It's little secret that 6th ed is currently a total mess from a balanced gameplay perspective. However, I can clearly remember a year ago, 6th ed was thought of as relatively well-balanced, barring a lack of AA (which obviously would become a non-issue once AA got patched into each dex) and maybe some Aegis Line shenanigans. DA and CSM were both very reasonable armies when they were released and allies didn't create broken armies (in fact, the FAQs eliminated almost all the broken combinations from the old books, and the Ravenwing and Deathwing forces denied potentially cheesy combos of scoring Bikes and Terminators... something that would never happen now). Was it Tau that started the trend? Eldar? Or maybe Codex: Inquisition starting the whole "yo dawg, I heard you liked allies!" thing that just makes the FOC basically a suggestion? I actually am wondering about this because it wasn't until quite recently that 40k started to go a bit off the rails.

*EDIT*

Ok, maybe I should clarify a bit: 6th ed was obviously unbalanced to begin with due to a lack of AA, but there was an optimism that the game would be balanced within a year as more armies got AA options. When people first heard about the allies rule, they were expecting everyone to take Sanguinary Priests to get FNP or KFFs to get themselves free cover, but GW FAQ'd these options out. Dark Angels were also a dirty option for cheap, scoring Terminators for every army, but then GW quickly put out DA with a "Ravenwing and Deathwing allies are never scoring units" concession to plug this gap. Not only that, but DA and CSM were both fairly decent Codices, neither broken (although the Heldrake FAQ was idiotic). So what I'm getting at is, at the onset of 6th ed, it seemed like GW still cared about balance and were doing what they could to not break the game... and idea which seems to have been thrown out around the time Tau dropped.

Heldrakes. Silly good fliers in a meta that still didn't have anything in the way of anti-aircraft other than a quad-gun.

Don't blame Tau for starting the cheese wheel rolling. It was already merrily trundling along before we got here thank you very much.

It was cheesy from the start.

Say hello to Mr. Vendetta.

As a melee player, roughly when they released 6th edition.

From when players turned to page 113 and saw that the allies matrix made almost no sense.

6th ed was never balanced. Looking back on it when I started with the beginning of 5th ed it wasn't all that balanced then but I never started noticing it until about halfway through 5th ed. The BA dex was the biggest factor in driving me away from the game. The SW and GK ones didn't help a lot either but I'd say BA was where I would say this downward spiral really started.

 welshhoppo wrote:
From when players turned to page 113 and saw that the allies matrix made almost no sense.

The allies matrix made my eyes bleed

Early 6th ed was horribly imbalanced, but still better than what we have now.
Most people would probably point to the Uber-Heldrake FAQ starting the escalation (pardon the pun) of cheese.

It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

First we had one obviously nasty unit (Chaos Space Marine Heldrakes), then a codex which could combine the effects of several units to make one really overpowered one (Chaos Daemons Screamerstar), then a codex which did that plus allowed easy abuse of allies (Tau), then one which did all of that and had an easily-spammed super-tank (Eldar).

Then we started ignoring the FOC with Codex: Inquisition and allowing super-heavies (and, more significantly, Destroyer weapons) with Escalation. Now we've got Codex: Imperial Knights, which gives us super-heavy walkers which effectively ignore the FOC.

For me its been the recent flurry of releases, suppliments, crossover rules and additions.
I dont even try to keep track of them anymore :(
The permutations and possibilities with LOW, Fortifications and Formations simply baffle me.
Whilst not leading to an imbalance in terms of games I play personally, it makes it incredibly difficult to pick and create a balanced and fair army list, as in one game you could face a Revenant Titan, in another a sub faction you've never even seen rules for e.g. Tau Farsight and in another a more standard army build.

As above, 6th wasn't particularly balanced from the get go, and the while the first codices weren't top power level material, they were still awfully balanced internally.

It really only got progressively worse from there.

6th edition started us off with the Necron flying circus. Then it was Heldrake n' friends. Then was it Mr. Riptide and his many brothers. Then Eldar really just broke the game.

And if I recall correctly, Demons used to have a powerbuild from their WD codex that abused screamers. Yeah, 6th was always a horridly imbal-FORGING A NARRATIVE FRIENDLY game. It just got much, much, much worse over time.

dementedwombat wrote:Heldrakes. Silly good fliers in a meta that still didn't have anything in the way of anti-aircraft other than a quad-gun.

Don't blame Tau for starting the cheese wheel rolling. It was already merrily trundling along before we got here thank you very much.

BrotherHaraldus wrote:It was cheesy from the start.

Say hello to Mr. Vendetta.

Again, flyers were a problem because GW made the idiotic decision of not giving every army flakk missiles at the get-go, so flying circuses became dominant to exploit this. However, the mindset was that obviously this was going to be rectified as more codices got AA (and this did eventually happen... unfortunately, that army was Tau ). So no, the game wasn't balanced obviously, but there was a state of mind that GW was doing what it could to balance the game as more armies were released. Of course, this isn't even a consideration anymore...

It was never "relatively" balanced, even at the outset nearly 2 years ago you had some very clear "Good" and "Bad" armies, remember the Necron Air Force? The double-whammy of the Tau and Eldar books then came out and were just so natively powerful that they're still seen as the best armies generally a year and several other armies later, while we've had stinkers like the Tyranid codex and non-helturkey CSM armies. We'll see what the IG bring.

But, really, it was the last few months of 2013 that began to include things like "free abilities for no extra points and no FoC usage" formations and D weapon titans to pickup games.

To bring the discussion back to some kind of objective level, what is the difference in power level between codexes now?

In 5th edition, I reckon if a middle tier codex was 100, then a top tier codex was 110 and a bottom tier codex was 90. Maybe the range was 120 down to 80 for the very best to very worst match-up, but still not impossible to overcome with skill and luck.

What is the differential now?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To bring the discussion back to some kind of objective level, what is the difference in power level between codexes now?

In 5th edition, I reckon if a middle tier codex was 100, then a top tier codex was 110 and a bottom tier codex was 90. Maybe the range was 120 down to 80 for the very best to very worst match-up, but still not impossible to overcome with skill and luck.

What is the differential now?

Actually it was just as nad back then, you either had good mechspam, or you didn't. Tyranids were ranked the lowest by a wide margin and such.

