I started the hobby at the beginning of 7th so don’t have a lot of history of army power through the editions beside what I have read on old forum posts. But I been thinking is there armies that have always been good every edition and also some that always seem to fair badly (talking about mono codex”s)?
From my point of view Eldar always seem to be in a good spot. I also thought spacemarines would always be upper tier being the face of the 40k and also the models that generate the most revenue. But they don’t seem to be in a good place this edition as a whole.
As far as who’s always bad. Not sure on this one it seems like all that have been around awhile have had their time to shine in one edition or another.
The function of an army “always” being good or bad is, in part, dependent on the support from GW: getting new models, updates, codices, etc. So armies like SM are always going to have some viability just because they’re such sellers.
I've played since 5th, and most armies have at least been middle of the road at some point or another, and usually had at least one competitive build that might not have won everything, but was at least a gatekeeper list that would be likely to place pretty high. I can't think of one that has always been terrible forever, but there are usually one or two each edition or so that are looked on as the worst.
There are armies that have always been somewhere barring brief blips; Grey Knights/Daemonhunters have been mediocre at best except for a brief period during 5e when they excelled, Eldar have always been fantastic except for a brief period during 5e under their 4e Codex where they were merely mediocre.
" I also thought spacemarines would always be upper tier being the face of the 40k and also the models that generate the most revenue."
This is not remotely true. Space marines have fluctuated wildly throughout the years. Probably the peak of overall marine effectiveness was 3rd edition. After that, gimmicks were necessary to make them strong because their basal units became more and more irrelevant.
Space Wolves were arguably #1 for most of 5th edition, but they were blatantly overpowered and did almost literally everything better than normal marines did. GK and BA were also quite good but GK were at the end of 5th. Normal marines were solid but boring compared to the super marines.
Space marines were poor in 5th, imo. They constantly lost to a 4th ed Ork codex because they didn't have shots to stop them They constantly lost to IG gunline, because they didn't have the durability or melee to kill the IG fast enough. They lost to the +1 marines like BA, SW, and GK. They lost to the Necrons too.
SW were very rough, because everyone had to learn to learn how to play against pods. And assaulting SW was suicidal.
What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I think, especially with 8th edition, we need to get out of the mindset of "Which armies have been good/bad" and get more into the "Which UNITS have been good/bad?".
Like it's been said, Grey Knights and Space Wolves ruled 5th Edition for a fairly long time. Orks have been poor to bad from early 5th edition to now. Eldar have usually been solid to amazing. Tau have been all over the place. Vanilla marines are usually really good for the ~4-5 months after an edition drops because they get the first new codex, and then drop off as everyone +1's them....etc
The real catch for these statements is that if an army has been good for a long time, or multiple times, it's not always the same units that make it good each time. Eldar were amazing because Wraith Knight/Lord spam, I hear they are good now because Dark Reapers? Space Wolves were amazing because Grey Hunters and rhino spam was incredibly hard to kill, or Thunder Wolf Calvary were practically indestructible. Winged Tyrant spam was the only way to play tyrants for a couple years, but before that, it was all about Tervigon spamming out free termigants.
I'd love to have an army that was always good, but even if you pick an army that has historically done very well, the units that make it good will likely change from year to year. I've taken to playing "Generic marines" the last 5 years, and just switching the codex I use based on what plays the best for me. Chaos marines, Space Wolves, Vanilla, Blood Angels.....etc. Power Armor is power armor, and a guy with a bolt gun can cover a dozen different units across 5+ codexes.
Grimlineman wrote: As far as who’s always bad. Not sure on this one it seems like all that have been around awhile have had their time to shine in one edition or another.
I don't think the Inquisition has ever risen above 'ok' - and that was a parking lot of immolators and stormtroopers in 5th.
Sisters have had some good showings but have also been near enough discontinued at times (they went two years without a codex at one point, and three more after that with just a pdf dex - not counting their wait in 3rd edition).
GK as mentioned had one very strong edition and then faded. Prior to 5th they were a completely different army.
And Templars. There was a point in 5th where beneath the mountain of errata was a somewhat effective gunline/terminator force... then they got rolled into the marine dex as a particularly unflattering chapter tactic.
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At the other end Eldar had huge firepower in 3rd, almost literally invulnerable tanks in 4th, a dip in 5th (old codex vs new ruleset), and then back to form in 6th.
I think it's pretty much down to the units. Even Eldar, which have always had solid options, have units which fluctuate tremendously each edition - mainly due to the nature of things like Aspect Warriors. Rules are either good or bad.
Look at Shining Spears...been around since 2nd edition, and probably never ever seen the table before 8th. In 8th they're arguably one of the best units in the book. Wraithknights were apparently balls-amazing in 7th and are terribly overpriced junk in 8th. Guardians have fluctuated a ton each edition. Rangers likewise. Aspect Warriors are the hardest to categorize, but many of them are sub-par at the moment with a couple being tremendously good.
Eldar started out strong in 8th, but have been hemmed back slowly and the slight power creep in each codex means that things like Dark Eldar wildly out-Eldar the Eldar.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar
To answer the OP question.
Armies that have almost always been on the better half of the competitive spectrum? Space Marines and Eldar hands down.
Armies that have been crap for the longest? Orkz, Dark Eldar and Chaos Space Marines.
Now all 3 have had there moments, but those were 3+ editions ago. Orkz were pretty darn good in 4th, Chaos in 3rd and Dark Eldar were pretty good even recently. But those 3 have usually been best friends hanging out on the bottom tier.
Grimlineman wrote: As far as who’s always bad. Not sure on this one it seems like all that have been around awhile have had their time to shine in one edition or another.
I don't think the Inquisition has ever risen above 'ok' - and that was a parking lot of immolators and stormtroopers in 5th.
Sisters have had some good showings but have also been near enough discontinued at times (they went two years without a codex at one point, and three more after that with just a pdf dex - not counting their wait in 3rd edition).
GK as mentioned had one very strong edition and then faded. Prior to 5th they were a completely different army.
And Templars. There was a point in 5th where beneath the mountain of errata was a somewhat effective gunline/terminator force... then they got rolled into the marine dex as a particularly unflattering chapter tactic.
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At the other end Eldar had huge firepower in 3rd, almost literally invulnerable tanks in 4th, a dip in 5th (old codex vs new ruleset), and then back to form in 6th.
To be fair that Witch Hunters codex was beastly, probably the best Sisters have ever been.
SemperMortis wrote: Now all 3 have had there moments, but those were 3+ editions ago. Orkz were pretty darn good in 4th, Chaos in 3rd and Dark Eldar were pretty good even recently. But those 3 have usually been best friends hanging out on the bottom tier.
Chaos have fluctuated back and forth. The 4e lash prince, troops, and other units were all very solid but caught between the pure cheese of 3.5 and the escalation of 5e marine books like wolves. Then 6e came in and helldrakes lit up the tournaments until again overtaken by power creep elsewhere. Now primarchs, deathguard, and chaos back up again for now.
3e Dark Eldar were half and half IMO. At low points you'd drown your opponent in lances and dissies, at higher points you'd be padding.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar .
WRONG! Chaos and Tau. I played against Eldar a lot and I think that a lot of Eldar players have a valid complaint that a lot of their units aren't worth taking. Most I have played would rather a solid codex over a few really powerful options. Having played Chaos on both sides of the 3.5 dex, I know what it's like to be called a power gamer because my army got a poorly thought out codex. The point is powerful =/= good.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar .
WRONG! Chaos and Tau. I played against Eldar a lot and I think that a lot of Eldar players have a valid complaint that a lot of their units aren't worth taking. Most I have played would rather a solid codex over a few really powerful options. Having played Chaos on both sides of the 3.5 dex, I know what it's like to be called a power gamer because my army got a poorly thought out codex. The point is powerful =/= good.
Last edition you had Warp Spiders, Scat Bikes, Wraith Knights, Farseers, invisible death stars, D-Cannons, Fire Dragons, dark Reapers and the list goes on. So yeah...They had a very powerful codex, and it wasn't mono build LOL. If you are going to say no Army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other then literally ZERO armies have ever been "good".
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar .
WRONG! Chaos and Tau. I played against Eldar a lot and I think that a lot of Eldar players have a valid complaint that a lot of their units aren't worth taking. Most I have played would rather a solid codex over a few really powerful options. Having played Chaos on both sides of the 3.5 dex, I know what it's like to be called a power gamer because my army got a poorly thought out codex. The point is powerful =/= good.
Last edition you had Warp Spiders, Scat Bikes, Wraith Knights, Farseers, invisible death stars, D-Cannons, Fire Dragons, dark Reapers and the list goes on. So yeah...They had a very powerful codex, and it wasn't mono build LOL. If you are going to say no Army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other then literally ZERO armies have ever been "good".
I didn't have any of these, I have never played Eldar as one of my armies. I never said or implied that an army "...is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other...". The point I made was a powerful army does not equal a good army. A good army would have good internal balance and be balanced well against other armies. The Eldar have had a long history of units that aren't worth taking compared to the flavor that currently al the rage. For instance Swooping Hawks and Shining Spears used to be the butts of everyone's jokes about Eldar internal codex balance but now Shining Spears are king and the hawks are now joined by the Striking Scorpions. Wouldn't it be better if Shining Spears weren't as good but Swooping Hawks and Striking Scorpions worth considering to take place along side the spears? To me, the answer is yes.
Hmm always been bad, only one i can think of is pure Deathwing, they have never actually been a top tier army, at best they have been mid and mostly lower tier, currently I would put them at above grey knights but thats about it.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I think the Eldar's strength has always been the specialised nature of their units and the wide range of units they have access too, with multiple unit options for each role. Regardless of how the game changes and codexes shift they've always had access to at least one solid build that works with the current meta, even if what works changes wildly between editions.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar .
WRONG! Chaos and Tau. I played against Eldar a lot and I think that a lot of Eldar players have a valid complaint that a lot of their units aren't worth taking. Most I have played would rather a solid codex over a few really powerful options. Having played Chaos on both sides of the 3.5 dex, I know what it's like to be called a power gamer because my army got a poorly thought out codex. The point is powerful =/= good.
Last edition you had Warp Spiders, Scat Bikes, Wraith Knights, Farseers, invisible death stars, D-Cannons, Fire Dragons, dark Reapers and the list goes on. So yeah...They had a very powerful codex, and it wasn't mono build LOL. If you are going to say no Army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other then literally ZERO armies have ever been "good".
Invisible Deathstars was an Imperial thing last edition, not Eldar, Fire Dragons and Dark Reapers were decent but not amazing and don't use D Cannons as a catch all since Wraithguard weren't that great, and Support Batteries were very short ranged for artillery. In a competetive setting it largely was very mono build (Scattpacks, a few Farseers and a Wraithknight was pretty much universally most of the army unless you went FW and felt like adding in Warp Hunters) but in a more friendly setting it was pretty easy to lower the power level. This edition the internal balance is even worse, 2/3rds of the codex is pure trash whilst the other 3rd is very competitive, since I don't run or have large Guardian blobs or Dark Reapers I've shelved the army as the rest of it is very unfun to play and not very strong.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I think the Eldar's strength has always been the specialised nature of their units and the wide range of units they have access too, with multiple unit options for each role. Regardless of how the game changes and codexes shift they've always had access to at least one solid build that works with the current meta, even if what works changes wildly between editions.
I would actually say that was their weakness, most of the times those specialisations don't work (Banshees can't kill elites, Scorpions can't kill hordes, Dire Avengers are terrible troops), instead it's the units that by accident or design end up being a great jack of all trades that are the go to choices. Last edition it was Windriders with Scatterlasers that had mid strength, high rate of fire and a low enough cost to take excessive amounts of them that they could and did kill everything better than the specialists. This edition it's the Guardian blob who with the right buffs will drop pretty much anything, or Dark Reapers who can be useful at taking out any type of target.
Ironically it's the Drukhari who are better at the specialisation thing since the nature of our weapons and units means we've never had anything that could be used as a jack of all trades unit (at least not with the same load out).
Martel732 wrote: " I also thought spacemarines would always be upper tier being the face of the 40k and also the models that generate the most revenue."
This is not remotely true. Space marines have fluctuated wildly throughout the years. Probably the peak of overall marine effectiveness was 3rd edition. After that, gimmicks were necessary to make them strong because their basal units became more and more irrelevant.
White Scars Gladius was a top tier list through most of 7th. Space marines ended 7th edition with the 3rd highest overall number of GT wins behind Eldar and Chaos Daemons.
Grimlineman wrote: As far as who’s always bad. Not sure on this one it seems like all that have been around awhile have had their time to shine in one edition or another.
I don't think the Inquisition has ever risen above 'ok' - and that was a parking lot of immolators and stormtroopers in 5th.
Sisters have had some good showings but have also been near enough discontinued at times (they went two years without a codex at one point, and three more after that with just a pdf dex - not counting their wait in 3rd edition).
GK as mentioned had one very strong edition and then faded. Prior to 5th they were a completely different army.
And Templars. There was a point in 5th where beneath the mountain of errata was a somewhat effective gunline/terminator force... then they got rolled into the marine dex as a particularly unflattering chapter tactic.
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At the other end Eldar had huge firepower in 3rd, almost literally invulnerable tanks in 4th, a dip in 5th (old codex vs new ruleset), and then back to form in 6th.
To be fair that Witch Hunters codex was beastly, probably the best Sisters have ever been.
When everyone was in the indexes, SoB were quietly in the top few armies in the game. They just got crowded out a bit by the sheer level of bullgak that was Index guilliRavens.
Eldar to my knowledge have generally been above average all the time (except for maybe one part of one edition but im not sure on that).
Orks have generally been below average unless there is some rules loophole for Orks to exploit like wound shuffling with Nob Bikers or a Greentide conga line to benefit from a void shield generator despite being half way across the board.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Not sure about 8th, but in 6th/7th every unit was worth taking.
Martel732 wrote: "White Scars Gladius was a top tier list through most of 7th. "
Yeah. A gimmick.
Firstly, you're not the one that decides what 'a gimmick' is. The white scars gladius was no more of a gimmick than wraithknights, or Decurions, or 2++ invuls, or any of the other crazy powerful things that were standard issue, garden variety army construction in 7th.
Secondly, there were MANY other lists that were EXTREMELY good that the marines could play. The droppod list that finished 10th at Adepticon AFTER Magnus came in, or any of the insane number of deathstars marines could run, the other versions of gladius, or centurion star, Librarius conclave daemon batteries, etc, etc, etc.
YOU might have been bad in 7th, marines were OBJECTIVELY great.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Not sure about 8th, but in 6th/7th every unit was worth taking.
Rangers, Shining Spears, Storm Guardians, Illic Nightspear, Wraithlords, Wraithblades. All of those weren't worthwhile in either 6th, 7th or both. Eldar in 6th was based hugely on Wave Serpents and 7th was largely WK, Scatbikes and Warp Spiders with another two units being swapped around.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar .
WRONG! Chaos and Tau. I played against Eldar a lot and I think that a lot of Eldar players have a valid complaint that a lot of their units aren't worth taking. Most I have played would rather a solid codex over a few really powerful options. Having played Chaos on both sides of the 3.5 dex, I know what it's like to be called a power gamer because my army got a poorly thought out codex. The point is powerful =/= good.
Last edition you had Warp Spiders, Scat Bikes, Wraith Knights, Farseers, invisible death stars, D-Cannons, Fire Dragons, dark Reapers and the list goes on. So yeah...They had a very powerful codex, and it wasn't mono build LOL. If you are going to say no Army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other then literally ZERO armies have ever been "good".
I didn't have any of these, I have never played Eldar as one of my armies. I never said or implied that an army "...is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other...". The point I made was a powerful army does not equal a good army. A good army would have good internal balance and be balanced well against other armies. The Eldar have had a long history of units that aren't worth taking compared to the flavor that currently al the rage. For instance Swooping Hawks and Shining Spears used to be the butts of everyone's jokes about Eldar internal codex balance but now Shining Spears are king and the hawks are now joined by the Striking Scorpions. Wouldn't it be better if Shining Spears weren't as good but Swooping Hawks and Striking Scorpions worth considering to take place along side the spears? To me, the answer is yes.
Didn't mean you specifically, was referring to the community at large. But you just said "I never implied that an army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other" but you also said the post before "Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use." So you just contradicted yourself.
Furthermore, in 7th almost every unit in the Eldar codex was good, the difference was you had a couple that were unbelievably amazing like wraithknights, scat bikes, warp spiders and Farseers. Wraithguard and Wraithblades weren't considered the best units but in several codexs they would have been auto-includes. Wave Serpeants weren't considered great but again in other armies they would have been the premier transports and gunboats. Fire Dragons weren't the best Anti-armor option for eldar but in almost every other army they would have been the absolute pinnacle (+3 to explode, +4 against Open topped). The average foot slogging guardian had a PLETHORA of rules and formations that made them go from average to better then most standard infantry in the game. SO yes, Eldar were and have almost always been in the top 3 and have had by far the most powerful codex which is proven by the fact that at LVO Eldar had something like 3 of the top 5 places.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Don't eldar have the highest unit per codex viable in every edition too? Most of their "unplayable" units aren't really unplayable there is just another much superior unit doing the same thing, often for less points.
Martel732 wrote: "White Scars Gladius was a top tier list through most of 7th. "
Yeah. A gimmick.
Firstly, you're not the one that decides what 'a gimmick' is. The white scars gladius was no more of a gimmick than wraithknights, or Decurions, or 2++ invuls, or any of the other crazy powerful things that were standard issue, garden variety army construction in 7th.
Secondly, there were MANY other lists that were EXTREMELY good that the marines could play. The droppod list that finished 10th at Adepticon AFTER Magnus came in, or any of the insane number of deathstars marines could run, the other versions of gladius, or centurion star, Librarius conclave daemon batteries, etc, etc, etc.
YOU might have been bad in 7th, marines were OBJECTIVELY great.
When basal marine units are ONLY seen in skyhammer or gladius, they're gimmicks.
I was playing BA. I had literally NONE of those options. BA are what marine units were really capable of without GIMMICKS. So yeah, I think I do get decide what's a gimmick, given that I was playing a list with 90% identical stats and unit selections and getting none of the utility. That makes the actual units BAD.
And despite all that, my success rate was still much higher vs marine gimmicks than Eldar just throwing gak out with no formations. Because Eldar were undercosted and marines weren't. Get real.
Eldar Codexes tend to be love letters to their players. Every edition (even 8th due to the pretty low tier index) sees a grab bag of buffs, special rules to match the fluff and point reductions that may or may not relate to trying to sell the new hotness. You can say "Banshees have never worked" - but every edition they got buffed to try and make it happen. They didn't get chucked on the scrap heap as has been the case for so many other units in different factions.
As a result there has always been something which is top tier or near enough. It is limited though. Some Farseers, Scatbikes, Warp Spiders & Wraithknights were top tier in 7th. Most of the rest wasn't.
By contrast GW clearly fell out of love with Orks somewhere in about 2009~ and their players have waited the best part of a decade for similar codex treatment. The 7th edition codex - like the 7th edition DE codex - was less a letter of love and more "can you just die pls?"
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Don't eldar have the highest unit per codex viable in every edition too? Most of their "unplayable" units aren't really unplayable there is just another much superior unit doing the same thing, often for less points.
Not currently at least. There's a whole lot in the Eldar codex that is just hot trash atm. They have a good fast assault unit with Fly, a good heavy fire support unit, and solid psychic powers.
Their troops are bad, luckily they can do the same thing marines do and just opt to not run any in favor of three min-sized scout units so they can have an "i win" button vs running assault deathblobs and an anti-DS screen. Guardians can be OK in a single 20-man blob that deep strikes and tries to shoot things, but at double the cost of a guardsman for something equally durable, theyre rarely going to make their points back and they'e pretty much hardlocked into coming in turn 2 after the FAQ so they're not a good tempo piece anymore either.
And then your options are basically: Feel like paying more points for pretty much the same thing as Guardians? How about committing a 150-point transport for five 12 point dudes?
And for everyone that just hates winning games, there's storm guardians.If you thought Assault Marines were DOA, boy do I have a unit for you.
I think part of the reason Eldar always end up good is because they just have so many fething units. These guys have like 15 HQ choices, 27 different kinds of aspect warriors, half a dozen wraith things, 18 vehicles, 98 different heavy weapon options...something's going to end up good. But you just need to compare a Wraithknight from the Eldar codex with the rules for the new imp knights to see all is not going great in eldar-land.
Eldar are probably the most consistenly "good" army, at least from a rules standpoint. You could build a strong tournament list with Eldar at pretty much any point in 40k, from 2nd edition through now, with really only the exceptions of 5th edition (when they never got a proper codex) and Index 8th edition. For stretches of that time, they weren't just good, but very good. Even when bad, they weren't terrible.
Orks might be the overall weakest main faction. They had a strong 3rd edition build in Speed Freaks, the late 4th edition codex was super nasty for a while, but other than that they've been mediocre to poor.
Grey knights have swung dramatically, from "barely an army" in 3rd edition (the codex literally said that building pure grey knights was challenging) to the sheer filth of their 5th edition book. Most of the time has been mediocre, with some real down spots.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Don't eldar have the highest unit per codex viable in every edition too? Most of their "unplayable" units aren't really unplayable there is just another much superior unit doing the same thing, often for less points.
Consider for a moment a simplified model where GW tries to make every unit "fair", but the margin for error in their design process makes about a third of the units in any one book too good, a third about right, and a third unplayably bad. In that circumstance a Codex containing twelve units is sort of shafted, because the four too-good units they're given aren't really enough to build a functional army out of so they're left to draw on their mediocre or bad units to fill holes in their list, whereas a Codex containing thirty units is having a fine time, because they can build a number of different functional armies out of their ten good units.
Eldar have the advantage of having more units than most people, so they tend to end up with more good units due to simple design errors. On top of that when writing Eldar more design decisions are limited to a single unit, whereas when writing Space Marines making a decision about the heavy bolter (for instance) ripples through 2/3rds of the book; the result of this is that more single-loadout-specialist books like the Eldar tend to follow the "some good, some fair, some bad" model a lot more closely than the more option-heavy books since the units can be designed in a vacuum rather than needing to compromise one to affect another.
The Eldar are a walking study in the advantages and disadvantages of a different mode of design than a lot of the rest of the game; in most Codexes every knob the designers have to twiddle is strung to a bunch of units so there aren't that many outliers and the power is flat across the army as a whole, but in the Eldar every knob the designers have to twiddle affects just that one unit, so there are hugely more outliers. If you could average out the effectiveness of every unit in a given Eldar book they're not that far off everyone else, but because they have enough units that are notably better than the baseline to build an army out of the armies people build with that book tend to be better.
You could read it as favouritism, or you could read it as "this army's entire shtick makes them tremendously sensitive to unintentional bugs in the design process."
Marines and Eldar have been consistently at least solid. Eldar because of their unit diversity, usually coupled with some fancy rules, and Space Marines for the sheer number of options, even if they're mostly just variations on a theme.
Tyranids and Chaos should have been similarly steady, but sadly have not.
Maybe am biased then, I look at the eldar codex and can't find a single bad unit comparing to the ones in my codex. Plus eldar can always go Inari, something my army can't do.
Martel732 wrote: "White Scars Gladius was a top tier list through most of 7th. "
Yeah. A gimmick.
Firstly, you're not the one that decides what 'a gimmick' is. The white scars gladius was no more of a gimmick than wraithknights, or Decurions, or 2++ invuls, or any of the other crazy powerful things that were standard issue, garden variety army construction in 7th.
Secondly, there were MANY other lists that were EXTREMELY good that the marines could play. The droppod list that finished 10th at Adepticon AFTER Magnus came in, or any of the insane number of deathstars marines could run, the other versions of gladius, or centurion star, Librarius conclave daemon batteries, etc, etc, etc.
YOU might have been bad in 7th, marines were OBJECTIVELY great.
When basal marine units are ONLY seen in skyhammer or gladius, they're gimmicks.
I was playing BA. I had literally NONE of those options. BA are what marine units were really capable of without GIMMICKS. So yeah, I think I do get decide what's a gimmick, given that I was playing a list with 90% identical stats and unit selections and getting none of the utility. That makes the actual units BAD.
And despite all that, my success rate was still much higher vs marine gimmicks than Eldar just throwing gak out with no formations. Because Eldar were undercosted and marines weren't. Get real.
In an edition defined by formations and special rules, formations and special rules can't be discounted when judging the strength of a codex. Marines were solid in 6th and 7th for sure.
But we can look at the actual quality of the printed units by looking at C:BA. Marines had good gimmicks pasted onto terrible units. BA had bad gimmicks pasted onto terrible units. The units were still terrible in both cases.
Martel732 wrote: But we can look at the actual quality of the printed units by looking at C:BA. Marines had good gimmicks pasted onto terrible units. BA had bad gimmicks pasted onto terrible units. The units were still terrible in both cases.
Doesn't matter. Warp Spiders wouldn't have been nearly as good without Flickerjump and BS 2+, aka, their special rules and formations.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar .
WRONG! Chaos and Tau. I played against Eldar a lot and I think that a lot of Eldar players have a valid complaint that a lot of their units aren't worth taking. Most I have played would rather a solid codex over a few really powerful options. Having played Chaos on both sides of the 3.5 dex, I know what it's like to be called a power gamer because my army got a poorly thought out codex. The point is powerful =/= good.
Last edition you had Warp Spiders, Scat Bikes, Wraith Knights, Farseers, invisible death stars, D-Cannons, Fire Dragons, dark Reapers and the list goes on. So yeah...They had a very powerful codex, and it wasn't mono build LOL. If you are going to say no Army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other then literally ZERO armies have ever been "good".
I didn't have any of these, I have never played Eldar as one of my armies. I never said or implied that an army "...is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other...". The point I made was a powerful army does not equal a good army. A good army would have good internal balance and be balanced well against other armies. The Eldar have had a long history of units that aren't worth taking compared to the flavor that currently al the rage. For instance Swooping Hawks and Shining Spears used to be the butts of everyone's jokes about Eldar internal codex balance but now Shining Spears are king and the hawks are now joined by the Striking Scorpions. Wouldn't it be better if Shining Spears weren't as good but Swooping Hawks and Striking Scorpions worth considering to take place along side the spears? To me, the answer is yes.
Didn't mean you specifically, was referring to the community at large. But you just said "I never implied that an army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other" but you also said the post before "Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use." So you just contradicted yourself
There, I fixed a key portion of my quote that I put in bold that you left out to try so you could try to misrepresent what I was saying. If an army has several choices that are not worth taking because their are other choices that are clearly superior, it is not a well designed army. Even still I have never contradicted myself. The first line you quote is "I never implied that an army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other" and the Eldar are a powerful army despite having a number of worthless units. You don't need to have all your available units to be powerful to have a powerful army (see flyrant SPAM) and I never stated you did. You seem to have trouble understanding that good DOES NOT equal powerful, which I have stated several times. If you have good sportsmanship, it doesn't mean you win all the time. A good army means I could look at its units and find ways to use its entire contents to make an army, rather than take the clearly superior units. A good army is also balanced against the other armies in the game, as an overpowered army can actually damage a game. My original post was to question what the OP meant by "good": a consistently solid army or just one that just wins a lot.
I am done trying to explain this to you. Your first reply to me was wrong and you've been digging downward ever since. If you wish to argue about the specifics of the validity of Eldar units in 6th and 7th, there seems to be a few people happy enough to take up that argument with you who are probably more knowledgeable about the internal workings of the army than I do, being an outsider. Peace out.
Martel732 wrote: It does matter when analyzing the actual efficacy of the marine statline.
Warp spiders were great from the codex entry, not from formations.
But Martel, we're not discussing the MEQ statline. The thread is about armies, and armies are their statlines plus whatever special rules shenanigans they bring.
As for specifically MEQ, my basic set up didn't even shift much going from 6th to 7th. Basic marines were still fieldable, even encouraged. I just made some Grav cannons and bought a few more Rhinos to meet the meta.
Always good: I was inclined to say Eldar, as they've dominated several different editions, but they were quite weak between like 2009-2013 in mid-to late 5th and early 6th before they got that very strong 6E codex.
The main Space Marines codex has pretty much always had at least one competitive build. Can't say the same for most other armies.
Honestly none of the main armies have always been bad. Best example I can think of is Harlequins, they just don't really work as a pure army. They are better now than they were in 7th, but they still need support from other Aeldari.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I would guess you play eldar .
WRONG! Chaos and Tau. I played against Eldar a lot and I think that a lot of Eldar players have a valid complaint that a lot of their units aren't worth taking. Most I have played would rather a solid codex over a few really powerful options. Having played Chaos on both sides of the 3.5 dex, I know what it's like to be called a power gamer because my army got a poorly thought out codex. The point is powerful =/= good.
Last edition you had Warp Spiders, Scat Bikes, Wraith Knights, Farseers, invisible death stars, D-Cannons, Fire Dragons, dark Reapers and the list goes on. So yeah...They had a very powerful codex, and it wasn't mono build LOL. If you are going to say no Army is powerful unless every unit is almost on par with each other then literally ZERO armies have ever been "good".
