So, one 3 wound model is less durable than 3 one wound models simply due to how multiple damage mechanics work, but making all excess damage spill over is a silly idea because it would turn Plasma guns into the undisputed king of anti-hoard weapony, so lets go for a middle ground.

We change this line

If a model loses several wounds from a single attack and is destroyed, any excess damage inflicted by that attack is lost and has no effect.

to this

If a model loses several wounds from a single attack and is destroyed, any excess damage and is destroyed, the unit takes mortal wounds equal to half the excess damage, rounding down. For example if a Tactical Marine (1 wound) suffers damage from a Rokkit (3 damage), the two excess damage is halved to 1, and the unit suffers 1 mortal wound.

This way a Plasma Gun overcharged (and other 2 damage weapons) can't spill over, while 3 and 4 damage weapons can inflict an extra mortal wound instead of being wasted (so can kill two 1 wound models instead of 1), 5 and 6 damage weapons can do 2 mortal wounds, etc.


or if you want to keep real world rounding rules, you can change it to

If a model loses several wounds from an attack that deals 3 or damage and is destroyed, any excess damage and is destroyed, the unit takes mortal wounds equal to half the excess damage, rounding up. For example if a Tactical Marine (1 wound) suffers damage from a Rokkit (3 damage), the two excess damage is halved to 1, and the unit suffers 1 mortal wound.

Nah, just give the proper price to any model or equipment. Encouraging to bring a significant number of infantries is a very good thing.

This, like all these suggestions, hurts small elite units more than hordes.

So the horde looses 1 extra guy from MW bleed over. On the other hand the unit of 5 marines now looses 2 models instead of 1. A significantly bigger blow and they don't even get their armor save on the second one.

Except thats not what it promotes, it the cheapest of the cheap infantry, special rules infantry and invulnerable saves/fnp.
Basic infantry isn't a big thing, its msu for detachments, CP's and screening. If they bring some firepower all the better, but their job inst to be part of the fight, its just dying slowely and giving up as few points.
It's not infantry to fight it's just a speed bump of dead bodies, that gave their lives for CP.

Ninja'd
Agree doesn't help more elite armies without a FNP.

Hordes. And aren't large units more vulnerable to taking heavy casualties and suffering mortal wounds through morale checks?

Your proposed problem seems to be high damage weapons being wasted on chaff troops- that would be working as intended.

If a player has presented only chaff units to your heavy guns and big multiwound units to your D1 small arms, that player is playing skillfully. Go ahead and fire lascannons at the conscripts.

Meanwhile your proposed solution is clunky and could result in 3 tac marines getting blasted away by a single lascannon shot. It also forces you to halve and round down excess damage for each shot- when the majority of damage falls into 6 or less, this will be a fancy way of determining 1 or 2 extra casualties.

In other words:
Land raider fires at a tac squad. 4 lascannons- 3 hit and wound.
Roll for damage- 6, 4, 3.
It takes 1 point of damage to kill a marine - : leftover damage is 5, 3, 2, halving to 2, 1, 1= 4 mortal wounds.

7 tactical marines die.

Beyond the fact that bonus mortal wounds turn high damage weapons into infantry mulchers, you are describing an issue that is playing as intended and proposing a solution that slows the game down.

I cannot recommend the premise or the conclusion of your post.

Whether or not this idea would provide the intended solution without causing other problems, I don't see how wrong it would be for a lascannon to blast through an extra space marine or two. I mean, I don't imagine that giant laser hitting a space marine and then dissipating. I imagine it slicing through the marine and striking the ground behind him. Whose to say it couldn't blast through another marine?

Make elite units cheaper. There, fixed.

I don't think this would have the intended fix. I think anti armour weapons should be penalised for firing against non-armoured units. Give them a -1 to hit when firing against something other than a vehicle or monster. This has the bonus of hopefully making TEQs more survivable. They could also add special weapons that deal the sort of damage we'd associate with a Lascannon without the -1 to hit against none Vehicle or Monster targets.

If you played Eternal Crusade firstly, unlucky, but secondly you'll know how hard it is to hit a marine/ork/craftworlder with a Lascannon meant for tanks.

The biggest issue I see is that the 'anti-horde' weapons (flamers, frag weapons, and most anti-infantry artillery) are terrible against their supposed intended targets. My thought on what could be done comes from how barbed stranglers work for nids right now. If the target is 10+ models, they get +1 on their hits rolls. So.. why not extent that rule, or things with similar trigger mechanics, to these supposed horde clearing weapons.
So lets go with a quick one, the humble flamer. Add a special rule on most, if not all of the old flamer template weapons, that adds a minimum number of hits clause for every 10 models in the target unit. So a full tactical squad takes d6, Minimum 2 hits. 40 conscripts takes minimum 5.
For the fragmentation type weapons like the Tau AFP, Whirlwinds castellan missiles, frag/plasma missiles, could have a rule where casualties caused by that weapon are doubled for morale purposes. I know this adds in some annoying bookkeeping, but we're nerfing hordes right?
For the psychic armies out there, perhaps reintroduce the concept of nova powers from 6/7th. Where all models within x distance take a Strength x ap-y damage 1 hit.
Maybe add that +1 to hit rule to a bunch of the old large blast low strength weapons.

for blasts provide an additional hit for every "x" models in the target units (e.g. x=10, you fire a flamer at a unit of 30 ork boyz, you get 1d6+3 automatic hits)

There really isn't a fundamental mechanic that favors Guard over Marines. Guard are undercosted and Marines are overcosted. The only possible anti-horde weapons are S3/4 with no AP. Point cost should take care of the rest (extra wound on single models should be cheaper than more models).
Example:
20 S4 shots vs 5 pt guard and 12 pt marines:

-Guard: 20*2/3*2/3= 8.88 W (44 pts killed)
-Marines: 20*1/2*1/3= 3.33 W (40 pts killed)

With morale as it is, that Guard squad is gonna run bringing the total to 50 pts removed. Meanwhile the marine squad only fails morale on a 5 or 6 which you can reroll, which will keep it at 40 pts removed. All things considered the S4 gun is 25% more point effective against horde than elite. Not a bad start I think.

Why not if a unit has more than 10 models it's +1 to hit?

GW has been striving for simple rules so this kinda goes in line

Guardsmen only come in 10 man squads now.

Agree, high damage has no business being good against hordes.

What we need is a blanket rule change for blasts and flamers, which make them scale. The main issue with hordes is that very few anti-horde weapons actually do their job well.

Bringing back AP5 in some form would go a long ways. Most anti-horde weapons got 33% worse against GEQ since they lost all AP. I have no clue how to do it though. Bolters and pulse rifles used to flat out kill guardsmen in the open.

That does nothing against daemons, pox walkers or ork boyz though. Units of 10 dudes are not a horde.

Weapons that used be template, blast or large blast should generate more hits, and most of they should also be way cheaper. Especially flamers and heavy flamers.

17 points for an average 3.5 autohits at S5 AP-1? Lol. They should be 10 points or 2D6 (at least) with an average of 7 autohits.

 Blackie wrote:
Weapons that used be template, blast or large blast should generate more hits, and most of they should also be way cheaper. Especially flamers and heavy flamers.

17 points for an average 3.5 autohits at S5 AP-1? Lol. They should be 10 points or 2D6 (at least) with an average of 7 autohits.

I think most people forget that in 7th everyone spread out their models to the max to minimize the effect of templates and blasts and as a result small blasts generally hit 1 or no models, 3 if they were dumb and you were VERY lucky. Large blasts hit 0-3 most of the time and templates could sometimes catch around 3 depending on if they chained their unit out.

Flamers causing a potential 12 hits for 10 points while having AP and str 5 makes them ridiculously powerful.

So far the only suggestion worth a damn is +1 to the hit roll for every 10 models in the unit.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Weapons that used be template, blast or large blast should generate more hits, and most of they should also be way cheaper. Especially flamers and heavy flamers.

17 points for an average 3.5 autohits at S5 AP-1? Lol. They should be 10 points or 2D6 (at least) with an average of 7 autohits.

I think most people forget that in 7th everyone spread out their models to the max to minimize the effect of templates and blasts and as a result small blasts generally hit 1 or no models, 3 if they were dumb and you were VERY lucky. Large blasts hit 0-3 most of the time and templates could sometimes catch around 3 depending on if they chained their unit out.

Flamers causing a potential 12 hits for 10 points while having AP and str 5 makes them ridiculously powerful.

So far the only suggestion worth a damn is +1 to the hit roll for every 10 models in the unit.

The difference between 7th and 8th is too great to really do a direct comparison as I don't remember anyone ever fielding 300+ invantry and no vehicals as an army in 7th.
However even if they did with better infantry weapons sporting AP5 or AP6 shooting infantry weapons at infantry was effective and massed infantry fire didn't scare vehicals/monsters.

Also templates and blast weren't confined to targeting 1 unit in 8th they are now. If they took up 80 of their deployment zone you were hitting something even with scatter.
Infantry spam works because killing infantry efficently is a stuggle for a number of codex's in 8th.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Weapons that used be template, blast or large blast should generate more hits, and most of they should also be way cheaper. Especially flamers and heavy flamers.

17 points for an average 3.5 autohits at S5 AP-1? Lol. They should be 10 points or 2D6 (at least) with an average of 7 autohits.

I think most people forget that in 7th everyone spread out their models to the max to minimize the effect of templates and blasts and as a result small blasts generally hit 1 or no models, 3 if they were dumb and you were VERY lucky. Large blasts hit 0-3 most of the time and templates could sometimes catch around 3 depending on if they chained their unit out.

Flamers causing a potential 12 hits for 10 points while having AP and str 5 makes them ridiculously powerful.

So far the only suggestion worth a damn is +1 to the hit roll for every 10 models in the unit.

I agree but 8th edition encourages the spam of cheap troops, thanks to multi damage weapons and the AP which isn't "all or nothing" like in the past when AP4 or AP5 didn't matter against 3+ save and now AP-1 or AP-2 hurt 3+ save dudes quite badly, and not every army can afford (or actually have) those expendable units. In 7th hordes were very lackluster and it would make sense if blasts and templates became more powerful in 8th, but in fact it's just the opposite.

Flamers were also way better, just consider ork burnas which only grant D3 autohits. 10D3 autohits are not remotely comparable to 10 templates in terms of generated hits, even if the opponent used to spread out his miniatures. But even regular flamers are now weaker than before while costing basically twice their previous cost.

IMHO flamers should be 5 points and heavy flamers 10 points. They have short range, which means they should hit something 2-3 times per game, and they usually can't be spammed very easily for cheap. That's their drawback. At 9 and 17 points flamers are just pure garbage.

only two ways you can really address hordes:

1. scale the point values, so some units may be cheaper as they get larger, others more expensive

2. scale how hordes actually work, so a unit fo 20 is not twice as dangerous as a unit of 10 - perhaps not allowing LoS to be drawn through friendly models without a penalty so a large mob doesn't allow everyone to fire in the same way they cannot all always fight

I think one thing we lost that helped against some hordes was the rule sweeping advance. Could such a mechanic help against hordes and even buff melee? Failed morale in melee and the unit gets wiped out.

Gitdakka wrote:
I think one thing we lost that helped against some hordes was the rule sweeping advance. Could such a mechanic help against hordes and even buff melee? Failed morale in melee and the unit gets wiped out.

How many hordes actually care about morale though?

Even ic all hordes cared about melee, a instant automatic wipe of an entire unit is a bs mechanic.

Is there a faction with a codex that lacks the tools to deal with hordes? I thought most codexes had a fee tools for dealibg with hordes?

Reintroducing AP by a special rule "This weapon ignores saves of 5+ or worse." seems like a good idea.

Scaling flamers should also work quite well. "The number of hits dealt by this weapon is equal to the number of models in the targeted unit, devided by 3." (Maybe add a minimum number of hits.)

The average chance of killing a horde model over all typical horde units should be around 1/2, so a flamer working like that should kill between 5 and 6.5 models of a full unit. On the other hand, 3 or 5 model units barely suffer any damage.

Only few armies are able to put more than 3 flamers into a single unit that can deliver them reliably. Therefore you can kill about half of a horde units models.

To clean up the rest, you still need another kind of weapon, which I think is nice because it adds a strategy component by making the players think about the flamers bolter-type weapons ratio and way of delivering.

