-1 to hit army traits are pretty busted. I think they should just be mass removed from the game and replaced with something else. I'm not saying there are not other busted army traits...but -1 to hit for what ends up being most of your army completely overshadows other options. If not for 2 special characters (Cawl and Guilliman [these guys are even more busted than -1 army traits]) Every armies best faction would be -1 to hit that had access to it (obviosuly these heros need fixing too.)

-1 to hit is so obviously and statistically better than all the other defensive traits. 6+ stackable or non stackable FNP? always count in cover? Am I missing another? Not even remotely close in power level. Again - I'm not ignoring other OP army traits - the top 3 AM traits are a little too good. Kraken is a little OTT for nids. I just think they could be fixed differently. -1 to hit army traits should just be flat out replaced or at the very least (should not stack with other -1 to hits) really though - just remove them and replace with something else.

It's really just sad we have to go through all this nonsense to play the game we love. I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

How many auto-hitting long range weapons are there?
Genuine question, I do agree that the trait is very strong, I just do wonder if it's a no-brainer.
Say, all the marines are either AL or RG? Or such variety is going to disappear?

This said, this is for sure another "core", base design problem. A -1 has not the same effect on BS 3+ compared to BS 5+.

This is just the result of the same very amateurish design that gave us non-functional tanks (without hotfixes like the double shooting) when BS 3+ is not present, or under-used flamers (unless mounted on specific platforms and/or with longer range than the usual).

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's really just sad we have to go through all this nonsense to play the game we love. I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

Then why haven't you? Fan rules, if good, are accepted. Just look at ITC and how they structure their rules and missions in an attempt to support diverse army lists. These rules are accepted because they work.

As for your main concern about -1 to hit from range army traits: I don't see the problem. It's powerful, but the other army traits are powerful if used properly as well. My +1A World Eaters don't give a fudge about -1 to hit from range because I'm attempting to lodge a Chainaxe in your face. Iron Warriors basically don't care either since you can't stack it up as much against them. There is a current balance of giving everyone something powerful if used correctly that they are trying to do, it doesn't always work but in general it's something you need to play around. You can't be all shooting and you can't be all melee, you need to balance your list to be prepared for opponents with a random assortment of traits.

The -1 to hit traits I think are going to be the most enduring balance issues of 8E.

There are ways to work around or power through it for some armies, but not all, especially in casual/TAC lists.

They especially shouldnt apply to things like tanks or monsters, for Alaitoc this really felt like a concept pulled off one iconic niche unit (Pathfinders) and applied to the whole army without really any thought applied.

We'll see how it shakes out, but I think they were a big mistake (same with the Catachan rerolls too).

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
How many auto-hitting long range weapons are there?
Genuine question, I do agree that the trait is very strong, I just do wonder if it's a no-brainer.
Say, all the marines are either AL or RG? Or such variety is going to disappear?

This said, this is for sure another "core", base design problem. A -1 has not the same effect on BS 3+ compared to BS 5+.

This is just the result of the same very amateurish design that gave us non-functional tanks (without hotfixes like the double shooting) when BS 3+ is not present, or under-used flamers (unless mounted on specific platforms and/or with longer range than the usual).

There are lots of ways get get serious shooting at 2+ to hit - though it's expensive. 2+ to hit doesn't care too much about -1 to hit but it gets progressively worse down the line. So if you have a -2 to hit - you are effectively invisible from bs4+ (I think we know how this will turn out). More auto hitting would go a long way but I think the real problem is -1 to hit going to any unit in an army for free.

Jormunger is substantially better because it never goes away.

Every army can be shooting within 12" on turn 1 if they feel like it.

-1 to hit is not unbalanced, it is a good balancing factor to turn 1 alpha strike armies. The issue is Stacking to hit bonuses beyond -1. Further the fact that several of the -1 to hit armies also get the best army specific stratagems (CSM and Marines at least both get the infiltrate stratagem.) is an issue with faction balance.

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's really just sad we have to go through all this nonsense to play the game we love. I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

Then why haven't you? Fan rules, if good, are accepted. Just look at ITC and how they structure their rules and missions in an attempt to support diverse army lists. These rules are accepted because they work.

As for your main concern about -1 to hit from range army traits: I don't see the problem. It's powerful, but the other army traits are powerful if used properly as well. My +1A World Eaters don't give a fudge about -1 to hit from range because I'm attempting to lodge a Chainaxe in your face. Iron Warriors basically don't care either since you can't stack it up as much against them. There is a current balance of giving everyone something powerful if used correctly that they are trying to do, it doesn't always work but in general it's something you need to play around. You can't be all shooting and you can't be all melee, you need to balance your list to be prepared for opponents with a random assortment of traits.

True - it doesn't work in melle. Melle is pretty much garbage teir again this edition though. The only units with viable melle are units that have a gimic to get into CC turn 1 - bezerkers are a rare exception because they have an outlandish number of attacks however - really are only viable because they can get auto turn 1 charges via warptime and having sneaky deployment.

Assuming every trait is being used properly -1 to hit is just better what other traits can offer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Jormunger is substantially better because it never goes away.

Every army can be shooting within 12" on turn 1 if they feel like it.

Jorm trait is pretty bad - because I could just be in cover anyways to get the same benefit. Plus nids want to advance every turn anyways - which turns the trait off. Play wise this is one of the worst traits (they just have some of the best strategems so it keeps them in the mix)

I don't think this is actually true. I agree that there's a problem but I don't think the problem is that -1 to hit is just so much more powerful than any other trait. I'll explain:

First, 6+ FNP is giving you a lot of the same benefit. -1 to hit is better when it works, but it's not that much better, and of course the FNP also applies to shooting from inside 12", CC, and mortal wounds. There are lots of units that would prefer the 6+ FNP. Deep strikers, for example, or close-range units in transports. Jormugandr's always-in-cover trait is even more effective, for most units without invulnerable saves, and would be competitive with -1 to hit if it didn't turn off when you advance or charge. It's true that -1 to hit is especially punishing for BS4+, but it's also probably a good thing that there's a way to counter Guard gunlines, which are otherwise extremely efficient.

Second, there are strong offensive traits too. The Salamanders trait is nuts and there are clearly units that would prefer it to the Raven Guard trait. The only reason you don't see more of it is that Guilliman's buff is better. You mention Kraken, which is another great offensive trait and which many Tyranid units would prefer to having -1 to hit. The Chaos Renegades trait would be very strong for several armies.

I think there are three underlying problems that make the -1 to hit traits look too good.

1) Lots of other traits are just bad. There are clearly tiers of traits, and GW doesn't seem to have paid much attention to this when giving out other goodies either. I'm most familiar with Eldar, where it's just immediately obvious that you want either Alatoic or Ulthwe for everything. Iyanden is almost strictly worse than Ulthwe for most real units. Biel-Tan and Saim-Hann apply to only a few units and aren't even very strong effects. I don't think the answer is to make everything as bad as Iyanden (for Eldar, I mean -- obviously there are armies that would love a free Commissar in every unit).

2) These traits often come with the best other goodies. Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, and Stygies get infiltrate stratagems, which is especially strong for Chaos.

3) Alatoic in particular is such a no-brainer over Ulthwe because the trait can benefit things that already get -1 to hit. This is also part of the appeal of Stygies (with dragoons). This is especially silly when it comes to Hemlocks -- Alatoic bumps them up to -2 to hit, while Ulthwe does literally nothing for them because Ulthwe's FNP doesn't stack with Spirit Stones. With the huge nerf to Shadow Spectres in CA, the main problems here are just the flyers and Rangers (which are only a reasonable Troops choice in Alatoic armies for this reason).

Breng77 wrote:
-1 to hit is not unbalanced, it is a good balancing factor to turn 1 alpha strike armies. The issue is Stacking to hit bonuses beyond -1. Further the fact that several of the -1 to hit armies also get the best army specific stratagems (CSM and Marines at least both get the infiltrate stratagem.) is an issue with faction balance.

Stacking is the main problem for 3+ armies - but 4+ armies are pretty boned by the 5+ to hit.

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's really just sad we have to go through all this nonsense to play the game we love. I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

Hyperbole, seriously, can we avoid it? It colors the entire tenor of the discussion going forward. Maybe you can, maybe you can't, making the statement invites a challenge to it which causes the discussion to digress into other unrelated topics, like your typing speed.

You feel that the -1 to hit outside of 12" trait is unbalanced and poorly implemented. Great. That's a valid discussion point, let's unpack that, not your hypothetical and completely unfounded claim at being able to write amazingly balanced game rules inside of a 24 hour period.

I don't currently have a problem with it, I do feel it's one of the better army traits (but only because the current meta is heavily slanted towards shooting), but I think it only seems overpowered by comparison to other traits that are not as generally applicable. However, against many armies, this ability will have little to no effect.
- Smite spam - who cares that you're -1 to hit at range?
- Assault - again, who cares?
- Immobile Gunline - is specifically the army style this was put in to counter, it's doing it's job, great.
- Fast Attack Gunline - only cares about half the time because they can get inside of 12" and fire their weapons if they want.
- Air Force - also doesn't care because they can negate the range effect.
- Super-Heavies - again, should be getting inside of 12" unless you're playing AM Super-Heavies, in which case, refer to immobile gunline.
- Hordes - again, don't care, will get inside 12".

I mean I can go on, but basically this is only a problem for armies that insist on sitting on their butts at max range.

A more cogent discussion would involve the army traits that don't get used and what could be done to make them more generally effective. For example, Word Bearers get to re-roll morale checks, outside of Cultists, who cares? How is this useful in a CSM army with high LD already?

-1 to hit armies are the new paper in the game of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' that is 40k 8th edition.

A static parking lot/gunline (rock) army will be at a massive disadvantage.

A deepstrike/infiltrate/in your face turn 1 army (scissors) will not care much.

Spartacus wrote:
-1 to hit armies are the new paper in the game of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' that is 40k 8th edition.

A static parking lot/gunline (rock) army will be at a massive disadvantage.

A deepstrike/infiltrate/in your face turn 1 army (scissors) will not care much.

Very well said.

-1 to hit is what makes Melee armies playable by indirectly making gun line armies less effective. What is important is giving as many armies access to the trait as possible.
I'll agree that right now it's a bit unbalanced because only 4 armies can do this army-wide (Marines, CSM, Eldar and Guard?)
Once more armies has access to the -1 to hit trait, or possible better traits, it won't seem so obvious.
Without this trait, gun line armies would reign supreme and we'd be in yet another edition in which melee armies are shelved.

Don't get me wrong, shooting armies are still better, but by giving those armies -1 to hit, it shifts the balance just enough to allow more melee centered lists to be playable.

-

 Galef wrote:
I'll agree that right now it's a bit unbalanced because only 2 armies can do this army-wide (Eldar and Guard?) and another two can put it on some of their units (SM/CSM).

Fixed for you, my pedantry knows no bounds.

Admech has this trait as well (stygies) which also comes with the infiltration stratagem like the CSM AL And SM RG.

I actually have to pick a forge world to play for some Mechanicus in the future too, as I may move into that army, not sure.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's really just sad we have to go through all this nonsense to play the game we love. I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

Hyperbole, seriously, can we avoid it? It colors the entire tenor of the discussion going forward. Maybe you can, maybe you can't, making the statement invites a challenge to it which causes the discussion to digress into other unrelated topics, like your typing speed.

You feel that the -1 to hit outside of 12" trait is unbalanced and poorly implemented. Great. That's a valid discussion point, let's unpack that, not your hypothetical and completely unfounded claim at being able to write amazingly balanced game rules inside of a 24 hour period.

I don't currently have a problem with it, I do feel it's one of the better army traits (but only because the current meta is heavily slanted towards shooting), but I think it only seems overpowered by comparison to other traits that are not as generally applicable. However, against many armies, this ability will have little to no effect.
- Smite spam - who cares that you're -1 to hit at range?
- Assault - again, who cares?
- Immobile Gunline - is specifically the army style this was put in to counter, it's doing it's job, great.
- Fast Attack Gunline - only cares about half the time because they can get inside of 12" and fire their weapons if they want.
- Air Force - also doesn't care because they can negate the range effect.
- Super-Heavies - again, should be getting inside of 12" unless you're playing AM Super-Heavies, in which case, refer to immobile gunline.
- Hordes - again, don't care, will get inside 12".

I mean I can go on, but basically this is only a problem for armies that insist on sitting on their butts at max range.

A more cogent discussion would involve the army traits that don't get used and what could be done to make them more generally effective. For example, Word Bearers get to re-roll morale checks, outside of Cultists, who cares? How is this useful in a CSM army with high LD already?

Don't sell yourself short - I think you could do a better job than GW at writing this complete ruleset in a 24 hour period too.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Galef wrote:
I'll agree that right now it's a bit unbalanced because only 2 armies can do this army-wide (Eldar and Guard?) and another two can put it on some of their units (SM/CSM).

Fixed for you, my pedantry knows no bounds.

Fair enough, although it is entirely possible to make competitive lists with both SM and CSM in which every unit gets the -1 to hit trait. Ergo, 4 armies exist in which the entire list would be -1 to hit for the opponent.

The only thing I would concede might be too strong is being able to stack -1s. However, I would also argue that being able to do so (and the existence of Dark Reapers) is probably the only thing keeping Eldar "competitive". I haven't see a single Eldar list without Alaitoc Flyers and Dark Reapers placing in any tourney results.

-

Actually Imperial Guard has no -1 to hit rule. Only SM, CSM, Admech and Craftworld have it.

Eh there needs to be some protection against shooting armies. I mean it's off the chain how good shooting and gunlines are in this edition, in general. When the Tau codex drops, and commanders are duking on everyone, that -1 to hit at 12" won't matter, because #deepstrike

 Galef wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Galef wrote:
I'll agree that right now it's a bit unbalanced because only 2 armies can do this army-wide (Eldar and Guard?) and another two can put it on some of their units (SM/CSM).

Fixed for you, my pedantry knows no bounds.

Fair enough, although it is entirely possible to make competitive lists with both SM and CSM in which every unit gets the -1 to hit trait. Ergo, 4 armies exist in which the entire list would be -1 to hit for the opponent.

-

Yeah - no question about it ether - Space marines and Admech would have this as their go to trait if not for the presence of Cawl an Guilliman/Azreal (who offer more through having amazing auras).

I think it's more a weakness of the D6 system than something specific to toHit rolls. I understand why the original WH40k went with D6s, they the one dice type gamers have sacks of, but it creates this very narrow band in which you can boost stats before they become broken.

Take -1 toHit on a guardsman (BS 4+). Give him a single bonus and he's still fine. Stack another -1 to hit and he's nearly incapable of missing.

Reverse it. Give him +1 to hit and he still gets work done (effect 5+). Stack 2 of them (like an armywide -1 to hit rolls stacked on a flyer's native -1 to hit rolls) and suddenly he can't be relied on to hit anything (effective 6+ )

It gets just as bad on wound rolls. Add +1 or -1 and you are still within a decent band of effectivenss. Do +2 or -2 and a lot of units become either capable of only wounding on 6 or capable of effectively wounding anything they want.

It won't happen in this edition, but either bonuses need to not stack (causing a riot) or they need to move to different dice (causing a riot). This is assuming they haven't just resigned themselves to having the problem, which given how many times they've advertised 2+ BS and 2+ Wound rolls in community articles, might be the case. It's the politically least painful move for them.

 Marmatag wrote:
Eh there needs to be some protection against shooting armies. I mean it's off the chain how good shooting and gunlines are in this edition, in general. When the Tau codex drops, and commanders are duking on everyone, that -1 to hit at 12" won't matter, because #deepstrike

NM - this gonna work great because drones and character targeting

Honestly, the fact that this trait is the "go-to" for armies that have it says more about how "busted" shooting armies are rather than the trait itself.

 Marmatag wrote:
Eh there needs to be some protection against shooting armies. I mean it's off the chain how good shooting and gunlines are in this edition, in general. When the Tau codex drops, and commanders are duking on everyone, that -1 to hit at 12" won't matter, because #deepstrike

It is entirely possible that T'au end up getting an attribute or WL trait that flat out ignores -1 to hit modifiers, meaning armies that choose the -1 to hit trait end up not having a trait at all.

-

I really like the Open War Cards, the Toxic Rain card. On the first turn of the battle, everyone has -1 to hit. It really hurts alpha strike.

I know "But meele alpha strike!" meele alpha strike is extremely easy to play agaisn't just with deployment and totally unreliable.

While I can see it being really annoying in a tournament setting...if the army list is nothing filthy, it's a pretty reasonable trait. It does suck for non-shooty armies or armies with poor ballistic skill.

I do think, as mentioned it is entirely dependent on the type of army you encounter. It does encourage something like a gunline guard army to reconsider taking additional units. I actually like that. It forces some more thought when constructing armies.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Galef wrote:
I'll agree that right now it's a bit unbalanced because only 2 armies can do this army-wide (Eldar and Guard?) and another two can put it on some of their units (SM/CSM).

Fixed for you, my pedantry knows no bounds.

