What could the Drukhari player have done to prevent the game from entering an un-winnable state (for themselves) in the first shooting phase of their opponent's in the game?
Insectum7 wrote: While I'm 100% on the side of poor decision making and army exposure leading to punishment and a lost game, the consequences of the poor decision don't have to be immediate single-turn annihilation. Imo the game would be better if it still took a number of turns to let that play out.
Command: Brother Nihilus, we have reached 50% casualties for this moment in the battle. Cease firing your bolter until the opponent has caught his breath!
Brother Nihilus: You keep saying that. But the opposing forces are still standing out in the open, exposing their posteriors!
Command: Rules of engagement prevent us from sanctioning dimwits too extremely. You have your orders.
Oh my mistake, I thought I was entering a serious conversation with reasoned debate, my bad!
Don't mistake exposition for a lack of reason.
One solution that's been discussed is to cap damage per turn. Would be kind of like that.
If a player chooses to expose their entire army to mine, I should probably be allowed to do all the damage I want. Caps are a poor solution.
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macluvin wrote: What could the Drukhari player have done to prevent the game from entering an un-winnable state (for themselves) in the first shooting phase of their opponent's in the game?
Stop reframing the question.
You do this constantly and don't recognize the answers when I take the time to respond.
I think it's frustrating you quite a bit, and I do actually care.
Insectum7 wrote: While I'm 100% on the side of poor decision making and army exposure leading to punishment and a lost game, the consequences of the poor decision don't have to be immediate single-turn annihilation. Imo the game would be better if it still took a number of turns to let that play out.
Command: Brother Nihilus, we have reached 50% casualties for this moment in the battle. Cease firing your bolter until the opponent has caught his breath!
Brother Nihilus: You keep saying that. But the opposing forces are still standing out in the open, exposing their posteriors!
Command: Rules of engagement prevent us from sanctioning dimwits too extremely. You have your orders.
Oh my mistake, I thought I was entering a serious conversation with reasoned debate, my bad!
Don't mistake exposition for a lack of reason.
One solution that's been discussed is to cap damage per turn. Would be kind of like that.
If a player chooses to expose their entire army to mine, I should probably be allowed to do all the damage I want. Caps are a poor solution.
Hi. I never mentioned anything about a "cap". Overall reduction in potential damage gets to the desired effect.
Also, a few changes to cover (not obscuring, I mean actual cover) would make the game a lot less lethal.
You type this like you're disagreeing with my overall sentiment and like the exact thing that I've been advocating for this entire time isn't EXACTLY the kind of stuff Tech laid out in their response and your agreement
I put the whole thing I'd do in the Proposed Rules section a couple days ago. The executive summary is:
1) Remove the terrain keyword system in favor of all terrain having the same rules.
Any edition ever where terrain has had multiple different rules, players have ALWAYS defaulted to applying whatever the 'strongest' terrain type is to literally everything on the battlefield. "everything is a ruin" or "Everything is a "battlescape"" or back to "everything is a Ruin" in 9th.
Just...give it all the same rules. Make them good rules. My suggestion is have normal cover (+1sv) be a highly bonus that's very easy for basically any unit to achieve, and have any terrain piece be considered "Large" if it's twice the height or more of the unit claiming cover, and Large terrain pieces are Obscuring if they're over 1" away from both attacker and target, or grant -1 to hit on top of +1sv if theyre within 1" of the target but not the attacker.
That, combined with a 'modifiers from terrain/movement/weapon type are exempt from the +1/-1 cap and are applied separately' would allow for a much lower bound on what a sub-optimal target is in 9th edition. Shooting over a barrel, under an overhang, through a window at maximum range at a target unit you can only see 1 bit of 1 model of would suddenly mean "-1 to hit, +1 to sv, and you can only kill just that one model" as opposed to now where if none of that terrain is Obscuring, you're probably shooting the whole squad as if they were totally exposed.
I disagree with with this specific event being an issue.
I don't disagree with there being a problem of lethality in the game.
Also, I like terrain keywords. They make different battlefields... different. I just think that the current cover doesn't matter enough, especially if you don't have a power armor. I guess I will answer directly in your thread though, don't want to derail this one.
Insectum7 wrote: While I'm 100% on the side of poor decision making and army exposure leading to punishment and a lost game, the consequences of the poor decision don't have to be immediate single-turn annihilation. Imo the game would be better if it still took a number of turns to let that play out.
Command: Brother Nihilus, we have reached 50% casualties for this moment in the battle. Cease firing your bolter until the opponent has caught his breath!
Brother Nihilus: You keep saying that. But the opposing forces are still standing out in the open, exposing their posteriors!
Command: Rules of engagement prevent us from sanctioning dimwits too extremely. You have your orders.
Oh my mistake, I thought I was entering a serious conversation with reasoned debate, my bad!
Don't mistake exposition for a lack of reason.
One solution that's been discussed is to cap damage per turn. Would be kind of like that.
If a player chooses to expose their entire army to mine, I should probably be allowed to do all the damage I want. Caps are a poor solution.
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macluvin wrote: What could the Drukhari player have done to prevent the game from entering an un-winnable state (for themselves) in the first shooting phase of their opponent's in the game?
Stop reframing the question.
You do this constantly and don't recognize the answers when I take the time to respond.
I think it's frustrating you quite a bit, and I do actually care.
Is it prevent 90% casualties in the first turn, or is it win the game?
Then you asked:
macluvin wrote: What could the Drukhari player have done to prevent the game from entering an un-winnable state (for themselves) in the first shooting phase of their opponent's in the game?
There's 3 different questions there, and I'm genuinely confused what kind of response you are seeking.
Are you asking me how to prevent 90% casualties turn one?
- or -
Are you asking me how to win that game?
- or -
Are you asking me what the Drukhari player could have done to prevent the game from entering an unwinnable state in the first shooting phase of their opponent's in the game?
The response to each one would be dramatically different, and I'd rather not be guessing at what you're after.
Insectum7 wrote: Hi. I never mentioned anything about a "cap". Overall reduction in potential damage gets to the desired effect.
What's the difference between limiting the total amount of potential damage and a cap on damage?
Right, so I'll go back to my "not a serious response" take. But for brevity let's just say that one feels organic while the other feels artificial.
Let's stick with sincere desire for clarity and precision in terminology.
I understand the sentiment but don't understand the difference.
'Fewer attacks for less damage' vs 'You magically (for no apparent reason) can't do more than X damage' where X is 10 or 20 or whatever arbitrary value cap.
One makes lasguns feel like lasguns, and the other means... lasguns in Platoon Charlie simply stop working after Platoon Bravo kills 20 orks. Its absolutely senseless.
Galas wrote: Lets move Nanavati and Sean Nadyen, techsoldaten and half the ork players of dakkadakka have come to teach you how to play.
I have yet to see a poster that arguess in more bad faith, and that is more pedantic than you.
And I saw Peregrine. But at least Peregrine most of the time was actually right, even if he came as an ass about it.
As an Ork player and dakka naît, please do not to not associate me/us with techsoldaten. I can assure you he doesn’t speak for half the ork players on dakka. Probably not even 1%. Galas what gave you the idea he spoke for many ork players here ?
Though I must say I am not a fan of the list Sean Nayden played (but apparently he was bored of the regular top drukhari builds, he more or less said so I recall).
Sure you can't lose over 1800pts turn one if you only deploy less than 1800. Way to try to win this argument on a technicality.
But if we use lethality as a % of points on a table the Ork player would now have been able to kill 100% of the points deployed which is even worse than "just" killing 90%.
If Sean was really good he could have put half his models in reserve and not put them on the table until his turn 3 making it a 3 turn tabling. Or do you lose now if you have 0 models on the table and rest in reserve? Can't remember since I never reserve that many units. This easy pro gaming move would have made his army 3x as durable!!!! The game would just end 2000pts Vs 0pts instead of the 2000pts Vs 0pts!!
Sure, but one at a time, so you can have a chance to respond. Just tell me when you are ready to move on.
Are you asking me how to prevent 90% casualties turn one?
Simple. Put 200+ points into reserve and deploy appropriately so you cannot be tabled.
Alternately, play more defensively and don't leave your entire army out in the open.
Some combination of the two could have cut casualties down significantly.
Alright. I suppose someone could math hammer out how that would have gone but my wager is still irrevocably crippled considering the issue was the overwhelming amount of flyers and buggies that don’t care about terrain and have a lot of mobility. Technically speaking if you only leave 1600 points on table I can see how only 1600 points instead of 1800 could get blasted off the table and I can definitely understand that some portion of the ork’s firepower would not have been utilized should some of the drukhari stayed behind LOS. Technically I will say you are right for this question.
Klickor wrote: Sure you can't lose over 1800pts turn one if you only deploy less than 1800. Way to try to win this argument on a technicality.
Yes, it is a technicality. I've described it myself that way multiple times.
Let's remember what we're solving for with this question. The title of the thread is "1,800 points of models removed in one turn in GT final." Right now, I'm only concerned with how to avoid that outcome.
My answer is not purely technical. Sean's playstyle is very aggressive, he left his army exposed to the full fury of the Orks when it was their turn.
Simply playing a more defensive game could avoid losing 1,800 points of models in one turn. Deploying differently, placing units in positions that block LOS for key units, grabbing cover, etc, along with reserves, would have made this outcome less likely.
Was it the best strategy for winning the game? That's a different question. But these points should be clear before moving on.
Klickor wrote: But if we use lethality as a % of points on a table the Ork player would now have been able to kill 100% of the points deployed which is even worse than "just" killing 90%.
Given Sean's playstyle, maybe.
If he was going to move forward with everything he had, sure, the likelihood of a tabling increases by putting units in reserve.
Are you saying it would have been impossible to decrease casualties with a different deployment / movement in the first turn? Not sure I buy that/
Klickor wrote: If Sean was really good he could have put half his models in reserve and not put them on the table until his turn 3 making it a 3 turn tabling. Or do you lose now if you have 0 models on the table and rest in reserve? Can't remember since I never reserve that many units. This easy pro gaming move would have made his army 3x as durable!!!! The game would just end 2000pts Vs 0pts instead of the 2000pts Vs 0pts!!
What's fun about this forum is if you are annoyed that too many people are dis cussing a thing, you can spam posts in every thread about the topic trying to flame bait until it gets locked.
Klickor wrote: Sure you can't lose over 1800pts turn one if you only deploy less than 1800. Way to try to win this argument on a technicality.
Let's remember what we're solving for with this question. The title of the thread is "1,800 points of models removed in one turn in GT final." Right now, I'm only concerned with how to avoid that outcome.
Well gee I suppose one possibility could be to make units less lethal. . . I'm not sure anybody has suggested that yet though. Thoughts?
Galas wrote: Lets move Nanavati and Sean Nadyen, techsoldaten and half the ork players of dakkadakka have come to teach you how to play.
I have yet to see a poster that arguess in more bad faith, and that is more pedantic than you.
And I saw Peregrine. But at least Peregrine most of the time was actually right, even if he came as an ass about it.
As an Ork player and dakka naît, please do not to not associate me/us with techsoldaten. I can assure you he doesn’t speak for half the ork players on dakka. Probably not even 1%. Galas what gave you the idea he spoke for many ork players here ?
Though I must say I am not a fan of the list Sean Nayden played (but apparently he was bored of the regular top drukhari builds, he more or less said so I recall).
I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. I was not lumping orks players with Technosaldean.
But I have to say is a little sad to see so many ork players come to defend something like this. Is the last group of players I would have expected it. Not because orks are OP or anything but the game is bonkers bananas. Thats clear for everybody.
Anyone still doubting Techsoldaten is a troll yet?
There's video evidence of a "more defensive" Drukhari player getting crushed
There's no clear line of causality between "reserving all your stuff and deploying defensively" and "not getting utterly crushed by the ork shooting"
And there's several people telling him he's wrong (including evidence)
At this point, I'm not sure whether he's just inept and incapable of changing his mind (to a nearly unbelievable degree) or whether he's genuinely trolling.
the_scotsman wrote: What's fun about this forum is if you are annoyed that too many people are dis cussing a thing, you can spam posts in every thread about the topic trying to flame bait until it gets locked.
It's not going to help in avoiding nor retarding the nerfbat, though.
One can live in denial and try to debate the issue as much as one wants, but numbers and facts rarely lie.
GW's game designers may be slow as snails in reacting to broken interactions, but sooner or later the issues get fixed. It will happen for AdMech, for DE and for Orks too, just like it happened many times before in other cases.
It's better to just accept it, enjoy the brokenness while it lasts and then be ready to move on.
The problem with the internet is that its hard to tell when people are trolling or just genuinely disagree.
I have a real problem with this idea that Nayden's play was an all in and he deserved to be near tabled for rolling some bad dice for movement to punish him for his temerity.
Because I don't think 40k works that way.
Saying "actually, if you'd kept stuff off the table, it couldn't be killed", insert tapping head meme pic here, is obviously correct - but equally sort of daft.
If Nayden had parked his entirely army in the corner it might have taken 3 turns to die - but you've completely abandoned winning the game. So... yeah, unsurprisingly not the way forward.
If Speedwaagh units were *meant* to hard counter say venoms, and Ad Mech were meant to hard counter Dreadnoughts then there might be some justification - but 40k doesn't really work that way either. Metas emerge because of the underlying probability - but its just random rules thrown at random rules.
Basically what we need is for everyone to play DG.
The big difference is that Orks are an all or nothing army, they offest 'extra' dakka by poor accuracy. Despite all the talk they never really had the firepower until now, not since 2nd ed anyway.
Difference than what? That drukhari list was the book definition of an all or nothing army.
You took a single line from a long post and removed the context.
Drukhari are not all or nothing, there is a lot of mitigation byt play. They are hard hitting and fragile but that isnt all or nothing, as they have a number of assets to their vulnerability. Hence the high win rate, mnuch is dependent on skill.
Orks are all or nothing, they are an unsubtle army with relatively few tricks, though they had more that before, they have massive firepower or at least the potential for massive firepower, but poor accuracy makes volleys unpredictable. Large number of dice on low odds doesn't average out as much as provide clumps of extremes, that in turn may even out over multiple turns of shooting but you get extreme results on the short term.
Combine that with overgunned and underpointed fast attack units that are spammable as lists of their own and you get a very random shooting phase. Vast volumes of dice will normally end up getting a mix of results, but there is a chance the entire army will whiff or slaughter the opponent in a single turn. While any army is capable of this, dice are dice, orks have a tendency to have skewed shooting results.
macluvin wrote: Tech are you ready to answer the next question?
Yes, but I'd like to finish dinner first. My daughter needs help on her homework, and it's my turn to read to her.
So this might need to wait until tomorrow.
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H.B.M.C. wrote: Is he really framing the complete annihilation of the Dark Eldar army as being the Dark Eldar player's fault?
Yes. But it's not that simple.
I'd prefer to spell out my thoughts in detail and be pilloried for thinking such things.
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Tyel wrote: If Nayden had parked his entirely army in the corner it might have taken 3 turns to die - but you've completely abandoned winning the game. So... yeah, unsurprisingly not the way forward.
It sounds like you think the Drukhari player deserved a chance to win the game. What, specifically, makes you think that?
Tyel wrote: If Nayden had parked his entirely army in the corner it might have taken 3 turns to die - but you've completely abandoned winning the game. So... yeah, unsurprisingly not the way forward.
It sounds like you think the Drukhari player deserved a chance to win the game. What, specifically, makes you think that?
Because in a good wargame, your fate shouldn't be determined entirely by what models you bring-you should ALWAYS have a chance.
If you bring a skew list and face a counterskew list, sure, it should be an uphill battle. But not a set-in-stone one.
Just to wade in again. (I don't know why I do this). I felt that flyers and out of line of sight artillery might be becoming too strong and they remove a lot of the ways to mitigate against them because terrain doesn't work against them. Having said that, I would also like to point out that many 40k games in 9th edition and swung because of a single mistake or misplay. Or several mistakes that snowball. But somethings, its just that one misplay be it deploying a unit wrongly, or responding in the wrong way.
While the consequences may not be quite as drastic as losing 80% of your army in one turn, they are usually "that's the game right there".
There are some lists that also hard counter others. So maybe this was a case where that particular Ork list was a hard counter to the Drukhari list.
My worry is more that such lists incorporating lots of flyers and out of line of sight shooting are going to become more prevalent. We have Imperial Guard codex yet to drop, and Guard are the King of artillery and they can deploy their vehicles in squadrons too, and Guard have flyers too. What if they buffed Vendettas to Ork flyer levels of lethality?
Eldar codex has not dropped yet as well. Eldar flyers could similarly become a problem.
Of course, extreme lethality is still a problem as well. This is a problem with big flashy units like a superheavy or a daemon Primarch right now. It is because there are so much lethality in the game right now that these units and the entire Knight armies are relatively uncommon in the meta scene these days. If I invest 500 or more points into one single beefy unit, but have it blown up once the shooting start, I am basically playing down 500 over points. Its not a fun feeling and superheavies cannot hide.
Which is the same issue I have with flyers and out of line of sight shooting. You can't do much to stop them, short of putting stuff off the board into reserve.
I would hazard a guess that up till now, Ork lists have not been winning quite as much because Death Guard is still a very common army in the meta. And Ork shooting doesn't do much against DG. You could field 18 squid buggies and all of them would be wounding on 4s and doing only 1 damage to DG plague marines and terminators. Add the miasma of pestilence for the -1 to hit ... and even 18 buggies will bounce on shooting a block of DG terminators. Similarly, consider what Orc shooting does against three plague burst crawlers (not very much).
This doesn't necessarily mean that overly lethal flyers and artillery are not a problem. Because of course, not everyone is DG.
techsoldaten wrote: It sounds like you think the Drukhari player deserved a chance to win the game. What, specifically, makes you think that?
...What?
Welcome to a weird moment where 12 pages of arguing coalesces into the bizarre revelation that its completely unreasonable to expect that both players in a game have a chance to win (not even an equal chance. Just any chance at all, because filthy dark elves, I guess).
There are certain matchups where its an almost certain loss for one side. Welcome to 40k list building.
I could post another extreme example. (on the resilience side).
30 Deathwing stormshield terminators. Mission: Priority target. the Deathwing player places 10 deathwing terminators on three objectives, with most of his army on the middle one.
He also takes the secondaries: priority target, the deathwing specific secondary and stranglehold.
Now, I am not saying you cannot design an army list that would beat this. But I would wager that the "average" army would have little hope of cracking this nut.
It becomes "Can you kill off 10 deathwing terminators standing on an objective, with a chief apoc healing one back to full and rezzing another every turn" If the answer is no.. then basically, you have close to zero chance of winning.
And if those 3 objectives happen to be in cover so that you are facing 10 DW terminators with a 0+ save before modifiers... well good luck!
Beats me. 9th edition has already progressed to this point. Not sure if its possible to dial back the clock at this stage. Too many units are already too lethal. And at the other extreme, a certain number of units are super resilient too.
It has become a bit of a rock paper scissors game now. There is probably a counter list to any list no matter how hard you make it. The problem is that the counter list may be so skewed it will likely not win any tournaments either.
Rihgu wrote: Even if the Drukhari player made a tactical or strategic mistake, is it okay for ONE mistake to result in a instantaneous, complete, absolute blowout loss?
Would not reduce the game to a single mistake.
Would call it a very aggressive playstyle. Either the Ork assault was going to be disrupted or the Drukhari force would be left completely exposed.