Martel732 wrote:
Make elite units cheaper. There, fixed.

Make Elite Armies Horde Armies, if all armies are Horde Armies, then Horde Armies are not a problem

No, that's a gakky "fix".


My solution is a fix to "blast" and "flamer" (formerly template) weapons.
Currently:
You fire a Hellhound Inferno Cannon at a group of 3 Terminators. In theory, that's not the right weapon for the job, as its supposed to be an anti horde weapon.
You roll 2D6 to see how many hits you get, and roll 9. That's three hits on each termie in the squad.
If the squad had 9 models, each would only get hit once.

This doesn't really make sense to me, and it punishes elite armies. In previous editions, one strength elite armies with small units had was that blast and flamer templates weren't very effective against them.

The 3rd edition "Cityfight" supplement, which also did away with templates, had a more elegant solution.
For blast weapons, you first rolled to hit using your ballistic skill. If you scored a hit, then you rolled a D3 (small blast) or a D6 (large blast) to see how many models in the targeted unit were hit.
The number of hits could not exceed the number of models in the target unit.
So a squad of 3 Terminators could not be hit more than 3 times by a single weapon.

This would mean some weapons would need their cost adjusted, and maybe Damage too. But it would also make it easier to balance blast weapons (supposedly anti horde) VS single shot weapons (supposedly anti large), like Battle Cannons VS Vanquisher Cannons.
Many weapons that are now Heavy D6 could for example be made Heavy D6+3, making them more effective against hordes, but not too effective against single models or small elite units, as they wouldn't be able to score more hits than the number of models.

Currently, a buff to blast/flamers to combat hordes will also make them more effective VS elites, and having to bring anti-elite/anti-large weapons at all wouldn't even be needed - just hose everything down with flamers and blasts.

Another solution would be Faction Specific Detachments. Currently, the Imperial Guard has access to some really cheap Battalions, and even Brigades. For an elite army, filling out a Battalion is far more costly. They simply won't get the same number of Command Points that easily.
How much does a battalion detachment of Custodes cost? I'm not sure, but I bet it's way more than 200pts.

Some anti-horde options:

Templates/Blasts hit more:
Templates/Blasts roll one die for each model in the target unit. The weapon gets one attack for each roll of 6.

This would make Flamers really scary to hordes, but not as scary to a Demon Prince.

Melee combat distance:
Models may only attack if they are within 1" of the target.

This would make it harder for a tide of Guardsmen to hold off elite units. It wouldn't improve the killiness of the elitest CC units that wipe out anything on the charge (zerkers), but suddenly VV and ASM and even Tacs don't take as many losses assaulting large numbers of chaff.

Morale actually mattering:
Double Morale losses (2 per point you lost by) and halve many of the morale protections.

Suddenly, killing 10 guys in a 30-man blob actually matters.

None of these 3 are particularly well tuned, and I'm not saying just add them in without rethinking other things. But are any of these 3 a good idea.

No, it's not a poor fix. Marines need to lose fewer points to weapons like disintegrators, too. Improving weapons again hordes does not address marines' insane fragility in the current meta. Marines need more bodies. More bodies will bring more guns, and make hordes more manageable.

It seems like weapon power needs to be tuned down a bit across the board, except when facing hordes. To me, at least. That would indirectly nerf hordes, to an extent.

That hits multiple codices. I think marines are the game's outlier at this point. The other factions seem to be able to have good games with each for the most part.

Bharring wrote:
It seems like weapon power needs to be tuned down a bit across the board, except when facing hordes. To me, at least. That would indirectly nerf hordes, to an extent.

The solution I suggested does exactly that; by limiting blast/flamer weapons to one hit per model in the targeted unit, these weapons become weaker against small elite units, while remaining strong against horde units.
Then some weapons can even be buffed, by given better Damage or more dice to roll, without ever being too powerful against small units or single models.

This would be a change to a flaw the core mechanics of the game, rather than just patching up single codexes. I stand by what I wrote earlier, that just making Marines cheaper is not a good fix - it's a bad fix to a symptom of a problem, rather than addressing one of the main problems.


The 8th edition implementation of blasts and flamers isn't the only problem with horde VS elite balance, but fixing it will make things better.
Changing core mechanics mid edition isn't new either. It was done in 3rd edition with the Trial Vehicle Rules and Trial Assault Rules, that later went on to become 4th edition.

Making marines cheaper is the only fix, as they are way too fragile per point atm. The horde thing is just a function of hordes being too durable per point.

Panzer,
I think that's a step in the right direction, but I don't think it's enough. Flamers then are no more better v hordes than they are today, and Marines don't fear Flamers much as is.

I'd support the change. Perfectly in the spirit of the rules. Great example of lightest touch. Looks to perform exactly as intended.

Not sure that we wouldn't *also* need an additional fix, but I like your suggestion.

The simple fact is that nothing costing less than 8 points should have better than a 6+ save. Anything 5 or less shouldn't have a save, period.

Of course people will not want to hear that but it's the truth. Conscripts should not have a save. Guardsmen should be 7 points and have a 6+ save.

Bharring wrote:
Panzer,
I think that's a step in the right direction, but I don't think it's enough. Flamers then are no more better v hordes than they are today, and Marines don't fear Flamers much as is.

I'd support the change. Perfectly in the spirit of the rules. Great example of lightest touch. Looks to perform exactly as intended.

Not sure that we wouldn't *also* need an additional fix, but I like your suggestion.

Thank you. One thing about my fix is that it opens the possibility if buffing flamer and blast weapons, making them 2D6 or D6+3 or whatever, without also making them more powerful VS single units or low model count armies.

Martel does have a point about Marines still being too fragile, but making them cheaper is IMO not the way to do it. It just increases total model count on the table.
Giving them some kind of buff, like maybe letting them reroll armour saving rolls of 1, or something like that, would make more sense.

Someone needs to back up the OP statement that 'hordes are too powerful at the moment'.

Why? Which tournaments have been won by a horde list?

Some of the top tier armies that I'm aware of pre FAQ were notably elite -
Eldar
Flyrant spam
Custodes
B/Dangels

The only horde list that has been particularly strong AFAIK was the poxspam and cultist bomb lists, both of which have been FAQ'd.

 Kharneth wrote:
Whether or not this idea would provide the intended solution without causing other problems, I don't see how wrong it would be for a lascannon to blast through an extra space marine or two. I mean, I don't imagine that giant laser hitting a space marine and then dissipating. I imagine it slicing through the marine and striking the ground behind him. Whose to say it couldn't blast through another marine?

The intent of the lascannon weapon is a concentrated high strength attack on a single target. There exist and have existed beam type attacks in the game that pass through models in a line, but a lascannon has never been depicted as one of these in-game (some novels do describe lascannons as scything through crowds)

If it helps, the depiction of the lascannon in the THQ game Space Marine is of an anti-tank energy sniper rifle- a quick 'choom' rather than drawn out 'freem'.

If you are familiar with the one-page 40k ruleset, my criticism of their lascannon (using a strength system that simply adds dice to represent rate of fire AND strength) was that it was a better infantry killer than the plasmacannon.

The 40k designers have neatly tied the maximum number of casualties a weapon can inflict to the maximum number of shots it can fire, while keeping damage a separate mechanic- which dispenses with prior rules for massive damage (instant death, eternal warrior, vehicle armour facings) .

If you want to tinker with crowd control weapons to make them kill more things- a good place to start would be a system based on the number of models per unit- example: a flamer rolls a d3 per 5 models or part thereof- It will never hit all the models in a unit but it will hit at least 6 in a mob of 26-30.

I doubt the game designers want to punish people for taking more miniatures though.

Angel,
What are your thoughts on such per-models-in-unit rules?

The simplest one I've seen is to cap the shots of blasts/templates at the number of models in the unit.

Another idea is a dX per Y models in the unit.

A third idea is to roll a 6+ for each model in the unit - for each success you get one shot.

What are your comparative opinions of those ideas?

Panzergraf wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Make elite units cheaper. There, fixed.

Make Elite Armies Horde Armies, if all armies are Horde Armies, then Horde Armies are not a problem

No, that's a gakky "fix".


My solution is a fix to "blast" and "flamer" (formerly template) weapons.
Currently:
You fire a Hellhound Inferno Cannon at a group of 3 Terminators. In theory, that's not the right weapon for the job, as its supposed to be an anti horde weapon.
You roll 2D6 to see how many hits you get, and roll 9. That's three hits on each termie in the squad.
If the squad had 9 models, each would only get hit once.

This doesn't really make sense to me, and it punishes elite armies. In previous editions, one strength elite armies with small units had was that blast and flamer templates weren't very effective against them.

The 3rd edition "Cityfight" supplement, which also did away with templates, had a more elegant solution.
For blast weapons, you first rolled to hit using your ballistic skill. If you scored a hit, then you rolled a D3 (small blast) or a D6 (large blast) to see how many models in the targeted unit were hit.
The number of hits could not exceed the number of models in the target unit.
So a squad of 3 Terminators could not be hit more than 3 times by a single weapon.

This would mean some weapons would need their cost adjusted, and maybe Damage too. But it would also make it easier to balance blast weapons (supposedly anti horde) VS single shot weapons (supposedly anti large), like Battle Cannons VS Vanquisher Cannons.
Many weapons that are now Heavy D6 could for example be made Heavy D6+3, making them more effective against hordes, but not too effective against single models or small elite units, as they wouldn't be able to score more hits than the number of models.

Currently, a buff to blast/flamers to combat hordes will also make them more effective VS elites, and having to bring anti-elite/anti-large weapons at all wouldn't even be needed - just hose everything down with flamers and blasts.

Another solution would be Faction Specific Detachments. Currently, the Imperial Guard has access to some really cheap Battalions, and even Brigades. For an elite army, filling out a Battalion is far more costly. They simply won't get the same number of Command Points that easily.
How much does a battalion detachment of Custodes cost? I'm not sure, but I bet it's way more than 200pts.

How is that a gacky fix?

I think many of us here agree that it's good for both GW and the player base to be able to field more models - more time assembling, more time painting, more models sold all the while the game playtime remains more or less the same, if not only slightly longer due to lengthened movement/charge phase.

Since the game has made elite units not so elite anymore, the point cost should reflect their (the elite units) performance on board. The current iteration of point system & damage system makes cheap, expendable 1W models highly valuable over multi wound models. What needs to happen is that the so called 'elite' units made slightly more expendable.

I don't think everyone would agree that more models is better. I actually think the board is already croweded, even with MEQ armies, with 2k points on a 6x4 board. I'd rather less.

At any rate, I think what he was really complaining about is making Elite armies play more like hordes, and what you're talking about is basically increasing the game size - bumping the numbers of both the elite armies and the hordes.

I want my Marines to not feel like Guardsmen, and my Banshees to not feel like Gaunts. So I don't want either a scale-up in model count or a reduction in the difference between MEQ and GEQ.

It's too late for that, they published the disintegrator at a reduced cost for the Drukhari. And the necrons have a chapter tactics that scoops up marines wholesale. And just in case primaris needed to be worse, the Tau throw buckets of damage 2 shots. A marine is not a 13 point unit in 8th edition, no matter how hard the apologists try to spin the situation.

Martel732 wrote:
It's too late for that, they published the disintegrator at a reduced cost for the Drukhari. And the necrons have a chapter tactics that scoops up marines wholesale. And just in case primaris needed to be worse, the Tau throw buckets of damage 2 shots. A marine is not a 13 point unit in 8th edition, no matter how hard the apologists try to spin the situation.

What necron tactic is this?

The extra AP tactic. Or obsession or whatever you guys get.

Martel732 wrote:
The extra AP tactic. Or obsession or whatever you guys get.

Mephrit? The one that's regarded as the second from worst? How does that "scoop up marines wholesale"?

I don't know it's the one that makes gauss -2 AP. If that's considered second worst, I don't want to know what the rest of them do. I realize killing marines at an insane rate is commonplace now in 8th, but it really is a nasty tactic against marines.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't know it's the one that makes gauss -2 AP. If that's considered second worst, I don't want to know what the rest of them do. I realize killing marines at an insane rate is commonplace now in 8th, but it really is a nasty tactic against marines.

It's only an additional -1 AP for models within half range. So, rapid fire range of warriors. Sure, it's alright. But warriors are slow. Also, apparently no one uses warriors.