The only difference, we had three top tier codex. IG, SW, and GK, rather then two, Tau, Eldar.

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

I feel that the imballance happened with the drop of 6th edition. And while a new edition does bring up a shake up, 6th edition was worse. The addition of flyers, snap shots, and flying monsterious creatures, was a huge swing that some armies still have yet to compensate for. This was made worse when things that were strong for their pricing suddenly became godly due to the flyer rules (vendettas).

There usually has been a shift in power between shooty and assault, one swings up, one swings down, but nothing like what 6th edition brought. variable charge ranges, overwatch, no assault from inside vehicles, outflank, or deepstrike. Now add in move and shoot heavy weapons, increases to rapid firing weapons, and lower over all cover saves just swing that pendulum to the extreme ends. Now each of those ideas individually isn't a bad thing. I personally love the reduction in cover saves, it needed to happen to keep the game moving), but when all of that is combined together... Some armies just took a huge hit to the happy sack.

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
From when players turned to page 113 and saw that the allies matrix made almost no sense.

The allies matrix made my eyes bleed

are you sure you haven't got the I-am-legend virus?

6th edition, with its wound allocation rules, has created deathstar builds. that needs to go.

plus beef the assault rules again (heck, you can keep all the buffs to ranged rules like overwatch etc.) and the edition is perfect.

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

Yeah Space Marines are absolutely top tier right now. It's just the "normal" SM builds aren't very good, so the more casual player doesn't see the insanity that codex can put out. Until they see a Grav Star GOI across the map and delete two Riptides in one go, they won't be believers either.

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

I find grav cents more manageable than Wave Serpents.

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

Yeah Space Marines are absolutely top tier right now. It's just the "normal" SM builds aren't very good, so the more casual player doesn't see the insanity that codex can put out. Until they see a Grav Star GOI across the map and delete two Riptides in one go, they won't be believers either.

Except a Grav Star can't delete two Riptides in one go easily because of A) Terrible range and B) Good luck finding an opponent stupid enough to put one near enough, yet alone two.

White Scar Grav Bikers are balanced, and a thankful addition given the prevalence of new MC's.

Imperial Fists aren't competitive and IF Lascannon Devs are meh, you need two extra men for each Dev squad for ablative wounds and they're not great HS choices.


Chaos Space Marines gave us the stand out unit of Helldrakes, a radical change to the formula, at a reasonable price, Tau gave us undercosted Riptides, Daemons gave us the unintentional Screamerstar, Eldar gave us admittedly overpowered Wave Serpents.

Its no different from 5th where every other Codex had its stand out overpowered, or extremely powerful unit. The only difference is a lot of the new OP units have been radical list formula changers for the meta.

Not being as broken as Wave Serpents doesn't mean they aren't broken.

 anonymou5 wrote:
Until they see a Grav Star GOI across the map and delete two Riptides in one go

Had me loling. I think the problem with Space Marines is that it has the biggest proportion of 40k newbies playing, so they tend to usually be the losing party when you happen to come across them on a random table in your FLGS, but if played right they are highly competetive.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

Yeah Space Marines are absolutely top tier right now. It's just the "normal" SM builds aren't very good, so the more casual player doesn't see the insanity that codex can put out. Until they see a Grav Star GOI across the map and delete two Riptides in one go, they won't be believers either.

Except a Grav Star can't delete two Riptides in one go easily because of A) Terrible range and B) Good luck finding an opponent stupid enough to put one near enough, yet alone two.

White Scar Grav Bikers are balanced, and a thankful addition given the prevalence of new MC's.

Imperial Fists aren't competitive and IF Lascannon Devs are meh, you need two extra men for each Dev squad for ablative wounds and they're not great HS choices.

Except it can. Grav Star has Gate of Infinity. So it has a 48 inch range. It generally has Scout too. So make that 54 inch range. That's usually more than enough to get a Riptide or two into death range. It's a top tier build, and extremely powerful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Not being as broken as Wave Serpents doesn't mean they aren't broken.

A good Gravstar build laughs at Wave Serpents.

The funny thing is you can cram a GOI grav star and a Clan Raukaan CM on bike with Chain of Gorgon command squad gravbikestar in one legal army. Meltabombs for anti-tank.

 Sir Arun wrote:
The funny thing is you can cram a GOI grav star and a Clan Raukaan CM on bike with Chain of Gorgon command squad gravbikestar in one legal army. Meltabombs for anti-tank.

If I was going to run Gravstar, which I refer to as the Teletubby build, I think the rest of my list is just Scouts in Land Speeder Storms. Such a versatile unit. (we've been building a two source Tubby build for ATC, kind of sad the build is becoming known outside of the Atlanta area now. Stupid TOF invite)

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

Yeah Space Marines are absolutely top tier right now. It's just the "normal" SM builds aren't very good, so the more casual player doesn't see the insanity that codex can put out. Until they see a Grav Star GOI across the map and delete two Riptides in one go, they won't be believers either.

Except a Grav Star can't delete two Riptides in one go easily because of A) Terrible range and B) Good luck finding an opponent stupid enough to put one near enough, yet alone two.

White Scar Grav Bikers are balanced, and a thankful addition given the prevalence of new MC's.

Imperial Fists aren't competitive and IF Lascannon Devs are meh, you need two extra men for each Dev squad for ablative wounds and they're not great HS choices.

Except it can. Grav Star has Gate of Infinity. So it has a 48 inch range. It generally has Scout too. So make that 54 inch range. That's usually more than enough to get a Riptide or two into death range. It's a top tier build, and extremely powerful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Not being as broken as Wave Serpents doesn't mean they aren't broken.

A good Gravstar build laughs at Wave Serpents.

So what happens when he puts his Riptides in reserve? Uh, diddums?

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

Yeah Space Marines are absolutely top tier right now. It's just the "normal" SM builds aren't very good, so the more casual player doesn't see the insanity that codex can put out. Until they see a Grav Star GOI across the map and delete two Riptides in one go, they won't be believers either.

Except a Grav Star can't delete two Riptides in one go easily because of A) Terrible range and B) Good luck finding an opponent stupid enough to put one near enough, yet alone two.

White Scar Grav Bikers are balanced, and a thankful addition given the prevalence of new MC's.

Imperial Fists aren't competitive and IF Lascannon Devs are meh, you need two extra men for each Dev squad for ablative wounds and they're not great HS choices.