The game was an either / or. Or won.
De could have played less aggressively. And auto lose by turn 2 anyway.
De player had 2 options. Get tabled t2 or try win, still almost certainly get tabled t2 and if fail like he did get tabled t1.
Is it good for game if 1 army can table in t2 at worst? Is such levev of rock paper scissor healthy for game? Do we want game be decided in list build or in game?
the_scotsman wrote: ^also this. The reason I made this thread was frustration towards the amount of 'git gud/your opponent's just a dick dont play dicks' in the "new player, got destroyed in 1 turn" thread. I wanted to point out that, no, this newbie wasn't just an idiot because really really good competitive players get exploded in one turn on the reg, and also no, an opponent who took a list that was literally "10 space marines, a captain, and a dreadnought" and played by the rules as written was not being an especial dick to this newbie.
Newbies are the EXACT people who will not know things like 'oh, if I play by this rule as it as written, we will always have a gak time.'
it takes a TON of metaknowledge currently to set up a good, fun game of warhammer 40,000. You cant just throw down two armies on a table with some trash on it for terrain and have a good game, everything goes kaboom in like 2 turns and the players sit there asking "wait...was that it?"
Instead of all that: tell them overly aggressive play is a bad idea.
99% of their problems will go away.
Basically, don't be like the Drukhari player in the video. Bad role model.
Ah yes. Autotabied by t2 is sooooo much better role model
macluvin wrote: What could the Drukhari player have done to prevent the game from entering an un-winnable state (for themselves) in the first shooting phase of their opponent's in the game?
He should have avoided an all or nothing melee list, simple. Drukhari are one of the best shooting armies and while they're incredibly powerful in melee as well they're not Khorne daemons.
It doesn't matter what he could have done once deployed his models, the problems here is that he brought an extreme list and got an hard counter. People should have this in mind, while instead they're arguing like it was a reasonable TAC list. It wasn't, so the whole "what could he have done to..." is entirely irrelevant and disingenuous. The moment he chose that kind of list he gambled hoping to find specific opponents and to avoid specific ones.
Typically when players bring one dimensional lists to tournaments and get stomped badly no one complains. Consider orks alpha strike melee lists: in every edition they could play ultra aggressive full melee lists, with strong melee units, but how many times did those lists pay off? Typically they got shot off the board in two turns at most if they fail one or two key rolls and/or get bad match ups. In fact best ork melee lists have always been those that could soak a lot of damage rahter than inflicting it, see greentides. The specific drukhari list that has been discussed in this thread is a pure glass cannon, with huge potential in causing a lot of damage but not very resilient. Autolosing turn 1-2 has always been a thing in ultra competitive play when one dimensional lists face their hard counters. So why is this different now?
A good solution is to put real OP armies in line so pure tailoring against them doesn't happen and people bring more TAC lists. The very same freebooters list can be stomped by mid tiers armies, as tyranids proved it.
I am not so sure it's because the list is to week defensively that it got wiped by the orks.
A space marine list that hides in both light and dense cover and as much out of Los as possible can lose any non 1+/2+ base save infantry or biker model that starts on the table against a speed wagh list turn 1. So even a base t4-5 3+ 2-3w army will if going second start at least 25% down. A dreadnought or ramshackle army that reserves everything squishy, DG or deathwing might lose less than 25% if deploying defensively in terrain. Anything else and its most likely game over if orks go first.
You might think it wouldn't be too bad if you only lose 25% but since it is mainly flyers, out of Los shooting and mobile models the Ork player can pick and choose to a degree what to kill. So eradicators or attack bikes will for sure be dead turn 1 if they start on the table and the Ork player goes first. But you can't also reserve them since you need them turn 1 to kill something to lessen their alpha strike if you go first and if going second they come in after 2 Ork turns have wiped most of your army off the table.
Quite insane you can get 40+ str 6 ap2 shots from a 120pt flyer with 12 wounds, ramshackle and built in -1 to hit that can potentially also get a 5++. Or look at the buggies stat lines or at the Killrig. We are talking insane offensive potential on very durable bodies. I wouldn't even bother deploying my Blood Angels against such a list. Conceding and browsing social media would be much more productive.
Quite insane you can get 40+ str 6 ap2 shots from a 120pt flyer with 12 wounds, ramshackle and built in -1 to hit that can potentially also get a 5++. Or look at the buggies stat lines or at the Killrig. We are talking insane offensive potential on very durable bodies. I wouldn't even bother deploying my Blood Angels against such a list. Conceding and browsing social media would be much more productive.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but people need to remember that the 40 shots are baseline BS 5+...so average of ~13 hits. That's the same as 20 shots with BS 3+
Klickor wrote: I am not so sure it's because the list is to week defensively that it got wiped by the orks.
A space marine list that hides in both light and dense cover and as much out of Los as possible can lose any non 1+/2+ base save infantry or biker model that starts on the table against a speed wagh list turn 1. So even a base t4-5 3+ 2-3w army will if going second start at least 25% down. A dreadnought or ramshackle army that reserves everything squishy, DG or deathwing might lose less than 25% if deploying defensively in terrain. Anything else and its most likely game over if orks go first.
You might think it wouldn't be too bad if you only lose 25% but since it is mainly flyers, out of Los shooting and mobile models the Ork player can pick and choose to a degree what to kill. So eradicators or attack bikes will for sure be dead turn 1 if they start on the table and the Ork player goes first. But you can't also reserve them since you need them turn 1 to kill something to lessen their alpha strike if you go first and if going second they come in after 2 Ork turns have wiped most of your army off the table.
Quite insane you can get 40+ str 6 ap2 shots from a 120pt flyer with 12 wounds, ramshackle and built in -1 to hit that can potentially also get a 5++. Or look at the buggies stat lines or at the Killrig. We are talking insane offensive potential on very durable bodies. I wouldn't even bother deploying my Blood Angels against such a list. Conceding and browsing social media would be much more productive.
Killrigs have not yet been proven to be good "tournament units". And by "Buggies" you mean scrapjets and sguig B.
The ork codex is not much of an issue, three units just need to take a 10-15 point increase and that is it, job done.
I do think Killrigs are too cheap for what you get. They might just be slightly worse than the buggies and planes and thus don't see much play. Might turn out though that the game is so lethal that not even the rigs will be good units and then you can really see how bad GW is at balancing this game. Because that unit have so much stuff piled on top of it that if compared to a Land Raider or some of the Titanic units would have cost 400pts using the same "formula". But it is 190pts. Now the Land Raider is over costed and not a good standard for competitive units but it is the same company that have made up the rules and points for both.
If introducing new units and new rules they should have done it with some caution. Rather have the points be 5-20 too much in the worst case if they turn out to not be so good in competitive games and then lower it a bit in the next update/CA. But lately they haven't done that at all and just added rules and rules on to a base stat line and not adjusted the points to compensate. Not just Orks but Ad-mech, GK and Drukhari as well. They did it with the marine supplements as well. We don't even know all the over performing units in a book now until after a couple of balance patches since a lot of the too good units aren't even used since they still aren't the most broken units in a book.
Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...
because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.
The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.
But drukhari have plenty of options to NOT go down that path.
If daemons are designed to be that way maybe it's why they work as a balanced army and those drukhari are extremely skew instead.
It's like arguing that a SM list with nothing but tanks and the HQs to make it legal should have a chance to win against competitive lists. Or an army with nothing but gretchins.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...
because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.
The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.
Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.
Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...
because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.
The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.
Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.
Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.
Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?
Unit1126PLL wrote: Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...
because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.
The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.
Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.
Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.
Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?
Warhammer is a game that's designed to take place over 5 turns with TAC lists. The purpose (or at least, a purpose) of a skew list is skewing all your defenses into a single type of defensive profile, thus rendering all (for example) anti-tank weaponry useless.
So if I bring a list of all gretchins, the least tough unit in the game, then no, I don't expect to win, but I would hope that it would actually be more unusual to see the end result being tabling, much less tabling in fething one turn.
Otherwise, what's the point of that unit even having a points value? It's clear that if you skew all your defenses into one thing and it makes your list defensively WEAKER, that would be a failure of the points system more than anything else, and it's strange that you think that should be a good, intended result.
Also, a few changes to cover (not obscuring, I mean actual cover) would make the game a lot less lethal.
Imagine if it shifted from if the barrel sticks out you can shoot/be seen to if the whole model cannot see/be seen it can shoot/be shot!
hell, even if it was just 'if the barrel sticks out you can't shoot the OTHER models in the unit that you CANT see" it would be an improvement from right now. If one model has the barrel of their gun poking out from behind a building, you are perfectly free to shoot and kill the ENTIRE UNIT as long as you can (spoiler alert: you can) destroy them in just one single unit's shooting attack resolution.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...
because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.
The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.
Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.
Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.
Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?
The question isn't should skew lists be able to win competitive games, it's whether or not any army should be able to remove 90% of another army in a single turn. Should any army have a 90% killing efficiency. This isn't specifically about Orks, other armies are capable of similar stunts, and gw knows it. That's why they've been covering their own tournament tables with LOS blocking terrain, because they know if something can be seen, it'll die. And now with the uptick of efficient LOS ignoring firepower and flyers, even that doesn't help.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...
because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.
The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.
Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.
Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.
Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?
I feel like Scouts and Grots are a pretty poor example. Neither are building blocks of the faction, and neither are honestly part of the identity of how each faction plays. While pretty darn skewed, the Drukhari list had 8 (light) vehicles with Venoms, but with next to zero anti-tank with 2 Blasters and Blast Pistols I believe.
A better example would be:
-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take Tactical Marines or Intercessors and some Rhinos or Razerbacks?
-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take a bunch of Boys and some Trukks or Buggies?
And in both cases, we have seen examples of those in competitive play in past editions (give or take a few Elite choices and some HQ choice).
I do not believe that a player should be unable to play in a competitive event if using what is the core units of their factions identity (Wyches and Venoms melee list). However I will say that the list did have hard counters, MSU large based Buggies and flyers clearly was one. 1800 points in one turn though? Too much in one turn, far too much.
People ITT: "The Drukhari skewed into low toughness melee models and lost because of it"
Me/Scotsman: "There are literally armies that are ONLY low toughness melee models skew"
Others: "Well, they're designed that way so it works."
What about the Slaanesh Daemons army being "designed that way" would make this any less of a Turn 1 near-tabling / Turn 2 tabling than this Drukhari list was? 5++ saves alone ain't gonna cut it (woo I only lost 1500 instead of 1800 pts, nice)
This is just the equivalent of high level roleplaying games. At level 1, everybody have limited options and sparse ressources. At level 20, insta-death effects are so abundant that if a character does not have the exact right defenses to counter an attack their only chance is to rely upon luck. It is not fun in roleplaying and not fun in 40K, apart from the mental gymnastics required to put together a working list or a working high level character.
GW tried to cap damage potential by capping the maximum damage single models specific models could sustain per phase, but it makes no sense to apply such a system game-wide. It would probably help if GW actually declared what their intention with the game was as that would enable them to carry out the changes required to reach that intention. Instead, we have an open system, where new units can be patched in with no concern for their interaction with existing rules until an exploit is uncovered and either ignored or remedied.
The only poor game design is game design that fails to meet its goals in terms of player experience. GW have designed a more or less shallow simulation of 5-10 minutes of combat with no goals concerning player experience and thus we see good and bad codexes, units, rules etc. as they are not designed with the player experience in mind, but rather their ability to interact with the simulation. It does not matter if a faction performs poorly in terms of player experience and it seldom results in a change to the faction. GW's usual response is to patch the simulation in order to alleviate troubles in part, often leading to a new problem in other parts of the simulation - see penta-flyrant lists and airplane-units vs. rule-of-three and boots on the ground for examples.
I typically peg a given Battle Round as about 6-20 seconds, given the fire rate on tank guns and the speed of troopers on the table (using Imperial Guard as a metric).
It's why Turn 1 "massive damage" games are so hilariously bad for narrative.
"Gavros-4 was a strategically critical Forge World in the Cadia sector, one of the last bastions standing alongside Agripinaa and Mordia against the boiling waves of the Cicatrix Maledictum. Suddenly, alarms began blaring... the warp was encroaching again! Astropathic pleas went out, the Space Marines were mobilized... and the gates tore open. Hundreds of daemons and their towering overlords spilled forth...
...and were annihilated in about nine seconds by the Forge World's skitarii defenders. "WERE THAT I HAD GOTTEN FIRST TURN!" cried the arch-daemon, bumblebutt nurglegross, as the Galvanic Volley Fire stratagem evaporated him.
I think everyone should have "a chance" to win.
And logically they do - the Ork player could roll nothing but 1s.
The point is that the probabilities shouldn't be such that we get outcomes like this. If it was a genuine fluke then fine. Its a dice game, it happens. But it just isn't that unlikely - hence why we are seeing it happen so often.
On one hand, The drukhari player in this case did overcommit and did run a pure skew. Him failing to make the commitment paying off, by bad luck is not a problem as is the punishment recieved for it.
Or better, it wouldn't be a problem, if it weren't for the fact, as already pointed out, that specific type of list which also seems to be similar to admech lists, is heavily problematic by forcing such a commitment without really manouvering itself. Which is a problem of reach.
In general, i think it's fair to state that 40k HAS a lethality problem, the increased ammount of shots and effectiveness on all ranges even on the most basic troops is selfevident, without a lack of trade offs for mobility are but one exemple of a syndome that has ever taken ever faster rounds in a spiral of escalation of damage since bolter discipline.
The easy access to massed firepower isn't inherently the core issue though, neither is high lethality in general, insofar as there are possibilities to counter that firepower, especially by maneouvre, however for that type of manouvre the boards are too small and clogged. Also high lethality is less of an issue in systems that make the momentum more spread appart, aka AA f.e. . Now there's the issue on the other side of the spectrum for melee orientated armies, which honestly should exist but, with daemons being the most archetypal force for that playstyle. Further i don't think it is wrong to deny pure melee armies in such a fashion in order to facilitate more balanced forces.
However a lot of the meachnics to make melee units work, from delivery options not working to terrain being pretty much worthless now an increase in boardsize would needlessly penalise these either. It would also not turn back the clock on basically always in range flyers and LOS ignoring firepower which has become even more widespread. Once an obscurity now is pretty common for most factions to have atleast 1 option for it.
I would be curious to hear from Sean (he's probably ducked out of this thread by now, understandably) what his plan was for encountering such a list before the event, especially in his list building process (I need to dig up his list but someone mentioned it wasn't typical for Drukhari that usually has a lot of good AT options). Surely he knew that he might run into that list at some point (there were grumblings about it's strength prior to this and I have seen some locals practicing with variants).
Obviously going second vs this list is bad news (been on the receiving end myself) but obviously Sean's list lacked the necessary units to inflict reasonable casualties to a list of this type even when going first, so I'd be curious as to what drove his design in the list building stages. I really like how he often builds unusual aeldari lists and plays the living heck out of them, but it seems that he made a serious error in list design this time around.
bullyboy wrote: I would be curious to hear from Sean (he's probably ducked out of this thread by now, understandably) what his plan was for encountering such a list before the event, especially in his list building process (I need to dig up his list but someone mentioned it wasn't typical for Drukhari that usually has a lot of good AT options). Surely he knew that he might run into that list at some point (there were grumblings about it's strength prior to this and I have seen some locals practicing with variants).
Obviously going second vs this list is bad news (been on the receiving end myself) but obviously Sean's list lacked the necessary units to inflict reasonable casualties to a list of this type even when going first, so I'd be curious as to what drove his design in the list building stages. I really like how he often builds unusual aeldari lists and plays the living heck out of them, but it seems that he made a serious error in list design this time around.
To be fair, Sean's list wasn't a meme list filled with gretchen. His list was undefeated going into the finals and it had curb stomped through everything matched against it before that match.
It wasn't a meme list, but it was also one of the most glassy lists you can build in this game.
85/90 point venoms. Those things may have a -1 to be hit but are T5 6W. Even a basic intercessor has a 75% return against them! And they even kill additional models exploding.
Incubi are 16 points per T3 wound 3+ wound. (Intercessor return 52%)
The wyches while not in combat are t3 6++ for 12/14 points. (Intercessor return 70%)
Trueborn are 15 points for T3 4+. (Intercessor return 65%)
Mandrakes are 15 points per T3 5++ -1 to hit. (Intercessor return 49%) .
Even wracks which normally are tanky models, the way they are in this list are 13 ppm on average, for T4 6+ 5++. (Intercessor return 35%).
So again, I don't see an issue with this list taking 1800 points of damage when left fully exposed. ANY list would have been able to inflict AT THE VERY LEAST 1200 points of damage to it. Even a list simply spamming basic intercessors could have done that! And I'm counting only the shooting phase! In this case on the other side there was an alpha strike list, so the damage was higher than normal, No issue with that.
This list is probably the squishiest list you can build in the game, and takes one of the best players around to use it effectively. Obviously as soon as the game does not go in the direction this list wants, it turns into a train wreck. It is the very definition of high risk high reward list. This time it has run into its counter. It happens.
The game has lethality issues, but this game was not an example of those.
The question isn't should skew lists be able to win competitive games, it's whether or not any army should be able to remove 90% of another army in a single turn. Should any army have a 90% killing efficiency. This isn't specifically about Orks, other armies are capable of similar stunts, and gw knows it. That's why they've been covering their own tournament tables with LOS blocking terrain, because they know if something can be seen, it'll die. And now with the uptick of efficient LOS ignoring firepower and flyers, even that doesn't help.
It entirely depends on how often something like this happen. In 5th I had all 3 of my battlewagons killed by single lascannon shots, from 3 razorbacks. Then the bulk of the army (boyz and lootas) was deleted by anti infantry weapons, mostly blasts from the missile launchers of the 3x5 units of long fangs. 60+% of an army gone in turn 1 in terms of points, more than 80% in terms of models gone (only ghaz, big mek, biker nobz and like 10 boyz remaining) and I was bringing one of the most competitive lists for that period. Now single anti tank shots that instant kill a vehicle don't exist anymore, but even then losing all three heavy vehicles in one turn wasn't something that happened frequently, I was typically losing a battlewagon per turn in 5th.
If such ork Freeboota army can delete 900-1800 points of any army on regular basis then of course we have a problem. If it deletes the same amount of points vs an army it tailored and not even that often, than no, it's the usual overreaction. Proof is that it doesn't dominate the competitive scene. It's also important to note the nature of the ork list, is it something that the average player could expect to see frequently? Becuase if it does than yes, it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. But 4 planes are an extreme list, not many players are willing to invest that much (75$ per flyer) on a unit that will inevitably be nerfed at some point.
-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take Tactical Marines or Intercessors and some Rhinos or Razerbacks?
-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take a bunch of Boys and some Trukks or Buggies?
Maybe my examples weren't the best ones, but that drukhari list was a full melee one. Tacs with tanks or boyz with buggies would have decent shooting. Maybe imagine a list with only assault marines and rhinos. Say a SW list with close to no notable shooting but lots of wulfen, wolf guard terminators, blood claws and rhinos for example, which is also a very fluffy list. How would it play against anyone, not necessarily those orks?
A drukhari list with decent shooting would have had a fair chance against those Freeboota.
macluvin wrote: Tech are you ready to answer the next question?
Are you asking me how to win that game?
