so much that your existing books no longer work with the game. It made sense at the start of 3rd, and the start of 8th. You can't (or shouldn't) do it between compatible editions.
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
Then yes. Literally by design it sounds like Nurgle daemons should struggle against high armor units if they don't use magic.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: We're not talking about being "equally good at everything," though. We're talking about how it would stink for the majority of your army to not be allowed to hurt portions of your opponent's army.
...
Some people are okay with having units that are literally immune to big chunks of their opponent's army. Reasonable people can feel that way. Some of us think it sounds miserable.
Then why are you playing mono-Nurgle daemons in this scenario? It doesn't sound like the issue is with the Terminators here, it sounds like the issue is that you expect to be able to take like 4 distinct units out of the codex' 20+ and be able to handle every scenario equally.
If you choose to ignore 75% of a book's options and skew your list, then you kind of forfeit the right to have a tactically flexible army.
Daedalus81 wrote: I have a gut feeling 10th edition will do something for that.
Not on a Codex level. We're too deep into the cross-compatible rabbit hole for the Codices to make any worthwhile changes, unless they make a complete paradigm shift in the way they design them. That would be worse, as now we'd have two distinct 'eras' of Codex - pre-change and after-change - both simultaneously trying to work with the same base ruleset whilst also trying to jury rig a solution to vehicles in some of the books, but not all. This, in turn, would just leave AdMech/DE atop the pile against Codices that have been written to fix a problem that exists with the core rules.
It would have to be at the core rules level, and in a way that works with all existing Codices. If it's something like "Units with the 'Vehicle' Keyword reduce all damage by 1 to a minimum of 1", I'm not sure that'll help.
And yes, I know, someone is going to come along and say "They could just do Indices again!". Yeah. Everyone wants to buy an Index at the start of 10th, completely invalidating their only-recently-bought 9th Ed books. Indices are for when your core rules change so much that your existing books no longer work with the game. It made sense at the start of 3rd, and the start of 8th. You can't (or shouldn't) do it between compatible editions.
I'm thinking core rules. Something like a hybrid of the old facing rules where they get something like +1 save to the front and -1 to the rear. I'm not super imaginative on what else though.
You don't have to "be imaginative", they just need to fix the points. At the end of 8th a 1 shot S8, AP-4, Dd6 multi-melta was 22 points. Fast forward to 9th, and they doubled the shots, which doubled the output, and they're now 20 PPM for INFANTRY, and 25 PPM for VEHICLES. That's nuts.
Gadzilla666 wrote: You don't have to "be imaginative", they just need to fix the points. At the end of 8th a 1 shot S8, AP-4, Dd6 multi-melta was 22 points. Fast forward to 9th, and they doubled the shots, which doubled the output, and they're now 20 PPM for INFANTRY, and 25 PPM for VEHICLES. That's nuts.
Yea, but how many lists that are a problem are packing MM? People are getting plinked by incidental dark lances and then tons of pointy melee or lots and lots of infantry weapons and super lascannons.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea, but how many lists that are a problem are packing MM? People are getting plinked by incidental dark lances and then tons of pointy melee or lots and lots of infantry weapons and super lascannons.
Super Lascannons and Dark Lances are too cheap as well. Dark Lances not as much, because DE can't pack in as many per points/units, but going from Dd6 at 15 PPM to Dd3+3 at.....15 PPM, is a bit silly.
As for "pointy melee" and infantry weapons: you mean DE melee and Admech infantry weapons? Well, yeah. But that isn't just a problem for vehicles. Fixing those two factions won't help vehicles much if every Imperial faction is still running around with underpriced multi-meltas.
Gadzilla666 wrote: You don't have to "be imaginative", they just need to fix the points. At the end of 8th a 1 shot S8, AP-4, Dd6 multi-melta was 22 points. Fast forward to 9th, and they doubled the shots, which doubled the output, and they're now 20 PPM for INFANTRY, and 25 PPM for VEHICLES. That's nuts.
You're describing only half the problem.
Tanks should fear those sorts of weapons. Those sorts of weapons should be great at killing vehicles. If they're too cheap, then change their cost. But the other half is that vehicles aren't durable in general (and monsters are even worse). This exacerbates the problem with Cognis-Lascannons and Multi-Meltas, but it doesn't show the scope of the entire problem. Those AT weapons need to be costed appropriately, but vehicles/monsters also need to be tougher.
Gadzilla666 wrote: You don't have to "be imaginative", they just need to fix the points. At the end of 8th a 1 shot S8, AP-4, Dd6 multi-melta was 22 points. Fast forward to 9th, and they doubled the shots, which doubled the output, and they're now 20 PPM for INFANTRY, and 25 PPM for VEHICLES. That's nuts.
You're describing only half the problem.
Tanks should fear those sorts of weapons. Those sorts of weapons should be great at killing vehicles. If they're too cheap, then change their cost. But the other half is that vehicles aren't durable in general (and monsters are even worse). This exacerbates the problem with Cognis-Lascannons and Multi-Meltas, but it doesn't show the scope of the entire problem. Those AT weapons need to be costed appropriately, but vehicles/monsters also need to be tougher.
Especially Carnifexes. (/no bias at all)
Agreed, tanks should fear those, but they're too cheap. Mine feel pretty durable outside of those things. But let's say vehicles in general aren't, what's your solution? And remember, as you said:
H.B.M.C. wrote:It would have to be at the core rules level, and in a way that works with all existing Codices. If it's something like "Units with the 'Vehicle' Keyword reduce all damage by 1 to a minimum of 1", I'm not sure that'll help.
So, within your own stipulations, what do you think would work?
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
Then yes. Literally by design it sounds like Nurgle daemons should struggle against high armor units if they don't use magic.
The only Nurgle daemon psykers that I'm aware of are the HQs, and I don't recall them having any especially impressive offensive powers. I don't think 1 or 2 smite-like powers per HQ slots is going to be enough to reliably power your way through a bunch of otherwise invulnerable wounds. Especially if your opponent has a bit of a skew list.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: We're not talking about being "equally good at everything," though. We're talking about how it would stink for the majority of your army to not be allowed to hurt portions of your opponent's army.
...
Some people are okay with having units that are literally immune to big chunks of their opponent's army. Reasonable people can feel that way. Some of us think it sounds miserable.
Then why are you playing mono-Nurgle daemons in this scenario? It doesn't sound like the issue is with the Terminators here, it sounds like the issue is that you expect to be able to take like 4 distinct units out of the codex' 20+ and be able to handle every scenario equally.
If you choose to ignore 75% of a book's options and skew your list, then you kind of forfeit the right to have a tactically flexible army.
To be fair, Nurgle daemons are a bit of an odd duck as an example because while they definitely should be a viable standalone faction, they really ought to have more support than they currently do. Still, JNA's point is a good one. A mono-god daemon army can potentially get screwed over by giving some units a 1+ save that doesn't fail on a roll of 1. And Nurgle daemons are just an extreme case being used to illustrate the problem. Should every pulse rifle, lasgun, scatter laser, and sororitas bolter in your opponent's army really be disallowed from hurting a terminator?
Basically, there are those of us who find the idea of not being allowed to hurt enemy units unappealing. Even if you don't share that view, you can probably understand it. Currently, it takes a lot of lasguns or sororitas bolter shots to kill a squad of terminators, but guardsmen and sisters are allowed to kill terminators. I feel that's better for the game than the 1+ unfailable save idea.
Gadzilla666 wrote: You don't have to "be imaginative", they just need to fix the points. At the end of 8th a 1 shot S8, AP-4, Dd6 multi-melta was 22 points. Fast forward to 9th, and they doubled the shots, which doubled the output, and they're now 20 PPM for INFANTRY, and 25 PPM for VEHICLES. That's nuts.
You're describing only half the problem.
Tanks should fear those sorts of weapons. Those sorts of weapons should be great at killing vehicles. If they're too cheap, then change their cost. But the other half is that vehicles aren't durable in general (and monsters are even worse). This exacerbates the problem with Cognis-Lascannons and Multi-Meltas, but it doesn't show the scope of the entire problem. Those AT weapons need to be costed appropriately, but vehicles/monsters also need to be tougher.
Especially Carnifexes. (/no bias at all)
You know I never thought about AT weapon-to-vehicle cost before, but I'm suddenly reminded that in 2nd ed, a SM Multimelta cost 65 points to a Land Raiders 220. One of the most effective AT weapons itself cost more than 25% of the vehicle cost! A Lascannon cost 45 points, for 1/6th the LR cost.
Are dark lances really unreasonable at their current price? I've been playing DE for a while now, so my perspective might be skewed. They have the same max damage as a lascannon and only 1 higher average damage (4.5 instead of a lascannon's 3.5), and I don't see a lot of complaints about standard lascannons. The dark lance is fumble-proof (you can't roll a 1 or 2 for damage like you can with a lascannon), but I recall plenty of threads talking about how dedicated anti-tank weapons sucked next to plasma weapons because of the possibility of rolling low on damage. So the flub-proof damage roll is probably a good thing.
None of which necessarily means that lances aren't underpriced. It just seems odd that they're considered a problem when both their average and max damage is so close to that of the lascannon. It kind of makes me wonder if that perception might have a bit of an imperial bias? Not an accusation. I'm sincerely uncertain.
Blackie wrote: No to more dice rolling, or alternatives that involve the same amount of dice rolling of the current version of terminators.
If you want to make termies durable but without rolling thousands of dice, I think the right solution could be making them T4 2W but 1+ save. Of course getting rid of the whole "rolls of 1 always fail". Maybe even ignoring AP-1 vs low S weapons, for example S4 or S5. This way they'll be extremely durable against light firepower but still vulnerable to weapons with high AP and/or high S.
Of course same solution would apply for other armored infantries and even vehicles. 1+ saves worked well for WHFB years ago and there's no need to differentiate infantries/bikes/cavarly/monsters and vehicles with two different systems, like the AV system of older editions of 40k.
Firing AP0 weapons against stuff like termis or LRs is already quite pointless in most of the circumstances, but 1+ saves would help against those units/armies that can have a massive amount of those shots for cheap which is the reason why termies went for the route of stats creep in the first place.
So feth Nurgle Daemons, right? They don’t ever need to handle Terminators.
Is Nurgle Daemons even an army? Chaos Daemons can definitely deal with 1+ termies, so do Deathguard. Mortal Wounds are also a thing, so is tarpitting elites with cheap (and disgustingly resilient) bodies.
JNAProductions wrote: ...2) I have, not once, ever seen someone propose "Make Terminators immune to AP0 weapons!" alongside "And here's how to make it work for armies that'd be screwed by that!" This is not the first time this suggestion has shown up.
AP0 weapons aren't Terminators' problem. The problem is overly-generous access to easily spammable AP-1/-2.
Those weapons are proper anti elite tools. Termies SHOULD be vulnerable to those, and with 2W 1+ they could tank lots of hits anyway. What people hated in the past was losing lots of termies against massive S3/4 weapons, simply by rolling a few 1s.
I don't think giving them 3W was the correct way to fix them, and I dislike the concept of rolling tons of dice for little or no result; I would have preferred making them more resilient to low-mid strength hits and immune against low S countless shots/attacks, which have always been the nightmare of terminators.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Itt:
"Infantry units should be immune to small arms but tanks and monsters can and should take wounds to lasguns"
Automatically Appended Next Post: I guarantee you can put thicker armor on a tank than you can on a space marine
In my previous post I said that 1+ should be extended to tanks, big ones like those which already have 2+ at least .
Since we're in the age of cumulative AP and mortal wounds I don't see the reason why 1+ saves shouldn't exist, that's it. WHFB had it for years (even 0+ was possible actually), although only on characters IIRC.
Gadzilla666 wrote: You don't have to "be imaginative", they just need to fix the points. At the end of 8th a 1 shot S8, AP-4, Dd6 multi-melta was 22 points. Fast forward to 9th, and they doubled the shots, which doubled the output, and they're now 20 PPM for INFANTRY, and 25 PPM for VEHICLES. That's nuts.
Yea, but how many lists that are a problem are packing MM? People are getting plinked by incidental dark lances and then tons of pointy melee or lots and lots of infantry weapons and super lascannons.
Lists are not packing MM's because no one is bringing tanks unless they are cheap and/or have an invul save.
And why is that? Because anti tank weapons are so damn points effective right now.
If the Ork buggy army takes off you might see some more AT weapons getting brought and then such a list will melt as snow in the summer and we're back to people not bringing a lot of AT because no one is bringing tanks. because AT is to effective.
Rather then do all sorts of +1 sv or ignore ap stuff. What happens if we simply double the wounds of all vehicles and monsters?
Mid-grade weapons still plink off wounds but are not good enough to deal with multiple tanks, AT weapons are still best but it actually takes some effort to kill a tank rather then glance in its general direction.
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
Then yes. Literally by design it sounds like Nurgle daemons should struggle against high armor units if they don't use magic.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: We're not talking about being "equally good at everything," though. We're talking about how it would stink for the majority of your army to not be allowed to hurt portions of your opponent's army.
...
Some people are okay with having units that are literally immune to big chunks of their opponent's army. Reasonable people can feel that way. Some of us think it sounds miserable.
Then why are you playing mono-Nurgle daemons in this scenario? It doesn't sound like the issue is with the Terminators here, it sounds like the issue is that you expect to be able to take like 4 distinct units out of the codex' 20+ and be able to handle every scenario equally.
If you choose to ignore 75% of a book's options and skew your list, then you kind of forfeit the right to have a tactically flexible army.
Struggle against units with good armor? Sure, that's fine. That's a weakness in the army.
Be literally incapable of dealing with them? That's just bad game design. And considering that, if I take three Poxbringers, I can get three Smites (killing two Terminators on average-and the Nurgle Smitelike powers aren't any better, really) and a handful of AP-3 attacks, or be forced into taking a GUO or two (who are big ol' fire magnets that aren't that hard to take down for their points) to even have a CHANCE of touching these Terminators... Yeah, no.
Blackie wrote: No to more dice rolling, or alternatives that involve the same amount of dice rolling of the current version of terminators.
If you want to make termies durable but without rolling thousands of dice, I think the right solution could be making them T4 2W but 1+ save. Of course getting rid of the whole "rolls of 1 always fail". Maybe even ignoring AP-1 vs low S weapons, for example S4 or S5. This way they'll be extremely durable against light firepower but still vulnerable to weapons with high AP and/or high S.
Of course same solution would apply for other armored infantries and even vehicles. 1+ saves worked well for WHFB years ago and there's no need to differentiate infantries/bikes/cavarly/monsters and vehicles with two different systems, like the AV system of older editions of 40k.
Firing AP0 weapons against stuff like termis or LRs is already quite pointless in most of the circumstances, but 1+ saves would help against those units/armies that can have a massive amount of those shots for cheap which is the reason why termies went for the route of stats creep in the first place.
So feth Nurgle Daemons, right? They don’t ever need to handle Terminators.
Is Nurgle Daemons even an army? Chaos Daemons can definitely deal with 1+ termies, so do Deathguard. Mortal Wounds are also a thing, so is tarpitting elites with cheap (and disgustingly resilient) bodies.
JNAProductions wrote: ...2) I have, not once, ever seen someone propose "Make Terminators immune to AP0 weapons!" alongside "And here's how to make it work for armies that'd be screwed by that!" This is not the first time this suggestion has shown up.
AP0 weapons aren't Terminators' problem. The problem is overly-generous access to easily spammable AP-1/-2.
Those weapons are proper anti elite tools. Termies SHOULD be vulnerable to those, and with 2W 1+ they could tank lots of hits anyway. What people hated in the past was losing lots of termies against massive S3/4 weapons, simply by rolling a few 1s.
I don't think giving them 3W was the correct way to fix them, and I dislike the concept of rolling tons of dice for little or no result; I would have preferred making them more resilient to low-mid strength hits and immune against low S countless shots/attacks, which have always been the nightmare of terminators.
Hey, do you play Black Templars? I hear they'll be a lot better if you soup in Inquisitorial Psykers!
Nurgle Daemons are a more distinct subfaction than Black Templars or Raven Guard, having mostly unique units instead of sharing 85% or more of their stuff with other Marine subfactions. And yet, you don't hear people saying "If your Templars suck, just play White Scars."
Or at least, not nearly as much as I hear "If your Nurgle Daemons suck, just play mixed Chaos."
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
Then yes. Literally by design it sounds like Nurgle daemons should struggle against high armor units if they don't use magic.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: We're not talking about being "equally good at everything," though. We're talking about how it would stink for the majority of your army to not be allowed to hurt portions of your opponent's army.
...
Some people are okay with having units that are literally immune to big chunks of their opponent's army. Reasonable people can feel that way. Some of us think it sounds miserable.
Then why are you playing mono-Nurgle daemons in this scenario? It doesn't sound like the issue is with the Terminators here, it sounds like the issue is that you expect to be able to take like 4 distinct units out of the codex' 20+ and be able to handle every scenario equally.
If you choose to ignore 75% of a book's options and skew your list, then you kind of forfeit the right to have a tactically flexible army.
Struggle against units with good armor? Sure, that's fine. That's a weakness in the army.
Be literally incapable of dealing with them? That's just bad game design. And considering that, if I take three Poxbringers, I can get three Smites (killing two Terminators on average-and the Nurgle Smitelike powers aren't any better, really) and a handful of AP-3 attacks, or be forced into taking a GUO or two (who are big ol' fire magnets that aren't that hard to take down for their points) to even have a CHANCE of touching these Terminators... Yeah, no.
Blackie wrote: No to more dice rolling, or alternatives that involve the same amount of dice rolling of the current version of terminators.
If you want to make termies durable but without rolling thousands of dice, I think the right solution could be making them T4 2W but 1+ save. Of course getting rid of the whole "rolls of 1 always fail". Maybe even ignoring AP-1 vs low S weapons, for example S4 or S5. This way they'll be extremely durable against light firepower but still vulnerable to weapons with high AP and/or high S.
Of course same solution would apply for other armored infantries and even vehicles. 1+ saves worked well for WHFB years ago and there's no need to differentiate infantries/bikes/cavarly/monsters and vehicles with two different systems, like the AV system of older editions of 40k.
Firing AP0 weapons against stuff like termis or LRs is already quite pointless in most of the circumstances, but 1+ saves would help against those units/armies that can have a massive amount of those shots for cheap which is the reason why termies went for the route of stats creep in the first place.
So feth Nurgle Daemons, right? They don’t ever need to handle Terminators.
Is Nurgle Daemons even an army? Chaos Daemons can definitely deal with 1+ termies, so do Deathguard. Mortal Wounds are also a thing, so is tarpitting elites with cheap (and disgustingly resilient) bodies.