Fair enough, although it is entirely possible to make competitive lists with both SM and CSM in which every unit gets the -1 to hit trait. Ergo, 4 armies exist in which the entire list would be -1 to hit for the opponent.

-

Yeah - no question about it ether - Space marines and Admech would have this as their go to trait if not for the presence of Cawl an Guilliman/Azreal (who offer more through having amazing auras).

I'm actually not sure about that.

My possible Mechanicus force is looking a Lucius, for the neato deepstrike stratagem and the ignoring -1 save guns (mostly for fluff reasons); Mars, and not for Cawl but rather two uses of Canticles of the Omnissiah (imagine if Guard could double their orders for free and cast 2 on the same unit...); Stygies (because frankly -1 to hit outside of 12" is hilariously good)... well really all of them. I have a reason for liking each one. Even Graia I like because of the stratagem to 50/50 deny an enemy psy power. That seems funny.

 Galef wrote:
Honestly, the fact that this trait is the "go-to" for armies that have it says more about how "busted" shooting armies are rather than the trait itself.

 Marmatag wrote:
Eh there needs to be some protection against shooting armies. I mean it's off the chain how good shooting and gunlines are in this edition, in general. When the Tau codex drops, and commanders are duking on everyone, that -1 to hit at 12" won't matter, because #deepstrike

It is entirely possible that T'au end up getting an attribute or WL trait that flat out ignores -1 to hit modifiers, meaning armies that choose the -1 to hit trait end up not having a trait at all.

-

Man I hope they get that - would be great for the meta - also would be great for tau.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
I really like the Open War Cards, the Toxic Rain card. On the first turn of the battle, everyone has -1 to hit. It really hurts alpha strike.

I know "But meele alpha strike!" meele alpha strike is extremely easy to play agaisn't just with deployment and totally unreliable.

Well open war is narrative. So you can just cast defensive buffs everywhere anyways - Imagine an eldar dark reaper gun line with aliatoc trait with that card - plus conceal on everything. Literally invunerable to shooting and hits everything on 3+ reroll ones . forgive me my mind just automatically goes to the most broken stuff - I actually played a narrative game this weekend and it was a blast for my greyknights.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I don't think deep striking commanders is even going to be viable with forewarned - plus they wont be getting within 12 of anything that opponents don't want them to be.

I'm not sure that the presence of a single stratagem costing 2CP invalidates an entire mechanic, again, it depends on what's deep striking and a number of other factors, it is by no means a binary result.

By that logic Dark Reapers invalidate Flyers entirely, which I hardly think is the case.

At a guess, they figured if you care about the attack you'll have re-roll to hits, and since the IoM and Chaos get those like it was half off on a fire sale they are probably right. Also they figured that people would do math and see abilities like disgustingly resilient are way better, silly GW on that one though.

A BS 3+ (and let's face it almost all of the game is 3+) unit shooting generally has a 66% chance to hit, but is reduced to 50%. With reroll misses, it drops from 88% to 75%. That's about a 15% reduction in damage taken. Compare it to a 5+ FnP (a straight 33% reduction in damage taken) and you can see it's pretty weaksauce. Even at a 4+, it's 50% to 37% (26% reduction in incoming damage) without rerolls and 75% to 56% (25% reduction in incoming damage), neither of which achieve the levels of defense provided by disgustingly resilient.

I doubt you'll find many people on these board arguing that disgustingly resilient is OP, so it doesn't make much sense to argue an ability that is mathematically inferior, and can be bypassed by positioning is OP ethier.

The problem is one of psychology, you will miss more shots due to the -1 to hit than people will make DR rolls. The monkey brain thinks more is more powerful, despite the fact that missed shots would still have to roll to wound and have to fail an armor save. So it seems more efficacious in the minds of players, despite being inferior mathematically.

So heres what am picking up from the responses. -1 to hit everywhere is good for the game because it helps assault armies?

Does it really though? Are gun line armies going to build less like gunlines because of the existence of -1 to hit? Does it help melle armies survive if they use it themselves? Nah I don't think so. Melle armies work best when they hit turn 1 and don't benift from the -1 to hit at all practically. Melles issues are obvious. Guns are better than swords - it's just the way things are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I don't think deep striking commanders is even going to be viable with forewarned - plus they wont be getting within 12 of anything that opponents don't want them to be.

I'm not sure that the presence of a single stratagem costing 2CP invalidates an entire mechanic, again, it depends on what's deep striking and a number of other factors, it is by no means a binary result.

By that logic Dark Reapers invalidate Flyers entirely, which I hardly think is the case.

Well actually i think I done goofed on this. A commander is going to have drones with him and you wont be able to target the commander.

 Grimgold wrote:
At a guess, they figured if you care about the attack you'll have re-roll to hits, and since the IoM and Chaos get those like it was half off on a fire sale they are probably right. Also they figured that people would do math and see abilities like disgustingly resilient are way better, silly GW on that one though.

A BS 3+ (and let's face it almost all of the game is 3+) unit shooting generally has a 66% chance to hit, but is reduced to 50%. With reroll misses, it drops from 88% to 75%. That's about a 15% reduction in damage taken. Compare it to a 5+ FnP (a straight 33% reduction in damage taken) and you can see it's pretty weaksauce. Even at a 4+, it's 50% to 37% (26% reduction in incoming damage) without rerolls and 75% to 56% (25% reduction in incoming damage), neither of which achieve the levels of defense provided by disgustingly resilient.

I doubt you'll find many people on these board arguing that disgustingly resilient is OP, so it doesn't make much sense to argue an ability that is mathematically inferior, and can be bypassed by positioning is OP ethier.

The problem is one of psychology, you will miss more shots due to the -1 to hit than people will make DR rolls. The monkey brain thinks more is more powerful, despite the fact that missed shots would still have to roll to wound and have to fail an armor save. So it seems more efficacious in the minds of players, despite being inferior mathematically.

I generally agree, though this goes out the window now that we know that non-marine armies are gonna get the trait on their fliers. -1 to hit is a fairly reasonable penalty (though it is still pretty much always the best trait when available), -2 to hit though...

 Grimgold wrote:
At a guess, they figured if you care about the attack you'll have re-roll to hits, and since the IoM and Chaos get those like it was half off on a fire sale they are probably right. Also they figured that people would do math and see abilities like disgustingly resilient are way better, silly GW on that one though.

A BS 3+ (and let's face it almost all of the game is 3+) unit shooting generally has a 66% chance to hit, but is reduced to 50%. With reroll misses, it drops from 88% to 75%. That's about a 15% reduction in damage taken. Compare it to a 5+ FnP (a straight 33% reduction in damage taken) and you can see it's pretty weaksauce. Even at a 4+, it's 50% to 37% (26% reduction in incoming damage) without rerolls and 75% to 56% (25% reduction in incoming damage), neither of which achieve the levels of defense provided by disgustingly resilient.

I doubt you'll find many people on these board arguing that disgustingly resilient is OP, so it doesn't make much sense to argue an ability that is mathematically inferior, and can be bypassed by positioning is OP ethier.

The problem is one of psychology, you will miss more shots due to the -1 to hit than people will make DR rolls. The monkey brain thinks more is more powerful, despite the fact that missed shots would still have to roll to wound and have to fail an armor save. So it seems more efficacious in the minds of players, despite being inferior mathematically.

Most people on this board think DG are under-powered. I know how strong they are. Not fair to call the ability inferior ether. On units that have natural -1 to hit - Their damage reduction becomes far superior. It would also be pretty hard to factor but FNP rolls occur after rolls for damage are taken so a lot of times you will have to take 2 FNP rolls to save a 1 wound model (a 2 damage shot). There is also the issue with overcharging weapons blowing up more on the user.

I kind of hate flyers, so I'm probably biased on this, but I think the flyer rules are horrible to begin with. The fact I'll have more reason to hate flyers doesn't really sour me on the base rule.

With that said, the easy answer is that minuses to hit don't stack.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
-1 to hit is not unbalanced, it is a good balancing factor to turn 1 alpha strike armies. The issue is Stacking to hit bonuses beyond -1. Further the fact that several of the -1 to hit armies also get the best army specific stratagems (CSM and Marines at least both get the infiltrate stratagem.) is an issue with faction balance.

Stacking is the main problem for 3+ armies - but 4+ armies are pretty boned by the 5+ to hit.

No stacking is the main problem for all armies. Gunline 4+ armies hitting things more than 12" away on a 5+ is fine, as it mitigates alpha strike gunline armies effectiveness. Which is good for the game. Stacking where those armies hit on a 6+ or not at all, is bad for the game.

It is good for assault armies because it reduces the effectiveness of static gunlines that sit behind chaff, and shooting that doesn't require LOS (typically long range) in the general meta. The issue is that these armies are also the most effective assault armies because they have the infiltrate stratagems along with the - 1 to hit. So the natural counter to these armies belongs to those same armies. So they end up being the only ones taken barring super buff characters.

 Grimgold wrote:
I kind of hate flyers, so I'm probably biased on this, but I think the flyer rules are horrible to begin with. The fact I'll have more reason to hate flyers doesn't really sour me on the base rule.

With that said, the easy answer is that minuses to hit don't stack.

In my OP I stated that would be my preferred secondary solution. I'd prefer a defensive buff not scale with enemy BS though - that is just flat unfair IMO.

It hurts AM most - which are currently considered top dog.

SM aren't affected as much - because they are BS4.

Funnily enough, Tac squads are BS4, and typically want to move up to wihtin 12" to shoot. So everyone's favorite unit actually does fairly well against it.

It would help Assault armies that can't assume a turn-1 charge. If Ork Boyz could get it, it'd be scary. You'd either have to move up and all but give them the charge if you failed to finish them (what can't cover 12" between moving and charging?), or you stay put and lose a decent chunk of your shooting.

I don't like it. I thought it was OP when RG got it, even worse for AL, and at a whole new level for CWE. But it hurts the top dogs, and doesn't affect much of the bottom of the pack.

Another point that I am not sure has been addressed here is how re-rolls work before modifiers.
Meaning that if something is BS3+ with a -1 to hit modifier and a re-roll, any natural 3+ rolls cannot be rerolled as they technically counts as a successful hit before the modifier.

It really should be the player's choice when to apply modifiers. That would help make -1 to hit not such a hard pill to swallow.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Most people on this board think DG are under-powered. I know how strong they are. Not fair to call the ability inferior ether. On units that have natural -1 to hit - Their damage reduction becomes far superior. It would also be pretty hard to factor but FNP rolls occur after rolls for damage are taken so a lot of times you will have to take 2 FNP rolls to save a 1 wound model (a 2 damage shot). There is also the issue with overcharging weapons blowing up more on the user.

I showed in my prior post why -1 to hit is worse in terms of damage prevention, but just to walk you down the garden path of the math, we'll do 100 bolter shots against 2 different groups of chaos marines, the first a group of sneaky alpha legion and the second a group of hideously deformed plague marines:

Alpha legion gives a -1 to hit, so the math is like this:
1/2 (to hit) * 1/2 (To wound) * 1/3 (failed armor save) = 1/12th, so it takes 12 shots to get a wound thru, so for 100 bolter shots you get 8.3 unsaved wounds.

DG have DR so the math goes like this:
2/3 (to hit) * 1/2 (to wound) * 1/3 (failed armor save) * 2/3 (failed DR) = 2/27 so for every 27 shots two wounds get thru, so in 100 bolter shots you get 7.4 unsaved wounds.

It can also be completely negated by being within 12", which does not apply to DR. As for plasma, if your in rapid fire range the -1 to hit doesn't apply, so DR is the clear winner there as well.

Well, that's DG.

Other FnP attributes are 6+++, not 5+++.

Besides, there is the inverse case of a 2W weapon hitting a 2W model. A 5+++ on Termies eating overcharged Plasma is about double the durability.

Breng77 wrote:
-1 to hit is not unbalanced, it is a good balancing factor to turn 1 alpha strike armies. The issue is Stacking to hit bonuses beyond -1. Further the fact that several of the -1 to hit armies also get the best army specific stratagems (CSM and Marines at least both get the infiltrate stratagem.) is an issue with faction balance.

Balancing alpha strike is best done with deployment limitations in the mission or by making the targets harder to kill (transports). Those alpha strike armies are often putting down a sick amount of firepower at low Strength, the -1 to hit is really not going to do a lot. This in turn is countered by small mobile armies or armies that wield anti-transport firepower. These are all good mechanics in the game. (I'm glad chapter approved is bringing over the AoS missions, they are much more balanced and force you to not just net list to win.)

I really don't think -1 to hit is an issue imo, now if an army comes out that is -1 to hit at all times? That's broke. So far it's been either a single phase, or a range limited thing, both of which have options to counter. (Hit them in the face or shoot them in the face.) Age of Sigmar has one army build like that (-1 to hit all the time) and it doesn't break the game because it's slower to slow and cannot really chase anything down.

 Grimgold wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Most people on this board think DG are under-powered. I know how strong they are. Not fair to call the ability inferior ether. On units that have natural -1 to hit - Their damage reduction becomes far superior. It would also be pretty hard to factor but FNP rolls occur after rolls for damage are taken so a lot of times you will have to take 2 FNP rolls to save a 1 wound model (a 2 damage shot). There is also the issue with overcharging weapons blowing up more on the user.

I showed in my prior post why -1 to hit is worse in terms of damage prevention, but just to walk you down the garden path of the math, we'll do 100 bolter shots against 2 different groups of chaos marines, the first a group of sneaky alpha legion and the second a group of hideously deformed plague marines:

Alpha legion gives a -1 to hit, so the math is like this:
1/2 (to hit) * 1/2 (To wound) * 1/3 (failed armor save) = 1/12th, so it takes 12 shots to get a wound thru, so for 100 bolter shots you get 8.3 unsaved wounds.

DG have DR so the math goes like this:
2/3 (to hit) * 1/2 (to wound) * 1/3 (failed armor save) * 2/3 (failed DR) = 2/27 so for every 27 shots two wounds get thru, so in 100 bolter shots you get 7.4 unsaved wounds.

It can also be completely negated by being within 12", which does not apply to DR. As for plasma, if your in rapid fire range the -1 to hit doesn't apply, so DR is the clear winner there as well.

I was specifically talking about -2 to hit. Natural -1 plus the army trait. Also more to your point. If DG wasn't slow AF people would talk about how broken they are. Plus I am seeing a fair amount of DG stuff showing up in GT top 10's. That is a lot of CSM models though - a lot of them using -1 to hit traits themselves.

Also - love the no country for old men image - I love that movie - you made me laugh

There's no problem with things getting -1 to hit. It should have never been able to stack though, let alone have been a design decision for codexes to be largely based around it.

Maybe GW expects the BA codex to balance this out.

 Xenomancers wrote:
So heres what am picking up from the responses. -1 to hit everywhere is good for the game because it helps assault armies?

Cherry picking.

It's more accurate to say that -1 to hit has the most impact on static gun line armies, exactly the spot where it's designed to have the most impact.

Against non-static armies, given an average starting distance of 24" from your opponent's front line, it's effectiveness is not a binary argument.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimgold wrote:
I doubt you'll find many people on these board arguing that disgustingly resilient is OP, so it doesn't make much sense to argue an ability that is mathematically inferior, and can be bypassed by positioning is OP ethier.

DR applies on a per wound basis and may not negate an entire attack.

-1 to hit applies on a per attack basis and may negate the entire attack.

It's worth discussing from a balance standpoint, but it is a bit apples and oranges.

Yeah - no question about it ether - Space marines and Admech would have this as their go to trait if not for the presence of Cawl an Guilliman/Azreal (who offer more through having amazing auras).

I'm actually not sure about that.

My possible Mechanicus force is looking a Lucius, for the neato deepstrike stratagem and the ignoring -1 save guns (mostly for fluff reasons); Mars, and not for Cawl but rather two uses of Canticles of the Omnissiah (imagine if Guard could double their orders for free and cast 2 on the same unit...); Stygies (because frankly -1 to hit outside of 12" is hilariously good)... well really all of them. I have a reason for liking each one. Even Graia I like because of the stratagem to 50/50 deny an enemy psy power. That seems funny.

While the deepstriking shenanigans sound awesome, there is not much you would actually want to deepstrike aside from Electropriests, Ruststalkers and Punchy Kastellans. Electropriests are super fragile, so it is a huge risk if you dont get first turn, Ruststalkers are just kind of bad (take infiltrators and get deepstrike for free) and Punchy Kastellans are good and tanky, but outclassed by thier shooty brethren. This on top of the fact that Admech is INCREDIBLE CP dependent means that the ability to deepstrike is just not as good as it is with other armies.

The thing that really makes specific forgeworlds good is thier forgeworld specific stratagem. You take mars for full rerolls with Cawl and the Fury of Mars strategem, not the 2 canticles (which are frankly not that useful). Ryza is competitive, just because the +1 to wound, +1 damage with Plasma stratagem is so strong.

Segwaying off of that, the thing that bothers me about -1 to hit is how good it is against models that depend on rolling gimmicks, aka tesla weapons and plasma (both of which Admech has). With -1 to hit those procs become impossible, or disproportionally worse.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:


DR applies on a per wound basis and may not negate an entire attack.