TL;DR: There's no silver bullet to make the Drukhari list win, probably not fair to ask me how to make it happen. My feeling is this was an experimental list, it's frail and had some big, obvious holes. There is a way the Drukhari player could have won, but the combined odds of the specific sequence of actions necessary for it to work were slim. In practice, this list depended on good dice rolls and opponents not recognizing what was about to happen. That's demonstrated in the game.
Caveat: I can't read minds and don't have a copy of the Drukhari player's list. Making some assumptions about what the Drukhari player was thinking.
It looks like his list consisted of 8 Venoms, an Archon, a Court of the Archon, a ton of Witches, and an assortment of Kabbalites / Succubi / Wracks and Mandrakes. There looks to be 2 detachments, I'm guessing the purple ones are Cult of Strife. The green ones, I'm not sure about.
While I'm sure I'm ignoring a lot of nuance, here's what the Drukhari player probably saw as the value in this list.
- Speed matters. The list's strength is getting across the table fast to deliver troops.
- Melee matters. He cares about getting into combat with units that do a lot of damage in a single round.
- Everything is fragile, even for a Drukhari list. I think the Venoms are the toughest models with 6 wounds each.
- Positioning is vital to success. He's either going to charge turn 1 or hide everything until he can pull off charges. So placement of models matters more than it would in most lists.
- There is no Plan B. If charges don't work out, he's not going to win a shooting match against anything but Infantry.
- Flyers get a pass from this list. Maybe the characters have plasma pistols or something, but splinter cannons are not really going to do anything against armor.
So the list is fast, frail, packs a wallop in melee and absolutely depends on being in range for charges. I'm assuming there's some Eldar trickery allowing him to advance and charge, since those Venoms can't get across the board without such a mechanic.
The Drukhari player is quite skilled and I'm betting he took this list thinking it was his best hope to beat Orks and AdMech. He wanted to get into combat before he could get shot up, ignoring aircraft because they can't hold objectives. Melee was his cover. When the most durable unit is a Venom with T5 W6 Sv4+ and native -1 to hit, it's clear the player is committed to one style of play.
So let's recognize something that's going on here. The Drukhari list is fundamentally high risk / high reward and depends on sequences of outcomes happening in a certain order to succeed. At a minimum, the following needs to happen once per game:
- 8 Venoms have to be positioned for a charge.
- 8 Venoms have to move and probably advance to close the gap.
- 8 Venoms actually need to make a charge.
So, move 12", advance d6, charge 2d6, plus maybe some Eldar trickery and you're talking about a 15" - 32" effective threat range. That's a huge variance with a simple, obvious counter - deploy such that Drukhari cannot charge and shoot them up. Which the Ork player appears to have done.
Despite previous successes in the tournament, there's a point where the Drukhari player's luck is going to run out. Sure, you could say the Venoms are open topped and there's a shooting aspect that should not be ignored. My point is that's not where the list's strength is and it's definitely not the answer against AdMech, Orks, Imperial Knights, Death Guard, a mechanized Guard list, and some others I can think of. This list only works well against the meta it's designed to beat, and only if a lot of dice rolls go your way. And, obviously, it has the potential to fail spectacularly.
So on to the game. The video is here, for those who want to follow along:
Each player deploys in their own corners, behind LOS blocking cover. The Ork player leaves some Mek Guns exposed for the charge, and the Drukhari player redeploys to take him up on it. The Drukhari player goes through the charge sequence explained above, and - to his credit - he does get the Venoms into combat. Then the Ork player withdraws his Mek Guns from combat and proceeds to shoot up the Drukhari list, which is entirely exposed and outside cover. The -1 to hit on the Venoms means very little and the Drukhari player is tabled in one turn.
What could have been done differently that might have lead to a win? I'm not going to defend this list, some Voidraven Bombers would have made this a different game. But maybe that would have been suboptimal against AdMech, who would have shot them down the moment they arrived on the board. Dunno, but it's relevant to why he took this list in particular.
What I can say is the odds of winning went to about 0% when the Drukhari player redeployed to charge the Mek Guns. The Venoms were either going to fail the charge and be exposed, or the Mek Guns were going to withdraw from combat and leave the Venoms exposed. Had the Mek Guns not been able to withdraw from combat, the Ork player had the option of simply repositioning his entire army outside the charge distance of the Drukhari and forcing them to make the charge all over again. Eventually, the Drukhari player's luck would run out and everything would be exposed.
To have odds of winning > 0%, the Drukhari player ABSOLUTELY had to toss out the original plan and do something different. Ork BS is not great and Venoms are -1 to hit. The board was covered with trees, parking them in cover would guarantee the Orks are shooting at a disadvantage. That's a way to mitigate the coming onslaught, but probably not the only way. Another way would be to keep troops on the board and only embark when the Venoms are ready to move. That would have increased the number of targets for the Ork player and allowed more Venoms to survive. The Venoms - not necessarily the payload - were key to disrupting the Orks.
The point here is: the Ork offense is centered on shooting. Making the Ork player work for it is demonstrably better than making it easy. If a unit has a BS 4 naturally, -1 to hit is 33% better. If we're talking about BS 5, -1 to hit is 50% better. That's not to say the Drukhari are going to shrug off the shots that get through, it is to say they will deal with a lower volume and have a chance to survive (even against Dakkajets and whatnot.)
Also, with regard to reserves - I thought Drukhari (or Cult of Strife) had some Stratagem that allowed them to put more than 50% of their army into reserves. One question I had was whether it was better to redeploy and make the charge first turn or set up on their opponent's side turn 2 and make a 9" charge. The odds of making it might be higher, but also the targets might be better. The Ork buggies were clumped together, it might have been hard for them to get out of combat. Even if the Drukhari player was limited to the normal 50% restriction, charging from 2 flanks on 2 different turns would have at least put the Ork player off-balance.
Whether any of this would have increased the odds of winning to 1%, 5%, 20% or something else is debatable. But it's better than 0%, which is what happened once the Drukhari player committed to charging the Mek Guns.
But, seriously - never make it easier for your opponent to destroy your army. That's what I mean when I say the Drukhari player played too aggressively. If your offense comes at the expense of defense, the odds better be on your side. For the Drukhari player, I can't see how they were.
Tyel wrote: If Nayden had parked his entirely army in the corner it might have taken 3 turns to die - but you've completely abandoned winning the game. So... yeah, unsurprisingly not the way forward.
It sounds like you think the Drukhari player deserved a chance to win the game. What, specifically, makes you think that?
Because in a good wargame, your fate shouldn't be determined entirely by what models you bring-you should ALWAYS have a chance.
If you bring a skew list and face a counterskew list, sure, it should be an uphill battle. But not a set-in-stone one.
Ideally, yes, this should be the case.
But if you choose a list that depends on long shot tactics, and everything in your army is frail - you are committing to a high risk / high reward scenario with obvious downsides.
The risk with this list is HUGE. The outcome reflects that.
Spoletta wrote: It wasn't a meme list, but it was also one of the most glassy lists you can build in this game.
85/90 point venoms. Those things may have a -1 to be hit but are T5 6W. Even a basic intercessor has a 75% return against them! And they even kill additional models exploding.
Not to be overly pedantic, but do you mean 25%?
Because as I see it into an 85 point venom, with lets say 3 shots in tactical doctrine.
1.5 hits. 0.5 wounds. 0.33 damage. On 85/90 points/6 that's 4.72/4.95 points worth of damage, or rounding up about a 25% return.
As compared with Incubi - 2 hits, 4/3 wounds, lets say tactical doctrine for 2/3 go through, 2/3*16=10.66, on 20 points a 52% return like you say.
Without checking I agree on your other numbers - I think its fair to say once you crack the vehicles open the guys inside die quickly. Really this applies to most DE lists you can conceive of beyond Cronos spam - and that win rate wouldn't suggest you don't need to be especially skilled to have success with such lists.
Venoms in most circumstances are not especially fragile - and certainly not enough to my mind justify "eh, glass cannon list, 1800 points worth of stuff dying is to be expected."
DE frankly don't have units which aren't - beyond Cronos. Talos hold up better versus Dakkajets when buffed to T7, before that its not all that much better. Ravagers are just as fragile.
In this case it would be easier to activate Freebooters by killing one than popping a raider - and you get more value out of grot gunners as it mitigates the -1 to hit so you are still getting the Freebooter bonus.
But if you could kill 8 venoms at 690 points, I think you'd have expected to kill 5-6 raiders at 475-570 points. And you'll then be able to mangle the guys inside in much the same way.
A Freebootered Dakkajet for instance expects to deal 33% more damage on a Venom to a Raider - although interestingly without (or before its activated) Freebooters its approaching a wash.
Spoletta wrote: It wasn't a meme list, but it was also one of the most glassy lists you can build in this game.
...
So again, I don't see an issue with this list taking 1800 points of damage when left fully exposed. ANY list would have been able to inflict AT THE VERY LEAST 1200 points of damage to it.
Before you say that, imagine what a mirror match would look like.
Low casualty affair, Drukhari shooting at each other from inside Venoms while contesting the center point. Whoever left their transport would be gunned down with poison weapons.
Spoletta wrote: It wasn't a meme list, but it was also one of the most glassy lists you can build in this game.
85/90 point venoms. Those things may have a -1 to be hit but are T5 6W. Even a basic intercessor has a 75% return against them! And they even kill additional models exploding.
Not to be overly pedantic, but do you mean 25%?
Because as I see it into an 85 point venom, with lets say 3 shots in tactical doctrine.
1.5 hits. 0.5 wounds. 0.33 damage. On 85/90 points/6 that's 4.72/4.95 points worth of damage, or rounding up about a 25% return.
As compared with Incubi - 2 hits, 4/3 wounds, lets say tactical doctrine for 2/3 go through, 2/3*16=10.66, on 20 points a 52% return like you say.
Without checking I agree on your other numbers - I think its fair to say once you crack the vehicles open the guys inside die quickly. Really this applies to most DE lists you can conceive of beyond Cronos spam - and that win rate wouldn't suggest you don't need to be especially skilled to have success with such lists.
Venoms in most circumstances are not especially fragile - and certainly not enough to my mind justify "eh, glass cannon list, 1800 points worth of stuff dying is to be expected."
Yeah, it's weird, all Eldar and more elite GEQ infantry in the game like fire warriors/scions/etc seem to just get absolutely shoveled off the table in droves and everything has a 50-60% points return against them... and before they got their 2nd wounds, marine infantry was exactly the same way.
its almost like too many weapons gak out a billion D1/D2 shots with good AP and if you dont have like Sv2+ 4++ and T4 you just die. A lot. And no durability buffs you can put on yourself or cover protection you can claim really makes any difference, so those kinds of units just get used as like deep strike glass cannon type suicide units or they dont get used at all.
It's pretty telling that drukhari have like the most bonkers dex in the entire world...but you still cant run their light infantry on foot without getting completely hosed down in one single turn.
Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Not to my knowledge, though I will point out that (for example) Eldar infantry is typically intended to play in a mostly footslogging fashion and also isn't usable at all right now.
Though - why arent we counting wracks? Wracks on foot for sure arent usable. calling them 'durable' is basically laughable at this point, they're T4 6++ 5+FNP 1W infantry for 10pts, you can point any anti-infantry weapon you'd like at them and just zoop a squad off the board.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also worth noting that Dark Eldar have spent about as much time as 'just the worst army in the game' as they have existing in general. One tiny moment in 5th just after their dex dropped and now, and that's the only times DE have been good.
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Not to my knowledge, though I will point out that (for example) Eldar infantry is typically intended to play in a mostly footslogging fashion and also isn't usable at all right now.
I think this is a sign of Warhammer having serious long term issues representing the hardiness of infantry (I don't want to spin off into another topic, but it is probably the byproduct of making Space Marines the standard statline, then going from there).
Though - why arent we counting wracks? Wracks on foot for sure arent usable. calling them 'durable' is basically laughable at this point, they're T4 6++ 5+FNP 1W infantry for 10pts, you can point any anti-infantry weapon you'd like at them and just zoop a squad off the board.
I didn't count Wracks since GW (at least in 5th), presented them as being medium infantry, rather than light. The 5th ed Codex tries to present them as ultra-durable (because GW writers don't know how their own games work). Of course this is a bit silly, as you point out. It was also because I was extending the question to the entire history of Warriors and Wyches.
Also worth noting that Dark Eldar have spent about as much time as 'just the worst army in the game' as they have existing in general. One tiny moment in 5th just after their dex dropped and now, and that's the only times DE have been good.
Well, I do think this kinda reveals the problem of "light infantry" in 40k for not just this edition - but many others. Since there's no scouting or reccee stuff (and units moving has no impact on your ability to hit them, like in many other games), things which light infantry might excell in just ... don't exist - so there's nothing they really can do except get into firefights with medium infantry and in turn be shredded.
Spoletta wrote: It wasn't a meme list, but it was also one of the most glassy lists you can build in this game.
85/90 point venoms. Those things may have a -1 to be hit but are T5 6W. Even a basic intercessor has a 75% return against them! And they even kill additional models exploding.
Not to be overly pedantic, but do you mean 25%?
Because as I see it into an 85 point venom, with lets say 3 shots in tactical doctrine.
1.5 hits. 0.5 wounds. 0.33 damage. On 85/90 points/6 that's 4.72/4.95 points worth of damage, or rounding up about a 25% return.
As compared with Incubi - 2 hits, 4/3 wounds, lets say tactical doctrine for 2/3 go through, 2/3*16=10.66, on 20 points a 52% return like you say.
Without checking I agree on your other numbers - I think its fair to say once you crack the vehicles open the guys inside die quickly. Really this applies to most DE lists you can conceive of beyond Cronos spam - and that win rate wouldn't suggest you don't need to be especially skilled to have success with such lists.
Venoms in most circumstances are not especially fragile - and certainly not enough to my mind justify "eh, glass cannon list, 1800 points worth of stuff dying is to be expected."
DE frankly don't have units which aren't - beyond Cronos. Talos hold up better versus Dakkajets when buffed to T7, before that its not all that much better. Ravagers are just as fragile.
In this case it would be easier to activate Freebooters by killing one than popping a raider - and you get more value out of grot gunners as it mitigates the -1 to hit so you are still getting the Freebooter bonus.
But if you could kill 8 venoms at 690 points, I think you'd have expected to kill 5-6 raiders at 475-570 points. And you'll then be able to mangle the guys inside in much the same way.
A Freebootered Dakkajet for instance expects to deal 33% more damage on a Venom to a Raider - although interestingly without (or before its activated) Freebooters its approaching a wash.
Hmm, yeah I seem to have multiplied twice for the number of shots on the venoms.
One of the things I put in the survey was the ridiculous number of shots/dice rolling in game. There should never be a reason to be throwing more than 30 dice to achieve an effect, and while they do, no light infantry can survive.
The dakkajet for example, 120ish points and is throwing out 40 shots? Assault intercessors throwing out 60 shots after a 2CP strat to fire again. Plenty of others, but I feel there needs to be a cap.
Same with melee too.
bullyboy wrote: One of the things I put in the survey was the ridiculous number of shots/dice rolling in game. There should never be a reason to be throwing more than 30 dice to achieve an effect, and while they do, no light infantry can survive.
The dakkajet for example, 120ish points and is throwing out 40 shots? Assault intercessors throwing out 60 shots after a 2CP strat to fire again. Plenty of others, but I feel there needs to be a cap.
Same with melee too.
Orks kinda just throw out dice with shooting, it’s their thing. The space marine thing I don’t get, they’ve always kinda supposed to have been the low but good shots guys, but with Bolger discipline and hyper turbo mega bolters it seems kinda negated.
Then again, might just be me grumbling after losing 2.5 max blobs of boyz.
bullyboy wrote: One of the things I put in the survey was the ridiculous number of shots/dice rolling in game. There should never be a reason to be throwing more than 30 dice to achieve an effect, and while they do, no light infantry can survive.
The dakkajet for example, 120ish points and is throwing out 40 shots? Assault intercessors throwing out 60 shots after a 2CP strat to fire again. Plenty of others, but I feel there needs to be a cap.
Same with melee too.
Orks kinda just throw out dice with shooting, it’s their thing. The space marine thing I don’t get, they’ve always kinda supposed to have been the low but good shots guys, but with Bolger discipline and hyper turbo mega bolters it seems kinda negated.
Then again, might just be me grumbling after losing 2.5 max blobs of boyz.
Yes Orks throw lots of dice but its all relative. If a Marine throws 5 dice an Ork throws 10. But when you make Marines shoot 20 dice you end up with Orks throwing 40.
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Hmmm.. footslogging light infantry. It depends on what we classify as light infantry. But the only army I can think of is Daemons. The Daemons book have no transports. So, yeah, literally the entire army is expected to footslog across the battlefield. The theme of the book is about mass hordes of light infantry (in shades of blood letters, pink horrors, daemonettes and plague bearers).
Originally, the theme of the Tyranids codex was also about mass hordes of footslogging light infantry. But these days, it seems like Tyranids are a lot more about shooting, with a lot centered around hive guard stacked with lots of buffs while shooting out of line shots.
By the way, I am not sure if Sean's list is considered that glass cannon. Sure, the infantry inside the transports are glass cannons. But that's basically the entire Drukhari codex. Same goes all forms of Aeldari. Most of the list rides in 8 transports. Transports do give a hefty measure of protection to the forces inside it. Granted Venoms are flimsier than Raiders, but it all depends on what kind of guns you are using to shoot them with. Str 7 and above guns make no difference whether they are shooting at a Venom or a Raider. So against the majority of dedicated anti tank weapons, Venoms and Raiders are the same outside of Raiders having more wounds. But running 8 Venoms is like running 5 Raiders. Is a T5, 6W, 4+, 5++ transport really that flimsy?
When most of the army are all inside those 8 Venoms, you are facing army wide T5, 4+, 5++. It doesn't seem that flimsy to me.
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Hmmm.. footslogging light infantry. It depends on what we classify as light infantry. But the only army I can think of is Daemons. The Daemons book have no transports. So, yeah, literally the entire army is expected to footslog across the battlefield. The theme of the book is about mass hordes of light infantry (in shades of blood letters, pink horrors, daemonettes and plague bearers).
Well Plague Bearers aren't exactly light - nor are Pink Horrors. Incidentally, Daemons can Deep Strike/Teleport (which as far as I know, their most effective strategies revolve around this).
Just going to throw out that DE were decent in 8th. Not top-top tier perhaps but just below - which isn't a terrible place to be. Or at least until Marines 2.0 anyway. Its always a bit skewed though because of soup. Until hard stopped, every DE list wanted to run a Farseer with doom. And then if you are running Eldar soup, why not go into Ynnari spears/dark reapers etc etc.
But very boringly - 3 ravagers, 2-3 flyers and a bunch of venoms with blasters all in a reroll 1 to hit and reroll 1 to wound bubble turn 1 and everything except the flyers (usually) turn 2 was incredible. And lets be honest, the comically undercosted (in 2018 meta terms) Dissie Ravager is probably responsible for why Marines got their utterly broken 2.0 codex.
I want to say Foot-DE was sort of viable in 3rd (Foot-Dar was in any case - and I don't think it ever would seriously be again), but I don't think it was especially good.
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Hmmm.. footslogging light infantry. It depends on what we classify as light infantry. But the only army I can think of is Daemons. The Daemons book have no transports. So, yeah, literally the entire army is expected to footslog across the battlefield. The theme of the book is about mass hordes of light infantry (in shades of blood letters, pink horrors, daemonettes and plague bearers).