Invisible Deathstars was an Imperial thing last edition, not Eldar, Fire Dragons and Dark Reapers were decent but not amazing and don't use D Cannons as a catch all since Wraithguard weren't that great, and Support Batteries were very short ranged for artillery. In a competetive setting it largely was very mono build (Scattpacks, a few Farseers and a Wraithknight was pretty much universally most of the army unless you went FW and felt like adding in Warp Hunters) but in a more friendly setting it was pretty easy to lower the power level. This edition the internal balance is even worse, 2/3rds of the codex is pure trash whilst the other 3rd is very competitive, since I don't run or have large Guardian blobs or Dark Reapers I've shelved the army as the rest of it is very unfun to play and not very strong.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
I think the Eldar's strength has always been the specialised nature of their units and the wide range of units they have access too, with multiple unit options for each role. Regardless of how the game changes and codexes shift they've always had access to at least one solid build that works with the current meta, even if what works changes wildly between editions.
I would actually say that was their weakness, most of the times those specialisations don't work (Banshees can't kill elites, Scorpions can't kill hordes, Dire Avengers are terrible troops), instead it's the units that by accident or design end up being a great jack of all trades that are the go to choices. Last edition it was Windriders with Scatterlasers that had mid strength, high rate of fire and a low enough cost to take excessive amounts of them that they could and did kill everything better than the specialists. This edition it's the Guardian blob who with the right buffs will drop pretty much anything, or Dark Reapers who can be useful at taking out any type of target.
Ironically it's the Drukhari who are better at the specialisation thing since the nature of our weapons and units means we've never had anything that could be used as a jack of all trades unit (at least not with the same load out).
Scat bikes or not, Eldar dominated last edition with only Tau and the odd Gladius lists being able to stop them some of the time. Every edition I have played in Eldar have been a top tourney army.
Martel732 wrote: It does matter when analyzing the actual efficacy of the marine statline.
Warp spiders were great from the codex entry, not from formations.
We're not analyzing the efficiency of the Marine statline. We're analyzing how various Codexes stack up against each other across the spread of editions. You could always start another thread if you want to argue that the Marine statline has never been very good but I don't think you'll find that much disagreement there.
Broadly speaking, Eldar have always been at or near the top of the power level, except for 5E where they didn't get a codex during that edition. Everywhere else, they've been the guys to beat. They've never had anything less but an absolutely stellar codex release, at lest in terms of power level.
Space Marines have usually hovered around the "decent-to-above-average" mark, often starting out a new phase of powercreep only to be overshadowed, often by another flavor of marines.
Chaos Marines have been...awkward, they've had some powerful builds, but through most of the history of the game, especially the last decade, they've been very much a gimmickry army (Lash in 5E, Heldrake spam in 6E, etc) with lots of subfactions that languish and then may tend to be super powerful for a year at the end of an edition before getting knocked off again.
Guard are usually on the garbage-to-maybe-mediocre tier with the exceptions of 5E and 8E, where they have been pretty strong.
Orks are much like Guard, being usually garbage-to-maybe-mediocre tier, with a couple of exceptions.
Tyranids tend to bounce around quite a bit, especially within the span of a single edition.
Necrons usually tend to be stupidly overpowered (3E/6E/7E) or garbage (5E/early 8E), their current 8E paradigm being a relatively pleasant change.
Tau have generally tracked pretty well with Eldar, but usually being a bit lower.
Consider for a moment a simplified model where GW tries to make every unit "fair", but the margin for error in their design process makes about a third of the units in any one book too good, a third about right, and a third unplayably bad. In that circumstance a Codex containing twelve units is sort of shafted, because the four too-good units they're given aren't really enough to build a functional army out of so they're left to draw on their mediocre or bad units to fill holes in their list, whereas a Codex containing thirty units is having a fine time, because they can build a number of different functional armies out of their ten good units.
The Ork codex last edition and this edition have as many units as the Eldar.....I think the problem is that whomever wrote both codexs had different opinions on what army should be good
Consider for a moment a simplified model where GW tries to make every unit "fair", but the margin for error in their design process makes about a third of the units in any one book too good, a third about right, and a third unplayably bad. In that circumstance a Codex containing twelve units is sort of shafted, because the four too-good units they're given aren't really enough to build a functional army out of so they're left to draw on their mediocre or bad units to fill holes in their list, whereas a Codex containing thirty units is having a fine time, because they can build a number of different functional armies out of their ten good units.
The Ork codex last edition and this edition have as many units as the Eldar.....I think the problem is that whomever wrote both codexs had different opinions on what army should be good
Yes and no. The Orks are an army wherein a "unit" tends to have not many unique special rules and weapons that exist on other units; not to the same extent as Space Marines, but definitely to a lesser extent than Eldar, so the "some good/some mediocre/some bad" estimate is also governed by the general shift to the middle produced by having more army-wide mechanics as opposed to the Eldar's many-unique-abilities format that lets them have more really good/really bad outliers, as is explained more thoroughly if you read the rest of my post instead of just the first paragraph.
Though the single-author problem was definitely a massive hurdle for GW in the 5e-7e days when the Codex writers didn't really talk to each other.
Karol wrote: Maybe am biased then, I look at the eldar codex and can't find a single bad unit comparing to the ones in my codex. Plus eldar can always go Inari, something my army can't do.
But you can go and play whatever army is top tier in your area.
Karol wrote: Maybe am biased then, I look at the eldar codex and can't find a single bad unit comparing to the ones in my codex. Plus eldar can always go Inari, something my army can't do.
But you can go and play whatever army is top tier in your area.
Not with the models I own, or is this some sort of sarcasm thing? I often miss those. Plus am sure it is not just my army feels that way, I have looked through lists that are being played and the eldar ones, depending on scenarios or missions, seem to use the largest number of different units. While some armies have this one army where the same units and characters are taken over and over again. Now am not saying I have seen all the lists in the world, but I did talk with people that play longer then me and they said it was always the case, and became and even bigger thing when ally systems were added .
I have no problems with eldar having a lot good units, now or through history. I would like my codex to have the same number of valid army choices .
This is so the THEE question that's plagued GW for 25 years. Way back in the early days GW used to say that new codexes and game editions were to fix glaring issues with the rules. The haven't tried to make that claim in years.
Instead of creating a fair and balanced game set they just shuffle broken rules around and jacking up the prices. That's how Fantasy died. Plenty of thought and money went into it, but instead of concentrating on a good game GW concentrated on profits. And that's how we got sigmarine. 40k did better making cash so instead of fixes the the rules they just turned Fantasy in to 40k with less guns.
My fear is that's what they'll do to 40k. The game designers will shuffle the crown of most powerful army around to push sales from one army to the next. And as people lose the desire to be relentlessly plagued by bad game design and priced out of the hobby we'll watch 40k die. GW will turn it all into Hero Clicks with CCG cards and pimp the fluff as just another old Intellectual Property fit only for cell phone video game fodder.
So this got long and pessimistic. Anywho my votes for Eldar at the top, marines in the middle and orks at the bottom. Just like everyone else.
Formosa wrote: Anyone remember that small period at the start of 5th when orks were awesome... I member
Nob bikers, man. I was blown away the first time I ran against them. Very nearly started a biker army with the FW models.
....They weren't even good. It was simply wound shenanigans that let them maintain a HIGH level of killiness longer then similar units. They were a T5, 2 Wound model with a 4+ save, they weren't exactly fearsome, they just took a lot of killing
While they've always been competitive (since 3rd), it wasn't until 6th that they actually got a super amazing codex.
3rd only worked at the competitive level if you took as many star-cannons as you could.
4th was better balanced across the codex, but wave serpent spam dominated.
5th, Wave Serpent Spam was the only thing that worked, as the codex didn't fit the edition very well anymore.
6th. Everything got ramped up. Multiple builds were viable, from WSS, to foot aspect, to Guardian Horde. Most competitive lists focused on the super-powered WSS, or wraithknights however.
7th: 6th, but on steroids. Scat-Bikes everywhere.
8th: Good builds are possible, but large parts of the codex are unusable. The competitive lists are made by spamming a few units.
Don't forget that in 3rd, Eldar had the infamous Waithlord spam list that dominated the GW forums, causing so many arguments, and thus, having them shut down their community outreach for more than a decade
2nd... Eldar had Warp Spiders that killed anything that failed initiative tests.... I hated having my Necrons killed on pretty much a 2+ by Warp Spiders lol
Formosa wrote: Anyone remember that small period at the start of 5th when orks were awesome... I member
Nob bikers, man. I was blown away the first time I ran against them. Very nearly started a biker army with the FW models.
....They weren't even good. It was simply wound shenanigans that let them maintain a HIGH level of killiness longer then similar units. They were a T5, 2 Wound model with a 4+ save, they weren't exactly fearsome, they just took a lot of killing
You basically just said something wasn't good, then proceeded to explain why that unit was, in fact, good. To clarify, I never said they were amazing, but no one can deny that they were a powerful, versatile unit that could fit in most Ork lists and could be as small or large as your point level needed to be.
Ultimately, they were fun, and the modelling opportunities and available models were awesome (though expensive). Nob bikers were definitely one of a few aspects of Orks in that edition that made them a solid codex.
BuFFo wrote: Don't forget that in 3rd, Eldar had the infamous Waithlord spam list that dominated the GW forums, causing so many arguments, and thus, having them shut down their community outreach for more than a decade
2nd... Eldar had Warp Spiders that killed anything that failed initiative tests.... I hated having my Necrons killed on pretty much a 2+ by Warp Spiders lol
Actually they killed the forums when GW put in a serious nerf against Nid warriors that was completely unnecessary and had the entire forum up against them until GW removed the nerf. They shut down the forums almost immediately after that.
Mmmpi wrote: 4th was better balanced across the codex, but wave serpent spam dominated.
I watched an entire apocalypse army bounce off 4e falcon formation until sororitas exorcists rolled up with +1 on the glancing damage chart to break them down.
5e eldar probably peaked with the warp hunter, and endless complaints that their heavy weapons weren't as cheap as the 3e dark eldar (who could field something like 27 lances/dissies, 5 fast skimmers, and 40 scoring troops at 1000pts... and not all that much more beyond 1k).
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Not sure about 8th, but in 6th/7th every unit was worth taking.
Rangers, Shining Spears, Storm Guardians, Illic Nightspear, Wraithlords, Wraithblades. All of those weren't worthwhile in either 6th, 7th or both. Eldar in 6th was based hugely on Wave Serpents and 7th was largely WK, Scatbikes and Warp Spiders with another two units being swapped around.
Seems like you don't get what a bad unit is. For Bad consult 6-7 ed possessed and flash gitz.
Out of what you've listed as bad only Illic was remotely like this.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Not sure about 8th, but in 6th/7th every unit was worth taking.
Rangers, Shining Spears, Storm Guardians, Illic Nightspear, Wraithlords, Wraithblades. All of those weren't worthwhile in either 6th, 7th or both. Eldar in 6th was based hugely on Wave Serpents and 7th was largely WK, Scatbikes and Warp Spiders with another two units being swapped around.
Seems like you don't get what a bad unit is. For Bad consult 6-7 ed possessed and flash gitz.
Out of what you've listed as bad only Illic was remotely like this.
I did some maths. Even on the move flash gitz outgun rangers point for point vs GEQ, MEQ and TEQ in 7th. Standing still they could do twice the damage vs GEQ and MEQ. It seems like you don't get what a bad unit is.
Rangers were much more durable, had 36' gunz and a sniper rule. Besides, they were troops with a bunch of hrlpful special rules. It's hard to make flash gitz look even remotely as good as rangers. You're just spoiled with good stuff. It's like saying hey, look, i've done some math and tactical marines are more durable than scatbikes. That's why scatbikes are worse.
koooaei wrote: Rangers were much more durable, had 36' gunz and a sniper rule. Besides, they were troops with a bunch of hrlpful special rules. It's hard to make flash gitz look even remotely as good as rangers. You're just spoiled with good stuff. It's like saying hey, look, i've done some math and tactical marines are more durable than scatbikes. That's why scatbikes are worse.
A. Tactical marines weren't more durable, the bikes had the same T and save but could jink.
B. Rangers were only more durable if you were shooting at them in cover and I don't see why you ever would. If you were wanting to take an objective they were sitting on charge them with anything and they fall over. If not they don't do enough damage to be worth shooting.
C. Most of the special rules were to do with movement, snipers don't move. Already addressed shrouded in B. Infiltrate just means they are easier to charge because they are closer.
D. Even if in the end they come out slightly better than gitz that still doesn't make them an okay unit, just slightly less bad.
Karol wrote: Maybe am biased then, I look at the eldar codex and can't find a single bad unit comparing to the ones in my codex. Plus eldar can always go Inari, something my army can't do.
But you can go and play whatever army is top tier in your area.
Not with the models I own, or is this some sort of sarcasm thing? I often miss those. Plus am sure it is not just my army feels that way, I have looked through lists that are being played and the eldar ones, depending on scenarios or missions, seem to use the largest number of different units. While some armies have this one army where the same units and characters are taken over and over again. Now am not saying I have seen all the lists in the world, but I did talk with people that play longer then me and they said it was always the case, and became and even bigger thing when ally systems were added .
I have no problems with eldar having a lot good units, now or through history. I would like my codex to have the same number of valid army choices .
There are roughly seven valid competitive army choices for CWE right now.
-Farseer on bike
-Autarch on bike
-Rangers
-Shining Spears
-Wave Serpents
-Dark Reapers
-Warlock/Spiritseer/Warlock Conclave/Some kind of Runes of Battle Caster I think post-FAQ nerf most people have shifted to a 2-man Conclave from Spiritseers
Completely mono-tactic (always Alaitoc in every competitive list).
The number of viable units around for CWE is almost comparable to the number of viable units that appear in factions that almost everyone agrees are extremely low-tier right now. Compare to
-Warboss on Bike
-Big Mek On Bike
-Weirdboy
-Stormboyz
-Ork Boyz
-KMK -Kommandos
So while CWE have been performing pretty well, we know that their hold on the meta is pretty brittle and tied to a few specific units..most of which got nerfed in the new FAQ in one way or another. It's not yet clear how units from Drukhari or Harlequins are likely to supplant units from CWE in competitive soup builds, and much like we now see a whole lot less of codex: CSM in chaos lists, I'm thinking it's pretty likely we'll be seeing a lot less CWE in lists after Drukhari and Harlequins fully impact the meta.
You've missed a few units for eldar that have performed in tournaments.
-Guardians
-Wraithguard/Wraithblades
-Hemlocks
-Other Autarcha and Farseer builds.
Further your argument is disingenuous.
People argue books are low tier because they don't perform. SO saying "x" units are viable, when one book is placing 100th and the other first is not really a good comparison.
Beyond that there isn't really a competitive non-soup build for any army that can currently soup.
the_scotsman wrote: The number of viable units around for CWE is almost comparable to the number of viable units that appear in factions that almost everyone agrees are extremely low-tier right now. Compare to...
The difference is that those seven eldar units shut out the top three spots of the las vegas open this year. SM Razorbacks and lieutenants... didn't.
Besides Eldar can easily add more to that list - the fliers, swooping hawks, the odd guardian blob, some of the named characters for instance.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Not sure about 8th, but in 6th/7th every unit was worth taking.
Rangers, Shining Spears, Storm Guardians, Illic Nightspear, Wraithlords, Wraithblades. All of those weren't worthwhile in either 6th, 7th or both. Eldar in 6th was based hugely on Wave Serpents and 7th was largely WK, Scatbikes and Warp Spiders with another two units being swapped around.
Seems like you don't get what a bad unit is. For Bad consult 6-7 ed possessed and flash gitz.
Out of what you've listed as bad only Illic was remotely like this.
Perhaps you could tell me how something that has S3 AP- attacks, armour ignored by almost everything in the game and no assault transport isn't bad? Or how Rangers aren't bad when you're lucky to deal three wounds with them before saves?
pm713 wrote: Perhaps you could tell me how something that has S3 AP- attacks, armour ignored by almost everything in the game and no assault transport isn't bad?
pm713 wrote: Perhaps you could tell me how something that has S3 AP- attacks, armour ignored by almost everything in the game and no assault transport isn't bad?
Guardsmen? Cultists?
Get to be taken en masse and have ranged weaponry? A guardsmen can sit still and pump out a lot of shots from half a board away. Storm Guardians can fail at punching you or shoot not many not amazing shots from 12" away before anyone with a gun butchers them.
pm713 wrote: Perhaps you could tell me how something that has S3 AP- attacks, armour ignored by almost everything in the game and no assault transport isn't bad?
Guardsmen? Cultists?
Get to be taken en masse and have ranged weaponry? A guardsmen can sit still and pump out a lot of shots from half a board away. Storm Guardians can fail at punching you or shoot not many not amazing shots from 12" away before anyone with a gun butchers them.
Ah, 6-7e storm guardians.
Got confused by the description of S3 AP- attacks when the unit had strength 4 rending shooting (literally a more powerful game long free version of the old sororitas most powerful faith ability), and IIRC a bunch of bonuses including four free meltaguns and power swords when taken in formation.
the_scotsman wrote: The number of viable units around for CWE is almost comparable to the number of viable units that appear in factions that almost everyone agrees are extremely low-tier right now. Compare to...
The difference is that those seven eldar units shut out the top three spots of the las vegas open this year. SM Razorbacks and lieutenants... didn't.
Besides Eldar can easily add more to that list - the fliers, swooping hawks, the odd guardian blob, some of the named characters for instance.
The relevance of the performance of CWE before the deep strike nerf, Dark Reaper nerf, Farseer Nerf, Spiritseer Nerf, the latest Ynnari nerf and the rule of 3 is about as relevant as me bringing up the early stormraven dominance of marines before the flyer nerf....i.e., not.
I don't include Guardian blobs because post DS nerf they are irrelevant.
I didn't include Swooping Hawks for the same reason.
Fire dragons - ditto, people would deep strike them.
The flyers, sure, I'd definitely say I missed Crimson Hunters. I don't really recall seeing a Hemlock making an appearance in competitive play because it's so far outperformed by CH for the cost. Maybe someone's taking it for a Jinx replacement to the now nerfed Spiritseer?
Similarly, the number of non-bike Farseers or Autarchs I've seen have been vanishingly small. Maybe someone's run a jump autarch pre DS nerf? Maybe a foot farseer? If I'd listed "Primaris Lieutenant" and "Lieutenant" as TWO viable marine units you know someone (or like, three particular someones) would be jumping down my throat.
The overall point is: CWE is showing itself to be a brittle faction in the meta. When something like the chaff-clearing alpha strike of Guardians in webway gets nerfed, it's gone, with no real replacement. When Dark Reapers and Farseers got nerfed, they stayed in everyone's list, because Farseers are the only option for ROF casters and Dark Reapers are the only actually good heavy fire support unit out of the codex.
Compare this kind of response to nerfs with, say, Guard. Conscripts get nerfed? The other two Troops choices are also good. Tallarn gets nerfed? Everyones a Catachan, or a Cadian. Manticores get nerfed? Good thing we have 4 other good heavy fire support vehicle options. Flying low-T transports enter the meta? Good thing we've got these Hydras.
This is the difference between a really strong codex and a codex with a handful of strong options. CSM/Tsons codex vs Death Guard/Nurgle Daemons. Marine codex vs Guard codex. Depth means when one thing gets nerfed, you can take something else in the codex that does the same thing and see only a very slight impact on your performance. Lack of depth means you say "Welp, that's nerfed, guess I don't have an anti-infantry alpha strike unit anymore."
Breng77 wrote: You've missed a few units for eldar that have performed in tournaments.
-Guardians
-Wraithguard/Wraithblades
-Hemlocks
-Other Autarcha and Farseer builds.
Further your argument is disingenuous.
People argue books are low tier because they don't perform. SO saying "x" units are viable, when one book is placing 100th and the other first is not really a good comparison.
Beyond that there isn't really a competitive non-soup build for any army that can currently soup.
You're right about Guardians and Hemlocks (and the Autarch/Farseer statement is vague enough that it's basically both right and wrong), but what about a source on Wraithguard/Wraithblades in competitive lists? I could maybe maybe believe you on Wraithguard (though I haven't seen any lists with them), but I'll call BS on Wraithblades (but would love to be proved wrong)
Karol wrote: Maybe am biased then, I look at the eldar codex and can't find a single bad unit comparing to the ones in my codex. Plus eldar can always go Inari, something my army can't do.
But you can go and play whatever army is top tier in your area.
Not with the models I own, or is this some sort of sarcasm thing? I often miss those. Plus am sure it is not just my army feels that way, I have looked through lists that are being played and the eldar ones, depending on scenarios or missions, seem to use the largest number of different units. While some armies have this one army where the same units and characters are taken over and over again. Now am not saying I have seen all the lists in the world, but I did talk with people that play longer then me and they said it was always the case, and became and even bigger thing when ally systems were added .
I have no problems with eldar having a lot good units, now or through history. I would like my codex to have the same number of valid army choices .
There are roughly seven valid competitive army choices for CWE right now.
-Farseer on bike -Autarch on bike -Rangers -Shining Spears -Wave Serpents -Dark Reapers -Warlock/Spiritseer/Warlock Conclave/Some kind of Runes of Battle Caster I think post-FAQ nerf most people have shifted to a 2-man Conclave from Spiritseers
Completely mono-tactic (always Alaitoc in every competitive list).
The number of viable units around for CWE is almost comparable to the number of viable units that appear in factions that almost everyone agrees are extremely low-tier right now. Compare to
-Warboss on Bike -Big Mek On Bike -Weirdboy -Stormboyz -Ork Boyz -KMK -Kommandos
So while CWE have been performing pretty well, we know that their hold on the meta is pretty brittle and tied to a few specific units..most of which got nerfed in the new FAQ in one way or another. It's not yet clear how units from Drukhari or Harlequins are likely to supplant units from CWE in competitive soup builds, and much like we now see a whole lot less of codex: CSM in chaos lists, I'm thinking it's pretty likely we'll be seeing a lot less CWE in lists after Drukhari and Harlequins fully impact the meta.
I don't understand why you put the middle bit in there. It actually makes your(fairly reasonable) point sound ridiculous to compare something like a wave serpent to a stalker(which is a unit that no one has ever voluntarily played ever, I have no idea how it made it's way onto a list of 'viable' options when it's been consistently one of the worst units in the Marine dex since it came out) The comparison heavily detract from your point because all I can think about when reading over the marine/ork lists is "other than Ork Boyz, these all suck". Especially when you're putting in a reroll 1s aura character in the list of 'viable units' like it isn't just a math helper-outer.
the_scotsman wrote: The relevance of the performance of CWE before the deep strike nerf, Dark Reaper nerf, Farseer Nerf, Spiritseer Nerf, the latest Ynnari nerf and the rule of 3 is about as relevant as me bringing up the early stormraven dominance of marines before the flyer nerf....i.e., not.
The stormraven is right there on your list of marine units.
Besides the thread is power (or lack thereof) over a prolonged period of time, not just the past couple of weeks.
I can think of no other faction that's as routinely top tier as CWE and Marines. There are other factions that are usually mostly OK, but nothing with their rates of success. And CWE is top dog more often than Marines between them.
That said, point of order on 6E: CWE was top dog for less than half. Their Dex came out and their Serpents were OP and had a few other shenanigans. But pre-codex (which was over halfway through 6E), they were garbage.
For consistently "bottom of the heap", Sisters and Orkz are probably near the top of the list. Guard and DE aren't that far behind - and they're currently near the top!.
SM is probably the book that never really has been/becomes trash (outside those who discount anything below SM as "not part of the game). CWE come close, again.
It's kindof amazing just how much churn "top dog" is. Between 6E/7E, we saw:
-Marines
-CWE -Necrons
-Demons
-Tau
-Ynnair
Each have a turn as top-dog, with a few other minor players here and there.
All be "top dog" at some point. That's quite a lot of variety for a short span.
When you look at the "main" armies, most get their chance in the sun. Most get their time at the bottom of the heap.
I should note that "minor factions" do tend to have it worse. Inquisition. Harlies. Sisters. Corsairs. And further note that GK was a "major faction", but appears to have been relegated to "minor faction" now.
Eldar have always been good.
I was an addicted tournament player for one decade stopping when the 7th ed came out.
My Eldar was always able to beat 90 to 95% of all armies out there no matter what.
Martel732 wrote: "White Scars Gladius was a top tier list through most of 7th. "
Yeah. A gimmick.
Firstly, you're not the one that decides what 'a gimmick' is. The white scars gladius was no more of a gimmick than wraithknights, or Decurions, or 2++ invuls, or any of the other crazy powerful things that were standard issue, garden variety army construction in 7th.
Secondly, there were MANY other lists that were EXTREMELY good that the marines could play. The droppod list that finished 10th at Adepticon AFTER Magnus came in, or any of the insane number of deathstars marines could run, the other versions of gladius, or centurion star, Librarius conclave daemon batteries, etc, etc, etc.
YOU might have been bad in 7th, marines were OBJECTIVELY great.
A gimmick is when you get free units. Literally - here - take 10 free razorbacks. That is a gimmick.
Specialist army with an answer for just about anything being able to counter... things.
But it goes further by having units in ever edition that are leagues above and beyond normal balance levels.
Just like every army ever. Except maybe 8th GK, but the NDK HQ seems to get some love, he is just lost drift a sea of bad.
I'm wondering if Eldar has always been "baller beyond comprehension", or if at some point in every edition someone got trolled by an eldar army that was a foil to their list (either intentionally by list tailoring, or unintentionally).
But most armies have, at least, one crutch unit that seems to form the backbone of their lists. Successful armies just seem to be able to link more of these units together, and to that point, Eldar has a wide variety of units (with varying levels of efficiency each edition).
Regardless, this thread is devolving into "trash eldar", so I think I'll hit the "passive lurking" button, again.
pm713 wrote: Perhaps you could tell me how something that has S3 AP- attacks, armour ignored by almost everything in the game and no assault transport isn't bad?
Guardsmen? Cultists?
Get to be taken en masse and have ranged weaponry? A guardsmen can sit still and pump out a lot of shots from half a board away. Storm Guardians can fail at punching you or shoot not many not amazing shots from 12" away before anyone with a gun butchers them.
Ah, 6-7e storm guardians.
Got confused by the description of S3 AP- attacks when the unit had strength 4 rending shooting (literally a more powerful game long free version of the old sororitas most powerful faith ability), and IIRC a bunch of bonuses including four free meltaguns and power swords when taken in formation.
Ooo free melta guns and power swords for a bad formation. So now you can have a special gun when you die to a breeze. The unit was a close combat unit there was no reason to use their pistol shooting as their standard. That's a bad comparison as well, if I shoot a Sister with a Bolter she gets a 3+ save but the guardian is dead. The Sister can shoot back from the same range. With best rolls the Storm Guardian gets shot at 24". moves and runs to fire it's pistol, gets shot again and then finally gets to charge if it's not dead.
Specialist army with an answer for just about anything being able to counter... things.
But it goes further by having units in ever edition that are leagues above and beyond normal balance levels.
Just like every army ever. Except maybe 8th GK, but the NDK HQ seems to get some love, he is just lost drift a sea of bad.
I'm wondering if Eldar has always been "baller beyond comprehension", or if at some point in every edition someone got trolled by an eldar army that was a foil to their list (either intentionally by list tailoring, or unintentionally).
But most armies have, at least, one crutch unit that seems to form the backbone of their lists. Successful armies just seem to be able to link more of these units together, and to that point, Eldar has a wide variety of units (with varying levels of efficiency each edition).
Regardless, this thread is devolving into "trash eldar", so I think I'll hit the "passive lurking" button, again.
Typically in these discussions, if you disagree with someone you actually discuss your perspective or offer some sort of evidence that counters the prevailing argument.
Instead, you simply complain everyone is trashing Eldar, ignore the evidence and arguments, and then publicly announce you'll be lurking because you willingly entered a thread, typed a response, and decided to hit submit on more than once occasion.
Seems odd.
It also seems odd that people get upset when their favourite faction is pointed out to be powerful.
Sniper Scouts had a rending S:X shot at 36". And actual rending, which was quite a bit better. And on 6s could choose the model to take it.
Sniper Scouts weren't good in 7th.
Sure, the Storm Guardian was a little cheaper than a Sniper Scout, but if you're afraid of it's pistol, you should see how scary <insert almost any troop in the game> is!
The 'taken in formation' means 'free' meltaguns on an t3 5+ frame, and 'free' powerswords at s3. Sure, better than nothing. But even with it, you were better off with a Power Sword/MGTac squad - which wasn't taken for very good reasons! And that's before talking about it's free Razorback!
Few troops don't destroy Storm Guardians, even if you give them the free equipment and don't give their opponents anything. Equal points of Tacs or Guardians or Sisters or Boyz make a mockery of them.