JNAProductions wrote: ...2) I have, not once, ever seen someone propose "Make Terminators immune to AP0 weapons!" alongside "And here's how to make it work for armies that'd be screwed by that!" This is not the first time this suggestion has shown up.
AP0 weapons aren't Terminators' problem. The problem is overly-generous access to easily spammable AP-1/-2.
Those weapons are proper anti elite tools. Termies SHOULD be vulnerable to those, and with 2W 1+ they could tank lots of hits anyway. What people hated in the past was losing lots of termies against massive S3/4 weapons, simply by rolling a few 1s.
I don't think giving them 3W was the correct way to fix them, and I dislike the concept of rolling tons of dice for little or no result; I would have preferred making them more resilient to low-mid strength hits and immune against low S countless shots/attacks, which have always been the nightmare of terminators.
Hey, do you play Black Templars? I hear they'll be a lot better if you soup in Inquisitorial Psykers!
Nurgle Daemons are a more distinct subfaction than Black Templars or Raven Guard, having mostly unique units instead of sharing 85% or more of their stuff with other Marine subfactions. And yet, you don't hear people saying "If your Templars suck, just play White Scars."
Or at least, not nearly as much as I hear "If your Nurgle Daemons suck, just play mixed Chaos."
Mono God armies were never meant to be well rounded. They are like WHFB index armies doubling down on a specific concept. So if my Night Goblin army runs into problems no one bats an eye but if those daemons do people on the Internet complain.
So if you want to have a Daemon army with less problems just include all four types. And don't be afraid to paint them all in one colour scheme. I have seen Nurgle units painted in a cold blue/white scheme and they looked great.
Outside that? Low strength, no-you can get S6 +1 to-wound on Plaguebearers. But they have no AP. In fact, outside of GUOs and Heralds, they don’t have AP at all.
Then yes. Literally by design it sounds like Nurgle daemons should struggle against high armor units if they don't use magic.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: We're not talking about being "equally good at everything," though. We're talking about how it would stink for the majority of your army to not be allowed to hurt portions of your opponent's army.
...
Some people are okay with having units that are literally immune to big chunks of their opponent's army. Reasonable people can feel that way. Some of us think it sounds miserable.
Then why are you playing mono-Nurgle daemons in this scenario? It doesn't sound like the issue is with the Terminators here, it sounds like the issue is that you expect to be able to take like 4 distinct units out of the codex' 20+ and be able to handle every scenario equally.
If you choose to ignore 75% of a book's options and skew your list, then you kind of forfeit the right to have a tactically flexible army.
Struggle against units with good armor? Sure, that's fine. That's a weakness in the army.
Be literally incapable of dealing with them? That's just bad game design. And considering that, if I take three Poxbringers, I can get three Smites (killing two Terminators on average-and the Nurgle Smitelike powers aren't any better, really) and a handful of AP-3 attacks, or be forced into taking a GUO or two (who are big ol' fire magnets that aren't that hard to take down for their points) to even have a CHANCE of touching these Terminators... Yeah, no.
Blackie wrote: No to more dice rolling, or alternatives that involve the same amount of dice rolling of the current version of terminators.
If you want to make termies durable but without rolling thousands of dice, I think the right solution could be making them T4 2W but 1+ save. Of course getting rid of the whole "rolls of 1 always fail". Maybe even ignoring AP-1 vs low S weapons, for example S4 or S5. This way they'll be extremely durable against light firepower but still vulnerable to weapons with high AP and/or high S.
Of course same solution would apply for other armored infantries and even vehicles. 1+ saves worked well for WHFB years ago and there's no need to differentiate infantries/bikes/cavarly/monsters and vehicles with two different systems, like the AV system of older editions of 40k.
Firing AP0 weapons against stuff like termis or LRs is already quite pointless in most of the circumstances, but 1+ saves would help against those units/armies that can have a massive amount of those shots for cheap which is the reason why termies went for the route of stats creep in the first place.
So feth Nurgle Daemons, right? They don’t ever need to handle Terminators.
Is Nurgle Daemons even an army? Chaos Daemons can definitely deal with 1+ termies, so do Deathguard. Mortal Wounds are also a thing, so is tarpitting elites with cheap (and disgustingly resilient) bodies.
JNAProductions wrote: ...2) I have, not once, ever seen someone propose "Make Terminators immune to AP0 weapons!" alongside "And here's how to make it work for armies that'd be screwed by that!" This is not the first time this suggestion has shown up.
AP0 weapons aren't Terminators' problem. The problem is overly-generous access to easily spammable AP-1/-2.
Those weapons are proper anti elite tools. Termies SHOULD be vulnerable to those, and with 2W 1+ they could tank lots of hits anyway. What people hated in the past was losing lots of termies against massive S3/4 weapons, simply by rolling a few 1s.
I don't think giving them 3W was the correct way to fix them, and I dislike the concept of rolling tons of dice for little or no result; I would have preferred making them more resilient to low-mid strength hits and immune against low S countless shots/attacks, which have always been the nightmare of terminators.
Hey, do you play Black Templars? I hear they'll be a lot better if you soup in Inquisitorial Psykers!
Nurgle Daemons are a more distinct subfaction than Black Templars or Raven Guard, having mostly unique units instead of sharing 85% or more of their stuff with other Marine subfactions. And yet, you don't hear people saying "If your Templars suck, just play White Scars."
Or at least, not nearly as much as I hear "If your Nurgle Daemons suck, just play mixed Chaos."
Mono God armies were never meant to be well rounded. They are like WHFB index armies doubling down on a specific concept. So if my Night Goblin army runs into problems no one bats an eye but if those daemons do people on the Internet complain.
So if you want to have a Daemon army with less problems just include all four types. And don't be afraid to paint them all in one colour scheme. I have seen Nurgle units painted in a cold blue/white scheme and they looked great.
There's a difference between "this army struggles to handle Terminators and other well-armored infantry" and "This army needs to take a 270 point, highly vulnerable HQ to have a chance of even wounding a 190 point squad."
I'd love to see Nurgle Daemons more fleshed out (along with the other Daemonic gods) but for now, I accept that they have weaknesses, like virtually no shooting and minimal access to AP. But when you can slap down 75 literally invulnerable to most of my army wounds and STILL have 1,000 points to play with... That's an issue.
Hey, do you play Black Templars? I hear they'll be a lot better if you soup in Inquisitorial Psykers!
Nurgle Daemons are a more distinct subfaction than Black Templars or Raven Guard, having mostly unique units instead of sharing 85% or more of their stuff with other Marine subfactions. And yet, you don't hear people saying "If your Templars suck, just play White Scars."
Or at least, not nearly as much as I hear "If your Nurgle Daemons suck, just play mixed Chaos."
BT are SM, with access to basically anything SM related without even souping. That's loads of datasheets to choose from. Maybe they'll even get a supplement.
Nurgle Daeomons are not a stand alone army though, so adding other kind of daemons or deathguard units it's not like suggesting to play something else: it's suggesting to play the army using its entire potential. It's basically like saying that a full gretchin army should be competitive while refusing to add any other ork unit that may improve a lot that themed army. Take a full coven army as another example: they're a subfaction of one of the best codex and yet it's not a proper standalone faction to play with; a full coven army will struggle against lots of stuff. If you want to run a full coven or gretchin army, or any other list that just spam a tiny fraction of a whole available roster, go for it; don't complain if it doesn't work though.
I'm usually not one to mind diverging from the original topic of the thread but this one has gone WAY of course.
In an effort to bring it back - I think the recent discussion here sort of showcases the issues, IMHO, with the current design and specially the growing lethality and power creep that's undermining more genuine tactical gameplay. The response to weapons being too strong? Double the HP's of units!
We shouldn't be in this situation in the first place and doing things like making vehicles just monstrous creatures with more wounds or whatever doesn't make the underlying gameplay more tactical or compelling. It makes it worse IMHO and ALSO creates new problems that requires more fussing around to fix.
Gadzilla666 wrote: You don't have to "be imaginative", they just need to fix the points. At the end of 8th a 1 shot S8, AP-4, Dd6 multi-melta was 22 points. Fast forward to 9th, and they doubled the shots, which doubled the output, and they're now 20 PPM for INFANTRY, and 25 PPM for VEHICLES. That's nuts.
Yea, but how many lists that are a problem are packing MM? People are getting plinked by incidental dark lances and then tons of pointy melee or lots and lots of infantry weapons and super lascannons.
Lists are not packing MM's because no one is bringing tanks unless they are cheap and/or have an invul save.
And why is that? Because anti tank weapons are so damn points effective right now.
If the Ork buggy army takes off you might see some more AT weapons getting brought and then such a list will melt as snow in the summer and we're back to people not bringing a lot of AT because no one is bringing tanks. because AT is to effective.
Rather then do all sorts of +1 sv or ignore ap stuff. What happens if we simply double the wounds of all vehicles and monsters?
Mid-grade weapons still plink off wounds but are not good enough to deal with multiple tanks, AT weapons are still best but it actually takes some effort to kill a tank rather then glance in its general direction.
I think it's a lot more complex than that.
Malik's army had 5 TCLC or 10 shots. That's 18 damage to vehicles on average plus 3 MW from the bomber. The average DE list brings on average 6 DL, which would be 13 damage and that's if every boat can see. Scrapjets bring 3 to 4 shots at S8 with a lot less AP than MM. Eight of those can't typically down a Redemptor and would barely take a tank.
Of the top two armies only one brings enough AT to stress and only if you stick your neck out too far. In the LGT situation the terrain wasn't enough to hide that many dreads and he took it on the chin from two blocks of infantry on top of good rolls.
There isn't that much AT on the table. The concerns for vehicles are overstated and what the internet says doesn't match what happens on the table.
Marine players aren't avoiding tanks. They're bringing weapons to help kill Raiders and other problem units. A Valiant does 6.2 to a Raider. A Volkite Contemptor does 7.1 for much cheaper. They didn't dodge the Valiant, because they were worried it would die. They dodged it, because it wasn't the best unit to tackle Raiders or backfield chickens. Most everyone has a top profile strat for vehicles as well, so if someone was worried about limping a tank around they don't really have to.
I think it would be interesting to try and crunch the odds on Malik's opening turn in the final.
But yeah. At this stage its fair to say a lot of vehicles/monsters not seeing play are due to the fact they are inefficient for the points - although the vulnerability of T7/T8/3+ save to MMs, Dark Lances, Ad Mech chickens etc does factor into that.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Agreed, tanks should fear those, but they're too cheap. Mine feel pretty durable outside of those things. But let's say vehicles in general aren't, what's your solution?
Tanks, or just vehicles in general? Because Rhinos and other light-armor vehicles don't feel too different from how they used to, but Leman Russes are now barely any more durable than Chimeras when they used to bounce lascannons 2/3 of the time.
I don't think it's vehicles on the whole that are too vulnerable; it's tanks and tank-analogue monstrous creatures that got hit hard by the transition to 8th. At the very least, an actual tank should have a 2+ save.
Gadzilla666 wrote: ...Agreed, tanks should fear those, but they're too cheap. Mine feel pretty durable outside of those things. But let's say vehicles in general aren't, what's your solution? And remember, as you said:
H.B.M.C. wrote:It would have to be at the core rules level, and in a way that works with all existing Codices. If it's something like "Units with the 'Vehicle' Keyword reduce all damage by 1 to a minimum of 1", I'm not sure that'll help.
So, within your own stipulations, what do you think would work?
Patch the wound table. The issue that's created the monster of d6+2 melta is that the new wound table destroyed melta's niche in 8th, since GW wanted overcharged plasma to wound T4 on 2+ they had to make it S8, and then didn't consider that they'd just made overcharged plasma (two S8/D2 shots) better than melta (one S8/Dd6 shot) against all targets, so now they're putting out damage reduction and pumping the damage stat on things in an effort to give melta back it's niche. In practice what they ought to do is go back to something closer to the old wound table (2+ S two higher/3+ S one higher/4+ S equal/5+ S one lower/6+ S 2-3 lower/impossible S 4 lower), since that de-homogenizes Strength some and lets you have more distinct roles for weapons without having to stack extra mechanics on the game, while still letting 2W Marines and D2 Marine-killer weapons exist, and also not growing vehicle wound counts beyond what you can reasonably mark on the table with d10s or an MTG spindown.
To be fair, Nurgle daemons are a bit of an odd duck as an example because while they definitely should be a viable standalone faction, they really ought to have more support than they currently do.
Sure, I have no problem with that.
JNA's point is a good one. A mono-god daemon army can potentially get screwed over by giving some units a 1+ save that doesn't fail on a roll of 1.
but that is the mono god army's problem, not the terminator's problem. You are misappropriating the issue. Going off of what you and he are saying, it sounds like Mono Nurgle armies are a skew list. It is apparently really really good at one or two things while being useless garbage and completely helpless at other things. Don't play skew lists, unless you're okay with running into something that your army can't deal with and automatically losing the game. As the rules currently are, if you take a bunch of slow, glass Cannon melee units and throw them against my army which is a bunch of hard-hitting artillery, I will crush you. And that's as it should be. If I bring my list that is nothing but hard-hitting artillery against your army which is a deep striking melee horde list, you will crush me. And that's how it should be.
If you want to be able to always have a answer against a particular unit type then you should be making well-rounded TAC lists.
Should every pulse rifle, lasgun, scatter laser, and sororitas bolter in your opponent's army really be disallowed from hurting a terminator?
if those factions have AV/anti-TEQ weapon options then yes I would have absolutely no problem with small arms being completely useless against terminators.
To be fair, Nurgle daemons are a bit of an odd duck as an example because while they definitely should be a viable standalone faction, they really ought to have more support than they currently do.
Sure, I have no problem with that.
JNA's point is a good one. A mono-god daemon army can potentially get screwed over by giving some units a 1+ save that doesn't fail on a roll of 1.
but that is the mono god army's problem, not the terminator's problem. You are misappropriating the issue. Going off of what you and he are saying, it sounds like Mono Nurgle armies are a skew list. It is apparently really really good at one or two things while being useless garbage and completely helpless at other things. Don't play skew lists, unless you're okay with running into something that your army can't deal with and automatically losing the game. As the rules currently are, if you take a bunch of slow, glass Cannon melee units and throw them against my army which is a bunch of hard-hitting artillery, I will crush you. And that's as it should be. If I bring my list that is nothing but hard-hitting artillery against your army which is a deep striking melee horde list, you will crush me. And that's how it should be.
If you want to be able to always have a answer against a particular unit type then you should be making well-rounded TAC lists.
Should every pulse rifle, lasgun, scatter laser, and sororitas bolter in your opponent's army really be disallowed from hurting a terminator?
if those factions have AV/anti-TEQ weapon options then yes I would have absolutely no problem with small arms being completely useless against terminators.
Nurgle Daemons are presented as a perfectly viable army.
If they cannot make a TAC list, that is an issue with them-and one that I would dare say needs addressing more than literally ANYTHING Marine.
I 100% agree with you. If games workshop is going to advertise mono Nurgle as a viable standalone army then they have a obligation to provide it with rules and units that allow it to be competitive in a TAC environment.
Since we're on the subject that is something that I as a slaanesh player has taken issue with for years. GW has gone out of their way to create anti-synergy for trying to play undivided demons but all of the monogod lists feel super underdeveloped.
Should every pulse rifle, lasgun, scatter laser, and sororitas bolter in your opponent's army really be disallowed from hurting a terminator?
if those factions have AV/anti-TEQ weapon options then yes I would have absolutely no problem with small arms being completely useless against terminators.
This might just be an irreconcilable difference in what you and I want the game to look like. Which is fine. Reasonable people can want different things.
To me, having some units in 40k be literally invulnerable to other units would be a bad thing. If you and I are playing a 1,000 point game and you've taken 750 points worth of terminators, then the only units in my army that are allowed to participate in the core engagement of the game (units fighting each other) are the ones that I happened to put some anti-tank guns into. So if I bring a vanilla TAC list, the unfailable 1+ terminator save mechanic has turned this into a pretty annoying experience as only the special weapons in my troop squads are allowed to actually fight your termies. Even worse, this makes it very easy to create a defensive skew list that basically just has to kill its opponent's anti-tank units to spend the rest of the game being invulnerable.
That's more or less how 5th edition parking lots were against S3 armies (S3 units couldn't punch tanks to death in melee the way S4 armies could). It was a bad experience then, and I don't want to return to it now. Similarly, I did not have fun in 7th edition when list building began and ended with being able to counter invisible death stars or AV 13/13/12 imperial knights.
That kind of blanket invulnerability makes more sense in games where you can change up your army loadout with a side list or mid-game decisions. In 40k, skews like that can screw you over before you even get to the game store.
I'm 100% ok with having some units being invulnerable to others, I just wouldn't put Terminators in that category. But monsters and vehicles? Heck yeah.
But then I'd minimize the possibilities for skew, and rebalance some other things, such as Knights.
Insectum7 wrote: I'm 100% ok with having some units being invulnerable to others, I just wouldn't put Terminators in that category. But monsters and vehicles? Heck yeah.
But then I'd minimize the possibilities for skew, and rebalance some other things, such as Knights.
Fair enough. How would you go about minimizing skew? Seems like you'd have to impose anti-tank quotas on list creation or something. Or put maximums on how many units with certain traits your list can contain. So for instance, you could say that only 50% of your points can be invested in models with the vehicle keyword. Of course, then you'd be invalidating tank companies.
For the tanks vs other stuff problem - originally 40k had masses of wounds on a vehicle (50+? for a land raider from memory), but AT weapons did stuff like 2D12 wounds.
Now that would vape characters, but that wasn't so much of a problem then. Now Abaddon players don't want their guy to disappear when a guardsman hits with an AT weapon, so that makes everything go weird with how the game treats vehicles as bigger people, but doesn't want special people to be turned into smoking boots.
There are limited ways round this sadly given the system. The only one I can see is going back to a lot more wounds for big tough things (MBTs) so its harder to deal with them using anti infantry weapons, AT weapons doing plenty of wounds to them to maintain that parity, and then one of two fixes to save the precious characters.
Either a) have AT weapons get -1 to shoot non tanks (not sure how Nids would fit in here, would need a sensible keyword for anything that is the favoured target of lascannon) OR b) have two damage stats vs tanks and everything else but that would be a lot clunkier.
The advantage of a) is you could expand it so weapons that were useless vs armour could get a -1 to hit and so on.
Insectum7 wrote: I'm 100% ok with having some units being invulnerable to others, I just wouldn't put Terminators in that category. But monsters and vehicles? Heck yeah.
But then I'd minimize the possibilities for skew, and rebalance some other things, such as Knights.
Fair enough. How would you go about minimizing skew? Seems like you'd have to impose anti-tank quotas on list creation or something. Or put maximums on how many units with certain traits your list can contain. So for instance, you could say that only 50% of your points can be invested in models with the vehicle keyword. Of course, then you'd be invalidating tank companies.