Well Plague Bearers aren't exactly light - nor are Pink Horrors. Incidentally, Daemons can Deep Strike/Teleport (which as far as I know, their most effective strategies revolve around this).
They can't deep strike or teleport except with CP which gets more expensive the more PL the unit is...
... so exactly like Strategic Reserves
And the idea that plaguebearers or horrors aren't light infantry makes me LOL. Eldar Howling Banshees are about as tough except against antitank guns
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Hmmm.. footslogging light infantry. It depends on what we classify as light infantry. But the only army I can think of is Daemons. The Daemons book have no transports. So, yeah, literally the entire army is expected to footslog across the battlefield. The theme of the book is about mass hordes of light infantry (in shades of blood letters, pink horrors, daemonettes and plague bearers).
Well Plague Bearers aren't exactly light - nor are Pink Horrors. Incidentally, Daemons can Deep Strike/Teleport (which as far as I know, their most effective strategies revolve around this).
T4 5++/5+++ is less durable than Marines, against AP0 or AP-1 in cover.
And Deepstrike is a strat, not an inbuilt ability.
I mean Plague Bearers have literally always supposed to have been "tough as nails, very difficult to move infantry". I don't understand how they're viewed as light now (while what, are Space Marines medium? I thought they were heavy).
Also an ability being CP based doesn't mean it's not an ability. I'm not too sure what the relevancy of that is?
blood reaper wrote: I mean Plague Bearers have literally always supposed to have been "tough as nails, very difficult to move infantry". I don't understand how they're viewed as light now (while what, are Space Marines medium? I thought they were heavy).
Also an ability being CP based doesn't mean it's not an ability. I'm not too sure what the relevancy of that is?
But they’re not-they’re about as durable as a Marine, except half the wounds.
10 SoB rapid-firing into them (even if we give them -1 to-hit, while Marines get nothing) kill two Plaguebearers, but only one Marine.
If the MEQ get cover, well then, it halves casualties. Does nothing for Plaguebearers. If the Plaguebearers don’t get -1, three of them die.
Plus they’re more vulnerable to Morale. Plus they have no guns. Plus they’re slower.
AoW tier list video, specifically it talks about why Orks are one of the S-tier factions in the game currently and why the Buggy/Plane spam list is so strong and problematic (timestamped at the start of that discussion):
Bosskelot wrote: AoW tier list video, specifically it talks about why Orks are one of the S-tier factions in the game currently and why the Buggy/Plane spam list is so strong and problematic (timestamped at the start of that discussion):
the_scotsman wrote: .
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also worth noting that Dark Eldar have spent about as much time as 'just the worst army in the game' as they have existing in general. One tiny moment in 5th just after their dex dropped and now, and that's the only times DE have been good.
Sorry, but that is just wrong. Dark Eldar were fantastic in 3rd edition.
100pts got you a squad with good BS, and 2 Dark Lance's. Sit them in cover and they could really give people a bad day. For an extra 10pts they could have 2 blasters... a few of them would unleash more heavy firepower than people could handle. Max out your 6 Troop choices with them and that is only 600 points, and you have already brought 12 Dark Lance's. The sheer number of Dark Lance's that Dark Eldar could bring was mental.
A Raider squad with a unit a Sybarite armed with splinter pistol, Agonised, and combat drugs could safely get to 5 attacks on the charge at WS4, needed 4+ to wound with a power weapon. That unit champion used to hit harder than some HQ choices in other factions. The rest of the squad were there just to take wounds.
Incubi were great, they would happily chew through most things, and with their power armour and speed (Raider) where good at survival.
Sure Hellions, Talos, and Mandrakes were garbage. Everything else was great.
Thank you Stonehorse for your post. I used to play Dark Eldar back in 3rd edition and +1 to everything you wrote.
Once I figured out my DE army, it was fun to play. I’d take my Archon (Lord I guess then) and scoot around on a Raider looking to fight other characters. This was back when Xenos weren’t just NPCs for Space Marines. Good times.
I also remember a game against an IG force, where my force was almost wiped out on turn 1. It was 75% of the force that I lost.
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Back with their first codex during 3rd and 4th edition, the basic DE squad was able to field 2 Dark Lances in each squad, minimum 10 models, iirc. 60 Dark Eldar Warriors with 12 Dark Lances between them was a really wicked amount of firepower in relatively cheap Troops choices in those days, and list would still have plenty of points left over for other choices. Iirc, Wytches used well could be pretty irritating in those days too.
Edit: Posted without seeing stonehorses post, but everything said there rings true. I didn't play DE then, but I played against them all the time and they could be dangerous AF.
I remember the Talos being a pain, but that might have been when brought through a warp gate or something? Hard to remember.
Talos depended on the edition. When you could snipe out the powerfist guy when removing casualties, they were a horror. When you couldn't, they were fairly punchable.
First day of the Coventry GT, Mani's Ork list deleted 5 Raiders and all of their contents in turn 1. All Ruud, a WTC vet and good player btw, had left were 10 Trueborn.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Game state is fine.
Yes Orks throw lots of dice but its all relative. If a Marine throws 5 dice an Ork throws 10. But when you make Marines shoot 20 dice you end up with Orks throwing 40.
The fun aspect is that current marines throw a comparable amount of dice than orks, definitely not just 50%, and with higher BS, same WS, but also with way more tools to enhance those rolls.
A single Aggressor has 6+D6 shots, which become 12 shots against units of 11+ models, other than 3A with power fists. That's the firepower of an infantry model, no infantry ork throw those numbers. 6 dudes are 270 points. The same amount of points invested in Flash Gitz or Lootas, the ork infantry units with the highest rate of fire, gives the ork player 30 shots from Flash Gitz and 48-32 from Lootas. Now those ork units have higher S and higher AP but also worse BS, worse save and no melee abilties; I don't want to compare the units in terms of efficiency, just show that SM models can throw the same dice than orks, if not even more. There only infantry ork unit that can fire that many dice for 270 points is shoota boyz, a unit of 30 models which is doomed the moment it gets deployed.
Repulsor and Repulsor Ex roll the same dice than a Gorkanaut.
In combat the comparison is even easier: take any SM melee specialist and compare it to the ork counterpart, SM will throw the same dice, if not more. Works for lighter and heavier infantries and of course characters.
Bosskelot wrote: First day of the Coventry GT, Mani's Ork list deleted 5 Raiders and all of their contents in turn 1. All Ruud, a WTC vet and good player btw, had left were 10 Trueborn.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Game state is fine.
No, no, no. That doesn't count for...reasons. We need more data. Must have been a tactical mistake that my genius-level playing could have prevented. /s
Did I hit all the excuses? It does seem DE are a bit more susceptible to the specifics of the Ork shooting than some other lists but it's pretty clear the damage potential is way, way too high if this is happening regularly. Going back to the original point of this thread it's still bizarre to me that anyone will defend even the possibility of such high damage output as being OK.
Bosskelot wrote: First day of the Coventry GT, Mani's Ork list deleted 5 Raiders and all of their contents in turn 1. All Ruud, a WTC vet and good player btw, had left were 10 Trueborn.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Game state is fine.
bullyboy wrote: So now it pretty much comes down to a case of when will GW adjust rather than if.
First turn seems to decide games vs Freebooterz/buggy orks.
Its always a when - the question is whether they do some sort of emergency nerf (see DE, Ad Mech) or just wing it.
Given DE, Ad Mech and possibly GK are arguably superior to Speedwaaagh, its hard to argue it deserves such an intervention - even if it is very obnoxious.
I'd hope we'd get a CA in January that serves to reset the meta. But I'm not sure I'd trust GW to do it and I'm not sure points alone can cut it at this point. Every army seems to be getting tuned up to do absurd damage.
Bosskelot wrote: AoW tier list video, specifically it talks about why Orks are one of the S-tier factions in the game currently and why the Buggy/Plane spam list is so strong and problematic (timestamped at the start of that discussion):
I mean I agree with them orks are the 4th best codex and S tier…
They actually may go to 2nd best after campaign book releases. And that basically removes freebooter out of the reason.
Ultimately squigbuggies should go up in points. Maybe a smidge on scrapjets and dakkajets but a lot of the other units are only good in specific klans and/or burning Strats to make them useful that turn.
Overall I like thier reasoning. Admech crushes everyone, drukari manhandles all the A and below codexs has hard counter w orks, grey knights does well against all, orks can win against all but can lose against all and manhandles drukari.
I actually like the concept of strategems, but there are too many and they are balanced poorly.
Personally, I think they belong more to narrative play than tournament, but that's just me. Tournaments should allow the book ones and perhaps only 1-3 additional ones from the codex (after balancing of course) that are preset before the event. Or a player has a small deck he can choose from (including book), say 10, and this is included in the list building stage. It would certainly be easier to reduce the "gotcha" moments.
I like pretty much enjoy every flavorful strategem but I don't care for any of the stratagems which are a could just be on the unit profile sheet instead. I think Stratagems add a dimension of play and they were fine at first but GW being GW churned out a boat load of them now they are too many to remember and too few that are meaningful.
bullyboy wrote: I actually like the concept of strategems, but there are too many and they are balanced poorly.
Personally, I think they belong more to narrative play than tournament, but that's just me. Tournaments should allow the book ones and perhaps only 1-3 additional ones from the codex (after balancing of course) that are preset before the event. Or a player has a small deck he can choose from (including book), say 10, and this is included in the list building stage. It would certainly be easier to reduce the "gotcha" moments.
The way AOS has implemented stratagems is IMO perfect.
There's about...six? universal, useful stratagems, primarily focused on allowing you to have some agency during your opponent's turn.
You get 2-4CP per turn, depending on a few factors, and it is "use it or lose it" no hoarding it.
No unit can be affected by a stratagem more than once per turn, no comboing, Period.
And instead of 'commander' type characters having a flat aura, most of the time, they have a unique stratagem that they can give to a unit within 12".
It perfectly dodges everything that makes stratagems a nightmare in 40k: the number of them, the amount they can combo to create huge power spikes, the 'blow them all in one turn' aspect....it's great.
bullyboy wrote: I actually like the concept of strategems, but there are too many and they are balanced poorly.
Personally, I think they belong more to narrative play than tournament, but that's just me. Tournaments should allow the book ones and perhaps only 1-3 additional ones from the codex (after balancing of course) that are preset before the event. Or a player has a small deck he can choose from (including book), say 10, and this is included in the list building stage. It would certainly be easier to reduce the "gotcha" moments.
The way AOS has implemented stratagems is IMO perfect.
There's about...six? universal, useful stratagems, primarily focused on allowing you to have some agency during your opponent's turn.
You get 2-4CP per turn, depending on a few factors, and it is "use it or lose it" no hoarding it.
No unit can be affected by a stratagem more than once per turn, no comboing, Period.
And instead of 'commander' type characters having a flat aura, most of the time, they have a unique stratagem that they can give to a unit within 12".
It perfectly dodges everything that makes stratagems a nightmare in 40k: the number of them, the amount they can combo to create huge power spikes, the 'blow them all in one turn' aspect....it's great.
Heh. That was actually my recommendation in the Survey. Either rework strats and CP along the same lines as AoS or enforce a 'hand size' for strats, because the plethora is abusive*. (And more-so for factions with sub-faction books).
I explicitly referred to AoS to sound more positive about GW games in general rather than a 'your rules design is terrible' take, which I assumed would just be dumpstered.
*as are some strats just for existing: Double fight and double shoot are ridiculous and only adds to the absurd lethality levels. Also they're just blatantly unreasonable from a balance perspective, as double fighting TAC squad is a completely different beast from double fighting <insert combat monster here>
AOS is basically a couple house-rules away from being a good, solid beer and pretzels battle wargame while 40k is in "oh god, oh no, what the feth, what do we do" territory rn.
Main problems with AOS 3rd are:
1) double turn shooting is the big one. if you either ditch the double turn, or combine the shooting+charging phase into another alternating phase like Combat, this issue basically goes away
2) stat cap makes cover kind of pointless. (you can only have +1 to all stats including save, and one of the generic strats is +1sv, so cover is very very unimpactful). Exempt sv from +1/-1 cap instead of current situation, which is Rend (AP) is the only thing that ignores the cap, and youre good to go.
People talk about how AOS is real loose with the mortal wounds but overall damage output in AOS is so much more reasonable that its so silly to even make the complaint. Aint no fething D3+3 wound attacks on 60pts models in AOS...
the_scotsman wrote: AOS is basically a couple house-rules away from being a good, solid beer and pretzels battle wargame while 40k is in "oh god, oh no, what the feth, what do we do" territory rn.
Main problems with AOS 3rd are:
1) double turn shooting is the big one. if you either ditch the double turn, or combine the shooting+charging phase into another alternating phase like Combat, this issue basically goes away
2) stat cap makes cover kind of pointless. (you can only have +1 to all stats including save, and one of the generic strats is +1sv, so cover is very very unimpactful). Exempt sv from +1/-1 cap instead of current situation, which is Rend (AP) is the only thing that ignores the cap, and youre good to go.
People talk about how AOS is real loose with the mortal wounds but overall damage output in AOS is so much more reasonable that its so silly to even make the complaint. Aint no fething D3+3 wound attacks on 60pts models in AOS...
Eh... the range in AoS is definitely shorter, but as far as damage goes... nope, it is possibly even higher than in 40k.
Being thrown 40-50 ranged MW in a turn is perfectly possible.
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Back with their first codex during 3rd and 4th edition, the basic DE squad was able to field 2 Dark Lances in each squad, minimum 10 models, iirc. 60 Dark Eldar Warriors with 12 Dark Lances between them was a really wicked amount of firepower in relatively cheap Troops choices in those days, and list would still have plenty of points left over for other choices. Iirc, Wytches used well could be pretty irritating in those days too.
Edit: Posted without seeing stonehorses post, but everything said there rings true. I didn't play DE then, but I played against them all the time and they could be dangerous AF.
I remember the Talos being a pain, but that might have been when brought through a warp gate or something? Hard to remember.
I think it's unfortunate this isn't really a viable approach anymore. I think GW really needs to stop pigeonholing them into the "only with vehicles" approach.
blood reaper wrote: Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?
Back with their first codex during 3rd and 4th edition, the basic DE squad was able to field 2 Dark Lances in each squad, minimum 10 models, iirc. 60 Dark Eldar Warriors with 12 Dark Lances between them was a really wicked amount of firepower in relatively cheap Troops choices in those days, and list would still have plenty of points left over for other choices. Iirc, Wytches used well could be pretty irritating in those days too.
Edit: Posted without seeing stonehorses post, but everything said there rings true. I didn't play DE then, but I played against them all the time and they could be dangerous AF.
I remember the Talos being a pain, but that might have been when brought through a warp gate or something? Hard to remember.
I think it's unfortunate this isn't really a viable approach anymore. I think GW really needs to stop pigeonholing them into the "only with vehicles" approach.
The problem with this (and this applies to other factions as well), is GW doesn't think they are. The Ivory Tower effect is in full play, and GW really thinks that people with play with large infantry blobs to get the multiple heavy weapons and etc, and stand on the ground and shoot despite how quickly t3 units just get erased. And when people complain about how this doesn't really work, GW writes weird articles about the 'spirit of the game' and people complain about 'competitive players' ruining everything (even though it doesn't work for 'casual players' either).
Drukhari isn't even hard countered by Orks, venoms are.
Venoms weapons lost shots from 8th to 9th and gained damage 2. Against Ork buggies they are effectively half as good as an eighth edition venom.
I realize Sean is a good player but he mostly lost in the list building phase in this particular match up, and then made a poor first turn plan, and then didn't roll well enough to keep playing the game when he was left out and exposed not making assault.
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Moving all his stuff up turn 1 to try and make multiple risky charges means if he fails he is within optimal shooting range of most of the opponents list.
This is the problem with skew lists. Also DE have lots of reserves options outside of the basic SR options, you start with less CP but maybe that is worth it in some cases. Maybe letting the Orks extend the fliers out and trying to pick them off turn 1-2 then spread out into the buggies and objectives turn 3+ would have played better. Maybe not, venoms are really bad into anything that gets -1 damage.
blaktoof wrote: Drukhari isn't even hard countered by Orks, venoms are.
Venoms weapons lost shots from 8th to 9th and gained damage 2. Against Ork buggies they are effectively half as good as an eighth edition venom.
I realize Sean is a good player but he mostly lost in the list building phase in this particular match up, and then made a poor first turn plan, and then didn't roll well enough to keep playing the game when he was left out and exposed not making assault.
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Moving all his stuff up turn 1 to try and make multiple risky charges means if he fails he is within optimal shooting range of most of the opponents list.
This is the problem with skew lists. Also DE have lots of reserves options outside of the basic SR options, you start with less CP but maybe that is worth it in some cases. Maybe letting the Orks extend the fliers out and trying to pick them off turn 1-2 then spread out into the buggies and objectives turn 3+ would have played better. Maybe not, venoms are really bad into anything that gets -1 damage.
Did Sean lose the game in the list building phase? Most probably. Then again when I was a chaos space marine player in 7th edition every game was lost in the list building phase the moment I opened my codex XD
Anyways, yes he hit a hard counter. We did discuss earlier in this thread a similar match up where the Drukhari player turtled up in the deployment zone and still got wrecked in the first turn because of all the ignore line of sight and flyers in the ork list, and reserves is only delaying the inevitable in the best of circumstances when the overwhelming majority of your opponents list doesn’t care about line of sight blocking terrain. So no, Sean did the best he could with his first turn, he did not miscalculate it like we have discussed previously. We have also established that reserves will not change the outcome of the game. Heck the board would probably look almost exactly the same had Sean tried to use reserves or hide in terrain.
The point of the whole thread is to investigate or discuss whether or not games like this are fun (on either side of this beat down) and why we have seen two instances of pretty much this game in two tournaments. And ultimately, is 9th edition too lethal. We have also explored similar outcomes with admech as well as drukhari when they were the new OP brokenness, so it’s not like we mean to single out orks. In my opinion drukhari admech and now orks are glaring symptoms of an issue with escalating lethality.
You are allowed to enjoy the game in its current form, and you can enjoy the amount of lethality in the game. Maybe you want shorter or faster paced games. Maybe you play tournaments and it makes your day less exhausting to only have to play one or two turns per game. Maybe you just inexplicably like how everything is now or find its current state the best you’ve seen it. Maybe you enjoy watching a wombo combo you discovered in the list building phase clear a board. Some posters in here like the OP have made a case for the game being too lethal though. And have proposed touching up terrain rules and scaling back the bonkers rules.
Did Sean lose the game in the list building phase? Most probably. Then again when I was a chaos space marine player in 7th edition every game was lost in the list building phase the moment I opened my codex XD
Yeah, but Chaos marines had a terrible codex in 7th, Drukhari are one of the best armies in 9th, arguably still much better than the faction that removed 1800 of stuff in one turn. That's why losing that hard is entirely on the drukhari player.
If he was playing AM or Tau, or an optimized drukhari list, I would agree that games like this are a problem, but average collections of drukhari (let alone tournament players' ones) have plenty of tools to compete with orks, including this specific archetype. He basically wanted to autowin against some factions, he ended up autolosing against an hard counter.
He probably learnt his lesson and won't happen again. Maybe, since those tournament players love to build their list around the rock/paper/scissor concept and hope to find the best match ups possible.
People love to claim it was fault of DE players but ignore it doesn't actually matter whether it's T1 or T2 wipeout.