-1 to hit applies on a per attack basis and may negate the entire attack.

It's worth discussing from a balance standpoint, but it is a bit apples and oranges.

The only case where it is substantially different is when shooting multiple wound weapons at single wound targets, which in fairness is an edge case. If someone is using las cannons to take out your plague marines, they are being very wasteful with their firepower. Still, If they use Las cannons on your ICs/dreads the math still applies in more or less the same way.

Look at it as a challenge. Include more close combat, fast and/or deep striking units to get up close quicker.

I play Orks and don't really see the -1 to hit as much of a problem. But it really depends on just what I'm fighting.
If I am able to engage it in close combat then I'm good. If it's shooting I bring artillery with bs 4+ so it's doable. And I bring burnas and scrochas so there's lots of auto hits in there.
As long as I can balance that then I'm comfortable with my chances.

GW realized that they made 8th edition too far skewed to shooting, leaving melee at it's core too risky, weak, and prone to alpha strikes to be competitive.

So they threw a bandaid on the issue by tossing -1 to hit from shooting to everyone and their dog. I wouldn't say that it's working as intended, but I'd hardly call it game breaking.

Well, much like some of the Tau's old 7th tricks-it only works against people who are themselves trying to pull something not too friendly to begin with (to remind you: "Tau OP! they can intercept everything and always get first shot!", well yea-but it only works when YOU tried to pull an "always get first shot" by deepstrike, if you didn't its wasted points.)

The range penalty trait only works against someone who goes "feth this, I'm not even TRYING to engage at melee, or even up close shooting"
And quite honestly, the game was never intended for gunline.
Even the shootiest army that is tau, always had some level of getting close to seal the deal, be it with suits, breacher or whatnot.
Because NOT doing it is getting old fast.

So now the range penalty comes along and says "well, if you plan to sit back and shoot all day, I got bad news for ya!, but if you come at my face, I got no trait."
Its basically a meta-balancing factor. the more gunlines dominate, the more powerful the trait becomes and ergo more common, and that directly leads to melee/point blank being better BECAUSE they practically ignore this trait.

Given that these days some units can even assault planes (and do a decent job at it), there are no excuses left to why assault CANT work. especially when so supposedly "broken trait", doesn't even work against assault armies.

 Fafnir wrote:
GW realized that they made 8th edition too far skewed to shooting, leaving melee at it's core too risky, weak, and prone to alpha strikes to be competitive.

So they threw a bandaid on the issue by tossing -1 to hit from shooting to everyone and their dog. I wouldn't say that it's working as intended, but I'd hardly call it game breaking.

It seems that GKs are not anyone nor their dogs.

Simple solution, change the to hit/to wound/to save mechanic to a D12. That way modifiers are an 8.3% mod instead of 16.6% mod. https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/743515.page


Basically, anywhere that needs a 2+ to hit/wound/save right now would instead need a 3+ on a D12, 3+ to 5+, 4+ to 7+, 5+ to 9+ and 6+ to 11+

 Galef wrote:
Another point that I am not sure has been addressed here is how re-rolls work before modifiers.
Meaning that if something is BS3+ with a -1 to hit modifier and a re-roll, any natural 3+ rolls cannot be rerolled as they technically counts as a successful hit before the modifier.

It really should be the player's choice when to apply modifiers. That would help make -1 to hit not such a hard pill to swallow.

That one is quite maddening too, yes. Good point.

Fafnir wrote:GW realized that they made 8th edition too far skewed to shooting, leaving melee at it's core too risky, weak, and prone to alpha strikes to be competitive.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverBringAKnifeToAGunFight

BaconCatBug wrote:Simple solution, change the to hit/to wound/to save mechanic to a D12. That way modifiers are an 8.3% mod instead of 16.6% mod. https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/743515.page


Basically, anywhere that needs a 2+ to hit/wound/save right now would instead need a 3+ on a D12, 3+ to 5+, 4+ to 7+, 5+ to 9+ and 6+ to 11+

Inclined to agree. The 1d6 is the biggest holdback. Maybe if they did something like FAD's system the d6 would still be useful, but I think it's a bit beyond most Warhammer players (involves division!).

M.

Yes, close combat on any large scale in the 41st millennium is silly. But Warhammer 40k is silly and fantastical, and the game is meant to represent that. It's a setting where sheer force of will and rule of cool make a chainsword a tactically viable weapon alongside mortars. If the game is meant to represent that wildly indulgent fluff, bringing that knife to the gunfight needs to be a viable option.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
GW realized that they made 8th edition too far skewed to shooting, leaving melee at it's core too risky, weak, and prone to alpha strikes to be competitive.

So they threw a bandaid on the issue by tossing -1 to hit from shooting to everyone and their dog. I wouldn't say that it's working as intended, but I'd hardly call it game breaking.

It seems that GKs are not anyone nor their dogs.

I mean, GKs are a subfaction of Space Marines and Space Marines got it. The only major faction that didn't get the -1 to hit rule so far is Guard, because obviously you're not going to give a rule designed to counter "sit back and shoot" armies to an army that does absolutely nothing except sit back and shoot.

I have to say, GK not getting a -1 to hit rule is kind of weird when you think about it, since they were the first faction to get something like that all the way back in 3rd edition with The Shrouding.

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe GW expects the BA codex to balance this out.

HA! Good one as usual Martel.

-

 Fafnir wrote:
Yes, close combat on any large scale in the 41st millennium is silly. But Warhammer 40k is silly and fantastical, and the game is meant to represent that. It's a setting where sheer force of will and rule of cool make a chainsword a tactically viable weapon alongside mortars. If the game is meant to represent that wildly indulgent fluff, bringing that knife to the gunfight needs to be a viable option.

True, I do agree.

M.

I guess in the next chapter approved were are going to have to see some special space marine traits to help balance this out Right?

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's really just sad we have to go through all this nonsense to play the game we love. I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

Then why haven't you? Fan rules, if good, are accepted. Just look at ITC and how they structure their rules and missions in an attempt to support diverse army lists. These rules are accepted because they work.

As for your main concern about -1 to hit from range army traits: I don't see the problem. It's powerful, but the other army traits are powerful if used properly as well. My +1A World Eaters don't give a fudge about -1 to hit from range because I'm attempting to lodge a Chainaxe in your face. Iron Warriors basically don't care either since you can't stack it up as much against them. There is a current balance of giving everyone something powerful if used correctly that they are trying to do, it doesn't always work but in general it's something you need to play around. You can't be all shooting and you can't be all melee, you need to balance your list to be prepared for opponents with a random assortment of traits.

Side bar to ole Xenomancer: lolololokokokok9kloloo8ooio9...wat?

No you couldn't. Because NO game is balanced. Even chess favors the side that goes first.

 Xenomancers wrote:
-1 to hit army traits are pretty busted. I think they should just be mass removed from the game and replaced with something else. I'm not saying there are not other busted army traits...but -1 to hit for what ends up being most of your army completely overshadows other options. If not for 2 special characters (Cawl and Guilliman [these guys are even more busted than -1 army traits]) Every armies best faction would be -1 to hit that had access to it (obviosuly these heros need fixing too.)

-1 to hit is so obviously and statistically better than all the other defensive traits. 6+ stackable or non stackable FNP? always count in cover? Am I missing another? Not even remotely close in power level. Again - I'm not ignoring other OP army traits - the top 3 AM traits are a little too good. Kraken is a little OTT for nids. I just think they could be fixed differently. -1 to hit army traits should just be flat out replaced or at the very least (should not stack with other -1 to hits) really though - just remove them and replace with something else.

It's really just sad we have to go through all this nonsense to play the game we love. I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

I don't disagree with you about the -1 to hit and Gulliman being big and obvious bad balance points. I used Gulliman (with opponent's pre-consent) this weekend and it was boring and overpowered.

However your claim to be able to balance the game in a day is laughable and completely undermines your point. It is bloody difficult. There are too many units and too many options.

Yeah, GW's design team might be crap at it, but it's still a hard job, and requires some pretty rigorous testing (part of why GW's design team is so bad) to get right. Sure, there are a lot of obvious things that can be shifted around, but there's also a lot of little things that make waves.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

could you please share your eternal wisdom?

 koooaei wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I could write a balanced rule set for this game in a day. Literally a day. It's just so obvious to me that they aren't trying.

could you please share your eternal wisdom?

It's not eternal.

When he said he could, he meant "last Wednesday".

This week, unfortunately, his wisdom isn't high enough to straight-up beat a rules-writing team with testing time but no 20/20 hindsight.

Maybe next week.

Next mission would be to solve the mid-east political crysis. I bet Xenomancers could do it in a couple hours. Right after having made 40k balanced.

 koooaei wrote:
Next mission would be to solve the mid-east polytical crysis. I bet Xenomancers could do it in a couple hours. Right after having made 40k balanced.

I would go for -1 to hit as chapter trait for Israel tbh, it's really the only trait that is worth anything apparently.

I'm curious to see if GW keeps that trend with armies that have more -1 to hit.
Harlequins essentially have -1-to-hit armywide (we don't see many footslogging troupes). DE can spam venoms and flyers (which is already a pretty decent build) which both have -1-to-hit already. If either of these army gets a -1 CT, it will be brutal.
Since GW buffed the already-powerful Hemlock, while giving it access to an additional -1-to-hit, I think it's possible we'll see the same stuff for Harlies and DE.

 koooaei wrote:
Next mission would be to solve the mid-east political crysis. I bet Xenomancers could do it in a couple hours. Right after having made 40k balanced.

Wow - incredible analogy. Balancing a dice game which can be figured through statistics/math is equal to a 60 years long human relocation and battle for a holy land which has been fought over for centuries. Being an ork player I'd think you'd be the first one agreeing that -1 to hit army traits are a problem. The game is hard to balance though so...I guess we should give GW a break on that.

The Hemlock got some buffs, including the -1 to hit outside 12". But at the same time, it lost the ability to give itself, and any infantry near it, -1 to hit vs all shooting.

So yes, the Hemlock got buffed, and it's stupid that you can stack the Flyer -1 with the Alaitoc -1. But one of the things that made the Hemlock OP was that it could *already* stack two -1s pre-buff. It can still stack the same number, but it trades Conceal for Alaitoc.

(It can only cast Offensive runes of battle, not Defensive ones, such as Conceal.)

Maybe we should put Xenomancers on the North Korea crisis once he's finished flawlessly balancing Warhammer 40k and also solving the crisis in the middle east.

I really do not expect to see a non-trivial asymetric game be truly balanced in my lifetime. I'd like it to be closer, but perfect balance is going to be nigh impossible.

On the bright side, look at some of the comparisons that keep getting bandied about. Dreadnaught vs Wraithlord are very asymetric, but very balanced. Fire Prism vs QuadLas Pred. DAs or Guardians vs Tacs. Not perfect, but so close that we can argue for days on any of those pairs, and still they seem to stack up about equal to eachother.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Except BA. I hope they change that streak. I fee bad for BA faithful.)

Deep strike and or fast attack, problem solved. I have fought armies with that trait and I just drop 10 terminators on them and laugh as I make a 9inch charge turn 1

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Deep strike and or fast attack, problem solved. I have fought armies with that trait and I just drop 10 terminators on them and laugh as I make a 9inch charge turn 1

If you did that against eldar - you'd lose all your terminators before they even got to shoot.

As an Ork player having even a -1 to hit pretty much invalidates an entire unit in my army, Lootas. Having the ability to make that -2 completely invalidates any point investment in said unit. Things like this are why blanket -1 army wide are bad. I’m hoping this will be fixed by the ork codex...whenever that happens.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Deep strike and or fast attack, problem solved. I have fought armies with that trait and I just drop 10 terminators on them and laugh as I make a 9inch charge turn 1

If you did that against eldar - you'd lose all your terminators before they even got to shoot.

Would you?
Reaper Launchers:
- Big missile: 2.7 dead terminators
- Tiny Missile: 4.4 dead terminators.

So not even half against Tactical Terminators. Against TH/SS Terminators, it kills:
Reaper Launchers:
- Big missile: 1.9 dead terminators
- Tiny Missile: 3 dead terminators.

So not even a third of the squad against TH/SS terminators.

Methinks you're suffering from that rush of gak to the brain again, Xenomancers. For someone so good at math and statistics, you're awful at math and statistics.

 Xenomancers wrote:
If you did that against eldar - you'd lose all your terminators before they even got to shoot.

Hasty generalization.

Dark Reapers might take out 3 Terminators with Forewarned, not likely to eliminate an entire squad, even a 5 man squad.

On average dice, that Reaper squad doesn't even wipe a 10man Tac squad.

I'd still suggest combat squadding the Termies, though. In that matchup, not going to be great. But you can drop into cover or out of LOS or something - which makes things much better for you. And two squads are more likely to get 1 into CC if you're going for a turn-1 charge.

Don't undersell Storm BOlters within 12" against t3 infantry, though.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Deep strike and or fast attack, problem solved. I have fought armies with that trait and I just drop 10 terminators on them and laugh as I make a 9inch charge turn 1

If you did that against eldar - you'd lose all your terminators before they even got to shoot.

Would you?
Reaper Launchers:
- Big missile: 2.7 dead terminators
- Tiny Missile: 4.4 dead terminators.

So not even half against Tactical Terminators. Against TH/SS Terminators, it kills:
Reaper Launchers:
- Big missile: 1.9 dead terminators
- Tiny Missile: 3 dead terminators.

So not even a third of the squad against TH/SS terminators.

Methinks you're suffering from that rush of gak to the brain again, Xenomancers. For someone so good at math and statistics, you're awful at math and statistics.

You beat me to it. Forewarned Reapers might kill your average 5-man MEQ squad deep-striking in, but no way it kills 10 TEQ

This pretty much high-lights a pretty obvious bias against a certain army and by extension, a bias against the -1 to hit attribute that is the subject of the thread
-1 to hit opens up so, so many list possibilities that would otherwise not be viable in 40K due to how shooting heavy the game has always been

-

TRIPLE NINJA!

Bharring wrote:
TRIPLE NINJA!

I am the ninja-est.

(One might even say I'm -1 To Hit with an Infiltrate stratagem...)

I run deathwing so I get that sweet sweet deathwing knight unit with thunder hammers that don't have a -1 to hit and a apoth to bring them back.

Again, I have never had an issue with the -1 to hit because it's only effective at 12"plus. It's not hard to deal with. Is it powerful? Yes, is it arguably the best trait? Yeah you could argue it. Is it zomg powerful hit with nerf bat? No.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Deep strike and or fast attack, problem solved. I have fought armies with that trait and I just drop 10 terminators on them and laugh as I make a 9inch charge turn 1

If you did that against eldar - you'd lose all your terminators before they even got to shoot.

Would you?
Reaper Launchers:
- Big missile: 2.7 dead terminators
- Tiny Missile: 4.4 dead terminators.

So not even half against Tactical Terminators. Against TH/SS Terminators, it kills:
Reaper Launchers:
- Big missile: 1.9 dead terminators
- Tiny Missile: 3 dead terminators.

So not even a third of the squad against TH/SS terminators.

Methinks you're suffering from that rush of gak to the brain again, Xenomancers. For someone so good at math and statistics, you're awful at math and statistics.

You beat me to it. Forewarned Reapers might kill your average 5-man MEQ squad deep-striking in, but no way it kills 10 TEQ

This pretty much high-lights a pretty obvious bias against a certain army and by extension, a bias against the -1 to hit attribute that is the subject of the thread
-1 to hit opens up so, so many list possibilities that would otherwise not be viable in 40K due to how shooting heavy the game has always been

-

Also need to take into account that if it's a tac Terminator squad, they get to shoot at them then charge, so your numbers of lost terminators will be a little bit less, or a lot less depending on the load out.

No no, this is before they shoot, Blackspacehacker, using the deep-strike-repellant stratagem. That's why I did a 10-man reaper squad with full loadout firing at full ballistic skill - it's certainly not Overwatch or anything.

In fact, it's a good way to draw out the stratagem. They blow the stratagem, kill a few comparatively irrelevant terminators, then you drop your Black Templar's Vanguard Veterans on their heads and murderblender their faces.

(There's a CWE stratagem for 2CP that allows one unit within 6" of a Farseer to intercept reinforcements once - with all the normal shooting rules applying.)

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
No no, this is before they shoot, Blackspacehacker, using the deep-strike-repellant stratagem. That's why I did a 10-man reaper squad with full loadout firing at full ballistic skill - it's certainly not Overwatch or anything.

In fact, it's a good way to draw out the stratagem. They blow the stratagem, kill a few comparatively irrelevant terminators, then you drop your Black Templar's Vanguard Veterans on their heads and murderblender their faces.

Oh gotcha gotcha, yeah I would just try and bait them with a more expendable squad. My rw dw list has like 2 Terminator squads, Belial, an apoth, and a banner so, just have them blow their load on the knights to soak up the wounds on 3+ then bring the rest in with no issues

They can choose when to use it, but must choose immediately when you place a unit.