For all the 'Gladius is just a gimmick', 'White Scars is just a gimmick', 'Grav is just one gun' arguments out there, same could be said of any army.
It also seems odd that people get upset when their favourite faction is pointed out to be powerful.
We're not saying the codecies haven't been good for eldar. We are challenging the people saying that every unit in the codex was at least okay because there were some very good units in the same book.
Eldar have traditionally been good-to-broken throughout the editions, and that is for 2 reasons.
1: Most of their units are specialized at something, which means the Eldar usually have a tool for any particular job.
2:The Eldar have always been the army that gets the most ways to break the core rules. They're GW's space elves, so they have to be a little extra special as a result.
Grand.Master.Raziel wrote: Eldar have traditionally been good-to-broken throughout the editions, and that is for 2 reasons.
1: Most of their units are specialized at something, which means the Eldar usually have a tool for any particular job.
2:The Eldar have always been the army that gets the most ways to break the core rules. They're GW's space elves, so they have to be a little extra special as a result.
^this basically.
#1 was especially prevalent before 8E when units could not split fire and all models had to engage the same target.
We see #2 a lot with "elf" type or equivalent factions (such as the Shaltari in Dropzone/Dropfleet) quite frequently in gaming, and it never fails to result in balance issues, it is not unique to GW, though GW is particularly egregious about it (anyone remember Eldar in BFG?).
Generic codex space marines has been bad since I've played the game (starting in 4th). Typically it's always the first army in a new edition - so it get's a psuedo sense of short term success and as other armies come out - it gets cast into oblivion. The army has always had core problems that never get fixed.
-Power armor is not effective
-Terminator armor is not effective
-Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason.
-Pay for assault stats without any real ability to use them (mobility is low - survivability is low) and close combat weapons are too expensive on anything but a captain.
-Vehicles are bad (the best marine vehicle I've ever seen was the 7th ed land speeder storm - it was like something you'd see in a xeno codex - WTF - I can shoot out of this? It has multiple free special rules? It has a gun with a special rule? OMG.) Vindicators have always sucked (this is the first edition you can actually move and shoot the thing) Too bad it's not nearly as powerful as it could have been if it had the ability to do that in other edditions (ofc the IG tanks with the same weapon have always been able to move and shoot it with a special rule) Preditors have always been bad - light tank that gets punished for moving. Whirlwinds were decent in 7th with a formation that required you take 3 of them and a land speeder. IG wyvern was better as it got reroll wounds on it's weapon for free lol without being in a formation.
It's comical really how bad marines stuff has been. You will always have the forge world stuff that is OP that makes the army playable (honestly it's always been like that for marines). You'll also have the gimick stuff that makes the army more playable (sicarians/leviathans/firerapotrs) + ally shenanigans creating indestructible units with every ability in the game. Or like 7th edition gladius (the first super formation) which was really not any better than other formations that came later (in fact it was much worse). Please - just reference 7th edition Ynnari if you want to talk about an actually good army in 7th. I once beat 4k of deathwatch with 2k of ynnari in 7th eddition (I'm serious - it wasn't even close ether)
Seriously - when it comes to army power - you have to look at the edition as a whole. You can't examine a few month period where you had updated stuff vs non updated stuff when they both existed updated in the same version of the game. That is extremely poor reasoning.
People always seem to punish the grey-knights for being strong at the end of 5th. The eldar though who received the most busted rules to ever exist in the game in the form of soul burst - are still allowed to be the most powerful army in the game.
pm713 wrote: Yet if I say Marines are GW's favourites so they get special treatment I get told how wrong that is.
That's because there are a lot of SM fanboys here and they don't like being reminded that they consistently get special treatment.
The only special treatment they get is coming out first in the edition - which is literally the worst thing that can happen for an army - it all but guarantees the army will suck at the end of the edition.
Xenomancers wrote: Generic codex space marines has been bad since I've played the game (starting in 4th).
This is not only completely false, its patently absurd, and its embarassing that it needs to be explained to you every time you claim this.
Argue with my points please. Don't just make blanket statements like. HAHA - look how dumb you are - that's just crazy talk. Very typical of an IG or Eldar fan boy. Next thing you are going to tell me about is Space marines winning a tournament with tactical marines or some other legit nonsense.
Are you trying to say that?
Gladius = Ynnari soulburst power level? Please make an argument.
Superfriends is actaully a space marine army? Because it's not - it's just a gimick abusing a poor ruleset taking from multiple codex and forge world.
Space marine (Codex) vehicals have ever been good? Please show me mathematically how space marine vehicles have ever been comparable to other armies good choices.
Power armor is actually worth it's cost? You don't even have to respond to this - It would be like arguing water isn't wet.
Terminator armor is actually worth the cost (baring a brief period in 5th where assault terms with Vulkan were actually good but ultimately made irrelevant by spacewolves and greyknight later in the edition). Yeah don't respond to this ether.
pm713 wrote: Yet if I say Marines are GW's favourites so they get special treatment I get told how wrong that is.
That's because there are a lot of SM fanboys here and they don't like being reminded that they consistently get special treatment.
And it's also got a lot of rational people who aren't SM fanboys like myself who understand they're not very good in this edition. While that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't GW's favorites - since that's a statement that is almost impossible to quantify - it certainly would suggest that there's a problem with marines not receiving enough from GW.
In either case, since the codex dropped, this is the first time i feel like i have an advantage playing people as Tyranids. I can't recall a time when Tyranids were generally good, prior to 8th.
Xenomancers wrote: Generic codex space marines has been bad since I've played the game (starting in 4th).
This is not only completely false, its patently absurd, and its embarassing that it needs to be explained to you every time you claim this.
Argue with my points please. Don't just make blanket statements like. HAHA - look how dumb you are - that's just crazy talk. Very typical of an IG or Eldar fan boy. Next thing you are going to tell me about is Space marines winning a tournament with tactical marines or some other legit nonsense.
Are you trying to say that?
Gladius = Ynnari soulburst power level? Please make an argument.
Superfriends is actaully a space marine army? Because it's not - it's just a gimick abusing a poor ruleset taking from multiple codex and forge world.
Space marine (Codex) vehicals have ever been good? Please show me mathematically how space marine vehicles have ever been comparable to other armies good choices.
Power armor is actually worth it's cost? You don't even have to respond to this - It would be like arguing water isn't wet.
Terminator armor is actually worth the cost (baring a brief period in 5th where assault terms with Vulkan were actually good but ultimately made irrelevant by spacewolves and greyknight later in the edition). Yeah don't respond to this ether.
It has been explained to you before that 7th Marines were a top tier book despite you claiming it was a weak codex. You stated that marines have been bad since 4th, which by almost any definition, is false.
Going by last edition alone, Marines were near the top. The incredibly simple fact you fail to understand is that the presence of a better codex doesn't make marines bad. Marines didn't have to be as good as Ynnari Soulburst to not be bad. The fact that they consistently won large tournaments with a variety of builds throughout the edition is all the evidence needed to state marines were not a bad codex.
The rest of your points don't matter because your initial claim is wrong, and there's no sense in getting into the weeds until you understand and admit that marines were never a bad codex. Ork players would love to be as 'bad' as you claim marines to have been treated.
Seriously, if you can't admit 7th edition codex marines was a top tier codex, then there's no sense in trying to engage with anything else you have to say.
SM book comes out first every edition?
8th: Sure
7th: Late
6th: Middle of the edition
Don't recall 4th and 5th, but that makes it fairly clearly not always the first. That's only 5 editions, so this isn't some technical counterpoint - the core of the argument is clearly incorrect in a broad sense.
Power armor is not effective? But yet you complain all the time about power armor-equivelents (3+)? You could say Marine PA overpay for that 3+, but clearly it's not the 3+ itself. If you go down the road of saying "I said power armor, not a 3+", but then the only crunch difference is that it's on Marines - so you're supporting your argument by assuming your argument is true.
Firepower costs more for no reason? Like how that quad-las Pred outshoots CWE tanks? Or how the Razorback outshoots the Devilfish? Or the Storm Raven.... Not all tanks are IG <insert your most hated>.
Superfriends are not an SM army? So they dont' take Tiggy (SM)? Sure, they use other Dexes too, so there is some argument there. But Superfriends is SM just as much as Ynnari is CWE.
Pay for assault stats they can't use?
SM + allies shouldn't be mentioned? Yet Ynnari shows up yet again? how are people fielding Ynnari without allies (hint: they're not)?
There are points that hurt SM, but you don't seem to be capable of seeing where they've done well, or the limitations to their weaknesses.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, I had to look up this, because it didn't jive with my recollection:
"Or like 7th edition gladius (the first super formation)"
Except that Decurion came out in January. Gladius in June. Decurion was the first, and there were others before Gladius.
I was referring specifically to this:
"Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason."
The quad-las Pred has more firepower per point than CWEBL Serpent or Falcon, and is better vs the things you should be using lascannons for than a Fire Prism.
In this particular vein I'm not staking the claim that SM tanks are better than CWE tanks. I'm showing that SM don't necessarily pay more for their firepower than non-SM.
Breng77 wrote: You've missed a few units for eldar that have performed in tournaments.
-Guardians
-Wraithguard/Wraithblades
-Hemlocks
-Other Autarcha and Farseer builds.
Further your argument is disingenuous.
People argue books are low tier because they don't perform. SO saying "x" units are viable, when one book is placing 100th and the other first is not really a good comparison.
Beyond that there isn't really a competitive non-soup build for any army that can currently soup.
You're right about Guardians and Hemlocks (and the Autarch/Farseer statement is vague enough that it's basically both right and wrong), but what about a source on Wraithguard/Wraithblades in competitive lists? I could maybe maybe believe you on Wraithguard (though I haven't seen any lists with them), but I'll call BS on Wraithblades (but would love to be proved wrong)
Every top LVO list had foot Farseers. As well as some other special characters. Swooping Hawks also were in one of the top 8 lists. I also missed Crimson Hunters as a possibility. As for the Wraith units I recall listening to a podcast about some reasonably large event where they did well, but cannot remember which one. It might have been Adepticon and they finished just out of the top 16.
I still think the number of usable units in eldar trumps what you see in Codex marine lists.
the_scotsman wrote: The number of viable units around for CWE is almost comparable to the number of viable units that appear in factions that almost everyone agrees are extremely low-tier right now. Compare to...
The difference is that those seven eldar units shut out the top three spots of the las vegas open this year. SM Razorbacks and lieutenants... didn't.
Besides Eldar can easily add more to that list - the fliers, swooping hawks, the odd guardian blob, some of the named characters for instance.
The relevance of the performance of CWE before the deep strike nerf, Dark Reaper nerf, Farseer Nerf, Spiritseer Nerf, the latest Ynnari nerf and the rule of 3 is about as relevant as me bringing up the early stormraven dominance of marines before the flyer nerf....i.e., not.
I don't include Guardian blobs because post DS nerf they are irrelevant.
I didn't include Swooping Hawks for the same reason.
Fire dragons - ditto, people would deep strike them.
The flyers, sure, I'd definitely say I missed Crimson Hunters. I don't really recall seeing a Hemlock making an appearance in competitive play because it's so far outperformed by CH for the cost. Maybe someone's taking it for a Jinx replacement to the now nerfed Spiritseer?
Similarly, the number of non-bike Farseers or Autarchs I've seen have been vanishingly small. Maybe someone's run a jump autarch pre DS nerf? Maybe a foot farseer? If I'd listed "Primaris Lieutenant" and "Lieutenant" as TWO viable marine units you know someone (or like, three particular someones) would be jumping down my throat.
The overall point is: CWE is showing itself to be a brittle faction in the meta. When something like the chaff-clearing alpha strike of Guardians in webway gets nerfed, it's gone, with no real replacement. When Dark Reapers and Farseers got nerfed, they stayed in everyone's list, because Farseers are the only option for ROF casters and Dark Reapers are the only actually good heavy fire support unit out of the codex.
Compare this kind of response to nerfs with, say, Guard. Conscripts get nerfed? The other two Troops choices are also good. Tallarn gets nerfed? Everyones a Catachan, or a Cadian. Manticores get nerfed? Good thing we have 4 other good heavy fire support vehicle options. Flying low-T transports enter the meta? Good thing we've got these Hydras.
This is the difference between a really strong codex and a codex with a handful of strong options. CSM/Tsons codex vs Death Guard/Nurgle Daemons. Marine codex vs Guard codex. Depth means when one thing gets nerfed, you can take something else in the codex that does the same thing and see only a very slight impact on your performance. Lack of depth means you say "Welp, that's nerfed, guess I don't have an anti-infantry alpha strike unit anymore."
Those units are still good post DS nerf. Every LVO list (basically any reaper list) runs foot farseers because they are better than bike seers in that build (cheaper and can embark). Primaris LT basically has no reason to be fielded as he has basically no advantage, so that comparison is not very genuine. It would be more akin to Jump LT and regular. However those are the same data slate.
Xenomancers wrote: Generic codex space marines has been bad since I've played the game (starting in 4th). Typically it's always the first army in a new edition - so it get's a psuedo sense of short term success and as other armies come out - it gets cast into oblivion. The army has always had core problems that never get fixed.
-Power armor is not effective
-Terminator armor is not effective
-Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason.
-Pay for assault stats without any real ability to use them (mobility is low - survivability is low) and close combat weapons are too expensive on anything but a captain.
-Vehicles are bad (the best marine vehicle I've ever seen was the 7th ed land speeder storm - it was like something you'd see in a xeno codex - WTF - I can shoot out of this? It has multiple free special rules? It has a gun with a special rule? OMG.) Vindicators have always sucked (this is the first edition you can actually move and shoot the thing) Too bad it's not nearly as powerful as it could have been if it had the ability to do that in other edditions (ofc the IG tanks with the same weapon have always been able to move and shoot it with a special rule) Preditors have always been bad - light tank that gets punished for moving. Whirlwinds were decent in 7th with a formation that required you take 3 of them and a land speeder. IG wyvern was better as it got reroll wounds on it's weapon for free lol without being in a formation.
It's comical really how bad marines stuff has been. You will always have the forge world stuff that is OP that makes the army playable (honestly it's always been like that for marines). You'll also have the gimick stuff that makes the army more playable (sicarians/leviathans/firerapotrs) + ally shenanigans creating indestructible units with every ability in the game. Or like 7th edition gladius (the first super formation) which was really not any better than other formations that came later (in fact it was much worse). Please - just reference 7th edition Ynnari if you want to talk about an actually good army in 7th. I once beat 4k of deathwatch with 2k of ynnari in 7th eddition (I'm serious - it wasn't even close ether)
Seriously - when it comes to army power - you have to look at the edition as a whole. You can't examine a few month period where you had updated stuff vs non updated stuff when they both existed updated in the same version of the game. That is extremely poor reasoning.
People always seem to punish the grey-knights for being strong at the end of 5th. The eldar though who received the most busted rules to ever exist in the game in the form of soul burst - are still allowed to be the most powerful army in the game.
pm713 wrote: Yet if I say Marines are GW's favourites so they get special treatment I get told how wrong that is.
That's because there are a lot of SM fanboys here and they don't like being reminded that they consistently get special treatment.
The only special treatment they get is coming out first in the edition - which is literally the worst thing that can happen for an army - it all but guarantees the army will suck at the end of the edition.
So, when it comes to marines, where they came out early in the edition, dominated because they were the only codex, then saw repeated nerfs until they're lower tier later in the edition, we should not judge their relative power on early success. Also, we should not look at outside gimmicks you can take WITH marine units (forgeworld, gladius) and judge power of marines as a whole.
But when it comes to Eldar, we should look at Ynnari, which came out early in the edition, dominated, then saw repeated nerfs (soulburst nerf to once per turn, nerf to WOTF, nerf to require Ynnari warlord, nerf to require a pure Asuryani/Drukhari/Harlequin detachment WITH ynnari warlord) until they got to the point they're at right now, where there were fewer Ynnari detachments taken to the London GT than there were pure no-allies Space Marine armies. We should also DEFINITELY judge Eldar as broken because of an outside gimmick (soulburst) which despite not technically being the same faction, and being added in by a book outside the codex as a sales tactic, you think is the most broken rule in the game.
But Skyhammer, for example, was just a sales tactic gimmick which should not bear any indication on the relative power judgement of space marines.
And you're not seeing any kind of double standard here.
I ain't saying Eldar aren't a good faction at the moment. And I ain't saying they should be ALLOWED to be super powerful or dominant - where they do actually dominate the meta, they should be, and have been, receiving nerfs.
I think another reason is that Eldar have tended to be reliable.
I mean assuming the same points, would you rather have 1 shot that hits on a 2+ or 5 shots that hit on a 6+? In terms of probability its the same - but the first has only a 16%~ chance to miss, while the second has a 40% chance to miss all 5 shots. On the plus side 20% of the time you will get 2 or more hits.
When tournaments come down to winning 5 games you need consistency, not red hot dice one game and then a complete failure the next.
I see people still don't get that an army can be powerful or over powered and still be a bad army. If all you want is to trash your opponent then he wait for GW to finally give you the lime light and just switch your army? If you want to cry about how bad your army is, then make a new thread.
Here, I'll give you some inspiration for that thread. The worst codex I have ever seen was the original Tau codex. Not only was it an all shooting army released in an addition when CC was heavily favored but its unit selection compared to other codexes was a joke. I remember a WD battle report were the players threw out points and just filled up a FOC chart with no limit to upgrades. I used this to compare my Tau with my 3.0 Chaos and then looked at what the point totals would be. The gap between the two was an absolute joke. It could have also been worse too, had I hamstrung myself by taking 3 squads of Kroot with Krootox and Hounds. That would have cost me all 3 of my FA and HS slots along with my Troop slots.
I was referring to the "pay more for the same firepower, but worse".
Let's look at weapons on troops then. An SM squad can take a heavy weapon. A Guardian squad can take a heavy weapon. Otherwise naked.
Overall, Guardians have twice the bodies, but die twice as fast. At 80 pts vs 65 pts. So they take up more space, but cost more per durability.
Lascannon vs Brightlance:
Lascannons are 5pts more, stock, but the platform is a bunch of points. Lascannons get +12" range (really useful to avoid moving to shoot), +1 S (wounding T8 on 3s). Brightlances have 1 better AP. The AT shooting clearly favors the Lascannon per unit. Surviviability about evens out per unit. And that Tac squad is quite a bit cheaper per unit than the Guardian squad.
AML vs IoMML:
The AML frag-equivelent has AP-1. Which is good. But again, it's more points to get the platform to take one. So again, the Tac unit wins.
Melta Gun vs Fusion Gun:
Guardians need to trade out their sidearms for pistols + CC weapons. Without gaining CC stats or a way to get into CC. Just so they can pay for up to two Fusion Guns. Their min squad goes down in points. So they aren't more expensive than a MG/CombiMG Tac squad, but they're even worse off survivability/unit than the other comparisons. And their chumps have pistols - so worse dakka from chumps than Tacs.
Flamers:
Same as above
Plasma:
CWE doesn't get Plas. The only specail weapon people currently care about.
It's just not accurate to say SM pay more for the same dakka.
It think to some extent that is a poor comparison because in eldar you don't use your troops as firepower as you have specialists for that role. With Stock guns Guardians outshoot marines point for point. Generally speaking in this edition tactical squads with special weapons are not very good, so when you look at having no special weapons guardians outperform the marines.
Grand.Master.Raziel wrote: Eldar have traditionally been good-to-broken throughout the editions, and that is for 2 reasons.
1: Most of their units are specialized at something, which means the Eldar usually have a tool for any particular job.
2:The Eldar have always been the army that gets the most ways to break the core rules. They're GW's space elves, so they have to be a little extra special as a result.
They're also generally given roles in all 3 offensive phases of the game, which means point cost is the only real limiter on their output.
Space Marines are often on the high end of mediocre because they're literally the baseline for everything in the game's combat engine. Everything else has slightly better min-maxed statlines. They're often good, even great; its just that since they serve as the baseline, they're rarely defining the meta. They are, kind of by definition; the first tier strategy that sets the stage for what kind of models DO get to define the meta.
@Breng,
I proably should have compared their weapons to Necrons or DE or anything aside from CWE, as it's just conflating topics.
I still don't believe SM have always paid more for the same firepower as other armies.
I think you're very right about the specialized role. I've always though of Guardians as militia, not soldiers.
Automatically Appended Next Post: (Also, I consider Bladestorm to be Plas of CWE. For three editions, with the exception of the index, Tacs + Plas/Combi have had about the same punch as the same points of Dire Avengers.)
Xenomancers wrote: Generic codex space marines has been bad since I've played the game (starting in 4th).
Generic codex marines were one of the better armies of 4E, and certainly of 5E (overshadowed largely only by other Marines and possibly IG and Necrons in the last few months).
Typically it's always the first army in a new edition - so it get's a psuedo sense of short term success and as other armies come out - it gets cast into oblivion. The army has always had core problems that never get fixed.
-Power armor is not effective
-Terminator armor is not effective
Hrm, in 8E thats probably a fair statement to some degree, but not so much in earlier editions, having a 3+ save really meant a lot in editions like 4E, the volume of fire geneeally didnt exist to overwhelm the 3+ in most instances the way it ballooned to in say, 7E. Likewise, Terminators featured heavily in many older SM lists. In 3E/4E, double heavy weapon 5man squads were popular, and in 5E the 2+/3++ Hammernators were practically an autoinclude, the bigger issue with Terminators broadly was that the basic Terminator SB/Pfist concept was envisioned for a fluff concept (short tight passageways held by dramatically less well armored opponents) that isn't reflected on 40k tables generally and the SB/pfist loadout hasnt ever really worked quite right as a result.
-Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason.
Hrm, historically speaking this hasnt necessarily been true. Hell, up until 8E, in most cases Devastators were more cost effective in terms of average number of hits landed per point invested than IG heavy weapons squads most of the time, especially when it came to guns like Lascannons, while being dramatically more resilient to boot, especially back in the days of 4E.
-Pay for assault stats without any real ability to use them (mobility is low - survivability is low) and close combat weapons are too expensive on anything but a captain.
In more recent editions I would agree, but in earlier editiona, especially 5E and earlier, they were able to use that CC ability quite well, the bigger issue being that another marine codex could come along and just do it better
Thinking back to older editions like 4E, a sergeant with a powerfist was ubiquitous, they were a huge part of the killing power of the unit.
-Vehicles are bad (the best marine vehicle I've ever seen was the 7th ed land speeder storm - it was like something you'd see in a xeno codex - WTF - I can shoot out of this? It has multiple free special rules? It has a gun with a special rule? OMG.) Vindicators have always sucked (this is the first edition you can actually move and shoot the thing) Too bad it's not nearly as powerful as it could have been if it had the ability to do that in other edditions (ofc the IG tanks with the same weapon have always been able to move and shoot it with a special rule)
Huh? You could move and shoot the vindicator in every edition, are you thinking *Barrage* ordnance like the Basilisk?
The only restriction was on firing Ordnance in addition to other weapons, which for the Vindi would be...a storm bolter. The IG tanks got an exception because they paid for a lot of other guns that were much more expensive and otherwise couldnt be used, and their exception rule was broken after 7E since it didnt override Ordnance restrictions when they changed it to Heavy from Lumbering Behemoth.
Preditors have always been bad - light tank that gets punished for moving.
Predators, while perhaps not outstanding, have never been awful. Theyve found their way into competitive lists in every edition, though the loadout may vary (mine lost their heavy bolter sponsons after 4E). I'd certainly take a Predator over any Russ in a 3E or 4E game, and over many Russ variants in later editions.
Whirlwinds were decent in 7th with a formation that required you take 3 of them and a land speeder. IG wyvern was better as it got reroll wounds on it's weapon for free lol without being in a formation.
The whirlwind was never spectacular, thats a fair point, though the Wyvern was also something of an oddity as well, a hamfisted new unit at the cusp of 7E that shoved the 2E era Griffon out of the codex (for the 2nd time) as part of a new plastic Hydra kit...where they then subsequently nerfed the utter bejeesus out of the Hydra which wasn't exactly great before (and in fact it made the Stalker look fantastic).
Bharring wrote: @Breng,
I proably should have compared their weapons to Necrons or DE or anything aside from CWE, as it's just conflating topics.
I still don't believe SM have always paid more for the same firepower as other armies.
I think you're very right about the specialized role. I've always though of Guardians as militia, not soldiers.
Automatically Appended Next Post: (Also, I consider Bladestorm to be Plas of CWE. For three editions, with the exception of the index, Tacs + Plas/Combi have had about the same punch as the same points of Dire Avengers.)
They haven't always paid more for the same compared to every other army. However, their firepower has most often been the "bland" version. Necron Gauss has always been better bolters. DE when they went with poison were better against many targets, though that is more comparable.
Marines have, and likely will always have the generalist problem. All their units are designed around a generalist platform (Their stats are good across the board, upper tier for most standard infantry with the exception of attacks). This makes all their units costly for their output because they pay for things other than damage output. This is exacerbated by the fact that the MEQ statline is way too common (it appears in more "armies" than any other statline). I think it was a mistake for GW(from a game design standpoint, not a business one), to put out 10 different flavors of marines. It is hard to make marines special when they are the base for half the armies in the game. GW should have made the GEQ statline the baseline stats for the game (I think that is the intent, but Marine armies outnumber basically all other armies). Marines at most should have been a single faction (with possible CSM), but probably would have been even better as a part of an "imperium" faction where they were elite units in a larger "human" army.
Bharring wrote: I was referring specifically to this:
"Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason."
The quad-las Pred has more firepower per point than CWEBL Serpent or Falcon, and is better vs the things you should be using lascannons for than a Fire Prism.
In this particular vein I'm not staking the claim that SM tanks are better than CWE tanks. I'm showing that SM don't necessarily pay more for their firepower than non-SM.
The pred costs more - it's less durable - it suffers greatly for being assaulted - yet - costs more than a crimson hunter exarch - which has equal firepower / increased durability/ immensely higher mobility which makes it's firepower much more effective / is immune to assault. This is what paying more for the same firepower looks like.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Same old crap from the same people living in lala land. I play every army. I can be objective - it is clear that you can't. Or you lack the ability really understand what makes units effective and what doesn't. I for one can't stand it when the clear worst armies in the game are somehow grouped into a "high tier" category because fanboys don't want their armies to get nerfed.
Bharring wrote: I was referring specifically to this:
"Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason."
The quad-las Pred has more firepower per point than CWEBL Serpent or Falcon, and is better vs the things you should be using lascannons for than a Fire Prism.
In this particular vein I'm not staking the claim that SM tanks are better than CWE tanks. I'm showing that SM don't necessarily pay more for their firepower than non-SM.
This is no longer true b/c of all the invulns in the game. Lascannons are now basically overpriced crap.
Bharring wrote: I was referring specifically to this:
"Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason."
The quad-las Pred has more firepower per point than CWEBL Serpent or Falcon, and is better vs the things you should be using lascannons for than a Fire Prism.
In this particular vein I'm not staking the claim that SM tanks are better than CWE tanks. I'm showing that SM don't necessarily pay more for their firepower than non-SM.
This is no longer true b/c of all the invulns in the game. Lascannons are now basically overpriced crap.
Bharring wrote: I was referring specifically to this:
"Firepower is good - but cost more than other armies for no reason."
The quad-las Pred has more firepower per point than CWEBL Serpent or Falcon, and is better vs the things you should be using lascannons for than a Fire Prism.
In this particular vein I'm not staking the claim that SM tanks are better than CWE tanks. I'm showing that SM don't necessarily pay more for their firepower than non-SM.
This is no longer true b/c of all the invulns in the game. Lascannons are now basically overpriced crap.
When a blaster is 17-18 - hell yeah it is.
Even blasters are blunted against other Xenos. Blasters kick the gak out of Imperials, but that's about it.
Bharring wrote: @Breng,
I proably should have compared their weapons to Necrons or DE or anything aside from CWE, as it's just conflating topics.
I still don't believe SM have always paid more for the same firepower as other armies.
I think you're very right about the specialized role. I've always though of Guardians as militia, not soldiers.
Automatically Appended Next Post: (Also, I consider Bladestorm to be Plas of CWE. For three editions, with the exception of the index, Tacs + Plas/Combi have had about the same punch as the same points of Dire Avengers.)
They haven't always paid more for the same compared to every other army. However, their firepower has most often been the "bland" version. Necron Gauss has always been better bolters. DE when they went with poison were better against many targets, though that is more comparable.
Marines have, and likely will always have the generalist problem. All their units are designed around a generalist platform (Their stats are good across the board, upper tier for most standard infantry with the exception of attacks). This makes all their units costly for their output because they pay for things other than damage output. This is exacerbated by the fact that the MEQ statline is way too common (it appears in more "armies" than any other statline). I think it was a mistake for GW(from a game design standpoint, not a business one), to put out 10 different flavors of marines. It is hard to make marines special when they are the base for half the armies in the game. GW should have made the GEQ statline the baseline stats for the game (I think that is the intent, but Marine armies outnumber basically all other armies). Marines at most should have been a single faction (with possible CSM), but probably would have been even better as a part of an "imperium" faction where they were elite units in a larger "human" army.