And game where rock scissor paper enough that 1800 pts can be wiped out in any situation is just sign of unhealthy game. 1800 pts shouldn't be killable in turn period especially without ridiculous rolling of 6's(hit, wound, damage) and 1's(saves).
And game where rock scissor paper enough that 1800 pts can be wiped out in any situation is just sign of unhealthy game. 1800 pts shouldn't be killable in turn period especially without ridiculous rolling of 6's(hit, wound, damage) and 1's(saves).
Absolutely not true, also this again shifts the focus on the "competitive scene" aka the players. It's not the players fault that those extremes exist.
Absolutely not true, also this again shifts the focus on the "competitive scene" aka the players. It's not the players fault that those extremes exist.
But it's their fault to actively exploit them and end up having that result.
Rules in themselves do nothing. It's always the players who use them.
I think that particular matter can be indeed solved by GW, but to me it will mean another edition. The real question is : is it really worth it to "fix" the rules to such a deep level that may be having consequences on, for example, the length of games, or is it rather easier to put more restrictions on the way of building lists so that these extreme army lists can't happen ?
Absolutely not true, also this again shifts the focus on the "competitive scene" aka the players. It's not the players fault that those extremes exist.
But it's their fault to actively exploit them and end up having that result.
Rules in themselves do nothing. It's always the players who use them.
I think that particular matter can be indeed solved by GW, but to me it will mean another edition. The real question is : is it really worth it to "fix" the rules to such a deep level that may be having consequences on, for example, the length of games, or is it rather easier to put more restrictions on the way of building lists so that these extreme army lists can't happen ?
Why have rules in the first place, if they do nothing? Of course there are different approaches (people who want to tell a story, play a themed army with self inflicted restrictions on one end of the spectrum and WAAC players on the other ) and none of those approaches is wrong, so you need to have a certain rule framework that keeps those two ends as close to each other as possible.
I mean, I will say to all you folks that are like 'welp, nothing to be done!' that it really...doesnt take all that much to give lethality a little bit of a nudge downward.
Just my last game, we tried out a simple redesign to the cover system, basically:
1) regular cover is claimed like Dense Cover (so if sight lines cross cover pieces that are not within 1" of the firing unit, the target unit gets +1sv) and we also lifted the infantry/swarms/beasts limitation
2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack
3) made any terrain 2x or more the height of a model in the target unit count as Obscuring if both firer and target weren't within 1" and Dense if target and not firer was within 1".
This sufficiently beefed up cover rules such that even up against a currently fairly competitive admech setup there was a solid 500-600pts on the board from either army at the end of the game.
All it took was taking so much of the fiddly wonkiness from the cover system, and understanding that cover is a fairly basic, minor bonus and so it should be fairly easy to lay claim to, and most of the time if you're shooting at a unit that's not been purposefully exposed by the opposing player for some purpose, you should be firing into 1-2 layers of defensive cover bonuses.
2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack
What I would give for this rule to be official.
Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.
2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack
What I would give for this rule to be official.
Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.
In most instances, the setup that we used (-1 to hit and +1 to sv) works better for most light infantry than the old 4+ pseudo-invulnerable-but-also-a-bunch-of-weapons-ignore-it thing. Seeing as most light infantry is sitting at a 5+ or 4+ base anyway, theres a couple 6+sv units like Cultists and Boyz where it technically breaks even but its usually better.
Personally, as much as I am an advocate for increasing durability, bringing back un-interactive game mechanics like common high invulnerables (3++ and better), flat cover saves, instant death and the old all-or-nothing AP system just make particular stat values artificially too strong or too weak.
Like remember when almost every gun in the game was at least AP5, how great it felt to go from that no save to that 6+sv to that 5+sv? Yeah, really awesome, now once every 2 games I'll get to make an armor save roll instead of once every 4 games.
Its the same exact reason I hate the stupid modifier cap thing that's present now - it devalues a bunch of random crap for units that have -1 to hit as an ability or an available stratagem in a counter-intuitive way. Why are the fast/sneaky factions the ones who are the least likely to care about hiding behind concealing terrain? Why is it logical to move and shoot your heavy lascannon only when youre trying to use it to down a speeding airplane? The only real effect it had was curbing the worst excesses of stacking up to-hit mods which could have easily been done by just updating the one eldar trait to the exact thing they updated the raven guard trait to and implementing the "6s always hit" rule.
It's a bit like disadvantage and advantage only counting once in d&d, where it's just as hard to do something while blind, exhausted and cursed as it is to do so when just exhausted.
Da Boss wrote: It's a bit like disadvantage and advantage only counting once in d&d, where it's just as hard to do something while blind, exhausted and cursed as it is to do so when just exhausted.
sure, but I at least kind of get it in DnD where at the end of the day combat is just 'you play the world's worst skirmish miniatures game for a little bit to resolve who dies and who lives when the stabby stabs happen and you get back to the role playing."
Da Boss wrote: It's a bit like disadvantage and advantage only counting once in d&d, where it's just as hard to do something while blind, exhausted and cursed as it is to do so when just exhausted.
sure, but I at least kind of get it in DnD where at the end of the day combat is just 'you play the world's worst skirmish miniatures game for a little bit to resolve who dies and who lives when the stabby stabs happen and you get back to the role playing."
In 40k the combat system...is the game.
Sorry for a little derailment, but I recently came back to DnD and this is hilarious...because it's true!
2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack
What I would give for this rule to be official.
Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.
We have had that sort of rule. Do you enjoy getting your special weapons sniped by rhino sniping? Use rhino's to block LOS, snipe specific model.
While sure it would reduce # of models lost...it would make all the special models from squads die even faster than others. Basically kill any unit like tactical squad, any squad with special melee weapons etc to do the work.
2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack
What I would give for this rule to be official.
Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.
We have had that sort of rule. Do you enjoy getting your special weapons sniped by rhino sniping? Use rhino's to block LOS, snipe specific model.
While sure it would reduce # of models lost...it would make all the special models from squads die even faster than others. Basically kill any unit like tactical squad, any squad with special melee weapons etc to do the work.
That was because you as the player HAD to take the model that was seen as the casualty. the_scotsman's solution is to give the defending player the option of taking any model off the table as a casualty, just as now, but if they remove all the ones in line of sight the sequence ends.
So if you want to protect that vulnerable dude in the open you now have the choice of sacrificing models that can't be seen or you remove the visible dude and everyone else is safe. In no way is this worse for the player getting shot at.
2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack
What I would give for this rule to be official.
Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.
We have had that sort of rule. Do you enjoy getting your special weapons sniped by rhino sniping? Use rhino's to block LOS, snipe specific model.
While sure it would reduce # of models lost...it would make all the special models from squads die even faster than others. Basically kill any unit like tactical squad, any squad with special melee weapons etc to do the work.
The simplest possible solution to it is just - exactly what I proposed. Allow the defender to remove casualties, and IF no models are ever visible, saves stop.
Opponnet wants to rhino snipe a special weapon? If it's more important to you that the weapon survives, remove other models from the unit. If its less important, remove just the special weapon and then the rest of that unit's shooting is wasted.
This puts all the cards in the hands of the defending player, and removes rhino-sniping as an issue entirely. Easy.
macluvin wrote: Really? I don’t pay attention to the influencers. I thought the deal was they say good stuff about GW product and GW gives them free product XD
Some of the last goonhammer articles about tournament winning lists had stuff akin to "yadda, yadda, boooooring." in the "Why is this list interesting?" fields for adMech and drukhari lists. They won so many games they just ran out of stuff to write about them.
macluvin wrote: Really? I don’t pay attention to the influencers. I thought the deal was they say good stuff about GW product and GW gives them free product XD
Some of the last goonhammer articles about tournament winning lists had stuff akin to "yadda, yadda, boooooring." in the "Why is this list interesting?" fields for adMech and drukhari lists. They won so many games they just ran out of stuff to write about them.
Goonhammer is generally more positive than I am about 40K, which admittedly is not a high bar, but they aren't afraid to occasionally call out when something's terrible.
There are really two issues here. Skew builds,and lethality.
Any game system where you can build a new lists with a faction they do really well versus certain matchups tend to have 1+ unfavorable match ups. When they run into that match up their chance to win goes down. Venom spam DE into freebooter buggies is a good example of this. For reference there were 16 freebooter lists at so cal, only 1 made it to the top 8. Freebooter buggies is pretty hard countered by deathwing terminators or other large tough unit builds.
In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.
First turn lethality.
40k has had first turn lethality problems for a long time. It is the reluctance to have an unit activation system opposed to I do all my stuff and you take it then you do all your stuff and I take it. If they had alternating activations the first turns would still be highly lethal but it would be more mutual lethality.
We already have alternating activations in assault, it is doable.
Geemoney wrote: So the original contention is that no army should be able to table any other army in a single turn ever?? Good luck with that.
It's probably not healthy for any wargame to be able to inflict 90% casualties with the first volley of fire.
History is full of battles where one side took that kind of punishment, but only with the first salvo? This is like a fundamentally immersion-wrecking experience, and I think it really isn't too much to ask that this kind of result maybe shouldn't be possible.
blaktoof wrote: There are really two issues here. Skew builds,and lethality.
Any game system where you can build a new lists with a faction they do really well versus certain matchups tend to have 1+ unfavorable match ups. When they run into that match up their chance to win goes down. Venom spam DE into freebooter buggies is a good example of this. For reference there were 16 freebooter lists at so cal, only 1 made it to the top 8. Freebooter buggies is pretty hard countered by deathwing terminators or other large tough unit builds.
In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.
First turn lethality.
40k has had first turn lethality problems for a long time. It is the reluctance to have an unit activation system opposed to I do all my stuff and you take it then you do all your stuff and I take it. If they had alternating activations the first turns would still be highly lethal but it would be more mutual lethality.
We already have alternating activations in assault, it is doable.
Out of curiosity, have you ever tried a game using alternating activations? Either in all phases, or just in the shooting phase?
My experience with it is limited to a series of games in late 6th / early 7th (fully acknowledging the game was very different.) While I enjoyed it, my main take away was that the player with the most units had an advantage. There was this "final word" aspect to each turn, where the excess units would dogpile on one or two units from the opponent's army.
Not saying this couldn't work, but curious about whether it's actually a solution to lethality. Losing an additional unit each turn due to an army's ability to target more things might just be a wash.
The few times I tried it in 8th it worked best going phase by phase. We tried one time doing it unit by unit doing their full turn sequence but it caused some strange interactions with some stratagems.
There is some favoring of large MSU, but it still seemed to be much less than letting a whole army do everything.
If I did it again in 9th I would want to adopt some rules in terms of alternating. Such as allowing the player with less units the ability to pass or activate a second unit before the other player can for every x amount of units difference. Or alternatively activating units in PL blocks, like 20 or 25 PL worth of units you can move then opponent etc. This would put more balance into how much effect you can get per an activation between a large unit or some multiple small units combining up to 25 PL.
The simplest possible solution to it is just - exactly what I proposed. Allow the defender to remove casualties, and IF no models are ever visible, saves stop.
Opponnet wants to rhino snipe a special weapon? If it's more important to you that the weapon survives, remove other models from the unit. If its less important, remove just the special weapon and then the rest of that unit's shooting is wasted.
This puts all the cards in the hands of the defending player, and removes rhino-sniping as an issue entirely. Easy.
It's 9th edition, it always gets better: That's a nice unit you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone used strategic line of sight blocking to specifically target the models in the middle, to cause the two halves to lose coherency.
I mean, it's not like the people who played the game when you could do line-of-sight sniping worked through all of the different ways the rules could be changed, or anything.
blaktoof wrote: If I did it again in 9th I would want to adopt some rules in terms of alternating. Such as allowing the player with less units the ability to pass or activate a second unit before the other player can for every x amount of units difference. Or alternatively activating units in PL blocks, like 20 or 25 PL worth of units you can move then opponent etc. This would put more balance into how much effect you can get per an activation between a large unit or some multiple small units combining up to 25 PL.
Yeah. I have a feeling 40kAA would require eliminating the turn sequence and allowing units to move / shoot / charge / fight / psyk-out as an activation itself.
The power level thing is an interesting idea, but I see it less as a points issue and more as a # of activations issue. A stronger model will still be subject to limitations around the number of units that can be targeted, while a larger number of units will have incentives to focus on the stronger unit.
While there's ways to compensate for those mechanics, it remains a sea change from where we are with the game. I'm looking for the convincing argument this impacts "lethality" in a positive way.
The simplest possible solution to it is just - exactly what I proposed. Allow the defender to remove casualties, and IF no models are ever visible, saves stop.
Opponnet wants to rhino snipe a special weapon? If it's more important to you that the weapon survives, remove other models from the unit. If its less important, remove just the special weapon and then the rest of that unit's shooting is wasted.
This puts all the cards in the hands of the defending player, and removes rhino-sniping as an issue entirely. Easy.
It's 9th edition, it always gets better: That's a nice unit you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone used strategic line of sight blocking to specifically target the models in the middle, to cause the two halves to lose coherency.
I mean, it's not like the people who played the game when you could do line-of-sight sniping worked through all of the different ways the rules could be changed, or anything.
It don’t change that much if you start removing models from a flank to maintain coherency and remove the middle models last.
In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.
That's the entire mentality of some tournament players, they don't care if they can be wiped out in one turn, they build their list in order to be those who can wipe out someone in one turn and hope to find those juicy opponents. They only care about placing high, and in order to do that a rock/paper/scissor list might be the best option.
Drukhari player hoped to find imperium, aeldari, chaos, necrons, etc... and it got orks instead. Orks player knew he had to counter drukhari and ad mech and brought a skew list that was extremely tailored against those. IIRC he played against 3 drukhari players in a row.
That's a risky gamble: tailor against the armies you think you can face more likely or those you absolutely need to be in advantage if you face them. Don't care if that list becomes unplayable or even flat out illegal next rounds of FAQs. Not the most common way to play 40k but nothing new at tournaments though.
In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.
That's the entire mentality of some tournament players, they don't care if they can be wiped out in one turn, they build their list in order to be those who can wipe out someone in one turn and hope to find those juicy opponents. They only care about placing high, and in order to do that a rock/paper/scissor list might be the best option.
Drukhari player hoped to find imperium, aeldari, chaos, necrons, etc... and it got orks instead. Orks player knew he had to counter drukhari and ad mech and brought a skew list that was extremely tailored against those. IIRC he played against 3 drukhari players in a row.
That's a risky gamble: tailor against the armies you think you can face more likely or those you absolutely need to be in advantage if you face them. Don't care if that list becomes unplayable or even flat out illegal next rounds of FAQs. Not the most common way to play 40k but nothing new at tournaments though.
Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".
No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.
The point is tailored list shouldn't exist, pretty much like games determined after one turn. A likely loss is something that happens between TAC lists, when an army is more optimized than the other one or is run by a more skilled/lucky player.
No game should be decided after first turn is something I agree. But when one out of 50+ games is actually decided after first turn, to me it's pretty much like saying that no game is decided after first turn.
And some players design their list knowing in advance that they'll autolose against their hard counters. Or autowin against juicy opponents. Now where's the problem here? Having the options to tailor?
Ordana wrote: Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out. It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".
No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.
Not even if you intentionally brought none of the weapons can harm your opponent's units, they have the perfect weapons to kill you and not only do you leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever, but also move close enough to be in rappid fire/dakka range of every weapon, no matter how short ranged it is?
Because that's what happened.
The drukhari player literally tossed the game because he ran into a hard-counter, and that's the main reason why this was such a stomp. All other games this list played during the event weren't this one-sided, and he even lost a game despite placing first overall.
Ordana wrote: Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".
No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.
Not even if you intentionally brought none of the weapons can harm your opponent's units, they have the perfect weapons to kill you and not only do you leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever, but also move close enough to be in rappid fire/dakka range of every weapon, no matter how short ranged it is?
Because that's what happened.
The drukhari player literally tossed the game because he ran into a hard-counter, and that's the main reason why this was such a stomp. All other games this list played during the event weren't this one-sided, and he even lost a game despite placing first overall.
ehm, yes? Even under perfect conditions a 2k point army should not be killing 1800 points in 1 turn.
And saying no other game was this one-sided is a strait up lie. The semi final was also on stream. The Ork player went first and almost wiped a different DE list in his first shooting phase, he won the game half way through turn 1. The finals he could have potentially lost if he didn't win the roll-off to flee from combat with his Mek guns.
Ordana wrote: Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out. It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".
No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.
Not even if you intentionally brought none of the weapons can harm your opponent's units, they have the perfect weapons to kill you and not only do you leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever, but also move close enough to be in rappid fire/dakka range of every weapon, no matter how short ranged it is?
It's hilarious to me that we're 15 pages into this thread and it still needs to be said that the answer to this question is a resounding "yes". No game should result in the removal of 90% of an army in the first turn, barring some ridiculously unlikely statistical anomaly.
You can easily build a marine all-melta list that one-shots every knight list in existence if the knight player cooparates.
So, limit meltas to 3 per army now?
Or balance melta better? Or (my preferred approach) remove Knights from the game if they have the possibility to cause this kind of skew, or alter profiles to avoid it, or give Knights access to something that isn't a vehicle in their army design.
Here's a practical example using my last 8 tournament games of X-Wing. In half of those games it was literally impossible for one of the players to inflict 90% damage in a single turn even with perfect dice outcomes because the damage output is tuned to something approaching a sensible level. The statistically most likely outcome in all games, assuming perfect situations for the attackers (which literally never happen), was around 40% damage.
The problem you seem to be having is that 40k is so massively out of whack that the necessary changes to bring it back to something approaching a sensible lethality are now quite radical, which seems to lead to some incredulity from the people who are defending the current level of lethality.
Ordana wrote: Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".
No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.
Not even if you intentionally brought none of the weapons can harm your opponent's units, they have the perfect weapons to kill you and not only do you leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever, but also move close enough to be in rappid fire/dakka range of every weapon, no matter how short ranged it is?
Because that's what happened.
The drukhari player literally tossed the game because he ran into a hard-counter, and that's the main reason why this was such a stomp. All other games this list played during the event weren't this one-sided, and he even lost a game despite placing first overall.
Sure he could have delayed the stomp to 2nd turn and not even try the sole chance he might have.
Might just as well not even bother deploy if strategy is not to even try to win.
The simplest possible solution to it is just - exactly what I proposed. Allow the defender to remove casualties, and IF no models are ever visible, saves stop.
Opponnet wants to rhino snipe a special weapon? If it's more important to you that the weapon survives, remove other models from the unit. If its less important, remove just the special weapon and then the rest of that unit's shooting is wasted.
This puts all the cards in the hands of the defending player, and removes rhino-sniping as an issue entirely. Easy.
It's 9th edition, it always gets better: That's a nice unit you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone used strategic line of sight blocking to specifically target the models in the middle, to cause the two halves to lose coherency.
I mean, it's not like the people who played the game when you could do line-of-sight sniping worked through all of the different ways the rules could be changed, or anything.
You're responding to a post explaining how the proposed rule would not work like that, how is this difficult for people to wrap their heads around?
You make it so that if a unit can no longer be seen, models can no longer be removed from that unit, but you leave it up to the defending player to remove the models that they want. So if someone tries to rhino-snipe you, you just...don't remove the models they want to rhino-snipe. Its entirely up to you. That completely removes the little 'trick' from the game because suddenly it puts you at a disadvantage if you do it.