You needn't choose which units are arriving before setting them up.

So place them most expendable first. If he shoots, youv'e saved your less expendable units. If he doesn't, you've just deployed safely everything but your least expendable unit. He's going to have a hard choice there.

It's still powerful, but it's not autowin.

Hell I'm really hoping the leaked dark angels strat are real.

+3 to the charge after a deep strike
Or
Deep strike within 6 inches of a Raven wing unit even if it's less then 9 inches away from an enemy.

Yes please, minus 1 to shoot? Pfft don't help when I deep strike 3 Inches away.

Bharring wrote:
They can choose when to use it, but must choose immediately when you place a unit.

You needn't choose which units are arriving before setting them up.

So place them most expendable first. If he shoots, youv'e saved your less expendable units. If he doesn't, you've just deployed safely everything but your least expendable unit. He's going to have a hard choice there.

It's still powerful, but it's not autowin.

Yeah. And there are on-the-tabletop ways to make this harder; e.g. put your most expendable units in the most tactically threatening places, like on the flanks or in their rear, or in front of his axis of advance. The Terminators can operate for a time without support, so you can place them simply to full-frontal some unfortunate part of the enemy's line.

This means they can blow the stratagem on a relatively irrelevant fight (the Terminators) to kill high-value models, or they can actually shoot at something important (the Expendables) but not kill much of value.

Then, you can pivot your army around its axis to make the Terminator's seemingly irrelevant fight into your main axis of advance, while the expendables slow down the enemy's own advance...

 Xenomancers wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Next mission would be to solve the mid-east political crysis. I bet Xenomancers could do it in a couple hours. Right after having made 40k balanced.

Wow - incredible analogy. Balancing a dice game which can be figured through statistics/math is equal to a 60 years long human relocation and battle for a holy land which has been fought over for centuries. Being an ork player I'd think you'd be the first one agreeing that -1 to hit army traits are a problem. The game is hard to balance though so...I guess we should give GW a break on that.

Yeah the analogy is stupid. And there's a good point about people like us maybe having a better ability to fix balance issues in the game. I know I tried to apply for the rules team when that was available, but as I'm not local for them that didn't happen. Plus I find myself better at fixing the rules rather than trying to create them, try as I do (especially if you read my fixes for Tyranids and Orks for 7th).

That said, no fix for the game is overnight. We had people saying they could balance 7th out of anything that quickly, and I was trying to take a week with each codex and make sure they would balance with each other. I maybe got 5 or 6 done before I tossed that out because 8th was on the way.
8th is newer, but let's not pretend the fixes will be quicker because of that. I'd still take a week with each codex to make sure everything is the way it should be.

It does seem simpler. But so does mid-east peace.

Go to any college campus. Start talking to the coeds about how to solve it. Half of them will have "perfect" solutions.

Imagine how relatively simpler it is to balance Chess. Then recall that Chess is not actually balanced (White has the advantage). Are you saying you could make 40k more balanced than Chess?

If you spend a lot of time in the Proposed Rules section (great place to put your balancing skills to an easy test), you'll find that most people wind up disagreeing on the finer points of balance.

If most people can't even throw in a few Proposed Rules that the majority believes are balanced, how would they rewrite 40k entirely in a way that appears balanced?

Try maintaining any sufficiently complex solution. Any given piece is simple. You an math it out. On the whole, it's a pile of crud. Its why software is always either not done or in need of a refactor. Same with company structures.

At any rate, if you want a 'put up or shut up', head on over to the Proposed Rules section.

I mean sure I could balance the game in 1 minute.

Throw out all buffs, all units become re-skinned tactical marines, with unit size 10 and no options except bolters. Players alternate unit activation, tables have no terrain.

Game is basically balanced.

Now lets add all the options players want, and try to do that again, it ceases to be easy every option you add makes it harder.

especially if we are talking about good internal and cross faction balance.

I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Martel732 wrote:
I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Yes, and unit costings can be a very sensitive thing.

Look at conscripts: at 3ppm, too powerful (apparently), at 4ppm: gone from the game, lol.

I think guardsmen at 5 ppm get conscripts back in the game. Guardsmen are a 5 point model, I think. 5+ armor is greatly improved, as is 24" S3.

And there are several undercosted units in the new Tyranid codex as well. Dakkafex, I'm looking at you.

Martel732 wrote:
I think guardsmen at 5 ppm get conscripts back in the game. Guardsmen are a 5 point model, I think. 5+ armor is greatly improved, as is 24" S3.

And there are several undercosted units in the new Tyranid codex as well. Dakkafex, I'm looking at you.

So... two troop choices that would never be fielded again. At least we'd still have tempestus before you rebalanced them on your way out.

Hyperbole at its finest. 5 ppm guardsmen are completely fair compared to termagants and boyz. 5 pts for 5+ armor model is still quite good, just not the gold standard for all troops.

Martel732 wrote:
Hyperbole at its finest. 5 ppm guardsmen are completely fair compared to termagants and boyz.

Perhaps Termagants and Boyz are overcosted.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Yes, and unit costings can be a very sensitive thing.

Look at conscripts: at 3ppm, too powerful (apparently), at 4ppm: gone from the game, lol.

I actually thought the codex did an okay job at fixing the Conscript issue, but the Commisar needs a slight buff now. That's always the issue with hyperbole, especially when GW may or may not be listening to feedback. Heck, there's still people that think Eldar should still suffer for their sins in 6th/7th.

Perhaps, but guardsmen look like the outlier, not every other troop. I'm not even looking at elite infantry here, who are dramatically inferior to even 5 pt guardsmen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Yes, and unit costings can be a very sensitive thing.

Look at conscripts: at 3ppm, too powerful (apparently), at 4ppm: gone from the game, lol.

I actually thought the codex did an okay job at fixing the Conscript issue, but the Commisar needs a slight buff now. That's always the issue with hyperbole, especially when GW may or may not be listening to feedback. Heck, there's still people that think Eldar should still suffer for their sins in 6th/7th.

Eldar have never truly paid back 2nd ed karma, much less 6/7th.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Yes, and unit costings can be a very sensitive thing.

Look at conscripts: at 3ppm, too powerful (apparently), at 4ppm: gone from the game, lol.

I actually thought the codex did an okay job at fixing the Conscript issue, but the Commisar needs a slight buff now. That's always the issue with hyperbole, especially when GW may or may not be listening to feedback. Heck, there's still people that think Eldar should still suffer for their sins in 6th/7th.

I think they overcommitted to killing conscripts and indirectly gutted other things.

E.G. at 3PPM while passing Orders on a 4+ only and having a 50-man max squad size, an all-conscript Valhallan theme army is still viable, because they're cheap. At 4ppm, but getting complete orders and having a 50-man max squad size, the Valhallan army is still viable. But at 4ppm while only getting Orders on a 4+, and only having a 30 man max squad size, well, at that point it's better to take 3 Infantry Squads than 30 conscripts.

Plus the Commissar nerf, which means Valhallans, Mordians, and Catachans will never bring them again, while Iyanden gets the same thing as an Army Trait and the Tyranids get a better thing as an Army Special Rule is just silly.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Yes, and unit costings can be a very sensitive thing.

Look at conscripts: at 3ppm, too powerful (apparently), at 4ppm: gone from the game, lol.

I actually thought the codex did an okay job at fixing the Conscript issue, but the Commisar needs a slight buff now. That's always the issue with hyperbole, especially when GW may or may not be listening to feedback. Heck, there's still people that think Eldar should still suffer for their sins in 6th/7th.

I think they overcommitted to killing conscripts and indirectly gutted other things.

E.G. at 3PPM while passing Orders on a 4+ only and having a 50-man max squad size, an all-conscript Valhallan theme army is still viable, because they're cheap. At 4ppm, but getting complete orders and having a 50-man max squad size, the Valhallan army is still viable. But at 4ppm while only getting Orders on a 4+, and only having a 30 man max squad size, well, at that point it's better to take 3 Infantry Squads than 30 conscripts.

Plus the Commissar nerf, which means Valhallans, Mordians, and Catachans will never bring them again, while Iyanden gets the same thing as an Army Trait and the Tyranids get a better thing as an Army Special Rule is just silly.

Tyranids have to pay a lot more than 30 points to do the same thing on top of most of those units being easy to actually shoot at. Eldar ruin everyone's fun again though.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Yes, and unit costings can be a very sensitive thing.

Look at conscripts: at 3ppm, too powerful (apparently), at 4ppm: gone from the game, lol.

I actually thought the codex did an okay job at fixing the Conscript issue, but the Commisar needs a slight buff now. That's always the issue with hyperbole, especially when GW may or may not be listening to feedback. Heck, there's still people that think Eldar should still suffer for their sins in 6th/7th.

I think they overcommitted to killing conscripts and indirectly gutted other things.

E.G. at 3PPM while passing Orders on a 4+ only and having a 50-man max squad size, an all-conscript Valhallan theme army is still viable, because they're cheap. At 4ppm, but getting complete orders and having a 50-man max squad size, the Valhallan army is still viable. But at 4ppm while only getting Orders on a 4+, and only having a 30 man max squad size, well, at that point it's better to take 3 Infantry Squads than 30 conscripts.

Plus the Commissar nerf, which means Valhallans, Mordians, and Catachans will never bring them again, while Iyanden gets the same thing as an Army Trait and the Tyranids get a better thing as an Army Special Rule is just silly.

They did exactly what I said they should - raise the cost of all AM infantry. 4 pt models aren't actually supposed to be doing damage or getting orders cast - they are supposed to die.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the best I could do in a day is get rid of the most obvious miscostings. But I'm not sure how many of those there even are.

Yes, and unit costings can be a very sensitive thing.

Look at conscripts: at 3ppm, too powerful (apparently), at 4ppm: gone from the game, lol.

We live in a world of extremes.

Its either too good so always take, or its not good at all and never take. 4 points per game isn't bad. Its just not really good anymore. So don't take it.

The game is asymetric. What Iyanden got is only similar to Commisars superficially.

When you lose 3 guys in a 5-man CWE squad, you could lose 1 more from a roll of a 6 - so the trait does nothing. When you lose 4 guys out of a 5-man squad, you lose 1 guy on a 5 or 6 - so the trait does nothing. 5-man CWE squads can't lose more than 1 guy already, pre-trait.

10mans are typically Guardians or a deathstar.

Deathstars have other ways to handle Morale, and if not, you might save 2-3 guys in a whole game in that 10man unit (a single 10-man cant' take enough casualties to lose more than 1 guy in more than 1 round before being wiped).

Guardians are still 8ppm - twice what IG pay. If you're playing a lot of them, it helps. But you're still not running several 30mans. Further, if Guardians are taking enough firepower to force a scary Morale check, it'll rarely be little enough to leave enough Guardians standing to be a threat.

So CWE can't make use of it the way IG could. It rarely ever can matter. And, when it can, typically only saves you a couple models a game - at the cost of what could be a better trait.

I go so far in depth on this one point (is it unfair for Iyanden to get what IG lost), because it's a great case study in asymetry. Much like how Infiltrate is a much bigger deal for AL than RG, not all rules affect everyone equally.

Imagine an attribute that said "Your Infantry cannot be wounded on better than a 4+". Would you care much if a SM Chapter got it? But imagine how broken that'd be if IG or CWE got it?

Guardians are 8 ppm? Guardsmen should definitely be 5 ppm, then.

Martel732 wrote:
Guardians are 8 ppm? Guardsmen should definitely be 5 ppm, then.

Good thing we got chapter approved to fix all tha--oh... OH... well then, nevermind.

I'm expecting that hammer to drop in March, with the smite hammer.

Do you think space marines will get chapter traits on their vehicles?

 Xenomancers wrote:
Do you think space marines will get chapter traits on their vehicles?

No, I doubt it, although the wording of the Blood Angels trait as it's presented in the preview doesn't specifically call out Infantry/Dreads, it simply states that units with the trait get the ability.

That being said I expect only infantry and dreadnoughts to have the trait.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Do you think space marines will get chapter traits on their vehicles?

They already do get chapter tactics on their vehicles....






...all the vehicles with 'Dreadnought' in the name at least.

Honestly it makes sense for Eldar to be able to apply their attributes to their vehicles, being more advanced and semi-living compared to the metal bawkes on the lesser races. Necrons probably should too, maybe *maybe* T'au.
The only reason Dreadnoughts should get to use the chapter tactics is because there is a half-dread marine wired into it. Rhinos and Storm Ravens do not have systems that are integrated into the actual pilot in the same manner. And before anyone mentions the Machine Spirit, AI is not the same. Why else do you think servo skulls are made with human brains instead of computers?

-

 Galef wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Do you think space marines will get chapter traits on their vehicles?

They already do get chapter tactics on their vehicles....






...all the vehicles with 'Dreadnought' in the name at least.

Honestly it makes sense for Eldar to be able to apply their attributes to their vehicles, being more advanced and semi-living compared to the metal bawkes on the lesser races. Necrons probably should too, maybe *maybe* T'au.
The only reason Dreadnoughts should get to use the chapter tactics is because there is a half-dread marine wired into it. Rhinos and Storm Ravens do not have systems that are that integrated into the actual pilot. And before anyone mentions the Machine Spirit, AI is not the same. Why else do you think servo skulls are made with human brains instead of computers?

-

To be fair, the difference between an "AI" and "human brain being used as a CPU" is really not that different.

The hardware an intelligence is running on has very little to do with the intelligence itself.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Wow - incredible analogy. Balancing a dice game which can be figured through statistics/math is equal to a 60 years long human relocation and battle for a holy land which has been fought over for centuries. Being an ork player I'd think you'd be the first one agreeing that -1 to hit army traits are a problem. The game is hard to balance though so...I guess we should give GW a break on that.

Excellent. Please math out the points for a reroll to hit aura.

 Galef wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Do you think space marines will get chapter traits on their vehicles?

They already do get chapter tactics on their vehicles....






...all the vehicles with 'Dreadnought' in the name at least.

Honestly it makes sense for Eldar to be able to apply their attributes to their vehicles, being more advanced and semi-living compared to the metal bawkes on the lesser races. Necrons probably should too, maybe *maybe* T'au.
The only reason Dreadnoughts should get to use the chapter tactics is because there is a half-dread marine wired into it. Rhinos and Storm Ravens do not have systems that are integrated into the actual pilot in the same manner. And before anyone mentions the Machine Spirit, AI is not the same. Why else do you think servo skulls are made with human brains instead of computers?

-

An eldar tank should be superior to a human one - I agree with that. It should come in the form of being able to shoot on the move with no penalty - being faster - and having advanced shielding. Eldar tanks already have that. I'd be okay with it if they paid additional for it but they don't. It's a hand out. A -1 to hit hand out is nothing to snuff at ether. Plus - IG tanks get traits and they are just far inferior humans compared to marines - if you claim it make sense for eldar and not marines - it must not make sense to you that AM guys get traits.

What baffles me is marines were the first army to get army traits. Now they are the only army to have army traits that only affect half of their army. That makes no sense to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Wow - incredible analogy. Balancing a dice game which can be figured through statistics/math is equal to a 60 years long human relocation and battle for a holy land which has been fought over for centuries. Being an ork player I'd think you'd be the first one agreeing that -1 to hit army traits are a problem. The game is hard to balance though so...I guess we should give GW a break on that.

Excellent. Please math out the points for a reroll to hit aura.

Considering almost every army has access to 3+ reroll 1's to hit with their most efficient shooters - it is pretty easy to call that a wash - I'd be happy to see auras removed from the game entirely though. It might help games get past turn 3. However - then marines would go from being at/near the bottom to being absolutely terrible because auras are about the only thing marines do better than other armies.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

An eldar tank should be superior to a human one - I agree with that. It should come in the form of being able to shoot on the move with no penalty - being faster - and having advanced shielding. Eldar tanks already have that. I'd be okay with it if they paid additional for it but they don't. It's a hand out. A -1 to hit hand out is nothing to snuff at ether. Plus - IG tanks get traits and they are just far inferior humans compared to marines - if you claim it make sense for eldar and not marines - it must not make sense to you that AM guys get traits.

What baffles me is marines were the first army to get army traits. Now they are the only army to have army traits that only affect half of their army. That makes no sense to me

.

Well, first of all, Eldar tanks do suffer -1 to hit for moving, it's just that they have 1 assault weapon to choose instead of 100% heavy weapon options. But otherwise, I can agree with the premise.
Fieldcraft probably shouldn't apply to a thing that is too big to be "stealthy". But the Iyanden attribute specifically applies to stuff made of wraithbone, which all the vehicles are.

At the end of the day, I feel like GW is making decisions intentionally, whether we agree with or can justify those decisions or not is up to us

-

 Galef wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

An eldar tank should be superior to a human one - I agree with that. It should come in the form of being able to shoot on the move with no penalty - being faster - and having advanced shielding. Eldar tanks already have that. I'd be okay with it if they paid additional for it but they don't. It's a hand out. A -1 to hit hand out is nothing to snuff at ether. Plus - IG tanks get traits and they are just far inferior humans compared to marines - if you claim it make sense for eldar and not marines - it must not make sense to you that AM guys get traits.