Go back to one Battalion only for army comp, stop putting all-heavy-weapons things like Kataphrons in Troops, cut down on vehicle squadrons, Knights get to be LoW choices for AdMech rather than their own Codex. If you want to minimize skew you have to invalidate tank companies. Tank companies are skew.
X-X HQ 0-6 Elite X-8 Troops 0-4 Fast Attack 0-4 Heavy Support 0-2 Flyers 0-2 Fortifications 0-X Dedicated Transports.
Want to add another Elite/FA/Flyer/HS? Pay 2 CP. No additional detachments. Then allow scaling for the troops/HQ requirement, so for 1000 points it'd be 1 and 1, for 1500 it'd be 2 and 3, and so on.
Then any special formations and what not could be handled via unique FOCs in each Codex, themed around that army, where appropriate.
So, to use a simple example, a Iyanden Spirit Host, where it's mostly Elites and HS, but Wraith units get a bonus (like Obsec or whatever). Also lets you play around with what gets 'Core'.
Insectum7 wrote: I'm 100% ok with having some units being invulnerable to others, I just wouldn't put Terminators in that category. But monsters and vehicles? Heck yeah.
But then I'd minimize the possibilities for skew, and rebalance some other things, such as Knights.
Fair enough. How would you go about minimizing skew? Seems like you'd have to impose anti-tank quotas on list creation or something. Or put maximums on how many units with certain traits your list can contain. So for instance, you could say that only 50% of your points can be invested in models with the vehicle keyword. Of course, then you'd be invalidating tank companies.
There are three options for minimizing skew as I see it.
1: Return to stricter FOCs. Too bad mr tank company.
2: Make tank/monster lists less objective-capable, so players can win easier against them without destroying them.
3: Make tanks/monsters more vulnerable when unsupported by infantry. (This is the option I like)
Ideally one could keep making their tank lists, but at some point it should become a negative return, design-wise. Preferably the opposing player has mechanics open to them which make it fun (just out-scoring isn't fun). This is why I'd advocate for more grenade attacks in cc against tanks, more interesting damage charts, and optional subsystem targeting/locational damage against knights or other superheavies.
Insectum7 wrote: 3: Make tanks/monsters more vulnerable when unsupported by infantry. (This is the option I like)
Please elaborate.
I'd imake infantry more deadly vs. Tanks in cc, for starters, using various routes like making grenades effective AT weapons in CC again, spreading them around, and having an entire squad be able to use them at once. You know, bring real Tankbusta capabilities back.
If we brought back the old damage charts or something similar, there might be ways to suppress tanks in the way that 'stunned/shaken' used to do.
Optional targeting of subsystems could be a thing, too.
For Monsters, I'd also consider grenades, but perhaps some bonuses could start applying in CC if the Monster were outnumbered by a certain amount.
Possibly add evasion or extra cover bonuses to Infantry type models, to help give them an edge when ambushing vehicles from concealed positions.
Bring back differing armor values, or bonus damage when firing at a vehicles flanks or rear.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Agreed, tanks should fear those, but they're too cheap. Mine feel pretty durable outside of those things. But let's say vehicles in general aren't, what's your solution?
Tanks, or just vehicles in general? Because Rhinos and other light-armor vehicles don't feel too different from how they used to, but Leman Russes are now barely any more durable than Chimeras when they used to bounce lascannons 2/3 of the time.
I don't think it's vehicles on the whole that are too vulnerable; it's tanks and tank-analogue monstrous creatures that got hit hard by the transition to 8th. At the very least, an actual tank should have a 2+ save.
Yes, this. Vehicles in general aren't less durable, it's only the former AV14-14/13-X bricks that are less durable than they used to be. All my ork vehicles are way more tough now with the T and save system, including battlewagons, which used to be AV14 in the front. And even those bricks may be less durable but they're also more performing as they don't have limitations in firepower anymore: no arcs, can move and shoot at full capacity, can shoot in combat, can split fire, no more immobilized/weapon destroyed/useless for a whole turn etc...
Insectum7 wrote: 3: Make tanks/monsters more vulnerable when unsupported by infantry. (This is the option I like)
Please elaborate.
I'd imake infantry more deadly vs. Tanks in cc, for starters, using various routes like making grenades effective AT weapons in CC again, spreading them around, and having an entire squad be able to use them at once. You know, bring real Tankbusta capabilities back.
I think I'd like that. I miss fire dragons being able to slap meltabombs on things after shooting, hawks screwing up vehicles with haywires, etc.
If we brought back the old damage charts or something similar, there might be ways to suppress tanks in the way that 'stunned/shaken' used to do.
Maybe... I remember a lot of comments bemoaning stunlocked vehicles being a bug rather than a feature.
Optional targeting of subsystems could be a thing, too.
See, I really like the idea of being able to target specific chunks of sufficiently big models like you would in a video game boss battle, but that feels like it's probably too book-keepy for a game 40k's size. That seems like the sort of mechanic I'd enjoy in either an all-tanks-all-the-time game variant or in a game variant focused on 500-1000 point games where there's less to track.
For Monsters, I'd also consider grenades, but perhaps some bonuses could start applying in CC if the Monster were outnumbered by a certain amount.
I've never really understood why the game sometimes draws so many distinctions between monsters and vehicles. Especially when you have things like dreadnaughts and forgefiends and wraith lords that all kind of blur the line. You can probably latch a krak grenade onto a dreadnaught. You can probably latch a krak grenade onto a carnifex. Both would probably be similarly rattled by a "shaken" damage result. Both would probably have similar difficulties with overwhelming numbers of enemies.
Possibly add evasion or extra cover bonuses to Infantry type models, to help give them an edge when ambushing vehicles from concealed positions.
I like the sound of this. Would be wary of adding too much complication or bookkeeping.
Bring back differing armor values, or bonus damage when firing at a vehicles flanks or rear.
Eh. This risks running into the problems with every "bring back vehicle facings" suggestion. Although if you limit that to ONLY distinguishing between the rear and not-the-rear, you could just place a straight line marker against any part of the model's base/hull to determine whether or not attackers are "flanking" it.
X-X HQ 0-6 Elite
X-8 Troops
0-4 Fast Attack
0-4 Heavy Support
0-2 Flyers
0-2 Fortifications
0-X Dedicated Transports.
Want to add another Elite/FA/Flyer/HS? Pay 2 CP. No additional detachments. Then allow scaling for the troops/HQ requirement, so for 1000 points it'd be 1 and 1, for 1500 it'd be 2 and 3, and so on.
Then any special formations and what not could be handled via unique FOCs in each Codex, themed around that army, where appropriate.
So, to use a simple example, a Iyanden Spirit Host, where it's mostly Elites and HS, but Wraith units get a bonus (like Obsec or whatever). Also lets you play around with what gets 'Core'.
I mostly like this but limiting armies like IG to a single HQ choice at 1000pts (if I'm understanding your system correctly?) seems a bit screwy.
(Also, if we go this sort of route, I do hope DE gets to be a single, coherent army again.)
I suppose my only other concern is that I'd rather see CP (and Stratagems) go die in a fire, rather than still being used in listbuilding.
vipoid wrote: I mostly like this but limiting armies like IG to a single HQ choice at 1000pts (if I'm understanding your system correctly?) seems a bit screwy.
Sorry I was mostly talking about the required compulsory HQs, as in that would scale with the size of the game, as would the maximum amount, so a 3000 point list might be able to bring 4 HQs, where as a 1000 point list might be limited to 2, but only one of those is compulsory.
vipoid wrote: I suppose my only other concern is that I'd rather see CP (and Stratagems) go die in a fire, rather than still being used in listbuilding.
Whenever I write rules for these sorts of situations I generally try to work within the systems as they currently exist, or base the solution around the existing mechanic. So my base assumption is that Command Points and strats still exist, but how would I implement such a system.
I think CP should represent a strategic resource, the expenditure of which is used to change the nature of your army. It should not, for instance, be used for reactionary 'gotcha!' strats like Transhuman Physiology* or to make use of common upgrades like Smoke Launchers or Tankbusta Bombs.
It's only when I see nothing to salvage at all in an existing mechanic that I would advocate replacing it wholesale (eg. the morale rules as they currently stand).
*At the same time, I do think there's an argument for CP use for interactivity and reaction within the IGOUGO system. I just haven't figured out how exactly yet...
There are TONS of things that CAN wound anything - AOS makes extremely liberal use of the Mortal Wound mechanic.
.....but also, the number are just not the same, and there is a much much much MUCH greater percentage of the units in the game that are either extremely short-range shooting units or slow melee units.
And, in general, numbers in AOS are just lower. A big huge 300-pt monster like a Zombie Dragon might be able to drop 6 damage on a 4+sv target from full health with all its melee attacks - compare to something in 40k like a 165pt heavy melta eradicator squad that BEFORE any subfactions/doctrines/auras/strats/etc lays down 15 unsaved wounds vs T7 3+ in melta range.
The old FOC was ok during old editions, like 3rd, when armies had 3-4 choices at most in their Elites, Heavy Support and Fast Attacks. 3rd edition ork codex had specialists like tankbustas or burnaboyz merged into the troop section.
Now it would be too limiting (buggies alone have 5 different datasheets in the ork codex), and there's no problematic list that is actually problematic because it breaks the old FOC restrictions.
Instead, if you want to reduce skew lists and shape the game around troops, you could give troops a key role in the army. For example let them be the only units that can score, or make them score twice the points compared to a specialist infantry unit. Force players to bring min X points (mind, actual points invested, not min amount of units) of troops every Y points of the army maybe, IIRCWHFB had it at some point. Something like that.
The majority of the most common lists (SM ones for starters) around wouldn't change a bit if they had to satisfy the FOC restrictions instead of the current detachment system. Other armies would be heavily penalized instead, while there's no need for that to happen.
The_Real_Chris wrote: For the tanks vs other stuff problem - originally 40k had masses of wounds on a vehicle (50+? for a land raider from memory), but AT weapons did stuff like 2D12 wounds.
Now that would vape characters, but that wasn't so much of a problem then. Now Abaddon players don't want their guy to disappear when a guardsman hits with an AT weapon, so that makes everything go weird with how the game treats vehicles as bigger people, but doesn't want special people to be turned into smoking boots.
There are limited ways round this sadly given the system. The only one I can see is going back to a lot more wounds for big tough things (MBTs) so its harder to deal with them using anti infantry weapons, AT weapons doing plenty of wounds to them to maintain that parity, and then one of two fixes to save the precious characters.
Either a) have AT weapons get -1 to shoot non tanks (not sure how Nids would fit in here, would need a sensible keyword for anything that is the favoured target of lascannon) OR b) have two damage stats vs tanks and everything else but that would be a lot clunkier.
The advantage of a) is you could expand it so weapons that were useless vs armour could get a -1 to hit and so on.
Special characters of medium size (e. g. humanoid infantry) couldn't be singled out in older editions. However running around with gargantuan primarch beatsticks should allow the opponent to waste 'em with lascannons and rockets. Sometimes being too big has also it' s disadvantages.
Has Abbadon suffered from growth hormones too? Damn, scale creep must be a warp-tainted disease. Well, I guess he can enjoy now too the Imperial disco laser light show like generations of greater daemons before him.
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Why so many distinctions among walkers?
That is the old question why Eldar Dreadnoughts were given a monster profile and SM/Ork Dreadnoughts received a vehicle statline since 3rd. One of the designer said that they wanted to boost the longevity of the Eldar machine and they achieved this goal.
I personally liked the difference between mechanical units and biological monsters. Only downside was that monsters wouldn't suffer from any kind of injuries so a mechanical unit was just a straight nerf compared to big gribblies.
I also miss the time when bikes were treated more like vehicles and not as horses.
I think the FOC has been absolutely pointless since 7th Ed. 7th formations meant there was no reason for it to exist, and being able to get multiple detachments and extra FOCs for nothing (and then later a paltry expenditure of CP) made it even more worthless.
I think the FOC should matter, and the fact that there are more choices than before actually enhances that, as you'd have to make choices.
As for 5 different types of buggies? That's no model/no rule fething up the rules. Blame GW for that.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Agreed, tanks should fear those, but they're too cheap. Mine feel pretty durable outside of those things. But let's say vehicles in general aren't, what's your solution?
Tanks, or just vehicles in general? Because Rhinos and other light-armor vehicles don't feel too different from how they used to, but Leman Russes are now barely any more durable than Chimeras when they used to bounce lascannons 2/3 of the time.
I don't think it's vehicles on the whole that are too vulnerable; it's tanks and tank-analogue monstrous creatures that got hit hard by the transition to 8th. At the very least, an actual tank should have a 2+ save.
Yes, MBTs should have 2+ saves. I think you and I have agreed on that several times before. How gw ever came to the conclusion that AV14 should equal a 3+ save escapes me. Like I said: My tanks feel plenty tough against lighter weapons like heavy bolters and auto cannons, but that's because they all have 2+ saves. They are, however, plenty threatened by realAT weapons, like multi-meltas and Admech super lascannons, as they should be.
So, give 2+ saves to MBTs/formerly AV14 vehicles (and MONSTROUS CREATURES that are effectively living MBTs), and get the pricing on real AT weapons right so that killing a tank costs more than a pittance. I think tanks (and their MONSTROUS CREATURE equivalents) might be ok then.
By the time you all are done fixing 9th you'll have recreated some classic hybrid version of 40k
Regarding FOC - This is one I really strongly agree with, and in ProHammer you only use the standard FOC or if your codex has an alternate you can use that. But you get 1 detachment period. No allies. No formations. No lords of war. Flyers use up a specialist slot (and limited to max of two). If you want to be play a non-bound list that's of course fine if both players agree.
Blackie wrote: The old FOC was ok during old editions, like 3rd, when armies had 3-4 choices at most in their Elites, Heavy Support and Fast Attacks. 3rd edition ork codex had specialists like tankbustas or burnaboyz merged into the troop section.
Now it would be too limiting (buggies alone have 5 different datasheets in the ork codex), and there's no problematic list that is actually problematic because it breaks the old FOC restrictions.
Instead, if you want to reduce skew lists and shape the game around troops, you could give troops a key role in the army. For example let them be the only units that can score, or make them score twice the points compared to a specialist infantry unit. Force players to bring min X points (mind, actual points invested, not min amount of units) of troops every Y points of the army maybe, IIRCWHFB had it at some point. Something like that.
The majority of the most common lists (SM ones for starters) around wouldn't change a bit if they had to satisfy the FOC restrictions instead of the current detachment system. Other armies would be heavily penalized instead, while there's no need for that to happen.
Largely agree with this, although it seems to me (do correct me if I'm missing something) that with the changes from 8th–9th in the way Detachments work, Troops are fairly heavily incentivised as things currently stand. Both by being compulsory in the CP-refunding detachments, and the 'skew' detachments having a relatively high CP cost plus being fairly limited beyond a single slot-type. Essentially, you're getting awarded bonus CPs *and* increased unit-choice flexibility by taking Troops as part of your army. Are other people finding this to not be the case?
Mezmorki wrote: By the time you all are done fixing 9th you'll have recreated some classic hybrid version of 40k
Eh... no.
Classic 40k has its own share of issues, and If we are going to fix 9th, I would prefer to not fall back into the issues of classic.
I mean, for example, it would be good if armor facing came back to some degree, but not as the AV system that only worked on imperial metal boxes and made AP irrelevant 80% of the time. I would prefer something more simple, like a front vs rear mechanic that boosted the armour save. Moreover it shouldn't be limited to vehicles, tank-like monsters like the Tyrannofex should also have it.
The concept of FOC was terrible, good thing we got rid of it.
It was tailor made around some factions and all the other ones were crammed into it. If you really want it back, you need to define a different FOC for each faction.
I prefer for units to be made usable and wanted by the players because of themselves, not because I'm forced to take them as tax.
I have always liked thematic alternative lists like all minotaur or all troll armies or all night goblins armies. And thats one of the things I like about AOS.
And I'm a "spam the troops" guy most of the time, but I would never impose that way of playing in my opponent. I trust the game designers to allow for an army of mostly troops and an army of mostly elites to be balanced and give us a good game agaisnt each other. If you claim for a unique FOC and then codex-based FOC you are basically saying that a general FOC is useless in a game like 40k to allow all the variety of lists the game and fluff should allow.
For me, forcing 50% of all the armies to be the same is just lazy game design that have no place outside historicals were recreation is as relevant as gameplay.
And this is another "tell me you don't play 9th without telling me you don't play 9th". With the changes to army construction of 9th, they fixed all problem with skew/spam lists. Taking more troops or more specialized slots have their advantages and costs balanced agaisnt each other. As it should be. If thats not enough to you, maybe is because you want to force how the army of your opponent should look , but not because theres a problem in the game that needs fixing.
Spoletta wrote: The concept of FOC was terrible, good thing we got rid of it.
It was tailor made around some factions and all the other ones were crammed into it. If you really want it back, you need to define a different FOC for each faction.
Do you have any examples in mind for factions that the FOC didn't work for?
Guard got their platoon structure to make it work, and the specialist subfactions got 'counts as troops' to let them stack particular units. I can't think of any factions that really struggled due to their faction identity, rather than because GW did a poor job of balancing units in certain slots.
Tyran wrote: I'm not sure that the Guard's "let's ignore the FOC with platoon and vehicle squadron shenanigans" is the best example of the FOC working.
Well, if someone's going to argue that the factions the default FOC didn't work for simply got left out in the cold, then yeah I think pointing out how exceptions were made to accommodate atypical armies is pretty relevant. I never said the default FOC with no exceptions was perfect for everyone.
I was never a fan of the vehicle squadrons, though. The default list wasn't meant to be an Armored Company, and the special list for that build archetype included additional rules intended to balance the inherently skewed nature of having potentially 10+ Leman Russes in one list.
I mean, that's why the FOC existed: To enforce some modicum of balanced list composition for structured/competitive play, and you didn't have to follow it if you were doing narrative games. 8th/9th's approach of loose force composition hard-limited by Rule of 3 seems like the worst of both worlds- I still can't use Veterans as all my infantry, but I can take an effectively unlimited number of Leman Russes anyways.
I liked the old FOC. I always felt and assumed that factions with weaker troops were indeed "paying a tax" but that was by design to compensate for other areas of strength in the list. I always felt that troops were supposed to be the backbone of a TAC list, and hence why at least two were always required and other slots more limited.
Lists with unique/special FOC were, I assumed, likewise designed for balance while allowing for a specifically different thing. Eldar 3rd editional craftworld supplement was a great example, Sam Hain (sp?) being table to take way more bikes, or Iyanden more wraith units, etc.
Foc is a way to level factions. Designers can use this to “balance” factions.