Ordana wrote: Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".
No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.
leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever,
if the cover system was actually functional, I might agree with you that this result would be OK, but as it stands if you look at (For example) a drukhari Venom, there is actually no cover bonus in existence in 9th edition 40k that benefits it at all.
You'll notice that my proposal for fixing this issue ISNT to limit or nerf any weapon or units or army. My proposal is to make cover...ACTUALLY WORK. To add rules to the game that make there be a difference between a perfect shot, at an exposed target in ideal range, and a bad shot, at a protected target at maximum range.
The problem with this scenario is even if you'd granted Sean's army board-wide cover, very little difference would actually be made in the result.
the_scotsman wrote: if the cover system was actually functional, I might agree with you that this result would be OK, but as it stands if you look at (For example) a drukhari Venom, there is actually no cover bonus in existence in 9th edition 40k that benefits it at all.
You'll notice that my proposal for fixing this issue ISNT to limit or nerf any weapon or units or army. My proposal is to make cover...ACTUALLY WORK. To add rules to the game that make there be a difference between a perfect shot, at an exposed target in ideal range, and a bad shot, at a protected target at maximum range.
The problem with this scenario is even if you'd granted Sean's army board-wide cover, very little difference would actually be made in the result.
I think we both don't disagree on the whole lethality issue, and terrain definitely has its part in it. Obscuring and dense cover both were a good step in the right direction, but as long as light cover remains a mostly anecdotal +1 to armor that saves a model or two every other game, things won't change. I still remember when an ADL barricade doubled the survivability of guardsmen and orks hiding behind it instead of being functionally identical to being out in the open.
What I am calling out is merely the hypocrisy of claiming that orks deserved to be nerfed for being able to remove most of an enemy army under perfect conditions, when this realistically has been a regular part of the game at least since 7th, possible longer. Even in 5th I witnessed a tailored guard army wiping out an ork player off the board in just two turns because he didn't space out his models.
I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
Geemoney wrote: I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
Yes. Ability to kill 90 boyz in 1-2 turns is too much lethality.
Geemoney wrote: I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
Geemoney wrote: I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
yes?
Did you miss the part where we have been complaining about the game being to lethal in general for ages?
the_scotsman wrote: if the cover system was actually functional, I might agree with you that this result would be OK, but as it stands if you look at (For example) a drukhari Venom, there is actually no cover bonus in existence in 9th edition 40k that benefits it at all.
You'll notice that my proposal for fixing this issue ISNT to limit or nerf any weapon or units or army. My proposal is to make cover...ACTUALLY WORK. To add rules to the game that make there be a difference between a perfect shot, at an exposed target in ideal range, and a bad shot, at a protected target at maximum range.
The problem with this scenario is even if you'd granted Sean's army board-wide cover, very little difference would actually be made in the result.
I think we both don't disagree on the whole lethality issue, and terrain definitely has its part in it. Obscuring and dense cover both were a good step in the right direction, but as long as light cover remains a mostly anecdotal +1 to armor that saves a model or two every other game, things won't change. I still remember when an ADL barricade doubled the survivability of guardsmen and orks hiding behind it instead of being functionally identical to being out in the open.
What I am calling out is merely the hypocrisy of claiming that orks deserved to be nerfed for being able to remove most of an enemy army under perfect conditions, when this realistically has been a regular part of the game at least since 7th, possible longer. Even in 5th I witnessed a tailored guard army wiping out an ork player off the board in just two turns because he didn't space out his models.
And we have been complaining about it the entire time.
And lol at trying to bring up the Leafblower list from 5th without mentioning that everyone at the time also thought it was bs and should be nerfed...
Geemoney wrote: I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
That's surprising, I've run 90 boyz many times (T4 variety) and I haven't met too many armies that had the sheer volume of fire to wipe out 90 Boyz in two turns. Then 8th gave us Unstoppable Green Tide
Except it wasn't a leafblower list, not even close. Just a regular guard lists with two infantry battalions, a few LR demolishers, basilisks, helhounds and a valkyrie or two. The tailoring was limited to putting flamers everywhere they could. You don't need a leafblower when every large pie plate hit 13 models.
But good job telling everyone how you hate the game for over a decade, I applaud your dedication. A lesser person would just have left the game.
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The Red Hobbit wrote: That's surprising, I've run 90 boyz many times (T4 variety) and I haven't met too many armies that had the sheer volume of fire to wipe out 90 Boyz in two turns. Then 8th gave us Unstoppable Green Tide
Most armies built from two marine starter boxes of your choice have no troubles doing that.
Jidmah wrote: Except it wasn't a leafblower list, not even close. Just a regular guard lists with two infantry battalions, a few LR demolishers, basilisks, helhounds and a valkyrie or two. The tailoring was limited to putting flamers everywhere they could. You don't need a leafblower when every large pie plate hit 13 models.
But good job telling everyone how you hate the game for over a decade, I applaud your dedication. A lesser person would just have left the game.
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The Red Hobbit wrote: That's surprising, I've run 90 boyz many times (T4 variety) and I haven't met too many armies that had the sheer volume of fire to wipe out 90 Boyz in two turns. Then 8th gave us Unstoppable Green Tide
Most armies built from two marine starter boxes of your choice have no troubles doing that.
20x Infiltrators, 2x phobos lieutenants, 2x impulsors (we'll throw stubbers and the extra stubber thingy on it to make it close to 1250pts), 2x suppressor squads, 2x eliminator squads.
Assuming theyre all in the lieutenant aura, that list (which is almost entirely anti-infantry, basically the only thing that's useful at all against heavier targets is the 2x suppressor squads) can take down 31 boyz/turn. 279pts/turn at 9ppm boyz?
22% points return seems..relatively reasonable to me.
Thanks for doing the math! So about 62 Boyz in two turns on average for an entire army geared toward anti-infantry. Seems relatively reasonable to me as well.
The Red Hobbit wrote: Thanks for doing the math! So about 62 Boyz in two turns on average for an entire army geared toward anti-infantry. Seems relatively reasonable to me as well.
it is worth noting that:
-this is without doctrines (though that would only matter slightly on the infiltrators only and only on turn 2, as everything else already has AP of at least -1)
-this is without chapter tactics, though most marine chapter traits that get used arent direct damage to bolter weapons
-this is with the lieutenant aura on all core models
-90 ork boyz is only about 850pts, if you were talking about how long it would take this 1250pts to destroy 1250pts of just Boyz and Boyz Accessories (say, a cheap foot warboss and weirdboy, who we'd assume the eliminators would be shooting at) if the boyz just stood in the open and didnt do anything, youd be looking at about a turn 4 table roughly. Removng the eliminators and saying that morale would make up for the loss of the extra ~3 boyz (the eliminators would be killing the HQs in about 3 turns, 2 for the warboss) youd lose about a 30-block of boyz per turn and you'd have ~120 boyz plus the two barebones HQs.
-yes I understand this is a somewhat silly example, I'm mostly just using it to disprove the slightly hyperbolic/silly claim that this is something that any given equivalent points value could do to any other given equivalent points value.
-some other examples of this which are technically accurate are reliant on both the major damage buffs GW put forward recently and also do not have nearly the kind of mobility+range in order to make the exact scenario occur. A space marine list that has 3 max size eradicator squads, 3 max size multi-melta devastator squads, and 9 multi-melta attack bikes can indeed table a 2000pt knight list in one turn, but is somewhat limited by the fact that they have to actually get all those guns within 12" with mostly footslogging models against the knights, who not only have plenty of weapons capable of killing those models quite efficiently but need to move into range so that the marines can get all their models within melta range.
The ork buggy + flyer list has no such problems, as basically all the weapons are on highly mobile platforms, which also have usually 24" range for full effectiveness, and can move and shoot without suffering any penalty. A purely theoretical "all multi-melta attack bikes, all the time" list (IIRC the multi-melta attack bike is basically the most cost efficient self-delivering melta platform) only destroys 1350pts of regular knights in one turn with assumed perfect range positioning and no attempts at any defensive abilities by the knights.
Nice misdirection with the MM list, which you know damn well will get slaughtered by so many other lists.
So what are we talking here...
3x3 Ravenwing MM Attack Bikes (may as well pick the best ones since Sallies only get good turn 2 and 3) 540pts
3 Dev sqds over 2 drop pods (have to get in range) 665
Can't get too many Eradicators now, because points...plus we need 2 HQs here somehow.
The issue with the Ork list was that it's damned good against a lot of different opponents, not skewed to kill just one type.
Now, with the plane change and buggy change, we're still going to see good freebooterz lists, just not crazy ones. However, I don't like the 1 unit restriction and would prefer they just removed squadrons from buggies, period. Then the rule of 3 would simply just get the effect needed without hamstringing the lists with coherency on tiny tables with lots of terrain.
bullyboy wrote: Nice misdirection with the MM list, which you know damn well will get slaughtered by so many other lists.
So what are we talking here...
3x3 Ravenwing MM Attack Bikes (may as well pick the best ones since Sallies only get good turn 2 and 3) 540pts
3 Dev sqds over 2 drop pods (have to get in range) 665
Can't get too many Eradicators now, because points...plus we need 2 HQs here somehow.
The issue with the Ork list was that it's damned good against a lot of different opponents, not skewed to kill just one type.
Now, with the plane change and buggy change, we're still going to see good freebooterz lists, just not crazy ones. However, I don't like the 1 unit restriction and would prefer they just removed squadrons from buggies, period. Then the rule of 3 would simply just get the effect needed without hamstringing the lists with coherency on tiny tables with lots of terrain.
"misdirection?"
I'm literally pointing out that if you were to actually take what is commonly considered to be a highly effective mobile multi-melta platform (an attack bike) and put it up against an all-vehicle skew list (knights, since that was the example used) you actually do not achieve the same 90% tabled in one turn result we saw here.
If anything, I'm steelmanning - using a purely theoretical, 2000-pts-of-literally-just-mm-bikes list that is actually not possible to field, and handwaving that you can actually get them all within melta range of their targets with perfect positioning.
being able to destroy 1350pts of models in a single turn is, in my opinion, still way too high, but I think it pretty definitively disproves the idea that "any list could do this" that was put forth. and it is worth noting here that the multi-melta is very much an extreme end example. If you take for instance a theoretical 2000pts list of all drukhari triple dark lance ravagers (a unit that I think many would contend is at the very least an above-average anti-tank unit that can easily reach across the board and hit whatever target it wants) then you actually only destroy 900pts of knights, even further from the 90% destruction in one turn scenario.
JUST skewing your list into all 'anti-one thing' and JUST putting an opposing list skewed into all that thing does not universally result in that single turn destruction across the board.
The Red Hobbit wrote: Thanks for doing the math! So about 62 Boyz in two turns on average for an entire army geared toward anti-infantry. Seems relatively reasonable to me as well.
it is worth noting that:
-this is without doctrines (though that would only matter slightly on the infiltrators only and only on turn 2, as everything else already has AP of at least -1)
-this is without chapter tactics, though most marine chapter traits that get used arent direct damage to bolter weapons
-this is with the lieutenant aura on all core models
-90 ork boyz is only about 850pts, if you were talking about how long it would take this 1250pts to destroy 1250pts of just Boyz and Boyz Accessories (say, a cheap foot warboss and weirdboy, who we'd assume the eliminators would be shooting at) if the boyz just stood in the open and didnt do anything, youd be looking at about a turn 4 table roughly. Removng the eliminators and saying that morale would make up for the loss of the extra ~3 boyz (the eliminators would be killing the HQs in about 3 turns, 2 for the warboss) youd lose about a 30-block of boyz per turn and you'd have ~120 boyz plus the two barebones HQs.
-yes I understand this is a somewhat silly example, I'm mostly just using it to disprove the slightly hyperbolic/silly claim that this is something that any given equivalent points value could do to any other given equivalent points value.
-some other examples of this which are technically accurate are reliant on both the major damage buffs GW put forward recently and also do not have nearly the kind of mobility+range in order to make the exact scenario occur. A space marine list that has 3 max size eradicator squads, 3 max size multi-melta devastator squads, and 9 multi-melta attack bikes can indeed table a 2000pt knight list in one turn, but is somewhat limited by the fact that they have to actually get all those guns within 12" with mostly footslogging models against the knights, who not only have plenty of weapons capable of killing those models quite efficiently but need to move into range so that the marines can get all their models within melta range.
- you hand-waved super doctrines, stratagems, warlord traits, relics and chapter tactics. From first hand experience I can tell you that at least Iron Hands, Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, Death Watch, Ultra Marines and many successor chapters all get some non-trivial help to their rank and file shooting during turn one and two, and that lieutenant should totally have target priority as warlord trait. - Morale casualties are a very significant part of the casualties you deal to orks especially in blocks of 30. If your number are correct and the marine player somewhat spreads damage intelligently, you are sweeping about 18 additional casualties under the rug, suddenly killing 80 out 90 boyz in two turns, painting a completely different picture. - No matter how you cut it, the ork boyz+HQs would most likely clock in at ~1000 points to be legally running 90 boyz, being an equivalent opponent for two combat patrols. - the list is not "geared towards killing boyz" but instead consists of mostly of units that are fairly inefficient at killing boyz. It still manages to kill two thirds of them with snipers, utility area control units and a dedicated transport uniformly considered to be bad. - I honestly didn't even know this terrible box existed. When I was talking about "any two starter sets" I was mostly thinking about picking two out of indomitus, dark imperium, the BA or DA combat patrol or the BT box. Not only are those the things you actually see on the tabletop, they also vastly more powerful and better at killing boyz. - you didn't show your math. The only reason for me to believe you is that you in specific usually aren't a person that pulls numbers out of their ass, but you still could have made mistakes. - In 5th edition it was rather unreasonable to expect to kill 90 boyz with ~1k points of marines over the course of a game.
In summary, with all those flaws in your argumentation, you have no right to call the argument silly or hyperbolic.
bullyboy wrote: Nice misdirection with the MM list, which you know damn well will get slaughtered by so many other lists.
So what are we talking here...
3x3 Ravenwing MM Attack Bikes (may as well pick the best ones since Sallies only get good turn 2 and 3) 540pts
3 Dev sqds over 2 drop pods (have to get in range) 665
Can't get too many Eradicators now, because points...plus we need 2 HQs here somehow.
The issue with the Ork list was that it's damned good against a lot of different opponents, not skewed to kill just one type.
Now, with the plane change and buggy change, we're still going to see good freebooterz lists, just not crazy ones. However, I don't like the 1 unit restriction and would prefer they just removed squadrons from buggies, period. Then the rule of 3 would simply just get the effect needed without hamstringing the lists with coherency on tiny tables with lots of terrain.
"misdirection?"
I'm literally pointing out that if you were to actually take what is commonly considered to be a highly effective mobile multi-melta platform (an attack bike) and put it up against an all-vehicle skew list (knights, since that was the example used) you actually do not achieve the same 90% tabled in one turn result we saw here.
If anything, I'm steelmanning - using a purely theoretical, 2000-pts-of-literally-just-mm-bikes list that is actually not possible to field, and handwaving that you can actually get them all within melta range of their targets with perfect positioning.
being able to destroy 1350pts of models in a single turn is, in my opinion, still way too high, but I think it pretty definitively disproves the idea that "any list could do this" that was put forth. and it is worth noting here that the multi-melta is very much an extreme end example. If you take for instance a theoretical 2000pts list of all drukhari triple dark lance ravagers (a unit that I think many would contend is at the very least an above-average anti-tank unit that can easily reach across the board and hit whatever target it wants) then you actually only destroy 900pts of knights, even further from the 90% destruction in one turn scenario.
JUST skewing your list into all 'anti-one thing' and JUST putting an opposing list skewed into all that thing does not universally result in that single turn destruction across the board.
Scotsman, sorry, I posted my response after Jidmah...probably should have quoted him. My stance is with yours above.
I've had a couple games vs my friend's freebooterz list and it was only a game when I went first. Even though my most game was only 1313pts (some weird halloween tournament) I still had 3 MM Attack bikes (with full rerolls from sammael and Talon master RR 1s to wound), 5 overcharged, weapons of the dark age, RR 1s to hit and wound black knights, the talon master, sammael, a RW land speeder vengeance (also overcharging) and a cyclone missile launcher shoot at his buggies first turn. With that impressive firepower I was able to kill 2 buggies, kill his squigosaur warboss, and put another buggy down to 2 or 3 wounds. Even so, the game was very tight and went all the way to the final round. If he had gone first, never would have been a game.
Crazy thing is, his list is not invalidated by the new FAQ, he just has to group a couple buggies together.
Don't worry GW will probably increase the cost of all the buggies by 50%. They never nerf orks half way.
My main contention is that if you bring a list to a tournament and you get tabled quickly; that is on you. Part of playing 40k and being an adult is taking responsibility for your decisions. That is especially true for the top 40k players.
A utopia where every possible 40k list is competitive with every other possible list is just not realistic.
BTW as I side note, I have a friend who plays a dark angels list that consistently beats the freebooter buggy list.
The freebooterz list is sort of an all or nothing. When you table someone, they’re smashed. When you don’t, you plink off. This is why I’m confused Admech and drukhari didn’t have their raiders or whatever limited because they more reliably tabled you, it just took em a turn or two more.
Orks just did it in a scarier looking way.
It's not an issue directly with the freebooters buggy list, and given the recent changes to aircraft limits and only 1 of each buggy type any inclination of that is likely moot.
16 players at socal ran freebooters, 1 made it to top 8. They played against DE in 3 games a favorable match up because of how the two lists skew in the meta.
Freebooter buggies loses pretty bad against DW terminator skew lists, and large custodes unit skew lists- also knights.
There are other army builds that will remove most of an opponents army when their opponent yolos and yeets their entire army into firing range as their turn 1 move.
Lethality is a problem, and that problem can be excabarated by skew lists against it's favorable skew list match up, and player agency.
If you want less lethal games there are three main paths to that.
Alternative activation
Make everything tougher
Reduce the number of units which start on the table (AoS meeting engagement style)
blaktoof wrote: It's not an issue directly with the freebooters buggy list, and given the recent changes to aircraft limits and only 1 of each buggy type any inclination of that is likely moot.
16 players at socal ran freebooters, 1 made it to top 8. They played against DE in 3 games a favorable match up because of how the two lists skew in the meta.
Freebooter buggies loses pretty bad against DW terminator skew lists, and large custodes unit skew lists- also knights.
There are other army builds that will remove most of an opponents army when their opponent yolos and yeets their entire army into firing range as their turn 1 move.
Lethality is a problem, and that problem can be excabarated by skew lists against it's favorable skew list match up, and player agency.
If you want less lethal games there are three main paths to that.
Alternative activation
Make everything tougher
Reduce the number of units which start on the table (AoS meeting engagement style)
You forgot option 4. Make things less lethal.
Less shots/attacks, less AP, less buffs.
A single model doesn't need 20+ shots
A character doesn't need 10+ attacks.
ect.
I'd be pretty happy if AP across the board dropped by 1, but I'm also of the opinion that Armor Saves should matter and Invul proliferation is a bad thing.
You forgot option 4. Make things less lethal.
Less shots/attacks, less AP, less buffs.
A single model doesn't need 20+ shots
A character doesn't need 10+ attacks.
ect.
That's my biggest whish about 40k, but unfortunately it can't happen without a completely re-write of all the existing codexes, which means getting back to an index era. I don't think it will ever happen.