Except it can. Grav Star has Gate of Infinity. So it has a 48 inch range. It generally has Scout too. So make that 54 inch range. That's usually more than enough to get a Riptide or two into death range. It's a top tier build, and extremely powerful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Not being as broken as Wave Serpents doesn't mean they aren't broken.

A good Gravstar build laughs at Wave Serpents.

So what happens when he puts his Riptides in reserve? Uh, diddums?

You kill everything else? lol. Gravstars own Riptide heavy builds, that's one of the reasons they exist, because of how hard they eat Ovesastars. . Riptide comes on the board does a wound or two to the Chaptermaster standing in front, then it dies.

Unless it comes on too close, then Coteaz triggers and the Riptide dies in it's movement phase for some nice irony.

You know what happens when you shoot a grav star in a place other than the chapter master side? Even my BA can tell you this one: it doesn't like it.

Without the unit durability of the seer council or screamerstar, the grav star is a second rate star, imo.

Martel732 wrote:
You know what happens when you shoot a grav star in a place other than the chapter master side? Even my BA can tell you this one: it doesn't like it.

Without the unit durability of the seer council or screamerstar, the grav star is a second rate star, imo.

Well it's the rock to the Seer Council's paper, that's for sure. It kills Seer Councils pretty quick.

It is vulnerable to directional fire, no doubt about that. But good luck getting directional shots. A lot of version of it have dual Chapter Masters for that very reason anyway.

How is it killing the Seer Council quickly? The baron has 2++ rerollable and the generic warlock guys have 4++ rerollable.

Martel732 wrote:
How is it killing the Seer Council quickly? The baron has 2++ rerollable and the generic warlock guys have 4++ rerollable.

Seer Councils don't tank on the Baron. If he dies the unit is done. But even if the Seer Council player is tanking on the Baron, with GOI the Gravstar generally gets to pick its angle of fire and shoot through Warlocks. A 4++ rerollable is nice (trust me, I know, I just won a GT with a Beaststar), the Gravstar still averages 2-4 dead Warlocks per shooting phase. 25 Twinlinked shots at BS4 is what 20 hits, wounding on 2s or 3s (depending on Protect), rerolling again is another 15-20 wounds. Takes 4 AP2 Ignores Cover Wounds to kill a Warlock.

Do that twice and the Seer Council is neutered.

I'm not just making this up, Gravstar just won the TOF Invitational, and it was brought because of how hard it owns Seer Council. It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper (it also annihilates Ovesastar)

Are these tournaments playing with grav ignoring vehicle cover?


How does the gravstar avoid DS mishap?

Martel732 wrote:
Are these tournaments playing with grav ignoring vehicle cover?


How does the gravstar avoid DS mishap?

It ignores cover because it either has a Tau Commander or a Perfect Timing Psychic in it. (it's either taken with Tau allies, or stacked with Divination Psychers). Avoiding mishaps is either done with servo skulls, scouts with homers, pods with homers, or Farsight; depending on build. (there are actually a lot of different versions of it)

Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

The only really useless unit in the SM codex is probably scout bikers. And assault marines. And a whirlwind if youre playing a seasoned veteran who always spaces all his infantry evenly out. Everything else is sturdy

 anonymou5 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

So someone really, really good did well with a list?

That's not really an indicator of a list unless that averages out well.

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
From when players turned to page 113 and saw that the allies matrix made almost no sense.

The allies matrix made my eyes bleed

This^ and the nonsense of flyers/AA and how clumsily GW handled it so everything was unbalanced. 6th was unbalanced from the get-go and has gone downhill from there. If the 6.5/7th edition rumours are true I have to hope things are brought back in line but that is wishlisting as this is GW we are talking about.

Kilkrazy wrote:What is the differential now?

More, I feel.

It seems like the codices that are in the middle are even closer to the middle, while the codices on the fringes got pushed further to the fringes.

Anyways, yeah, 6th took a turn for the wonk just by coming out, but people's nerdrage apocoterror of fliers was unjustified. Vendettas and helldrakes weren't game-breakers. The only real problem with them was that necron could take an army of nothing but them.

Things took a step in a new direction with tau. The codex came by and just sort of threw all of the rules out of the window, and made it so that you could force everyone who wasn't playing a gunline to play a gunline of some sort. When eldar came out, that only solidified the change. Then, of course, GW is taking another step with the introduction of mass ally-with-self and superheavies in regular 40k. Naturally the balance on these new things is going to be pretty off.

The strange thing is, though, in the background of all this craziness, as mentioned, the average is getting closer. If you chop off tau and eldar from one end, and SoB and orks from the other, the balance between the remaining armies is pretty strong. I mean, compare BA to DA to CSM to SM to IG to DE to GK, and it all seems rather close, army book to army book, at least.

The "problem" that GW is having is the same one they've always had - things trundling along, and then someone coming by and throwing a single turd or two in the punch bowl.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

So someone really, really good did well with a list?

That's not really an indicator of a list unless that averages out well.

I mean that's a fair point. Tournament results are always going to be tiny sample size. Also worth noting that Dan May won FOB Open with White Scars bikers. How about this, Space Marines have won more major GTs than Tau have since they came out. Still a small sample size, but I'd say it's telling.

I know that running my Beaststar I basically chalk Tau up to a free win, but there are several SM builds that give me trouble. (more anecdotal evidence, sure). But I'm also stating my opinion, SM is a top tier dex. I definitely rate it higher than Tau right now (at least at the top level of the game; Tau are better at ruining friendly games for people)

 Sir Arun wrote:
The only really useless unit in the SM codex is probably scout bikers. And assault marines. And a whirlwind if youre playing a seasoned veteran who always spaces all his infantry evenly out. Everything else is sturdy

In a competitive environment, I'd say the following is useless to me:

Chaplain
Librarian
Sicarius
Cassius
Helbrecht
Grimaldus
The EC
Shrike

Tactical Squads
Telion
Rhinos (eh, outside of some extremely experimental RG testing)
Razorbacks

Terminators
Assault Terminators without full TH/SS
Vanguards
Dreadnoughts
Assault Centurions

Assault Squads
Attack Bikes
Scout Bikes

Whirlwind
Vindicator
Land Raider Godhammer
Chronus

This is why I don't even bother playing Marines anymore. I could concede and grab Devastator Centurions (yuck) and Bikes (how bland) and make yet another Iron Hands or White Scars clone army, but what would be the fun in that.