What baffles me is marines were the first army to get army traits. Now they are the only army to have army traits that only affect half of their army. That makes no sense to me

.

Well, first of all, Eldar tanks do suffer -1 to hit for moving, it's just that they have 1 assault weapon to choose instead of 100% heavy weapon options. But otherwise, I can agree with the premise.
Fieldcraft probably shouldn't apply to a thing that is too big to be "stealthy". But the Iyanden attribute specifically applies to stuff made of wraithbone, which all the vehicles are.

At the end of the day, I feel like GW is making decisions intentionally, whether we agree with or can justify those decisions or not is up to us

-

You can buy a crystal targeting matrix - why would you though? the best load out is all assault weapons anyways. I think you are giving GW too much credit. It seems like an army trait lottery with wild guess for the points costs. Even in the chapter approved leaks you see no rational about the points costs.

Malific lords for example were obviously OP at 30 points but compared to a spirit seer at 45 points they are pretty balanced - so they made it 80 points? Another crazy example is a revenant titan for the eldar. It was 1200 points now its 2000. At 1200 points it was criminally over costed - it played like a 600-700 point model. Also - space marine centurions aren't mentioned in the points leaks and I've seen the PDF - they aren't getting dropped in points - currently it's at the bottom of a pile of unplayable units in the space marine arsenal. I don't see a lot of intellgent decisions being made by GW's balance team. If such a thing exists.

The Fieldcraft - in all its forms - could probably be better if it specified Infantry, and maybe Bikes.

But if it got taken from Dreads, there'd be hell to pay.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
CTM only matters if you fire at the closest. If you want to use your heavy weapons on anything but the chaff they're shoving in your face, it does nothing.

The all-assault is a worthwhile loadout, but that means no Brightlances (our not-quite-Lascannon option) or any other anti-heavy-stuff weapons.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Considering almost every army has access to 3+ reroll 1's to hit with their most efficient shooters - it is pretty easy to call that a wash - I'd be happy to see auras removed from the game entirely though. It might help games get past turn 3. However - then marines would go from being at/near the bottom to being absolutely terrible because auras are about the only thing marines do better than other armies.

Sweet! A wash! RG is like a double wash then, because SM hit on 3s?

 Galef wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Do you think space marines will get chapter traits on their vehicles?

They already do get chapter tactics on their vehicles....






...all the vehicles with 'Dreadnought' in the name at least.

Honestly it makes sense for Eldar to be able to apply their attributes to their vehicles, being more advanced and semi-living compared to the metal bawkes on the lesser races. Necrons probably should too, maybe *maybe* T'au.
The only reason Dreadnoughts should get to use the chapter tactics is because there is a half-dread marine wired into it. Rhinos and Storm Ravens do not have systems that are integrated into the actual pilot in the same manner. And before anyone mentions the Machine Spirit, AI is not the same. Why else do you think servo skulls are made with human brains instead of computers?

-

Ah yes, because Iron Hands no longer getting anything to make vehicles more durable makes sense, as well as Imperial Fists forgetting how to ignore cover, even with that little dude popping from the top of a Rhino and firing a Storm Bolter. Which no longer ignores cover simply because he's not on foot.

Super awesome justifications. Just because Eldar are more advanced. How didn't I already think of that? Brilliant post, Galef.

The -1 to hit trait can be negated by getting to within 12".

... Or because Chapter Tactics are tactics that affect the members of the Chapter - but not necessarily the cars they drive.

... Or because Uthwe Wraithbone is affected by psyker energies because Wraithbone is a manifestation of the Warp itself.

... Or because vehicles piloted by prescient pilots are more likely to be affected by the pilots prescience than vehicles driven by cybernetically enhanced pilots are likely to have redundant or hardened systems built into the pilot themselves.

We could just dismiss it as "CWE therefore OP", certainly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If I put a metal plate in my foot, does that mean I can't get a flat tire on my car anymore?

blaktoof wrote:
The -1 to hit trait can be negated by getting to within 12".

That's hard to do without dying. I'm BA. I tried to do that against index lists and couldn't do it. It's not going to work now.

Bharring wrote:
... Or because Chapter Tactics are tactics that affect the members of the Chapter - but not necessarily the cars they drive.

... Or because Uthwe Wraithbone is affected by psyker energies because Wraithbone is a manifestation of the Warp itself.

... Or because vehicles piloted by prescient pilots are more likely to be affected by the pilots prescience than vehicles driven by cybernetically enhanced pilots are likely to have redundant or hardened systems built into the pilot themselves.

We could just dismiss it as "CWE therefore OP", certainly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If I put a metal plate in my foot, does that mean I can't get a flat tire on my car anymore?

Which means my Imperial Fists example still works. Try again.

Can we stop with the random fluff justifications for tactics to apply in some cases to vehicles and in others don't?

It is just a random rules inconsistence, don't try to pass it as some kind of "yeah they did this because of fluff"

"Ah yes, because Iron Hands no longer getting anything to make vehicles more durable makes sense".

Goalpost moved.

CWE doesn't have 'Ignores Cover' as an attribute. So neither get that on their vehicles. If they did, though, that sort of thing would require advanced optics and controls to allow the driver of a tank to pull it off. Something that CWE would have but Fists would not.

So moved goal posts, CWE *doesnt* have it. And someone upthread always explains why it would make more sense if CWE *did* have it.

What's the next goalpost?

Bharring wrote:
"Ah yes, because Iron Hands no longer getting anything to make vehicles more durable makes sense".

Goalpost moved.

CWE doesn't have 'Ignores Cover' as an attribute. So neither get that on their vehicles. If they did, though, that sort of thing would require advanced optics and controls to allow the driver of a tank to pull it off. Something that CWE would have but Fists would not.

So moved goal posts, CWE *doesnt* have it. And someone upthread always explains why it would make more sense if CWE *did* have it.

What's the next goalpost?

Iron Hands literally had it first with IWND on all vehicles. I never moved the goalposts.

It's not really random fluff. It was a concious decision when the first "modern" CTs were introduced (with SM in 6th). They existed long before, but CTs were meant to affect Battle Brothers fighting as Battle Brothers.

That's not a random fluff point. That's a central tennant in the introduction of the rule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"Ah yes, because Iron Hands no longer getting anything to make vehicles more durable makes sense"

->

[Reasons why CWE should have it and IH should not]

->

[Ignores that] You didn't answer why IF doesn't have it on vehicles?

That's a goalpost move.

Bharring wrote:
It's not really random fluff. It was a concious decision when the first "modern" CTs were introduced (with SM in 6th). They existed long before, but CTs were meant to affect Battle Brothers fighting as Battle Brothers.

That's not a random fluff point. That's a central tennant in the introduction of the rule.

It doesn't follow any kind of fluff for the equivalents of Chapter and Legion tactics to not apply to vehicles but everything else ones (AM, IG, Eldar) does, just like it doesn't follow any kind of fluff to lose those bonuses when you are fighting alongside allies in the same detachment, is pure balance/rules interaction . But if you want to think it does, ok. Go ahead. I'm not gonna enter this nonsense again.

I think it wouldn't be as bad if the range was 18-20".

Would be hard to screen units outside of the -1 range and the ability to move and then shoot heavy weapons/assault and shoot assault weapons w/o a -2 would be really helpful.

Also the no stacking thing is pretty obvious. -2 and -3 are out there and are quite frustrating/good with how re-rolls and modifiers work.

Bharring wrote:
It's not really random fluff. It was a concious decision when the first "modern" CTs were introduced (with SM in 6th). They existed long before, but CTs were meant to affect Battle Brothers fighting as Battle Brothers.

That's not a random fluff point. That's a central tennant in the introduction of the rule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"Ah yes, because Iron Hands no longer getting anything to make vehicles more durable makes sense"

->

[Reasons why CWE should have it and IH should not]

->

[Ignores that] You didn't answer why IF doesn't have it on vehicles?

That's a goalpost move.

It might as well be a random fluff point as there isn't a fluff justification for Marines and Chaos Marines not to get it, yet Eldar do.

I'm literally just using two examples as the main ones. One of which is Imperial Fists, who forget to ignore cover, and the inconsistency with Iron Hands dreads somehow being more survivable compared to the Predator. A guy bekng wired in doesnt just GIVE a FNP equivalent.

-Fluff reason why CWE get it but SM don't
-Fluff reason why CWE get it but SM don't
-Fluff reason why CWE get it but SM don't
-Fluff reason why CWE get it but SM don't

Response #1: Don't use random fluff to justify it!
Response #2: "there isn't a fluff justification for Marines and Chaos Marines not to get it, yet Eldar do"

Several were just given upthread.

I agree on the FnP on the Dread is a bit off, though. And removing it would be an unnecessary nerf.

I honestly think, balance wise, CTs overall should change. But the amount of gak that gets claimed in these threads...

Simplest solution is two fold and takes a que from the tyranids codex. 1) No trait stacks with any other ability. Takes out multiple minuses to hit hit problems, removes crazy FNP stacking. 2) retro the pre-eldar codexes that traits apply to everything in the detachment if properly battleforged. Just silly that every codex after eldar has had this but the older ones.

That fixes about any abuse scenario and keeps balance.

The CWE FNP already doesn't stack, explicitly.

But I think I agree with you, Buddha.

Personally I'd have put "-1 to hit at long range" as a basic game rule, and defined lone range as 18" (because 12" is too short and 24" is too long on a 4' table), would have further put a -1 (so -2 total) over 36" range.

then removed the army traits of -1 to hit and put them back on cover saves where such belong really in a D6 game (i.e. stuff you can get around by blasting the general area with something powerful)

@OP - this is the continuation apparently of your 40 page thread where you erroneously claimed that space marines are the worst codex.

I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just want want to know a few things.
1. Why do you play the game if everything about the games lack of balance etc makes you angry. There are other games? Checkers? Chess?
2. Have you ever heard of planned obsolescence. Is it possible that GW Knows that there are crappy balance issues and they want to see players buy new units or even change armies to try to find some kind of equilibrium within the constantly changing balance of the game?
3. Didn’t your chapter just get huge point reductions. The win button is even larger. If all you care about is having a whole bunch of new strategems that eldar have etc maybe you should play eldar?

leopard wrote:
Personally I'd have put "-1 to hit at long range" as a basic game rule, and defined lone range as 18" (because 12" is too short and 24" is too long on a 4' table), would have further put a -1 (so -2 total) over 36" range.

then removed the army traits of -1 to hit and put them back on cover saves where such belong really in a D6 game (i.e. stuff you can get around by blasting the general area with something powerful)

I would be happy with this. Perhaps have the associated faction trait turn the 18" into 12". It would make melee combat viable outside of reserves viable for more than just ultra-fast moving lock-ups, and help to alleviate the raw destructive potential of alpha strike armies.

 Fafnir wrote:

leopard wrote:
Personally I'd have put "-1 to hit at long range" as a basic game rule, and defined lone range as 18" (because 12" is too short and 24" is too long on a 4' table), would have further put a -1 (so -2 total) over 36" range.

then removed the army traits of -1 to hit and put them back on cover saves where such belong really in a D6 game (i.e. stuff you can get around by blasting the general area with something powerful)

I would be happy with this. Perhaps have the associated faction trait turn the 18" into 12". It would make melee combat viable outside of reserves viable for more than just ultra-fast moving lock-ups, and help to alleviate the raw destructive potential of alpha strike armies.

I dunno, I think Guard being effectively BS5+ at all times would kill the army dead. Balancing out gunlines and melee is a commendable goal but I think this would go too far into killing gunlines.

Give Scout Sentinals (and other analogous units for other armies) the ability to act as spotters who could skip their shooting to negate the penalties against a unit, and let snipers ignore the penalty.

-hit stacking from Eldar just received a nerf with CA. The worst offenders, the spectres, received a huge price hike.
Now Eldar have a -1 hit trait like a lot of other factions plus a -2 on a unit per turn. The only problem i still see is the crimson hunter, which has both the -2 to hit and the range to make use of it. The hemlock will rarely be at -2 after first turn if he wants to be usefull.

Having played that army trait, I would like to point out that Eldar generally don't do well in CC and can't really prevent anyone from closing within 12".

That means most of this discussion is about the first turn or static armies.

There seem to be a lot of whine again about how Eldar is OP, what exactly makes them so strong again?

I haven't played much with the new codex, but Eldar pre-codex were pure failure, and I don't see what could be so strong even with the new codex.

Overall, my understanding is that some people in this thread feel the -1 to hit further improves a very strong build.

But what's that build to begin with?

CQC is largely irrelevant in 8th, luckily for Eldar.

Martel732 wrote:
CQC is largely irrelevant in 8th, luckily for Eldar.

How can that be true with all the armies that can simply 1-turn charge, and massive improvement to some of them?

Also, is this still true in a post-conscript meta?

morgoth wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
CQC is largely irrelevant in 8th, luckily for Eldar.

How can that be true with all the armies that can simply 1-turn charge, and massive improvement to some of them?

Also, is this still true in a post-conscript meta?

Alpha Legion Khorne Berzerkers seem to work pretty well even at the highest level of play; verdict is still out on if Genestealers can compete on top tables post-codex though I think they probably can.

To be fair, the CSM and Tyranids codexes are the only ones that have come out you would expect a high-performing CC strategy out of. Might see the introduction of another powerful CC threat with the Blood Angels if the rumor that Death Company is getting Blood for the Blood God is true.

isn’t the rule -1 outside of 12”?
Can’t space marines deep strike lots of units.
They have infiltrating units too.
They have fast units like speeders and storm ravens.

I'd say Salamanders trait is much better than the -1 to hit.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I'd say Salamanders trait is much better than the -1 to hit.

Its important to understand that the marine version is heavily nerfed and only affects infantry, bikes and dreadnoughts where as Eldar have no such restriction.

 Kirasu wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I'd say Salamanders trait is much better than the -1 to hit.

Its important to understand that the marine version is heavily nerfed and only affects infantry, bikes and dreadnoughts where as Eldar have no such restriction.

Also important to understand is that many of the Eldar weapons are 12" range only and thus many units have to forego using the Alaitoc trait just to be able to shoot...at all.

It is pretty clear (to me at least) that GW intentionally made Chapter and Legion attributes only apply to certain units, while CWE gets detachment-wide access. It makes sense in the fluff, and GW writes rules based on fluff FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW. If it makes sense to GW, the rules will reflect it. I'm actually impressed that 8E is a balanced as it is so far.

And honestly, if you are unsatisfied that the rules are not 100% consistent because of this kind of decision making on GW's part, remember that GW in a model company, not a rules company. (despite having "Games" in their name). Also remember that this is supposed to be an asymmetrical system allowing diversity of factions/units. The only way to make the rules 100% consistent is to drop all armies but Marines of different colors.
If that is the kind of game you want, GW already supports it and it's 30K.

-

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Hyperbole at its finest. 5 ppm guardsmen are completely fair compared to termagants and boyz.

Perhaps Termagants and Boyz are overcosted.

Agreed, I'd put Termagants at 3, Hormogaunts at 4 and Boyz at 5

Martel732 wrote:

blaktoof wrote:
The -1 to hit trait can be negated by getting to within 12".

That's hard to do without dying. I'm BA. I tried to do that against index lists and couldn't do it. It's not going to work now.

No its not, Terminators, Fast attack, drop pods, fliers.
There are easy ways to do it, you are just choosing not to do it.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Considering almost every army has access to 3+ reroll 1's to hit with their most efficient shooters - it is pretty easy to call that a wash - I'd be happy to see auras removed from the game entirely though. It might help games get past turn 3. However - then marines would go from being at/near the bottom to being absolutely terrible because auras are about the only thing marines do better than other armies.

Sweet! A wash! RG is like a double wash then, because SM hit on 3s?

RG would be a wash - except he also rerolls wounds. Which is problematic for balance. Yet marines still under-perform against armies who don't have this buff on the big stage so clearly marines need help - I'd start with army traits on the whole army. On the topic though - I don't think -1 to hit should be one of those options. It shouldn't be an option for anyone. Too strong.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Considering almost every army has access to 3+ reroll 1's to hit with their most efficient shooters - it is pretty easy to call that a wash - I'd be happy to see auras removed from the game entirely though. It might help games get past turn 3. However - then marines would go from being at/near the bottom to being absolutely terrible because auras are about the only thing marines do better than other armies.

Sweet! A wash! RG is like a double wash then, because SM hit on 3s?

RG would be a wash - except he also rerolls wounds. Which is problematic for balance. Yet marines still under-perform against armies who don't have this buff on the big stage so clearly marines need help - I'd start with army traits on the whole army. On the topic though - I don't think -1 to hit should be one of those options. It shouldn't be an option for anyone. Too strong.

"Marines still under perform against armies who dont have this buff on the big stage, clearly marines need help"
Yeah im gonna need a source on that.