Xenomancers wrote: Generic codex space marines has been bad since I've played the game (starting in 4th).
Huh. They've been pretty good since I started playing. (In 2nd.)
Git gud.
You must have had the weakest possible player pool to think 2nd ed loyalists were "pretty good". There were plenty of games where loyalist marines didn't get a single turn in 2nd. Tabled on the top of 1. This assessment makes me question every single thing you claim about marines.
Skaorn wrote: What is good? Most people will say that Eldar are because they usually have some very powerful units each edition. Many of their units are considered worthless to take though. Does a few really powerful units make them a good army? In my opinion, no. A good army would be one where each unit is worth considering for use.
Not sure about 8th, but in 6th/7th every unit was worth taking.
Rangers, Shining Spears, Storm Guardians, Illic Nightspear, Wraithlords, Wraithblades. All of those weren't worthwhile in either 6th, 7th or both. Eldar in 6th was based hugely on Wave Serpents and 7th was largely WK, Scatbikes and Warp Spiders with another two units being swapped around.
Seems like you don't get what a bad unit is. For Bad consult 6-7 ed possessed and flash gitz.
Out of what you've listed as bad only Illic was remotely like this.
Perhaps you could tell me how something that has S3 AP- attacks, armour ignored by almost everything in the game and no assault transport isn't bad? Or how Rangers aren't bad when you're lucky to deal three wounds with them before saves?
Rangers: infiltrate and easy 3+ or even 2+ cover. You've got plenty of other ranged damage options. Now scoring can be handy.
Storm guardians can have multiple special weapon. Not the worst option out there. Still having shuriken pistols. Guardians with a couple flamers were pretty decent as chaff cleaners in casual games. Or you could get a couple meltas and they'd be supplementing the front better.
Both units were often used in highlander tourneys with great results. Everything other than Illic in fact. He's just too overpriced even for highlander.
Don't get me wrong, top tourneys (almost) never saw this units but in more regular games they were ok. Unlike a bunch of other units that did piss poor no matter where you use them.
Outclassed OK units =/= Crap units.
That's why i'm saying you're spoiled by good stuff.
Grand.Master.Raziel wrote: Eldar have traditionally been good-to-broken throughout the editions, and that is for 2 reasons.
1: Most of their units are specialized at something, which means the Eldar usually have a tool for any particular job.
I would say that also changed somewhat with 6th and 7th, where the eldar gained a lot of all-purpose firepower on tough, cheap, and mobile units.
Rangers had a 3+ or 2+ if they went to ground. SM Scouts had one worse cover, a 4+ vs a 5+, S/T4, much more options for weapons, and Scout. I do agree that they weren't terrible in the 7th ed book, but I wouldn't call them great. The 6e ones were bad.
The 'multiple special weapon[s]' is 2. Flamer or Melta. Their chaff-cleaning with Flamers is about that of a Flamer Tac squad, minus a bit. With GEQ survivability. For only a little less. A 2xMelta squad isn't that much worse an option than a TacMG/Combi-MG. It's a couple points less, but less incidental dakka, less than half the survivabiliy, and roughly equivelent CC punchiness. In either case, the oft-lamented (for good reason) Tac squad outperforms. They are bad.
I can see some use of them in Highlander, because you can't take more than 1 FD squad and/or 1 Wraithguard squad. Plus, it's the only CWE troops that can take either a Melta or Flamer.
Crap units is when they're outclassed by options in *most codexes*. Storm Guardians are outclassed in CC by *guardsmen* (4ppm vs 7 - same survivability, slightly more killy per model on the Storm Guardians).
Grand.Master.Raziel wrote: Eldar have traditionally been good-to-broken throughout the editions, and that is for 2 reasons.
1: Most of their units are specialized at something, which means the Eldar usually have a tool for any particular job.
I would say that also changed somewhat with 6th and 7th, where the eldar gained a lot of all-purpose firepower on tough, cheap, and mobile units.
That's something of an issue with the Eldar. The lore focuses very much on precision strikes and specialised units. Which is what Aspect Warriors are all about in both lore and (usually) gameplay. But when you have other things like scatbikes you don't need the special unit because you can blast through almost anything.
You must have had the weakest possible player pool to think 2nd ed loyalists were "pretty good". There were plenty of games where loyalist marines didn't get a single turn in 2nd. Tabled on the top of 1. This assessment makes me question every single thing you claim about marines.
Won one tournament, came in 2nd in another tourney. They were 400 miles away from each other, so it wasn't even just my local meta. I don't know what you were doing to get tabled in turn 1, but I don't think I ever had the experience.
You must have had the weakest possible player pool to think 2nd ed loyalists were "pretty good". There were plenty of games where loyalist marines didn't get a single turn in 2nd. Tabled on the top of 1. This assessment makes me question every single thing you claim about marines.
Won one tournament, came in 2nd in another tourney. They were 400 miles away from each other, so it wasn't even just my local meta. I don't know what you were doing to get tabled in turn 1, but I don't think I ever had the experience.
To be fair 2nd ed Eldar could get an easy first turn victory. It required a special mission card where you needed to get a unit in your enemy's deployment zone and Warp Spiders. If you had it and the first you could just hand them the card and say "Look, I win! Can you give me a new card so we can start playing?" Lol
You must have had the weakest possible player pool to think 2nd ed loyalists were "pretty good". There were plenty of games where loyalist marines didn't get a single turn in 2nd. Tabled on the top of 1. This assessment makes me question every single thing you claim about marines.
Won one tournament, came in 2nd in another tourney. They were 400 miles away from each other, so it wasn't even just my local meta. I don't know what you were doing to get tabled in turn 1, but I don't think I ever had the experience.
To be fair 2nd ed Eldar could get an easy first turn victory. It required a special mission card where you needed to get a unit in your enemy's deployment zone and Warp Spiders. If you had it and the first you could just hand them the card and say "Look, I win! Can you give me a new card so we can start playing?" Lol
I dont think that was automatic victory, probably some number of victory points. Besides, marines could have done the same thing with bikes or teleporting terminators.
A virus grenade could also wipe out an entire non-armored (e.g. Ork, IG) army too, and almost every army had a way to deliver a character to do that, one of the few times GW advised actually dumping something entirely
Vaktathi wrote: A virus grenade could also wipe out an entire non-armored (e.g. Ork, IG) army too, and almost every army had a way to deliver a character to do that, one of the few times GW advised actually dumping something entirely
Vaccine squig in the ork dex - a wargear item to prevent first turn wipeouts.
Also the vortex detonator in one of the expansions to ward off the eldar hawk wings/vortex grenade combo.
The objective was 5 victory points for having an undamaged vehicle or squad at more than half strength in the enemy deployment zone at the end of the game (usually turn 4).
You must have had the weakest possible player pool to think 2nd ed loyalists were "pretty good". There were plenty of games where loyalist marines didn't get a single turn in 2nd. Tabled on the top of 1. This assessment makes me question every single thing you claim about marines.
Won one tournament, came in 2nd in another tourney. They were 400 miles away from each other, so it wasn't even just my local meta. I don't know what you were doing to get tabled in turn 1, but I don't think I ever had the experience.
To be fair 2nd ed Eldar could get an easy first turn victory. It required a special mission card where you needed to get a unit in your enemy's deployment zone and Warp Spiders. If you had it and the first you could just hand them the card and say "Look, I win! Can you give me a new card so we can start playing?" Lol
I dont think that was automatic victory, probably some number of victory points. Besides, marines could have done the same thing with bikes or teleporting terminators.
I never played 2nd, I just saw the exchange I described take place.
Isn't that a common pattern for where these complaints come from?
A hated faction can do something OP. Doesn't matter that other factions can do the exact same thing with different units - it becomes legendary about just how OP the hated faction is.
We still have people who can't accept that Marines have not always been trash. I don't think the hobby will ever get away from that. Peoples' recollections are colored by their prejudices.
"Marines" have not always been trash. Even in 2nd, it was night and day playing SW or playing any other loyalist space marine faction. However, if you weren't playing SW, you had a very different view of 2nd than a SW player.
In 3rd ed, they made tactical marines remotely effective, and its been largely downhill for the marine statline since 3rd. I think this is the source of a lot of marine self-hate.
Bharring wrote: Isn't that a common pattern for where these complaints come from?
A hated faction can do something OP. Doesn't matter that other factions can do the exact same thing with different units - it becomes legendary about just how OP the hated faction is.
We still have people who can't accept that Marines have not always been trash. I don't think the hobby will ever get away from that. Peoples' recollections are colored by their prejudices.
Some of it is grounded in fact. Eldar usually do end up with some very powerful things, often influenced by not the best design choices and then all the edition changes where everyone was usually not playing with a codex with whatever the rules were at the time. For instance the Star Cannon in 3rd (Heavy 3 S6 AP2 or 3 36") was bordering on broken based on other armies' weapons, availability, and the occasional boost from guide. You could take it no matter who you fought and it would do well.
They usually have enough special units so the dice do come up in some units favor when things get up end with edition changes. Though they also get their share of bad units to go with it. It's also possible what some people remember as broken might be the result of an army being designed for a previous edition and not mixing well with the new.
Eldar are also a specialist army and can be really strong in the hands of someone good, who knows how to use them. I've been tabled by people like that with Eldar but ultimately I rate them as better than me. I have stomped all over Eldar players who a worse and had close games With those I'd say I'd equal. Of course I've also been tabled by bad luck so phenomenal that I think my opponents felt much worse about the game than I did. I've also seen good players with a generalist SM list table an ok Eldar players with list tailored for MEQs.
These things blend together to give the illusion that Eldar are a super powered army favored by GW. If that were true though, then you'd think Eldar would get more plastic Aspect Warriors and codexes each edition. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out things that are overpowered with the Eldar as it can lead to change. Simply saying that the Eldar are just too good and/or bashing on people for pointing out the flaws with the Eldar is kind of implying an "anyone who plays them is part of the problem". It breeds communities were anyone who sticks up for an army is immediately called out and dismissed as a crying player of said army or just being told to get good even when there are legitimate issues.
Being a powerful army does not make one a good army.
You basically just said something wasn't good, then proceeded to explain why that unit was, in fact, good. To clarify, I never said they were amazing, but no one can deny that they were a powerful, versatile unit that could fit in most Ork lists and could be as small or large as your point level needed to be.
Ultimately, they were fun, and the modelling opportunities and available models were awesome (though expensive). Nob bikers were definitely one of a few aspects of Orks in that edition that made them a solid codex.
Incorrect, I pointed out how EVERY unit with Multi-wound models was good. Wound shenanigans wasn't a strategy used only by Orkz.
I did some maths. Even on the move flash gitz outgun rangers point for point vs GEQ, MEQ and TEQ in 7th. Standing still they could do twice the damage vs GEQ and MEQ. It seems like you don't get what a bad unit is.
Umm.....what???????? Flashgitz were also severely over priced for their complete lack of durability. Or are you saying T4 with a 6+ save is durable? So while they might have out shot rangers...at 24in range....they died to a stiff breeze and the loss of 1 was a huge deal compared to the loss of a single ranger.
Here is a hint, don't retroactively go back and explain to ork players how their units were actually good because X when every facet of the game says otherwise.
Incorrect, I pointed out how EVERY unit with Multi-wound models was good. Wound shenanigans wasn't a strategy used only by Orkz.
...which still makes them a good unit. Its also important to note that they needed to be multi-save with wargear options. No one was terrified of Ogryn despite beingh multi-wound models.
Incorrect, I pointed out how EVERY unit with Multi-wound models was good. Wound shenanigans wasn't a strategy used only by Orkz.
...which still makes them a good unit. Its also important to note that they needed to be multi-save with wargear options. No one was terrified of Ogryn despite beingh multi-wound models.
And a 4+ and a 5+++ was terrifying? Nob bikers didn't change at all from 4th to 7th except the wound shenanigans went away. In 4th-6th Nob Bikers were 45pts (20 for nob and 25 for bike) in 7th they were 45pts (18 for Nob and 27 for Bike) In 7th they could still take a Painboy on a Bike if they wanted to, so why were Nob bikers crap in 7th compared to 4th? because wound shenanigans, not multi save. They were a decent unit, but no better then any unit with multi-wounds. And realistically, if you took 10 of them, you were looking at a MASSIVE investment in them BEFORE you equipped them with any PKs or gave them that Painboy on a bike, which cost another 75pts.
But honestly this is my opinion based on my belief that they were over priced and not that difficult to kill.
Incorrect, I pointed out how EVERY unit with Multi-wound models was good. Wound shenanigans wasn't a strategy used only by Orkz.
...which still makes them a good unit. Its also important to note that they needed to be multi-save with wargear options. No one was terrified of Ogryn despite beingh multi-wound models.
And a 4+ and a 5+++ was terrifying? Nob bikers didn't change at all from 4th to 7th except the wound shenanigans went away. In 4th-6th Nob Bikers were 45pts (20 for nob and 25 for bike) in 7th they were 45pts (18 for Nob and 27 for Bike) In 7th they could still take a Painboy on a Bike if they wanted to, so why were Nob bikers crap in 7th compared to 4th? because wound shenanigans, not multi save. They were a decent unit, but no better then any unit with multi-wounds. And realistically, if you took 10 of them, you were looking at a MASSIVE investment in them BEFORE you equipped them with any PKs or gave them that Painboy on a bike, which cost another 75pts.
But honestly this is my opinion based on my belief that they were over priced and not that difficult to kill.
Remember that in 5th, a full time cover save in an edition with less ignores cover weaponry was not something to laugh at. Now, I never said they were terrifying, and maybe that's my fault for saying I was blown away the first time I faced them, and then didn't explain how I learned how to deal with them (a regular at my club was an avid Ork player, the classic kind who cannibalized random toys to make 'battlewagons'). I felt I was pretty clear they were a good, fun unit, to which I don't think there's any disagreement. Part of their strength came from multi-wound shenanigans, but the stacking bonus of full time cover save, FnP, Inv, rapid movement, decent shooting (for Orks anyways) and near unrivaled melee killingness made them a good unit. They were distinctly better than a good chunk of multi-wound units, like Ogryn as one example.
They dropped off in power as the edition wore on, but I think we'd all be kidding ourselves if we didn't acknowledge they were a strong point in the Ork codex in 5th, which, if you recall, was the context of the original post you responded to.
Incorrect, I pointed out how EVERY unit with Multi-wound models was good. Wound shenanigans wasn't a strategy used only by Orkz.
...which still makes them a good unit. Its also important to note that they needed to be multi-save with wargear options. No one was terrified of Ogryn despite beingh multi-wound models.
And a 4+ and a 5+++ was terrifying? Nob bikers didn't change at all from 4th to 7th except the wound shenanigans went away. In 4th-6th Nob Bikers were 45pts (20 for nob and 25 for bike) in 7th they were 45pts (18 for Nob and 27 for Bike) In 7th they could still take a Painboy on a Bike if they wanted to, so why were Nob bikers crap in 7th compared to 4th? because wound shenanigans, not multi save. They were a decent unit, but no better then any unit with multi-wounds. And realistically, if you took 10 of them, you were looking at a MASSIVE investment in them BEFORE you equipped them with any PKs or gave them that Painboy on a bike, which cost another 75pts.
But honestly this is my opinion based on my belief that they were over priced and not that difficult to kill.
Remember that in 5th, a full time cover save in an edition with less ignores cover weaponry was not something to laugh at. Now, I never said they were terrifying, and maybe that's my fault for saying I was blown away the first time I faced them, and then didn't explain how I learned how to deal with them (a regular at my club was an avid Ork player, the classic kind who cannibalized random toys to make 'battlewagons'). I felt I was pretty clear they were a good, fun unit, to which I don't think there's any disagreement. Part of their strength came from multi-wound shenanigans, but the stacking bonus of full time cover save, FnP, Inv, rapid movement, decent shooting (for Orks anyways) and near unrivaled melee killingness made them a good unit. They were distinctly better than a good chunk of multi-wound units, like Ogryn as one example.
They dropped off in power as the edition wore on, but I think we'd all be kidding ourselves if we didn't acknowledge they were a strong point in the Ork codex in 5th, which, if you recall, was the context of the original post you responded to.
Fair enough I just never liked them. Like I said, for me most games in 4th-6th were 1500, with some going to 1750 or 1850 occasionally. And 10 Nobz on bike with 4 PKs and a Painboy on bike was 625ish points, So more then a third and closer to 1/2 at 1,500. Especially if you gave them those 5++ saves which I never did because why bother when I have 4+ armor and a 4+ jink save?
I do have to point out though that there dakka was less then good. In that aforementioned 11 bike unit (10 nobz 1 painboy) you have 33 TL shots, which equals 18 hits and 12 wounds with no AP against T4 at 18' range. Against a SM that equals 4 Dead Marines on average, So almost 700pts kills about 50 in the shooting phase. On the other hand, in CC they were beasts. 24 S5 attacks hitting on 4s wounding on 3s and 16 S9 attacks hitting on 4s wounding on 2s with the ability to instant kill anything with multi wounds or put -1 on the damage chart to vehicles. Basically you were wiping out any unit they hit in CC. The trick was hiding them or getting them stuck in with something so tough that they got to hide during the enemies shooting phase so they didn't get blasted off the table
4e was an era where a 4++ was a still a 1/army relic option for most and almost nothing had FnP. Good scoring units were all important, WS5 and T5 were very powerful, and a solid S8 power weapon hit killed anything short of a daemon prince or tyranid MC. Biker nobs took all of this and added wound shenanigans on top, and were dirt cheap by 4e standards.
I did some maths. Even on the move flash gitz outgun rangers point for point vs GEQ, MEQ and TEQ in 7th. Standing still they could do twice the damage vs GEQ and MEQ. It seems like you don't get what a bad unit is.
Umm.....what???????? Flashgitz were also severely over priced for their complete lack of durability. Or are you saying T4 with a 6+ save is durable? So while they might have out shot rangers...at 24in range....they died to a stiff breeze and the loss of 1 was a huge deal compared to the loss of a single ranger.
Here is a hint, don't retroactively go back and explain to ork players how their units were actually good because X when every facet of the game says otherwise.
Did I ever say they were good? No. I said rangers were also bad. I also said the orks were more durable IN COMBAT, which they are, T4 6+ is more durable than T3 5+ against S3, S4 and S5 which is the normal strength of units. They also have 2w each I believe.
There is a lot of cheese CWE have had, especially in the 6e and 7e book. The 6e book had a couple bonkers OP options, and a number of outright trash options by nearly any army's standards. The 7e book nerfed DAVU, and buffed just about everything else - even things that were already good. With the 6e book, I could easily make a list that was reasonable at most levels. The 7e book made it so I had to try hard to not make an OP army.
I was so excited going into the CWE 7e book, because most of the preceeding books were extremely well balanced around a shared power level. I was worried because Necrons had Wraiths and the Decurion - but aside from that, toed line on what appeared to be the new balance. Really exciting. Then they released the preview of the Bikes. Gah.
"Good" can mean many different things. "Good" as in "Quality", I'm not sure CWE win that award often. "Good" as in "OP" - yeah, they win it even more than Marines do.
I think it's important to check our colored views of what was against eachother, because just reconsidering it yourself, in your own head, is a mini echo chamber. So I find it useful to correct things like "Bladestorm made CWEOP" or "Marines have never been good". In part, to help those who are part of the conversation, whether reading or participating, to challenge the beliefs they hold - in hopes they form more accurate understandings. But also, in part, to help dislodge biases I myself have - such as I had underestimated how bad Tacs have it in the current edition.
So have at thee, all you "Marines have always sucked, everything CWE is OP" posters.
Incorrect, I pointed out how EVERY unit with Multi-wound models was good. Wound shenanigans wasn't a strategy used only by Orkz.
...which still makes them a good unit. Its also important to note that they needed to be multi-save with wargear options. No one was terrified of Ogryn despite beingh multi-wound models.
And a 4+ and a 5+++ was terrifying? Nob bikers didn't change at all from 4th to 7th except the wound shenanigans went away. In 4th-6th Nob Bikers were 45pts (20 for nob and 25 for bike) in 7th they were 45pts (18 for Nob and 27 for Bike) In 7th they could still take a Painboy on a Bike if they wanted to, so why were Nob bikers crap in 7th compared to 4th? because wound shenanigans, not multi save. They were a decent unit, but no better then any unit with multi-wounds. And realistically, if you took 10 of them, you were looking at a MASSIVE investment in them BEFORE you equipped them with any PKs or gave them that Painboy on a bike, which cost another 75pts.
But honestly this is my opinion based on my belief that they were over priced and not that difficult to kill.
Remember that in 5th, a full time cover save in an edition with less ignores cover weaponry was not something to laugh at. Now, I never said they were terrifying, and maybe that's my fault for saying I was blown away the first time I faced them, and then didn't explain how I learned how to deal with them (a regular at my club was an avid Ork player, the classic kind who cannibalized random toys to make 'battlewagons'). I felt I was pretty clear they were a good, fun unit, to which I don't think there's any disagreement. Part of their strength came from multi-wound shenanigans, but the stacking bonus of full time cover save, FnP, Inv, rapid movement, decent shooting (for Orks anyways) and near unrivaled melee killingness made them a good unit. They were distinctly better than a good chunk of multi-wound units, like Ogryn as one example.
They dropped off in power as the edition wore on, but I think we'd all be kidding ourselves if we didn't acknowledge they were a strong point in the Ork codex in 5th, which, if you recall, was the context of the original post you responded to.
Fair enough I just never liked them. Like I said, for me most games in 4th-6th were 1500, with some going to 1750 or 1850 occasionally. And 10 Nobz on bike with 4 PKs and a Painboy on bike was 625ish points, So more then a third and closer to 1/2 at 1,500. Especially if you gave them those 5++ saves which I never did because why bother when I have 4+ armor and a 4+ jink save?
I do have to point out though that there dakka was less then good. In that aforementioned 11 bike unit (10 nobz 1 painboy) you have 33 TL shots, which equals 18 hits and 12 wounds with no AP against T4 at 18' range. Against a SM that equals 4 Dead Marines on average, So almost 700pts kills about 50 in the shooting phase. On the other hand, in CC they were beasts. 24 S5 attacks hitting on 4s wounding on 3s and 16 S9 attacks hitting on 4s wounding on 2s with the ability to instant kill anything with multi wounds or put -1 on the damage chart to vehicles. Basically you were wiping out any unit they hit in CC. The trick was hiding them or getting them stuck in with something so tough that they got to hide during the enemies shooting phase so they didn't get blasted off the table
I always thought they were pretty cool, especially with scoring bikers with Wazdakka (really should have been any warboss on a bike) for a fun, effective army.
The shooting by universal standards wasn't great, but I did mention it was good for Orks, especially on a unit geared for melee.
Then again, Orks have always been a cool army, shame they've been mostly relegated to bottom rung power levels in recent editions.
Iirc nob bikers were one of the very few competitive ork units in 6th. Nob bikers, lobbas and probably lootas. Not outstanding ovedall but great for orks.
4e was an era where a 4++ was a still a 1/army relic option for most and almost nothing had FnP. Good scoring units were all important, WS5 and T5 were very powerful, and a solid S8 power weapon hit killed anything short of a daemon prince or tyranid MC. Biker nobs took all of this and added wound shenanigans on top, and were dirt cheap by 4e standards.
A different game back then.
4+ armor they get, 4+ JINK if they Jink and ruin their shooting and doesn't stack with Invuln, cover or armor, 5+ FNP IF they take a Painboy on bike (75pts) 5++ Invuln IF they take a 5+ upgrade per model, so on a 10 nob unit (11 if you count the painboy) thats 55 more points, 5++ Cover save if they took a Big Mek on a Bike with a KFF which costs 125pts, There was no option to take a 4+ FnP at all. So if you want the 4+ armor, 4+ jink, 5+ Cover save and the 5+ FnP on 10 bikers (+2 for Big Mek and Painboy) you are looking at a 650pts for just the nobz and 2 Characters, if you want that 5+ Invuln then its 705. Add in 4 PKs so they actually do dmg and that Waaagh Banner for that WS5 and you are looking at another 115pts so now your 12 Biker unit costs 820pts. But on the bright side they have 4+ armor, 4+ Jink, 5+ Invuln, 5+ FnP and 5+ Cover. Of course they can only ever use 1 of the armor, jink, cover saves and the 1 FnP so 1 save at 4+ or worse and 1 5+FnP. Not what I would call game changing.
I kid. In all honestly I think Eldar has always been at a minimum, pretty good, and Orks have rarely been much outside of a fun army. I do think Orks had a decent run with something strong at some point, but my memory may be shorting out on me, it's vague.
I kid. In all honestly I think Eldar has always been at a minimum, pretty good, and Orks have rarely been much outside of a fun army. I do think Orks had a decent run with something strong at some point, but my memory may be shorting out on me, it's vague.
4th edition and into early 5th we had Kan Wall, Bikers/speed freakz and Wagon Rush.
Ork bikers were pretty awful in earlier edition due to how much they cost. There was close to no reason to run them when you could just use trukkboyz with better results. Nob bikers were a different story because of possiblr buffs and musical wounds.
Based on your post you are thinking of later edition ork bikers (4e bikers had a built in cover save for instance).
You are correct, it was in 7th they had to jink to get the 4+ in 4th they had a built in 4+ cover save. So the difference is their shooting stayed relatively lackluster but again, 4+ Cover +5FnP isn't "Game Changing"
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koooaei wrote: Ork bikers were pretty awful in earlier edition due to how much they cost. There was close to no reason to run them when you could just use trukkboyz with better results. Nob bikers were a different story because of possiblr buffs and musical wounds.
Couldn't agree more. I loved my Speed Freakz list, I miss them :(
4e was an era where a 4++ was a still a 1/army relic option for most and almost nothing had FnP. Good scoring units were all important, WS5 and T5 were very powerful, and a solid S8 power weapon hit killed anything short of a daemon prince or tyranid MC. Biker nobs took all of this and added wound shenanigans on top, and were dirt cheap by 4e standards.
A different game back then.
4+ armor they get, 4+ JINK if they Jink and ruin their shooting and doesn't stack with Invuln, cover or armor, 5+ FNP IF they take a Painboy on bike (75pts) 5++ Invuln IF they take a 5+ upgrade per model, so on a 10 nob unit (11 if you count the painboy) thats 55 more points, 5++ Cover save if they took a Big Mek on a Bike with a KFF which costs 125pts, There was no option to take a 4+ FnP at all. So if you want the 4+ armor, 4+ jink, 5+ Cover save and the 5+ FnP on 10 bikers (+2 for Big Mek and Painboy) you are looking at a 650pts for just the nobz and 2 Characters, if you want that 5+ Invuln then its 705. Add in 4 PKs so they actually do dmg and that Waaagh Banner for that WS5 and you are looking at another 115pts so now your 12 Biker unit costs 820pts. But on the bright side they have 4+ armor, 4+ Jink, 5+ Invuln, 5+ FnP and 5+ Cover. Of course they can only ever use 1 of the armor, jink, cover saves and the 1 FnP so 1 save at 4+ or worse and 1 5+FnP. Not what I would call game changing.
Of note Nob bikers did not need to Jink for cover in 4th/5th. They had the smoke cloud rule which gave them 4+ cover for existing. You also say they were as good as any other multi-wound unit. They were honestly better than most because they could exploit the wound allocation rules better than most of those units, the only unit that did it better was paladins late in 5th. Most other multi-wound units (there were not that many of them honestly) could not mix match wargear. Also of note T5 meant no instant death for the most part making them durable against the things that typically killed multi-wound units. They began to show their age in mid-5th ed, but that had as much to do with lack of supporting options as anything else. IF I recall they were also a troop choice in the 5th ed book if you too a warboss. IN 5th though they were 4+ armor, 4+ cover (all the time) with 4+ FNP which they basically always got. SO they saved on average 75% of wounds that came their way, except in CC where they might not get a save other than the FNP or a couple guys who you gave 5++ saves to. It was a unit that took a lot to put down. It seems to me like you are mixing editions in your remembrance of the unit as it was in late 4th/early 5th.
Space Marines are always doing well, model, lore and rules wise. They're not and I can't see them ever being a poor army. Eldar also always seem to do well among a couple others. Guard have a habit of flip flopping between great, mediocre and usable and could certainly do with some new models. As for bad i'd agree with others that Orks seem to always be rather low on rules effectiveness and don't get much in new lore and models in general.
Vanilla Marines issues is that they are usually quickly overshadowed by some other marines +1 codex in most editions.
Eldar tend to swing wildly as GW changes the combos but still can't balance them properly so eldar tend to end up with auto loose or autowin units.
Orks occasionally get some good rules but I don't think anyone at GW has had love for orks for a few editions now. Produce enough rules and something viable will probably sneak out.
Tau tend to vary heavily depending on who's involved as they need to dominate the shooting phase as they don't have a psychic phase or assualt phase. But this gives them a very narrow area to be "balanced" in.