For more casual players it's never been better. For someone like me that can't put Tacticals in a list without getting butterflies, it sucks.

I play IG, and my best list is one I have never seen as a netlist, one that did well at a tournament I took it to, with almost complete wins save for garbage luck. The same ain't true for Marines.

 anonymou5 wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

So someone really, really good did well with a list?

That's not really an indicator of a list unless that averages out well.

I mean that's a fair point. Tournament results are always going to be tiny sample size. Also worth noting that Dan May won FOB Open with White Scars bikers. How about this, Space Marines have won more major GTs than Tau have since they came out. Still a small sample size, but I'd say it's telling.

I know that running my Beaststar I basically chalk Tau up to a free win, but there are several SM builds that give me trouble. (more anecdotal evidence, sure). But I'm also stating my opinion, SM is a top tier dex. I definitely rate it higher than Tau right now (at least at the top level of the game; Tau are better at ruining friendly games for people)

http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/stats/armies

In that FOB Open there was only 13 games with Tau, while the highest army amount was SM at 40 games.

There wasn't much Tau there at all.

To check, there was 1 loss, 1 draw, and 1 win against a tau (By a DA list mind you, not SM)

So there wasn't much representation by Tau to begin with, and with only three games it's hard to tell. Not to mention the loss to Eldar was 2 win, 5 losses, 1 draw

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


TRIMMED DOWN FOR READABILITY

True, Tau were strangely underrepresented at FOB Open. Doesn't really change my point though, no? That's still a major GT won by Space Marines. (The invite was won by Eldar). As far as I know, Space Marines have won more major GTs than Tau have since their release. Eldar are still vastly in the lead. But next up is Daemons and Space Marines. I can't think of Tau winning anything since Nova Open (and Eldar won the Invite there too, lol)

The armies themselves are only part of it though, the players themselves are another. Is it a case of players who win tournaments codex hopping, or is it a case of players who win tournaments not winning tournaments because they only played SM, and now have a better codex, or is it a case of players who play taudar happenstantially staying home for some recent tournaments?

I mean, we can always fall back on the fact that tournaments don't sift out the best players, they sift out the luckiest ones, but perhaps there's more to it?

 Ailaros wrote:
The armies themselves are only part of it though, the players themselves are another. Is it a case of players who win tournaments codex hopping, or is it a case of players who win tournaments not winning tournaments because they only played SM, and now have a better codex, or is it a case of players who play taudar happenstantially staying home for some recent tournaments?

I mean, we can always fall back on the fact that tournaments don't sift out the best players, they sift out the luckiest ones, but perhaps there's more to it?

I'll grant you that there is a lot of codex hopping, and that's a solid point. But even if tournament winners aren't the "best players" the top tables at tournaments are generally made up of the same population. Whether they're lucky or good is sort of irrelevant, they certainly tend to craft the "best" lists. That population is migrating away from Tau. Tau just don't have the tools to compete in Deathstar 40k (with the exception of the Ovesastar, which is still somewhat defenseless against Gravstar, Beastpacks, and even a well played Bikerspam list)

I just won BFSR with a Beaststar, and my Tau games were easy wins (including a Triptide list and a Taudar list played by a GT winner)

 anonymou5 wrote:
It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper...

Er... paper beats rock. It's scissors which beat paper.

and Spock crushes scissors and vaporises rock.

I don't think it was ever balanced (although not much in 40k ever was), just it's more prominent now with Taudar, Knights, Escalation, etc.

The issue at the core is the fundamental disconnect over how the game is played by the Studio and by regular people; they play the game a certain way, focusing on narrative and the like, but this doesn't apply to everybody else and rather than make the rules balanced enough to appeal to everybody, they ignore a portion of their playerbase when it wouldn't be hard to fix it.

The narrative idea doesn't even translate well in the real world. For example, most (all?) 40k battles from White Dwarf and supplements are always Imperium vs. Other (HH and Badab War being the notable exceptions), but out in the real world Space Marines are the most popular army, and it is completely narrative-breaking to have Marine v. Marine or even Marine v. Other Imperial without resorting to contrived and lame reasons (e.g. it's a wargame simulation, or the always silly "Let's play Who's the Heretic" scenario), but this is ignored because the Studio armies and most staffers have various armies, so it's easy to pull out the Eldar if your opponent plays Marines. In fact, I can't remember a time there was Marine vs. Marine (Loyalist, not counting chaos) in a battle report, ever, and that's thinking back to 1996 - the only thing that may spring to mind is I recall a battle report with Inquisition vs. 13th Company Space Wolves that was technically speaking two loyalist armies (although 13th is borderline IMO). Speaking of 40k in particular since I know there was some in Inquisitor with rival bands.

I see a lot of parallels with Wizards of the Coast during 3rd edition D&D which I played and was an active member of their forums at that time. Most of the supplements were created without much internal balance (balancing only against the Core books and ignoring other supplements), but a lot of the underlying problems was that the designers and playtesters only played the game a certain way, so weren't even aware that several potentially game-breaking combinations existed because they would never in a million years do something like that, and couldn't fathom that anyone else would either, so a simple clarification or fix never happened because the very idea it was possible was an anathema.

I get the impression that GW works the same way. Their Eldar players don't field Serpent Spam, but only field them where it fits; their Chaos players don't field 3x Heldrakes and Typhus' Walking Dead army because they play Alpha Legion or some other CSM force and that's not fluffy; the SM players don't do drop pod spam outside of a planetary assault narrative; I recall looking at the Crusade of Fire campaign and every army shown (I believe it was: Howling Griffons, Imperial Fists, Flesh Tearers, Space Wolves, Dark Eldar, Red Corsairs, Word Bearers and Alpha Legion) were all fairly fluffy and relatively casual lists, nothing was really on the competitive side of things as far as comparing to the plethora of netlists and the like that are out there, and IMO showcase part of the disconnect (don't get me wrong the armies looked good and typical representations, but weren't built for competition). They don't see the problems with the game because they play in a bubble where they'd never do such a thing, and sadly can't fathom that other people don't play the same way they do, and the more I think about it the more that's the crux of the issue regarding 40k and anything about balance - it's balanced when you play a fairly regular group known to you, where everybody plays fluffy armies that could tell an interesting story but sometimes like to try fringe things in specific scenarios. It's not balanced in the least when you have players of different types playing together - the competitive vs. the casual, because one builds his lists for effectiveness and the other builds his list for a story/theme, and when the two meet it's no longer balanced.