And its not that strong, we have been saying this whole thread deep strike is a thing, fliers, are a thing, DROP PODS, are a thing, all put you at 9 inches, they dont get a -1 to hit anymore. Hell Psykers, that -1 wont do anything against a mortal wound.

 Galas wrote:
Can we stop with the random fluff justifications for tactics to apply in some cases to vehicles and in others don't?

It is just a random rules inconsistence, don't try to pass it as some kind of "yeah they did this because of fluff"

I'm not - I am only arguing for balance purpose. If eldar/AM vehicles and flyers are affected by their traits - everyone should be. Including CSM - all chapters of marines. I'd be fine if they did it like with AM and made special traits within the main trait that only affected vehicles. Just to reiterate too - I don't think -1 to hit should be an army trait for anyone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Considering almost every army has access to 3+ reroll 1's to hit with their most efficient shooters - it is pretty easy to call that a wash - I'd be happy to see auras removed from the game entirely though. It might help games get past turn 3. However - then marines would go from being at/near the bottom to being absolutely terrible because auras are about the only thing marines do better than other armies.

Sweet! A wash! RG is like a double wash then, because SM hit on 3s?

RG would be a wash - except he also rerolls wounds. Which is problematic for balance. Yet marines still under-perform against armies who don't have this buff on the big stage so clearly marines need help - I'd start with army traits on the whole army. On the topic though - I don't think -1 to hit should be one of those options. It shouldn't be an option for anyone. Too strong.

"Marines still under perform against armies who dont have this buff on the big stage, clearly marines need help"
Yeah im gonna need a source on that.

And its not that strong, we have been saying this whole thread deep strike is a thing, fliers, are a thing, DROP PODS, are a thing, all put you at 9 inches, they dont get a -1 to hit anymore. Hell Psykers, that -1 wont do anything against a mortal wound.

Drop pods aren't actually a thing anymore. Deep striking any unit you want for free is a thing now (1 command point) Marines can't do this. In fact our 80ish point drops pods have more restrictions than free deep strike from other armies. Eldar do it / tyranids do it. If you are spending real points to do it - you are losing - that is a fact. Screening units are also a thing - deep strike can put you within 9 inch of things they are okay with you being 12 inches from. You wont be 12" from their flyers or dark reapers I assure you.

So this is not actually about the -1 to hit, this is about you getting out played by someone with dark reapers and you cry OP. Like every thread you make is complaining about a unit.

-1 to hit is not that strong. There are plenty of ways to deal with it, and counter it. From reading this thread, this entire rant can be summed up with one sentence, "Get gud" Seriously, there are ways around it, if you dont want to use it, thats your own fault.

 Xenomancers wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Considering almost every army has access to 3+ reroll 1's to hit with their most efficient shooters - it is pretty easy to call that a wash - I'd be happy to see auras removed from the game entirely though. It might help games get past turn 3. However - then marines would go from being at/near the bottom to being absolutely terrible because auras are about the only thing marines do better than other armies.

Sweet! A wash! RG is like a double wash then, because SM hit on 3s?

RG would be a wash - except he also rerolls wounds. Which is problematic for balance. Yet marines still under-perform against armies who don't have this buff on the big stage so clearly marines need help - I'd start with army traits on the whole army. On the topic though - I don't think -1 to hit should be one of those options. It shouldn't be an option for anyone. Too strong.

"Marines still under perform against armies who dont have this buff on the big stage, clearly marines need help"
Yeah im gonna need a source on that.

And its not that strong, we have been saying this whole thread deep strike is a thing, fliers, are a thing, DROP PODS, are a thing, all put you at 9 inches, they dont get a -1 to hit anymore. Hell Psykers, that -1 wont do anything against a mortal wound.

Drop pods aren't actually a thing anymore. Deep striking any unit you want for free is a thing now (1 command point) Marines can't do this. In fact our 80ish point drops pods have more restrictions than free deep strike from other armies. Eldar do it / tyranids do it. If you are spending real points to do it - you are losing - that is a fact. Screening units are also a thing - deep strike can put you within 9 inch of things they are okay with you being 12 inches from. You wont be 12" from their flyers or dark reapers I assure you.

Raven Guard would like a word with you. Marines absolutely can "deep strike" for 1 CP., or take plenty of units that have inherent deepstrike, or take pods, OR take Issodon....seriously Marines are not lacking for advanced deployment options.

Wait, when did Marines lose their Infiltrate stratagem? And when did Drop Pods get actually removed from the codex? And when did CWE get a screening unit?

On a mathhammer standpoint, and on a first look, I thought -1 to hit was OP, even when it was only infantry/dreads. I still think it's too good for CWE. But a lot of people have brought up a lot of good points about it being good for the game as a whole.

If you want to show that it's bad for the game as a whole, perhaps try fewer emotive falsehoods, and actually stick to the facts?

CWE can deepstrike 1 unit for 1 CP, or 2 for 3 CP. They cannot deepstrike 3, outside units that natively have deepstrike - Hawks Spiders, Rangers. And they cant deepstrike both Vehicles and Infantry - one or the the other (even if they pay 3 CP)

Marines can Infiltrate as RG 1 unit per CP. No limit. If they don't want to do that, they can Pod in their Infantry - although the cost is high enough that most would rathe rdo something else instead. Outside the Pod, they still have some native Deep Strike units of their own.

These are asymetric, but each side has strengths and weeknesses. Handwaving away oen faction's strenghts and the other's weeknesses doesn't help us figure anything out.

(I still think Alaitoc is too strong, but I'm no longer against other factions having that -1 to hit.)

morgoth wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
CQC is largely irrelevant in 8th, luckily for Eldar.

How can that be true with all the armies that can simply 1-turn charge, and massive improvement to some of them?

Also, is this still true in a post-conscript meta?

Because your units just leave combat like nothing happened and then shoot the CQC units off the table.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Can we stop with the random fluff justifications for tactics to apply in some cases to vehicles and in others don't?

It is just a random rules inconsistence, don't try to pass it as some kind of "yeah they did this because of fluff"

I'm not - I am only arguing for balance purpose. If eldar/AM vehicles and flyers are affected by their traits - everyone should be. Including CSM - all chapters of marines. I'd be fine if they did it like with AM and made special traits within the main trait that only affected vehicles. Just to reiterate too - I don't think -1 to hit should be an army trait for anyone.

If the fact that AM/Eldar vehicles get access to trait is included in their point cost, then there's no problem with balance.
If you're arguing that SM vehicles should all get access to CT for free, then I don't see how that would be in pursuit of balance.

2 days have passed. 40k still lacks balance.

If you really want to argue that marines can deepstrike by a complete overpriced drop pod...we can just stop having this discussion - that is a completely nonviable strategy because paying 80 points for something other armies do for free is obviously nonviable.

Also the RAVEN GUARD SPECIFIC stratagem is not deep strike but special infiltrate. It is only helpful if you go first - it doesn't give you alpha strike protection.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 koooaei wrote:
2 days have passed. 40k still lacks balance.

GW would have to pay me to do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

fresus wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Can we stop with the random fluff justifications for tactics to apply in some cases to vehicles and in others don't?

It is just a random rules inconsistence, don't try to pass it as some kind of "yeah they did this because of fluff"

I'm not - I am only arguing for balance purpose. If eldar/AM vehicles and flyers are affected by their traits - everyone should be. Including CSM - all chapters of marines. I'd be fine if they did it like with AM and made special traits within the main trait that only affected vehicles. Just to reiterate too - I don't think -1 to hit should be an army trait for anyone.

If the fact that AM/Eldar vehicles get access to trait is included in their point cost, then there's no problem with balance.
If you're arguing that SM vehicles should all get access to CT for free, then I don't see how that would be in pursuit of balance.

What kind of clownish argument is that? Every army gets army traits for free.

Infiltrate is better and worse than Deep Strike. For Berzerkers and many CWE units, Infiltrate would be better. But for RG, DS would be better. But I think it's fairly fair to say unlimited use of 1CP per unit Infiltrate is at least as good, if not better, than being able to DS 1 or 2 units for 1 or 3 CP.

Regardless, other armies don't do it for "free". It costs CP, and for CWE it also costs opportunity. That point is flat out wrong.

Pods are inviable. Because other options are more viable. So Marines can Deep Strike with Pods, but choosing not to is almost always the better option. Because Pods aren't the only way to get within 12". Pods should be cheaper, but you can choose to pay points for DS where most factions cannot.

Also, there are a lot of uses of Infiltrate if you go second. Nowhere near as good as if you go first, but hardly useless.

Disregarding RG as "Only 1 chapter" is fairly reasonable in many discussions, but not this one. This one is about Traits that *only affect one <chapter-equiv>". ONLY RG is the same as shouting ONLY ALAITOC. Both are true. And if one makes it irrelevant, how does the other not?

Bharring wrote:
Infiltrate is better and worse than Deep Strike. For Berzerkers and many CWE units, Infiltrate would be better. But for RG, DS would be better. But I think it's fairly fair to say unlimited use of 1CP per unit Infiltrate is at least as good, if not better, than being able to DS 1 or 2 units for 1 or 3 CP.

Regardless, other armies don't do it for "free". It costs CP, and for CWE it also costs opportunity. That point is flat out wrong.

Pods are inviable. Because other options are more viable. So Marines can Deep Strike with Pods, but choosing not to is almost always the better option. Because Pods aren't the only way to get within 12". Pods should be cheaper, but you can choose to pay points for DS where most factions cannot.

Also, there are a lot of uses of Infiltrate if you go second. Nowhere near as good as if you go first, but hardly useless.

Disregarding RG as "Only 1 chapter" is fairly reasonable in many discussions, but not this one. This one is about Traits that *only affect one <chapter-equiv>". ONLY RG is the same as shouting ONLY ALAITOC. Both are true. And if one makes it irrelevant, how does the other not?

Only ravengaurd can infiltrate per stratagem. Any craftworld can deepstrike any unit in the codex for 1 CP or 2 for 3. It's also worth mentioning where Aliatoc are the stand out best craft-world - RG are not the best marine chapter - that is Ultra marines. So if you want to chose the best army trait - you have to forgo using the best combos in ultra marines. This is all relevant from a balance perspective. If Ultramarines had -1 to hit - id be going after them with the same fervor even though they are my chapter - same would be true of AdM if mars had -1. Eldar is the only army thus far that it's best army trait has access to everything in the entire book that is any good.

As you stated early on, Roboute Gilleman is notable because he makes the non -1-to-hit subfaction better than the -1-to-hit subfaction.

So much of the angst is the "You have your -1 cake, but I can't have my -1 cake with my primarch cake"?

In other words, -1-to-hit is OP and gamebreaking, but it's not a problem on Marines because they have something even better?

Gilleman needs to be toned down. Alaitoc needs to be toned down. But if RG are so bad, why does their -1 need to be toned down? AL needs to be toned down, but that's Infiltrating Berzerkers who aren't likely to benefit from the -1, not the -1 itself.

It seems, more and more, the problem is not the -1-to-hit traits. It's sounding more and more balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also - "Any unit" - please be more accurate in your rue specifications. Almost any unit. Fairly sure Avatar and Wraithlords, for example, cannot.

Gotta admit. If the BA codex is actually good instead of steaming poo (as it will probably be), all the -1 handwringing is going to be amusing to me.

Bharring wrote:
As you stated early on, Roboute Gilleman is notable because he makes the non -1-to-hit subfaction better than the -1-to-hit subfaction.

So much of the angst is the "You have your -1 cake, but I can't have my -1 cake with my primarch cake"?

In other words, -1-to-hit is OP and gamebreaking, but it's not a problem on Marines because they have something even better?

Gilleman needs to be toned down. Alaitoc needs to be toned down. But if RG are so bad, why does their -1 need to be toned down? AL needs to be toned down, but that's Infiltrating Berzerkers who aren't likely to benefit from the -1, not the -1 itself.

It seems, more and more, the problem is not the -1-to-hit traits. It's sounding more and more balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also - "Any unit" - please be more accurate in your rue specifications. Almost any unit. Fairly sure Avatar and Wraithlords, for example, cannot.

My original post adressed super buffers as well. In essesnse - free power is a bad thing reroll hit and wound bubbles and -1 to hit blanket buffs are too strong. Originally I thought vehicals could use the stratagem but it's just vehicles with the fly keyword - which is practically everything - it is everything that you'd want to. It even works on super heavy grav tanks.

The point is you often make grand claims about what factions can and can't do, ignoring the actual rules themselves.

If you're saying that disclaimer means Gilleman isn't relevant to the conversation, then why bring him up when claiming we should only consider Alaitoc for CWE, but never consider RavenGuard for SM?

Bharring wrote:
The point is you often make grand claims about what factions can and can't do, ignoring the actual rules themselves.

If you're saying that disclaimer means Gilleman isn't relevant to the conversation, then why bring him up when claiming we should only consider Alaitoc for CWE, but never consider RavenGuard for SM?

Because from a balance perspective space marines are trash and eldar are top notch?

It's also meaningless that you can DS a wraithlord or an avatar - they are terrible units. Whats not terrible? Shinning spears.

I hate to be the one who addresses the elephant in the room but this is Xenomancers we're talking about. A brief walk through of his posts include endless posts whining about SMs being the worst codex, about how bad Grey Knights are, and other similar topics. There isn't really a reason to attempt to have a conversation at this point because one party isn't interested in actual discourse but rather repeating the same few talking points over and over.

Is -1 to hit a very obviously powerful army trait? Yes. Do some armies take more advantage of it than others? Yes. Do either of these mean that it's bad for the health of the game or game breaking? No. That's really all there is to it.

Classic Eldar drivel. My army is just better than everyone elses but it's not game breaking. That's just the way things are. I play eldar too btw. Busted things need to be called busted. That's just the way things are when you are playing beta 8th edition.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Drop pods aren't actually a thing anymore. Deep striking any unit you want for free is a thing now (1 command point) Marines can't do this. In fact our 80ish point drops pods have more restrictions than free deep strike from other armies. Eldar do it / tyranids do it. If you are spending real points to do it - you are losing - that is a fact. Screening units are also a thing - deep strike can put you within 9 inch of things they are okay with you being 12 inches from. You wont be 12" from their flyers or dark reapers I assure you.

Hasty Generalization(s), again.

This statement depends on how you value CP, if you have a lot of CP in your army, maybe this cost is negligible, if you're running a smaller number of CP you might consider this very expensive. This also depends on the drop vehicle, which may have tactical usefulness beyond it's delivery capabilities.

As usual, your mileage may vary.

 Galef wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I'd say Salamanders trait is much better than the -1 to hit.

Its important to understand that the marine version is heavily nerfed and only affects infantry, bikes and dreadnoughts where as Eldar have no such restriction.

Also important to understand is that many of the Eldar weapons are 12" range only and thus many units have to forego using the Alaitoc trait just to be able to shoot...at all.

It is pretty clear (to me at least) that GW intentionally made Chapter and Legion attributes only apply to certain units, while CWE gets detachment-wide access. It makes sense in the fluff, and GW writes rules based on fluff FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW. If it makes sense to GW, the rules will reflect it. I'm actually impressed that 8E is a balanced as it is so far.

And honestly, if you are unsatisfied that the rules are not 100% consistent because of this kind of decision making on GW's part, remember that GW in a model company, not a rules company. (despite having "Games" in their name). Also remember that this is supposed to be an asymmetrical system allowing diversity of factions/units. The only way to make the rules 100% consistent is to drop all armies but Marines of different colors.
If that is the kind of game you want, GW already supports it and it's 30K.

-

Ah, classic Eldar player. Marine players apparently don't have any justification via fluff but Eldar do.

If one set of players can defend Scatterbikes they can defend anything.

Drop pods will probably get another price drop in March with the first rebalancing.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Because from a balance perspective space marines are trash and eldar are top notch?

Hasty Generalization, again.

You move the goalposts every time someone points out your various logical fallacies and move on to the next hasty generalization that supposedly "proves" your point.

Martel732 wrote:
Drop pods will probably get another price drop in March with the first rebalancing.

How did they miss it in this re-balancing? They probably haven't sold a drop pod in 6 months.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Drop pods aren't actually a thing anymore. Deep striking any unit you want for free is a thing now (1 command point) Marines can't do this. In fact our 80ish point drops pods have more restrictions than free deep strike from other armies. Eldar do it / tyranids do it. If you are spending real points to do it - you are losing - that is a fact. Screening units are also a thing - deep strike can put you within 9 inch of things they are okay with you being 12 inches from. You wont be 12" from their flyers or dark reapers I assure you.

Hasty Generalization(s), again.

This statement depends on how you value CP, if you have a lot of CP in your army, maybe this cost is negligible, if you're running a smaller number of CP you might consider this very expensive. This also depends on the drop vehicle, which may have tactical usefulness beyond it's delivery capabilities.

As usual, your mileage may vary.

A command point isn't worth 80 points. Plus. Command points lose value when you lose 80 points in units to use them. So you are devaluing a command point by wasting 80 points on a drop pod when another army does it for free. It's like baizaro world. 1 army has to spend 80 points to deep strike units and other armies can do it for free and people actually defend it.