It's the infinitely regenerating destroyers that are killing me.

Martel732 wrote:
It's the infinitely regenerating destroyers that are killing me.

Well, yes. But Mephrit is not gonna add anything to Destroyers. But that's off topic.

Bharring wrote:
Angel,
What are your thoughts on such per-models-in-unit rules?

The simplest one I've seen is to cap the shots of blasts/templates at the number of models in the unit.

Another idea is a dX per Y models in the unit.

A third idea is to roll a 6+ for each model in the unit - for each success you get one shot.

What are your comparative opinions of those ideas?

Conversely, I'm enjoying having an edition where a Leman Russ' Battlecannon is actually effective at fighting other tanks.

Once you add in special rules that allow vehicles and monsters to count as 5 models or some such, it starts getting complicated.

 Asmodai wrote:

Conversely, I'm enjoying having an edition where a Leman Russ' Battlecannon is actually effective at fighting other tanks.

Its HE shells really shouldn't be effective at that, though. At least not more than the AT shells of the Vanquisher.

 Asmodai wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Angel,
What are your thoughts on such per-models-in-unit rules?

The simplest one I've seen is to cap the shots of blasts/templates at the number of models in the unit.

Another idea is a dX per Y models in the unit.

A third idea is to roll a 6+ for each model in the unit - for each success you get one shot.

What are your comparative opinions of those ideas?

Conversely, I'm enjoying having an edition where a Leman Russ' Battlecannon is actually effective at fighting other tanks.

Once you add in special rules that allow vehicles and monsters to count as 5 models or some such, it starts getting complicated.

But by definition it really shouldn't be as the blast profile it has depicts a HE shell which should be inefficient vrs hard reinforced targets like tanks and bunkers hence why moddern MBT have various ammunition for different targets and IG have different tanks for different targets.

In previous editions, the Vanquisher could choose between HE shells (template, regular Battle Cannon profile) and AT-shells with no blast and 2D6 penetration.
FW also had some optional rules in one of the Imperial Armour books for regular Battle Cannon ammunition too, with HE shells being even worse VS tanks than normally (2D6 pick lowest for penetration), and AT shells being decent, but not as good as the Vanquisher AT shells.

Depending on how many rulse we want to re-write here, giving the Battle Cannon an AT shell that's decent VS tanks, but inferior to the Vanquisher, would be fine by me. But if not, I'm totally OK with the Battle Cannon simply being bad against other tanks.

leopard wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
I think one thing we lost that helped against some hordes was the rule sweeping advance. Could such a mechanic help against hordes and even buff melee? Failed morale in melee and the unit gets wiped out.

How many hordes actually care about morale though?

This is definitely the failsafe mechanic that's failing to properly keep hordes in check. Make hordes fear fear and it'll limit them properly.

 LunarSol wrote:

leopard wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
I think one thing we lost that helped against some hordes was the rule sweeping advance. Could such a mechanic help against hordes and even buff melee? Failed morale in melee and the unit gets wiped out.

How many hordes actually care about morale though?

This is definitely the failsafe mechanic that's failing to properly keep hordes in check. Make hordes fear fear and it'll limit them properly.

Not caring about morale and the loss of ap5 has made them too durable. Guardsmen went from only getting cover saves most of the time to always getting 5+ unless someone wastes higher ap weapons on guardsmen. Same logic applies to most hordes, but I feel like guardsmen are the real problem child here. Killing large amounts of orcs or gaunts isn't nearly as difficult as it is units of 10 guardsmen. If guardsmen have to use cover to not instantly die against most weapons like they used to then proper screening becomes a trade-off instead of a no-brainer. An AP-1 or AP-2 against saves of 5+ or worse also could be a pretty effective buff for most traditionally strong anti infantry weapons. The hard part is making it effective against hordes without being even more effective against things like marines.

I would think a rule given to former blast weapons like this would make the most sense:

Shrapnel - failed saving throws against this weapon may be rerolled.

This would be balanced by making things like frag missiles, grenades, and mortars 2D6 or even 3D6 shots, but their effectiveness dramatically reduces against armored targets. It makes some realistic sense too as modern body armor is worn more to protect against shrapnel than actual bullets. You could still give such weapons an AP value for larger caliber weapons such as earthshakers and other high explosive ordnance. It would also make cover much more effective against blast weapons (which is also realistic).

Give all marines +1 W at no extra cost (except primaris). Since they're overcosted now, maybe they're pointed for having the extra wound?
Right now a marine veteran is 16 pts I believe. An intercessor is 18 pts. If these values are correct (I don't own the marine codex so I can't verify), then the intercessor gets +1W and AP -1 for only 2 pts extra. If we assume Intercessors are overcosted due to plasma and such, then the price of regular marines now but at 2W should be fine (theoretically).

I disagree with the title.

Prove that hordes are a problem first.

From my understanding of the competitive side of the game, hordes aren't dominating the scene there. In more casual settings, I run Horde like lists and generally lose to harder lists.

Hordes are generally fluffy and fun, I've never seen one do super well competitively, but for the enjoyment you get from playing with/against them, the story, the visuals on the table, it never fails to be awesome!

Many of the supporters seem to be saying this as another way to say "IG Squads > Tac Squads", which is a very narrow view.

I'd still like the cap-templates/blasts-at-unit-count-for-hits change, as it makes a lot of fluff sense.

But the game doesn't seem to be stacked specifically in favor of hordes as much as it originally may have seemed.

Don't forget kabalites making marines look foolish.

 Blndmage wrote:
I disagree with the title.

Prove that hordes are a problem first.

From my understanding of the competitive side of the game, hordes aren't dominating the scene there. In more casual settings, I run Horde like lists and generally lose to harder lists.

Hordes are generally fluffy and fun, I've never seen one do super well competitively, but for the enjoyment you get from playing with/against them, the story, the visuals on the table, it never fails to be awesome!

I 100% agree.

Hordes are powerful in three turns games, which aren't regular 40k games. A green tide with 210 orks struggles to avoid tabling in a real game despite doing well in tournaments cause time limitations.

 Blackie wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
I disagree with the title.

Prove that hordes are a problem first.

From my understanding of the competitive side of the game, hordes aren't dominating the scene there. In more casual settings, I run Horde like lists and generally lose to harder lists.

Hordes are generally fluffy and fun, I've never seen one do super well competitively, but for the enjoyment you get from playing with/against them, the story, the visuals on the table, it never fails to be awesome!

I 100% agree.

Hordes are powerful in three turns games, which aren't regular 40k games. A green tide with 210 orks struggles to avoid tabling in a real game despite doing well in tournaments cause time limitations.

I think you may be misinterpreting the term "horde" here.

As far as this thread goes, "horde" refers to the ability for certain unit entries to reach critical mass with minimal/negligible point expenditure. For example, AM could spend 200 points on 50 1W models and absolutely swamp the table so that it's mathematically impossible provide a meaningful counter to it at the same point cost.

Bharring wrote:
Angel,
What are your thoughts on such per-models-in-unit rules?

The simplest one I've seen is to cap the shots of blasts/templates at the number of models in the unit.

Another idea is a dX per Y models in the unit.

A third idea is to roll a 6+ for each model in the unit - for each success you get one shot.

What are your comparative opinions of those ideas?

My gut feeling is that flamers and blasts aren't hitting enough models. At the same time, I can see an argument that a flamer should be able to deal wounds based on mass- don't tell me that covering a grot in flame and covering an ogryn in flame should both have the potential to deal 1 wound.

I don't think a solution that makes multiwound units more durable than an equivalent wounds single wound infantry is a positive step.

I would go cap the shots of blasts/templates at the number of wounds in the unit.
A flamer that would have found time to hit 6 guardsmen could have done a double pass on 3 primaris or terminators.

 =Angel= wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Angel,
What are your thoughts on such per-models-in-unit rules?

The simplest one I've seen is to cap the shots of blasts/templates at the number of models in the unit.

Another idea is a dX per Y models in the unit.

A third idea is to roll a 6+ for each model in the unit - for each success you get one shot.

What are your comparative opinions of those ideas?

My gut feeling is that flamers and blasts aren't hitting enough models. At the same time, I can see an argument that a flamer should be able to deal wounds based on mass- don't tell me that covering a grot in flame and covering an ogryn in flame should both have the potential to deal 1 wound.

I don't think a solution that makes multiwound units more durable than an equivalent wounds single wound infantry is a positive step.

I would go cap the shots of blasts/templates at the number of wounds in the unit.
A flamer that would have found time to hit 6 guardsmen could have done a double pass on 3 primaris or terminators.

Flamers arn't the issue its Battle Cannons being as good against tanks as against marines as againt terminators same for Basilisics etc. And worse agains chaff that we are saying need a limited number of hits per model

 skchsan wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
I disagree with the title.

Prove that hordes are a problem first.

From my understanding of the competitive side of the game, hordes aren't dominating the scene there. In more casual settings, I run Horde like lists and generally lose to harder lists.

Hordes are generally fluffy and fun, I've never seen one do super well competitively, but for the enjoyment you get from playing with/against them, the story, the visuals on the table, it never fails to be awesome!

I 100% agree.

Hordes are powerful in three turns games, which aren't regular 40k games. A green tide with 210 orks struggles to avoid tabling in a real game despite doing well in tournaments cause time limitations.

I think you may be misinterpreting the term "horde" here.

As far as this thread goes, "horde" refers to the ability for certain unit entries to reach critical mass with minimal/negligible point expenditure. For example, AM could spend 200 points on 50 1W models and absolutely swamp the table so that it's mathematically impossible provide a meaningful counter to it at the same point cost.

Yeah, but that only applies to guardsmen. The thread is another rant against AM, isn't it?

Anything else can be countered, and to be honest even guardsmen are not even remotely the most effective unit in the game. Those 50W at 200 points are certainly very effective but is AM unbeatable? The answer is no, or not anymore at least, even if that 50W can't be killed without investing way more points of stuff. I've won against AM lists that fielded 100+ guardsmen with all my armies in this edition. Note that you don't have to table the opponent but to score one more point than your opponent to win the game.

Soups may be too powerful, and in fact they are, but hordes are even too weak and should be improved IMHO.

 skchsan wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
I disagree with the title.

Prove that hordes are a problem first.

From my understanding of the competitive side of the game, hordes aren't dominating the scene there. In more casual settings, I run Horde like lists and generally lose to harder lists.

Hordes are generally fluffy and fun, I've never seen one do super well competitively, but for the enjoyment you get from playing with/against them, the story, the visuals on the table, it never fails to be awesome!

I 100% agree.

Hordes are powerful in three turns games, which aren't regular 40k games. A green tide with 210 orks struggles to avoid tabling in a real game despite doing well in tournaments cause time limitations.

I think you may be misinterpreting the term "horde" here.

As far as this thread goes, "horde" refers to the ability for certain unit entries to reach critical mass with minimal/negligible point expenditure. For example, AM could spend 200 points on 50 1W models and absolutely swamp the table so that it's mathematically impossible provide a meaningful counter to it at the same point cost.

Wait, are you saying that my Grot army, currently at less than 900 points, that has 180 Grots and 7 Orks, should dominate games because it's theoretically impossible to kill them all? That just isn't true, there are many factors that go into Horde lists, Morale being crucial. Some hordes, like Nids, can manage this easily, until key units are taken out, but there always a lynchpin.

I think clarity is important here. Which hordes are a problem exactly?
If it's only imperial guard, the codex needs to be looked at, not the core rules.

 Blndmage wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
I disagree with the title.

Prove that hordes are a problem first.

From my understanding of the competitive side of the game, hordes aren't dominating the scene there. In more casual settings, I run Horde like lists and generally lose to harder lists.

Hordes are generally fluffy and fun, I've never seen one do super well competitively, but for the enjoyment you get from playing with/against them, the story, the visuals on the table, it never fails to be awesome!

I 100% agree.

Hordes are powerful in three turns games, which aren't regular 40k games. A green tide with 210 orks struggles to avoid tabling in a real game despite doing well in tournaments cause time limitations.

I think you may be misinterpreting the term "horde" here.

As far as this thread goes, "horde" refers to the ability for certain unit entries to reach critical mass with minimal/negligible point expenditure. For example, AM could spend 200 points on 50 1W models and absolutely swamp the table so that it's mathematically impossible provide a meaningful counter to it at the same point cost.