I don't think it's balanced even if everyone plays fluffy lists. You try pitting some fluffy Eldar lists against fluffy Dark Angels, I guarantee you the Eldar player will have a huge advantage.

 Perfect Organism wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:
It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper...

Er... paper beats rock. It's scissors which beat paper.

I was tired! haha.

I see a lot of parallels with Wizards of the Coast during 3rd edition D&D which I played and was an active member of their forums at that time. Most of the supplements were created without much internal balance (balancing only against the Core books and ignoring other supplements), but a lot of the underlying problems was that the designers and playtesters only played the game a certain way, so weren't even aware that several potentially game-breaking combinations existed because they would never in a million years do something like that, and couldn't fathom that anyone else would either, so a simple clarification or fix never happened because the very idea it was possible was an anathema.

Actually one of the designers mentioned even in core that he designed magic users to be far better then the 'simpler' classes because he wanted people to use his favored stuff, not to mention even without supplements the core for 3.0 and 3.5 was broken outright by casters.

 Perfect Organism wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:
It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper...

Er... paper beats rock. It's scissors which beat paper.

Not if it's very sharp rock

It all went downhill when the design team lost their integrity and dignity, and let the sales people take the reins.

Steelmage99 wrote:
It all went downhill when the design team lost their integrity and dignity, and let the sales people take the reins.

That happened at the end of 2nd Ed.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
It was cheesy from the start.

Say hello to Mr. Vendetta.

Yeah I'd agree it started going bad with the Vendetta

Actually when the Vendetta was a fast skimmer, things werent bad. IG dont have Holofields and Spiritstones.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

I see a lot of parallels with Wizards of the Coast during 3rd edition D&D which I played and was an active member of their forums at that time. Most of the supplements were created without much internal balance (balancing only against the Core books and ignoring other supplements), but a lot of the underlying problems was that the designers and playtesters only played the game a certain way, so weren't even aware that several potentially game-breaking combinations existed because they would never in a million years do something like that, and couldn't fathom that anyone else would either, so a simple clarification or fix never happened because the very idea it was possible was an anathema.

Actually one of the designers mentioned even in core that he designed magic users to be far better then the 'simpler' classes because he wanted people to use his favored stuff, not to mention even without supplements the core for 3.0 and 3.5 was broken outright by casters.

Sure was...

... but the 3.0/3.5 supplements did not fix this at all. They made it far, far worse. Gods, the characters I and my friends built using those extra books were disgusting. A Barbarian with the Frenzied Berzerker elite class... cannot die due to HP loss while Raging. At -400+ HP and still swinging... just before Rage ends? The party cleric, who maintains a Status on him at all times, casts Cure Minor Wounds, restoring him to 0 HP, and then Heal, restoring him to full. An elven fighter/rogue with a pair of vorpal swords, and "Improved Critical" bought multiple times for the type of sword the vorpals were. Any "to hit" roll of a natural 15+ killed anything that could be decapitated, and with a Tumble of 35+, could tumble past any foe, denying them their Dex bonus, and then unleash 5 attacks with added Backstab damage... with vorpal weapons.

The balance in 40K might be broken, but GW is hardly the only company with this design problem.

We are currently seeing a plethora of builds and multiple unique armies winning tournaments.

We are in a 40k renaissance, competitively speaking. Gone are the years between releases, the meta gets shaken up with each new release, the game stays fresh and exciting for competitive players.

Knights will be huge on Deathstar 40k. The meta will evolve again. 5th edition was ridiculously stagnant and dominated by the same army fads(Grey Knights).

And narrative players? Why should they care? They can house-rule everything since they're playing a narrative.

6e was ever balanced?

I'm pretty sure it just went from the Guard and Necrons working over everyone to the Tau and Eldar working over everyone.

I'm really torn on what I think about what's happening with 40k.

On the one hand, 5e had become fairly stagnant. Most of the codexes were so old that the meta had pretty much solidified. If you saw a player across from you lay a Tau or Eldar codex on the table then you didn't even need to see his list to have a pretty good idea of what he brought.

That absolutely needed to be fixed. In order to provide some variety each army has to have multiple "take all comers" builds available. DE was a pretty good step in the right direction as there were clearly 3 different types of armies to run, although there are certainly a few units that they shouldn't have bothered making an entry for.

Fast forward to today. We've had a large number of releases recently. But not just regular releases, releases that completely tear down the structure that was 40k. With the 6e allies matrix there is an obvious disconnect between the background and ability of certain armies to ally. For example, the background states that Tau will never ally with Orks as they consider the Orks to be completely irredeemable. However, the powers that be ignored this background in an effort to make 40k more like a mini Apoc.

Now some people might simply not care one bit about the background and whether the gaming experience is reflective of it; but there are a number of people, such as myself, that do. That's why I think allies are "broken". Guard ally with SM? good. Daemons ally with CSM? Absolutely. Grey Knights and SOB NOT Battle Brothers? lol wut? GK can ally with Eldar? What happened to "suffer not the alien to live"? DE being able to ally with Daemons at any level? Um.. no.

Going further we've had different ways that changes have been introduced. For example, Death from the Skies - to fix flyers and Stronghold Assault to fix buildings. Personally, I think this approach was is horrible. Yes, those items certainly needed to be fixed however the corrections should have been in the form of FAQs, not additional books that need to be purchased, lugged around and debated as to whether they should be included within a gaming group. And don't forget "data slates" for individual units... The past year of rule releases screams "we didn't test the 6e BRB release AT ALL. So, please pay us to fix it." lovely.

Next, we have various codex "supplements". Unfortunately these seem to take a haphazard approach to how they function with the parent army. Rather than providing a different way to build a core army some of these can ally with themselves (without going blind...) causing all sorts of FoC breaking issues.

Which leads into codexes such as Inquisition and Imperial Knights that completely disregard the force chart. Making an entire army by spamming just 1 model shouldn't be possible. Yet that's an "option" we now have... and these are "full" codex releases not just supplements. Quite frankly I think the Inquisition one should have been a supplement which could have been taken with any imperial force - except the space wolves. They don't play well with each other. The Imperial Knights one should have been a data slate to either be taken as a Lord of War (escalation) or perhaps to fill a heavy slot in an IG army.