Aside from having 4+ rather than 3+ a biker nob was effectively a 4e marine biker captain with a better invulnerable (1/army halos aside), more strength, a cover and FNP save, objective secured, and wound shenanigans, for about half the cost, as a troops choice.
There was a lot of better stuff as 5e rolled on, but they were one of the orks better tournament options.
Though a lot of stuff ignored fnp back then. All ap1-2 and power weapons. Also, id weapons and since bikes were t4(5) instead of flat t5, s8 weapons caused instant death. Imo, the change to fnp and toughness made nob bikers tougher dispite the fnp dropping from 4+ to 5+. Simply because they got it much more often.
I literally cannot remember a point in time where eldar was not the best army in the game by far, and I've been playing since 2nd. I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.
Necrons has always been decent. I don't think there was any point in time where they've been considered bad.
I don't think orks has been good...ever... I remember nob biker doom squad at some edition, think it was 5th or 6th that was merely ok.
DA has been bad since forever too. I don't even think they had any doom squad or cheesy unit to spam. Their death/raven-wings are also infamously bad.
Tyranids has been terrible since 5th thanks to cruddace. 4th was their peak with their malleable carnifexes and other mutations. Even in 8th, they're a pale shadow of their former selves.
Eldar are also a specialist army and can be really strong in the hands of someone good, who knows how to use them.
This myth has been floating around since 3rd. Pray tell, how much expertise and generalship does it take to spam starcannons, lead around a seer council of doom, do Taudar, spam scatbikes and wraithknights?
There is nothing specialist about eldar, they're all relatively hardy, have spammable weapons that can deal with any type of unit regardless, and are the fastest army out there. Literally no weakness.
Back in 3rd, we had a guy who was claiming the exact same thing you were claiming, and we started a challenge for each of us to take his army and try to lose with it. If someone lost, we paid that person and him half of the prize pool each, if no one lost in a year, he had to double what we put into the prize pool. He stopped coming in after 11 months
kburn wrote: I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.
It was a powerful 4e book with a lot of the steam taken out of it by the 5e rules changes.
Eldrad/farseers, three HS supports of scatter laser walkers and wraithknights, 3-4 units of dire avengers/rangers/minimum jetbikes, and perhaps a couple of squads of fire dragons in transports - easily 1500pts and anything over that fillout out the weapons, troops, and perhaps another support unit like harlies.
A capable enough army but liable to get wrecked by all kinds of nasty 5e lists.
SemperMortis wrote: Can someone tell me where this miraculous 4+ FNP was coming from?
In 5th Ed FNP was always 4+ As per the universal special rule in the brb. It changed to 5+ in 6th ed. It was ignored by instant death and AP 1,2. Power weapons etc. But a T5 model was getting a 4+ re-rollable against most things. At the time that was near the top as far as durability. It got eclipsed by Paladins later in the edition, and was nothing compared to 6th/7th unit’s. Against small arms though you were looking at a 5 or 6 to wound followed by a 4+ re-rollable. Close combat against high strength power weapons was their weak point. But they were better than many units at close combat.
kburn wrote: I literally cannot remember a point in time where eldar was not the best army in the game by far, and I've been playing since 2nd. I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.
Necrons has always been decent. I don't think there was any point in time where they've been considered bad.
I don't think orks has been good...ever... I remember nob biker doom squad at some edition, think it was 5th or 6th that was merely ok.
Eldar were intensely mediocre all the way through 5th. They weren't really bad, but the power armies of that edition were Guard, Blood Angels, Space Wolves and Grey Knights. Their book was designed to run the 4th edition rules ragged, but a number of the things they relied on changed significantly in 5th and they ended up paying over the odds for abilities that just weren't that good any more.
Similarly Necrons were terrible all through 5th, being a decade out of date and with very limited options. Their codex at the end of the edition was strong again, but that was only the last few months of the edition and really came into its own in early 6th.
Orks with Nob Bikers and the 4 Battlewagon lists were the terrors of late 4th and particularly early 5th, but quickly ran out of steam when IG's 5th ed book dropped and could cheerfully blow the wagons off the table.
Grimlineman wrote: I started the hobby at the beginning of 7th so don’t have a lot of history of army power through the editions beside what I have read on old forum posts. But I been thinking is there armies that have always been good every edition and also some that always seem to fair badly (talking about mono codex”s)?
From my point of view Eldar always seem to be in a good spot. I also thought spacemarines would always be upper tier being the face of the 40k and also the models that generate the most revenue. But they don’t seem to be in a good place this edition as a whole.
As far as who’s always bad. Not sure on this one it seems like all that have been around awhile have had their time to shine in one edition or another.
Thoughts?
Hard to answer, I've been playing since 2nd, Eldar have been best the most but armies have been bad or middle tier and gotten good by getting new units which people started to spam, like TWC made Space Wolves top tier, so its not as easy as saying which have been good or bad, because its complicated and you can have a 'bad' army that gets turned around by new rules or new units etc. formations in 7th was really crazy as well, you had armies going from middle tier to top or middle to bottom because they had gak formation etc.
Eldar are also a specialist army and can be really strong in the hands of someone good, who knows how to use them.
This myth has been floating around since 3rd. Pray tell, how much expertise and generalship does it take to spam starcannons, lead around a seer council of doom, do Taudar, spam scatbikes and wraithknights?
There is nothing specialist about eldar, they're all relatively hardy, have spammable weapons that can deal with any type of unit regardless, and are the fastest army out there. Literally no weakness.
Back in 3rd, we had a guy who was claiming the exact same thing you were claiming, and we started a challenge for each of us to take his army and try to lose with it. If someone lost, we paid that person and him half of the prize pool each, if no one lost in a year, he had to double what we put into the prize pool. He stopped coming in after 11 months
Well if we're going anecdotal then in 3rd and 4th, when I did most of my gaming, I beat Eldar more often than not with my Chaos 3.0 and up. Most of them used the good stuff though sometimes you'd get someone who really felt like using Swooping Hawks because they liked and worked hard on the unit even if it was crap. I once had a particularly brutal stomping of an Eldar player with my Tau, who probably had the worst codex in the game when they came out, because he ignored a 20 Kroot mob in woods 4 turns and kept putting rear arcs of vehicles in 12" of them. Some of the times I've lost was also because my dice luck can become catastrophically bad, to the point I've had opponents telling me to reroll all the 3+ armor saves I just failed because my dice were cocked.
The only Eldar player I've ever had a problem with not getting a victory in was one of my friends. Of course the same holds true with his DA too. Usually he uses his DA because they're more of a challenge but he breaks out the Eldar against players he thinks are good. I saw him once take on an Eldar player who people thought were cheating with his DA. My friend pointed out each rule the guy was breaking, let him do it anyways, calculated the few hundred points he had to be over by at a minimum, and tabled the guy in 3 turns. The guy was band from playing at the GW store shortly afterwards. My friend also picked up other armies like Nids when they were crap to play them for the challenge but sold them due to lack of space. To date I've never seen him lose. Then again his dad is even worse to play against in any strategic game and that was who my friend regularly played.
I forgot to add that a powerful army does not make it good, as it still seems many people miss this distinction.
Well if we're going anecdotal then in 3rd and 4th, when I did most of my gaming, I beat Eldar more often than not with my Chaos 3.0 and up. Most of them used the good stuff though sometimes you'd get someone who really felt like using Swooping Hawks because they liked and worked hard on the unit even if it was crap. I once had a particularly brutal stomping of an Eldar player with my Tau, who probably had the worst codex in the game when they came out, because he ignored a 20 Kroot mob in woods 4 turns and kept putting rear arcs of vehicles in 12" of them. Some of the times I've lost was also because my dice luck can become catastrophically bad, to the point I've had opponents telling me to reroll all the 3+ armor saves I just failed because my dice were cocked.
The only Eldar player I've ever had a problem with not getting a victory in was one of my friends. Of course the same holds true with his DA too. Usually he uses his DA because they're more of a challenge but he breaks out the Eldar against players he thinks are good. I saw him once take on an Eldar player who people thought were cheating with his DA. My friend pointed out each rule the guy was breaking, let him do it anyways, calculated the few hundred points he had to be over by at a minimum, and tabled the guy in 3 turns. The guy was band from playing at the GW store shortly afterwards. My friend also picked up other armies like Nids when they were crap to play them for the challenge but sold them due to lack of space. To date I've never seen him lose. Then again his dad is even worse to play against in any strategic game and that was who my friend regularly played.
The myth that eldar only plays well in the hands of expert players is still completely wrong though. Like I said, they are relatively durable with the best speed and firepower in the game. Nothing specialist about spamming seer councils, starcannons, holo-fields, taudar, wraithknights, or scatbikes. A specialist army is something like DE, who have paper armour, short range and extreme speed. In fact, IIRC, in the holo-field edition, with jink saves and all that nonsense, their vehicles were more durable than monoliths, were the fastest in the game, and had more firepower than landraiders. Specialist indeed, specialists in being completely broken and brain-dead to use.
Most eldar players have this massive chip on their shoulders where they think its their expert generalship that lets their specialist wraithknights stomp all over the armies of lesser players, but the one in my shop back in 3rd was particularly obnoxious. Not sure if your chaos 3.0 was iron warriors basilisk spam, but this guy had minimum guardian squads, a super-seer council of doom, and filled in the rest of the points with starcannon platforms like wraithlords. In fact, one of the few times I used his army was against basilisk spam, where instead of charging in, I sat back and shot at basilisks, won completely easily, tabled him in 4 turns. Seen other people do stupid things like park the seer council of doom just outside BA death company charge range, get charged, wipe out the DC, consolidate into tacticals, wipe them out.
Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.
kburn wrote: I literally cannot remember a point in time where eldar was not the best army in the game by far, and I've been playing since 2nd. I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.
Necrons has always been decent. I don't think there was any point in time where they've been considered bad.
I don't think orks has been good...ever... I remember nob biker doom squad at some edition, think it was 5th or 6th that was merely ok.
Eldar were intensely mediocre all the way through 5th. They weren't really bad, but the power armies of that edition were Guard, Blood Angels, Space Wolves and Grey Knights. Their book was designed to run the 4th edition rules ragged, but a number of the things they relied on changed significantly in 5th and they ended up paying over the odds for abilities that just weren't that good any more.
Pretty much this. I remember 5th being mostly Flying Farseers/Warlock death stars(which btw didn't have a model so not everyone was running these) and War Walker spams(boring as hell), and occasionally a Footdar army(which were at least somewhat fun albeit weird for such a highly mobile army). None of these were winning big but were doing okay. Everything else in the codex was just utter gak nobody wanted to play with. Then 6th edition came and we all know how that ended.
Well, 6E came and CWE got bad. Really bad. They had Eldrad + WarWalkers. Otherwise, they were paying lots of points for Guardsmen with shotguns. Or Storm Troopers with bad storm bolters for even more points.
In the second half of the edition, their book came out. Then DAVU started the hatetrain we have today.
Skaorn wrote: Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.
That goes to Marines without a doubt.
Well none of this is true - Eldar are actually a tactically adept army and they aren't at all forgiving. Fail to cast a crucial quicken and protect in a turn - you lose. Space marines are even less forgiving - go first or lose. A forgiving army is something like death-gaurd that has invo saves and FNP all over the place for free.
Skaorn wrote: Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.
That goes to Marines without a doubt.
Well none of this is true - Eldar are actually a tactically adept army and they aren't at all forgiving. Fail to cast a crucial quicken and protect in a turn - you lose. Space marines are even less forgiving - go first or lose. A forgiving army is something like death-gaurd that has invo saves and FNP all over the place for free.
Marines share most of their stats, have incredibly simple models by comparison and have reasonable armour for casual play.
Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.
In my personal experience, I have never found playing Eldar to be particularly challenging to play, at least not more than any other army, and depending on the edition, absolutely could be called forgiving. They have great specialists in a game that rewards specialists over generalists, while not a horde army they're generally not super outnumbered either (at least any more than most classic marine lists are) , they have some of the best support characters and abilities in the game (that often are some of the hardest to remove in practical terms even if not on paper), they're faster than just about any other army, and are very resilient (as a total army) to boot in most editions (save 5th where they didnt get a codex update).
Not as much in 8th, but there have been editions where Eldar could really easily be built to "pointclickwin" status, especially against typical TAC/pickup lists.
Skaorn wrote: Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.
That goes to Marines without a doubt.
Well none of this is true - Eldar are actually a tactically adept army and they aren't at all forgiving. Fail to cast a crucial quicken and protect in a turn - you lose. Space marines are even less forgiving - go first or lose. A forgiving army is something like death-gaurd that has invo saves and FNP all over the place for free.
Marines share most of their stats, have incredibly simple models by comparison and have reasonable armour for casual play.
Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.
I assume when we are talking about how an army plays - we are talking about how it plays best. Not some summation of how the army would work if you had to pick your units out of the codex at random or something like that. True - marines and eldar are similar - most of their units are glass cannons but you can't call them forgiving. Make a mistake or have a bad turn with a glass cannon army - you will be destroyed very easily the next turn.
Karol wrote: Someone told me that back in 4th or 5th ed eldar had tanks that could take on 1500pts of shoting, and not suffer any wounds. Is that true ?
Yes*
Skimmers downgraded penetrating hits to glancing hits and eldar vehicles could force you to roll twice for damage and take the worst result. Then they ignored most of those results - boxcars needed to knock one out of the sky. Plus the usual AV12, cover saves, and serpent shield as appropriate.
4e was also a high point for heavy weapon costs and typically you had very little outside of your three heavy support slots. A BS4 lascannon had a slightly less than 1% chance of blowing up a wave serpent before cover saves IIRC, and a minimum sized squad of devastators would set you back 215 points.
*A few things were notably more efficient against them, like sororitas exorcists.
Talking about how forgiving an army is to play is inherently not talking about how it plays best. How forgiving it is basically translates to the delta in power over the range of skill/correct tactical choices.
DAVU and Scatter Bikes were point & click, even moreso than Gladius or Obsec Spam. 8th E CWE might also be OP, but is less point & click to varying degrees. Less so than Bobby G and Assault Cannons were when they were the thing.
Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.
IDK, I guess wraith knights, seer councils of doom, holofield vehicles that can take 6 turns of shooting from a 1500pt army and not die, bikes with their ++++ jink saves, 3+ saves everywhere are just pure glass cannons, and die to a gentle breeze right? I mean, look at their T3! You might as well throw your wraithknights and holofield vehicles against the wall, they're so fragile that a single lasgun can destroy the entire army in a turn of shooting!
Also, there comes the extremely complex choice of do you shoot your scat-lasers/starcannons at marines, guards, vehicles, or all the above? Do I charge in my seer council of doom, or do I tactfully bait the death company, since they can't kill a single seer anyway? Its so tactically confusing and challenging, not even the very best strategists in the world would sob in their hands. Only in the hands of superior eldar players, can these confounding questions be solved.
So its official then, eldar is the hardest army of all to play, and eldar players the most intelligent!
Bust seriously, beyond not shooting your fire dragons at guard, what complex decisions do you have to make?
The thing to keep in mind is that no actual army is ever consistently, wholly potent. Certain factions can retain a fairly steady grip on power, but the paradigms of power shift so awkwardly and heavily with each major publication that the individual units within will vary wildly.
This reason, combined with GW's poor ability to consider balance and create rules, means that the most consistently powerful factions must have these features built into their fundamental core:
1) A high degree of competent and stackable specialization. 40k has always rewarded heavy redundancy, and specialist units tend to be best optimized for this, rarely wasting perceived point value on unused stats (see: the main problem with tac Marines).
2) A wide variety of the above units to fill a variety of functions. Specialization will reward certain armies in specific editions, but a wide variety of options means that shifting metas won't leave a faction without viable options when the old trick becomes outdated. The better fleshed out your faction is, the better capable it is to handle wild change.
3) Mobility. The value of movement may wax and wane over time, but it always matters. Table control wins games, and movement is the most universal mechanism in gaining it.
Fafnir wrote: The thing to keep in mind is that no actual army is ever consistently, wholly potent. Certain factions can retain a fairly steady grip on power, but the paradigms of power shift so awkwardly and heavily with each major publication that the individual units within will vary wildly.
This reason, combined with GW's poor ability to consider balance and create rules, means that the most consistently powerful factions must have these features built into their fundamental core:
1) A high degree of competent and stackable specialization. 40 has always rewarded heavy redundancy, and specialist units tend to be best optimized for this, rarely wasting perceived point value on wasted stats (see: the main problem with tac Marines).
2) A wide variety of the above units to fill a variety of functions. Specialization will reward certain armies in specific editions, but a wide variety of options means that shifting metals won't leave a faction without viable options when the old trick becomes outdated. The better fleshed out your faction is, the better capable it is to handle wild change.
3) Mobility. The value of movement may wax and wane over time, but it always matters. Table control wins games, and movement is the most universal mechanism in gaining it.
So, to that end, Eldar.
Indeed, they're pretty well built around these pillars. It also hasn't hurt that seemingly most every codex release they tweak a handful of things up to 11 to boot (particularly the 6E/7E books), and got an army wide boost in BS with the 6E book
Bharring wrote: Well, 6E came and CWE got bad. Really bad. They had Eldrad + WarWalkers. Otherwise, they were paying lots of points for Guardsmen with shotguns. Or Storm Troopers with bad storm bolters for even more points.
In the second half of the edition, their book came out. Then DAVU started the hatetrain we have today.
They were actually pretty good in early 6th ed. Seer councils did well at a few GTs with fortune + invis. They were just boring to play. It was essentially go second, survive all game, break the council apart to control contest all the objectives. I will say they were more finess at that point. But they were stronger in early 6th than late 5th.
Skaorn wrote: Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.
That goes to Marines without a doubt.
For the record, the original line of text being quoted here is not mine but kburn's. You must have deleted the wrong portion of the quote code by accident. I do not believe it as I've beaten Eldar a decent amount before. I mean, if they were the easiest and most forgiving army to play, would it matter what units you put into your list from their codex?
Well if we're going anecdotal then in 3rd and 4th, when I did most of my gaming, I beat Eldar more often than not with my Chaos 3.0 and up. Most of them used the good stuff though sometimes you'd get someone who really felt like using Swooping Hawks because they liked and worked hard on the unit even if it was crap. I once had a particularly brutal stomping of an Eldar player with my Tau, who probably had the worst codex in the game when they came out, because he ignored a 20 Kroot mob in woods 4 turns and kept putting rear arcs of vehicles in 12" of them. Some of the times I've lost was also because my dice luck can become catastrophically bad, to the point I've had opponents telling me to reroll all the 3+ armor saves I just failed because my dice were cocked.
The only Eldar player I've ever had a problem with not getting a victory in was one of my friends. Of course the same holds true with his DA too. Usually he uses his DA because they're more of a challenge but he breaks out the Eldar against players he thinks are good. I saw him once take on an Eldar player who people thought were cheating with his DA. My friend pointed out each rule the guy was breaking, let him do it anyways, calculated the few hundred points he had to be over by at a minimum, and tabled the guy in 3 turns. The guy was band from playing at the GW store shortly afterwards. My friend also picked up other armies like Nids when they were crap to play them for the challenge but sold them due to lack of space. To date I've never seen him lose. Then again his dad is even worse to play against in any strategic game and that was who my friend regularly played.
The myth that eldar only plays well in the hands of expert players is still completely wrong though. Like I said, they are relatively durable with the best speed and firepower in the game. Nothing specialist about spamming seer councils, starcannons, holo-fields, taudar, wraithknights, or scatbikes. A specialist army is something like DE, who have paper armour, short range and extreme speed. In fact, IIRC, in the holo-field edition, with jink saves and all that nonsense, their vehicles were more durable than monoliths, were the fastest in the game, and had more firepower than landraiders. Specialist indeed, specialists in being completely broken and brain-dead to use.
Most eldar players have this massive chip on their shoulders where they think its their expert generalship that lets their specialist wraithknights stomp all over the armies of lesser players, but the one in my shop back in 3rd was particularly obnoxious. Not sure if your chaos 3.0 was iron warriors basilisk spam, but this guy had minimum guardian squads, a super-seer council of doom, and filled in the rest of the points with starcannon platforms like wraithlords. In fact, one of the few times I used his army was against basilisk spam, where instead of charging in, I sat back and shot at basilisks, won completely easily, tabled him in 4 turns. Seen other people do stupid things like park the seer council of doom just outside BA death company charge range, get charged, wipe out the DC, consolidate into tacticals, wipe them out.
Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.
First off, reread the line you originally quoted from me:
Eldar are also a specialist army and can be really strong in the hands of someone good, who knows how to use them.
At what point do I state that "Eldar only play well in the hands of expert hands" there? As I have stated repeatedly, Eldar are a powerful army but not a good one. I think you misunderstand what a specialist army is supposed to be, an army that uses units designed to handle a specific task effectively and efficiently. Outside that task, they aren't particularly great. This is how GW has always described Eldar and their reliance on Aspect Warriors. This is how GW tries to handle the design of the Eldar, but they aren't good at it. They always manage to make units that are good to excellent and units that are not worth taking. As has been stated numerous times already, when there is an edition change, everything gets shaken up and the power units get a change up. Many times this is because the current rules happen to favor certain types of units and because you have many units that are supposed to be really good at certain things, those select units become really good. It can also be made worse when they don't have a codex that gets made for the new edition.
While you present all these spammable units though, you are taking them from a range of editions. Right now suggesting someone spam wraithknights would probably get you laughed at from just what I've seen from the thread on Xenos knights. Also, DE are a glass cannon army as they hit hard and fast, but fold under heavy fire. That's pretty much the definition of glass cannons.
Maybe Eldar players have a big chip on their shoulders because they have to deal with the a lot usually just implied "you're just a cheap power gamer" when discussing Eldar. This is something I've had my own experiences with the Chaos 3.5 codex, which is where IW baslisk came in with 4 HS slots to fill but 1 FA (I most often played as BL, NL, or AL and had no basilisks). I started Chaos 3.0 which wasn't considered all that great but was much better than Tau and nobody played them. Then GW put out probably the most broken codex they've come up with in 3.5. Despite repeatedly stating it was OP had to regularly deal with people implying or straight up telling me I was a power gamer because I used my codex and not even the most notable combos like IW or the Slaanesh whip it good combo. When CSM 4 came out many of us were upset because GW gutted Daemons from our army. I was flat out told a couple of times that we deserved it for Chaos 3.5. So, yeah, I'm kind of sympathetic to the Eldar players that I've met and generally talk about the poor codex balance and would like to be able to use any unit in their book and not have it be a serious handicap for not taking the current power units. If you want to blame anyone for poorly balanced codexes, blame the design team and not the player. Also don't assume that the entire codex is good because people are throwing out only a couple of super units from a codex. That's probably a sign that the internal balance isn't good.
So, if power is the major metric for determining what is "good" then were does internal an external balance come in? If Eldar are a no brainer, easy win, and super forgiving army, then why don't they give SM a run for their money in popularity?
Note: I put the line from kburn that is being misquoted as mine in this thread in bold to point it out.
Fragile units got more armour, unskilled units got stat boosts, units weak against vehicles got anti-vehicle weapons (compare reaper launchers and death spinners pre 6th for instance), support units became devastating attack units (wave serpents for instance, invisible councils), their centrepiece from being the slow melee avatar to the all singing all dancing wraithlord, and even small stuff like shuriken weapons went from light infantry attrition to massed rending attacks.
Fragile units got more armour, unskilled units got stat boosts, units weak against vehicles got anti-vehicle weapons (compare reaper launchers and death spinners pre 6th for instance), support units became devastating attack units (wave serpents for instance, invisible councils), their centrepiece from being the slow melee avatar to the all singing all dancing wraithlord, and even small stuff like shuriken weapons went from light infantry attrition to massed rending attacks.
I think this is a very astute point (not that you are the first to say it).
By contrast Dark Eldar are currently very strong but their inherent strengths and weaknesses remain consistent.
I would argue Tau are the ultimate Easy Mode army. Not that they are always strong and OP or Auto-win, but that to be competitive doesn't take that much skill. Case and point, Smart Missile systems, does positioning matter? not much, does target priority matter? a bit, but its good vs most stuff. Or the ever fun and completely not cheesy, Tau Onion of Death, 30-60 Tau Firewarriors wrapped up together in a big ball of fun, can't assault them and they out range almost all standard infantry weapons.
Hell look at 7th edition, what should I bring? Ohh I know, 3 Riptides and a Stormsurge, whats my tactics? Kill everything by turn 4.
With that said though, Eldar are still the clear winners here of the OP, they have been the most competitive over the 8 editions of WH40k, the only army close would be Space Marines and even then I still give it to the Eldar.
You can also get a pretty good handle on which armies are used to being strong by how much their playerbase loses their mind with whinging when they get given rules releases that aren't amazing.
You just have to look at the reactions of the Necron, Ork, and Nid playerbases to their rules so far in 8th and their reactions to new releases, nerfs and beta rules vs the reactions of Marine, Eldar and Tau players.
Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.
IDK, I guess wraith knights, seer councils of doom, holofield vehicles that can take 6 turns of shooting from a 1500pt army and not die, bikes with their ++++ jink saves, 3+ saves everywhere are just pure glass cannons, and die to a gentle breeze right? I mean, look at their T3! You might as well throw your wraithknights and holofield vehicles against the wall, they're so fragile that a single lasgun can destroy the entire army in a turn of shooting!
Also, there comes the extremely complex choice of do you shoot your scat-lasers/starcannons at marines, guards, vehicles, or all the above? Do I charge in my seer council of doom, or do I tactfully bait the death company, since they can't kill a single seer anyway? Its so tactically confusing and challenging, not even the very best strategists in the world would sob in their hands. Only in the hands of superior eldar players, can these confounding questions be solved.
So its official then, eldar is the hardest army of all to play, and eldar players the most intelligent!
Bust seriously, beyond not shooting your fire dragons at guard, what complex decisions do you have to make?
That's a really big chip on your shoulder isn't it?
Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.
IDK, I guess wraith knights, seer councils of doom, holofield vehicles that can take 6 turns of shooting from a 1500pt army and not die, bikes with their ++++ jink saves, 3+ saves everywhere are just pure glass cannons, and die to a gentle breeze right? I mean, look at their T3! You might as well throw your wraithknights and holofield vehicles against the wall, they're so fragile that a single lasgun can destroy the entire army in a turn of shooting!
Also, there comes the extremely complex choice of do you shoot your scat-lasers/starcannons at marines, guards, vehicles, or all the above? Do I charge in my seer council of doom, or do I tactfully bait the death company, since they can't kill a single seer anyway? Its so tactically confusing and challenging, not even the very best strategists in the world would sob in their hands. Only in the hands of superior eldar players, can these confounding questions be solved.
So its official then, eldar is the hardest army of all to play, and eldar players the most intelligent!
Bust seriously, beyond not shooting your fire dragons at guard, what complex decisions do you have to make?
That's a really big chip on your shoulder isn't it?
Wraithknights? Seer councils of doom? Scatter lasers?
Are you raging about 7th edition eldar still? Death Company can't kill a SINGLE seer in a seer council? Those guys that are like 55ppm, T4 4++ and 2W?
I'm not sure that you can chalk up reactions to nerfs to just historical power.
Players of the two biggest usually-strong armies - Marines and CWE - seem to complain very differently. Marines players always complain about how they've always been bad. CWE players are split between complaining that they're not OP anymore and that they are too OP.
I don't know why, but Marines seem to have an unreasonably high number of players who can't see the past for what it was. Sure, it's a minority of Marine players, but it seems to be a majority of the volume from Marine players.
Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.
IDK, I guess wraith knights, seer councils of doom, holofield vehicles that can take 6 turns of shooting from a 1500pt army and not die, bikes with their ++++ jink saves, 3+ saves everywhere are just pure glass cannons, and die to a gentle breeze right? I mean, look at their T3! You might as well throw your wraithknights and holofield vehicles against the wall, they're so fragile that a single lasgun can destroy the entire army in a turn of shooting!
Also, there comes the extremely complex choice of do you shoot your scat-lasers/starcannons at marines, guards, vehicles, or all the above? Do I charge in my seer council of doom, or do I tactfully bait the death company, since they can't kill a single seer anyway? Its so tactically confusing and challenging, not even the very best strategists in the world would sob in their hands. Only in the hands of superior eldar players, can these confounding questions be solved.
So its official then, eldar is the hardest army of all to play, and eldar players the most intelligent!
Bust seriously, beyond not shooting your fire dragons at guard, what complex decisions do you have to make?
That's a really big chip on your shoulder isn't it?
Wraithknights? Seer councils of doom? Scatter lasers?
Are you raging about 7th edition eldar still? Death Company can't kill a SINGLE seer in a seer council? Those guys that are like 55ppm, T4 4++ and 2W?
what are you actually on about?
He seems to be taking the spectacularly stupid approach of conflating the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th ed books all into one and then pretending that Eldar have been able to do all of that at the same time for the last 20 years. Clearly a troll with an absolutely worthless opinion.
Bharring wrote: I'm not sure that you can chalk up reactions to nerfs to just historical power.