The scrapjet buggy fires up to 32 shots during the speedwaaagh, 29 on average. The dakkajet went from 9 re-rollable shots (or 12 during the single waaagh turn) in 7th to 36 base or 42 during the speedwaaagh in 9th, with access to modifiers. Those are massive improvements for these units, next codex what will we get, a plane firing 70 shots and a buggy firing 50?
Geemoney wrote: I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
We should probably just buff boyz.
And this is how you get hyper-lethality, because players don't like their stuff being nerfed. The weak stuff gets buffed to equal the strongest outliers, over and over.
I'm consistently reminded of a quote from an EVE Online developer about how if balacing was left to players, every ship would end up with millions of hit points and 99% resistance to everything after a couple of cycles.
Geemoney wrote: I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
We should probably just buff boyz.
And this is how you get hyper-lethality, because players don't like their stuff being nerfed. The weak stuff gets buffed to equal the strongest outliers, over and over.
I'm consistently reminded of a quote from an EVE Online developer about how if balacing was left to players, every ship would end up with millions of hit points and 99% resistance to everything after a couple of cycles.
The reality is that boys did get buffed this edition...
I would wait for a couple of months of results after this dataslate.
My opinion is that lethality has been decreased significantly.
Admech losing a couple of planes of average is surely a huge change.
On Drukhari's side the lethality was hit twice.
First with point increases and then with the durability builds being buffed.
Orks too lost on average a lot of lethality.
The limitations to flyers and buggies surely will do a lot, but the other huge change is the AoR. That AoR turns lethality into durability. So again, those lists will hurt a lot less and survive a lot more.
My current biggest fear for the health of the game are Tyranids.
The reality is that boys did get buffed this edition...
Well no, the reality is they got a buff on two stats (T and AP for choppa or number of shots for shoota, with the latter that can actually be seen as a nerf since the weapon lost the assault trait as well) but in the meantime they lost a plethora of buffs or synergies with other units as well. Now they have worse morale, worse KFF support, they lost access to +1A due to their number, they can't respawn through stratagem, they're 1ppm more expensive, they lost tankbusta (melta) bombs which were also free, Goffs ones are S5 only if they charge, Evil Sunz ones lost +1 to charges, etc...
Geemoney wrote: I have been on both sides of turn 1-2 tabling. It is a 40k issue NOT an ork buggy issue.
If I put 90 boyz on the table I guarantee I will lose games in the first two turns. Should we nerf everybody else because boy heavy lists get tabled too fast??
We should probably just buff boyz.
And this is how you get hyper-lethality, because players don't like their stuff being nerfed. The weak stuff gets buffed to equal the strongest outliers, over and over.
I'm consistently reminded of a quote from an EVE Online developer about how if balacing was left to players, every ship would end up with millions of hit points and 99% resistance to everything after a couple of cycles.
You could just buff durability. Boyz actually being able to run across the board without half of your army dying would be nice for a change.
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Geemoney wrote: The reality is that boys did get buffed this edition...
At least not in this reality. They got +1 toughness, sometimes don't count as under half strength, slugga boyz got an extra point in AP and goff no longer need to pay 1 CP per mob, but where hit with a massive sledge hammer of nerfs otherwise. They lost every single one of their stratagems, lost an attack, take casualties from morale like no other unit in the game and went up by 10-30 points, shoota boyz lost the ability to advance and shoot. In addition all their support characters got nerfed - Thrakka got more expensive, lost his extra attack aura and can't be healed anymore. KFF was reduced to 6++. Weird boyz can't cast da jump reliably anymore and lose their second cast when enough boyz die. Pain boyz got more expensive, lost access to killsaws, lost its stratagem and have to pay points for their grot orderly that does less.
So no, they didn't get buffed, at all. In fact, outside of trukk boyz, they are seen as a liability and people rather pay 3CP for extra detachments than bring boyz.
Spoletta wrote: I would wait for a couple of months of results after this dataslate.
My opinion is that lethality has been decreased significantly.
Admech losing a couple of planes of average is surely a huge change.
On Drukhari's side the lethality was hit twice.
First with point increases and then with the durability builds being buffed.
Orks too lost on average a lot of lethality.
The limitations to flyers and buggies surely will do a lot, but the other huge change is the AoR. That AoR turns lethality into durability. So again, those lists will hurt a lot less and survive a lot more.
My current biggest fear for the health of the game are Tyranids.
Yep, share your fears about nids, so fingers crossed for a HG nerf very soon, as well as the devil gaunt shower of devourer bullets. Fix these two issues and the codex falls in line perfectly IMHO, so it should not require that much brainpower for GW. The buggy treatment for HG would be perfect, until the next codex lands, then they can lift the buggy treatment when the unit is no longer OP thanks to the new codex changing the datasheet. As an ork player, I wouldn't wish the buggy treatment for anyone with a 9th ed codex, but the nid 8th ed codex won't be used for very longer yet, so not much harm done really.
GK and druka seem very, very strong, perhaps even stronger than nids, but less "feel bad" probably.
Spoletta wrote: I would wait for a couple of months of results after this dataslate.
My opinion is that lethality has been decreased significantly.
Admech losing a couple of planes of average is surely a huge change.
On Drukhari's side the lethality was hit twice.
First with point increases and then with the durability builds being buffed.
Orks too lost on average a lot of lethality.
The limitations to flyers and buggies surely will do a lot, but the other huge change is the AoR. That AoR turns lethality into durability. So again, those lists will hurt a lot less and survive a lot more.
My current biggest fear for the health of the game are Tyranids.
Yep, share your fears about nids, so fingers crossed for a HG nerf very soon, as well as the devil gaunt shower of devourer bullets. Fix these two issues and the codex falls in line perfectly IMHO, so it should not require that much brainpower for GW. The buggy treatment for HG would be perfect, until the next codex lands, then they can lift the buggy treatment when the unit is no longer OP thanks to the new codex changing the datasheet. As an ork player, I wouldn't wish the buggy treatment for anyone with a 9th ed codex, but the nid 8th ed codex won't be used for very longer yet, so not much harm done really.
GK and druka seem very, very strong, perhaps even stronger than nids, but less "feel bad" probably.
Depends on how GW fixes HG and devilgants. Because if fix means nerf to oblivion, then Nids fall in line alright... probably 20th in line. That is a baddddd codex without the BS crutches. And I agree, HG and devilgants should maybe be nerfed (though I think everybody is overreacting to Mani's 18 HG list; I like John Lennon's list better and it's way less degenerate), but I sure don't want Nids to immediately fall back in the dumpster.
Mani is at least good for highlighting the hottest cheese in the building on any given week. If it's broken, and spammable, he's going to run three full units of it (or more if possible).
That's similar to how AOS does it and I love it(also loving greatly reduced rerolls. Now if stacking of saves was reduced beyond post all modifiers(getting hit by -3 should count for something more than hitting with no rend...) would be even better.
The Red Hobbit wrote: Thanks for doing the math! So about 62 Boyz in two turns on average for an entire army geared toward anti-infantry. Seems relatively reasonable to me as well.
it is worth noting that:
-this is without doctrines (though that would only matter slightly on the infiltrators only and only on turn 2, as everything else already has AP of at least -1)
-this is without chapter tactics, though most marine chapter traits that get used arent direct damage to bolter weapons
-this is with the lieutenant aura on all core models
-90 ork boyz is only about 850pts, if you were talking about how long it would take this 1250pts to destroy 1250pts of just Boyz and Boyz Accessories (say, a cheap foot warboss and weirdboy, who we'd assume the eliminators would be shooting at) if the boyz just stood in the open and didnt do anything, youd be looking at about a turn 4 table roughly. Removng the eliminators and saying that morale would make up for the loss of the extra ~3 boyz (the eliminators would be killing the HQs in about 3 turns, 2 for the warboss) youd lose about a 30-block of boyz per turn and you'd have ~120 boyz plus the two barebones HQs.
-yes I understand this is a somewhat silly example, I'm mostly just using it to disprove the slightly hyperbolic/silly claim that this is something that any given equivalent points value could do to any other given equivalent points value.
-some other examples of this which are technically accurate are reliant on both the major damage buffs GW put forward recently and also do not have nearly the kind of mobility+range in order to make the exact scenario occur. A space marine list that has 3 max size eradicator squads, 3 max size multi-melta devastator squads, and 9 multi-melta attack bikes can indeed table a 2000pt knight list in one turn, but is somewhat limited by the fact that they have to actually get all those guns within 12" with mostly footslogging models against the knights, who not only have plenty of weapons capable of killing those models quite efficiently but need to move into range so that the marines can get all their models within melta range.
- you hand-waved super doctrines, stratagems, warlord traits, relics and chapter tactics. From first hand experience I can tell you that at least Iron Hands, Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, Death Watch, Ultra Marines and many successor chapters all get some non-trivial help to their rank and file shooting during turn one and two, and that lieutenant should totally have target priority as warlord trait.
- Morale casualties are a very significant part of the casualties you deal to orks especially in blocks of 30. If your number are correct and the marine player somewhat spreads damage intelligently, you are sweeping about 18 additional casualties under the rug, suddenly killing 80 out 90 boyz in two turns, painting a completely different picture.
- No matter how you cut it, the ork boyz+HQs would most likely clock in at ~1000 points to be legally running 90 boyz, being an equivalent opponent for two combat patrols.
- the list is not "geared towards killing boyz" but instead consists of mostly of units that are fairly inefficient at killing boyz. It still manages to kill two thirds of them with snipers, utility area control units and a dedicated transport uniformly considered to be bad.
- I honestly didn't even know this terrible box existed. When I was talking about "any two starter sets" I was mostly thinking about picking two out of indomitus, dark imperium, the BA or DA combat patrol or the BT box. Not only are those the things you actually see on the tabletop, they also vastly more powerful and better at killing boyz.
- you didn't show your math. The only reason for me to believe you is that you in specific usually aren't a person that pulls numbers out of their ass, but you still could have made mistakes.
- In 5th edition it was rather unreasonable to expect to kill 90 boyz with ~1k points of marines over the course of a game.
In summary, with all those flaws in your argumentation, you have no right to call the argument silly or hyperbolic.
Yeah, I did, I figured since we were going with "2 starter boxes can easily table 90 boyz" we were taking a fairly casual example. I explained exactly why I ignored doctrines (because it was kind of trivial as most things were already AP-1. Similarly, most super-doctrines dont really matter much at all for anti-boyz firepower. You might have a few extra hits from IH RR1s with Heavy weapons, or you might have one unit out of the lieutenant auras from DW that gets RR1s to wound. But, weirdly, when the goalposts of this discussion were initially set up it seemed like a fairly casual scenario you were trying to create - like any old idiot could go out and pick up 2 space marine starter boxes (sorry for using Start Collecting: Space Marines for that lol, I guess that was a bad pick? Hahah silly me picking their SC box...) and casually table that many orks without trying very hard.
Honestly I'd think youd be MORE likely to call bs on me if I picked, say, one of the boxes like the Black Templars box that involves a lot of melee units, because in those instances you dont have a whole army of marines just shooting away at the orks with no orks getting to fight back.
But hey, no, lets look at one of the other ones you said. I'll choose randomly, I'll literally roll a D6 to pick between them. I got a 4, so thats the DA combat patrol, lets see what that is.
2 primaris chaplains, 10 intercessors, 2 redemptor dreadnoughts, and 6 in...feth. the flying ones. This time I will CAREFULLY, PAINSTAKINGLY include all bonuses from them being dark angels, I will look up what the feth a chaplain does so if he can buff up shooting with an ability he gets to choose I'll include that, and I will include some stratagems, and I will try to include morale, but I'm not just going to be playing my orks as complete and total bullet sponges then either, im going to try and play a semi-sensible green tide.
However - and I hope this is a fair concession here from you that you'll respect: if we're assuming this Dark Angels player is semi-competent at all, making use of all the features of his army, I think its fair to assume that he'd build at LEAST half of his units in the tournament competitive configurations - which for the dreadnoughts and the jetpack dudes IS the plasma configuration. He's playing dark angels, he's got the special dark angels plasma stratagem, plasma redemptors are literally in every competitive marine list, I think thats fair if we're talking a general TAC scenario. I'm gonna build the intercessors as a 10-man squad with bolt rifles (as dark angels want to stand still and get their bonus thing), no upgrades on the sgt, the jetpacks as plasma, one dread as plasma and one dread as dakka.
So lets go thru the bonus extras here:
Warlord Trait: I'm reading through the dark angels and basic space marine warlord traits and i'm sorry - im not seeing one that would actually improve the DA's firepower vs ork boyz. Storm of Fire does AP, which we dont need, the doctrine swapping one from dark angels doesnt seem to do anything until turn 3...I think any logical DA player vs orks would actually go for the '+1S on the charge" aura trait. So I'm going to assume that.
Relic: I'm not seeing a relic that gives an aura of any kind that would increase firepower in either the DA or the standard relic list, there is a DA one that gives a chaplain a +1A prayer, so I'll do that.
Chapter Tactic: We're going to give Grim Resolve to anything that would reasonably be within range without moving, which is gonna be anything with greater than 24" range turn 1 and then everything turn 2+.
Chaplain bs: We're going to give one of them the +1 to hit and one of them the +1 to wound prayers. That seems to be the best for shooting.
So the list setup is:
Patrol
2 primaris chaplains
10 intercessors with bolt rifles
1 redemptor with HOGC and OGC
1 redemptor with MPI and OGC
6 inceptors with plasma
so thats 1030.
1030 points of Boyz with Minimal Support Units:
Patrol - we'll do Evil Sunz. My orks are Evil Sunz and I know their gak without having to look it up
Warboss with the Killa Klaw, Brutal But Kunnin
90 boyz
and since I cant fit in any more boyz squads without going over 1030 lets say a KFF mek. I dont want to have to similate "Da jumps" - that gets us to 995 and lets say the nobz all get power klaws or whatever, 90 boyz.
BR1: Chaplain uses the litany strat to automatically get the +1 to wound on the intercessors who are gonna shoot twice and are gonna get +1 to hit from Dark Angels. Other chaplain rolls for the litany on the HOGC dread whos gonna move to get his gak into range, ill increase his hit rolls by "2/3" to simulate the chance of failure. Plasma guys have to move to get in range, plasma redemptor wants the OGC to be in range so also moves slightly, doesnt get resolve.
that firepower burning 4cp (double shoot and chaplain autopass) kills 17x2 boyz, we'll split it evenly to do morale. Morale on squad 1 our ork player autopasses, morale on squad 2 he takes, mob rule means no attrition mods, modifying casualties by .833 because of the 1/6 chance the morale test is passed I get 2.4 casualties from morale on average on the 13 remaining boyz from the squad, but ill round up and say 10 left. so we have killed 27 boyz.
Orks turn: there is a squad within 18" (plasceptors) but we'll say the marine player positioned correctly to keep the 30-block he wasnt targeting out of charge range, but we are gonna call the waaagh to get the 10 and 13 in if we can. average movement is 10.5", average charge with a reroll is approximately 8, I think its a bit more than 8 and we do need a 7 to get in on the dice. I'll randomly pick between warboss, 10 boyz, and 13 boyz to fail the charge.
I got 13 boyz fails the charge. 10 boyz and warboss are still in. The BBK/Klaw boss and 10 boyz all on the waaagh do kill the inceptors on the charge - warboss kills 5 himself, so I wont bother doing a combat interrupt for them.
BR2: We've got the boss and 10 boyz closer, so our marine player is gonna focus on taking them out. we'll assume all stand still, same stratagems. The HOGC dread and the auxiliary weapons from the second dread can take out the 10 boyz together with average rolls, and the plasma dread will overcharge his plasma into the boss, which gets an average of just about exactly 1 unsaved wound for 3 damage. The warboss with 3 wounds remaining is a credible threat and our marine player doesnt want the dreads to get 'orks is never beaten'd so rather than charge in melee he'll try to kill using one round of the ints shooting, which does 4 wounds and kills him on average rolls. Second round of int shooting takes out 7/30 of the big boyz squad. The morale casualties again modified by .833 for the chance to autopass, average out to 4. 11/30 gone from squad 3.
our Boyz squads started out 24" from the dreads and 30" from the ints and characters, and moved 10.5 last turn, so now are looking at 6" charge rolls to get in with a reroll. We'll give them each the charge roll, KFF mek advances to keep squads in aura, and we'll represent the non-ideal circumstances by saying each squad charges 1 dread instead of 2 on 1 dreadnought.
the 17 boyz on the waagh can deal an average of 8.5 wounds normally to one redemptor, so we'll use the tankbusta bomb stratagem and basically guarantee it lands with an extra CP to take it out. Random roll says that was the plasma dreadnought. We have used...let me see. We have used all our CP for the dark angels so the other dread does not interrupt, 13 waaaghing boyz deal 6.72 to the other redemptor we'll round up to 7.
OK.
It's BR3 now, marines' turn, we've got the firepower and punch from the intercessors even without the double shooting to shoot+charge in to the 17 boyz and pretty much whack them down to a couple of models, the redemptor is probably gonna sort out the remaining boyz by hook or by crook.
My estimate of "basically gone by turn 3" still seems fairly reasonable to me.
Gir Spirit Bane wrote: Fix a lot of jank in 40k? A unit can only benefit from 1 strat or aura at a time in a phase.
Stop this multi layering death ball units and force choice of who gets what buff at the time rather than just all of them.
Necrons are a good example, powerful single unit buffs! 6" aura of reroll 1's is a step back.
TBH, I'm getting so sick and tired of layered strats, auras etc. I'd go one step further and make every single strat, possibly barring the re-roll strat, a once per game thing, on top of your suggestion about preventing layered buffs.
Decisions on whether to use strats are too binary, IMO. For most of the powerful ones it's literally a question of "do I have enough CPs?" If there were a real opportunity cost to using them we might see an increase in impactful decisions as players need to worry about going all-in on strats too early. Of course, we still need to reduce overall lethality otherwise the correct play is to front-load your stratagem use into turn 1 to go for the alpha strike and I think removing stacking buffs probably helps with that.
You could almost make it so you have a deck of strats you bring to a game, say maybe 10 max. You can also only use 2 per turn so you have to manage the ones you have throughout the game, plus a one time use only for each strat. Perhaps these would not include the generic ones in the rulebook so you could repeat these ones but still limits you to 2 strats per turn (not battle round).
The thing is, that is simply a house rule situation. Comp players want access to everything as it is the complexity and orchestration of it all that they want to achieve their goals.
edit: The deck would also be visible in the list submission so players no what strats are available to avoid possible "gotcha" moments.
bullyboy wrote: You could almost make it so you have a deck of strats you bring to a game, say maybe 10 max. You can also only use 2 per turn so you have to manage the ones you have throughout the game, plus a one time use only for each strat. Perhaps these would not include the generic ones in the rulebook so you could repeat these ones but still limits you to 2 strats per turn (not battle round).
The thing is, that is simply a house rule situation. Comp players want access to everything as it is the complexity and orchestration of it all that they want to achieve their goals.
edit: The deck would also be visible in the list submission so players no what strats are available to avoid possible "gotcha" moments.
Honestly, IMO: burn it down. replace it with the way AOS does Command Abilities, which is far more sane, far more approachable, and just feels way way better.
Any strats that are really 100% critical to the function of a unit? Add it in as a once-per-game datasheet ability.
Any strats that are really critical to the identity of a faction? put them onto Commander-type HQs as datasheet command abilities, and remove passive auras.