Wait, are you saying that my Grot army, currently at less than 900 points, that has 180 Grots and 7 Orks, should dominate games because it's theoretically impossible to kill them all? That just isn't true, there are many factors that go into Horde lists, Morale being crucial. Some hordes, like Nids, can manage this easily, until key units are taken out, but there always a lynchpin.

No, it's precisely the ability for your 180 grots and 7 runtherds to be able to tie up the opponents army while rest of your army gets set up. Obviously in case of orks, your screen could actually hinder your melee heavy hitters from reahing their targets.It will depend on what the rest of your 1,100 pts are made of to determine the level of "OP-ness" of your 900 pt grots n herds. Back to my example, 200 pts of guardsmen, made of 5x 10 man squads will soak up AT LEAST half of other non-horde army to put a decent dent on them. It'll require more if they're buffed by other characters.

It is mathematically easier to down 200 pts worth of troops, elites, hq, heavy, FA of elite army than it is to down horde of same pts worth. This is because expendability is the keyword in determining toughness of a unit in 8th ed.

Because anything can hurt everything in 8th ed, more dice you can roll, the better the unit in general.

To add a bit of math here, consider a case where 200 pts of grots get locked in combat with 200 pts of berserkers, one of the most problematic melee unit in the game currently. This is highly theoretical but bear with me for a sec.

Grots with WS+5, S2, T2, Sv +6 vs berserkers with WS+3, S5, T4, Sv+3 will yield:
Grots, with 66.67 W, will take zerkers 9.48 turns to completely wipe them without retaliation. (.0817 WPP @ 17 PPM) while zerkers, with 11.76 W, will take grots 4.08 turns (.0062 WPP @ 3 PPM) to wipe them. Systematicallg, hordes are an issue.

TLDR Version:

Guardsmen should be 5ppm

That makes a problem in itself. Cause you've just incentivized more soup by making AM guardsmen cheaper.

That just opens up another problem.

Hordes, by it's nature. is hard to stop without some means of anti horde. But if your running an TAC list then you should account for this, at least.

doing overkill on things leads to bigger problems down the road, like the fact that elite armies would suffer more under this ruling. Or the fact that you would be promoting anti tank/anti Armour weapons as an anti horde solution, when in reality it shouldn't (remember from past editions people)

As i can see it. Bringing in a rule to specifically address hordes leads to more problems in terms of everything else. Unless you would want to change the fundamental rules (Morale, Weaponry) then this discussion will go nowhere.

In terms of rules, i could see specific weapons getting more hits per models in the unit, or address morale damaging weapons (wounds caused by this weapon give a -1 penalty to morale for each unsaved wound caused) like say flamers or "shock" weaponry. Things that are designed to suppress or destroy whole lines of infantry. Artillery is another example

ATM, such rules would be too much of a change for the current ruleset

 skchsan wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
I disagree with the title.

Prove that hordes are a problem first.

From my understanding of the competitive side of the game, hordes aren't dominating the scene there. In more casual settings, I run Horde like lists and generally lose to harder lists.

Hordes are generally fluffy and fun, I've never seen one do super well competitively, but for the enjoyment you get from playing with/against them, the story, the visuals on the table, it never fails to be awesome!

I 100% agree.

Hordes are powerful in three turns games, which aren't regular 40k games. A green tide with 210 orks struggles to avoid tabling in a real game despite doing well in tournaments cause time limitations.

I think you may be misinterpreting the term "horde" here.

As far as this thread goes, "horde" refers to the ability for certain unit entries to reach critical mass with minimal/negligible point expenditure. For example, AM could spend 200 points on 50 1W models and absolutely swamp the table so that it's mathematically impossible provide a meaningful counter to it at the same point cost.

Wait, are you saying that my Grot army, currently at less than 900 points, that has 180 Grots and 7 Orks, should dominate games because it's theoretically impossible to kill them all? That just isn't true, there are many factors that go into Horde lists, Morale being crucial. Some hordes, like Nids, can manage this easily, until key units are taken out, but there always a lynchpin.

No, it's precisely the ability for your 180 grots and 7 runtherds to be able to tie up the opponents army while rest of your army gets set up. Obviously in case of orks, your screen could actually hinder your melee heavy hitters from reahing their targets.It will depend on what the rest of your 1,100 pts are made of to determine the level of "OP-ness" of your 900 pt grots n herds. Back to my example, 200 pts of guardsmen, made of 5x 10 man squads will soak up AT LEAST half of other non-horde army to put a decent dent on them. It'll require more if they're buffed by other characters.

It is mathematically easier to down 200 pts worth of troops, elites, hq, heavy, FA of elite army than it is to down horde of same pts worth. This is because expendability is the keyword in determining toughness of a unit in 8th ed.

Because anything can hurt everything in 8th ed, more dice you can roll, the better the unit in general.

To add a bit of math here, consider a case where 200 pts of grots get locked in combat with 200 pts of berserkers, one of the most problematic melee unit in the game currently. This is highly theoretical but bear with me for a sec.

Grots with WS+5, S2, T2, Sv +6 vs berserkers with WS+3, S5, T4, Sv+3 will yield:
Grots, with 66.67 W, will take zerkers 9.48 turns to completely wipe them without retaliation. (.0817 WPP @ 17 PPM) while zerkers, with 11.76 W, will take grots 4.08 turns (.0062 WPP @ 3 PPM) to wipe them. Systematicallg, hordes are an issue.

Veryncool and informative response!
Thank you!

One question, why the assumption that I'm playing 2,000 points? What if I'm playing 1,000 or 1,500? How does that change things?
Also Grots in units of 20+ get a =1 to hit, in both CC and shooting, how does that skew things?

 skchsan wrote:
Grots with WS+5, S2, T2, Sv +6 vs berserkers with WS+3, S5, T4, Sv+3 will yield:
Grots, with 66.67 W, will take zerkers 9.48 turns to completely wipe them without retaliation. (.0817 WPP @ 17 PPM) while zerkers, with 11.76 W, will take grots 4.08 turns (.0062 WPP @ 3 PPM) to wipe them. Systematicallg, hordes are an issue.

No true though.

204 points are 12 zerkers, who attack 37 times (12 of those attack AP0, all other AP-1), twice.
Each round of chain-axes kills 13.88 gretchin, the chainswords kill another 5.55, for a total of 19.33 gretchin. Due to LD 4, the minimum casualties they take from moral is 16, wiping one unit per round of combat.
So, if you declare two gretchin units as targets for your charge, you can kill 180 points of gretchin per turn with an equally expensive unit of khorne berzerkers.

But, runtherd! If the gertchin get supporting auras, why don't the Zerkers get any? Add a dark apostle to the zerkers and they will still wipe two units of gretchin per turn and most likely the runtherd as well.

In return, if the 180 points of gretchin get the charge, they kill exactly 5 khorne berzerkers, including the +1 to hit. Worst case they lose 3 additional models to moral.

Thought on flamers and other "auto hit" weapons.

Give then a second profile for a shorter range where they hit more models, doesn't change overwatch performance unless the enemy wants to get say within 6" or whatever you set it to - but when the models carrying it are on the offensive they can get closer to a horde.

Say a flamer going from 1d6 auto hits to 1d6+3

A few things from reading all of this:

The original suggestion might not work as intended, but i like the general idea.

Flamers definitely need some kind of buff. I think the best idea I've seen floating around is up the shots to 2D6 or 3D6 (depending on the flamer) but limit the number to the number of models or wounds in the unit.

I think most cheap horde units should cost more rather than have the elite ones cost less, though some elite ones do definitely need to cost less as well.

Back to original idea, what if:

If the strength of a weapon is more than double the toughness of a unit, the damage of the weapon does carry over, but the unit gets to roll their saves against this damage as normal.

Ice_can wrote:

The difference between 7th and 8th is too great to really do a direct comparison as I don't remember anyone ever fielding 300+ invantry and no vehicals as an army in 7th.
However even if they did with better infantry weapons sporting AP5 or AP6 shooting infantry weapons at infantry was effective and massed infantry fire didn't scare vehicals/monsters.

Also templates and blast weren't confined to targeting 1 unit in 8th they are now. If they took up 80 of their deployment zone you were hitting something even with scatter.
Infantry spam works because killing infantry efficently is a stuggle for a number of codex's in 8th.

Well then you never played against a Green tide list, nor did you watch the LVO where we had an ork player place decently by fielding 300 Ork boyz.

But again, i have seen multiple people ask a very relevant question. Where is this idea that "Hordes are too powerful" coming from? Because to my knowledge, no Horde army has done well in any major tournaments except the recent GW one where the player apparently slow played the entire time so games finished on turn 2-3. So when you say that Hordes are too powerful, what do you mean exactly because I have yet to see any real evidence that they are in fact "too powerful". I do see them doing their job, slowing down elite units and tarpitting them, so if you are upset that they are doing their exact function might I ask you to stop trying to ban them?

SemperMortis wrote:

Well then you never played against a Green tide list, nor did you watch the LVO where we had an ork player place decently by fielding 300 Ork boyz.

But again, i have seen multiple people ask a very relevant question. Where is this idea that "Hordes are too powerful" coming from? Because to my knowledge, no Horde army has done well in any major tournaments except the recent GW one where the player apparently slow played the entire time so games finished on turn 2-3. So when you say that Hordes are too powerful, what do you mean exactly because I have yet to see any real evidence that they are in fact "too powerful". I do see them doing their job, slowing down elite units and tarpitting them, so if you are upset that they are doing their exact function might I ask you to stop trying to ban them?

I would ask you to stop assigning sentiments to me that I haven't expressed.

I've seen and played against green tide in 8th edition.
I never played against green tide in 7th edition, it was all silly deathstars or friendly games.

In 8th edition quality of attack isn't as important as the volume. Hordes bring volumes of attacks at points costs that can't be countered by non hordes. If orks get the points drops that players are calling for like 4ppm ork boys this edition is going to be unplayable for non hordes.

If flamers etc didn't suck so hard they may aswell not exsist, I wouldn't find 4ppm guards men so objectionable. But right now killing such things efficently is not possible with a lot of lists.
Take DE as a case in point to make them competitive with guardsmen they destroy power armour with insane efficiency.

Ice_can wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Well then you never played against a Green tide list, nor did you watch the LVO where we had an ork player place decently by fielding 300 Ork boyz.

But again, i have seen multiple people ask a very relevant question. Where is this idea that "Hordes are too powerful" coming from? Because to my knowledge, no Horde army has done well in any major tournaments except the recent GW one where the player apparently slow played the entire time so games finished on turn 2-3. So when you say that Hordes are too powerful, what do you mean exactly because I have yet to see any real evidence that they are in fact "too powerful". I do see them doing their job, slowing down elite units and tarpitting them, so if you are upset that they are doing their exact function might I ask you to stop trying to ban them?

I would ask you to stop assigning sentiments to me that I haven't expressed.

I've seen and played against green tide in 8th edition.
I never played against green tide in 7th edition, it was all silly deathstars or friendly games.

In 8th edition quality of attack isn't as important as the volume. Hordes bring volumes of attacks at points costs that can't be countered by non hordes. If orks get the points drops that players are calling for like 4ppm ork boys this edition is going to be unplayable for non hordes.

If flamers etc didn't suck so hard they may aswell not exsist, I wouldn't find 4ppm guards men so objectionable. But right now killing such things efficently is not possible with a lot of lists.
Take DE as a case in point to make them competitive with guardsmen they destroy power armour with insane efficiency.

The last comment wasn't aimed at you but in general to everyone. In 7th, the formation was literally called "green tide" and its smallest incarnation was 101 Orkz for a total of 660ish points.

I agree in 8th that volume is important, as it has been in every previous edition. I don't know of a single ork player who wants Ork Boyz to be priced at 4ppm. I actually don't know any Ork players who want Ork boyz lowered in price at all. I do know that almost everyone ork player wants SIGNIFICANT price drops and buffs to other units so they are worth taking so we don't have to bring 150+ models to a game to even have a chance at winning. As for flamers sucking? well yeah compared to last edition where a few lucky flamer shots could inflict 20-30 wounds on a 10 man unit. As for sucking in general? not so much, and if you don't believe me then lets trade, you can have my Burna's and i'll take your flamers.