Players of the two biggest usually-strong armies - Marines and CWE - seem to complain very differently. Marines players always complain about how they've always been bad. CWE players are split between complaining that they're not OP anymore and that they are too OP.
I don't know why, but Marines seem to have an unreasonably high number of players who can't see the past for what it was. Sure, it's a minority of Marine players, but it seems to be a majority of the volume from Marine players.
Marines have never been able to play the army they wanted to play. It's always been a gimick. Eldar have always had lots of good options most of which are better than marines by comparison playing the stuff you'd expect to see in an eldar army.
If I wanted to put 8 champions on the table and turn them into a mega deathstar...I'd play magic the gathering. You know what I mean?
the_scotsman wrote: You can also get a pretty good handle on which armies are used to being strong by how much their playerbase loses their mind with whinging when they get given rules releases that aren't amazing.
You just have to look at the reactions of the Necron, Ork, and Nid playerbases to their rules so far in 8th and their reactions to new releases, nerfs and beta rules vs the reactions of Marine, Eldar and Tau players.
To be fair, Necrons and Nids aren’t spectacularly complaining because they got good Codexes - for which the measure is not ‘how does their #1 competitive build compare to the other #1 competitive builds’, but rather ‘how well can I reflect the fluff of my army, and how strong is an army build that reflects their fluff?’ Eldar went from #1 by a mile to #2 or so, so their complaining is a bit spoilt brat but understandable, with Tau seeing a similar drag backwards. Marines got smacked around by the nerf bat and the ugly stick, only kept off the bottom of the heap by Grey Knights’ current misery, and they dropped there from #2 in 7th so they have more right than most to complain.
That Ork players don’t complain is just testament to their being the best human beings in this community.
"Marines have never been able to play the army they wanted to play. It's always been a gimick. Eldar have always had lots of good options most of which are better than marines by comparison playing the stuff you'd expect to see in an eldar army. " - Xeno
Lets compare some of the stupidest stuff each book has had more directly:
-DAVU vs Gladius:
Super mechanized undercosted transports defining a list. Sure, there are some DAs/Battle Brothers, but the transports do all the work. The difference is the Gladius has more variety, and their non-transports do a lot of work too. Both gimicks, but the Gladius very much did represent a reasonable SM force from a fluff perspective, and fought similar to one. DAVU wasn't fluffy and didn't fight anything like any CWE fluff.
-SL Bikes vs White Scars Bikers
Sure, there are a number of Samm-Hain players who love windriders. But lots of others who hated windriders. Same can be said for White Scars vs non-White Scars Marine players.
-SuperBestFriends vs Seer Council
Both were stupid hero deathstars. Both required allies. One was the heros of the imperium gathering together and kicking ass. The other was support psykers becoming the whole army.
-WK vs Bobby G
A big centerpiece. Hard to kill. Blast things off the table. One requires playing UltraMarines. The other requires playing a spirit host (in effect, if not in rules). Because somehow, an unkillable super-tough robot is the epitome of what CWE players wanted to play?
-Podded DevCents vs WWP Scytheguard
Both are an OP unit that could be put anywhere. The DevCents had a little less placement predictability, but a lot more range. Also, while DevCents could benefit from allies, WWP Scytheguard could not be fielded without allies. DevCents podding in was a little odd. Honored Dead being entrusted to some deviant Archon with no affiliation to the Craftworld and no Craftworlder joining, and allowing the Archon do to just whatever with them them is a fluff abomination, just a step below Abbadon and Bobby G allying up for the lulz.
-Obsec Spam (pre-Gladius) vs Spider spam
The Spiders are more stupidly OP. And far less fluffy. The Obsec Spam was Tacs in Pods - the basic 'Steel Rain' strategy. It'd be fluffier with some ASM and Devs and other support mixed in, but it's not so bad. Spider spam is entierly an unfluffy gimick.
Both factions have had unfluffy OP gak. Both factions have had lots of options and been OP/top dog many times over the years. But the insistence that CWE got the army CWE players wanted, whereas Marines got gimicky stuff they didn't want jsut doesn't seem to hold up.
the_scotsman wrote: You can also get a pretty good handle on which armies are used to being strong by how much their playerbase loses their mind with whinging when they get given rules releases that aren't amazing.
You just have to look at the reactions of the Necron, Ork, and Nid playerbases to their rules so far in 8th and their reactions to new releases, nerfs and beta rules vs the reactions of Marine, Eldar and Tau players.
To be honest, I haven't seen complaint from Tau players since Gamgee has been banned/erased from existence. I believe most of the Tau powergamers simply jump off to Eldar with 8th. Yeah, people complained with the Index because even if it was competitive with commander spam it was ultra boring and bland. The Codex does a good job at making other lists viables. It could have been better with Crisis, but aye.
Since then, have you really eard any complaint from Tau players? Since the codex I didn't (And I'm a tau player!)
The biggest complaints of 8th have been: Marines suck, Imperial Guard is OP, and Eldar are OP/Eldar Suck at the same time based in if the players play Eldar or doesn't.
So, if power is the major metric for determining what is "good" then were does internal an external balance come in? If Eldar are a no brainer, easy win, and super forgiving army, then why don't they give SM a run for their money in popularity?
They do among top level players. But they don't have near the fluff support, are harder to paint, and are alien. All 3 of those things work against them competing with Space Marines in overall popularity. A great majority of players (even "competitive" players) pick their army based on aesthetics and background because they get into the game knowing little about how it plays etc. Further most people don't meta chase/jump factions. So the argument that power isn't relevant to what makes a good codex, and using popularity as a metric is flawed. SM books have also always had bad internal balance.
Bharring wrote: "Marines have never been able to play the army they wanted to play. It's always been a gimick. Eldar have always had lots of good options most of which are better than marines by comparison playing the stuff you'd expect to see in an eldar army. " - Xeno
Lets compare some of the stupidest stuff each book has had more directly:
-DAVU vs Gladius:
Super mechanized undercosted transports defining a list. Sure, there are some DAs/Battle Brothers, but the transports do all the work. The difference is the Gladius has more variety, and their non-transports do a lot of work too. Both gimicks, but the Gladius very much did represent a reasonable SM force from a fluff perspective, and fought similar to one. DAVU wasn't fluffy and didn't fight anything like any CWE fluff.
-SL Bikes vs White Scars Bikers
Sure, there are a number of Samm-Hain players who love windriders. But lots of others who hated windriders. Same can be said for White Scars vs non-White Scars Marine players.
-SuperBestFriends vs Seer Council
Both were stupid hero deathstars. Both required allies. One was the heros of the imperium gathering together and kicking ass. The other was support psykers becoming the whole army.
-WK vs Bobby G
A big centerpiece. Hard to kill. Blast things off the table. One requires playing UltraMarines. The other requires playing a spirit host (in effect, if not in rules). Because somehow, an unkillable super-tough robot is the epitome of what CWE players wanted to play?
-Podded DevCents vs WWP Scytheguard
Both are an OP unit that could be put anywhere. The DevCents had a little less placement predictability, but a lot more range. Also, while DevCents could benefit from allies, WWP Scytheguard could not be fielded without allies. DevCents podding in was a little odd. Honored Dead being entrusted to some deviant Archon with no affiliation to the Craftworld and no Craftworlder joining, and allowing the Archon do to just whatever with them them is a fluff abomination, just a step below Abbadon and Bobby G allying up for the lulz.
-Obsec Spam (pre-Gladius) vs Spider spam
The Spiders are more stupidly OP. And far less fluffy. The Obsec Spam was Tacs in Pods - the basic 'Steel Rain' strategy. It'd be fluffier with some ASM and Devs and other support mixed in, but it's not so bad. Spider spam is entierly an unfluffy gimick.
Both factions have had unfluffy OP gak. Both factions have had lots of options and been OP/top dog many times over the years. But the insistence that CWE got the army CWE players wanted, whereas Marines got gimicky stuff they didn't want jsut doesn't seem to hold up.
Cents were literally only good with greyknight soup. Drop them with tigarius in a pod - they blow something up - then they get charged and tarpitted or your choice to risk GOI with tigarius and perils to death. Cents without GOI are not good - and quite honestly not good without white-scar relic ether. So at a minimum of 3 factions to make it actually good - and it still can't hurt things that only have invo saves (AKA lots of powerful things).
RG is not a valid comparison for a WK - RG was not even a competitive choice - he had 0 delivery methods and moved 9 inches and could be bogged down by any tar-pit.
Seer councils are not only fluffy but also don't require soup. Super-friends is the definition of soup and is hugely unfluffy.
Gladius is your only valid example here. Honestly - it's not nearly as good people complain about. If you gave eldar 400 free points they would auto win every game - give space marines 400 free points and they barely scrap by with an objective win. There is a big difference.
Another problem with saying marines were or weren't powerful for a given edition is that it depends alot on what you define as marines.
Does marines mean marines from the generic "Codex Space Marines" or are you including Dark Angles, blood Angles and Space furries under the term Marine?
As if you are then yes one of those books would have been viable in an edition, if your not combining codex into some super combo then marines have walked this path of OMG OP filth as they get an early codex and get left behind and replaced later by a Marine +1 or Space Furries new hotness which to non marine players is still just another OP marine list. While your codex chapter is left in the kiddy pool of competative lists.
Martel732 wrote: There has almost always been a competitive power armor list. Not necessarily marines.
I thought it was understood that when we are talking about Marines we are talking about "CODEX SPACE MARINES/ ADEPT ASTARTES". You know?
Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Greyknights, Space Wolves....they are all serpate armies with unique units. Plus yeah - at least one of these armies was probably competitive. SPACE WOLVES ARE ALWAYS COMPETITIVE.
Marines generally suffer from being the first meta definition. They determine what is or isn't good for every other faction. Once everyone else adapts to Marines, they fall behind by virtue of not posing an extreme skew in any one aspect of the game.
Xeno,
Podded DevCents were a hell of a lot more effective sans allies than WWP Scytheguard. Seeing as WWP Scytheguard sans allies didn't exist. Not as in weren't taken, but as in no legal entry could do it. DevCents might have not been great vs things with only an invuln, but of the threats of the day, how many were there? Every big bad I'm thinking of in that edition had a 3+ or 2+. And with rerolls to wound, it only got "not-uber" vs 6+ saves and worse. Even 5+ saves died quickly. Sure, they were better with Tiggy and GK, but they were just fine with just Tiggy - so you only needed one faction, but could do better with 2. As for range, yes, you then have to hoof around if you want to get within 24", which sucks compared to some things, but not compared to hoofing it at the same speed with 9" range.
RG had a great delivery method. Deployment. He didn't need to be in CC to do his thing. His thing is different from WK, sure. Perhaps they're not as comparable. Afterall, RG is the "uber commander" that makes your marines "more marines", where as WK is the model that says "ignore everything you know and love|hate about CWE. I just walk up the table and punch them". I don't see how the WK is more what CWE players wanted than RG is what SM players wanted?
Seer Council, I was thinking the truly obnoxious 2++ rerollable. And 2++s were not in the CWE book. But fair point that there were plenty of vialble Seer Councils that didn't need DE. However, while a Seer Council is a fluffy thing, the point is that the Seer Council should be supporting/leading the army. It shouldn't be the army. SuperFriends was more representitive of soup, but I think the fluff has far more instances of heros-of-the-hour band together in one unit and destroy armies than nameless-seers-go-super-ninja-and-kill-everyone. I don't like it, but it's more compatible with the fluff.
Any army with 400pts free would probably be OP. How is that different from saying any army, given a free S7 ignores cover range-who cares lots-of-shots weapon on each transport would win the game?
Of 6 examples, you debate 3, dismiss one, then claim there's only one example?
Ice_can,
i think most of these posts are considering Marines to be Vanilla Marines, in this discussion. DA/BA/SW have done well at different times, but vanilla seems to be in a solidly better league.
Martel732 wrote: No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.
Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.
Martel732 wrote: No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.
Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.
A lot of people assume that if your faction didn't win the last big event they're bottom tier.
Their record was so poor in my area, it's hard to believe they were truly middle of the road in 5th. Eldar had builds far more fearsome than what vanilla could pump out. Playing against vanilla in 5th was largely a cakewalk.
Bharring wrote: Xeno,
Podded DevCents were a hell of a lot more effective sans allies than WWP Scytheguard. Seeing as WWP Scytheguard sans allies didn't exist. Not as in weren't taken, but as in no legal entry could do it. DevCents might have not been great vs things with only an invuln, but of the threats of the day, how many were there? Every big bad I'm thinking of in that edition had a 3+ or 2+. And with rerolls to wound, it only got "not-uber" vs 6+ saves and worse. Even 5+ saves died quickly. Sure, they were better with Tiggy and GK, but they were just fine with just Tiggy - so you only needed one faction, but could do better with 2. As for range, yes, you then have to hoof around if you want to get within 24", which sucks compared to some things, but not compared to hoofing it at the same speed with 9" range.
RG had a great delivery method. Deployment. He didn't need to be in CC to do his thing. His thing is different from WK, sure. Perhaps they're not as comparable. Afterall, RG is the "uber commander" that makes your marines "more marines", where as WK is the model that says "ignore everything you know and love|hate about CWE. I just walk up the table and punch them". I don't see how the WK is more what CWE players wanted than RG is what SM players wanted?
Seer Council, I was thinking the truly obnoxious 2++ rerollable. And 2++s were not in the CWE book. But fair point that there were plenty of vialble Seer Councils that didn't need DE. However, while a Seer Council is a fluffy thing, the point is that the Seer Council should be supporting/leading the army. It shouldn't be the army. SuperFriends was more representitive of soup, but I think the fluff has far more instances of heros-of-the-hour band together in one unit and destroy armies than nameless-seers-go-super-ninja-and-kill-everyone. I don't like it, but it's more compatible with the fluff.
Any army with 400pts free would probably be OP. How is that different from saying any army, given a free S7 ignores cover range-who cares lots-of-shots weapon on each transport would win the game?
Of 6 examples, you debate 3, dismiss one, then claim there's only one example?
Ice_can,
i think most of these posts are considering Marines to be Vanilla Marines, in this discussion. DA/BA/SW have done well at different times, but vanilla seems to be in a solidly better league.
Sorry I missed the last 2. Objective secured - don't care - practically everything was running around with it.
Warp spiders - nothing forces you to spam them in 7th. You could take 3 of any aspect of your choice in an aspect host. You could be as fluffy or unfluffy with it as you wanted. OFC though - you were getting the 2+ to hit. Me personally - I hate the spider models so I have never owned any. They had such stupidly busted rules that anyone that was actually playing with them was TFG. My Siamhan friend would bring 1 unit of them and I basically had to ignore them because they were impossible to kill - or t the very least would be able to hop into cover.
Martel732 wrote: Their record was so poor in my area, it's hard to believe they were truly middle of the road in 5th. Eldar had builds far more fearsome than what vanilla could pump out. Playing against vanilla in 5th was largely a cakewalk.
Your problem is consistently assuming your little, bizarre microcosm is a reflection of the bigger picture. For someone so keen on 'mathematical' analysis of the game, it'd be pretty easy to figure out that 5th Marines had a few strong units, lots of decent units, and could make effective builds in the edition's meta. They placed well at events from my recollection, and were only really overshadowed by other marines.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because you weren't top tier, you must obviously be bottom tier.
Guard have always seemed to be in the good->great range. Orks, aside from their 4th edition codex have been pretty bad.
Generic Marines have been in the "good" range
Martel732 wrote: No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.
Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.
No - this is nonsense. They had a single salamanders build with vulkan which was strong early on in the eddition in 5th and it got power crept to death by SW/BA/ then GK. It still at no point could even challenge leaf blower IG and eldar could easily defeat it because they were solidly above it's power level. If you were crimson fists (which I was at the time) you were solidly out of luck and outmatched in literally every game. The one army that I think sucked equally to vanilla space marines was orks in 5th.
Yet again - this is another example of "play this build or you lose" type marine codex. It is a gimmick.
Martel732 wrote: No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.
Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.
No - this is nonsense. They had a single salamanders build with vulkan which was strong early on in the eddition in 5th and it got power crept to death by SW/BA/ then GK. It still at no point could even challenge leaf blower IG and eldar could easily defeat it because they were solidly above it's power level. If you were crimson fists (which I was at the time) you were solidly out of luck and outmatched in literally every game. The one army that I think sucked equally to vanilla space marines was orks in 5th.
Man, if only there were other codices in the game that were worse off or roughly equal to marines.
Its also as if there were more competitive builds than just one in that codex, and that even the Vulkan build had a few variant options to tool around with.
You've demonstrated time and time again to have an incredibly lacking understanding of power comparisons when you claimed 7th marines were a bottom tier army; its really, really hard to take you seriously on any other analysis if something that obvious eludes you.
Once again, not being a top codex doesn't make it a bad codex. Orks, Tau, Necrons (for most of the edition), DE, Sisters, and Nids were all roughly equal or worse off than Vanilla, which oddly enough, amounts to roughly half of the codices at the time.
*Edit* Forgot Chaos. Chaos (marines and daemons) were in rough shape for that edition and generally pretty bad.
Martel732 wrote: Their record was so poor in my area, it's hard to believe they were truly middle of the road in 5th. Eldar had builds far more fearsome than what vanilla could pump out. Playing against vanilla in 5th was largely a cakewalk.
Your problem is consistently assuming your little, bizarre microcosm is a reflection of the bigger picture. For someone so keen on 'mathematical' analysis of the game, it'd be pretty easy to figure out that 5th Marines had a few strong units, lots of decent units, and could make effective builds in the edition's meta. They placed well at events from my recollection, and were only really overshadowed by other marines.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because you weren't top tier, you must obviously be bottom tier.
That's just it; I don't think they had any truly good units. They couldn't even exploit pods well.
Martel732 wrote: Their record was so poor in my area, it's hard to believe they were truly middle of the road in 5th. Eldar had builds far more fearsome than what vanilla could pump out. Playing against vanilla in 5th was largely a cakewalk.
Your problem is consistently assuming your little, bizarre microcosm is a reflection of the bigger picture. For someone so keen on 'mathematical' analysis of the game, it'd be pretty easy to figure out that 5th Marines had a few strong units, lots of decent units, and could make effective builds in the edition's meta. They placed well at events from my recollection, and were only really overshadowed by other marines.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because you weren't top tier, you must obviously be bottom tier.
That's just it; I don't think they had any truly good units. They couldn't even exploit pods well.
Pods were still great for marines. They had hammernators, Vulkan, bikes, rifle dreads, libbies, preds, sternguard, speeders, vindis, and razors. All of those were at least good choices that filled their role effectively.
Martel732 wrote: No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.
Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.
No - this is nonsense. They had a single salamanders build with vulkan which was strong early on in the eddition in 5th and it got power crept to death by SW/BA/ then GK. It still at no point could even challenge leaf blower IG and eldar could easily defeat it because they were solidly above it's power level. If you were crimson fists (which I was at the time) you were solidly out of luck and outmatched in literally every game. The one army that I think sucked equally to vanilla space marines was orks in 5th.
Man, if only there were other codices in the game that were worse off or roughly equal to marines.
Its also as if there were more competitive builds than just one in that codex, and that even the Vulkan build had a few variant options to tool around with.
You've demonstrated time and time again to have an incredibly lacking understanding of power comparisons when you claimed 7th marines were a bottom tier army; its really, really hard to take you seriously on any other analysis if something that obvious eludes you.
Once again, not being a top codex doesn't make it a bad codex. Orks, Tau, Necrons (for most of the edition), DE, Sisters, and Nids were all roughly equal or worse off than Vanilla, which oddly enough, amounts to roughly half of the codices at the time.
*Edit* Forgot Chaos. Chaos (marines and daemons) were in rough shape for that edition and generally pretty bad.
Exactly, Marines were usually nothing special, but they were far from bottom tier especially compared to armies like Orks, CSM, Nids for long stretches
Martel732 wrote: No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.
Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.
No - this is nonsense. They had a single salamanders build with vulkan which was strong early on in the eddition in 5th and it got power crept to death by SW/BA/ then GK. It still at no point could even challenge leaf blower IG and eldar could easily defeat it because they were solidly above it's power level. If you were crimson fists (which I was at the time) you were solidly out of luck and outmatched in literally every game. The one army that I think sucked equally to vanilla space marines was orks in 5th.
If you were losing to Eldar routinely in 5th with Vanilla marines, it wasnt the fault of the book. Eldar in 5E were nowhere near as capable as that book was. Meanwhile 5E ended up being one of the better editions for Orks with Nob Bikers, Lootas, Painboyz, and functional Boyz mobs (No Retreat aside). I dont think Orks have been as capable since 5E actually.
Aside from Vulkan, White Scars biker/outflanker builds were capable and popular, as were basic Ultramarines armies, while Crimson Fists Cantor led Sternguard builds did pretty well, and the 3++ hammernators were a big scourge of most of that edition. Yes they were overshadowed by other marine books, but they were hardly garbage and absolutely were not worse off than Eldar.
Martel732 wrote: Their record was so poor in my area, it's hard to believe they were truly middle of the road in 5th. Eldar had builds far more fearsome than what vanilla could pump out. Playing against vanilla in 5th was largely a cakewalk.
Your problem is consistently assuming your little, bizarre microcosm is a reflection of the bigger picture. For someone so keen on 'mathematical' analysis of the game, it'd be pretty easy to figure out that 5th Marines had a few strong units, lots of decent units, and could make effective builds in the edition's meta. They placed well at events from my recollection, and were only really overshadowed by other marines.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because you weren't top tier, you must obviously be bottom tier.
That's just it; I don't think they had any truly good units. They couldn't even exploit pods well.
Pods were still great for marines. They had hammernators, Vulkan, bikes, rifle dreads, libbies, preds, sternguard, speeders, vindis, and razors. All of those were at least good choices that filled their role effectively.
Did you bother to actually read my post to completion, or just glaze over the period between my thought of "Pods were good" and "also, these things were good"?
Unless of course you seriously think I was also suggesting you pod predators as well.
Did you bother to actually read my post to completion, or just glaze over the period between my thought of "Pods were good" and "also, these things were good"?
Unless of course you seriously think I was also suggesting you pod predators as well.
Oh okay - because that would have been idiotic.
Still. There's nothing on that list that makes you say "uh oh". Not like a plasma russ.
I'm digging out my massive ork collection from the desk drawers in preparation of the new Dex, and it occurs to me exactly what Orks have always lacked... Anti Tank damage. I have over 160 Boyz, 35 Lootaz,20 Komandos, tons of Power Klaw Nobz, trukks and Wagons. No high damage anywhere.
Im already discuraged and I havent even started playing them this edition...
still.
It seems like the same old game of "Not getting tabled=WIN" for orkz will be played, or as I also call it, Shooting Gallery 40k.
If you use a middle of the road army agaisnt the top-tier armies of the moment you will get destroyed every time and will think that middle of the road army is bottom tier.
The 5E era Plamsa Russ that was priced as much as a Land Raider after kit, tossing small blasts onto targets able to use 2" coherency to mitigate casualties and where 4+ cover saves were available for just touching area terrain?
I mean, they were cool on paper, but they didnt appear in many competitive lists.
Nightlord1987 wrote: I'm digging out my massive ork collection from the desk drawers in preparation of the new Dex, and it occurs to me exactly what Orks have always lacked... Anti Tank damage. I have over 160 Boyz, 35 Lootaz,20 Komandos, tons of Power Klaw Nobz, trukks and Wagons. No high damage anywhere.
Thats never really been their thing, just like IG has never had bikers or beastly CC commanders. Thats what Powerklaws and Tank Hammas are for (though some assistance in their use could certainly have been warranted).
Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.
Galas wrote: If you use a middle of the road army agaisnt the top-tier armies of the moment you will get destroyed every time and will think that middle of the road army is bottom tier.
This is my biggest issue with 8th edition it feels very swingy.
First turn vrs going second is massive power shift.
Having a powerful codex or a not top tier codex can have a massive effect on the game.
Having soup or mono faction can totally change the power of armies.
Hopefully CA 2018 can bring in some more balance, but I suspect that 8th edition high alpha strike very swingy game design is here to stay.
It's hard to accept claims that SM are the worst book because there's only one build in it that's top tier when discussing eras where Obsec Spam, White Scar Rhino Rush, Bikers, GravCents, and more were all top-tier lists.
And "Obsec Spam" doesn't just mean "I have ObSec". It was a list where you'd field tons of Tacs and Pods (or possibly Rhinos) with a couple specials or combis, and do enough damage to keep the opponent from being able to kill you.
Also, the mental image of a podding Pred is hillarious.
So, if power is the major metric for determining what is "good" then were does internal an external balance come in? If Eldar are a no brainer, easy win, and super forgiving army, then why don't they give SM a run for their money in popularity?
They do among top level players. But they don't have near the fluff support, are harder to paint, and are alien. All 3 of those things work against them competing with Space Marines in overall popularity. A great majority of players (even "competitive" players) pick their army based on aesthetics and background because they get into the game knowing little about how it plays etc. Further most people don't meta chase/jump factions. So the argument that power isn't relevant to what makes a good codex, and using popularity as a metric is flawed. SM books have also always had bad internal balance.
There are some issues I have with your argument:
1) a top level players are playing for reward. Most will usually go with what will give them an advantage in the current meta to get to their reward. Eldar usually end up there because they usually have some OP units that can be spammed. Should the Eldar slip down the rankings of GWs poorly balanced game towards the bottom, many will likely drop them for whatever armies are now at the top. Look at Flyrant spam for example. Nids have often been near the bottom of the power rankings but the 7 flyrants were awesome briefly for 8th, that's gone now and I'm willing to bet that many of those players have moved on too. A dedicated Nid player, particularly one for a few editions, might lhave looked at 7 flyrants as a dubious purchase if GW decided to move back to more limited numbers of HQs that GW used to run with. Those that jumped on this band wagon now can't even use half of them in their army that they are less likely to abandon due to the meta change.
2) subjective stuff is subjective. Any painting is hard for me because my hands shake to much. When I first went into GW in my teens I saw SM and thought "meh, storm troopers with box vehicles with guns glued on. When I see a sci-fi setting I look at two things, what is the technology like and what are the aliens like. I was honestly more drawn to Eldar because they had the coolest vehicles and some of the models, but then there were the cone heads... I only got into 40k when the Tau came out around 10 years later because I liked the models better and had those very important sci-fi elements that originally drew my eye to Eldar originally. I disagree with fluff being what draws people in but something that keeps them hooked instead. I also think you're leaving out that SM, whether at GW stores or elsewhere, are the trainer army, especially if they are young. Back when I first walked into that GW store I even had a rep try to steer me away from Eldar to SM because they were easier to learn. Note: I think that I should reiterate at this point that I have never played Eldar, lest my comments be immediately dismissed.
3) you forget that most players will not stop with one army but branch out to different ones. Boredom and frustration with their current army are often a major factor, especially if most of your other opponents are other loyalist SM. Now, if power is the main reason for an army being "good", then it stands to reason that Eldar would be more popular than an army with a more dubious history over the editions. Usually I see more more Tau than Eldar or any other Xenos and I've generally see more Nid than Eldar players.
4) most people don't don't chase meta and, once drawn into the game are drawn to factions based on the aesthetics and lore, which is largely true. Admittedly I got into chaos because no one played them in my area and there was no pretending to be the hero with them. At best their lore is as appealing to me as when I go down a Wikipedia or YouTube hole regarding lore on DC comics to kill time, a curiousity at best. If you are calling it the major draw that an Eldar player feels is based on aesthetics and lore though and not being powerful, than the general environment here towards Eldar players is unfair. If they like Eldar due to the models and the lore you can't also turn around and say they can't complain when their army doesn't really fit with lore or that many of their favorite models get sidelined because they are not the current handful of useful models. On this thread though we have people saying that players complain that Eldar are OP but Eldar players say their army sucks. Both of these things can be true but Eldar players points are largely ignored because POWER and get crap because of GWs poor rule design. Also, if Fluff and aesthetic are part of making an army good than Eldar aren't that great as they have far less lore than SM and are using a lot of models that are finecast copies of old metal ones from 3rd ed or earlier.
5) I agree that power shouldn't be the metric that a codex is judged to determine if it is good or not. How well it balances with other armies and how well their own units balance with each other. If you have a well balanced game and then add an OP faction to it then your going to damage the game, not make it better. Being OP is a problem. Being underpowered is a problem. Having auto include and worthless units is a problem. Having poor support from the company is a problem
As with most things, the issues are not binary in nature. You might hate Eldar because they are more powerful than your favorite army but Eldar players can also complain about their army has its own issues and shouldn't be dismissed immediately because POWER. The simple fact is that 40k is not a well balanced game and the only people to blame for whose on top right now is GW. Unless you want to blame everyone for supporting GW with our monies for said game, then you be you.
Given that no books have great internal balance (Eldar ranks higher here than many other books as far as having viable their 2 units) or external balance, any argument using those metrics for army power/quality is somewhat irrelevant. As such for such a discussion you can look at 2 things. 1.) consistent above the board performance. 2.) ability to make a variety of powerful lists especially if those lists are thematic.