They didn't miss it. They only dropped it 10 pts. They are probably going to stick with 10 pt increments in a lot of cases until a) spammed units stop being spammed b) units never used start getting used.

Expect more price increases for manticores and more drops for drop pods.

 Xenomancers wrote:
A command point isn't worth 80 points. Plus. Command points lose value when you lose 80 points in units to use them. So you are devaluing a command point by wasting 80 points on a drop pod when another army does it for free. It's like baizaro world. 1 army has to spend 80 points to deep strike units and other armies can do it for free and people actually defend it.

Hasty Generalization, again, and possibly some circular logic thrown in for fun.

Spending 1 CP to deep strike is not free.

Honestly, Drop Pods may need a points adjustment, but surrendering to hyperbole for every argument you make devalues every point you make.

I've been quite happy with using the Kharybdis Assault Claw, but it's good because it's very effective beyond it's ability to deliver troops. Is it still good at 375 points? We'll see, I own one, I'll play it again, we'll see, but I'm not running around like chicken little about it.

If you want to move the goalposts again and have a discussion about the relative value of CP within the context of individual armies versus the game as a whole, well, you should probably start a new thread for that as it promises to be a lengthy debate.

You get 3 command points for battle forged army - absolutely free.

As I said, drop pods will keep dropping as long as they are never used. That's the balancing model they appear to be using.

 Xenomancers wrote:
You get 3 command points for battle forged army - absolutely free.

False Dichotomy.

Only free if you consider everything else you spend CP on to be worthless. Somehow I suspect that's not true.

Also, "Free" after you build your list to be Battleforged, which comes with restrictions. Fairly light restrictions, but still restrictions. Just like how that Battalion costs you not being able to take a list of nothing by FA. Not a points cost, but an opportunity cost.

Those 3 CP are free much like the 2k points you get in a 2k battleforged match. Yes, you didn't have to pay some other resource to get those points, but things you buy with those points generally isn't considered "free".

You even went back to update a previous post from "free" to 1CP, then posted again claiming the DS was "free".

This really feels like a "CWE > SM" thread, not a "-1 to-hit is OP" thread. If it were the latter, RG and AL would be just as relevant as Alaitoc. But, from the posts, it's just more "CWE OP" complaints. Most people (myself included) don't even disagree with that claim. But the wild claims and accusations being swung around are just crazy.

So let's ask this: Of the forces that can take -1 to hit, which are OP with it?
I'm seeing Alaitoc as OP.
Alpha Legion has some tricks, but generally the -1 doesn't matter much.
The others don't seem broken.

So if only 1 faction makes use of it and is broken, is it the trait itself that's broken?

The trait seems fine to me, now. But Alaitoc still doesn't.

If you want to discuss how OP Alaitoc is, perhaps you should be honest about your intention? Otherwise, we just get circular FUD.

It's the -1 to hit stacked on top of other Eldar huba-joobs.

If Martel and I agree on a SM/CWE thread, does DakkaDakka segfault?

Actually people complain about Alpha Legion and Raven Guard all the time.

Most complaints I've heard about Alpha Legion have been around the Infiltrate stratagem, which is something totally different.

There was some complaints about RG when tactics were revealed, but since they've been tried at tournies, have they really held up that well?

This is about -1 to hit army trait in general - it should not exists. It is too powerful. Eldar abuse it best that's how this devolved into that. The eldar defenders are out in force though just like with scatter bikes and warp spiders and serpents.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Actually people complain about Alpha Legion and Raven Guard all the time.

Bharring wrote:Most complaints I've heard about Alpha Legion have been around the Infiltrate stratagem, which is something totally different.

There was some complaints about RG when tactics were revealed, but since they've been tried at tournies, have they really held up that well?

Bharring has the right of it, I feel. Most of the AL/RG complaints have centered around their Stratagems rather than the -1 to Hit @ 12"+.

I've been giving it some thought and I wonder if maybe the Eldar one should be altered to be the following for vehicles:

Eldar vehicles can only gain this if they are at least halfway concealed by a piece of cover

Bharring wrote:
Most complaints I've heard about Alpha Legion have been around the Infiltrate stratagem, which is something totally different.

There was some complaints about RG when tactics were revealed, but since they've been tried at tournies, have they really held up that well?

That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

If they make assault viable, it's less powerful.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Most complaints I've heard about Alpha Legion have been around the Infiltrate stratagem, which is something totally different.

There was some complaints about RG when tactics were revealed, but since they've been tried at tournies, have they really held up that well?

That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

Dude the book came out barely a month ago.

Martel732 wrote:
If they make assault viable, it's less powerful.

Or people can, y'know, just get within 12 inches.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Most complaints I've heard about Alpha Legion have been around the Infiltrate stratagem, which is something totally different.

There was some complaints about RG when tactics were revealed, but since they've been tried at tournies, have they really held up that well?

That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

Dude the book came out barely a month ago.

Tournaments happen every weekend all over the world.

I think its creating an unpleasant meta that tournament players may not mind, but is in danger of driving more and more casual players out of 40k.

The game is becoming far, far too dependent on skewed armies dictating the outcome of the game from turn 1 and the -1 to hit, which is clearly better than the other comparable tactics, is a factor in that.

I am sure there are other issues - but yes, if GW came in now and did a blanket change to make it something else I think that would be for the best.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Most complaints I've heard about Alpha Legion have been around the Infiltrate stratagem, which is something totally different.

There was some complaints about RG when tactics were revealed, but since they've been tried at tournies, have they really held up that well?

That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

Dude the book came out barely a month ago.

Yeah, a month is not long enough to declare "tournament domination". People need to adapt to new stuff (i.e. get inside 12" and kill those -1 to hit traits)

I'll grant that the Alaitoc trait doesn't make as much sense on Grav tanks, but on Infantry, Bikes and Flyers, it makes perfect sense. The issue comes from the later being boosted quite a bit be an additional -1.
But let's not forget that prior to this edition, Flyers were always hit on 6s and flat out could not be targeted by blast weapons. Now those same Flyers are hit on 4+ or 5+ and by any weapon with range to them.

Flyers were not dominating 7E, they certainly won't dominate now. The only exception to this is the Stormraven, a SM Flyer btw, which was being spammed early on in 8E prior to the "Boot on the Ground" FAQ.
So the real issue isn't -1 traits sweeping across factions, it is when units in those faction already have -1 and get boosted to -2. The problem with fixing (to not stack) is that it makes Rangers not benefit from being Alaitoc. Ya know, the CW that has the most/best Rangers.

-

 Xenomancers wrote:
That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

Please post results to support this. Otherwise, Hasty Generalization...again.

 Galef wrote:

I'll grant that the Alaitoc trait doesn't make as much sense on Grav tanks, but on Infantry, Bikes and Flyers, it makes perfect sense. The issue comes from the later being boosted quite a bit be an additional -1.

I disagree with it making sense on Flyers. If it doesn't make sense on Grav Tanks, why would it make sense on Flyers?

But let's not forget that prior to this edition, Flyers were always hit on 6s and flat out could not be targeted by blast weapons. Now those same Flyers are hit on 4+ or 5+ and by any weapon with range to them.

Flyers were not dominating 7E, they certainly won't dominate now. The only exception to this is the Stormraven, a SM Flyer btw, which was being spammed early on in 8E prior to the "Boot on the Ground" FAQ.

Wasn't it the fact that the Stormraven is pretty durable and has a hover mode that made it such a big deal?

So the real issue isn't -1 traits sweeping across factions, it is when units in those faction already have -1 and get boosted to -2. The problem with fixing (to not stack) is that it makes Rangers not benefit from being Alaitoc. Ya know, the CW that has the most/best Rangers.
-

So rejig it to be rather than "At over 12 inches" to "When in cover"? The Pathfinders' schtick was that they're masters of concealment and disruption.
Right now, the only units that I know of(I don't have the Eldar book to go off of so forgive me if I'm wrong here) with native -1 to Hits at 12" and beyond are the Tau Stealth Suits, Ghostkeel, and Shadowsun.
Making it so that Alaitoc stuff is -1 to Hit when in Cover fixes the issue of the Flyer double-dipping for it while adding a bit more flavor to the rule and not ruining the feel of the Pathfinders as supreme concealment/camouflage experts IMO.

@Kahnluen,
I would agree with that change - but it may be simpler to just make Alaitoc's specify 'Infantry and Biker units'.

Technically, the Vyper is both a Biker and Vehicle, but I don't think that'd be a problem.

I actually added that change to the thread I started about theorycrafting potential changes in Proposed Rules.

@Xeno,
When you paint peoople who say "CWE are OP" as Eldar defenders, it's really, really hard to try to hash this stuff out.

Tyel,
I wouldn't mind if GW found a better answer and pushed that out. I just don't see it breaking the game.

The trait seems to be making one powerful codex even stronger, is a suboptimal choice in another codex, and tends to be irrelevant even when taken by yet another codex.

Still seems like it's Alaitoc, not the trait itself, that needs to be fixed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I like the "While in cover" change. Makes sense. Should be both in cover and outside 12" though - we don't need DAs to be as durable as Tacs when in cover at close range.

I keep going back and forth on if Rangers should get it stacking. I think so. On them, it's not as big a deal. But note that a trait not supporting what the army is known for is common for CWE traits (Biel Tan and it's Thousand Cuts only buff one cut...).

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

Please post results to support this. Otherwise, Hasty Generalization...again.

I've seen the results. Feel free to research them yourself - it is extremely taxing work as no one really compiles the data that you want to see.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I've seen the results. Feel free to research them yourself - it is extremely taxing work as no one really compiles the data that you want to see.

Hasty Generalization it is then, again.

I am not required to find evidence to support your claims, that is for you to do, that's how debate works.

This looks like a great survey... list all the trait archatypes (maybe with names behind) and have the community rank them - or select the most powerful. Not sure what Dakka has for survey options, also don't have all the codices so can't mine the data...

It does have polls.

The only trait I can think of which would give it a run for it's money would be the FnP trait.

I'm fairly sure it's the best trait. I'm fairly sure most people think it is. I'd like it to be weaker. Again, I think most people would. But that isn't the topic of the thread. The thread is about it being stupidly OP and ruining the game. That is a MUCH higher bar than simply being the best.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

Please post results to support this. Otherwise, Hasty Generalization...again.

I've seen the results. Feel free to research them yourself - it is extremely taxing work as no one really compiles the data that you want to see.

That's not how that works. Your claim was challenged, you have to produce evidence to defend your statement. In effect you either cannot or will not provide proof of your statement and thus your point is invalid. Which isn't surprising - yes -1 to hit is good, several armies have access to it. The reason it looks so good on Alatioc is the lack of other truly viable trait options. It creates a skewed perspective because unlike armies like AdMech or Marines who have an incentive to use their other traits to access a more all together powerful trait, Eldar do not. The problem isn't that -1 to hit is too good, its that its the only universally effective option in the CWE book.

I wouldn't mind Alaitoc Fieldcraft to apply to Infantry and Bikes only (although it makes sense to apply to Flyers & non-tank Vehicles too as "Feildcraft" can represent expert dodging and playing with the enemy's blind spots, but I could live without it for balance sake, I guess).

If you disregard Alaitoc for a moment, I don't thing other armies with -1 to hit traits are exactly "dominating" tournies.
-1 to hit is perfectly healthy for the game as it counter-balances pure shooting armies.
it goes back to the old argument that shooting can be used from turn 1, but melee can't happen until turn 2.
Thankfully, melee is finally a turn 1 option for many list, but it still needs a bit of help. -1 to hit traits make melee/close range armies viable vs gunlines.

Time will tell if Tau, Orks or Necrons get -1 to hit traits.

-

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Because from a balance perspective space marines are trash and eldar are top notch?

Hasty Generalization, again.

You move the goalposts every time someone points out your various logical fallacies and move on to the next hasty generalization that supposedly "proves" your point.

This has been true in all the threads where he states “X is too gud, change rules. Eldar are OP, SM need Moar”.

I can appreciate when someone is upset with one thing or another. But the constant outpouring of hate and I could do better gets old. What’s your real motivation.

 Galef wrote:
I wouldn't mind Alaitoc Fieldcraft to apply to Infantry and Bikes only (although it makes sense to apply to Flyers & non-tank Vehicles too as "Feildcraft" can represent expert dodging and playing with the enemy's blind spots, but I could live without it for balance sake, I guess).

Mymeara became adept at cloaking/hiding their entire craftworld when the need arose. Shouldn't be an issue to do the same thing for a Grav tank.

"Holofields" may not be wargear choices anymore, but CWE didn't lose that technology.

(I seem to need to add "But I'd be fine with the change, for balance sake" to most of my posts, just to avoid 4 pages of hate.)

Bharring wrote:
I'm fairly sure it's the best trait. I'm fairly sure most people think it is. I'd like it to be weaker. Again, I think most people would. But that isn't the topic of the thread. The thread is about it being stupidly OP and ruining the game. That is a MUCH higher bar than simply being the best.

I'd probably agree with this generally. That being said, I've played with some of the other CSM traits, and they can be *very* good when used correctly. World Eaters chapter trait is flat-out amazing on Cultists, they punch way above their weight class with that trait. Night Lords trait is a very fidgety trait that you have to design your army to take advantage of, however, under the right circumstances, could be devastating. Iron Warriors is very solid and easy to use, it would be amazing if they could actually use it with artillery and vehicles.

That being said, there are ones I'm really not thrilled with. The Black Legion trait isn't bad, neither is Emperor's Children, just not as generally applicable to the prevailing gunline meta right now. I hate the Word Bearers legion trait, I have no good things to say about this, feels superfluous, should have given them an extra die when summoning Daemons, would have been useful, thematic, effective.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
That is because space marines are a terrible army. Once Aliatoc was released it instantly started dominating tournaments.

Please post results to support this. Otherwise, Hasty Generalization...again.

I've seen the results. Feel free to research them yourself - it is extremely taxing work as no one really compiles the data that you want to see.

That's not how that works. Your claim was challenged, you have to produce evidence to defend your statement. In effect you either cannot or will not provide proof of your statement and thus your point is invalid. Which isn't surprising - yes -1 to hit is good, several armies have access to it. The reason it looks so good on Alatioc is the lack of other truly viable trait options. It creates a skewed perspective because unlike armies like AdMech or Marines who have an incentive to use their other traits to access a more all together powerful trait, Eldar do not. The problem isn't that -1 to hit is too good, its that its the only universally effective option in the CWE book.

Eldar have the exact same copy and paste options as everyone else. Eldar success isn't tied to a special character like admech and space marines - so they are free to pick whatever trait they want to use. -1 to hit being the blatantly obvious decision. CSM which is basically the top codex right now (though it is mostly soup lists) Is always played as -1 to hit alpha legion - not only because it has the best combos but also because the -1 to hit is OP as feth on obliteraters and such.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eldar have the exact same copy and paste options as everyone else. Eldar success isn't tied to a special character like admech and space marines - so they are free to pick whatever trait they want to use. -1 to hit being the blatantly obvious decision. CSM which is basically the top codex right now (though it is mostly soup lists) Is always played as -1 to hit alpha legion - not only because it has the best combos but also because the -1 to hit is OP as feth on obliteraters and such.

You do a brilliant job of dodging points and moving goal posts in nearly every thread I watch you in. Get challenged to post tournament results? No you go do it. Get told that's now how the burden of proof works? Just skip that point to loop back into another point and then disengage from a known tactic of "Eldar OP!' to deflect with 'Alpha Legion OP!'. Ultimately at this point all I can do is agree to disagree with you because you have 0 interest in an actual discussion or possibly changing your view point, much less even actively listening to ideas that don't line up with yours.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eldar have the exact same copy and paste options as everyone else. Eldar success isn't tied to a special character like admech and space marines - so they are free to pick whatever trait they want to use. -1 to hit being the blatantly obvious decision. CSM which is basically the top codex right now (though it is mostly soup lists) Is always played as -1 to hit alpha legion - not only because it has the best combos but also because the -1 to hit is OP as feth on obliteraters and such.

You do a brilliant job of dodging points and moving goal posts in nearly every thread I watch you in. Get challenged to post tournament results? No you go do it. Get told that's now how the burden of proof works? Just skip that point to loop back into another point and then disengage from a known tactic of "Eldar OP!' to deflect with 'Alpha Legion OP!'. Ultimately at this point all I can do is agree to disagree with you because you have 0 interest in an actual discussion or possibly changing your view point, much less even actively listening to ideas that don't line up with yours.

I have already said that I am not digging the results up for you. It is grueling work - you want to know the truth - do it yourself.

And I answered the other part of your post.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eldar have the exact same copy and paste options as everyone else.

Not sure what this means other than many armies get this trait, yes, this is true.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eldar success isn't tied to a special character like admech and space marines - so they are free to pick whatever trait they want to use. -1 to hit being the blatantly obvious decision.

Hasty Generalization, again.

 Xenomancers wrote:
CSM which is basically the top codex right now (though it is mostly soup lists) Is always played as -1 to hit alpha legion - not only because it has the best combos but also because the -1 to hit is OP as feth on obliteraters and such.