Point is, we are in a very weird time for 40k and I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it. Yes, they have completely gotten away from the bog standard armies from 5th edition - which is a good thing - but the way they've done this has been to completely tear apart any semblance of army balance and by dispensing with large portions of the background from the game.

If I had my preference I'd rather see them focus on how to make a single army both flavorful (ie: not acting like everything else) AND by providing units where all of them are compelling to use. I think structure is a very important thing for helping people create an army that actually has a chance against most things it will run into. By removing the last pretenses of structure they are encouraging an even greater divide between those players that intrinsically know how to build lists vs those that really have no idea what they are doing.

Grey Knights and SOB NOT Battle Brothers? lol wut? GK can ally with Eldar? What happened to "suffer not the alien to live"? DE being able to ally with Daemons at any level? Um.. no.

It probably would help if people actually knew the background fluff at times.

Like the fact that GK has worked with Eldar quite a few times against Daemons and the like (They helped return a Craftworld for gods sakes), specially the Harliquins and their anti-daemon stance \.

Dark Eldar do have factions that actually summon and work with Daemons (Yes, including Slaaneshi!), and GK typically keep all factions at arms length, thus the SoB/GK allies of convenience, not to mention SoB's views on those who cannot be judged...

Most of the time I keep seeing people list fluff violations that have actually happened in the backstory.

 Kain wrote:
6e was ever balanced?

Not so much balanced as there was optimism that it would be balanced by now due to FAQs and the first couple of Codices seeming to eliminate OP stuff.

Grey Knights and SOB NOT Battle Brothers? lol wut? GK can ally with Eldar? What happened to "suffer not the alien to live"? DE being able to ally with Daemons at any level? Um.. no.

And yet the credo "Suffer not the Witch" is apparently not applied to a chapter of marines who are all witches...

Gotta agree with Zebio on this one, the allies chart isn't perfect but it works pretty well in an "Enemy of my enemy is someone I can trust not to shoot me till my enemy is dead kind of way"

Some of them, CWE and DE particularly sums up the fluff nicely. They might fight and hate each other at times but at least they are both still Eldar and not one of those filthy primitive civilizations that sprang up post Fall...

I hope this (my) version of the allies chart makes it into 7th:

 Dunklezahn wrote:

Grey Knights and SOB NOT Battle Brothers? lol wut? GK can ally with Eldar? What happened to "suffer not the alien to live"? DE being able to ally with Daemons at any level? Um.. no.

And yet the credo "Suffer not the Witch" is apparently not applied to a chapter of marines who are all witches...

Gotta agree with Zebio on this one, the allies chart isn't perfect but it works pretty well in an "Enemy of my enemy is someone I can trust not to shoot me till my enemy is dead kind of way"

Some of them, CWE and DE particularly sums up the fluff nicely. They might fight and hate each other at times but at least they are both still Eldar and not one of those filthy primitive civilizations that sprang up post Fall...

The Grey Knight's reputation for purity is beyond the reproach of even the Templars. The Templars hate the witch as the witch can and has fallen many times, with even the Astropaths and Navigators needed for society to function being a necessary evil. However the Knigts were founded at the behest of the Emperor himself, and despite all the temptations of the Daemonic, the heretical, and the Alien, not one has ever fallen.

Even Logan and the Wolves don't begrudge them in particular (the Ordo Malleus that commands them though...) so it's not impossible for even the templars to give the Grey Knights proper respect.

Yet they will casually butcher a whole group of Sisters and *bathe in their blood* to protect themselves. The other aspects of the IoM may not act against the Knights, but trust them?

Would you trust an ally that engages in the kinds of actions the Knights do? So witches, ally killing, exterminatus toting, answers to no-one outside the inquisition, mind wiping, sacrifice you in the name of the IoM "allies".

I an keeping an eagle eye on those guys, allies or no.

And Arun, that's a very Imperio-centric allies chart I'd rather not see personally.

Very few even know they exist, much less who they are, much less that they killed some Sisters.

If you were an important enough person in the Imperium to know of them, you'd also know how important they are.

Like for example the first founding chapters Captains and Chapter Masters that make up a chunk of the allies matrix?

The average IG infantryman wont know but those Marines, Generals and Inquisitors are going to know enough to be wary of the GK. They don't need it confirmed, it's enough that they aren't going to trust them outright with just some of the rumours that float around them.

It's one thing to think of them with respect knowing they are the mighty heroes of the Imperium. It's quite another to not worry they are going to mind wipe you, outright murder you or blow up the entire planet you are standing on at any given moment.

Grey Knights are known by all Chapter Mastesr of all Space Marine Chapters I believe (I know this is in the fluff somewhere, I think it may even be in the Grey Knight book.). Only the Chapter Master though, the rest of his marines won't usually know. Marines have their minds wiped after fighting alongside them too (Another piece of fluff, I believe is mentioned in the Blood Angel book).

As to the OP though... When was it balanced? When 6th first released and Necron Wraithwing dominated everything in its path? I don't think there has ever been, or will ever be a time when balance reigns. We are forever subjected to growing gap between middle tier and top tier. If you don't play at tournaments though, this doesn't really come into play that often.

 Dunklezahn wrote:
Yet they will casually butcher a whole group of Sisters and *bathe in their blood* to protect themselves. The other aspects of the IoM may not act against the Knights, but trust them?

Would you trust an ally that engages in the kinds of actions the Knights do? So witches, ally killing, exterminatus toting, answers to no-one outside the inquisition, mind wiping, sacrifice you in the name of the IoM "allies".

I an keeping an eagle eye on those guys, allies or no.

And Arun, that's a very Imperio-centric allies chart I'd rather not see personally.

There is a reason why the best relationship the Grey Knights can possibly have is allies of convenience and work about as well alongside the more talkative Xenos as they do with the rest of the Imperium.

Well yeah, that's my point, it was in reference to Cliverly who seemed to think GK and SOB should have been Battle Brothers. The rumours and speculation around GK alone should put people off trusting them and if they actually know some of what they've done it's even worse.

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

What do Imperial Fists Lascannon Devastators do that's so devastating?