But yet again we are getting off my main point. How are hordes "Too Powerful"? I still haven't seen any horde list do well except for maybe IG using soup or just flooding hte board and using Basilisks and the like. So to my knowledge this is less a thread about nerfing hordes and yet another "Damn Imperial Guard are OP" thread.

To be honest my main issue is that GW apparently can't balance the most playtested and balanced edition ever.

I've never met a real life player calling for 4ppm boys, but I have seen some post here calling for them.

I realy wish GE had found some other mechanic to translate templates into 8th as their current idea is an unbalanced mess.

Some came off unusable poor and others came off so well they outclass all their alternatives.

Ice_can wrote:
To be honest my main issue is that GW apparently can't balance the most playtested and balanced edition ever.

I've never met a real life player calling for 4ppm boys, but I have seen some post here calling for them.

I realy wish GE had found some other mechanic to translate templates into 8th as their current idea is an unbalanced mess.

Some came off unusable poor and others came off so well they outclass all their alternatives.

I am fairly active in the ork community here and I have never even heard someone say 4ppm boyz is a good idea.

Is a boy better than a guardsmen? I guess.

SemperMortis wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
To be honest my main issue is that GW apparently can't balance the most playtested and balanced edition ever.

I've never met a real life player calling for 4ppm boys, but I have seen some post here calling for them.

I realy wish GE had found some other mechanic to translate templates into 8th as their current idea is an unbalanced mess.

Some came off unusable poor and others came off so well they outclass all their alternatives.

I am fairly active in the ork community here and I have never even heard someone say 4ppm boyz is a good idea.

Same here. No one is calling for 4ppm boyz.

Martel732 wrote:
Is a boy better than a guardsmen? I guess.

Ironically, in a vacuum, no they aren't. At 120pts an Ork can field 19 ork boyz and a free nob, IG can field 27 guardsmen and 3 sergeants armed with lasguns and chainswords. As soon as the IG get in range the orkz start dying in droves, 30 shots, 15 hits, 5 wounds, 4 dead orkz. Orkz move and advance (8.5inches on average). IG move into Rapid fire range 60 shots, 30 hits 10 wounds 8 dead Orkz. Orkz take a leadership check at LD8 with 8 losses so they lose D6 more orkz so 3 more, they are now down to 5 models including a nob. Orkz move, shoot 5 shots 1.66 hits, 1.33 wounds 1 dead Guardsmen. Orkz charge, IG Overwatch 58 shots, 10ish hits on average 3 wounds and 2-3 more dead orkz. 3 orkz get in for 6 attacks at S4 and 4 attacks at S5 6 hits, 4 wounds and 3 dead Guardsmen. The absolute horde of remaining guardsmen then bum rush in and wipe out the remaining orkz.

So yep, guardsmen are better point for point. And yet again, I haven't heard of anyone calling for 4ppm Ork boyz, Hell I am an ork player and I don't want 5ppm orkz. What I really want is the ability to take FEWER MODELS and still be competitive. My current tournament list has 165 Boyz models, 25 grotz and 5ish character models. Even if I could take HALF that and be successful I would be happy.

If hordes are he problem some weapons should have attacks increased and damage decreased.
Instead of battle cannons being d6 shots and d3 damage it should be 6 shots at 1 damage. Autocannon should be heavy 4 and 1 damage, etc

This would start killing off chaff quicker HOWEVER this would severely screw infantry vs Armour balance.

IMHO hordes are NOT as big a problem as people say. Hordes are honestly not winning major tournies and aren’t that great.

gungo wrote:
If hordes are he problem some weapons should have attacks increased and damage decreased.
Instead of battle cannons being d6 shots and d3 damage it should be 6 shots at 1 damage. Autocannon should be heavy 4 and 1 damage, etc

This would start killing off chaff quicker HOWEVER this would severely screw infantry vs Armour balance.

IMHO hordes are NOT as big a problem as people say. Hordes are honestly not winning major tournies and aren’t that great.

Does that mean my ork equivalents get double that? So my version of Autocannons are Heavy 8? and my D6 weapons become 12? Sure, I am all about that. My Ranged weapons might actually accomplish something now.

The issue with changing all weapons like that is them you don't have certain guns being good at certain targets.

A las cannon being 1 shot 1d6 damage is good vs tanks, okay vs heavy infantry (3+ wounds is what i consider heavy), and bad against light infantry (1 wound).

If you made it 6 shots 1d then it would be good against pretty much everything. So people would just take tons of lascannons and nothing else. This would also add a lot of dice rolling to the game (though apps can help against that i suppose).

That being said, i wouldn't hate it if some guns could do some extra damage to hordes if they were powerful enough, which is why i think my previous idea might not be terrible:

Caught in the blast: If the strength of a weapon is more than double the toughness of a unit, the damage of the weapon does carry over, but the unit gets to roll their saves against this damage as normal, ignoring the AP of the weapon.

This lets multi-damage weapons do a little extra damage to low wound models, without making them the go-to options for facing them.

jcd386 wrote:
The issue with changing all weapons like that is them you don't have certain guns being good at certain targets.

A las cannon being 1 shot 1d6 damage is good vs tanks, okay vs heavy infantry (3+ wounds is what i consider heavy), and bad against light infantry (1 wound).

If you made it 6 shots 1d then it would be good against pretty much everything. So people would just take tons of lascannons and nothing else. This would also add a lot of dice rolling to the game (though apps can help against that i suppose).

That being said, i wouldn't hate it if some guns could do some extra damage to hordes if they were powerful enough, which is why i think my previous idea might not be terrible:

Caught in the blast: If the strength of a weapon is more than double the toughness of a unit, the damage of the weapon does carry over, but the unit gets to roll their saves against this damage as normal, ignoring the AP of the weapon.

This lets multi-damage weapons do a little extra damage to low wound models, without making them the go-to options for facing them.

Again, where are hordes doing great in competitive games? because to my knowledge they aren't. The only time Horde does well is in local small tournaments, at LVO the best lists were soup, eldar and other nonsense, not horde.

Personally I think this is less about Hordes being OP and more about certain players/armies being upset that they can't handle horde skew lists if they take anti-vehicle spam lists.

Last tournament I went to one of my opponents was angry when he played me, specifically because I took 180 models and he brought a Lascannon Space Marine spam list. Had a similar thing happen a few days later when I played against an eldar player who brought a bunch of his best units like Dark Reapers and what not. So maybe instead of just bringing a bunch of heavy weapons to deal with Vehicles and monsters you should bring some anti-infantry weapons as well.

SemperMortis wrote:

jcd386 wrote:
The issue with changing all weapons like that is them you don't have certain guns being good at certain targets.

A las cannon being 1 shot 1d6 damage is good vs tanks, okay vs heavy infantry (3+ wounds is what i consider heavy), and bad against light infantry (1 wound).

If you made it 6 shots 1d then it would be good against pretty much everything. So people would just take tons of lascannons and nothing else. This would also add a lot of dice rolling to the game (though apps can help against that i suppose).

That being said, i wouldn't hate it if some guns could do some extra damage to hordes if they were powerful enough, which is why i think my previous idea might not be terrible:

Caught in the blast: If the strength of a weapon is more than double the toughness of a unit, the damage of the weapon does carry over, but the unit gets to roll their saves against this damage as normal, ignoring the AP of the weapon.

This lets multi-damage weapons do a little extra damage to low wound models, without making them the go-to options for facing them.

Again, where are hordes doing great in competitive games? because to my knowledge they aren't. The only time Horde does well is in local small tournaments, at LVO the best lists were soup, eldar and other nonsense, not horde.

Personally I think this is less about Hordes being OP and more about certain players/armies being upset that they can't handle horde skew lists if they take anti-vehicle spam lists.

Last tournament I went to one of my opponents was angry when he played me, specifically because I took 180 models and he brought a Lascannon Space Marine spam list. Had a similar thing happen a few days later when I played against an eldar player who brought a bunch of his best units like Dark Reapers and what not. So maybe instead of just bringing a bunch of heavy weapons to deal with Vehicles and monsters you should bring some anti-infantry weapons as well.

The issue is, when you look at the numbers, anti-horde weapons tend to do better against elite models.

That is almost universally true.

 JNAProductions wrote:

The issue is, when you look at the numbers, anti-horde weapons tend to do better against elite models.

Wouldn't the solution then be to make elite models tougher instead of trying to nerf something that doesn't need a nerf?

Can someone actually provide some evidence outside of anecdotes to show that hordes are too powerful and weapons that are designed to be strong against them need to be increased in potency?

Until the most basic premise of this question is proven the discussion around it is moot.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Can someone actually provide some evidence outside of anecdotes to show that hordes are too powerful and weapons that are designed to be strong against them need to be increased in potency?

Until the most basic premise of this question is proven the discussion around it is moot.

apparently the answer is that Hordes aren't OP but that anti-horde weapons tend to be as effective or MORE effective on elite infantry and people are upset that a Lascannon isn't as effective at slaying up to 5-6 bodies as it is killing 1 super elite terminator or other such model.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Can someone actually provide some evidence outside of anecdotes to show that hordes are too powerful and weapons that are designed to be strong against them need to be increased in potency?

Until the most basic premise of this question is proven the discussion around it is moot.

I think that elite models are too weak, rather than hordes being too strong. I can mathematically show you weapon efficacy, but I don't know if that's what you are looking for.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Can someone actually provide some evidence outside of anecdotes to show that hordes are too powerful and weapons that are designed to be strong against them need to be increased in potency?

Until the most basic premise of this question is proven the discussion around it is moot.

Any specific examples you want mathed out?

SemperMortis wrote:
apparently the answer is that Hordes aren't OP but that anti-horde weapons tend to be as effective or MORE effective on elite infantry and people are upset that a Lascannon isn't as effective at slaying up to 5-6 bodies as it is killing 1 super elite terminator or other such model.

I don't see how a flamer or heavy flamer is more effective against a squad of Terminators over a mob of Boyz, personally.

Martel732 wrote:
I think that elite models are too weak, rather than hordes being too strong. I can mathematically show you weapon efficacy, but I don't know if that's what you are looking for.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Any specific examples you want mathed out?

No, I don't want mathed examples. I want evidence on the proposition that "hordes are too strong" and hence anti-horde weapons needs to be better at taking them out.

If 'hordes are too powerful on a mechanical level', they must be dominating tournaments, right? Which ones? How well do relatively elite armies do in the same tournaments?

What exactly is the definition of a 'horde'?

Maths teaches us little except what happens on average/with perfect rolling/with worst possible rolling in a vacuum so I don't find it a reliable metric for balance when used in isolation.

'Terminators/TEQs are too weak' is not the same argument as 'hordes are too strong' and the balancing actions for one might/should be completely different to the other.

"I don't see how a flamer or heavy flamer is more effective against a squad of Terminators over a mob of Boyz, personally. "

That's because you refuse to consider mathematics in your analyses.

Tournaments have their own caveats, such as time limits. I don't play games with time limits, which enhances IG, but hurts Orks.

A Flamer kills, shot per shot, 2.5 points of Boyz.
It kills, shot per shot, 3.75 points of Terminators, assuming your Termis are 45 points apiece.

Heavy Flamers?
Boyz lose 4 points per shot.
Termis (again assuming 45 points per Termi) lose 10 points per shot.

It's less about hordes as it is any 1 would infantry that costs less than 10 points being too efficient at what it does. It might also depend on what your definition of hordes are, but to say that cultists or IG infantry squads aren't popular is just not the case, and x amount of points of cultists are more durable than the same amount of Marines vs most weapons in the game.

Most imperial lists have 32+ guardsmen in them at a minimum just for the CP as a standard, and many have more. The amount of fire power needed to shift that many guardsmen will kill more points worth of most other infantry in the game, making them less effective from a durability standpoint, which just doesn't make very much sense.

jcd386 wrote:
It's less about hordes as it is any 1 would infantry that costs less than 10 points being too efficient at what it does. It might also depend on what your definition of hordes are, but to say that cultists or IG infantry squads aren't popular is just not the case, and x amount of points of cultists are more durable than the same amount of Marines vs most weapons in the game.

Most imperial lists have 32+ guardsmen in them at a minimum just for the CP as a standard, and many have more. The amount of fire power needed to shift that many guardsmen will kill more points worth of most other infantry in the game, making them less effective from a durability standpoint, which just doesn't make very much sense.