For illustration, eldar are supposed to be dying out. So guardians should cost more points than equivalent troops for factions with more expendable bodies, I.e. most everyone else. The troop tax as it is called is a way to offset eldar superiority in other areas e.g. fast skimmers, high ap long range energy weapons, warp jump and defensive fields.
On the other hand, orks should have plentiful troops and pay relatively more for high tech high mobility. So, to have a kff requires a big mek and is limited by big mek slots, being hq slots, so often limited to one or max two army wide.
Alternatively, the citizen-soldiers of a dying race shouldn't be on the front lines except in the most dire of situations so Guardians should be an Elites choice. And sure, let's cost them at 20 points to show how valuable Aeldari lives are.
Orks have among the best Tellyporta tech in the galaxy, so they should pay LESS for high tech high mobility. They also love bikes a lot, and buggies, and trukks, so those should all be cheap to show how plentiful they are in ork armies. There's a Ciaphas Cain novel where the orks built 13 gargants in a relatively short amount of time, and besides they show up in almost every battle with orks so let's cost them discount, too.
Nah, I don't think I like fluff costing armies very much. Their points cost, a gameplay mechanic, should probably reflect their gameplay efficacy.
jeff white wrote:For illustration, eldar are supposed to be dying out. So guardians should cost more points than equivalent troops for factions with more expendable bodies, I.e. most everyone else.
Tyran is spot on- this is an amateur approach to balancing that never works out. In practice it means you take as few Guardians as possible, and then max out on whatever is undercosted to compensate.
The better way to encourage this sort of fluff-based army composition is to balance access to capabilities, not the cost of those capabilities. Eg, don't give Tau melee-only units and then make them overpriced; give Tau mixed melee-shooting units that are appropriately priced, so that they don't have the option to lean fully into melee.
If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.
"Fluff costing" and real costing would be the same if:
1) the fluff made sense (the only two factions in the game with "militia" units are the Dying Race and Imperial Guard... but only makes sense for 1...)
2) the rules matched the fluff. ("One SM has an even chance against 10 men? 10-1 cost ratio!")
Tellyportas and da jump are new. Don’t recall those being part of the game twenty years ago, let alone ten, but might be wrong.
So called fluff costing… I beg to differ. The game started that way. Explains why some factions pay more or less for access to different things. How else do you propose that gets explained?
So, guardians end up few, and kept relatively safe to hold objective only after the lines of fire are cleared and charges held back with other tougher units e.g. wrathbone animates. What about them makes them elites! In the background, we learn than many had walked warrior paths but might have stopped. These may end up leading units. But the elites are the practicing specialists.
You know what rarely ends well? Prideful ignorance.
jeff white wrote: Tellyportas and da jump are new. Don’t recall those being part of the game twenty years ago, let alone ten, but might be wrong.
So called fluff costing… I beg to differ. The game started that way. Explains why some factions pay more or less for access to different things. How else do you propose that gets explained?
So, guardians end up few, and kept relatively safe to hold objective only after the lines of fire are cleared and charges held back with other tougher units e.g. wrathbone animates. What about them makes them elites! In the background, we learn than many had walked warrior paths but might have stopped. These may end up leading units. But the elites are the practicing specialists.
You know what rarely ends well? Prideful ignorance.
If you balance based off the fluff, there should be 10,000 Orks to fight a small detachment of Marines. Say, three Tac Squads, a Dev Squad, an Assault Squad, and their ancillary support.
Do you think the Ork player wants to get 10,000 models to fight less than 100?
Do you want to make the game balanced around that?
Or, is it better to make a balanced game that is fun for every faction, with the understanding that it may not perfectly reflect the lore owing to concessions made for gameplay's sake?
jeff white wrote:For illustration, eldar are supposed to be dying out. So guardians should cost more points than equivalent troops for factions with more expendable bodies, I.e. most everyone else.
Tyran is spot on- this is an amateur approach to balancing that never works out.
Spoiler:
In practice it means you take as few Guardians as possible, and then max out on whatever is undercosted to compensate.
The better way to encourage this sort of fluff-based army composition is to balance access to capabilities, not the cost of those capabilities. Eg, don't give Tau melee-only units and then make them overpriced; give Tau mixed melee-shooting units that are appropriately priced, so that they don't have the option to lean fully into melee.
If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.
Still using the foc and manipulating to suit different factions is fine. Might match the background but the elite units should be just as rare, all things considered. Eldar are tech superior. So wraith units are a thing, whereas orks might have kans, wraith units are better.
And as for amateur, this is the way things were. You wanna be insulting, be that way. Doesn’t change facts. Just shows ignorance. Won’t ruin my day. Does make me wonder why I bother engaging with people of a certain caliber but whatevs. You do you.
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Tyran wrote: Sure, 40k started with fluff costing, but GW always has sucked at balance so I do not know why we are using their decisions as positive examples.
It was an illustration.
Some people just like to be mean and argue, I guess.
jeff white wrote: Tellyportas and da jump are new. Don’t recall those being part of the game twenty years ago, let alone ten, but might be wrong.
So called fluff costing… I beg to differ. The game started that way. Explains why some factions pay more or less for access to different things. How else do you propose that gets explained?
So, guardians end up few, and kept relatively safe to hold objective only after the lines of fire are cleared and charges held back with other tougher units e.g. wrathbone animates. What about them makes them elites! In the background, we learn than many had walked warrior paths but might have stopped. These may end up leading units. But the elites are the practicing specialists.
You know what rarely ends well? Prideful ignorance.
If you balance based off the fluff, there should be 10,000 Orks to fight a small detachment of Marines. Say, three Tac Squads, a Dev Squad, an Assault Squad, and their ancillary support.
Do you think the Ork player wants to get 10,000 models to fight less than 100?
Do you want to make the game balanced around that?
Or, is it better to make a balanced game that is fun for every faction, with the understanding that it may not perfectly reflect the lore owing to concessions made for gameplay's sake?
Some people purposefully misread to make themselves feel superior at the expense of anyone else. Sith type reasoning. You do you, man. I was offering a harmless example.
jeff white wrote: And as for amateur, this is the way things were. You wanna be insulting, be that way. Doesn’t change facts. Just shows ignorance. Won’t ruin my day. Does make me wonder why I bother engaging with people of a certain caliber but whatevs. You do you.
I think what Catbarf was trying to get across is that simply changing points is often an inelegant and perhaps something of a 'brute force' method to game balance that does not always work the way you want it.
The phrase I always use in this situation is: Points are not the great leveller. That is to say, you can't always rely on changing the points as your one-stop-shop to fixing problems in the game.
This is especially true when it comes to rarity within the fluff. Forget Guardians for a moment, and look at something on a smaller scale. Way back in the day Guard paid 6 points for Plasma Guns. Every infantry squad had one. GW decided that Plasma Guns should be rare, so jacked their cost to 10 points each. Did this change the amount of Plasma Guns in Guard armies? Did it make them "more rare", as their points were supposed to indicate? Of course not. Guard players just took less of other things to ensure they had enough points to maintain their supply of Plasma Guns. If they wanted to make Plasma Guns rare, they should have made Plasma Guns rare!!!. Change them to 0-2 per Platoon, rather than just upping their cost.
So to go back to your Guardians example. Making Guardians more expensive wouldn't make them more rare. It would just make them more expensive. If someone wants to bring a large amount of Guardians, they'll just keep doing that, and make compromises/sacrifices elsewhere to ensure that.
Galas wrote: With the changes to army construction of 9th, they fixed all problem with skew/spam lists.
Really?
People have just exchanged soup-ing different armies to soup-ing small detachments from different Forge Worlds/Cabals/etc..
Life... uhh... found a way, as it were, and the method has changed even though the results haven't.
catbarf wrote: If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.
That's precisely what I would want.
Everyone would always have the standard FOC available to them (slightly expanded and more scalable to game size), but each faction would have their own unique FOC (maybe more, if appropriate). An Eldar one that emphasises Elites is a great example of something that could exist. I picture a Tyranid one that branches outwards like a web as Synapse creatures are taken (kinda like how 2nd Ed Space Marine did it). A Word Bearer 'Summoning Circle' one that emphasises taking multiple Daemon units alongside CSMs (and none of this "You took a Daemon, so your troops forgot your core rules!" nonsense purity bonuses). That Iyanden one I mentioned with a heavy emphasis on Wraith constructs. And so on.
Make the fluff and army composition work hand-in hand rather than at odds with it, as it so often is now.
Galas wrote: With the changes to army construction of 9th, they fixed all problem with skew/spam lists.
Really?
People have just exchanged soup-ing different armies to soup-ing small detachments from different Forge Worlds/Cabals/etc..
Life... uhh... found a way, as it were, and the method has changed even though the results haven't.
catbarf wrote: If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.
That's precisely what I would want.
Everyone would always have the standard FOC available to them (slightly expanded and more scalable to game size), but each faction would have their own unique FOC (maybe more, if appropriate). An Eldar one that emphasises Elites is a great example of something that could exist. I picture a Tyranid one that branches outwards like a web as Synapse creatures are taken (kinda like how 2nd Ed Space Marine did it). A Word Bearer 'Summoning Circle' one that emphasises taking multiple Daemon units alongside CSMs (and none of this "You took a Daemon, so your troops forgot your core rules!" nonsense purity bonuses). That Iyanden one I mentioned with a heavy emphasis on Wraith constructs. And so on.
Make the fluff and army composition work hand-in hand rather than at odds with it, as it so often is now.
I still think that having a Knight + guardsmen + Space marine army is more fluffy and interesting than having 3 different forgeworlds in a single list of admech
VladimirHerzog wrote: I still think that having a Knight + guardsmen + Space marine army is more fluffy and interesting than having 3 different forgeworlds in a single list of admech
I don't disagree with you at all, but we exist in a world where GW over-compensates for problems (perceived or otherwise) in their rules.
Soup was a legitimate problem, so they basically eliminated it by punishing armies that do so.
Folks will probably say they'd make exceptions for narrative gaming, BUT...
The current detachment/ soup system is fantastic for narrative gaming, especially when combined with escalation, game size mechanics and campaign play.
Returning to a single FOC would crush pretty much everything I've done with this hobby since 8th. I use detachments to tell stories about alliances and betrayals, about advancement and training, and a whole host of other themes.
I've been unofficially fielding detachments since the Witch Hunter dex- rather than a single 3k army, I had 1.5 k of pure, virtuous sisters and a 1.5 k Pennitent Legion led by an Inquisitor; most frequently, the armies fought separately, but in times of great peril, they combined. If I remember correctly, the armies were built in such a way that a combined force could be fielded in a single FOC because that was the only way to legally do it.
If you're running a map based campaign where the rule is that you must have a presence at a territory to maintain control of it, detachments are awesome. You'd start with a giant Brigade occupying a single territory, but as they captured ground, Patrols split off to maintain control of captured assets. Having a variety of detachments to choose from becomes an important strategic consideration in this type of game.
If you want to bring back standardized, mono-FOCs, do it to the 2k matched game- after all, that's probably what you were proposing anyway.
But don't make the change in such a way that it impacts narrative, because detachments are just too good as a storytelling tool to let go.
H.B.M.C. wrote: The whole point is that the army-specific FOCs would be narrative driven; a way of matching narrative with rules.
Yeah, but it just doesn't work as well, nor is it as broad and diverse as what we've already got.
Like if I start a 25 PL Crusade, my commander is good enough to command the Patrol detachment that I'm obligated to use at that level. But if he's going to step up and eventually command a battalion, he better get working on some agendas, because troops aren't going to respect a battalion commander that hasn't been battle hardened. And it's kinda cool to be able to pull in a detachment of off-world, allied troops from another regiment. I love fielding multiple Orders in my SOB army- the whole narrative thread for that faction in our campaign revolves around multi-Order armies. And you might have a Bespoke FOC that includes multiple Orders in the Sisters dex, but look at the number of combinations we have with the existing system! In story terms, the story potential of an OoOML battalion + a Bloody Rose vanguard is RADICALLY different than the story potential of a Bloody Rose Battalion and an OoOML Vanguard- and I kept these two combinations as similar as possible in order to illustrate the point.
I can see where you're coming from with some armies- Whitescars Biker Army as a bespoke FOC comes to mind. I don't have the DA dex so I'm not sure to what degree the existing detachment system facilitates Ravenwing/ Deathwing, and I'm not sure if that's adaptable to Whitescars Bikers or not.
But suffice it to say, with all the bitching about bespoke faction/subfaction bespoke content in this and other threads like it, I'm surprised to see anyone suggest bespoke FOCs when we've got a diverse system in the base rules that seems to fit most armies well enough. After all, aren't detachments kinda the USRs of bespoke FOCs? Isn't it supposed to be an ideal thing amongst the "40k is broken and needs fixing" set when a problem is solved by base rules rather than codex rules?
Either way, propose whatever changes you want to matched play; I won't object at all- I don't play it, why would I? Finally, I suppose if GW did change them, I could continue to use detachment rules anyway, but I'd rather not have to house-rule more often than necessary.
jeff white wrote: Foc is a way to level factions. Designers can use this to “balance” factions.
For illustration, eldar are supposed to be dying out. So guardians should cost more points than equivalent troops for factions with more expendable bodies, I.e. most everyone else. The troop tax as it is called is a way to offset eldar superiority in other areas e.g. fast skimmers, high ap long range energy weapons, warp jump and defensive fields.
On the other hand, orks should have plentiful troops and pay relatively more for high tech high mobility. So, to have a kff requires a big mek and is limited by big mek slots, being hq slots, so often limited to one or max two army wide.
In-universe lore is an excellent way to balance rules for the game, definitely. that's why all tyranids and orks should cost 0 points - they have billions upon billions of them! And custodes should be 5000 points, since theres only like 12 of them.
Eh. The FOC doesn't seem like a great solution to the skew problem, tbh. Like, high-concept I get how it might do that. But in practice, I don't think it succeeded in doing that. I remember running into parking lot skew lists in 5th edition that basically invalidated all of my shuriken weapons and caused me to ignore chunks of my codex because I was compelled to take as much AT as I could get to try and account for those skew lists. In 5th, you could also lean really hard into infantry spam and just drown enemies with too few shots in bodies; basically stat-checking their raw number of shots.
And that's before you factor in detachment-modifying rules that basically just let you partially ignore the FOC.
So the FOC...
* Did not prevent skew lists from being a thing.
* Did invalidate some thematic list concepts (which may or may not have been skew lists and may or may not have been OP).
The current army building rules have their own failings, but a return to the FOC seems like a sidegrade. Especially if we're talking about all the "variant detachment" rules we'd have to introduce for various armies.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Right now the FOC is purposeless because you can just take whatever you want anyway. The "structure" we have with the different FOCs is just a facade.
A specific FOC would return that structure to the game. Remove the "But I want lots of Heavy Support!"FOC or the "But I just want more Elites!"FOC.
People complained once that Iron Warriors got a 4th HS slot. Seems quaint in comparison to what we've got these days.
I mean, I get what you're saying, but isn't that still just trading one set of flaws for another? As I pointed out, the FOC didn't prevent you from taking skew lists; your army could be nothing but tanks and a handful of cheap infantry hiding inside them. And being forced to go back to it would make it harder to field like a Death Wing list that should reasonably have lots of terminator squads but not necessarily any troop units.
The problems people are pointing out with the old FOC is less an issue with the FOC and more a consequence of cases where certain armies could work around the intended restriction of the FOC.
IG taking 1-3 heavy tanks per HS slot was a problem with the specific tank entries. It was as if they could take 9 HS choices instead of the three they'd normally be allowed.
Guard being guard perhaps they should've been able to trade something for an extra HS choice, with vehicles still being 1 vehicle per HS slot. Or some thing where every troop choice beyond your compulsory ones gave you an extra HS slot (quite intentionally a troop tax). You could still do a mechanized force using chimeras if you wanted of course.
The problems with the FOC arose because of the ways the later codexes let people break it.
Again we're talking about matched competitive play where there is some, however mild, expectation that armies be roughly balanced. In a competitive environment, putting more restrictions on list assembly allows the designers to better balance whole army costs and keeps the playing field somewhat more level and analogous.
I'd also contend that forcing a more consistent army setup via a common FOC reduces the variance and skew-iness of lists and reduces the likelihood of bad matchups. If everyone is forced to take more of a TAC list I think it's healthier for the game and puts more emphasis on battle field tactics rather than army list bastardizations.
Players don't have to use the FOC if they agree not to. They can just use whatever units they want.
Wyldhunt wrote: I mean, I get what you're saying, but isn't that still just trading one set of flaws for another? As I pointed out, the FOC didn't prevent you from taking skew lists; your army could be nothing but tanks and a handful of cheap infantry hiding inside them.
And I get what you're saying, but I think some structure with list building is better than the meaningless "just take whatever you want" structure that the FOC pretends to be right now.
The FOC has also been used as a method of increasing sales rather than making the game any better. I think certain vehicle squadrons are a good example of this ("Guard players only buy three big tanks!""Then let 'em bring 9... no... 11!"). It is why, I suspect, the number of 0-1 units (like Oblits, as an example) started to vanish from books and become unlimited.
Plus I advocate for specific solutions to specific problems. Parking lots of Leman Russes are not a fault of the FOC. They're a fault of the Guard list itself. Fix that first, then the FOC side of things would sort itself out.
Wyldhunt wrote: And being forced to go back to it would make it harder to field like a Death Wing list that should reasonably have lots of terminator squads but not necessarily any troop units.
Which is why I prefer faction-specific FOCs. It lets you have those kinds of armies - and Deathwing is a wonderful example - without having to have a system as meaningless as the one we have now.
So, pulling it out of thin air, something like:
Iyanden Spirit Host 1-3 HQ 3-8 Elites 0-4 Heavy Support 0-2 Flyers 0-X Dedicated Transports
All units other than Dedicated Transports must have the Wraith Construct or Psyker Keywords. All non-Flyer units with the 'Spirit Host' Keyword gain "Objective Secured".
Now the specifics of the amount of each slot is flexible, but as an example, I'd much rather have that as the method of fielding an Iyanden army that's just "Take a Vanguard and that'll do!".
jeff white wrote:And as for amateur, this is the way things were. You wanna be insulting, be that way. Doesn’t change facts. Just shows ignorance. Won’t ruin my day. Does make me wonder why I bother engaging with people of a certain caliber but whatevs. You do you.