 Orock wrote:
[A good Gravstar build laughs at Wave Serpents.

HAHAHAHAHAHAhAHA no.

Good Gravstar immobilizes/kills two serpents a turn. Serpents are not good against twinlinked, ignores cover grav guns that reroll their armor pen. Add in GOI and that's a pretty easy match up. Serpents just can't get through that many 2+ saves fast enough

The Internet made it Unbalanced.

 Guitarquero wrote:
The Internet made it Unbalanced.

Don't bring ICQ into this!

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Orock wrote:
[A good Gravstar build laughs at Wave Serpents.

HAHAHAHAHAHAhAHA no.

Good Gravstar immobilizes/kills two serpents a turn. Serpents are not good against twinlinked, ignores cover grav guns that reroll their armor pen. Add in GOI and that's a pretty easy match up. Serpents just can't get through that many 2+ saves fast enough

What does it do about the other 4 Wave Serpents in the list and the pseudo-rending weapons within them? As long as the Eldar player understands the rules of the Space Marine Codex enough to understand the capability, this is a non-issue for a Serpent heavy list. And if it kills two Serpents, it isn't killing the Wraithknights. If it is killing the Wraithknights, it isn't killing the Serpents. Hardened target saturation is what makes these builds nasty....and I have never had issues with even the strong players and their Centurion-star setups.

 Dunklezahn wrote:
Well yeah, that's my point, it was in reference to Clively who seemed to think GK and SOB should have been Battle Brothers. The rumours and speculation around GK alone should put people off trusting them and if they actually know some of what they've done it's even worse.

Let me put it a different way. The SoB *allowed* the GK to slaughter them in order to defeat the daemons. The trust level on that has to be incredibly high; hence the reason I think they should have been BB. As far as the other armies: No one who had heard anything at all about the GK would trust them.

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Orock wrote:
[A good Gravstar build laughs at Wave Serpents.

HAHAHAHAHAHAhAHA no.

Good Gravstar immobilizes/kills two serpents a turn. Serpents are not good against twinlinked, ignores cover grav guns that reroll their armor pen. Add in GOI and that's a pretty easy match up. Serpents just can't get through that many 2+ saves fast enough

What does it do about the other 4 Wave Serpents in the list and the pseudo-rending weapons within them? As long as the Eldar player understands the rules of the Space Marine Codex enough to understand the capability, this is a non-issue for a Serpent heavy list. And if it kills two Serpents, it isn't killing the Wraithknights. If it is killing the Wraithknights, it isn't killing the Serpents. Hardened target saturation is what makes these builds nasty....and I have never had issues with even the strong players and their Centurion-star setups.

If you disembark your precious troops to shoot with them for a slim chance of rending, they're dead next turn and you've lost the game.

Centurion devs are the second best thing for hunting Wave Serpents, the best thing being Crisis suits with twin missile pods and buff commander.

You can easily fit both into a Farsight Enclaves/Space Marine list. Eldar are incredibly squishy outside of the Seerstar/ Beastpack, they have no hardened targets.

Gating centstar kills the Wraithknights first turn. Crisis suits kill Serpents. With my opening salvo I can potentially kill or cripple half your army; Eldar can't deal with the correct Tau/SM build. Do the strong players you play go to or win in many GTs? If not, they're not strong players.

clively wrote:
Let me put it a different way. The SoB *allowed* the GK to slaughter them in order to defeat the daemons.

Eh? That's not how I've ever heard the story told.

 DanielBeaver wrote:

clively wrote:
Let me put it a different way. The SoB *allowed* the GK to slaughter them in order to defeat the daemons.

Eh? That's not how I've ever heard the story told.

Of course not. It doesn't fit into the "Ward is the devil!" spiel going on on the interwebz.

clively wrote:

 Dunklezahn wrote:
Well yeah, that's my point, it was in reference to Clively who seemed to think GK and SOB should have been Battle Brothers. The rumours and speculation around GK alone should put people off trusting them and if they actually know some of what they've done it's even worse.

Let me put it a different way. The SoB *allowed* the GK to slaughter them in order to defeat the daemons. The trust level on that has to be incredibly high; hence the reason I think they should have been BB. As far as the other armies: No one who had heard anything at all about the GK would trust them.

I thought most everyone ignored that fluff as the bad fanfic writings of an idiot and not real canon?

Heldrakes were broken but i'd say its the weapons race between tau and eldar that really made things bad. Like everything else it will pass, maybe in a year we could be crying about imperial guard cheese. I'd say orcs or ba have that potential too, but with the lack of melee in this edition i doubt it.

 kronk wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
It's been a gradual creep, which pretty much every book apart from Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Tyranids has been part of.

I'm sorry what? Omniscope Grav Centurions moving and wasting 2 enemy MEQ squads at a time led by beatstick CM taking any and all enemy fire and dropping orbital bombardment that happily scatters off to a nearby tank doesnt ring a bell? Or biker command squad going all grav? Or Imperial Fist Lascannon Devastators? White Scar all biker army where almost every unit is scoring?

What do Imperial Fists Lascannon Devastators do that's so devastating?

They get the tank hunter USR, meaning they get to re-roll any and all failed armor penetration rolls. Four S9 Lascannons doing this is very, very deadly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, in regards to the GK debate, Mat Ward raped the fluff. I believe "mind wiping" was his idea.

 Sir Arun wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, in regards to the GK debate, Mat Ward raped the fluff. I believe "mind wiping" was his idea.

He didn't, and it wasn't.

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

 Orock wrote:
[A good Gravstar build laughs at Wave Serpents.

HAHAHAHAHAHAhAHA no.

Good Gravstar immobilizes/kills two serpents a turn. Serpents are not good against twinlinked, ignores cover grav guns that reroll their armor pen. Add in GOI and that's a pretty easy match up. Serpents just can't get through that many 2+ saves fast enough

What does it do about the other 4 Wave Serpents in the list and the pseudo-rending weapons within them? As long as the Eldar player understands the rules of the Space Marine Codex enough to understand the capability, this is a non-issue for a Serpent heavy list. And if it kills two Serpents, it isn't killing the Wraithknights. If it is killing the Wraithknights, it isn't killing the Serpents. Hardened target saturation is what makes these builds nasty....and I have never had issues with even the strong players and their Centurion-star setups.