Hasty Generalization, again.

Please post the CSM-based lists that are currently "dominating" the tournaments.

It's OP on Obliterators because you can't be bothered to move 12" closer to them? You know their range is 24" right?

Furthermore, Smite Spam is not CSM, that is pre-CA Malefic Lord spam. These types of Smite Spam lists rarely make significant use of Legion traits, since most of the units involved aren't actually from the CSM codex. Perhaps you mean Renegades and Heretics (RAH) or Daemons? There is one list that I've seen which used Alpha Legion Tzeentchian Obliterators alongside the Changeling, it was a good combo, it didn't win the tournament, it placed. Many codices have good combos, this is not strange.

-1 to hit trait is perfectly balanced against all other traits. It is only perceived as the better one right now because the game is focused on shooting. 6 months from now, we have no idea what the meta will be, gunline armies could be 100% unviable and the ultramarine trait would become all the rage.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Tournaments happen every weekend all over the world.

And clearly you have the tap into all of that data? Care to share it?

Twin pole you are straight trolling.

When someone says this to me -refering to -1 to hit trait
"The reason it looks so good on Alatioc is the lack of other truly viable trait options."
Then I say this
"Eldar have the exact same copy and paste options as everyone else"

I am obviosuly expressing that this isn't an eldar problem. It is a game problem. Which is actually proving my point.

You keep going on about hasty generalizations. Well let me hit you with some facts. Space marine and Ad Mech Tournament success is directly tied Cawl and Guilliman respectively. They want to use the -1 to hit trait BUT THEY CAN'T. Everyone else uses the -1 trait competitively because it is glaringly better.

Observing things in a vacum is bad. Obliterators deep strike and wipe out your best units and there is a bunch of bezerkers in rhinos in front of them. Getting close is not an option - unless you can somehow manage to destroy their whole army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:
-1 to hit trait is perfectly balanced against all other traits. It is only perceived as the better one right now because the game is focused on shooting. 6 months from now, we have no idea what the meta will be, gunline armies could be 100% unviable and the ultramarine trait would become all the rage.

This game will always be focused on shooting - LOL. Unviable gunlines? So - AM, Tau, and Space marines will cease to exist huh?

Raven Guard's Infiltrate is "the exact same copy and paste option" as Alpha Legion. Infiltrate is OP for Alpha Legion. Would you argue that Infiltrate is OP for Raven Guard?

The game is asymetric. Different abilities are better or worse for different armies. Infiltrate would be even more OP in CWE hands, but it's just not as big a deal for Loyalist Marines.

As such, Alaitoc's -1-to-hit being mostly the same as other factions -1-to-hit doesn't mean it's as powerful in other armies' hands as it is in Alaitoc's.

Just how many "other armies" do you think are out there with the trait? I'll give you a hint: less than a dozen.

I don't think this is too powerful. I've faced this multiple times and I've beaten this multiple times. Not to say it's not powerful, far from it.

Either way, I don't think its level of power is the problem. The problem is that these traits are too samey. C'mon, GW, show some originality.

Bharring wrote:
Infiltrate would be even more OP in CWE hands.

Which is exactly why CWE are limited in the use of Infiltrating stratagem. Unlike AL/RG, CWE can infiltrate a max of 2 units and have to spend 3CPs to do so.

 RedCommander wrote:
The problem is that these traits are too samey. C'mon, GW, show some originality.

Be careful what you wish for. Most times GW tries giving out unique snowflake special rules, you either get an asymmetrically OP army, or they overcompensate by making those units too expensive and thus unless.

Chapter Tactics, Legion traits, CW attributes, etc should give flavor to an army, not be the main course.

-

 Xenomancers wrote:
Twin pole you are straight trolling.

Here's the sad thing, I'm not. I actually think you probably have some decent points, I agree with you sometimes. However, your presentation is horrible, you engage in every kind of logical fallacy in the book when debating the topics you post about, and never once have I actually seen you admit error once you have adopted a position, even when reasonable counterpoints are presented to your hyperbolic vitriol.

Mostly though, the sheer volume of logical fallacies you use in your posts in mind blowing. I just started identifying them as an exercise in the hopes that maybe you would make the effort to construct cogent arguments rather than retreating into hyperbole and emotional appeal.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I am obviosuly expressing that this isn't an eldar problem. It is a game problem. Which is actually proving my point.

If your point is that the trait exists in multiple armies, you are correct. If your point is that the trait inherently undermines the competitive balance of the game, no, you haven't. Again, you've engaged a number of hasty generalizations, false dichotomies and goalpost shifting. About the only logical fallacy you haven't engaged in was Ad Hominem, until now, when you accused me of trolling you.

 Xenomancers wrote:
You keep going on about hasty generalizations. Well let me hit you with some facts. Space marine and Ad Mech Tournament success is directly tied Cawl and Guilliman respectively. They want to use the -1 to hit trait BUT THEY CAN'T. Everyone else uses the -1 trait competitively because it is glaringly better.

Again, you may have a point about Gulliman and Cawl, at least from a tournament perspective, but again, it fails to prove your other point and is once again, a hasty generalization. If you want to post information that actually backs up this claim, I'll stop calling it a hasty generalization. That's how debate works.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Observing things in a vacum is bad. Obliterators deep strike and wipe out your best units and there is a bunch of bezerkers in rhinos in front of them. Getting close is not an option - unless you can somehow manage to destroy their whole army.

Clearly this must be the list you refer to as "dominating" tournaments from the CSM codex, please point us to the results and list so that we can share in your terror and horror.

I don't think he's trolling at all.

Even for me, some of the posting in here is too absolutist, and does't get to the heart of the problem.

If CC = viable, then -1 to hit becomes far less powerful. That's it. That's the solution.

Martel732 wrote:
If CC = viable, then -1 to hit becomes far less powerful. That's it. That's the solution.

And will Nids just getting a Codex, BAs on the way and Orks still yet to come out, CC may indeed become viable
However I do think it's interesting that none of those armies have a -1 to hit trait. Only AL seem to get both -1 to hit and decent melee units.

-

 Galef wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
If CC = viable, then -1 to hit becomes far less powerful. That's it. That's the solution.

And will Nids just getting a Codex, BAs on the way and Orks still yet to come out, CC may indeed become viable
However I do think it's interesting that none of those armies have a -1 to hit trait. Only AL seem to get both -1 to hit and decent melee units.

-

If BA units are FINALLY costed correctly, the -1 to hit won't slow us down much at all. Flamers, frags, melta, and punching don't care.

For the record, all the nid players are gunlining with dakkafexes. I told them not to buy 12 of them, as the hammer is going to come for them.

Martel732 wrote:
If BA units are FINALLY costed correctly, the -1 to hit won't slow us down much at all. Flamers, frags, melta, and punching don't care.

They're moving in the right direction for BA, your chapter trait is straight gangsta.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
If BA units are FINALLY costed correctly, the -1 to hit won't slow us down much at all. Flamers, frags, melta, and punching don't care.

They're moving in the right direction for BA, your chapter trait is straight gangsta.

The beta strikes are still going to murder power armor CQC, I fear. We need cheaper BA-specific units, too. MOAR BODIES!!

October 1-22nd results (probably not long enough for eldar to count):
https://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2017/11/16/top-itc-tournament-lists-october-2017/

AM
Alpha legion
AM + GMDKs
Alpha legion
rowboat + stormravens
rowboat + AM x2 (same list top 3)
AM
Alpha legion + morty
Alpha legion + magnus
Magnus+morty
Blood angels + leviathan dreads
rowboat + stormravens + xiphon
Ynarri
assassins
renegade kinghts + mal lords
CawlBots

I sure do see a lot of alpha legion (25%) followed by rowboat + stormravens and then AM. Best results I can see.

There have been more recent tourneys where 3 out of top 4 were eldar of some color (http://www.gowarhead.com/2017/11/war-head-triad-iii-coverage.html)

It seems the meta is moving and it seems with the changes to points target the current FOTM SM army is getting (gulliman + stormravens) to the exclusion of the other top performers so that one will probably move onto fire raptors and xiphons + guilliman, get replaced with something else or the point changes won't have an effect (which I doubt).

But if -1 wasn't very powerful I doubt we'd see so many alpha legion armies. Hard to say definitely because the strat is really good and we don't see many/any RG armies anymore (I'd posit that's because SM suck without guilliman and are rather 1 trick with him)

-1 is good, I think with all of ways CWE get it to -2 it boarders on game breaking. We'll see how the meta shifts in the next couple months, I think the CA nerfs will help speed the meta shift along but I curious to wait and see.

I hadn't realized Alpha Legion was up there so far.

Any further details on the list? Like, was it AL to infiltrate Zerkers then a bunch of Maelific Lords? Or was it AL for some CSM long-range shooting? Or what?

I checked out the BoK list, about the last half dozen Chaos lists have had a decent level of AL in them. Usually some Oblits and a squad of Berzerkers or two to use with Forward Operatives.

Still a lot of Mal Lords and Horrors, and obviously M&M here and there.

So what can we take from this?

Alpha Legion is proving effective in tournaments, appears to be supported heavily by Daemons/Renegades, if not vice versa entirely. AL is basically there for Oblits+Changeling and infiltrating Berzerkers.

Honestly, given the recent results posted above, it's not a bad spread, the lists are all carbon copies of one another, but that is going to be the tendency for tournament lists.

Interestingly enough, the only Eldar on the list is Ynnari, which works against the premise of the thread.

bananathug wrote:
But if -1 wasn't very powerful I doubt we'd see so many alpha legion armies. Hard to say definitely because the strat is really good and we don't see many/any RG armies anymore (I'd posit that's because SM suck without guilliman and are rather 1 trick with him)

Raven Guard doesn't have anything worth infiltrating like Alpha Legion does (Cultists and Khorne Berzerkers are both exceptionally good targets for the stratagem). The -1 to hit is largely exploited for obliterators, especially Tzeentch ones with the Changeling so you can be -2 to hit.

It's a very strong list, but it'll be interesting to see if it can still keep up with Guard/Eldar/Tyranids when the malefic lords are removed from it.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

bananathug wrote:
But if -1 wasn't very powerful I doubt we'd see so many alpha legion armies. Hard to say definitely because the strat is really good and we don't see many/any RG armies anymore (I'd posit that's because SM suck without guilliman and are rather 1 trick with him)

Raven Guard doesn't have anything worth infiltrating like Alpha Legion does (Cultists and Khorne Berzerkers are both exceptionally good targets for the stratagem). The -1 to hit is largely exploited for obliterators, especially Tzeentch ones with the Changeling so you can be -2 to hit.

It's a very strong list, but it'll be interesting to see if it can still keep up with Guard/Eldar/Tyranids when the malefic lords are removed from it.

Infiltrated RG assault centurions are terrifying. But what do I know? I play BA.

I honestly think the thing to take from this is -2 to hit is broken, -1 merely good.

changeling + AL = broken. Same with Altorac(sp?) and conceal/-1 to hit strat/flyer.

Martel732 wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

bananathug wrote:
But if -1 wasn't very powerful I doubt we'd see so many alpha legion armies. Hard to say definitely because the strat is really good and we don't see many/any RG armies anymore (I'd posit that's because SM suck without guilliman and are rather 1 trick with him)

Raven Guard doesn't have anything worth infiltrating like Alpha Legion does (Cultists and Khorne Berzerkers are both exceptionally good targets for the stratagem). The -1 to hit is largely exploited for obliterators, especially Tzeentch ones with the Changeling so you can be -2 to hit.

It's a very strong list, but it'll be interesting to see if it can still keep up with Guard/Eldar/Tyranids when the malefic lords are removed from it.

Infiltrated RG assault centurions are terrifying. But what do I know? I play BA.

Are they? The only times I've heard the word "centurion" in 8th it's been associated with the word "terrible". Not my army though so I could be wrong.

bananathug wrote:
I honestly think the thing to take from this is -2 to hit is broken, -1 merely good.

changeling + AL = broken. Same with Altorac(sp?) and conceal/-1 to hit strat/flyer.

-2 is really good, although generally it will be a localized effect (ie the units around the Changeling, the unit that you cast MoP on,an Alaitoc flyer specifically), but given that it removes Orks entirely from the shooting process is problematic, for sure.

However, that starts to get in to a discussion of what should stack and what shouldn't stack. FnP stacks in various circumstances, as does +1 to hit. I don't think it would be bad to nix stacking entirely, but it may involve some rules revision to released materials.

Stacking is often what breaks systems like these anyways.

 RedCommander wrote:
The problem is that these traits are too samey. C'mon, GW, show some originality.

I would not be so hard on GW on this: the same trait can play in a dramatically different way on different armies like Marines, CSM, Eldar and Mech.

bananathug wrote:
October 1-22nd results (probably not long enough for eldar to count)

Definitely not since it was out Oct 28th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

bananathug wrote:

AM
Alpha legion
AM + GMDKs
Alpha legion
rowboat + stormravens
rowboat + AM x2 (same list top 3)
AM
Alpha legion + morty
Alpha legion + magnus
Magnus+morty
Blood angels + leviathan dreads
rowboat + stormravens + xiphon
Ynarri
assassins
renegade kinghts + mal lords
CawlBots

Looking at actual lists there is only one i'd attribute to true AL cheese -- Obliterators and the Changeling.

The rest are Magnus/Morty/Malefic Lords/Klaws/Fire Raptors

The biggest cheese I can think of in the game is the guy who beats me, seriously, the game isn’t balanced if I’m not winning 100% of the time. Every list is pure cheese with their 1st turn charges and -1 to hit and thousands of Ork boyz, not to mention the storm ravens and the conscripts and the assault cannons and the Eldar and those disgusting bloated green Marines.... but if I win my army is completely balanced and it is because of my pure tactical genius, end of story.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

bananathug wrote:
But if -1 wasn't very powerful I doubt we'd see so many alpha legion armies. Hard to say definitely because the strat is really good and we don't see many/any RG armies anymore (I'd posit that's because SM suck without guilliman and are rather 1 trick with him)

Raven Guard doesn't have anything worth infiltrating like Alpha Legion does (Cultists and Khorne Berzerkers are both exceptionally good targets for the stratagem). The -1 to hit is largely exploited for obliterators, especially Tzeentch ones with the Changeling so you can be -2 to hit.

It's a very strong list, but it'll be interesting to see if it can still keep up with Guard/Eldar/Tyranids when the malefic lords are removed from it.

Infiltrated RG assault centurions are terrifying. But what do I know? I play BA.

Are they? The only times I've heard the word "centurion" in 8th it's been associated with the word "terrible". Not my army though so I could be wrong.

Well, they get 3 hurricane bolters and 6 melta shots and automatically set up within optimal range. And they can be placed in cover for 1+ saves. And shooting them from more than 12" is at -1. So yeah, terrifying, imo.

 Galef wrote:
However I do think it's interesting that none of those armies have a -1 to hit trait. Only AL seem to get both -1 to hit and decent melee units.

Have to wait and see with Orks (most of the -1 to hit subfactions have been the "sneaky" ones, so Blood Axes are a possibility for it), but Tyranids didn't get it because they already have access to a -1 in the form of Venomthropes and Malanthropes (or carapace Spore Cysts for a Carnifex spam army). As far as I can tell, Astra Miliarium and Grey Knights so far are the only factions without access to a -1 trait or bubble of some sort, but even then AM may end up getting it indirectly through Brood Brothers when the Genestealer Cult Codex shows up.

Also worth noting, the Tyranid codex specifically calls out it's -1 to hit effects from being able to stack, so there very well may be a similar rule added to the faction traits in an errata if it appears to skew things too badly.

I really dont see why people think it is so good. Most of the -1 to hit traits have a qualifier which allows people to get around having a -1 to hit.

Personally I run AL Rubric Marines because im a treacherous donkey-cave that thinks friends are for pussies. They do alright but not all that great. Mostly people just get within 12 and then take them out. It buys me some time but it really isnt broken in any way.

Keep in mind it would probably be a good idea for them to attach the army traits to certain charcters rather then just giving the entire army.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

bananathug wrote:
But if -1 wasn't very powerful I doubt we'd see so many alpha legion armies. Hard to say definitely because the strat is really good and we don't see many/any RG armies anymore (I'd posit that's because SM suck without guilliman and are rather 1 trick with him)

Raven Guard doesn't have anything worth infiltrating like Alpha Legion does (Cultists and Khorne Berzerkers are both exceptionally good targets for the stratagem). The -1 to hit is largely exploited for obliterators, especially Tzeentch ones with the Changeling so you can be -2 to hit.

It's a very strong list, but it'll be interesting to see if it can still keep up with Guard/Eldar/Tyranids when the malefic lords are removed from it.

Infiltrated RG assault centurions are terrifying. But what do I know? I play BA.

Are they? The only times I've heard the word "centurion" in 8th it's been associated with the word "terrible". Not my army though so I could be wrong.

Well Assault Centurions got better after that huge points drop in the codex, but the Devastator ones are paying for their sins still.