Most basic infantry that I know of costs less than 10 pts. Are you suggesting that eldar guardians are too effective simply because they are less than 10 pts? Skitarri rangers? Battle sisters?
As far as I know the only faction whose basic infantry is more than 10 pts is marines.

Dandelion wrote:

jcd386 wrote:
It's less about hordes as it is any 1 would infantry that costs less than 10 points being too efficient at what it does. It might also depend on what your definition of hordes are, but to say that cultists or IG infantry squads aren't popular is just not the case, and x amount of points of cultists are more durable than the same amount of Marines vs most weapons in the game.

Most imperial lists have 32+ guardsmen in them at a minimum just for the CP as a standard, and many have more. The amount of fire power needed to shift that many guardsmen will kill more points worth of most other infantry in the game, making them less effective from a durability standpoint, which just doesn't make very much sense.

Most basic infantry that I know of costs less than 10 pts. Are you suggesting that eldar guardians are too effective simply because they are less than 10 pts? Skitarri rangers? Battle sisters?
As far as I know the only faction whose basic infantry is more than 10 pts is marines.

Necron Warriors cost 12 points per, with zero options.

No, it's not all units below 10 pts. This is a very complicated mathematical problem, way past GW's pay grade.

The two biggest offenders to me are 4 pt guardsmen and 6 pt kabalites. Orks are effective at 6pts, but relying on melee for damage makes them inherently less effective than kabalites imo. Especially when you factor in kabalite weapons and transports.

Guardians pay more for a shorter range gun, and can't fire out of any Eldar transport to my knowledge.

One could argue that sisters of battle are too effective for 9 pts, but I like to think they are close to where marines should be priced currently. Especially after the drukhari dropped. If this were a computer game, the drukhari existing would knock 1 pt off marines right there.

jcd386 wrote:
It's less about hordes as it is any 1 would infantry that costs less than 10 points being too efficient at what it does. It might also depend on what your definition of hordes are, but to say that cultists or IG infantry squads aren't popular is just not the case, and x amount of points of cultists are more durable than the same amount of Marines vs most weapons in the game.

Most imperial lists have 32+ guardsmen in them at a minimum just for the CP as a standard, and many have more. The amount of fire power needed to shift that many guardsmen will kill more points worth of most other infantry in the game, making them less effective from a durability standpoint, which just doesn't make very much sense.

Roffle, Cultists are this popular because they are cheap, and therefore fill the troop tax easy. They also profited from the tide of traitors stratagem and additionally from the Slaaneshy double shooting. The problem isn't the cultists but rather that normal CSM suck compared to them simply by the shere dmg output and rof.
a 10 man CSM bolter squad costs 130 pts. they offer 10/20 shots 6.333 shots hit a guardsmen target and generate 4.... wounds over 12 inches

i get 32.5 cultists for that. they offer me 32.5 /65 shots. 16.25 hit and 8.125 wound on a guardsmen target.

Yes durabiltiy comes into play and favors the marines. However you can split the cultists of and form 3 troops slots. Have filled them and therefore payed min tax, allready for some detachment, getting access to CP which is the main problem.
It get's even worse with guardsmen and whilest they are not in the same codex as SM or Custodes they still generate dirt cheap CP for those armies and are even better in most ways than Cultists which need stratagems to really shine.
Orkz on the other hand have with mob up a rule that literally makes them immune to morale, and by extension that is what makes them a good horde army as in they don't need to pay extra for stopping the running from morale, on the contrary you have also a horde army done right in R&H which needs to buy enforcers (basically the same as old commisars but instead denying all morale checks via inflicting d3 autolosses on all infantery units that need to make a morale test) for 30 aswell as suffering from lackluster troop choices and or from the lack of Squadsize, (cultists are only allowed in 30 man blobs for R&H without access to stratagems)

And then we have Kabalites. Nothing shows the overpriced situation of any marine in the game better then these. 6 pts for a profile that is equal in everything but T and Armor. Their gun is better aggainst MC and they cost less then half the ammount of a marine.

 JNAProductions wrote:
A Flamer kills, shot per shot, 2.5 points of Boyz.
It kills, shot per shot, 3.75 points of Terminators, assuming your Termis are 45 points apiece.

Heavy Flamers?
Boyz lose 4 points per shot.
Termis (again assuming 45 points per Termi) lose 10 points per shot.

You have shown in this single post why I didn't want pointless mathematical arguments thrown at me. When calculating the 'points post per shot' are you also factoring in the reduced offensive power of said unit as it takes casualties? Are you taking into account possible morale losses? All of these things happen in a real game and while the flamer takes 3 shots to kill a Boy, or 5 to kill 2 it takes 12 to kill a TEQ. So until those 12 flamer shots have gone into the Terminators they have lost 0 points.

I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to show us that hordes are too powerful mechanically and hence are winning lots of tournaments....

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
A Flamer kills, shot per shot, 2.5 points of Boyz.
It kills, shot per shot, 3.75 points of Terminators, assuming your Termis are 45 points apiece.

Heavy Flamers?
Boyz lose 4 points per shot.
Termis (again assuming 45 points per Termi) lose 10 points per shot.

You have shown in this single post why I didn't want pointless mathematical arguments thrown at me. When calculating the 'points post per shot' are you also factoring in the reduced offensive power of said unit as it takes casualties? Are you taking into account possible morale losses? All of these things happen in a real game and while the flamer takes 3 shots to kill a Boy, or 5 to kill 2 it takes 12 to kill a TEQ. So until those 12 flamer shots have gone into the Terminators they have lost 0 points.

I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to show us that hordes are too powerful mechanically and hence are winning lots of tournaments....

Hordes aren't the problem, the problem is that certain troop choices just are to cost effective.
Granted normal marines are not top tier, but the banana regain CP combo with IG is.

This is a different suggestion to the OP.

So we're talking about only specific units being too strong, namely (from the looks of the thread) - Kabalite Warriors, Guardsmen and Boyz?


FYI Not Online - Mob rule doesn't make Orks immune to morale. It makes their LD the value of the number of models in the unit or they can take the value of a unit within 6" (or 3", can't remember off hand). You start to see that Orks are quite vulnerable to morale once an isolated squad of 30 Boyz takes 15+ casualties.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
This is a different suggestion to the OP.

So we're talking about only specific units being too strong, namely (from the looks of the thread) - Kabalite Warriors, Guardsmen and Boyz?


FYI Not Online - Mob rule doesn't make Orks immune to morale. It makes their LD the value of the number of models in the unit or they can take the value of a unit within 6" (or 3", can't remember off hand). You start to see that Orks are quite vulnerable to morale once an isolated squad of 30 Boyz takes 15+ casualties.

I said basically, and since you any way will take boyz you have no additional costs, that beeing said i agree that Orkz hordes are not the worst offenders.
On a side note there is quite alot wrong with the Orkz in general and they are in dire need of getting a proper Codex.
Also Ld 10 on a cheap t 4 model is still extremely good.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
This is a different suggestion to the OP.

So we're talking about only specific units being too strong, namely (from the looks of the thread) - Kabalite Warriors, Guardsmen and Boyz?


FYI Not Online - Mob rule doesn't make Orks immune to morale. It makes their LD the value of the number of models in the unit or they can take the value of a unit within 6" (or 3", can't remember off hand). You start to see that Orks are quite vulnerable to morale once an isolated squad of 30 Boyz takes 15+ casualties.

I said basically, and since you any way will take boyz you have no additional costs, that beeing said i agree that Orkz hordes are not the worst offenders.
On a side note there is quite alot wrong with the Orkz in general and they are in dire need of getting a proper Codex.
Also Ld 10 on a cheap t 4 model is still extremely good.

I think you mean Leadership 30, because of the boyz next to them that didn't get shot.

The problem is that many hordes have access to units that don' t minimize morale losses but rather make them completely immune.
Synapses, Early Commisars, Cold and BItter for Iron Warriors, etc.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
This is a different suggestion to the OP.

So we're talking about only specific units being too strong, namely (from the looks of the thread) - Kabalite Warriors, Guardsmen and Boyz?


FYI Not Online - Mob rule doesn't make Orks immune to morale. It makes their LD the value of the number of models in the unit or they can take the value of a unit within 6" (or 3", can't remember off hand). You start to see that Orks are quite vulnerable to morale once an isolated squad of 30 Boyz takes 15+ casualties.

I said basically, and since you any way will take boyz you have no additional costs, that beeing said i agree that Orkz hordes are not the worst offenders.
On a side note there is quite alot wrong with the Orkz in general and they are in dire need of getting a proper Codex.
Also Ld 10 on a cheap t 4 model is still extremely good.

I think you mean Leadership 30, because of the boyz next to them that didn't get shot.

Isn't it limited to LD 10?
Because if you can get LD 30 how the feth do you break such a squad without a punisher Gattling?

Not Online!!! wrote:

I said basically, and since you any way will take boyz you have no additional costs, that beeing said i agree that Orkz hordes are not the worst offenders.
On a side note there is quite alot wrong with the Orkz in general and they are in dire need of getting a proper Codex.
Also Ld 10 on a cheap t 4 model is still extremely good.

I thought you believed them to be literally fearless, apologies.

It's funny people think Orks are immune to morale when we have quite a lot of units that can/will be devestated by losses - Killa Kans and Koptas are prime examples.

I'm struggling to understand the logic of this thread. People seem to think hordes are too strong, while others believe elite units are too weak and others still believe that anti horde weapons aren't good enough against their intended target for their points. These are 3 vastly different premises with completely different fixes for each.

E - to answer your question on breaking Boyz you either kill them to the Boy or ensure they aren't next to another Mob through positioning and target priority.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

I said basically, and since you any way will take boyz you have no additional costs, that beeing said i agree that Orkz hordes are not the worst offenders.
On a side note there is quite alot wrong with the Orkz in general and they are in dire need of getting a proper Codex.
Also Ld 10 on a cheap t 4 model is still extremely good.

I thought you believed them to be literally fearless, apologies.

It's funny people think Orks are immune to morale when we have quite a lot of units that can/will be devestated by losses - Killa Kans and Koptas are prime examples.

I'm struggling to understand the logic of this thread. People seem to think hordes are too strong, while others believe elite units are too weak and others still believe that anti horde weapons aren't good enough against their intended target for their points. These are 3 vastly different premises with completely different fixes for each.

Personally it is mainly a guard problem. Nobody complains about a R&H CSM mix even if i put down 2 50 man mutant blobs with enforcers.
Mainly because they don't get boosted via auras and stratagems and Cp is just as easily makable with normal CSM cultists.
Contrary to that you have the Guard which gains access to some really good relics that allow you to regain cp and perfectly cover the weakness of custodes aswell as profiting from their auras to some degree.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

I said basically, and since you any way will take boyz you have no additional costs, that beeing said i agree that Orkz hordes are not the worst offenders.
On a side note there is quite alot wrong with the Orkz in general and they are in dire need of getting a proper Codex.
Also Ld 10 on a cheap t 4 model is still extremely good.

I thought you believed them to be literally fearless, apologies.

It's funny people think Orks are immune to morale when we have quite a lot of units that can/will be devestated by losses - Killa Kans and Koptas are prime examples.

I'm struggling to understand the logic of this thread. People seem to think hordes are too strong, while others believe elite units are too weak and others still believe that anti horde weapons aren't good enough against their intended target for their points. These are 3 vastly different premises with completely different fixes for each.

E - to answer your question on breaking Boyz you either kill them to the Boy or ensure they aren't next to another Mob through positioning and target priority.

That is easier said then done, especially when there is literally a wall of 30 man blobs, which isn't that expensive to field.
Firstly you need massive Rof just for one 30 man blob, considering these are t4 units regular small arms will allready have problems dealing with that (S3 ones) Secondly even if you kill 15 Orkboys and they have a another squad near them they still get more morale than other units which should be comparable to them, minimizing morale losses even if you manage to do decent damage.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Isn't it limited to LD 10?
Because if you can get LD 30 how the feth do you break such a squad without a punisher Gattling?

Why would you think it's limited to 10?