I apologize. I am not trying to be insulting or condescending, I am literally saying that this idea of skewing costs to encourage/discourage fluff-based choices is something that only ever seems to come up as a suggestion from fans. It's easy to exploit, fundamentally misses the point of what points are supposed to do, and I don't know of any professional designers (or successful games) using it as a mechanic. Adjust choices, limit capabilities, don't skew points.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Everyone would always have the standard FOC available to them (slightly expanded and more scalable to game size), but each faction would have their own unique FOC (maybe more, if appropriate). An Eldar one that emphasises Elites is a great example of something that could exist. I picture a Tyranid one that branches outwards like a web as Synapse creatures are taken (kinda like how 2nd Ed Space Marine did it). A Word Bearer 'Summoning Circle' one that emphasises taking multiple Daemon units alongside CSMs (and none of this "You took a Daemon, so your troops forgot your core rules!" nonsense purity bonuses). That Iyanden one I mentioned with a heavy emphasis on Wraith constructs. And so on.
I like that. Basically instead of a generic FOC, it's more like a faction-specific TOE.
Wyldhunt wrote:I mean, I get what you're saying, but isn't that still just trading one set of flaws for another? As I pointed out, the FOC didn't prevent you from taking skew lists; your army could be nothing but tanks and a handful of cheap infantry hiding inside them. And being forced to go back to it would make it harder to field like a Death Wing list that should reasonably have lots of terminator squads but not necessarily any troop units.
In 4th Ed you had three HS slots so that meant three tanks, and Deathwing got a special rule that let them count Terminators as troops. Tyranids couldn't take six Flyrants, but Ravenwing got to have all bikes.
Generic FOC prevented tank-stacking while still allowing fluffy forces to adjust it slightly. The key is that those exceptions to the structure were limited, fluff-based, and balanced in other ways.
Armoured Company is a good example, because there are basically three phases to playing that list:
1. "OMG! I have an entire army of tanks!" 2. "Wow. My opponent really can't do much to me." 3. "None of my opponents can really do much to me. This isn't fun anymore..."
I've played Armoured Companies a few times and yeah, the novelty of all tanks, all the time wears off pretty quickly, especially during the third turn of the second game, where you've systematically annihilated all the things that can damage your tanks and your opponent is left floundering as they try to get rear AV10 shots on Russes that are in my DZ and other stuff like that.
But, that's a problem with the AC list, not a problem with the FOC.
Mezmorki wrote:The problems people are pointing out with the old FOC is less an issue with the FOC and more a consequence of cases where certain armies could work around the intended restriction of the FOC.
IG taking 1-3 heavy tanks per HS slot was a problem with the specific tank entries. It was as if they could take 9 HS choices instead of the three they'd normally be allowed.
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote: I mean, I get what you're saying, but isn't that still just trading one set of flaws for another? As I pointed out, the FOC didn't prevent you from taking skew lists; your army could be nothing but tanks and a handful of cheap infantry hiding inside them.
And I get what you're saying, but I think some structure with list building is better than the meaningless "just take whatever you want" structure that the FOC pretends to be right now.
...
Plus I advocate for specific solutions to specific problems. Parking lots of Leman Russes are not a fault of the FOC. They're a fault of the Guard list itself. Fix that first, then the FOC side of things would sort itself out.
The thing is, you could still build skew lists even without special exceptions to the FOC like vehicle squadrons or force org slot manipulators. IG, for instance, could (iirc) take hell hounds and in their FA slots, russes in their HS slots, and pack their mandatory troop choices and HQs into chimeras. So even if they were stuck with the "one tank per slot" limitation like most armies, they could still build skew lists.
Similarly, marines could run razorback spam backed up by HS tanks and Elite slot dreadnaughts. I think BA could even take the Baal Predator in the FA slot, but I'm not sure about that one. Craftworlders were less good at it, but they could field all tanks (or wraith lords) with DAVU (dire avenger vehicle upgrade) units hiding inside them and wraith guard as troops which in modern terms translates to having an entire army of T6, 7 and 8. Tau would probably be similar in modern terms now that they have big suits in several force org roles.
What I'm getting at is that the FOC didn't do a great job of preventing skew, and that's partly because what units go in which slots seems to be based more on "feel" than on specific traits. If you can fit enough vehicles (or hordes or whatever kind of skew you're running) into the slots you have available, then it doesn't particularly matter what those slots are when it comes to solving the skew problem. You could try to address that by changing force org roles to reflect units' traits better, but that kind of change wouldn't necessarily need a force org chart to be effective. At that point, what you'd really want would be more of an army points percentage-based cap. Ex: "Only 40% of your army points may be spent on units with the 'Heavy Armor' battlefield role."
So, pulling it out of thin air, something like:
Iyanden Spirit Host 1-3 HQ 3-8 Elites
0-4 Heavy Support
0-2 Flyers
0-X Dedicated Transports
All units other than Dedicated Transports must have the Wraith Construct or Psyker Keywords. All non-Flyer units with the 'Spirit Host' Keyword gain "Objective Secured".
Now the specifics of the amount of each slot is flexible, but as an example, I'd much rather have that as the method of fielding an Iyanden army that's just "Take a Vanguard and that'll do!".
Agreed that the, "Just take a Vanguard," approach is very flawed, I kind of like this in theory. However, I worry about the execution. A couple things:
A.) Even in the example you gave, I have issues with that detachment. Sure, Iyanden is known for its wraith units, but they do have other stuff as well. It seems like I ought to be able to support my wraith units with a squad of banshees, for instance. Or a unit of war walkers now that there are plenty of war machines to go around among the surviving guardian ranks. I'm nit-picking here to give an idea of the kinds of issues you'd have to solve for every single special detachment you create.
B.) You risk ending up with haves and have-nots. I play craftworld Iybraesil. It's a canon craftworld, but it's not one of the big five that GW bothered creating rules for in the codex. So there's a decent chance that, if GW were to switch to a system like the one you're proposing, that my particular army would be left unsupported. And what about a hypothetical player whose homebrewed craftworld's fluff is that they're really into swooping hawks the same way Iybraesil is really into banshees?
C.) The Iyanden detachment you've pitched there would, itself, be kind of skew-y. Pretty much everything would be T6 or higher except the screenable psykers. So if avoiding skew is one of our design goals, that detachment probably wouldn't accomplish that.
Hope none of that came off as aggressive. I do see the merit to these ideas and am enjoying the discussion.
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Daedalus81 wrote: Current method would be more impactful if they reduced the CP so it was more valuable, which might solve other issues, too.
The tricky thing about reducing CP is that so many of the game's decision points and iconic abilities/wargear are wrapped up in stratagems. I already find myself avoiding some flavorful-but-suboptimal strats as-is. Giving me even fewer CP to work with would mean I'd be even less likely to ever utilize those abilities. Of course, the current stratagem system has room for improvement and warrants a discussion all its own.
Wyldhunt wrote: The tricky thing about reducing CP is that so many of the game's decision points and iconic abilities/wargear are wrapped up in stratagems. I already find myself avoiding some flavorful-but-suboptimal strats as-is. Giving me even fewer CP to work with would mean I'd be even less likely to ever utilize those abilities. Of course, the current stratagem system has room for improvement and warrants a discussion all its own.
This is the crux of the issue, they've shifted and diversified the problem.
By doing so they've lost control of how to work "balance" into army composition.
Wyldhunt wrote: The thing is, you could still build skew lists even without special exceptions to the FOC like vehicle squadrons or force org slot manipulators. IG, for instance, could (iirc) take hell hounds and in their FA slots, russes in their HS slots, and pack their mandatory troop choices and HQs into chimeras. So even if they were stuck with the "one tank per slot" limitation like most armies, they could still build skew lists.
And once upon a time, when there were some weapons that couldn't hurt some targets, I'd be concerned about that. But since the start of 8th, everything can hurt everything, and Mortal Wound spam is a thing. I don't see the fear of "skew" being as big a deal as some make it out to be, certainly not in comparison to editions 3rd through 7th.
And besides, you can still skew the other way - all Infantry Guard was a fun thing to spring occasionally, making your opponent's TAC list suddenly find that its AT weapons were worthless.
Wyldhunt wrote: What I'm getting at is that the FOC didn't do a great job of preventing skew, and that's partly because what units go in which slots seems to be based more on "feel" than on specific traits. If you can fit enough vehicles (or hordes or whatever kind of skew you're running) into the slots you have available, then it doesn't particularly matter what those slots are when it comes to solving the skew problem.
But again, that's a specific list issue, not an FOC issue.
Wyldhunt wrote: Ex: "Only 40% of your army points may be spent on units with the 'Heavy Armor' battlefield role."
Then you get into the situation where taking upgrades might tip a unit beyond the given %, and that's daffy. No... percentages were tried back in 2nd, and before that in WHFB. They weren't great (I'm pretty sure we ignored them). The FOC makes way more sense if its enforced, and not basically ignored as it is now.
Wyldhunt wrote: A.) Even in the example you gave, I have issues with that detachment. Sure, Iyanden is known for its wraith units, but they do have other stuff as well. It seems like I ought to be able to support my wraith units with a squad of banshees, for instance. Or a unit of war walkers now that there are plenty of war machines to go around among the surviving guardian ranks. I'm nit-picking here to give an idea of the kinds of issues you'd have to solve for every single special detachment you create.
You are correct: Iyanden do indeed have more than just Wraith units, but it was just a simple example of what I'm getting at. I don't see the issue you describe as insurmountable however. In fact, I see solving it as entirely worthwhile, as I think it would lead to a better game where the structure of your army matches the fluff of the faction you are playing.
Which brings us neatly to...
Wyldhunt wrote: B.) You risk ending up with haves and have-nots. I play craftworld Iybraesil. It's a canon craftworld, but it's not one of the big five that GW bothered creating rules for in the codex. So there's a decent chance that, if GW were to switch to a system like the one you're proposing, that my particular army would be left unsupported. And what about a hypothetical player whose homebrewed craftworld's fluff is that they're really into swooping hawks the same way Iybraesil is really into banshees?
You are 100% correct here and I had not considered the "custom" Craftworld/Chapter/Legion/whatever side of "Your Dudes". I'll fully admit that I don't have an elegant solution to this right now, because as it stands this whole idea exists wholly in my head right now with next to nothing written down other than a few ideas (Spear-Tip for Black Legion, Sorcerous Cabal for 1KSons, Fifth Column for Alpha Legion... I mean, my Iron Warriors idea right now is listed as 'Siege Something' ).
So I haven't thought it all the way through yet, and you bringing up non-standard factions (canon or otherwise) is an exceptionally good point that I'll now have to factor in as I move forward.
Wyldhunt wrote: C.) The Iyanden detachment you've pitched there would, itself, be kind of skew-y. Pretty much everything would be T6 or higher except the screenable psykers. So if avoiding skew is one of our design goals, that detachment probably wouldn't accomplish that.
Like I said, I don't think that's such a big deal now. T6 ain't what it used to be.
Wyldhunt wrote: Hope none of that came off as aggressive. I do see the merit to these ideas and am enjoying the discussion.
Not at all.
It's nice to discuss rule ideas than just having someone shutting them down over and over again, as some here seem to always attempt.
Troops are completely useless now, unless they can do a couple of specific things: kill a lot of stuff or tank a lot of hits. Obj sec is mostly useful on very tanky and/or super fast units, not on regular infantries. Specialists overperform troops in every possible way.
Instead of "fixing" the FOC, change the troops' role. Or make it a mandatory heavy tax, like a mandatory 30% of the points budget that must be invested in troops.
With a classic FOC and change on the troops' value those who have trash troops would just bring the cheapest required amount of them, not very differently from now. And no amount of fun would be added, rather the opposite.
The vast majority of the current "oppressive" lists wouldn't break a classic FOC, and due to proliferation in datasheets in most of the largest factions lots of collections would become straight up unplayable with a strict old style FOC.
Instead of "fixing" the FOC, change the troops' role. Or make it a mandatory heavy tax, like a mandatory 30% of the points budget that must be invested in troops. .
WHFB did this and I got the impression people generally disliked it? I liked it so I dunno. But I think WHFBs way of setting up armies into Core, Special, Rare would probably work better for 40k at this point give the amount of models in a codex and how randomly GW assigns roles to things. IIRC correctly it was 25% Core minimum, 50% Special maximum and 25% maximum Rare. On top of that in 7th I think you had a unit restriction as well, like Warp Lightning Cannons were 0-1 per 1000pts IIRC? It's hazy, but in any case I think 40k could probably stand to do something like this.
Though knowning GW if they DID introduce a WHFB system they'd plonk it lazily on top of the FoC/Detachment system somehow.
Also, I am actually currently playing games of 4th as Armageddon Steel Legion (I have another tonight as we speak) which is literally FORCED, by their doctrine, to put everyone in Chimeras. It's the nightmare all-tank skew list that was exemplified...
... except it isn't. The rules for transports in 4th are incredibly punishing, meaning it is often better to deploy outside them unless you need the mobility to get somewhere. Forced disembark on a single pen, entanglement (forced pinning that not even Fearless gets you out of when you disembark if the vehicle is wrecked), units inside being hit by penetrating hits (super fun with blast weapons), units inside being outright annihilated when the vehicle is (hi Ordnance Penetrating Hits Table! Long time no see!)...
It isn't an unstoppable wall of iron, that is for sure.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Armoured Company is a good example, because there are basically three phases to playing that list:
I think what you mean is "were basically three phases"
Anyone want to go back in the thread and count the number of posts bitching about how weak vehicles are this edition? From what I've read in this thread, if someone showed up with a tank company, I'd expect a "Bully hurrah, good chap- you can't possibly win with that parking lot, but I admire your gumption!"
Or are the reports of weak vehicles exaggerated?
Furthermore, the CP cost for non-core detachments (ie not Patrol, Battalion, Brigade) is not a small consideration, especially in smaller games. There's a Crusade restriction that at 25 PL, a Patrol detachment is the only legal option. I wanted to play a vanguard for my Bloody Rose because of their story (their mission was entirely wiped out, so ALL of the survivors took a penitent oath- entire army is Repentia Superior + Preacher + 2 x repentia + 1 mortifier). The crew was like- Awesome- so you want to have no command points or obsec? You go!
H.B.M.C. wrote: Armoured Company is a good example, because there are basically three phases to playing that list:
I think what you mean is "were basically three phases"
Anyone want to go back in the thread and count the number of posts bitching about how weak vehicles are this edition? From what I've read in this thread, if someone showed up with a tank company, I'd expect a "Bully hurrah, good chap- you can't possibly win with that parking lot, but I admire your gumption!"
Or are the reports of weak vehicles exaggerated?
Furthermore, the CP cost for non-core detachments (ie not Patrol, Battalion, Brigade) is not a small consideration, especially in smaller games. There's a Crusade restriction that at 25 PL, a Patrol detachment is the only legal option. I wanted to play a vanguard for my Bloody Rose because of their story (their mission was entirely wiped out, so ALL of the survivors took a penitent oath- entire army is Repentia Superior + Preacher + 2 x repentia + 1 mortifier). The crew was like- Awesome- so you want to have no command points or obsec? You go!
The how strong or weak vehicles are really depends on the luck of your dice rolls. Random damage is a stupid mechanic. Random amounts of shots with random damage is a stupid, stupid mechanic.
Wyldhunt wrote: The thing is, you could still build skew lists even without special exceptions to the FOC like vehicle squadrons or force org slot manipulators. IG, for instance, could (iirc) take hell hounds and in their FA slots, russes in their HS slots, and pack their mandatory troop choices and HQs into chimeras. So even if they were stuck with the "one tank per slot" limitation like most armies, they could still build skew lists.
Similarly, marines could run razorback spam backed up by HS tanks and Elite slot dreadnaughts. I think BA could even take the Baal Predator in the FA slot, but I'm not sure about that one. Craftworlders were less good at it, but they could field all tanks (or wraith lords) with DAVU (dire avenger vehicle upgrade) units hiding inside them and wraith guard as troops which in modern terms translates to having an entire army of T6, 7 and 8. Tau would probably be similar in modern terms now that they have big suits in several force org roles.
A mechanized army was nowhere near the same level of skew as taking 9+ Leman Russes, though. It was a lot of vehicles on the table, but when they were all AV10/AV11 that was something a TAC list could still deal with (particularly in editions with meltabombs and powerfists making short work of them). Transports were also generally expensive, and putting your whole force in Chimeras, Rhinos, or Devilfish meant a lot of points sunk into platforms that don't really do a lot of shooting.
The old FOV specifically allowed unlimited dedicated transports because mechanized lists were not seen as inherently game-breaking. If that was a legitimate problem for balancing, they could have limited the number of transports you could take.
When it was problematic, it was usually due to other factors than just the availability of transports- Rhino rush because of how disembarkation worked in 3rd, fish of fury because of how LOS worked in 4th, leafblower because Veterans were cheap and Valkyries were in the codex in 5th, etc.
Anyone want to go back in the thread and count the number of posts bitching about how weak vehicles are this edition? From what I've read in this thread, if someone showed up with a tank company, I'd expect a "Bully hurrah, good chap- you can't possibly win with that parking lot, but I admire your gumption!"
Or are the reports of weak vehicles exaggerated?
We're explicitly talking about 3rd/4th but nice attempt at a gotcha I guess. Armored Company was an overpowered skew in that era but running a list with a bunch of Leman Russes now is pretty bad. It has, in fact, changed over time.
Instead of "fixing" the FOC, change the troops' role. Or make it a mandatory heavy tax, like a mandatory 30% of the points budget that must be invested in troops. .
WHFB did this and I got the impression people generally disliked it? I liked it so I dunno. But I think WHFBs way of setting up armies into Core, Special, Rare would probably work better for 40k at this point give the amount of models in a codex and how randomly GW assigns roles to things. IIRC correctly it was 25% Core minimum, 50% Special maximum and 25% maximum Rare. On top of that in 7th I think you had a unit restriction as well, like Warp Lightning Cannons were 0-1 per 1000pts IIRC? It's hazy, but in any case I think 40k could probably stand to do something like this.
Though knowning GW if they DID introduce a WHFB system they'd plonk it lazily on top of the FoC/Detachment system somehow.
WHFB had issues with leniency on what could become core/ was core, and access for certain other factions to HQ etc.
Throgg being a parde exemple that put trolls into core, albeit bad because trolls were bad, was not so rare for factions to have.
Another issue was Lords and heros being pretty expensive for some factions and rather not for others. Chaos warriors often had an issue to find the pts to field enough sorcerers in spell heavy times to counter and levy their own magic. Fielding a Lord for Chaos warriors at 2000 pts and a sorcerer was pretty limiting in Capability compared to other factions.
Also WHFB had a lot of magic lores tied to heros / access to basic lores which all more or less at some point were ridicoulus.
Atleast that was my perception of it back then and i partially blame this for the ever increasing seize of the armies played as "standard" which ultimately killed the game in conjunction with GW's Goldswords and Vampire knight pricing standard.
So, guardians end up few, and kept relatively safe to hold objective only after the lines of fire are cleared and charges held back with other tougher units e.g. wrathbone animates. What about them makes them elites! In the background, we learn than many had walked warrior paths but might have stopped. These may end up leading units. But the elites are the practicing specialists.