In both those categories Eldar often rank among the better armies. As to ease of painting. Marines are one of the easiest to make look decent with minimal effort/ability they are lower model count with easy details to pick out. Eldar are one of the more difficult, but not as difficult as some.
Nightlord1987 wrote: I'm digging out my massive ork collection from the desk drawers in preparation of the new Dex, and it occurs to me exactly what Orks have always lacked... Anti Tank damage. I have over 160 Boyz, 35 Lootaz,20 Komandos, tons of Power Klaw Nobz, trukks and Wagons. No high damage anywhere.
Thats never really been their thing, just like IG has never had bikers or beastly CC commanders. Thats what Powerklaws and Tank Hammas are for (though some assistance in their use could certainly have been warranted).
Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.
Well, Zzap guns in 3rd-4th were nasty. Autohit 4D6 penetration. Youch.
Shockk Attack guns in 2nd were premiere heavy-target killers. Terminators, Dreadnoughts, Tanks. Snotling appearing inside vehicles and attacking crewmen. Or just appearing inside the crewmen...
Breng77 wrote: Given that no books have great internal balance (Eldar ranks higher here than many other books as far as having viable their 2 units) or external balance, any argument using those metrics for army power/quality is somewhat irrelevant. As such for such a discussion you can look at 2 things. 1.) consistent above the board performance. 2.) ability to make a variety of powerful lists especially if those lists are thematic.
In both those categories Eldar often rank among the better armies. As to ease of painting. Marines are one of the easiest to make look decent with minimal effort/ability they are lower model count with easy details to pick out. Eldar are one of the more difficult, but not as difficult as some.
Actually for the last couple of editions now Craftworlds have had some of the worst internal balance out there, and saying no book has great internal balance is stupid, the current Dark Eldar book is great for internal balance with only a few units that no one would take, mostly from the Court and Beast Packs which weren't exactly most peoples first choices even if they were good.
Ice_can wrote: Another problem with saying marines were or weren't powerful for a given edition is that it depends alot on what you define as marines.
Does marines mean marines from the generic "Codex Space Marines" or are you including Dark Angles, blood Angles and Space furries under the term Marine?
As if you are then yes one of those books would have been viable in an edition, if your not combining codex into some super combo then marines have walked this path of OMG OP filth as they get an early codex and get left behind and replaced later by a Marine +1 or Space Furries new hotness which to non marine players is still just another OP marine list. While your codex chapter is left in the kiddy pool of competative lists.
I mean, you've got to look at things in context I think.
There was a whole period of the game I played through where literally 100% of competitive marine players regardless of how they were painted declared their basic las-plas and devastator marine armies to be "Space wolves" because then their marines just got a bolt pistol/chainsword and splitfire on their devs for free, no cost.
I'd call that "a competitive marine build" even though you technically had to declare yourself "space wolves". Just like I wouldn't stop someone who says "eldar are competitive" and shout "NO, ALAITOC are competitive! I am a dedicated Biel Tan player and we SUCK, ZERO lists in any competitive event EVER!!!"
When there's a braindead easy "best" army-wide rule you can just claim with the models you own and gain an advantage, you're never going to see a competitive player taking the less powerful option.
By contrast I would not claim that the 5th ed GK meta was a "competitive marine build" because that required an entirely different model range. You couldn't just take your marine army, say "theyre GK now" and have them be better without proxying.
If you say plasma russ was not top tier in 5th - it doesn't make it true.
2 inch coherency is not the norm. Units are normally bumped together in cover - or perfectly lined up after deep strikes - or coming out of transports. Plus models take up space - you run out of it. People just love to act like every model is 2 inches apart - they never were and they never will be.
Basically 5 plasma cannons on a 14 armor tank was exceptionally busted. Oh it cost as much as a land raider? Makes sense. It was better than a land raider.
Finding large listings of 7e tournies and even 6e tournies was easy. Is there a good place to look at large volumes of 5e tournies? It wouldn't be conclusive, but would be suggestive.
Still. There's nothing on that list that makes you say "uh oh". Not like a plasma russ.
Vaktathi explained it better than I could.
All of those things I listed were at the same general competitive tier level as a plasma russ, or better.
But once again, you also believe marines were terrible in 7th, so it begs the question if you truly understand balance and relative power.
I find it hilarious that you think space marines had a single entree in their codex as good as a plasma Russ...or really any Russ variant.
Marines were terrible in 7th. They required 400 free points of razorbacks/rhinos/drop-pods to be competitive. Or as countless upon countless space marine players will tell you. The units have always been bad - they have relied on gimmicks just to be playable.
Still. There's nothing on that list that makes you say "uh oh". Not like a plasma russ.
Vaktathi explained it better than I could.
All of those things I listed were at the same general competitive tier level as a plasma russ, or better.
But once again, you also believe marines were terrible in 7th, so it begs the question if you truly understand balance and relative power.
I find it hilarious that you think space marines had a single entree in their codex as good as a plasma Russ...or really any Russ variant.
Marines were terrible in 7th. They required 400 free points of razorbacks/rhinos/drop-pods to be competitive. Or as countless upon countless space marine players will tell you. The units have always been bad - they have relied on gimmicks just to be playable.
Eldar were even worse though. They needed their gimmicks to prop them up. The real cheese of 7th was the Tyranids.
Still. There's nothing on that list that makes you say "uh oh". Not like a plasma russ.
Vaktathi explained it better than I could.
All of those things I listed were at the same general competitive tier level as a plasma russ, or better.
But once again, you also believe marines were terrible in 7th, so it begs the question if you truly understand balance and relative power.
I find it hilarious that you think space marines had a single entree in their codex as good as a plasma Russ...or really any Russ variant.
Marines were terrible in 7th. They required 400 free points of razorbacks/rhinos/drop-pods to be competitive. Or as countless upon countless space marine players will tell you. The units have always been bad - they have relied on gimmicks just to be playable.
Eldar were even worse though. They needed their gimmicks to prop them up. The real cheese of 7th was the Tyranids.
Wave serpents weren't a gimmick - they were out of the box rape machines. 7.0 Eldar was nearly as dominant as 7.5.
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Bharring wrote: "Marines were terrible in 7th. They required 400 free points of razorbacks/rhinos/droppods to be competitive."
You keep saying that, but how does that explain all their wins before they got Gladius?
You mean super-friends? Cent Star? These are not space marine armies. They are imperial soup.
Xenomancers wrote: Marines were terrible in 7th. They required 400 free points of razorbacks/rhinos/drop-pods to be competitive.
I could field my 1500pt mechanised sisters list for 1000pts if I took them as marines - enough to ally in a knight with points to spare.
Model for model, gun for gun. And i'd get game long rerolls and a free upgrade to a dude with a combi-disintegrator on top of that.
So 'terrible' is relative, especially as that was by no means the strongest marine list/gimmick of 7th.
Still. There's nothing on that list that makes you say "uh oh". Not like a plasma russ.
Vaktathi explained it better than I could.
All of those things I listed were at the same general competitive tier level as a plasma russ, or better.
But once again, you also believe marines were terrible in 7th, so it begs the question if you truly understand balance and relative power.
I find it hilarious that you think space marines had a single entree in their codex as good as a plasma Russ...or really any Russ variant.
Marines were terrible in 7th. They required 400 free points of razorbacks/rhinos/drop-pods to be competitive. Or as countless upon countless space marine players will tell you. The units have always been bad - they have relied on gimmicks just to be playable.
Eldar were even worse though. They needed their gimmicks to prop them up. The real cheese of 7th was the Tyranids.
Wave serpents weren't a gimmick - they were out of the box rape machines. 7.0 Eldar was nearly as dominant as 7.5.
Riiiiiight. Adding hundreds of free points that was all objective secured in a load of light tanks isn't a gimmick as well. Gladius was ridiculously OP.
What about the SM armies that were doing so well that were monofaction, and included no Centurions? Were they Soup, CentStar, or Superfriends?
Each of those 3 were variants Marines did well with, but so were Obsec Spam and Biker Spam, for instance.
Could you give a more structured definition of 'gimmick'? Your current use seems to be "anything that makes SM look strong", which is not a very useful term.
Automatically Appended Next Post: One of the big differences between DAVU and Gladius is that, in Gladius, the vehicles were added firepower/presence - the rest of the list did a lot of the work, too. In DAVU, the vehicles were the list. The DAs were there only so you could take Serpents - and would have been replaced with anything cheaper if possible.
Xenomancers wrote: Marines were terrible in 7th. They required 400 free points of razorbacks/rhinos/drop-pods to be competitive.
I could field my 1500pt mechanised sisters list for 1000pts if I took them as marines - enough to ally in a knight with points to spare.
Model for model, gun for gun. And i'd get game long rerolls and a free upgrade to a dude with a combi-disintegrator on top of that.
So 'terrible' is relative, especially as that was by no means the strongest marine list/gimmick of 7th.
Gladius? Wasn't the strongest? Wow...I actually agree with you. However - you are looking at it the wrong way. What if the sisters had gladius formation? That would have been way better because you have better units.
Deathstars were still the strongest and absolutely crushed Gladius.
Bharring wrote: What about the SM armies that were doing so well that were monofaction, and included no Centurions? Were they Soup, CentStar, or Superfriends?
Each of those 3 were variants Marines did well with, but so were Obsec Spam and Biker Spam, for instance.
Could you give a more structured definition of 'gimmick'? Your current use seems to be "anything that makes SM look strong", which is not a very useful term.
Automatically Appended Next Post: One of the big differences between DAVU and Gladius is that, in Gladius, the vehicles were added firepower/presence - the rest of the list did a lot of the work, too. In DAVU, the vehicles were the list. The DAs were there only so you could take Serpents - and would have been replaced with anything cheaper if possible.
So in your opinion - space marines were strong without super-friends or cent star in 7.0 edition?
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Bharring wrote: If only Marines had had access to Deathstars? Really?
I completely disregard deathstar 40k. It is best forgotten. It doesn't belong in a discussion about "army strength". If you were actually playing that way. I pitty you.
Breng77 wrote: Given that no books have great internal balance (Eldar ranks higher here than many other books as far as having viable their 2 units) or external balance, any argument using those metrics for army power/quality is somewhat irrelevant. As such for such a discussion you can look at 2 things. 1.) consistent above the board performance. 2.) ability to make a variety of powerful lists especially if those lists are thematic.
In both those categories Eldar often rank among the better armies. As to ease of painting. Marines are one of the easiest to make look decent with minimal effort/ability they are lower model count with easy details to pick out. Eldar are one of the more difficult, but not as difficult as some.
Actually for the last couple of editions now Craftworlds have had some of the worst internal balance out there, and saying no book has great internal balance is stupid, the current Dark Eldar book is great for internal balance with only a few units that no one would take, mostly from the Court and Beast Packs which weren't exactly most peoples first choices even if they were good.
So if the bad choices are ones no one takes the balance is OK? How balanced it is remains to be seen, historically though no book has had great internal balance. I would rank Craftworld Eldar far from the worst internal balance over the last few editions. Plenty of other books were far worse.
Automatically Appended Next Post: For what it is worth no top guard armies ran russes in 5th, they were bad.
I didn't play SuperFriends. But it's extremely disingenous to forget SuperFriends and not SeerStar. They're both abominations I've never played as, and wish weren't in the game. But they're both things the top two books have had at different times in the past.
In my opinion, with SM taking so many of the top 10 slots when looking at random tournaments early in 7th, and with CentStars and SuperFriends not featuring prominently in those lists (not in many of them at all, from what I saw), it is very fair to say the SM book was good even without them.
Breng77 wrote: Given that no books have great internal balance (Eldar ranks higher here than many other books as far as having viable their 2 units) or external balance, any argument using those metrics for army power/quality is somewhat irrelevant. As such for such a discussion you can look at 2 things. 1.) consistent above the board performance. 2.) ability to make a variety of powerful lists especially if those lists are thematic.
In both those categories Eldar often rank among the better armies. As to ease of painting. Marines are one of the easiest to make look decent with minimal effort/ability they are lower model count with easy details to pick out. Eldar are one of the more difficult, but not as difficult as some.
Actually for the last couple of editions now Craftworlds have had some of the worst internal balance out there, and saying no book has great internal balance is stupid, the current Dark Eldar book is great for internal balance with only a few units that no one would take, mostly from the Court and Beast Packs which weren't exactly most peoples first choices even if they were good.
So if the bad choices are ones no one takes the balance is OK? How balanced it is remains to be seen, historically though no book has had great internal balance. I would rank Craftworld Eldar far from the worst internal balance over the last few editions. Plenty of other books were far worse.
Automatically Appended Next Post: For what it is worth no top guard armies ran russes in 5th, they were bad.
Breng77 wrote: Given that no books have great internal balance (Eldar ranks higher here than many other books as far as having viable their 2 units) or external balance, any argument using those metrics for army power/quality is somewhat irrelevant. As such for such a discussion you can look at 2 things. 1.) consistent above the board performance. 2.) ability to make a variety of powerful lists especially if those lists are thematic.
In both those categories Eldar often rank among the better armies. As to ease of painting. Marines are one of the easiest to make look decent with minimal effort/ability they are lower model count with easy details to pick out. Eldar are one of the more difficult, but not as difficult as some.
Actually for the last couple of editions now Craftworlds have had some of the worst internal balance out there, and saying no book has great internal balance is stupid, the current Dark Eldar book is great for internal balance with only a few units that no one would take, mostly from the Court and Beast Packs which weren't exactly most peoples first choices even if they were good.
So if the bad choices are ones no one takes the balance is OK? How balanced it is remains to be seen, historically though no book has had great internal balance. I would rank Craftworld Eldar far from the worst internal balance over the last few editions. Plenty of other books were far worse.
Automatically Appended Next Post: For what it is worth no top guard armies ran russes in 5th, they were bad.
Space marines were good - and russes were bad.
Dakka is literally a joke.
Yeah, feth "data" you bunch of jokes.
I have no counter to your reasoning so I'm going to just re-state my opinion and start calling you names.
Breng77 wrote: Given that no books have great internal balance (Eldar ranks higher here than many other books as far as having viable their 2 units) or external balance, any argument using those metrics for army power/quality is somewhat irrelevant. As such for such a discussion you can look at 2 things. 1.) consistent above the board performance. 2.) ability to make a variety of powerful lists especially if those lists are thematic.
In both those categories Eldar often rank among the better armies. As to ease of painting. Marines are one of the easiest to make look decent with minimal effort/ability they are lower model count with easy details to pick out. Eldar are one of the more difficult, but not as difficult as some.
Actually for the last couple of editions now Craftworlds have had some of the worst internal balance out there, and saying no book has great internal balance is stupid, the current Dark Eldar book is great for internal balance with only a few units that no one would take, mostly from the Court and Beast Packs which weren't exactly most peoples first choices even if they were good.
So if the bad choices are ones no one takes the balance is OK? How balanced it is remains to be seen, historically though no book has had great internal balance. I would rank Craftworld Eldar far from the worst internal balance over the last few editions. Plenty of other books were far worse.
Automatically Appended Next Post: For what it is worth no top guard armies ran russes in 5th, they were bad.
Space marines were good - and russes were bad.
Dakka is literally a joke.
Yeah, feth "data" you bunch of jokes.
I have no counter to your reasoning so I'm going to just re-state my opinion and start calling you names.
Tournament data is not any more valid than my personal experience playing this game. Except - my group of players play by the actual rules (not house rules) and don't call games after 2 1/2 hours...really it is more valid.
There are actual statements that are just dumb. Like. "Lemon russes aren't good" "space marines are good" - people would just laugh at you if you said that around my group of players.
Tournament data is a biased dataset. It has it's limitations. An individual submeta - your group of players - is a significantly smaller dataset very likely subject to much stronger biases. It's also data that can help refine our understanding, but it has most of the weaknesses of massed tourney data, only worse.
Your experiences don't seem to mesh with the majority of experiences, either. If it were tournies that were biased and your experiences less so, it would be expected that your experiences would be more commonly experienced.
The OP even prefaced their clarifying remarks as "for what it's worth", as in a technical clarification and contrary evidence, not intended to prove authoritatively that Russes weren't the OP gak you think they were.
We're seeing a racheting up in unpleasantness because we're going in circles where points are being brought up and defended, and your response was "except that didn't happen" or to keep reasserting the same claim in the face of strong contrary evidence without supplying any rationale for why.
Xenomancers wrote: If you say plasma russ was not top tier in 5th - it doesn't make it true.
As a competitive guard player in 5th, the tricked out plasma russ was not a top tier unit, nor a particularly common one after new players ran them a couple of games.
2 inch coherency is not the norm. Units are normally bumped together in cover - or perfectly lined up after deep strikes - or coming out of transports. Plus models take up space - you run out of it. People just love to act like every model is 2 inches apart - they never were and they never will be.
When someone has a unit that would be vulnerable to a plasma russ and they wanted to keep it intact, they would absolutely make use of that 2" coherency, and in most cases even moderate spread of an inch or so would mean that, in most situatiobs, you're getting two guys on a dead on hit. More to the point, lets also remember, BS3 small blasts, these missed entirely...a lot.
And then, even if the target was bunched up in cover, in 5E that meant a 4+ that the AP2 would not break.
Hence why most people saved themselves 100pts and just took a Battlecannon russ instead, or, more usually, Vendettas and more AV12 hulls.
The Executioner had a high damage potential for sure, but an underwhelming practical output, and a very high price tag.
Basically 5 plasma cannons on a 14 armor tank was exceptionally busted. Oh it cost as much as a land raider? Makes sense. It was better than a land raider.
The exceptionally busted tank that was basically nonexistent in competitive guard lists...
I absolutely saw more Land Raiders in 5E than plasma Russ tanks, Guard had other, better ways of getting that AP2, the Land Raider (or at least the Crusader and Redeemer), was useful at least for delivering Hammernators.
People aren't arguing "Leman Russes aren't good" or "Space Marines are good". They're arguing "Leman Russes weren't more OP in 5th Ed than the Space Marine codex stuff" and "Space Marines were good, at times X, Y, and Z, for reasons A, B, and C".
Most players I know wouldn't laugh off those comments. They might disagree with one or two of the finer points, and either argue or not care. If your group of players would laugh it off, I'm glad it's not my meta for any game.
I love how people saying that Marines are terrible is only comparing them against top tier armies like Guard and Eldar, and no the bottom feeders like orks, DE/nids (depending on edition), GKs outside of 5th
Breng77 wrote: Given that no books have great internal balance (Eldar ranks higher here than many other books as far as having viable their 2 units) or external balance, any argument using those metrics for army power/quality is somewhat irrelevant. As such for such a discussion you can look at 2 things. 1.) consistent above the board performance. 2.) ability to make a variety of powerful lists especially if those lists are thematic.
In both those categories Eldar often rank among the better armies. As to ease of painting. Marines are one of the easiest to make look decent with minimal effort/ability they are lower model count with easy details to pick out. Eldar are one of the more difficult, but not as difficult as some.
Actually for the last couple of editions now Craftworlds have had some of the worst internal balance out there, and saying no book has great internal balance is stupid, the current Dark Eldar book is great for internal balance with only a few units that no one would take, mostly from the Court and Beast Packs which weren't exactly most peoples first choices even if they were good.
So if the bad choices are ones no one takes the balance is OK? How balanced it is remains to be seen, historically though no book has had great internal balance. I would rank Craftworld Eldar far from the worst internal balance over the last few editions. Plenty of other books were far worse.
Automatically Appended Next Post: For what it is worth no top guard armies ran russes in 5th, they were bad.
Space marines were good - and russes were bad.
Dakka is literally a joke.
Yeah, feth "data" you bunch of jokes.
I have no counter to your reasoning so I'm going to just re-state my opinion and start calling you names.
Tournament data is not any more valid than my personal experience playing this game. Except - my group of players play by the actual rules (not house rules) and don't call games after 2 1/2 hours...really it is more valid.
There are actual statements that are just dumb. Like. "Lemon russes aren't good" "space marines are good" - people would just laugh at you if you said that around my group of players.
So only your meta counts as real 40k? Seriously? I played a ton of tournaments in 5th frequently using book missions, and never had a game called due to time. So none of your strawmen about why Plasma russes were bad hold up. They were bad because for the price tag they were inefficient in the 5th was ed meta and guard had far better options. 5th was super Mech edition plasma russes were flat out bad against mechanized targets especially AV12. They were bad because easily obtainable 4+ cover made their advantages not so great, they were bad because most competitive infantry that wasn’t hugging cover had invul saves, they were bad because small blasts were bad, too easy to scatter off or defend by spacing out. Sorry just because some guy used them effectively in your meta doesn’t make them a good choice. Were they awful, no you could use them. Were they in any competitive guard armies? Not really, other units did their job better for less.
Always the same nonsensical arguments from you. You almost make it sound like ap2 is bad because invo saves and cover existed in 5th. Plasma Russes were great against vehicles - they practically auto hit them. Things that did their job better were very easy to kill where 14 armor russ is practically indestructible. For heavier stuff you had 3 twin las vendettas with melta vets.
Plus no - my meta doesn't count anymore than anyone elses meta. I never said that.
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Billagio wrote: I love how people saying that Marines are terrible is only comparing them against top tier armies like Guard and Eldar, and no the bottom feeders like orks, DE/nids (depending on edition), GKs outside of 5th
Lets see - DE have been raping marines since they came out - they are practically designed to kill space marines. In 4th eddition there was almost no point in playing marines vs DE. In 5th I don't recall much DE really - I seem to remember vect being quite good though almost ensuring you go first (kind of a gimick.) In 7th DE could easily beat space marine armies until gladius came out (then again - they never got a 7.5 codex) (but DE are sure strong now).
ITT I have stated 5th ed orks were also terribly bad. Greyknights were amazing in 5th (currently the only other army worse than space marines in 40k).
You insinuated it with the “we played all the rules, no time limit.” Nonsense.
That said no they were bad against vehicles. They did not almost auto-hit, unless you mean 1/5 templates was likely to hit. They averaged a 3” scatter. Pretty easy to scatter off something depending on direction. So let’s go benefit of the doubt and say 4 shots hit every time. Against AV 12. That is 1 glance/pen (1.33, 50-50 glance or pen). If the vehicle had cover (pretty easy to do in 5th) you are looking at a pen or glance every other turn, for the cost of a land raider. Compare that to plasma/melts vets, or vendettas, or mantacores. You talk about durability, but all I need to do is glance your vehicle to render it near useless. When you cost nearly the price to 2 vendettas or the like you aren’t good. They were a middling option that was amazing against noobs, but had no presence in top lists.
Xenomancers wrote: Always the same nonsensical arguments from you. You almost make it sound like ap2 is bad because invo saves and cover existed in 5th. Plasma Russes were great against vehicles - they practically auto hit them. Things that did their job better were very easy to kill where 14 armor russ is practically indestructible. For heavier stuff you had 3 twin las vendettas with melta vets.
Plus no - my meta doesn't count anymore than anyone elses meta. I never said that.
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Billagio wrote: I love how people saying that Marines are terrible is only comparing them against top tier armies like Guard and Eldar, and no the bottom feeders like orks, DE/nids (depending on edition), GKs outside of 5th
Lets see - DE have been raping marines since they came out - they are practically designed to kill space marines. In 4th eddition there was almost no point in playing marines vs DE. In 5th I don't recall much DE really - I seem to remember vect being quite good though almost ensuring you go first - kind of a gimick (but DE are sure strong now)
ITT I have stated 5th ed orks were also terribly bad. Greyknights were amazing in 5th (currently the only other army worse than space marines in 40k).
DE - the army that was historically hard-countered by cheap tough vehicles and relied on AP5 poison spam to kill infantry - was practically designed to counter space marines.
You remember that the starter kit for the game for 3rd edition, the grand introduction of Dark Eldar, was a Dark Eldar vs Space Marines box set in which the Marines had a model that the Dark Eldar could not actually hurt, right?
"My personal experience trumps your data" is a really solid, valuable argument that contributes a lot to a discussion.
Breng77 wrote: You insinuated it with the “we played all the rules, no time limit.” Nonsense.
That said no they were bad against vehicles. They did not almost auto-hit, unless you mean 1/5 templates was likely to hit. They averaged a 3” scatter. Pretty easy to scatter off something depending on direction. So let’s go benefit of the doubt and say 4 shots hit every time. Against AV 12. That is 1 glance/pen (1.33, 50-50 glance or pen). If the vehicle had cover (pretty easy to do in 5th) you are looking at a pen or glance every other turn, for the cost of a land raider. Compare that to plasma/melts vets, or vendettas, or mantacores. You talk about durability, but all I need to do is glance your vehicle to render it near useless. When you cost nearly the price to 2 vendettas or the like you aren’t good. They were a middling option that was amazing against noobs, but had no presence in top lists.
You are a clown. This is vs a non prefered target. Lets run the math on las cannons killing gaurdsmen in cover while we are at this. It was very capable against vehicals if it had to be. It could crush a razorback easily or a whole terminator squad - that is it's job.
Xenomancers wrote: Always the same nonsensical arguments from you. You almost make it sound like ap2 is bad because invo saves and cover existed in 5th. Plasma Russes were great against vehicles - they practically auto hit them. Things that did their job better were very easy to kill where 14 armor russ is practically indestructible. For heavier stuff you had 3 twin las vendettas with melta vets.
Plus no - my meta doesn't count anymore than anyone elses meta. I never said that.
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Billagio wrote: I love how people saying that Marines are terrible is only comparing them against top tier armies like Guard and Eldar, and no the bottom feeders like orks, DE/nids (depending on edition), GKs outside of 5th
Lets see - DE have been raping marines since they came out - they are practically designed to kill space marines. In 4th eddition there was almost no point in playing marines vs DE. In 5th I don't recall much DE really - I seem to remember vect being quite good though almost ensuring you go first - kind of a gimick (but DE are sure strong now)
ITT I have stated 5th ed orks were also terribly bad. Greyknights were amazing in 5th (currently the only other army worse than space marines in 40k).
DE - the army that was historically hard-countered by cheap tough vehicles and relied on AP5 poison spam to kill infantry - was practically designed to counter space marines.
You remember that the starter kit for the game for 3rd edition, the grand introduction of Dark Eldar, was a Dark Eldar vs Space Marines box set in which the Marines had a model that the Dark Eldar could not actually hurt, right?
"My personal experience trumps your data" is a really solid, valuable argument that contributes a lot to a discussion.
how do cheap tough vehicals counter DE?
Cheap vehicals can be flanked and shot in the butt with str 8 blaster/blast pistols/dark lances. Even disentegrators hurt there.
Plus you have it backwards - DE are the ones spamming cheap vehcials. Space marines are probably running a LR with terminators in it. Ideal targets for darklances blasters and disintegration cannon.
Not saying DE were a good army - they didn't leave an impression with me - but they weren't any worse than marines.
Plus you have it backwards - DE are the ones spamming cheap vehcials. Space marines are probably running a LR with terminators in it. Ideal targets for darklances blasters and disintegration cannon.
Not saying DE were a good army - they didn't leave an impression with me - but they weren't any worse than marines.
1 - disintegrator cannons could not actually harm land raiders in 7th or earlier. Can't hurt AV14 with S5.
2 - A land raider full of terminators is a horrifically inefficient unit, in pretty much every version of the game. If someone claimed that tactical marines are points efficient because they get super great returns shooting up Flash Gitz, you'd rightfully call them an idiot.
3 - competitive marine lists in nearly every edition of the game have spammed razorbacks, rhinos, or drop pods. Not land raiders.
Xenomancers wrote: Always the same nonsensical arguments from you. You almost make it sound like ap2 is bad because invo saves and cover existed in 5th.
what did we see a the trend toward in 5E? Volume of fire, not AP. It was the great rise of the Autocannon. 4+ cover everywhere for everything drove that trend. Not saying AP2 was useless, but great gobs of AP2 blasts were not particularly amazing.
My 5E guard tournament list was 9 Chimeras, 5 command squads with 4 meltas each (3 platoon and 2 company), 6 AC/GL infantry squads, 3 Vendettas and 3 Hydras in 2k.
What Russ tanks I did run were Battlecannons, and, towards the end of the edition, autocannon equipped Exterminators.
Plasma Russes were great against vehicles - they practically auto hit them.
Hrm, they hit them at about a BS4 rate, not autohit. So your 250pt tank would get 5 Autocannon equivalent shots (AP2 didn't mean anything against tanks back then) at BS4 equivalent, and a single BS3 Lascannon against another tank. Not incapable, but not good, much less great, for 250pts, two Vendettas for the same points generated triple the average kill output against AV12, and even Hydras would be about twice as efficient point for point over the Executioner against AV12.
Things that did their job better were very easy to kill where 14 armor russ is practically indestructible.
*snort* wat?
They certainly weren't as indestructible as the "worse" Land Raider that had better side and especially rear armor (important against CC attacks).