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is easier said then done, especially when there is literally a wall of 30 man blobs, which isn't that expensive to field.
Firstly you need massive Rof just for one 30 man blob, considering these are t4 units regular small arms will allready have problems dealing with that (S3 ones) Secondly even if you kill 15 Orkboys and they have a another squad near them they still get more morale than other units which should be comparable to them, minimizing morale losses even if you manage to do decent damage.

It's not that hard, particularly if you play R&H.

I think the post below summarises an easy way to destroy Orks;

SemperMortis wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Is a boy better than a guardsmen? I guess.

Ironically, in a vacuum, no they aren't. At 120pts an Ork can field 19 ork boyz and a free nob, IG can field 27 guardsmen and 3 sergeants armed with lasguns and chainswords. As soon as the IG get in range the orkz start dying in droves, 30 shots, 15 hits, 5 wounds, 4 dead orkz. Orkz move and advance (8.5inches on average). IG move into Rapid fire range 60 shots, 30 hits 10 wounds 8 dead Orkz. Orkz take a leadership check at LD8 with 8 losses so they lose D6 more orkz so 3 more, they are now down to 5 models including a nob. Orkz move, shoot 5 shots 1.66 hits, 1.33 wounds 1 dead Guardsmen. Orkz charge, IG Overwatch 58 shots, 10ish hits on average 3 wounds and 2-3 more dead orkz. 3 orkz get in for 6 attacks at S4 and 4 attacks at S5 6 hits, 4 wounds and 3 dead Guardsmen. The absolute horde of remaining guardsmen then bum rush in and wipe out the remaining orkz.

So yep, guardsmen are better point for point. And yet again, I haven't heard of anyone calling for 4ppm Ork boyz, Hell I am an ork player and I don't want 5ppm orkz. What I really want is the ability to take FEWER MODELS and still be competitive. My current tournament list has 165 Boyz models, 25 grotz and 5ish character models. Even if I could take HALF that and be successful I would be happy.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Isn't it limited to LD 10?
Because if you can get LD 30 how the feth do you break such a squad without a punisher Gattling?

Why would you think it's limited to 10?

Mainly because it was limited in previous editions and i since then stopped playing my Ork army, especially after how dakkajets and burna bombaz perform,
So my Flymek army got worse and worse which for me was the point that i jumped ship. I just assumed that it would be like the old rule limited to 10, which was the maximum LD in all previous editions.
I don't quite understand however what the idea behind this is: from a fluff position aswell as from a rules perspective.
One would imagine that if a Boy mob which functions as a unit within the Ork society and generally includes their closest "friends" they would not just aqquire morale from the presence of other orks. Secondly there is something inherently wrong with the rule as it allows to go over the limit, which other units pay quite alot of pts for additional moral. As a way one could see their Mob Morale as massively underpriced in such a case.
As for LD 30+ one would need to make atleast 25 losses to an ork squad to get ONE ork running and that is on a 6 in the morale test. That seems frankly quite stupid. there should be no way in hell an ork unit would stick around after 5/6 of the unit got wiped out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is easier said then done, especially when there is literally a wall of 30 man blobs, which isn't that expensive to field.
Firstly you need massive Rof just for one 30 man blob, considering these are t4 units regular small arms will allready have problems dealing with that (S3 ones) Secondly even if you kill 15 Orkboys and they have a another squad near them they still get more morale than other units which should be comparable to them, minimizing morale losses even if you manage to do decent damage.

It's not that hard, particularly if you play R&H.

I think the post below summarises an easy way to destroy Orks;

SemperMortis wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Is a boy better than a guardsmen? I guess.

Ironically, in a vacuum, no they aren't. At 120pts an Ork can field 19 ork boyz and a free nob, IG can field 27 guardsmen and 3 sergeants armed with lasguns and chainswords. As soon as the IG get in range the orkz start dying in droves, 30 shots, 15 hits, 5 wounds, 4 dead orkz. Orkz move and advance (8.5inches on average). IG move into Rapid fire range 60 shots, 30 hits 10 wounds 8 dead Orkz. Orkz take a leadership check at LD8 with 8 losses so they lose D6 more orkz so 3 more, they are now down to 5 models including a nob. Orkz move, shoot 5 shots 1.66 hits, 1.33 wounds 1 dead Guardsmen. Orkz charge, IG Overwatch 58 shots, 10ish hits on average 3 wounds and 2-3 more dead orkz. 3 orkz get in for 6 attacks at S4 and 4 attacks at S5 6 hits, 4 wounds and 3 dead Guardsmen. The absolute horde of remaining guardsmen then bum rush in and wipe out the remaining orkz.

So yep, guardsmen are better point for point. And yet again, I haven't heard of anyone calling for 4ppm Ork boyz, Hell I am an ork player and I don't want 5ppm orkz. What I really want is the ability to take FEWER MODELS and still be competitive. My current tournament list has 165 Boyz models, 25 grotz and 5ish character models. Even if I could take HALF that and be successful I would be happy.

Yes and also shows another problem. To get enough small arms fire, and Heavy Weapons for that matter, i need to play another horde army.
And again no it is not that easy, even for R&H because surprise surprise bs5 for most infantery too.(guard would be better, if it weren't for the max size of IG squads.)
Yeah sure you can argue about mortars and nade launchers, but what are you doing if you run a "elite" army, as in a pure marine list?
Because you won't get enough Bolters on an army like this. I doubt even CSM emperors children with sonic weaponry and double shoot strategem could successfully stop such an assult.
Quite frankly Boyz shouldn't be the only thing keeping you in the game. However atm they are, therefore i am hesitant to call for a nerf, but seriously limiting Orks back again to just horde a playstyle isn't fun, neitehr for them nor for players that play against them, that i can agree with..

Not Online!!! wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Isn't it limited to LD 10?
Because if you can get LD 30 how the feth do you break such a squad without a punisher Gattling?

Why would you think it's limited to 10?

Mainly because it was limited in previous editions and i since then stopped playing my Ork army, especially after how dakkajets and burna bombaz perform,
So my Flymek army got worse and worse which for me was the point that i jumped ship. I just assumed that it would be like the old rule limited to 10, which was the maximum LD in all previous editions.
I don't quite understand however what the idea behind this is: from a fluff position aswell as from a rules perspective.
One would imagine that if a Boy mob which functions as a unit within the Ork society and generally includes their closest "friends" they would not just aqquire morale from the presence of other orks. Secondly there is something inherently wrong with the rule as it allows to go over the limit, which other units pay quite alot of pts for additional moral. As a way one could see their Mob Morale as massively underpriced in such a case.
As for LD 30+ one would need to make atleast 25 losses to an ork squad to get ONE ork running and that is on a 6 in the morale test. That seems frankly quite stupid. there should be no way in hell an ork unit would stick around after 5/6 of the unit got wiped out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is easier said then done, especially when there is literally a wall of 30 man blobs, which isn't that expensive to field.
Firstly you need massive Rof just for one 30 man blob, considering these are t4 units regular small arms will allready have problems dealing with that (S3 ones) Secondly even if you kill 15 Orkboys and they have a another squad near them they still get more morale than other units which should be comparable to them, minimizing morale losses even if you manage to do decent damage.

It's not that hard, particularly if you play R&H.

I think the post below summarises an easy way to destroy Orks;

SemperMortis wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Is a boy better than a guardsmen? I guess.

Ironically, in a vacuum, no they aren't. At 120pts an Ork can field 19 ork boyz and a free nob, IG can field 27 guardsmen and 3 sergeants armed with lasguns and chainswords. As soon as the IG get in range the orkz start dying in droves, 30 shots, 15 hits, 5 wounds, 4 dead orkz. Orkz move and advance (8.5inches on average). IG move into Rapid fire range 60 shots, 30 hits 10 wounds 8 dead Orkz. Orkz take a leadership check at LD8 with 8 losses so they lose D6 more orkz so 3 more, they are now down to 5 models including a nob. Orkz move, shoot 5 shots 1.66 hits, 1.33 wounds 1 dead Guardsmen. Orkz charge, IG Overwatch 58 shots, 10ish hits on average 3 wounds and 2-3 more dead orkz. 3 orkz get in for 6 attacks at S4 and 4 attacks at S5 6 hits, 4 wounds and 3 dead Guardsmen. The absolute horde of remaining guardsmen then bum rush in and wipe out the remaining orkz.

So yep, guardsmen are better point for point. And yet again, I haven't heard of anyone calling for 4ppm Ork boyz, Hell I am an ork player and I don't want 5ppm orkz. What I really want is the ability to take FEWER MODELS and still be competitive. My current tournament list has 165 Boyz models, 25 grotz and 5ish character models. Even if I could take HALF that and be successful I would be happy.

Yes and also shows another problem. To get enough small arms fire, and Heavy Weapons for that matter, i need to play another horde army.
And again no it is not that easy, even for R&H because surprise surprise bs5 for most infantery too.(guard would be better, if it weren't for the max size of IG squads.)
Yeah sure you can argue about mortars and nade launchers, but what are you doing if you run a "elite" army, as in a pure marine list?
Because you won't get enough Bolters on an army like this. I doubt even CSM emperors children with sonic weaponry and double shoot strategem could successfully stop such an assult.
Quite frankly Boyz shouldn't be the only thing keeping you in the game. However atm they are, therefore i am hesitant to call for a nerf, but seriously limiting Orks back again to just horde a playstyle isn't fun, neitehr for them nor for players that play against them, that i can agree with..

I gotta be honest, I don't think you understand enough about the game in it's current guise to make any calls regarding nerfs or buffs. Capped stats are no longer a thing. Have you missed that vehicles have 10+ W now?

Dakkajets and Burna Bommas are one of the best Ork units we have, currently. If that was your reason for ceasing play with them I'd suggest you look again.

I'd also suggest that if you're afraid of 5 Orks that remain after you have killed 25 there is something wrong with your list. Generally it isn't difficult, in fact it's extremely common, for me to lose 45 - 60 Boyz per turn. The mob rule only works if there's another massive unit nearby and if all the Boyz are clustering together they aren't picking up objectives, or moving around terrain presumably. Custodes tear through Boyz like a knife through butter, they are the elite of the elite. Eldar, another traditionally elite army, don't seem to struggle either. It's about taking the right tools for the job.

As has been said time and time again, any game that goes the distance is pretty much an auto-loss for Orks now, despite your fears we just don't have the durability. Effectively the only competitive games we win are those where there is an enforced time limit and the games end on turn 2 or 3 with no punishment.

If this thread is an excuse to beat on Boyz, Kabalite Warriors, Guardsmen or whatever else is the flavour of the month villainous horde unit I'd suggest the title is changed to reflect such.

I do know that the stats are uncapped. I also do know that morale should've never been uncapped for a reason, mainly because (mostly) infantery has to deal with that and the new moral mechanic is there for a reason.
Again i stopped with the 6th ed Ork codex with the WD add on for the ork flyers, so forgive me for not nailing all the Ork rules atm.
I do however know enough that i can point out that the Rule in this case is flawed, I also agree that Ork boyz shouldn't be so god damn mandatory as they are now, because of their mob rule. Frankly i belive that alot of the overcosted Ork stuff like Mega armor etc. should get a well deserved cost reduction.

That beeing said the 5 orks left, should run as intended with the new morale system and not stick around because when they do we might aswell go back to the old system in which moral did not particullary matter.
Again, the Orks especially seriously need a Codex, from overpriced wargear to the problems that they have with survivability against anything that can field enough small dakka to the simple fact that after t3-4 they suck compared to other armies.

That still dosen't make the argument flawed that "hordes" are overperforming. Mind you i don't support the blanket statement that hordes overperform, in many cases they do not. However many choices like Guardsmen, Cultists, Kabalites are just frankly undercosted and that is the problem, especially now since we need for some detachment troop choices to generate cp. Those armies that got Codex Stratagems profit massively and in case of the Bananas they profit doubly from IG soup.
Basically in many cases it isn't a horde of units but rather dirt cheap troops that get picked for inherent advantages that either come with the army they are attached to or because they literally are a necessity and you just want to take cheap screening as to avoid getting bubblewrapped.

So the problem is mainly in 3 categories:

1: Costeffectivness: Some troop choices massively outperform others for ppm value, aka Kabalites and Guardsmen to a degree, aswell as Cultists.