This highlight the tension between fancy words and mechanical constraints. Here elite doesn't mean SF, but rather limited (otherwise wouldn't we complain about all the marines being in the troops not elites slot?).
Personally I think its a shame that for Eldar it isn't Aspects in the troops section and Guardians in a more restricted one. So a 40k company skirmish in the background they 100% rely on guardians for this. Go to the Epic battalion level and you should see equal number or far more Guardians than Aspects (and you do, it really is a great manifestation of GW background).
If you balance based off the fluff, there should be 10,000 Orks to fight a small detachment of Marines. Say, three Tac Squads, a Dev Squad, an Assault Squad, and their ancillary support.
Do you think the Ork player wants to get 10,000 models to fight less than 100?
Do you want to make the game balanced around that?
Thats really quite doable when you consider marines defeat them in detail, concentrating fighting power better than the enemy. In game terms that a series of 40k engagements, in fluff terms a day spent battling the unending horde, but they don't all arrive at that spot in the battlefield at once...
H.B.M.C. wrote: Armoured Company is a good example, because there are basically three phases to playing that list:
1. "OMG! I have an entire army of tanks!" 2. "Wow. My opponent really can't do much to me." 3. "None of my opponents can really do much to me. This isn't fun anymore..."
I've played Armoured Companies a few times and yeah, the novelty of all tanks, all the time wears off pretty quickly, especially during the third turn of the second game, where you've systematically annihilated all the things that can damage your tanks and your opponent is left floundering as they try to get rear AV10 shots on Russes that are in my DZ and other stuff like that.
But, that's a problem with the AC list, not a problem with the FOC.
If 40k wanted to get sophisticated (and I have seen some tournies do that), you would have a core XXXX 75% of points then 2-3 optional modules of XXX 25% points, which you can switch around when shown the enemies core.
Really though the threat of an all armour force in the meta should just ensure the inclusion of anti tank guns in your infantry to deal with them (historically the best deterrent) in case you run up against them.
The game already requires you to have a warlord, so i guess the requirements would be 1 Character.
The game rewards you for bringing obsec (typically troops) so you would bring some anyway.
The FoC has never felt like something good from a pure game perspective. Why would White scars be penalized (less CP) by bringing a fluffy all bikers list? Why add rules to guard to allow them to bring extra HS?
Removing it gives more freedom when listbuilding. And if you really want to match the fluff, you're free to do so if you want.
Rihgu wrote: Alternatively, the citizen-soldiers of a dying race shouldn't be on the front lines except in the most dire of situations so Guardians should be an Elites choice. And sure, let's cost them at 20 points to show how valuable Aeldari lives are.
Orks have among the best Tellyporta tech in the galaxy, so they should pay LESS for high tech high mobility. They also love bikes a lot, and buggies, and trukks, so those should all be cheap to show how plentiful they are in ork armies. There's a Ciaphas Cain novel where the orks built 13 gargants in a relatively short amount of time, and besides they show up in almost every battle with orks so let's cost them discount, too.
Nah, I don't think I like fluff costing armies very much. Their points cost, a gameplay mechanic, should probably reflect their gameplay efficacy.
Agreed, pricing units "according to fluff" doesn't work. Especially when the people doing the pricing don't know the fluff. See: CSM and Martial Legacy.
The game already requires you to have a warlord, so i guess the requirements would be 1 Character.
The game rewards you for bringing obsec (typically troops) so you would bring some anyway.
The FoC has never felt like something good from a pure game perspective. Why would White scars be penalized (less CP) by bringing a fluffy all bikers list? Why add rules to guard to allow them to bring extra HS?
Removing it gives more freedom when listbuilding. And if you really want to match the fluff, you're free to do so if you want.
Eh. I am not sure obsec is enough of a lure and I don't think you'll ever have a rule that makes that category always attractive. You definitely need to force troops.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Right now the FOC is purposeless because you can just take whatever you want anyway. The "structure" we have with the different FOCs is just a facade.
A specific FOC would return that structure to the game. Remove the "But I want lots of Heavy Support!"FOC or the "But I just want more Elites!"FOC.
People complained once that Iron Warriors got a 4th HS slot. Seems quaint in comparison to what we've got these days.
The old FOC was meaningless. A lot of GW codex had built-in tools to side-step the FOC so the army would actually remain flavorful and not only 3xscouts for troop tax and then fill with useful stuff. The old FOC was and is just lazy rulewriting through and through that gives people the illusion of structure. It's a facade; a mirage.
The death of the old FOC was perhaps the best thing to come with 8th as it meant people could actually play their respective flavors without having to buy unwanted models for their armies.
The game already requires you to have a warlord, so i guess the requirements would be 1 Character.
The game rewards you for bringing obsec (typically troops) so you would bring some anyway.
The FoC has never felt like something good from a pure game perspective. Why would White scars be penalized (less CP) by bringing a fluffy all bikers list? Why add rules to guard to allow them to bring extra HS?
Removing it gives more freedom when listbuilding. And if you really want to match the fluff, you're free to do so if you want.
Eh. I am not sure obsec is enough of a lure and I don't think you'll ever have a rule that makes that category always attractive. You definitely need to force troops.
I think "forcing people to take bad units" is a very good mechanic. At most, incentivize but if the units aren't appealing enough to take you shouldn't force them.
Troops should just be good enough that obsec is a lure.
Eh. I am not sure obsec is enough of a lure and I don't think you'll ever have a rule that makes that category always attractive. You definitely need to force troops.
With the way GW has managed to write rules in the past decades this is just an easy way of getting people out of the hobby. There are way too many garbage troops in the game that GW has never managed to make appealing that forcing them onto people is more likely to spoil the mood for players.
Eh. I am not sure obsec is enough of a lure and I don't think you'll ever have a rule that makes that category always attractive. You definitely need to force troops.
Why do we need another layer to force troops tho? Actually why do we *need* to force them at all?
If the troops are good, people are gonna play them. I'd rather play models that are fun/good than play cultists or CSM for example
I would rather have them not as powerful as specialists, while at the same time being more useful because they score more points for doing objective actions or something.
So you have a proper decision to make wether you like to be better at the mission, or having it easier to prevent the enemy from doing the same.
The current implementation is not going far enough while still having a soft forcing of troops.
Eh. I am not sure obsec is enough of a lure and I don't think you'll ever have a rule that makes that category always attractive. You definitely need to force troops.
Why do we need another layer to force troops tho? Actually why do we *need* to force them at all?
If the troops are good, people are gonna play them. I'd rather play models that are fun/good than play cultists or CSM for example
And likewise, I'm going to play cultists and CSM pretty much no matter what, so they could at least be good.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Right now the FOC is purposeless because you can just take whatever you want anyway. The "structure" we have with the different FOCs is just a facade.
A specific FOC would return that structure to the game. Remove the "But I want lots of Heavy Support!"FOC or the "But I just want more Elites!"FOC.
People complained once that Iron Warriors got a 4th HS slot. Seems quaint in comparison to what we've got these days.
Iron Warriors filled their heavy slots with multiple units of "kyborgs" (don't know the English name of the unit) and basilisks.
Those were pretty good back in the day as my NL ALWAYS brought one unit of kyborgs to the table.
The issue with troops is internal balance. Its hard to draw a line between "spam troops because they are further up the curve than spending the equivalent points on elite units" (many Codexes in 8th and Ad Mech today) and "never take troops, or take exactly the minimum for CP efficiency, because the points go further on elite units".
You could I guess insist all 2k points armies have at least 3 units of troops, and these were all balanced to a lower point on the curve than elite units. So they'd all be comparatively "bad", and show off the superiority of other stuff. But this just means everyone would include precisely 3 such units. And factions which have a powerful troop choice (see say Ad Mech or DE today versus Marines, Sisters, Orks) would have an obvious advantage.
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
Can't speak for 2nd, but in 3rd...
- the amount of units was severly limited.
- the combinable factions were severly limited.
- taking Marines as allys prevented you from taking any Grey Knights at all in your Demonhunter army.
- it all made some fluff sense.
I would rather have them not as powerful as specialists, while at the same time being more useful because they score more points for doing objective actions or something.
So you have a proper decision to make wether you like to be better at the mission, or having it easier to prevent the enemy from doing the same.
The current implementation is not going far enough while still having a soft forcing of troops.
I guess you could limit actions to obsec and drive that home more.
I would rather have them not as powerful as specialists, while at the same time being more useful because they score more points for doing objective actions or something.
So you have a proper decision to make wether you like to be better at the mission, or having it easier to prevent the enemy from doing the same.
The current implementation is not going far enough while still having a soft forcing of troops.
I guess you could limit actions to obsec and drive that home more.
honestly i think a solution to 40k's lethality problem would be to add actions outside of secondaries.
Obsec too isnt something that's really needed, it comes back to forcing players to play with underwhelming units. And now that more and more non-troops get obsec, that job isnt even truly fulfilled.
I would rather have them not as powerful as specialists, while at the same time being more useful because they score more points for doing objective actions or something.
So you have a proper decision to make wether you like to be better at the mission, or having it easier to prevent the enemy from doing the same.
The current implementation is not going far enough while still having a soft forcing of troops.
I guess you could limit actions to obsec and drive that home more.
Or just, I don't know, make troops good? Admech and Dark Eldar take plenty of troops. Loyalists don't complain about Intercessors. You Thousand Sons folks seem to like Rubrics quite a bit since the new codex dropped. Why? Because they're all GOOD. Basic troops shouldn't feel like a "tax", they should be fundamentally good for their price. You shouldn't have to be forced to take them, you should want to. Without silly bonus rules like obsec.
I feel like a compelling design challenge for GW would be to take this approach:
What would we have to do to make the game engaging, deep, and fun to play if armies ONLY used Troop units. This would require that (a) armies have interesting / fun / diverse troop unit design to begin with and (b) that the core rules of the game has enough depth and nuance and gameplay opportunity that playing with "just troops" creates a worthwhile experience.
If they can achieve that, THEN they could start layering on specialist units with the requirement that X amount of troops be required at a minimum.
FWIW - I'm coming from the perspective that most armies should have a lot of troops, as the backbone and spirit of their army, period.
WHFB encouraged you to take troops because they could deny enemy rank bonuses, help achieve outnumbering bonuses, and fill gaps in your line to prevent you from being flanked and outnumbered yourself.
Infinity encourages you to take troops because they improve your activation economy, and can still kill a specialist if positioned appropriately thanks to the reaction system.
Lord of the Rings encourages you to take troops because they can support more expensive troops in fights (particularly if they have spears or pikes), keep your expensive troops from getting ganged up on, and help pad out your model count to avoid army-level morale issues.
In 40K, everything is measured by its ability to hold objectives or kill the enemy, so troops often end up being either point-for-point more killy than the specialists and displace them, or objectively worse and not worth taking. When they are cost-effective at holding objectives, we see 200+ model lists that just sit on objectives forever and can't be killed fast enough, and it makes for boring play.
There's a deeper issue here than just making troops good versus making troops required. Troops don't do anything differently from elite units, and that's a problem for design. There has to be value in having bodies on the field that don't necessarily fight well or take hits well in order for non-specialists to have a distinct role.
Or just, I don't know, make troops good? Admech and Dark Eldar take plenty of troops. Loyalists don't complain about Intercessors. You Thousand Sons folks seem to like Rubrics quite a bit since the new codex dropped. Why? Because they're all GOOD. Basic troops shouldn't feel like a "tax", they should be fundamentally good for their price. You shouldn't have to be forced to take them, you should want to. Without silly bonus rules like obsec.
I think the only "not good" troops out of new books is Orks - putting aside the real chaffy chaffersons. But those become a problem, because every inch you add gets more quickly amplified by any force multipliers. They were definitely a problem in 8th.
Ok... and? Like, obviously this is past tense. Armoured Company doesn't exist anymore. This isn't news.
Do you get a quick out of replying to me with what basically amounts to "Nuh-uh!", 'cause you do it a lot?
Sorry if you feel targeted- not my intention.
I guess I didn't understand your series of posts RE: the old FOC. You seem to be proposing bringing it back because it is better than detachments.
Yet the armoured company skew from 3/4 existed with that old FOC, and now no longer exists? So I'm confused.
Some examples may be from 3/4, but if they are used in argument about bringing back the old FOC, regardless of what the examples are, you're now talking about 9th.
Maybe my lack of clarity is over when you're talking about 3rd/4rth and when you're talking about 9th and how those two arguments relate to each other?
Just out of curiousity, quote you quote me on these other occasions where I've replied to you with a "nuh-uh?"
It is an oft lamented observation that I tend to be a bit... Loquacious; I suspect that if you feel like I've ever just said "nuh-uh" to anything, it's probably because you're reducing the argument I'm making. Still, emotions are what they are, and sometimes I suppose I might "snap back," so as always, I'm prepared to stand corrected. But your posts don't stand out to me as being consistently problematic- I've agreed with a lot of things you've said before, and you generally seem to have a decent sense of humour.
It surprises me to hear that you think I'm targeting you. On this particular issue, I suppose it may feel that way, because I genuinely believe that detachments, combined with ally and game size rules are very powerful storytelling tools that you just can't get with a standard FOC. And even with the provision for bespoke FOC's, I think there is still the potential that the types of stories we've played through in 8th and 9th would not have been possible.
Believe me when I tell you, it's not just you though, and it's not just to say gotcha or Nuh-uh. I'd say the same things to anyone who suggested replacing detachments with a standardized FOC and the occasional bespoke FOC for armies that are known to have non-standard organizational blocks of units. I am very proud to be a person who really only plays games that fit into a larger narrative, and because my experiences have been positive and fulfilling, I do try to share this approach as a potential solution to the discontent that I read in this forum. My motivation for doing so genuinely is because I think other people could be as happy with the game as I am if they tried this approach.
You expressed dissatisfaction with the detachment system: I explained how I use detachments as storytelling tools that provide the basis for relationships between units because I thought it might give you some ideas about using detachments in ways you may not have previously considered, and that might improve your level of happiness or contentment with the current system.
Here's another one: when Primaris get introduced to an Old Marine chapter for the first time, keeping them in separate detachments tells the story of initial distrust. Having the Primaris units gradually accepted into the Oldmarine detachment tells the story of growing trust. The recent Torchbearer fleet rules from WD make this even cooler.
Very sorry if any of this felt like personal attack. It was never my intention.
jeff white wrote: And as for amateur, this is the way things were. You wanna be insulting, be that way. Doesn’t change facts. Just shows ignorance. Won’t ruin my day. Does make me wonder why I bother engaging with people of a certain caliber but whatevs. You do you.
I think what Catbarf was trying to get across is that simply changing points is often an inelegant and perhaps something of a 'brute force' method to game balance that does not always work the way you want it.
Spoiler:
The phrase I always use in this situation is: Points are not the great leveller. That is to say, you can't always rely on changing the points as your one-stop-shop to fixing problems in the game.
This is especially true when it comes to rarity within the fluff. Forget Guardians for a moment, and look at something on a smaller scale. Way back in the day Guard paid 6 points for Plasma Guns. Every infantry squad had one. GW decided that Plasma Guns should be rare, so jacked their cost to 10 points each. Did this change the amount of Plasma Guns in Guard armies? Did it make them "more rare", as their points were supposed to indicate? Of course not. Guard players just took less of other things to ensure they had enough points to maintain their supply of Plasma Guns. If they wanted to make Plasma Guns rare, they should have made Plasma Guns rare!!!. Change them to 0-2 per Platoon, rather than just upping their cost.
So to go back to your Guardians example. Making Guardians more expensive wouldn't make them more rare. It would just make them more expensive. If someone wants to bring a large amount of Guardians, they'll just keep doing that, and make compromises/sacrifices elsewhere to ensure that.
Galas wrote: With the changes to army construction of 9th, they fixed all problem with skew/spam lists.
Really?
People have just exchanged soup-ing different armies to soup-ing small detachments from different Forge Worlds/Cabals/etc..
Life... uhh... found a way, as it were, and the method has changed even though the results haven't.
catbarf wrote: If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.
That's precisely what I would want.
Everyone would always have the standard FOC available to them (slightly expanded and more scalable to game size), but each faction would have their own unique FOC (maybe more, if appropriate). An Eldar one that emphasises Elites is a great example of something that could exist. I picture a Tyranid one that branches outwards like a web as Synapse creatures are taken (kinda like how 2nd Ed Space Marine did it). A Word Bearer 'Summoning Circle' one that emphasises taking multiple Daemon units alongside CSMs (and none of this "You took a Daemon, so your troops forgot your core rules!" nonsense purity bonuses). That Iyanden one I mentioned with a heavy emphasis on Wraith constructs. And so on.
Make the fluff and army composition work hand-in hand rather than at odds with it, as it so often is now.
Absolutely. Maybe some combination of what GW is doing, changing points re chapter approved type updates, and this with faction specific force orgs makes a whole lot of sense. Such an approach would represent the differing characters of the different factions while remaining transparent to people who are not so familiar with those factions.
One thing that I remember is when wave serpents were all the rage, super killy indestructible and people were playing a ton of them all at once. At the time, I remember thinking:
Why doesn't GW write something up in WD about how serpents have been overused by Eldar strategists who relied on them so heavily that they have become rare, with most of them damaged in battle, and this rarity is now represented by an increase in points cost? With so many serpents damaged in battle, they should cost more in available resources to get these units to the battlefield, because they need repaired, retooled, injured crew need replaced, spirit stones replaced, and so on. And, this resource cost could easily be represented by an increase in points spent in assembling the force, representing the use of available resources to simply get these units on the table.
This would be a narrative based background reinforcing mechanism to moderate unit abuse with players taking advantage of loose game mechanics as written into the basic rules system. Since that time, GW has been changing points costs, and to some degree I suppose to similar effect, but the explanation beyond the "meta" is lacking. Anyways, point being that this seems one way that points could be used in a grand narrative style to moderate army composition and "balance" factions when players exploit loopholes to "spam" certain units in order to win at all costs (including the costs of a half dozen tanks and so on).
Instead of "fixing" the FOC, change the troops' role. Or make it a mandatory heavy tax, like a mandatory 30% of the points budget that must be invested in troops. .
WHFB did this and I got the impression people generally disliked it? I liked it so I dunno. But I think WHFBs way of setting up armies into Core, Special, Rare would probably work better for 40k at this point give the amount of models in a codex and how randomly GW assigns roles to things. IIRC correctly it was 25% Core minimum, 50% Special maximum and 25% maximum Rare. On top of that in 7th I think you had a unit restriction as well, like Warp Lightning Cannons were 0-1 per 1000pts IIRC? It's hazy, but in any case I think 40k could probably stand to do something like this.