I'm not saying that you are not capable of beating a Grav Star list with your WS Spam list. I am saying that a Gravstar definitely has the advantage in that matchup. Asmodai already covered it, but I'm going to reiterate.

The Gravstar kills WKs even easier than it kills Serpents (the WKs die first, if you're lucky they put a few wounds on a CM first). You're looking at two Eldar units dead in a turn, almost for sure. In turn, you cannot kill the Gravstar fast enough. There will be between 1-2 Chapter Masters tanking, and then either a Tau Commander in Iridium Armor or a pair of Inquisitors (one of whom will be Coteaz) in TDA/Artificer armor. Then all the Centurions themselves have a 2+ save. If Shadowsun is present they will have a 2+ cover, which will completely ignore your pseudo rending. If you're counting on the Serpents for rending, assuming SL/Cannon/Shield (and I personally don't run the Cannon on my Serpents, and neither do many top level players), you are avereging slightly less than 1 rend per 2 Serpents. I think the Gravstar can handle that. If you're dismounting your Dire Avengers, maybe you kill a Teletubby or two, but now Thundefire cannons and Talons and/or etc just killed all your Troops. It's a terrible matchup for Serpent spam.

Really though, for as good as Wave Serpents are (and they're amazing) and how much they shifted the meta (which was insane for a dedicated transport, they single handedly killed Pulse Bomb style Tau gunlines), Serpent spam is not a top tier list. Eldar are the best Army in the game, and part of that is because of Wave Serpents, but it is not because of armies rocking 6-9 Serpents. Gravstar (or Teletubby star as I hope catches on) is a top tier Army, and it hoses Serpents/WKs. To really run with Eldar you need an actual damage sink. Beastpacks and Seer Councils being the obvious candidates, but Guardian blobs work pretty well too.

clively wrote:
Let me put it a different way. The SoB *allowed* the GK to slaughter them in order to defeat the daemons.

We don't actually know that. All we're told is that the GK "turn their blades upon" the surviving Sisters. Nothing's said about how the Sisters react to it.

Anyway, as for their allies rating, I'd say that allies of convinience fits. The GK are quite distant from anyone who isn't them, and the Sisters have some degree of wariness towards Marines in general.

 Sir Arun wrote:

Also, in regards to the GK debate, Mat Ward raped the fluff. I believe "mind wiping" was his idea.

I am 100% certain it was mentioned in the background section of the 5th (or maybe even 4th) edition rulebook that space marines who encountered demons were automatically mind wiped afterwords (and normal humans were killed). Since where demons go Grey Knights seem to follow it doesn't seem to far fetched to assume that contact with the GK would be a reasonable indicator that a men in black moment is in your near future.

 changerofways wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
It was cheesy from the start.

Say hello to Mr. Vendetta.

Yeah I'd agree it started going bad with the Vendetta

That's hardly anybody's fault, it was a moderate Fast Skimmer in 5th, it was 6th that turned it into the monster it is. This also isn't GW's fault, they turned anything that looked like it should go 'Nyeeeeowm' into a flyer and the Vendetta was one of those.

I thought the ONLY two things they turned into flyers was the Stormraven, Nightscythe, and the Vendetta.
So only IG, Necrons, BA, and GK go a flyer just from an update.
Then they did a special flyer release, which gave orks and C:Sm a flyer.
So right at the drop of 6th only 6 armies had access to this meta changing event.
Yeah. I think I can blame GW for that.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I thought the ONLY two things they turned into flyers was the Stormraven, Nightscythe, and the Vendetta.
So only IG, Necrons, BA, and GK go a flyer just from an update.
Then they did a special flyer release, which gave orks and C:Sm a flyer.
So right at the drop of 6th only 6 armies had access to this meta changing event.
Yeah. I think I can blame GW for that.

The Dark Eldar supersonics became flyers as well.

And Tyranid and Daemons FMC.

 dementedwombat wrote:

I am 100% certain it was mentioned in the background section of the 5th (or maybe even 4th) edition rulebook that space marines who encountered demons were automatically mind wiped afterwords (and normal humans were killed). Since where demons go Grey Knights seem to follow it doesn't seem to far fetched to assume that contact with the GK would be a reasonable indicator that a men in black moment is in your near future.

May well be but I think the whole chaos experience mind wiping and slaughter has been around ages, doesn't Grimnar get his knickers in a twist about it at Armageddon 1: The Armageddoning?

Also "turning your blades" on an ally does not make it sound like the sisters gave their blood up willingly to me if that is the quote.
People may not like Wards fluff but it's still there as part of the setting now. Some of it you can take as propaganda as sweep to one side a little if it makes you really hate it but it's still there. Personally I preferred it when marines had a rougher edge rather than the shining space knights we increasingly see today but hey, what can you do.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I thought the ONLY two things they turned into flyers was the Stormraven, Nightscythe, and the Vendetta.
So only IG, Necrons, BA, and GK go a flyer just from an update.
Then they did a special flyer release, which gave orks and C:Sm a flyer.
So right at the drop of 6th only 6 armies had access to this meta changing event.
Yeah. I think I can blame GW for that.

8 armies. FMC Demon Princes (CSM+ Demons), Hive Tyrants (Nids), Deldar flyer, Vendetta, Stormraven, Nightscythe...
So half of the armies had access to this special, meta-breaking event. That's not bad in my opinion.
And, did you really expect GW to release special flyer models for every single army in advance, they literally just turned anything that looked like a plane into a flyer and said 'that's that', or of course, anything with wings.
So no, you can't.

FMC aren't in the same category to me. You can ground a FMC afterall and FMC don't start off flying and don't have to start off in reserves.

But if we went with the "everything with wings" approach, then why wasn't the Skyray given skyfire options at the turn of 6th. Why didn't things that were anti-air units in fluff and look get skyfire?

Even then half of the armies out there. How is that justified? Half of the armies are allowed to set the meta and the other half have to find ways around it with a single AA fortification.

It's entirely GW's responsibility and I still can blame them. It's a rock, paper, scissor game. You introduce a 4th thing, like fire, which ties with rock, melts scissor, and burns paper. It is entirely stupid to introduce an element that there is no available counter for at the time.

Let's not forget that for a while FMCs didn't even have Skyfire, on top of being slower, generally much more expensive, and subject to grounding tests.