2. Soup: Mainly a IG problem, they are getting used and abused for their cheap CP generation and for their Relic to regain spent CP

3. min taxes for detachment cp gains: This is again a problem as in there are units that are massively cheaper and can do the same thing the other alternatives within a codex can do. Cultists are the main offender here, why should i "waste" pts for a backfield unit that grabs some objectives and i mainly take for CP and cheap dakka, like CSM, when i can just field tripple the ammount of them in Cultists which have access to certain strategems that massively outperform most stratagems normal CSM get and aswell fill out my tax in the same pts budget?

To those saying Orkz with LD 30 is absurd or hard to impossible to remove...here is the simplest tactic to beat them...ready, this will be hard to wrap your head around....Shoot 2 mobz instead of 1

Most tournament lists i've faced can remove 30-45 boyz a turn without too much difficulty. The ones that can't can surely do so in 2 game turns (about the average time required to get mobz into CC). So instead of dumping all your shots into 1 mob and deleting it...SPLIT IT UP! If you can statistically kill 30 boyz a turn then kill 15 in one mob and 15 in the other, for 2 reasons. 1: the ork player might screw up and remove casualties so that the two units aren't within the required 6' to use each others leadership and 2: because now even if they are in range they are LD15 with 15 losses which means D6 auto losses for 1 squad at a minimum. I played against a rather smart admech player who did this little trick to 3 of my mobz over 2 game turns and by the end of turn 2 I was suffering 3-5+D6 casualties in each mob. I very clearly lose that game to his tactics.

So getting back to the main point of this topic I think we can safely say that NOBODY thinks hordes are too powerful and what they really mean are 2-3 units in 2-3 separate armies are too cheap and annoy you heavily. They don't win the game for your opponent but they seriously help them with there strats and that bothers people here. Cool, so lets change the name of this topic to "Hordes annoy me, lets fix that".

SemperMortis wrote:
To those saying Orkz with LD 30 is absurd or hard to impossible to remove...here is the simplest tactic to beat them...ready, this will be hard to wrap your head around....Shoot 2 mobz instead of 1

Hold on, you're going to have to slow down.

First I shoot one unit, then what? Shoot another unit you say?!

This all seems a bit too much like tactical thinking, I thought this was supposed to be a wargame!

Which can be avoided via decent positioning and LOS blocking cover, which will exist on all tables, regardless of tournament or not, so you can surely hide one or two mobs somewhere. ..

Not Online!!! wrote:
Which can be avoided via decent positioning and LOS blocking cover, which will exist on all tables, regardless of tournament or not, so you can surely hide one or two mobs somewhere. ..

Where the feth on a normal table am I going to hide a mob of 30 Boyz, within 6" of a mob of another 30 Boyz? I don't think my Boyz have yet to benefit from cover, in any game I've played.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Which can be avoided via decent positioning and LOS blocking cover, which will exist on all tables, regardless of tournament or not, so you can surely hide one or two mobs somewhere. ..

Where the feth on a normal table am I going to hide a mob of 30 Boyz, within 6" of a mob of another 30 Boyz? I don't think my Boyz have yet to benefit from cover, in any game I've played.

When i manage to hide a 50 man blob out of LOS, then how the heck are you not managing 30 boys? Also aren't there rules like the first floor of ruins is blocking los and you can't shoot through them?
One squad hides behind the walls of a building, the other Squad stands in the open. Problem of the moral solved, aslong as you take the proper orks away from the unit that stands in the open, and yes i realize that Orks should get into CQC as fast as possible and that hiding might be a hinderance for that but sometimes you need to make a tradeoff no?
And yes i realize that Orks need to be within 6" of another Squad, that complicates these things i agree on that and that is also why i don't count Orks as a problem.
Because again hordes are not the problem, the problem is Soup, Min Tax Troops cost effectivness on certain troop choices and the fact that some choices are only made because some Stratagems are broken and therefore armies need CP and take such min tax troops.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Which can be avoided via decent positioning and LOS blocking cover, which will exist on all tables, regardless of tournament or not, so you can surely hide one or two mobs somewhere. ..

Where the feth on a normal table am I going to hide a mob of 30 Boyz, within 6" of a mob of another 30 Boyz? I don't think my Boyz have yet to benefit from cover, in any game I've played.

When i manage to hide a 50 man blob out of LOS, then how the heck are you not managing 30 boys? Also aren't there rules like the first floor of ruins is blocking los and you can't shoot through them?
One squad hides behind the walls of a building, the other Squad stands in the open. Problem of the moral solved, aslong as you take the proper orks away from the unit that stands in the open, and yes i realize that Orks should get into CQC as fast as possible and that hiding might be a hinderance for that but sometimes you need to make a tradeoff no?
And yes i realize that Orks need to be within 6" of another Squad, that complicates these things i agree on that and that is also why i don't count Orks as a problem.
Because again hordes are not the problem, the problem is Soup, Min Tax Troops cost effectivness on certain troop choices and the fact that some choices are only made because some Stratagems are broken and therefore armies need CP and take such min tax troops.

I won't hit on this too much since you already admitted most of the problems with your thinking.

1: Boyz need to be in CC in order to be worth a damn, unless they are camping an objective...which you would be better off using a min squad of Grotz and hiding them out of LOS.
2: You can hide 1 mob out of LOS and use their leadership for 1 turn...or you could daisy chain back to them but then you run the risk of not having enough bodies where the Rubber meets the road so to speak.
3: There is no trade off since you are now using 180pts as a morale battery, so almost 1/10th of your army is useless. And its actually more then that because of the daisy chains.
4: Ive played tournaments at numerous different events and venues and I have yet to come across a board with this mythical amount of terrain that blocks LOS all over the place. This isn't a hit on you but to the masses in general who scream "Just use more LOS terrain". I mean yeah, if we are playing a friendly game at the FLGS then yeah we can pile all sorts of terrain on the board, but if its 8-12+ tables all going at the same time terrain becomes few and far between.

SemperMortis wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Which can be avoided via decent positioning and LOS blocking cover, which will exist on all tables, regardless of tournament or not, so you can surely hide one or two mobs somewhere. ..

Where the feth on a normal table am I going to hide a mob of 30 Boyz, within 6" of a mob of another 30 Boyz? I don't think my Boyz have yet to benefit from cover, in any game I've played.

When i manage to hide a 50 man blob out of LOS, then how the heck are you not managing 30 boys? Also aren't there rules like the first floor of ruins is blocking los and you can't shoot through them?
One squad hides behind the walls of a building, the other Squad stands in the open. Problem of the moral solved, aslong as you take the proper orks away from the unit that stands in the open, and yes i realize that Orks should get into CQC as fast as possible and that hiding might be a hinderance for that but sometimes you need to make a tradeoff no?
And yes i realize that Orks need to be within 6" of another Squad, that complicates these things i agree on that and that is also why i don't count Orks as a problem.
Because again hordes are not the problem, the problem is Soup, Min Tax Troops cost effectivness on certain troop choices and the fact that some choices are only made because some Stratagems are broken and therefore armies need CP and take such min tax troops.

I won't hit on this too much since you already admitted most of the problems with your thinking.

1: Boyz need to be in CC in order to be worth a damn, unless they are camping an objective...which you would be better off using a min squad of Grotz and hiding them out of LOS.
2: You can hide 1 mob out of LOS and use their leadership for 1 turn...or you could daisy chain back to them but then you run the risk of not having enough bodies where the Rubber meets the road so to speak.
3: There is no trade off since you are now using 180pts as a morale battery, so almost 1/10th of your army is useless. And its actually more then that because of the daisy chains.
4: Ive played tournaments at numerous different events and venues and I have yet to come across a board with this mythical amount of terrain that blocks LOS all over the place. This isn't a hit on you but to the masses in general who scream "Just use more LOS terrain". I mean yeah, if we are playing a friendly game at the FLGS then yeah we can pile all sorts of terrain on the board, but if its 8-12+ tables all going at the same time terrain becomes few and far between.

1: Which i said was a tradeoff and also the reason why i don't mind Ork hordes.
2: Also true leads to point one.
3: Never meant to say that you should stay behind cover with that squad for multiple turns, also the job could be given to Ballaboyz so they won't just waste air and cover space.
4: Flashback to the London event recently, the main problem is that in many cases for bigger tournaments often times organizers face scarcity for terrain. This hurts especially CQC focussed armies that have no reliable / effective/ fast way of closing the gap and or lack the punch in their first attack wave.

Again Ork hordes are not something that is especcially difficult to pick appart. Do i condone the fact that you can "leand" morale, no, not when the changes to the moral system were applied to get a specific attrition effect on especcially big Squads. Are Orks the main problem in regards to "hordes"? No they are not, in fact they seem quite underwhelming when their only unit that keeps them in the game is their basic boy mob in conjunction atleast 2-3 other such mobs, which allready cost the player in case of atleast 4 x 30 boyz more then enough pts.

The problem really lies with IG for CP farming and the Relic and Soup, Cultists for mintax CP farming and costefficency, Kabalites for CP farming and generally beeing to cost effective compared to other "elite" armies like marines.
That beeing said Marines themselves are in a bad spot, either beeing overpriced or their basic job can be fullfilled easily by other allied detachments, in case of CSM can even be replaced with units in their own Codex.
And here is the Crux: In a better world we would be able to field Marines or CSM and not be punished for that by the fact that we need them for CP, instead they should fullfill a role. Why bother however fullfiling a jack of all trades role when Tac Marines and CSM lack either melee or shooting abilities because their loadouts are restricted and there is literally the cheaper option to take that can do the same thing a tad worse but atleast get's properly suported via stratagems.
As soon as a Army get's a Codex, they will try to maximize their CP gains, simply because some of these are just way to good.
Now Marines or Bananas lack the cheap troop choice, respectively their troops just plain suck compared to IG guardsmen costefficency wise. Add insult to injury and add in the fact that you can regain CP with certain relics, so why bother bringing a proper non soup list or a CSM list with nothing but Cultists as troops.
Oh and the Detachments themselves are good and all, but basically what it boils down to, how much CP can i get for the cheapest ammount of pts spent on as costeffective troops as possible. This leads to the infamous soup especially on the Imperial side.
Then we had also the problem that the Detachments easily allowed us to spam certain units, or gain access to certain slots and whilest basically a good idea this also meant that we players would try and use onebig detachment like platoon or brigade to farm CP with the cheapest possible avilable units and another one were the main power of the army is.
So no Hordes are not a problem, allowing CP for stratagems to be used from differing detachments is.

And the absolute easiest way to solve this is to reclassify some armies as Detachments and others as armies. Armies can not soup with anything that isn't a detachment. Then simply make the main factions into armies and not detachments.

So IG can not be a detachment and so on. Then let true allies be called detachments, Harlequins, Assassins, Inquisition, genestealer cult and so on.

Suddenly you are no longer facing these issues. I always thought soup was a stupid idea but GW is always right.

SemperMortis wrote:
And the absolute easiest way to solve this is to reclassify some armies as Detachments and others as armies. Armies can not soup with anything that isn't a detachment. Then simply make the main factions into armies and not detachments.

So IG can not be a detachment and so on. Then let true allies be called detachments, Harlequins, Assassins, Inquisition, genestealer cult and so on.

Suddenly you are no longer facing these issues. I always thought soup was a stupid idea but GW is always right.

Just don't allow CP farming anymore, there problem solved. As in you can't use CP genereated by IG detachments for your Bananas, aswell as you can't reroll on their wasted CP with the IG Relic.
Maybee buff Tac and CS Marines a bit, maybee. (basically give them bolters, boltpistols and chainswords at the same time, basically making them proper jack of all trades again.)

Not Online!!! wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
And the absolute easiest way to solve this is to reclassify some armies as Detachments and others as armies. Armies can not soup with anything that isn't a detachment. Then simply make the main factions into armies and not detachments.

So IG can not be a detachment and so on. Then let true allies be called detachments, Harlequins, Assassins, Inquisition, genestealer cult and so on.

Suddenly you are no longer facing these issues. I always thought soup was a stupid idea but GW is always right.

Just don't allow CP farming anymore, there problem solved. As in you can't use CP genereated by IG detachments for your Bananas, aswell as you can't reroll on their wasted CP with the IG Relic.
Maybee buff Tac and CS Marines a bit, maybee. (basically give them bolters, boltpistols and chainswords at the same time, basically making them proper jack of all trades again.)

Sure, as soon as my orkz get a buff to the point where they can reliably deal with those armies