Though knowning GW if they DID introduce a WHFB system they'd plonk it lazily on top of the FoC/Detachment system somehow.
You've got your editions mixed up there. 5th ed WHFB (and prior editions) had the percentages. 6th onwards had the lords/heroes/core/special/rare.
The difference was, it's like what HBMC suggested a few pages back- it scaled. Up to 1999pts you could only have 1 rare, 2 special (IIRC) and no lords. 2000-2999 a single lord became available and more special and rare, but the core requirements also upped in turn.
Instead of "fixing" the FOC, change the troops' role. Or make it a mandatory heavy tax, like a mandatory 30% of the points budget that must be invested in troops. .
WHFB did this and I got the impression people generally disliked it? I liked it so I dunno. But I think WHFBs way of setting up armies into Core, Special, Rare would probably work better for 40k at this point give the amount of models in a codex and how randomly GW assigns roles to things. IIRC correctly it was 25% Core minimum, 50% Special maximum and 25% maximum Rare. On top of that in 7th I think you had a unit restriction as well, like Warp Lightning Cannons were 0-1 per 1000pts IIRC? It's hazy, but in any case I think 40k could probably stand to do something like this.
Though knowning GW if they DID introduce a WHFB system they'd plonk it lazily on top of the FoC/Detachment system somehow.
You've got your editions mixed up there. 5th ed WHFB (and prior editions) had the percentages. 6th onwards had the lords/heroes/core/special/rare.
The difference was, it's like what HBMC suggested a few pages back- it scaled. Up to 1999pts you could only have 1 rare, 2 special (IIRC) and no lords. 2000-2999 a single lord became available and more special and rare, but the core requirements also upped in turn.
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
You know, I remember that my eldar could include harlies as these were eldar. I remember that orks might be found alongside chaos marines or bloodaxes with imperial guard, even! But I remember these sorts of "allies" only as anecdotes, from descriptions in the old ork books and so on. I have to say that I never actually saw anything like that on a tabletop. Orks were orks, though one buddy had ogryns which might have been part of his ork army sometimes. marines were marines... I don't remember anyone ever including imp guard in a marine army, unless we were lined up with two armies and two players on each side of an 8x4 foot table. But, in such instances, those we treated as separate armies. Anyways, it has been a long time, and I was relatively new to the scene, so I might not remember well and I certainly didn;t know everything about the game, but I have to say here that IF there were anything like "allies" in 2nd, these were such a small part of the game that I have no memory of the possbility. Frankly, I liked things better that way. I mean, why not return to that way of doing things. If one wanted to use two different factions, produce two separate forces employing dedicated (faction specific, per HBMC) FOCs within the total points limit agreed upon by both player/sides. No marines riding tau transports, no tau deployed closer to a marine hq than a tau hq, something like that i.e. with limitations. Simple.
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
From a balance perspective the Loyal 32 in 8th were so powerful they became effectively mandatory for playing Imperium lists, even when people didn't really want to buy Guardsmen, so they got annoyed at feeling like they were being upsold Guardsmen they didn't want.
Instead of "fixing" the FOC, change the troops' role. Or make it a mandatory heavy tax, like a mandatory 30% of the points budget that must be invested in troops. .
WHFB did this and I got the impression people generally disliked it? I liked it so I dunno. But I think WHFBs way of setting up armies into Core, Special, Rare would probably work better for 40k at this point give the amount of models in a codex and how randomly GW assigns roles to things. IIRC correctly it was 25% Core minimum, 50% Special maximum and 25% maximum Rare. On top of that in 7th I think you had a unit restriction as well, like Warp Lightning Cannons were 0-1 per 1000pts IIRC? It's hazy, but in any case I think 40k could probably stand to do something like this.
Though knowning GW if they DID introduce a WHFB system they'd plonk it lazily on top of the FoC/Detachment system somehow.
You've got your editions mixed up there. 5th ed WHFB (and prior editions) had the percentages. 6th onwards had the lords/heroes/core/special/rare.
The difference was, it's like what HBMC suggested a few pages back- it scaled. Up to 1999pts you could only have 1 rare, 2 special (IIRC) and no lords. 2000-2999 a single lord became available and more special and rare, but the core requirements also upped in turn.
8th also had the percentages.
It did? Well, I'm the proverbial man in orthopaedic shoes...
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
From a balance perspective the Loyal 32 in 8th were so powerful they became effectively mandatory for playing Imperium lists, even when people didn't really want to buy Guardsmen, so they got annoyed at feeling like they were being upsold Guardsmen they didn't want.
So nerf that specific combination, don't just go in with a sledgehammer and destroy soup *almost* completely.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
This is an example of GW's extreme overbalancing.
They fix problems by swinging the pendulum so hard that it ends up being the complete opposite level of bad.
From a balance perspective the Loyal 32 in 8th were so powerful they became effectively mandatory for playing Imperium lists, even when people didn't really want to buy Guardsmen, so they got annoyed at feeling like they were being upsold Guardsmen they didn't want.
So nerf that specific combination, don't just go in with a sledgehammer and destroy soup *almost* completely.
The Loyal 32 was "mandatory" because it gave you cheap CP; not because the 30 guardsmen and 2 HQs were all that powerful. Currently, the Loyal 32 problem is solved because adding them to your army would take away CP rather than granting it.
No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
Nurgle daemons and Death Guard really should be able to hang out, but I sort of get where GW is coming from. Imagine teaming up sisters and ad mech if you didn't lose your gimmick mechanics. You'd have to track miracle dice, sacred rites, canticles, whatever those skitarii bonuses are called, and the weird mechanicus warlord trait "modes" all at once.
I'm okay with armies only having access to one gimmick mechanic to keep things simple, Nurgle daemons probably shouldn't take away plague auras, and drukhari coven units should probably be viable without PFP.
EDIT: Regarding troops:
I've been saying for a long time now that troops should NOT be mandatory and SHOULD be desirable on their own merits. What is and isn't a "troop" and how cost-effective those units are ocmpared to other options within their faction is just too arbitrary to pretend that being a "troop" means anything. Mandatory troops just don't work well from a mechanical OR narrative angle.
Troops that aren't cheap, durable, or killy enough to be desirable should be made desirable by making them support units for the rest of your army; the sort of unit that you want to spread out across your forces. So maybe some troops have the ability to intercept (shoot at) enemy units when they arrive from reserves or the ability to charge an enemy unit before it can pull off its own charge (thus keeping your more expensive units from getting charged). Maybe you introduce a crossfire mechanic, and having troops spread around the table naturally makes it easier to catch the enemy in a crossfire. Maybe you make certain strats cheap or free when used by certain troops representing the idea that your army is most accustomed to having troops pull off that maneuver.
So my dire avengers don't have to be as good at killing infantry as my non-troops, but they should be a unit that I want to buddy up with other units. Tactical marines don't have to match aggressors for raw fire power, but maybe they could auspex scan for 0CP.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
This is an example of GW's extreme overbalancing.
They fix problems by swinging the pendulum so hard that it ends up being the complete opposite level of bad.
We're basing this on the perception of what people take, but there are a few who have been successful using soup. Is it badly done, do people have hang ups, or are they just enticed more by the extra rules?
There's still people complaining about meltas on the forums, but those guns are so damned rare right now. Perception doesn't always match reality.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
This is an example of GW's extreme overbalancing.
They fix problems by swinging the pendulum so hard that it ends up being the complete opposite level of bad.
We're basing this on the perception of what people take, but there are a few who have been successful using soup. Is it badly done, do people have hang ups, or are they just enticed more by the extra rules?
There's still people complaining about meltas on the forums, but those guns are so damned rare right now. Perception doesn't always match reality.
They might be rare in your tournaments Daed, but that doesn't mean they're rare everywhere. You're looking at everything with your "competitive glasses" on again.
Gadzilla666 wrote: They might be rare in your tournaments Daed, but that doesn't mean they're rare everywhere. You're looking at everything with your "competitive glasses" on again.
Yes, guilty, but it's the only data I have. If you look at bottom lists you might find many with lots of MM and others succeed despite their existence.
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H.B.M.C. wrote: Ok... but I don't see what bearing that has on GW's penchant for overbalancing (the Nurgle Daemons breaking a Deathguard army being the key example).
That's likely a thing where GW will sell another book ( yaaaaay ) that gives an army of renown for that archetype.
Gadzilla666 wrote: They might be rare in your tournaments Daed, but that doesn't mean they're rare everywhere. You're looking at everything with your "competitive glasses" on again.
Yes, guilty, but it's the only data I have. If you look at bottom lists you might find many with lots of MM and others succeed despite their existence.
Sure, but how many of those that are "succeeding" are doing it with tanks? I can deal with it, but just because my 26W T8 2+ tank with an available -1 to be hit that I can slap a 5+++ on with a Sorcerer is "OK", doesn't mean someone trying to run some Leman Russes is.
Gadzilla666 wrote: They might be rare in your tournaments Daed, but that doesn't mean they're rare everywhere. You're looking at everything with your "competitive glasses" on again.
Yes, guilty, but it's the only data I have. If you look at bottom lists you might find many with lots of MM and others succeed despite their existence.
Sure, but how many of those that are "succeeding" are doing it with tanks? I can deal with it, but just because my 26W T8 2+ tank with an available -1 to be hit that I can slap a 5+++ on with a Sorcerer is "OK", doesn't mean someone trying to run some Leman Russes is.
Yea things are not simple in superheavy land. I don't know why they took away T9. Likes others have said they need to use that range.
Gadzilla666 wrote: They might be rare in your tournaments Daed, but that doesn't mean they're rare everywhere. You're looking at everything with your "competitive glasses" on again.
Yes, guilty, but it's the only data I have. If you look at bottom lists you might find many with lots of MM and others succeed despite their existence.
Sure, but how many of those that are "succeeding" are doing it with tanks? I can deal with it, but just because my 26W T8 2+ tank with an available -1 to be hit that I can slap a 5+++ on with a Sorcerer is "OK", doesn't mean someone trying to run some Leman Russes is.
Yea things are not simple in superheavy land. I don't know why they took away T9. Likes others have said they need to use that range.
Um, no, the Fellblade is fine. My point was, if it takes a Fellblade with Delightful Agonies on it to be "OK", how are tanks that are less ridiculous supposed to survive? It's a giant tank, covered in S10+ guns, backed up by a character with one of the best psychic disciplines in the game. Most people aren't running something like that.
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
You know, I remember that my eldar could include harlies as these were eldar. I remember that orks might be found alongside chaos marines or bloodaxes with imperial guard, even! But I remember these sorts of "allies" only as anecdotes, from descriptions in the old ork books and so on. I have to say that I never actually saw anything like that on a tabletop. Orks were orks, though one buddy had ogryns which might have been part of his ork army sometimes. marines were marines... I don't remember anyone ever including imp guard in a marine army, unless we were lined up with two armies and two players on each side of an 8x4 foot table. But, in such instances, those we treated as separate armies. Anyways, it has been a long time, and I was relatively new to the scene, so I might not remember well and I certainly didn;t know everything about the game, but I have to say here that IF there were anything like "allies" in 2nd, these were such a small part of the game that I have no memory of the possbility. Frankly, I liked things better that way. I mean, why not return to that way of doing things. If one wanted to use two different factions, produce two separate forces employing dedicated (faction specific, per HBMC) FOCs within the total points limit agreed upon by both player/sides. No marines riding tau transports, no tau deployed closer to a marine hq than a tau hq, something like that i.e. with limitations. Simple.
The ally system was introduced back then to allow hobbyists buying small amounts of models of an additional faction and STILL use them in their 40K games together with their main faction.
In 2nd and 3rd 40K had an ally system that allowed to include a small amount of specific troops from certain other codices to be included in your force. No one was screaming bloody murder back then like they do now when the word "ally" is dropped in forums.
From a balance perspective the Loyal 32 in 8th were so powerful they became effectively mandatory for playing Imperium lists, even when people didn't really want to buy Guardsmen, so they got annoyed at feeling like they were being upsold Guardsmen they didn't want.
The term Loyal 32 is meaningless to me. What does it stand for?
Loyal 32 was a minimum-sized Astra Militarum Battalion of 32 models. Folks took them in 8th Ed for the CP plus the Warlord Trait and Relic that regenerated CPs. Provided the CPs to “power” certain CP hungry Imperium lists like Knights.
Was nerfed by changes to CP regeneration and then disappeared with 9th.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
This is an example of GW's extreme overbalancing.
They fix problems by swinging the pendulum so hard that it ends up being the complete opposite level of bad.
You say this as if it isnt completely, obviously and blatantly 100% intentional. Come on. GW might as well have come out at the launch of 9th and announced "OK YALL NEW EDITION TIME, HORDES ARE GONNA SUCK, ELITE INFANTRY IS GOING TO BE THE WAY TO GO! REBUY YOUR ARMIES NOW, TOURNEY PLAYERS!"
TangoTwoBravo wrote: Loyal 32 was a minimum-sized Astra Militarum Battalion of 32 models. Folks took them in 8th Ed for the CP plus the Warlord Trait and Relic that regenerated CPs. Provided the CPs to “power” certain CP hungry Imperium lists like Knights.
Was nerfed by changes to CP regeneration and then disappeared with 9th.
Okay, so during 8th it was a no-brainer to use them. Edition change invalidated these units and now they collect dust on someone's shelf.
Reminds me of the time when formations were introduced and GW were looking for gullible folks who would buy X amount of models, which they would have NEVER bought on their own, to receive some sort of buff. All those buffs were eliminated in the next edition too.
This happens when you let marketing people write rules for a game. It just degenerates into a shameless money grab.
Hmmm. Its The Scotsman's thing - but I will say at least in my experience "the Loyal 32" was way more of an internet thing than reality.
In part because yes, on paper, plug and play in every imperial list for a bunch of cheap CP. In practice, because of how good *Guard* were in this era, having started down this line, why stop? If you were competitive it was by putting more of them on the table, not just 32, and stripping out everything except BA Smash Captains, Custodes Biker Captains and/or a Castellan.
The 2 BA captains, 15 scouts, 1 Castellan and 1k(ish) points of Guard lists are gathering dust - but realistically, anyone acquiring that should have realised it was going to have a use-by date.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
This is an example of GW's extreme overbalancing.
They fix problems by swinging the pendulum so hard that it ends up being the complete opposite level of bad.
You say this as if it isnt completely, obviously and blatantly 100% intentional. Come on. GW might as well have come out at the launch of 9th and announced "OK YALL NEW EDITION TIME, HORDES ARE GONNA SUCK, ELITE INFANTRY IS GOING TO BE THE WAY TO GO! REBUY YOUR ARMIES NOW, TOURNEY PLAYERS!"
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I have a lot I critisize GW over but when it comes to rules, I never assume they do anything maliciously, because if they did the game would be very, very different.
This happens when you let marketing people write rules for a game. It just degenerates into a shameless money grab.
No, this happens when you chase the flavour of the month. All the armies that used the Loyal 32 on regular basis were 100% fine even without the 5CPs and cheap allied force provided by that combo in any casual to semi-competitive meta. With the Loyal 32 those imperium based armies, including the most common Space Marines, had the tools to compete with the top tiers, and one list even became the most oppressive list available for a while.
I, with my SW, was absolutely fine using 9-10 CPs, never felt the need to add the cheap (not in terms of money ) AM dudes to play with 14-15. Pretty much every competitive SW build had those though.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No idea, and i personally really dislike how extreme GW has gone with 9th to discourage soup (deathguard losing their fething contagions if they ally nurgle demons, WTF)
This is an example of GW's extreme overbalancing.
They fix problems by swinging the pendulum so hard that it ends up being the complete opposite level of bad.
You say this as if it isnt completely, obviously and blatantly 100% intentional. Come on. GW might as well have come out at the launch of 9th and announced "OK YALL NEW EDITION TIME, HORDES ARE GONNA SUCK, ELITE INFANTRY IS GOING TO BE THE WAY TO GO! REBUY YOUR ARMIES NOW, TOURNEY PLAYERS!"
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I have a lot I critisize GW over but when it comes to rules, I never assume they do anything maliciously, because if they did the game would be very, very different.
To be fair, they could just be incompetent in their attempts at malice.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Um, no, the Fellblade is fine. My point was, if it takes a Fellblade with Delightful Agonies on it to be "OK", how are tanks that are less ridiculous supposed to survive? It's a giant tank, covered in S10+ guns, backed up by a character with one of the best psychic disciplines in the game. Most people aren't running something like that.
Most should do fine...as long as you don't bring a whole bunch of them. The bigger "problem" vehicles are things like Predator Annihilators and relying on D6 damage to carry the day. Some days they're amazing and others they are not.
There seems to be this pervasive idea that if you bring something then it must be worth taking multiples of it otherwise it isn't worth it at all...and I find that pretty silly.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Um, no, the Fellblade is fine. My point was, if it takes a Fellblade with Delightful Agonies on it to be "OK", how are tanks that are less ridiculous supposed to survive? It's a giant tank, covered in S10+ guns, backed up by a character with one of the best psychic disciplines in the game. Most people aren't running something like that.
Most should do fine...as long as you don't bring a whole bunch of them. The bigger "problem" vehicles are things like Predator Annihilators and relying on D6 damage to carry the day. Some days they're amazing and others they are not.
There seems to be this pervasive idea that if you bring something then it must be worth taking multiples of it otherwise it isn't worth it at all...and I find that pretty silly.
Depends. If you have brought only one giant to your WHFB games it usually ate a cannonball and died before it got into hth combat. Therefore you needed to take two in order get something out of them.
Keyword is redundancy here. Same principle applies to certain big units in 40K which act like fire magnets due to their impressive size.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Um, no, the Fellblade is fine. My point was, if it takes a Fellblade with Delightful Agonies on it to be "OK", how are tanks that are less ridiculous supposed to survive? It's a giant tank, covered in S10+ guns, backed up by a character with one of the best psychic disciplines in the game. Most people aren't running something like that.
Most should do fine...as long as you don't bring a whole bunch of them. The bigger "problem" vehicles are things like Predator Annihilators and relying on D6 damage to carry the day. Some days they're amazing and others they are not.
There seems to be this pervasive idea that if you bring something then it must be worth taking multiples of it otherwise it isn't worth it at all...and I find that pretty silly.
D6 damage vehicles just don't work, especially when they have low firerate on top. Rolling a 1 for damage will really set you back usually. ALL D6 (for number of shots and damage) in the game shouldve been changed to D3+3.
Wyldhunt wrote: Troops that aren't cheap, durable, or killy enough to be desirable should be made desirable by making them support units for the rest of your army; the sort of unit that you want to spread out across your forces. So maybe some troops have the ability to intercept (shoot at) enemy units when they arrive from reserves or the ability to charge an enemy unit before it can pull off its own charge (thus keeping your more expensive units from getting charged). Maybe you introduce a crossfire mechanic, and having troops spread around the table naturally makes it easier to catch the enemy in a crossfire. Maybe you make certain strats cheap or free when used by certain troops representing the idea that your army is most accustomed to having troops pull off that maneuver.