There's a reason guard lists tended toward AV12 spam and not running AV14. Melta (especially deep striking melta) was spammed everywhere, and AV ignoring stuff like Haywire increasingly common, and CC didnt care if you were AV12 or 14 at the front, its all 10/11 in the rear.
Again.....look at competitive guard lists, Russ tanks are rare and the Executioner certainly wasnt a big popular netlist metaunit.
For heavier stuff you had 3 twin las vendettas with melta vets.
At which point you dont much need the plasma Russ either.
Plus you have it backwards - DE are the ones spamming cheap vehcials. Space marines are probably running a LR with terminators in it. Ideal targets for darklances blasters and disintegration cannon.
Not saying DE were a good army - they didn't leave an impression with me - but they weren't any worse than marines.
1 - disintegrator cannons could not actually harm land raiders in 7th or earlier. Can't hurt AV14 with S5.
2 - A land raider full of terminators is a horrifically inefficient unit, in pretty much every version of the game. If someone claimed that tactical marines are points efficient because they get super great returns shooting up Flash Gitz, you'd rightfully call them an idiot.
3 - competitive marine lists in nearly every edition of the game have spammed razorbacks, rhinos, or drop pods. Not land raiders.
I'm not sure you played 5th edition. LR with thunder hammer terms was basically the only unit space marines had that was scary.
Compare a Chimera or Razorback to a Raider in 5E. You need about 3.4 TLHB Razorbacks to kil a Raider, or 2.2 ML/HB himeras, but needed 13.5 Raiders to kill a Chimera or 9 to kill a Razorback.
Lances and Blasters are great against AV14, against AV12/11/10, theyre worse than Lascannons.
Meanwhile, everyone elses long range anti infantry weapons work just as well per shot against a Raider or Ravager as the Dark Lance does back at them, and theyre getting wayyyyyyy more shots while still wounding DE infantry infantry on 2's usually with no save.
Not saying DE were a good army - they didn't leave an impression with me - but they weren't any worse than marines.
DE were, up until recently, exceedingly good against elite armies, stuff like Marines and Nidzilla, and *realllllllly* bad against stuff like Guard and Orks.
@ Xeno- the same generous 4 auto-hits result in about 1 glance and 1 pen against a Razorback. So cover knocks that down to 1 or the other....hardly great against razorbacks especially when those results often don’t kill the target. Sorry still not great. 250 points that might kill a Razorback every other turn if it gets to shoot isn’t good. A whole terminator squad (Terrible unit unless paladins, or THSS.)? Only if you roll really well and they are dumb enough to not run after deepstrike. So let’s look at paladins and TH/SS termies that sit in a blob. Let’s assume you hit with all your shots, so 25 hits kills 7 TH/SS termies or 3 paladins. But you won’t hit that many times. People will spread out and you will be lucky to get 10 hits. So 3 termies, or 1 paladin. Termies were hardly a top unit in 5th.
Xenomancers wrote: Gladius? Wasn't the strongest? Wow...I actually agree with you. However - you are looking at it the wrong way. What if the sisters had gladius formation?
Then they would have have competed on more even terms with the top armies of 7th... like marines. Formations were integral to the power of books in the edition.
What army was the most best counter eldar through the ages, because if eldar were good or very good through the ages, an army that can beat them would have been really good.
Breng77 wrote: And often 4+ FNP, which amounts to the same 7 wounds.
Wrong weapon for the job - sound like you need a demolisher cannon for this job. Which is pretty good on a russ - pretty bad on a vindicator.
So what is it the right weapon for exactly. Mediocre at killing vehicles, bad against units in cover, bad if units are spread out. You are right the demolished is better and the only Russ I ever saw get much play. But your argument about “bad target”. When I describe the meta of 5th, what was it good against exactly? The guy running regular terminators all bunched up? Or marines out in the open all bunched up? That is getting to be super situational for a 250 point unit.
Arachnofiend wrote: As I've said before, never has there been a Necron player who whined about how bad Necrons were in 7th because we relied on the Decurion to work.
The big difference between Decurion and Gladius is massive. Decurion gave you at least some list building freedom. Gladius forced you to take lots of crap units to get more crap units. At the end of the day though 2250 points of space marine trash is better than the best 1850 space marine list you could possible make taking the best choices.
Decurion made Necrons play like Necrons wanted them to play. They had some required choices but had a lot of freedom with what they could include. People got genuinely excited about playing necrons.
You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?
I get your central point, but it's quite limited. There was plenty in the Decurion Necrons didn't want to field. And the CWE lists are only more what CWE want to play than SM lists were what SM wanted to play when you're an SM player and not a CWE player.
Bharring wrote: You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?
I get your central point, but it's quite limited. There was plenty in the Decurion Necrons didn't want to field. And the CWE lists are only more what CWE want to play than SM lists were what SM wanted to play when you're an SM player and not a CWE player.
Exactly. Plus, Gladius actually allowed for a good amount of freedom. Really, the only truly mandatory unit were 6 units of tac marines. Every other 'slot' had at least two options (FA had something like 5 options), then you could pick from well over a dozen aux and command formations to fill out the rest.
Contrast to Eldar formation, where you had 3 core choices, but each core choice option was strictly dictated exactly what had to be taken.
Bharring wrote: You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?
I get your central point, but it's quite limited. There was plenty in the Decurion Necrons didn't want to field. And the CWE lists are only more what CWE want to play than SM lists were what SM wanted to play when you're an SM player and not a CWE player.
Exactly. Plus, Gladius actually allowed for a good amount of freedom. Really, the only truly mandatory unit were 6 units of tac marines. Every other 'slot' had at least two options (FA had something like 5 options), then you could pick from well over a dozen aux and command formations to fill out the rest.
Contrast to Eldar formation, where you had 3 core choices, but each core choice option was strictly dictated exactly what had to be taken.
Hey man, maybe 1000pts of my army was completely dictated, but I got SIX free power swords and melta guns out of the deal. SIX! What army can compete with that, thats like 100 free points of stuff!
Vaktathi wrote: Thats never really been their thing, just like IG has never had bikers or beastly CC commanders. Thats what Powerklaws and Tank Hammas are for (though some assistance in their use could certainly have been warranted).
Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.
Lootas were absolute murder in 7th were they?
A unit of 5 Lootas (A Depleted squad) can dish out 10 shots on average, for 3.33 hit and against AV 11 that is 1/6th chance to Glance and a 1/3rd chance to Pen. They didn't have AP2 or 1 so no + to explode which means ZERO chance to kill it outright, So when you say they were murder what you mean is that they were capable of inflicting 1 HP of damage a turn with 5 of them. They also didn't benefit from Mob Rule and died or ran away when shot. So no, they didn't "absolute murder" anything. And that is against AV11, against AV 12 it went down to 1/6th chance to Glance and 1/6th chance to pen.
Conversely a unit of 15 Lootas was capable of putting out 30 shots on average, 10 hits and 5 glances/pens on an AV 11 vehicle, unless they had any number of bonuses like cover night fighting, or invuln saves. Against an AV12 vehicle that went down to 2.5 on average
Arachnofiend wrote: As I've said before, never has there been a Necron player who whined about how bad Necrons were in 7th because we relied on the Decurion to work.
The big difference between Decurion and Gladius is massive. Decurion gave you at least some list building freedom. Gladius forced you to take lots of crap units to get more crap units. At the end of the day though 2250 points of space marine trash is better than the best 1850 space marine list you could possible make taking the best choices.
Decurion made Necrons play like Necrons wanted them to play. They had some required choices but had a lot of freedom with what they could include. People got genuinely excited about playing necrons.
Wasn't the Gladius the one where if I bought an assault cannon razorback, I got a free combat squad with a las cannon or plasma?
So if I'm going to be taking lots of razorbacks, what's wrong with free units?
And yes, I know the book actually said it was the other way around, but the posts costs are very similar between the two.
Vaktathi wrote: Thats never really been their thing, just like IG has never had bikers or beastly CC commanders. Thats what Powerklaws and Tank Hammas are for (though some assistance in their use could certainly have been warranted).
Lootas however were absolute murder to light and medium vehicles and tanks up until 8E however. If you werent AV13 or 14, even a depleted unit of Lootas stood a good chance of killing any vehicle they shot at and a full unit was almost guaranteed to.
Lootas were absolute murder in 7th were they?
A unit of 5 Lootas (A Depleted squad) can dish out 10 shots on average, for 3.33 hit and against AV 11 that is 1/6th chance to Glance and a 1/3rd chance to Pen. They didn't have AP2 or 1 so no + to explode which means ZERO chance to kill it outright, So when you say they were murder what you mean is that they were capable of inflicting 1 HP of damage a turn with 5 of them.
Lets put that in some context. While they give up the 1/9 chance on any successful hit to explode that a Lascannon enjoys vs AV11, that depleted 5man unit is exceeding a trio of BS3 Lascannons for HP damage output by almost a third (1.66 HP's for the Lootas, 1.25 HP's for the Lascannons, and you sure weren't getting a trio of those for 75pts even for Guard), and odds are you'll kill the target through HP loss by the time you'd land an Explodes result with the Lascannons most of the time either way. Compared to an IG Heavy Weapons squad with autocannons for the same cost as 5 Lootas, the guardsmen are easier to kill and break, and are only averaging only 3 hits a turn vs the Lootas 3.33, and are more vulnerable to S6+ weaponry (a single S6+ hit forces an Ld7 break test), while 75pts gets you naked 5 Chaos Havocs wondering who looted their autocannons, a naked Predator Destructor, a "we forgot how to shoot at the ground" Hydra, a couple of Autocannon sentinels (not quite two armored ones), half a Russ Exterminator, Two thirds of a Rifleman Dread? Maybe two MP crisis suits or a single scatterlaserspamming War Walker?
Yeah the lack of Mob Rule sucked, but when they got to do their thing they were great long range fire support.
Conversely a unit of 15 Lootas was capable of putting out 30 shots on average, 10 hits and 5 glances/pens on an AV 11 vehicle, unless they had any number of bonuses like cover night fighting, or invuln saves. Against an AV12 vehicle that went down to 2.5 on average
Against AV12 that should average to 3.33 (30 shots, 10 hits, 1.66 glances, 1.66 pens, 3.33 total HP's), either way though we can average to 3. This means that, barring cover saves (which affects everything), on average such a unit would kill any light or medium 3HP vehicle (80%+ of vehicles in the game) in a single round of fire at up to 48". Relative to most other autocannon-esque platforms that's a pretty good damage output for the points invested, and, with snapshots, had more mitigation to the accuracy loss than other armies when moving.
Mmmpi wrote: Wasn't the Gladius the one where if I bought an assault cannon razorback, I got a free combat squad with a las cannon or plasma?
Gladius was free rhinos/razorbacks(including infernums in theory)/drop pods, obsec for everything, and three extra turns of doctrine rerolls.
IIRC for a little under 1000 points you got 57 infantry and 11 vehicles including the optional Centos(if ultramarines) and Imperial Marine. Special weapons and grav cannons were extra.
I'm not game to take the bait that is getting into an argument about it with some of the more vocal people on here, but I just want to say that I've seen way too many threads in my lifetime of people pretending Gladius wasn't a top tier formation. Why is it always one group of players so insistent on this fact...
ShredderShards wrote: I'm not game to take the bait that is getting into an argument about it with some of the more vocal people on here, but I just want to say that I've seen way too many threads in my lifetime of people pretending Gladius wasn't a top tier formation. Why is it always one group of players so insistent on this fact...
You have to understand the canon of the Dakka Expanded Universe a little bit. When you read things by certain posters, you have to understand the perspective of the alternate reality that those posters exist in. You might read a post and say "wait, that has no bearing on objective reality" but remember this is the INTERNET, and everyone exists in their own reality (which you can't possibly disregard as unrealistic because You Dont Know Them)
Allow me to familiarize you with a few of the groups:
The Casual Police State Resistance: These players exist in a twisted universe where all tactical thought and competitive list-building has been banned with an irrevocable penalty of exile. Dakka is the only place where these poor individuals can exist in anonymity free of their oppressive overlords The Enforced Casual Gaming Group. If they were ever to display any hint of competitive acumen to this BeernPretzelstapo, they would be irrevocably exiled and unable to ever again play 40k (in fact, this may have already happened to some posters). Their only recourse is to attempt to spread the gospel of Why Powergaming Is Perfectly Good and Should Be Encouraged online, hoping one day to change the course of history.
The Eternal Victims of the Ninth Circle of Powergaming Hell: The mirror universe, if you will, of the Casual Police State, the Victims exist in an anarchic society where they have seen the utter collapse of any and all unspoken rules of conduct for gaming. They, alone in their world, adore and adhere to the fluff of their army, lovingly painting their collection which they slowly accumulate by saving up spare pennies scrounged from the couch cushions and found in the laundry. Once every decade when they can afford a GW kit, they assemble and permanently glue it based solely on the appearance and aesthetic of the model, knowing it would be dishonorable to think any impure thoughts about tactical use or in-game power while creating a work of art. Sadly, their gaming group does not share this sentiment. They ruthlessly exploit every rules loophole and broken unit combo solely for the joy of crushing the fluff and dreams of the Victim.
The Virtuous Paragon: Surrounded by a cackling legion of negative jackals who complain and jeer endlessly at every effort by GW to improve the game, the Virtuous Paragon must resort to vigiliante-style positivity online. He has seen his playerbase cut down from thousands of joyful, jovial lovers of the Great Games Workshop Hobby down to a mere handful of unjustifiably negative and bitter complainers. He is the last of his kind. He must warn those who may seek to create a community elsewhere, and he must take to the internet to do Battle with those who would ceaselessly kvetch and moan about every single problem with the game.
The Persecuted Faction Die-Hard: Similar to the Victim, but distinct in that this poster has chosen just one single faction to dedicate his life and existence to, and his evil gaming group have taken to exploiting every Unfair and Cruel counter that may exist within the game to destroy them. If they play a Marine faction, every game is against 500 plasma guns and army-wide AP-4. If they play orks, impenetrable gunlines bristling with high-rate of fire anti infantry weapons tear apart their army in two turns. All theoretical opponents possess all possible countermeasures to any suggested tactic that might be proposed or any change in strategy that could be conceived. it doesn't matter what some tournament players have managed, THEIRS is the worst faction in the game, and any that disagree are clearly and terribly wrong.
ShredderShards wrote: I'm not game to take the bait that is getting into an argument about it with some of the more vocal people on here, but I just want to say that I've seen way too many threads in my lifetime of people pretending Gladius wasn't a top tier formation. Why is it always one group of players so insistent on this fact...
You have to understand the canon of the Dakka Expanded Universe a little bit. When you read things by certain posters, you have to understand the perspective of the alternate reality that those posters exist in. You might read a post and say "wait, that has no bearing on objective reality" but remember this is the INTERNET, and everyone exists in their own reality (which you can't possibly disregard as unrealistic because You Dont Know Them)
Allow me to familiarize you with a few of the groups:
The Casual Police State Resistance: These players exist in a twisted universe where all tactical thought and competitive list-building has been banned with an irrevocable penalty of exile. Dakka is the only place where these poor individuals can exist in anonymity free of their oppressive overlords The Enforced Casual Gaming Group. If they were ever to display any hint of competitive acumen to this BeernPretzelstapo, they would be irrevocably exiled and unable to ever again play 40k (in fact, this may have already happened to some posters). Their only recourse is to attempt to spread the gospel of Why Powergaming Is Perfectly Good and Should Be Encouraged online, hoping one day to change the course of history.
The Eternal Victims of the Ninth Circle of Powergaming Hell: The mirror universe, if you will, of the Casual Police State, the Victims exist in an anarchic society where they have seen the utter collapse of any and all unspoken rules of conduct for gaming. They, alone in their world, adore and adhere to the fluff of their army, lovingly painting their collection which they slowly accumulate by saving up spare pennies scrounged from the couch cushions and found in the laundry. Once every decade when they can afford a GW kit, they assemble and permanently glue it based solely on the appearance and aesthetic of the model, knowing it would be dishonorable to think any impure thoughts about tactical use or in-game power while creating a work of art. Sadly, their gaming group does not share this sentiment. They ruthlessly exploit every rules loophole and broken unit combo solely for the joy of crushing the fluff and dreams of the Victim.
The Virtuous Paragon: Surrounded by a cackling legion of negative jackals who complain and jeer endlessly at every effort by GW to improve the game, the Virtuous Paragon must resort to vigiliante-style positivity online. He has seen his playerbase cut down from thousands of joyful, jovial lovers of the Great Games Workshop Hobby down to a mere handful of unjustifiably negative and bitter complainers. He is the last of his kind. He must warn those who may seek to create a community elsewhere, and he must take to the internet to do Battle with those who would ceaselessly kvetch and moan about every single problem with the game.
The Persecuted Faction Die-Hard: Similar to the Victim, but distinct in that this poster has chosen just one single faction to dedicate his life and existence to, and his evil gaming group have taken to exploiting every Unfair and Cruel counter that may exist within the game to destroy them. If they play a Marine faction, every game is against 500 plasma guns and army-wide AP-4. If they play orks, impenetrable gunlines bristling with high-rate of fire anti infantry weapons tear apart their army in two turns. All theoretical opponents possess all possible countermeasures to any suggested tactic that might be proposed or any change in strategy that could be conceived. it doesn't matter what some tournament players have managed, THEIRS is the worst faction in the game, and any that disagree are clearly and terribly wrong.
Bharring wrote: You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?
I get your central point, but it's quite limited. There was plenty in the Decurion Necrons didn't want to field. And the CWE lists are only more what CWE want to play than SM lists were what SM wanted to play when you're an SM player and not a CWE player.
LOL marine players did want to take min trash units to get a trash vehical for free. You ofc are missing the point entirely. Gladius played like imperial guard - it was a strong formation but to max it out you were forced to do this. Plus even then - with all these free points - YOU WERE STILL OUTGUNNED by Eldar. You were helpless against deathstars (because you can't even fit a librarian in this formation if you are trying to get the most out of it). The only thing this formation was good at was sitting on objectives - which seems to be the only thing people think marines should be good at - standing in cover and dying. It's pathetic.
Perpetual marine haters - They literally seek out posts about marines to undermine how bad they suck. Probably because they feel their army is historically worse off than marines. When In fact - marines have been near the bottom in terms of power in every edition relying on gimmicks to stay relevant with horrendously over-costed units in a game that is designed to make their units irrelevant. Typically they play orks or imperial guard almost exclusively.
ShredderShards wrote: I'm not game to take the bait that is getting into an argument about it with some of the more vocal people on here, but I just want to say that I've seen way too many threads in my lifetime of people pretending Gladius wasn't a top tier formation. Why is it always one group of players so insistent on this fact...
You have to understand the canon of the Dakka Expanded Universe a little bit. When you read things by certain posters, you have to understand the perspective of the alternate reality that those posters exist in. You might read a post and say "wait, that has no bearing on objective reality" but remember this is the INTERNET, and everyone exists in their own reality (which you can't possibly disregard as unrealistic because You Dont Know Them)
Allow me to familiarize you with a few of the groups:
The Casual Police State Resistance: These players exist in a twisted universe where all tactical thought and competitive list-building has been banned with an irrevocable penalty of exile. Dakka is the only place where these poor individuals can exist in anonymity free of their oppressive overlords The Enforced Casual Gaming Group. If they were ever to display any hint of competitive acumen to this BeernPretzelstapo, they would be irrevocably exiled and unable to ever again play 40k (in fact, this may have already happened to some posters). Their only recourse is to attempt to spread the gospel of Why Powergaming Is Perfectly Good and Should Be Encouraged online, hoping one day to change the course of history.
The Eternal Victims of the Ninth Circle of Powergaming Hell: The mirror universe, if you will, of the Casual Police State, the Victims exist in an anarchic society where they have seen the utter collapse of any and all unspoken rules of conduct for gaming. They, alone in their world, adore and adhere to the fluff of their army, lovingly painting their collection which they slowly accumulate by saving up spare pennies scrounged from the couch cushions and found in the laundry. Once every decade when they can afford a GW kit, they assemble and permanently glue it based solely on the appearance and aesthetic of the model, knowing it would be dishonorable to think any impure thoughts about tactical use or in-game power while creating a work of art. Sadly, their gaming group does not share this sentiment. They ruthlessly exploit every rules loophole and broken unit combo solely for the joy of crushing the fluff and dreams of the Victim.
The Virtuous Paragon: Surrounded by a cackling legion of negative jackals who complain and jeer endlessly at every effort by GW to improve the game, the Virtuous Paragon must resort to vigiliante-style positivity online. He has seen his playerbase cut down from thousands of joyful, jovial lovers of the Great Games Workshop Hobby down to a mere handful of unjustifiably negative and bitter complainers. He is the last of his kind. He must warn those who may seek to create a community elsewhere, and he must take to the internet to do Battle with those who would ceaselessly kvetch and moan about every single problem with the game.
The Persecuted Faction Die-Hard: Similar to the Victim, but distinct in that this poster has chosen just one single faction to dedicate his life and existence to, and his evil gaming group have taken to exploiting every Unfair and Cruel counter that may exist within the game to destroy them. If they play a Marine faction, every game is against 500 plasma guns and army-wide AP-4. If they play orks, impenetrable gunlines bristling with high-rate of fire anti infantry weapons tear apart their army in two turns. All theoretical opponents possess all possible countermeasures to any suggested tactic that might be proposed or any change in strategy that could be conceived. it doesn't matter what some tournament players have managed, THEIRS is the worst faction in the game, and any that disagree are clearly and terribly wrong.
This is exactly why you are one of my favourite posters on Dakkadakka, exalted!.
Bharring wrote: You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?
I get your central point, but it's quite limited. There was plenty in the Decurion Necrons didn't want to field. And the CWE lists are only more what CWE want to play than SM lists were what SM wanted to play when you're an SM player and not a CWE player.
LOL marine players did want to take min trash units to get a trash vehical for free. You ofc are missing the point entirely. Gladius played like imperial guard - it was a strong formation but to max it out you were forced to do this. Plus even then - with all these free points - YOU WERE STILL OUTGUNNED by Eldar. You were helpless against deathstars (because you can't even fit a librarian in this formation if you are trying to get the most out of it). The only thing this formation was good at was sitting on objectives - which seems to be the only thing people think marines should be good at - standing in cover and dying. It's pathetic.
The fact that it was beaten by what was (arguably) the most OP thing in the game doesn't make it less OP itself.
For example if Eldar can take a weapon that costs 3 points and has infinite range and deals 3d6 mortal wounds to every unit in sight that's OP. But if Marines had a version of that weapon that deals 2d6 mortal wounds within 120" costing 10pts that would be less OP and beaten outright by the Eldar version. But it's still OP.
Bharring wrote: You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?
I get your central point, but it's quite limited. There was plenty in the Decurion Necrons didn't want to field. And the CWE lists are only more what CWE want to play than SM lists were what SM wanted to play when you're an SM player and not a CWE player.
LOL marine players did want to take min trash units to get a trash vehical for free. You ofc are missing the point entirely. Gladius played like imperial guard - it was a strong formation but to max it out you were forced to do this. Plus even then - with all these free points - YOU WERE STILL OUTGUNNED by Eldar. You were helpless against deathstars (because you can't even fit a librarian in this formation if you are trying to get the most out of it). The only thing this formation was good at was sitting on objectives - which seems to be the only thing people think marines should be good at - standing in cover and dying. It's pathetic.
The fact that it was beaten by what was (arguably) the most OP thing in the game doesn't make it less OP itself.
For example if Eldar can take a weapon that costs 3 points and has infinite range and deals 3d6 mortal wounds to every unit in sight that's OP. But if Marines had a version of that weapon that deals 2d6 mortal wounds within 120" costing 10pts that would be less OP and beaten outright by the Eldar version. But it's still OP.
But thats the thing here. It doesn't matter how OP its your own stuff. If isn't literally the MOST Op thing out there, is garbage..
Bharring wrote: You mean Marine players don't want to field Tacs, Devs, and ASM? Really?
I get your central point, but it's quite limited. There was plenty in the Decurion Necrons didn't want to field. And the CWE lists are only more what CWE want to play than SM lists were what SM wanted to play when you're an SM player and not a CWE player.
LOL marine players did want to take min trash units to get a trash vehical for free. You ofc are missing the point entirely. Gladius played like imperial guard - it was a strong formation but to max it out you were forced to do this. Plus even then - with all these free points - YOU WERE STILL OUTGUNNED by Eldar. You were helpless against deathstars (because you can't even fit a librarian in this formation if you are trying to get the most out of it). The only thing this formation was good at was sitting on objectives - which seems to be the only thing people think marines should be good at - standing in cover and dying. It's pathetic.
The fact that it was beaten by what was (arguably) the most OP thing in the game doesn't make it less OP itself.
For example if Eldar can take a weapon that costs 3 points and has infinite range and deals 3d6 mortal wounds to every unit in sight that's OP. But if Marines had a version of that weapon that deals 2d6 mortal wounds within 120" costing 10pts that would be less OP and beaten outright by the Eldar version. But it's still OP.
But that's the thing here. It doesn't matter how OP its your own stuff. If isn't literally the MOST Op thing out there, is garbage..
Imbalance is garbage. It's most obvious when you have the exact same rule but it's better and has bonuses in the other army.
Like currently with eldar compared to marines. For 2CP Forewarned has unlimited range and full BS (you just need to be standing 6" near a farseer. It can be any unit (including a superheavy tank). Auspex scan 2 CP. 12" range - infantry only - you shoot at -1 BS.
uhhhh????
How about DE flayed skull (Fly units (this can essentially be your who army) gain ignore cover/ reroll 1's including for inside transport / +3 movement stat)
Imperial fists - ignore cover / rerolls against fortifications (fortifications? WTF) infantry biker dread only (yeah your vehicals can't access this because reasons)
I could go on and on and on about this from edition to edition.
Scotsman.
You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Always a pleasure to read your posts.
Galas,
The standing definition of "trash" is "anything worse than what I want to play. The standing definition of "OP" is "anything better than what I want to play".
Xeno,
I think you're missing the point I was trying to make. You might not want to play [gladius | skyhammer | bikespam | gravspam | obsecspam | centstar | scoutspam | superfriends]. Fair enough.
The argument that the OPSM options don't allow for what an SM player might want to play isn't something I disagreed with. It's your insistence that all those options mean you can't play what you want coupled with [ davu | scatterbikes | spiderspam | wk | seercouncil ] somehow magically being exactly what CWE players want to play.
How, pray tell, do you support that assertion?
It bothers me to no end, having been both a CWE and SM player in that era.
I never said gladius wasn't good. I just said superfriends was better and that gladius is just another gimick. Essentially a bandaid fix for some of the most trash units in the game.
You've also said that we should discount SMOP gak because it's gimmicky and not what SM players want to play, whereas CWEOP gak is what CWE players want to play.
I thought my post was very clear on that being the subject of my post, not whether Gladius was OP.
This basically gets back to the difference between the impossibility of perfect balance and the achieveable goal of maximum competitive diversity. A competitive environment is going to consist of models that are above the average power level. That's more or less the reward for understanding how the game works. If something is sufficiently powerful enough to reduce the competitive variety to basically itself and maybe some niche counters; that's OP. If something is just the powerful option that adds to an environment of similarly powerful options... that's pretty much how competitive environments exist.
Perpetual marine haters - They literally seek out posts about marines to undermine how bad they suck. Probably because they feel their army is historically worse off than marines. When In fact - marines have been near the bottom in terms of power in every edition relying on gimmicks to stay relevant with horrendously over-costed units in a game that is designed to make their units irrelevant. Typically they play orks or imperial guard almost exclusively.
That's right. How dare they fail to take into account the DEU canon that the poster hails from that informs the nature of their reality and determines the location of the goalposts of a given discussion.
Pro tip: if you're looking to construct an ad hominem line of attack on me specifically, it's not a smart idea to try and figure out "my army". As people from most of the tactics threads have learned, I've been in this hobby for 15+ years, and I play or have played nearly everything. Including marines. I just base my observations on relative faction power on a basis of reality that seems to be shared by a larger number of people.
Also, it may be possible to determine (maybe by looking at titles of posts) whether you are in fact being followed around by a posse of people aiming to attack Space Marine threads, or whether threads might become Space Marine threads when you enter them. Hypothetically of course.
That is a very reasonable and thoughtful way to discriminate between "good" and "OP"/"broken". I'm not sure that it's what I would use (example of a problem - if there exists 1 OP army + its current counter-lists, and an army comes out that is that army +1, it adds options to the environment, but I'd still call it OP not good).
By that metric, or by what i consider a reasonable good-faith approximation of it, I'd say CWE is the book that is most commonly OP, but not all that commonly good. And SM is the book that is most commonly good, but not as commonly OP as CWE. Does that sound right to you, Lunar?
All hes doing is comparing SM to Eldar, the arguable best army in the game for many editions. Just because they arnt as good as them doesnt make them "always" bad (which is what this thread is about btw, not who is bad this edition)
heap by Grey Knights’ current misery, and they dropped there from #2 in 7th so they have more right than most to complain.