So, for example, for Drukhari you might have Lightning Reactions on a Succubus, Never Still on an archon, and Butcher's Craft on a Haemonculus, with Screaming Jets as a once per game on Raiders, Eviscerating Flyby as a once per game on Reaver jetbikes (As IIRC they were the ones originally that had that ability on their datasheet and Hellions seem strong enough without it) and hell - maybe Lurk in the Shadows as a once per game on Kabalite Warriors to enable them to sort of semi-competently play as footslogging infantry rather than just always being mounted. Why not.
Then youve just got to rework the core stratagems to be...actually usable, and badabing badaboom you got yourself a better system.
My personal favorites from that thread was to limit the number of Strategems you can take with you to a match and pre-selecting them before a match. For instance, you can only pick three Strategems to use in your game and you must select them before the match starts at the same time you pick Secondaries.
My personal favorites from that thread was to limit the number of Strategems you can take with you to a match and pre-selecting them before a match. For instance, you can only pick three Strategems to use in your game and you must select them before the match starts at the same time you pick Secondaries.
I like this idea but dislike the approach. You will just see the same strats over and over.
It would be better if your CP allowed you to pick that many CP worth of starts at the start of a match. You will see some key strats repeated but then secondary ones with more variety.
It also scales with battle size and adds a other layer into taking +CP characters and spending CP on detachments etc during list creation.
First of all, thanks for doing that, scotsman. It really honors you to put all that work into it.
the_scotsman wrote: But, weirdly, when the goalposts of this discussion were initially set up it seemed like a fairly casual scenario you were trying to create - like any old idiot could go out and pick up 2 space marine starter boxes (sorry for using Start Collecting: Space Marines for that lol, I guess that was a bad pick? Hahah silly me picking their SC box...) and casually table that many orks without trying very hard.
Actually, it's not a scenario I was pulling out of thin air - it's the reality how marine players start the game these days or how semi-competitive players branch into marines. They get a box set simply because of the hype, subscribed to the conquest magazine, bought a set for their army that was half marines or found a deal on ebay. After their first few games, they add one of the combat patrols to it because it's the cheapest way to get a "real" army and buy a unit they like or two. I could point to at least five players who started like this.
However - and I hope this is a fair concession here from you that you'll respect: if we're assuming this Dark Angels player is semi-competent at all, making use of all the features of his army, I think its fair to assume that he'd build at LEAST half of his units in the tournament competitive configurations - which for the dreadnoughts and the jetpack dudes IS the plasma configuration. He's playing dark angels, he's got the special dark angels plasma stratagem, plasma redemptors are literally in every competitive marine list, I think thats fair if we're talking a general TAC scenario. I'm gonna build the intercessors as a 10-man squad with bolt rifles (as dark angels want to stand still and get their bonus thing), no upgrades on the sgt, the jetpacks as plasma, one dread as plasma and one dread as dakka.
Sure. ETB inceptors and redemptors are super common, but I don't think that will make a big difference. The intercessors tend to be rapid fire and rarely assault though, which makes quite the difference in this case. Stalker intercessors have fallen out of favor ever since DG got their codex and I presume that ramshackle has furthered that trend for TAC lists. Personally, I haven't seen the heavy variant since DA got their supplement.
In general, that army is a really good example, since I actually face one very similar to that regularly when playing crusade. Only difference is that they run an interrogator chaplain, a lieutenant and a storm speed instead of one dread.
I'm not going to pick apart everything in detail - while there are some odd things (mek would be a MA mek, chaplains would have a melee relic), it's close enough to real armies facing each other, so let's just run with it.
BR1: Chaplain uses the litany strat to automatically get the +1 to wound on the intercessors who are gonna shoot twice and are gonna get +1 to hit from Dark Angels. Other chaplain rolls for the litany on the HOGC dread whos gonna move to get his gak into range, ill increase his hit rolls by "2/3" to simulate the chance of failure. Plasma guys have to move to get in range, plasma redemptor wants the OGC to be in range so also moves slightly, doesnt get resolve.
that firepower burning 4cp (double shoot and chaplain autopass) kills 17x2 boyz, we'll split it evenly to do morale. Morale on squad 1 our ork player autopasses, morale on squad 2 he takes, mob rule means no attrition mods, modifying casualties by .833 because of the 1/6 chance the morale test is passed I get 2.4 casualties from morale on average on the 13 remaining boyz from the squad, but ill round up and say 10 left. so we have killed 27 boyz.
Personally, I wouldn't use the liturgy stratagem as you can just hope for one or the other chaplain to succeed, but it makes the math easier, so fine.
If you drop the "you are stationary" stratagem (2CP) on rapid fire intercessors as well as the shoot twice and +1 to wound, they already kill 13.88 boyz by themselves.
6 plasma inceptors with no buffs whatsoever shoot six times each thanks to blast and will kill another 13.33 boyz.
assuming no buffs for the dreads:
gatling dread kills 6.66 +1.85 from fragstorms
plasma dread kills 4.72 because blast +1.85 from fragstorms
With +1 to hit, the gatling dread kills 1.66 additional boyz plus .55 for the launchers. You can also use your last CP to pop wisdom of the ancients (1CP) on one of the dreads for an additional 16.66% more damage on either dread.
Chaplains aren't going to shoot anything turn 1.
Which means you hit one mob for 14 casualties, one for 13 and one for at least 12, but up to 19 depending on distance and liturgy roll (or even more if the dreads are within 6" of each other).
The best the ork player can do to reduce casualties is auto-pass morale on the biggest mob (2CP), and smack another mob for d3 MW (2CP) to reduce casualties during morale to 2 MW, 1 moral and 2-3 attrition. This leaves with total of 44 dead boyz, about six saved by KFF. Outside of cold dice, this is the best case for the ork.
Under optimal circumstance, they could push the casualties on two mobs past 15, and the attrition casualties would increase by about 2. Worst case (once again assuming average dice), there are 54 boyz dead now.
In a middling case, if the liturgy passed, but fragstorms aren't in range we are now looking at 3 mobs of boyz with 13 (shot by intercessors, keepin da order), 17 (shot by inceptors, insane heroism) and 12 (shot by dreads).
Orks turn: there is a squad within 18" (plasceptors) but we'll say the marine player positioned correctly to keep the 30-block he wasnt targeting out of charge range, but we are gonna call the waaagh to get the 10 and 13 in if we can. average movement is 10.5", average charge with a reroll is approximately 8, I think its a bit more than 8 and we do need a 7 to get in on the dice. I'll randomly pick between warboss, 10 boyz, and 13 boyz to fail the charge.
I got 13 boyz fails the charge. 10 boyz and warboss are still in. The BBK/Klaw boss and 10 boyz all on the waaagh do kill the inceptors on the charge - warboss kills 5 himself, so I wont bother doing a combat interrupt for them.
Why would the inceptors be within 18.5" (+1 for ES) of the warboss? Two mobs charging them, sure, but 3 of them and the warboss? That's some serious self-sabotage for the DA player.
With 28" effective range there is no need to be that suicidal, and even if you wanted to throw them away, why not keep them in reserve and drop them behind the orks turn 2? So assuming one mob makes it, I can't see boyz killing more than 2-3 of them, with them punching back for a casualty or two. However, this would mean forcing them to fall back, so the difference to killing them for this exercise is not that big.
BR2: We've got the boss and 10 boyz closer, so our marine player is gonna focus on taking them out. we'll assume all stand still, same stratagems. The HOGC dread and the auxiliary weapons from the second dread can take out the 10 boyz together with average rolls, and the plasma dread will overcharge his plasma into the boss, which gets an average of just about exactly 1 unsaved wound for 3 damage. The warboss with 3 wounds remaining is a credible threat and our marine player doesnt want the dreads to get 'orks is never beaten'd so rather than charge in melee he'll try to kill using one round of the ints shooting, which does 4 wounds and kills him on average rolls. Second round of int shooting takes out 7/30 of the big boyz squad. The morale casualties again modified by .833 for the chance to autopass, average out to 4. 11/30 gone from squad 3.
Not really. Inceptors fall back and can't shoot, Intercessors get one more round of shooting with the chapter trait and liturgy for 9.64 dead orks, dreads stay put, use wisdom (1CP) and kill 12.96 (gatling) and (plasma) 8.55 boyz. Chaplain pistols kill half a boy.
Gatling goes after the biggest mob, dropping it to 4, intercessors probably have to stick with their target because of how the liturgy works, also dropping it to 4, plasma shoots the last mob dropping it to 4.
The two chaplains have served their purpose and can tag-team the warboss. Even if it interrupts, BKK cannot split attacks and hitting both 4++ models twice without the trait is unlikely, so the warboss will be stuck there, ready to be shot off the board next turn - assuming the chaplains don't just smash it.
If no other units can charge, morale will then kill two boyz of each mob, leaving 84 out 90 boyz dead when the ork's second turn starts.
If the liturgy fails, one mob will go down to 8 and then lose 3 to morale, leaving just 81 out of 90 boyz dead.
The three pairs of boy+nob will be killed by anything they charge, and while the MA mek could proably shoot something, orks will be tabled next turn.
My estimate of "basically gone by turn 3" still seems fairly reasonable to me.
I think orks holding out that long in your example is due to some sub-optimal choices on the DA side (bringing stalker rifles, pointing plasma cannon that would have gotten max shots when shooting at boyz at warboss instead, sacrificing inceptors), going second, plus the KFF actually saving a ton of them. On the flip side, facing double redemptors without any anti-tank is problem of its own and you could probably prolong the life of your boyz by blowing the KFF.
It's also worth noting that nuking the warboss first turn is a valid option in this match-up by just wiping out the mob that is protecting him and then gunning him down to prevent the Waaagh! from happening at all. This will cause boyz to die less fast, but take away the ork's ability to put up a fight at all.
In any case, the important takeaway is that
a) you can't assume marines to be french vanilla when measuring their effectiveness. They can stack buffs like liturgies, stratagems, chapter tactics and characters to double or tripple the output of a unit.
b) a somewhat well piloted beginner army not specifically geared to gun down boyz can still do so with shocking efficiency.
Once again, thanks for taking the time to properly answer my post.
I mean orks and admech are pretty much out of the top rankings and those poor manhandled drukari with the best win rates in only had a better weekend with 60%+ win rates again But everyone is cool with it so whatever.
Regarding fixing Strats since we are wishlisting for 10th Ed stuff.
Just put 5 strats in the rulebook
Extra warlord trait
Extra relic
Auto pass morale
Overwatch
Reroll
Wash out all 9th edition stuff except datasheets and klan/regiment/doctrine/canticle/whatever.
When an army gets a new codex they get a deck of 10 strategems. You can use them each only 1 a game and only 1 per unit.
After every army gets a codex.. start pushing out supplements with 3 new Strats that can replace 1 in the deck and put these cards in white dwarf or something.
Do something similar for warlord traits, relics, psychic powers.
Pretty sure everyone that everyone that called for orks to be nerfed also called for drukhari and admech to be nerfed as well.
What if subfaction rules were all included in the main rule book and each faction got to pick whichever they felt would bring their codex out the best on the table top?
The codex could have recommendations or what to use to represent each sub faction.
I think orks holding out that long in your example is due to some sub-optimal choices on the DA side (bringing stalker rifles, pointing plasma cannon that would have gotten max shots when shooting at boyz at warboss instead, sacrificing inceptors), going second, plus the KFF actually saving a ton of them. On the flip side, facing double redemptors without any anti-tank is problem of its own and you could probably prolong the life of your boyz by blowing the KFF.
It's also worth noting that nuking the warboss first turn is a valid option in this match-up by just wiping out the mob that is protecting him and then gunning him down to prevent the Waaagh! from happening at all. This will cause boyz to die less fast, but take away the ork's ability to put up a fight at all.
In any case, the important takeaway is that
a) you can't assume marines to be french vanilla when measuring their effectiveness. They can stack buffs like liturgies, stratagems, chapter tactics and characters to double or tripple the output of a unit.
b) a somewhat well piloted beginner army not specifically geared to gun down boyz can still do so with shocking efficiency.
Once again, thanks for taking the time to properly answer my post.
point of order 1 - I didnt assume stalker rifles, I assumed bolt rifles due to them being generically the best choice for DA in a TAC situation, as DA want to be standing still. Just wanted to note that in case you made the claim that I was strawmanning by not giving them auto bolts, all HOGC, bolter inceptors etc.
Regardless, I guess part of me kind of struggles to have too much sympathy for the plight of the green tide here: it's not exactly a list that displays a whole lot...or any thinking or tactics or anything at all. It's a plain and simple skew list, which operates basically the same as any skew list - shunts the whole list into a single defensive profile and hopes that an opponent with a TAC list doesnt have the tools or firepower to take that down before it just bluntly rolls over it. And just like basically any skew list, it lives or dies on the question of: Are the things youre skewing into overtuned, or are they not? And sure, last edition boyz skew with ghaz and whatnot was highly tuned enough to act as a solid foil list in a lot of metas when people were dealing with marines or harlequins or whatever else that required different tools to take down than boyz. But it's not because the playstyle required any more thought or decision making to play, you just had a bunch of completely obvious non-decisions like "hmm, should I spend CP to bring this whole unit of boyz back, or should I do something else that doesnt drop another 200pts of models onto the board?"
All-boyz green tide is a classic, lore based way to play orks. But so is all drop pod space marines. Do I think 40k as a competitive game would be healthier if either of them were extremely solid viable approaches in competitive play? Not really, if we're being honest. It feels a bit like arguing that a person should be able to go to a fighting game tournament, pick a character, and button mash a single attack and still have a chance of winning against someone who's actually trying to make use of all the options at their disposal.
A whole ork horde being able to get removed in 3 turns feels gakky. Absolutely 100% agreed there. But that is also kind of the generic reality for most armies in 9th edition. Play any given game of 9th and 75% or more casualties by turn 3 is basically typical. it's the #1 thing I'd like to see changed in the game, theres way too many ways to stack up ridiculous offense - I mean, my example involved +1 to hit, +1 to wound, double shooting space marine intercessors shoveling off 14/30 ork boyz in a max size squad from a 30" max range...that sucks ass. its exactly the kind of gak I think needs to be done away with.
the_scotsman wrote: point of order 1 - I didnt assume stalker rifles, I assumed bolt rifles due to them being generically the best choice for DA in a TAC situation, as DA want to be standing still. Just wanted to note that in case you made the claim that I was strawmanning by not giving them auto bolts, all HOGC, bolter inceptors etc.
Ok, then I just misunderstood what you wrote. As I said, everything else about that army is a perfectly valid choice. I only see auto-bolts when someone is running a character like Azrael or Lazarus because they advance to get into combat faster.
Regardless, I guess part of me kind of struggles to have too much sympathy for the plight of the green tide here: it's not exactly a list that displays a whole lot...or any thinking or tactics or anything at all. It's a plain and simple skew list, which operates basically the same as any skew list - shunts the whole list into a single defensive profile and hopes that an opponent with a TAC list doesnt have the tools or firepower to take that down before it just bluntly rolls over it. And just like basically any skew list, it lives or dies on the question of: Are the things youre skewing into overtuned, or are they not? And sure, last edition boyz skew with ghaz and whatnot was highly tuned enough to act as a solid foil list in a lot of metas when people were dealing with marines or harlequins or whatever else that required different tools to take down than boyz. But it's not because the playstyle required any more thought or decision making to play, you just had a bunch of completely obvious non-decisions like "hmm, should I spend CP to bring this whole unit of boyz back, or should I do something else that doesnt drop another 200pts of models onto the board?"
No, I fully agree with this sentiment - and green tide isn't just toxic to the meta an people playing against it, it also hurts ork players. Whenever it has become competitive, it has been pushing out other, more interesting builds and the vast majority of ork players actually doesn't like playing that archetype. It sucks to transport, sucks to set up, sucks to move, charge, pile in, consolidate. Playing it all day also hurts your back. However, me (and many other ork players) miss the days where 40 boyz coming out of battlewagons, 4-6 sets of trukk boyz or just four blocks of 20 marching across the board were actually considered a able to archive something. Currently there is just no point in doing so because most armies can just gun down as many boyz each turn as your average 5th edition army killed per game, barring sweeping advances and tank-shock+template combos. There is an entire thread going on over in general, so I won't go into that in more detail here. Let's just agree that an army should be able to bring boyz without automatically being gak and that green tide should stay out of the competitive meta for everyone's sake.
All-boyz green tide is a classic, lore based way to play orks.
Is it though? I don't really remember any lore blurbs that specified that none of the boyz were lootas, no one had a bike or a burna or was a storm boy and that there were no groups of nobz around. The lore based army would be an all-infantry army, not an all-boyz army.
But so is all drop pod space marines. Do I think 40k as a competitive game would be healthier if either of them were extremely solid viable approaches in competitive play? Not really, if we're being honest. It feels a bit like arguing that a person should be able to go to a fighting game tournament, pick a character, and button mash a single attack and still have a chance of winning against someone who's actually trying to make use of all the options at their disposal.
Agree. That's also why I think the squig buggy spam had to go. It just should have been solved in a different way.
A whole ork horde being able to get removed in 3 turns feels gakky. Absolutely 100% agreed there. But that is also kind of the generic reality for most armies in 9th edition. Play any given game of 9th and 75% or more casualties by turn 3 is basically typical. it's the #1 thing I'd like to see changed in the game, theres way too many ways to stack up ridiculous offense - I mean, my example involved +1 to hit, +1 to wound, double shooting space marine intercessors shoveling off 14/30 ork boyz in a max size squad from a 30" max range...that sucks ass. its exactly the kind of gak I think needs to be done away with.
Eh, in my example the boyz were almost gone before moving a second time. The issue here is that it's not just boyz evaporating that fast - it's also lootas, burnas, storm boyz, tank bustas and many more. Kommandoz aren't just popular because of their infiltrate, but also because they actually can take some fire. 1000 points of ork specialists would be 100% wiped out T1.
Currently all issues 40k has always come back to the same one root cause - damage is just too god damn high.
I was happy with Green Tide when it came about in 5e because it was a reasonably strong Ork army I could run with the models I already had, but I agree, after a while of playing it I wanted to find other, more interesting and more combined arms approaches.
I think the game is much more interesting if the breadth of what is in factions can generally be seen in the game. So factions should generally be a couple of squads of basic troops, a couple of elite units, a fast unit, a tank or two and some characters. Add transports and walkers to taste.
We never talked much about "skew" when I was playing competitively, but I can see what you guys mean about it being bad for the game overall. Although the greatest "skew" is just the sheer number of space marine players compared to others.
Da Boss wrote: We never talked much about "skew" when I was playing competitively, but I can see what you guys mean about it being bad for the game overall. Although the greatest "skew" is just the sheer number of space marine players compared to others.
As an anecdote about that, during 5th marines were actually quite hated in my area (at least in the three stores I visited, plus multiple playing groups), people playing them were openly antagonized and made fun of. People were told to stop playing easy mode, house rules were in place to sanction them in campaigns and tournaments, new players were openly discouraged to play them and it was common to make crunching noises when a marine player was walking by in reference to all the "sugar blown up their but" (a German proverb for overly pampering someone) by GW. This caused them to be a fairly rare faction overall, the most commonly played armies were guard, eldar and chaos (CSM+daemons) at that time.
My first run-in with "everyone is marines" has actually been during 8th when everyone and their dog started a primaris army.
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