I was alluding to this earlier when I summarized how other games use basic troops- if you have mechanics like crossfire as you said, or reaction systems, or activation mechanics, then that gives any unit some inherent value no matter how weak it is. I'm not so keen on giving special abilities to just Troops (basic Infantry Squads can shoot enemies arriving from reserves, but Veterans or Scions can't?), but game-wide mechanics that incentivize maneuver and allow basic units to contribute just by being on the board is a plus in my book.
In a lot of ways the problem with Troops boils down to the core rules being about an inch deep. There's nothing for Troops to do that isn't explicitly provided within their own codex. So maybe the solution will have to come from that direction, giving each faction a reason to value their Troops choices.
Wyldhunt wrote: Troops that aren't cheap, durable, or killy enough to be desirable should be made desirable by making them support units for the rest of your army; the sort of unit that you want to spread out across your forces. So maybe some troops have the ability to intercept (shoot at) enemy units when they arrive from reserves or the ability to charge an enemy unit before it can pull off its own charge (thus keeping your more expensive units from getting charged). Maybe you introduce a crossfire mechanic, and having troops spread around the table naturally makes it easier to catch the enemy in a crossfire. Maybe you make certain strats cheap or free when used by certain troops representing the idea that your army is most accustomed to having troops pull off that maneuver.
I was alluding to this earlier when I summarized how other games use basic troops- if you have mechanics like crossfire as you said, or reaction systems, or activation mechanics, then that gives any unit some inherent value no matter how weak it is. I'm not so keen on giving special abilities to just Troops (basic Infantry Squads can shoot enemies arriving from reserves, but Veterans or Scions can't?), but game-wide mechanics that incentivize maneuver and allow basic units to contribute just by being on the board is a plus in my book.
In a lot of ways the problem with Troops boils down to the core rules being about an inch deep. There's nothing for Troops to do that isn't explicitly provided within their own codex. So maybe the solution will have to come from that direction, giving each faction a reason to value their Troops choices.
I think the Troops thing is really just a matter of bringing value, and that certain armies will just hit that value tradeoff in different ways. The recent near-disappearance of Ork Boyz from lists should illustrate this value proposition. The fact that Tyranids, afaik, seem to have an easy time finding value for their troops should also tell us something. Tbh I'm wondering if this is primarily coming from a Marine standpoint. Marines have a long history of bringing minimum troops, and these days Marines have so many units to choose from that it seems like basic probability would dictate that players might find more value in units elsewhere in the FOC.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Um, no, the Fellblade is fine. My point was, if it takes a Fellblade with Delightful Agonies on it to be "OK", how are tanks that are less ridiculous supposed to survive? It's a giant tank, covered in S10+ guns, backed up by a character with one of the best psychic disciplines in the game. Most people aren't running something like that.
Most should do fine...as long as you don't bring a whole bunch of them. The bigger "problem" vehicles are things like Predator Annihilators and relying on D6 damage to carry the day. Some days they're amazing and others they are not.
There seems to be this pervasive idea that if you bring something then it must be worth taking multiples of it otherwise it isn't worth it at all...and I find that pretty silly.
Depends. If you have brought only one giant to your WHFB games it usually ate a cannonball and died before it got into hth combat. Therefore you needed to take two in order get something out of them.
Keyword is redundancy here. Same principle applies to certain big units in 40K which act like fire magnets due to their impressive size.
In fairness that was more to do with cannons being OP than the monsters being weak.
H.B.M.C. wrote: How can you say that when people consistently shoot down the "GW don't change/boost units for sales purposes!".
I so much as imply that and it's "More conspiracy theories!" or "Stop being a whiny hater who hates everything ever!".
That's not what The GW Conspiracy typically is, though. The GW Conspiracy is "GW purposefully makes new units OP in order to push their sales".
THAT is purely an exercise in the standard "Remember the Hits, Forget the Misses" thinking that actually is common among adherents to conspiracy theories.
It entirely relies on peoples' natural tendency to, to use a recent example, remember
-Warboss on Squigosaur
-Kill Rig
-new Deffcopta kit
and forget about
-Beast Snagga Boyz
-New Boyz kit
-Named runtherd
-Nob on Smasha Squig
-New Mega-Armor boss
GW's new releases are basically all over the competitive map. GW using new editions to make sure that unit types and army types that were competitively dominant in the prior edition are less powerful in the new edition, and army types which were absent in the prior edition are dominant in the new edition is literally a thing that they say they do openly, and is consistent across every edition of the game.
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TangoTwoBravo wrote: Loyal 32 was a minimum-sized Astra Militarum Battalion of 32 models. Folks took them in 8th Ed for the CP plus the Warlord Trait and Relic that regenerated CPs. Provided the CPs to “power” certain CP hungry Imperium lists like Knights.
Was nerfed by changes to CP regeneration and then disappeared with 9th.
Okay, so during 8th it was a no-brainer to use them. Edition change invalidated these units and now they collect dust on someone's shelf.
Reminds me of the time when formations were introduced and GW were looking for gullible folks who would buy X amount of models, which they would have NEVER bought on their own, to receive some sort of buff. All those buffs were eliminated in the next edition too.
This happens when you let marketing people write rules for a game. It just degenerates into a shameless money grab.
It's weird though, I was told that the profit motive was always the best way to get the best thing in any category!
Are you telling me that the most profitable video games arent the best video games, the most profitable movies arent the best movies, and the most profitable music isnt the best music?
Wyldhunt wrote: Troops that aren't cheap, durable, or killy enough to be desirable should be made desirable by making them support units for the rest of your army; the sort of unit that you want to spread out across your forces. So maybe some troops have the ability to intercept (shoot at) enemy units when they arrive from reserves or the ability to charge an enemy unit before it can pull off its own charge (thus keeping your more expensive units from getting charged). Maybe you introduce a crossfire mechanic, and having troops spread around the table naturally makes it easier to catch the enemy in a crossfire. Maybe you make certain strats cheap or free when used by certain troops representing the idea that your army is most accustomed to having troops pull off that maneuver.
I was alluding to this earlier when I summarized how other games use basic troops- if you have mechanics like crossfire as you said, or reaction systems, or activation mechanics, then that gives any unit some inherent value no matter how weak it is. I'm not so keen on giving special abilities to just Troops (basic Infantry Squads can shoot enemies arriving from reserves, but Veterans or Scions can't?), but game-wide mechanics that incentivize maneuver and allow basic units to contribute just by being on the board is a plus in my book.
In a lot of ways the problem with Troops boils down to the core rules being about an inch deep. There's nothing for Troops to do that isn't explicitly provided within their own codex. So maybe the solution will have to come from that direction, giving each faction a reason to value their Troops choices.
I think the Troops thing is really just a matter of bringing value, and that certain armies will just hit that value tradeoff in different ways. The recent near-disappearance of Ork Boyz from lists should illustrate this value proposition. The fact that Tyranids, afaik, seem to have an easy time finding value for their troops should also tell us something. Tbh I'm wondering if this is primarily coming from a Marine standpoint. Marines have a long history of bringing minimum troops, and these days Marines have so many units to choose from that it seems like basic probability would dictate that players might find more value in units elsewhere in the FOC.
Who do Tyranids find value from their Troops? Because the amount of actual competitive units is very limited and something has to sit on objectives.
The moment you were to give Nids units that can actually survive sitting on an objective getting shot at while contributing to the game (Like correctly prices and tough gun Carnifexes) you will see Troops disappear from their lists, because outside of a devilgaunt bomb those Troop units contribute nothing in damage.
I was just reading about how Fleshborer gants remained key for some lists being valuable for filling up space as movement blockers as well. Hormagaunts just the same but faster for a little extra cost. Genestealers were used for a long time as well, even if not as much recently.
The key point I think is that it's easy to see how each of those units would have clear roles, and the only reason they may not be competetive is thruough slight point tweaks or simple fixes. The distance to travel from where they are to being more commonly used is probably very small. And back in their heyday, people took lots of them. "Min troops" Tyranids is just not something I've seen a lot of.
Comparing that to a long history of "Min Scouts" Space Marine lists prior to Primaris says something about internal balance (or percieved internal balance) I think.
Non-troop Space Marine units are more or less just the same units as the Troops, just betterer either at a specific thing (Vanguard), or at everything (Sternguard), which makes the troops themselves less inspiring and appear less valuable*. The Tyranid troop roles on the other hand are harder to replace with non-troop Tyranids.
*Personally I've always found the Tactical Squad valuable, and taken lots of them, but I speak about a common community perception.
Wyldhunt wrote: Troops that aren't cheap, durable, or killy enough to be desirable should be made desirable by making them support units for the rest of your army; the sort of unit that you want to spread out across your forces. So maybe some troops have the ability to intercept (shoot at) enemy units when they arrive from reserves or the ability to charge an enemy unit before it can pull off its own charge (thus keeping your more expensive units from getting charged). Maybe you introduce a crossfire mechanic, and having troops spread around the table naturally makes it easier to catch the enemy in a crossfire. Maybe you make certain strats cheap or free when used by certain troops representing the idea that your army is most accustomed to having troops pull off that maneuver.
I was alluding to this earlier when I summarized how other games use basic troops- if you have mechanics like crossfire as you said, or reaction systems, or activation mechanics, then that gives any unit some inherent value no matter how weak it is. I'm not so keen on giving special abilities to just Troops (basic Infantry Squads can shoot enemies arriving from reserves, but Veterans or Scions can't?), but game-wide mechanics that incentivize maneuver and allow basic units to contribute just by being on the board is a plus in my book.
Fair point regarding the weirdness more skilled/veteran troops not being able to do the same things the basic troops can. If I were to try and justify it, I'd maybesay something like, "Oh, well the rank and file guys are drilled on how to secure the area more frequently than the scions; the scions are too busy looking for optimal targets for their special guns." Or some such thing. But you're right, it is slightly weird.
In a lot of ways the problem with Troops boils down to the core rules being about an inch deep. There's nothing for Troops to do that isn't explicitly provided within their own codex. So maybe the solution will have to come from that direction, giving each faction a reason to value their Troops choices.
I think you're probably right, although I think you could reasonably reuse a lot of troop incentives between factions. For instance, infiltrators have that wargear option that lets them prevent deepstriking within 12". That's the sort of utility I'd expect to see out of a lot of troops, and you could probably reasonably give a similar rule to something like guardian defenders; maybe tie it to the heavy platform guy with his special visor. Or having troops intercept charges, though powerful, seems like it could be reasonably given to a lot of units like dire avengers, storm guardians, hormagaunts, kroot, etc. Or, and this is kind of ham-fisted, maybe some troops can put a "supporting fire token" on enemies if they don't split fire, and other units can spend those tokens to reroll failed to-hit/wound rolls. I could see that rule being given to basically any troop that needs some help and sports a conventional rifle-like weapon.
Basically, I think you could come up with a handful of abilities that would be useful to a number of armies and then give specific troops access to some number of those abilities. So rather than needing a bespoke rule to fix every lacklustre troop in the game, you could hand out some combination of the rules spitballed above.
Insectum7 wrote: I was just reading about how Fleshborer gants remained key for some lists being valuable for filling up space as movement blockers as well. Hormagaunts just the same but faster for a little extra cost. Genestealers were used for a long time as well, even if not as much recently.
The key point I think is that it's easy to see how each of those units would have clear roles, and the only reason they may not be competetive is thruough slight point tweaks or simple fixes. The distance to travel from where they are to being more commonly used is probably very small. And back in their heyday, people took lots of them. "Min troops" Tyranids is just not something I've seen a lot of.
Comparing that to a long history of "Min Scouts" Space Marine lists prior to Primaris says something about internal balance (or percieved internal balance) I think.
Non-troop Space Marine units are more or less just the same units as the Troops, just betterer either at a specific thing (Vanguard), or at everything (Sternguard), which makes the troops themselves less inspiring and appear less valuable*. The Tyranid troop roles on the other hand are harder to replace with non-troop Tyranids.
*Personally I've always found the Tactical Squad valuable, and taken lots of them, but I speak about a common community perception.
Basically this. In Tyranids you don't have anything else that can do what troops do for you because troops are your small bugs. In Marines as you say, all the army are just marines with slighly different wargear + vehicles.
Other armies that work like Tyranids are Necrons or Dark Eldar were your troops are 90% of your infantry and do stuff nothing else can actually do.
But armies like Orks were the boyz have to compete with boyz+ like stormboyz or kommandok is very easy for one or the others to be the most optimal choice. Imperial guard, like Tyranids, they can play mechanised or infantry based but if they want to go infantry they need to go troop heavy or bust.
Insectum7 wrote: I was just reading about how Fleshborer gants remained key for some lists being valuable for filling up space as movement blockers as well. Hormagaunts just the same but faster for a little extra cost. Genestealers were used for a long time as well, even if not as much recently.
The key point I think is that it's easy to see how each of those units would have clear roles, and the only reason they may not be competetive is thruough slight point tweaks or simple fixes. The distance to travel from where they are to being more commonly used is probably very small. And back in their heyday, people took lots of them. "Min troops" Tyranids is just not something I've seen a lot of.
Comparing that to a long history of "Min Scouts" Space Marine lists prior to Primaris says something about internal balance (or percieved internal balance) I think.
Non-troop Space Marine units are more or less just the same units as the Troops, just betterer either at a specific thing (Vanguard), or at everything (Sternguard), which makes the troops themselves less inspiring and appear less valuable*. The Tyranid troop roles on the other hand are harder to replace with non-troop Tyranids.
*Personally I've always found the Tactical Squad valuable, and taken lots of them, but I speak about a common community perception.
Basically this. In Tyranids you don't have anything else that can do what troops do for you because troops are your small bugs. In Marines as you say, all the army are just marines with slighly different wargear + vehicles.
Other armies that work like Tyranids are Necrons or Dark Eldar were your troops are 90% of your infantry and do stuff nothing else can actually do.
But armies like Orks were the boyz have to compete with boyz+ like stormboyz or kommandok is very easy for one or the others to be the most optimal choice. Imperial guard, like Tyranids, they can play mechanised or infantry based but if they want to go infantry they need to go troop heavy or bust.
Definitely agree. It's all about giving each unit its own niche. That can be tricky though. Using dire avengers as an example again, their niche is, theoretically, being a pretty good anti-infantry shooting unit. But they live in the same codex as things like swooping hawks and warp spiders who both probably do that job a little bit better. I'm okay with there being some overlap in roles there, but it does mean that you have to give avengers more of a niche than just "anti-infantry shooting unit." OR you have to buff avengers to the point that they're the best at anti-infantry shooting, but the hawks and spiders have their own (probably mobility-related) tricks to make up the difference. But then we're wandering into power creep territory, and you have to make sure guardians aren't just worse avengers and so on and so forth.
I think that's why I like the idea of giving troops their own unique tricks so much. It adds value without increasing lethality.
Insectum7 wrote: I was just reading about how Fleshborer gants remained key for some lists being valuable for filling up space as movement blockers as well. Hormagaunts just the same but faster for a little extra cost. Genestealers were used for a long time as well, even if not as much recently.
The key point I think is that it's easy to see how each of those units would have clear roles, and the only reason they may not be competetive is thruough slight point tweaks or simple fixes. The distance to travel from where they are to being more commonly used is probably very small. And back in their heyday, people took lots of them. "Min troops" Tyranids is just not something I've seen a lot of.
Comparing that to a long history of "Min Scouts" Space Marine lists prior to Primaris says something about internal balance (or percieved internal balance) I think.
Non-troop Space Marine units are more or less just the same units as the Troops, just betterer either at a specific thing (Vanguard), or at everything (Sternguard), which makes the troops themselves less inspiring and appear less valuable*. The Tyranid troop roles on the other hand are harder to replace with non-troop Tyranids.
*Personally I've always found the Tactical Squad valuable, and taken lots of them, but I speak about a common community perception.
Basically this. In Tyranids you don't have anything else that can do what troops do for you because troops are your small bugs. In Marines as you say, all the army are just marines with slighly different wargear + vehicles.
Other armies that work like Tyranids are Necrons or Dark Eldar were your troops are 90% of your infantry and do stuff nothing else can actually do.
But armies like Orks were the boyz have to compete with boyz+ like stormboyz or kommandok is very easy for one or the others to be the most optimal choice. Imperial guard, like Tyranids, they can play mechanised or infantry based but if they want to go infantry they need to go troop heavy or bust.
Which, btw, is why Marines were "complete" at about 4th edition with some very minor tweaks.
The only tweak I'd make to the lineup is to give Assault Squads more access to various weapons in the same way that the 2nd ed version did. (The lack of which excused Vanguard)
I think the limitation of special ccw was one of the few improvements of 3rd compared to 2nd for any type of common assault units. So units being equipped with chainswords and bolt pistols was okay but refusing to give the former ANY kind of special rule despite being a trademark weapon of the entire setting was beyond stupid.
Giving it REND which either activates on a hit roll of 6 or a wound roll of 6 would have been suitable. It also could have been combined with the implementation of levels which then could come in forms of AP (2, 3 and 4 or worse).
Alas the chainsword was reduced to the level of a fist punch.
Strg Alt wrote: I think the limitation of special ccw was one of the few improvements of 3rd compared to 2nd for any type of common assault units. So units being equipped with chainswords and bolt pistols was okay but refusing to give the former ANY kind of special rule despite being a trademark weapon of the entire setting was beyond stupid.
Giving it REND which either activates on a hit roll of 6 or a wound roll of 6 would have been suitable. It also could have been combined with the implementation of levels which then could come in forms of AP (2, 3 and 4 or worse).
Alas the chainsword was reduced to the level of a fist punch.
I think the moment you impose those restrictions on the Assault Squad is the moment that you leave design space open for Vanguard, which in turn just "invalidate" the Assault Squad in the eyes of a lot of people. In addition, the Vanguard become a "stolen unit" from the BA, who were unique in the ability to field Jump Pack veterans at the time. Imo the Assault Squad should just have the wide array of options (including bringing back the other Special Weapons) available to them. Assault Squads were hit the worst out of the Marine units. Bike Squads kept all their Specials, Devastators of course kept their 4 Heavy Weapons, Scouts retained their wide array of weapon options. . . yet Assault Squads were kicked back to only Chainswords and two Flamers or Plasma Pistols, when formerly they had everything available to them. Power Swords/Fists/Axes, Melta/Plasmaguns, etc.
)/Necron Warriors etc vs. Intercessors. 
, although even there Terminators suffer from the advent of rolling a couple 1's.
nuts.
.
