This came up in a conversation today, where the basic premise was that currently in 9th edition Eldar (a race that designs all its technology and training around being as evasive as possible, to the point where they no longer wear 'protective' armour) are easier to kill than an ork in a tshirt.
So as a caveat - I personally did not like the 8th edition shenanigans of stacking up -4 / -6 etc to-hit modifiers, making units impossible to hit. It was too much, and it made things boring. Blame GW for leaving so many obvious loopholes and stacking opportunities open.
(Lets forget for a moment this recently got partly fixed by making 6s always hit. )
However... capping it at +1/-1... has issues.
An example:
Alaitoc Ranger unit, hiding in a forest. Should be -3 to hit, under the old rules. They're sneaky dudes, from a sneaky race, wearing camouflage. Makes sense.
However it gets capped at -1...
So now we throw in a Custodes unit. Big hulking dude.
He wants to fire his gun... it's a -1 to hit.
Well then he decides to advance first. -2 to hit still -1 to hit
Decides to fire both his weapon profiles. -3 to hit still -1 to hit
So a custodes can now run around the map, jumping and firing his weapons wildly in the air (any Halo fans out there?), and is exactly as accurate as a trained assassin firing his rifle from his snipers nest.
I think a change needed to be made... but I'm not sure this was the right change. Perhaps it can be fixed with a tweak, maybe +2/-2 being the cap instead... it would certainly be more reasonable.
Alternatively, they could change the army's that use this from -1 to hit modifiers, to something else. Maybe "enemy weapons range is reduced by 6inches", or a change to the armour save maybe. Alternatively, a bunch of units need to go down in price by a significant amount (but the best place to read recommendations on this is the Goonhammer site).
But I'd guess GW won't be making any changes like this for a year or so. The imperium just got another huge buff, and they're selling their speshmareens.
I would say so, but one of the reasons for this is that the game now directly affects the dice roll more, so the impact is larger.
Previously if you had WS modifier, you compared it to your opponent's WS. So it wasn't always effective.
But now that everything is a flat X+ to hit, you're basically prevented from changing the roll or it skews the results too much.
The consequence being the design space for rule effects shrinks - it's now pretty much just a T, Sv and W game now.
unless they invent a special rule for the eldar or other armies (genestealers now have a flat invulnerable save, because it's easier in the his paradigm than giving them a negative to hit like they had in 2nd ed for running), there is not much design space to represent hard to hit hit glass cannons anymore.
In this current paradigm, the best you can do is either a universal invulnerable save to represent reflexes, extra wounds to represent your ability to get out of the way so no hit lands properly, or some arbitrary rule that breaks the core mechanics like - All aeldari models can't be hit on better than a 4+ regardless of modifiers.
Speed hasn't been a real defence since 2nd ed - and once they took initiative away, it wasn't even a defence in Melee anymore.
Eldarain wrote: What about putting a cap on -1s to hit imposed by enemy/terrain.
Compare your +s to the Enemy/Terrain based -s. Cap either way at 1. Impose any self inflicted -s Advancing, Combi Weapon etc. Afterwards.
Funny you should say that, the reason this came into my head today was because I was reading the new terrain rules and saw 'Dense Cover' gives a -1 to be hit, and thought "wow, that's totally useless".
Cover modifiers should definitely be excluded from the cap.
I did also think the same thing as you - self inflicted modifiers (like advancing) should also be excluded from the cap. I'm not forcing you to advance, you're choosing to do it, I shouldn't be the one punished for it.
Eldarain wrote: What about putting a cap on -1s to hit imposed by enemy/terrain.
Compare your +s to the Enemy/Terrain based -s. Cap either way at 1. Impose any self inflicted -s Advancing, Combi Weapon etc. Afterwards.
Funny you should say that, the reason this came into my head today was because I was reading the new terrain rules and saw 'Dense Cover' gives a -1 to be hit, and thought "wow, that's totally useless".
Cover modifiers should definitely be excluded from the cap.
I did also think the same thing as you - self inflicted modifiers (like advancing) should also be excluded from the cap. I'm not forcing you to advance, you're choosing to do it, I shouldn't be the one punished for it.
the rule loses its effect if you create too many exceptions to it though. And if you have to balance a rule by creating lots of exceptions then it's probably not a good rule.
Maybe they'll introduce a hit 'save' - if you're super dodgy then you get a save against successful hits before they're rolled to wound. Then you get your armour save after that.
In this current paradigm, the best you can do is either a universal invulnerable save to represent reflexes, extra wounds to represent your ability to get out of the way so no hit lands properly, or some arbitrary rule that breaks the core mechanics like - All aeldari models can't be hit on better than a 4+ regardless of modifiers.
Speed hasn't been a real defence since 2nd ed - and once they took initiative away, it wasn't even a defence in Melee anymore.
This is the problem thought - elite armies like Harlequins pay a big premium for their stats, and two of the things they pay a lot for is a 4++ and a -1 to be hit. They already have this, so the -1 to be hit can't be swapped for an invuln (unless they improve it to a 3++, but that won't happen). It just means they're more fragile than they already were. And they were already glass cannons. Now they're... biscuit cannons.
Initiative was eldars main defence back in the old days, but that got removed and eventually replaced with -1 to hit, which has now also been removed. So far thought it hasn't been replaced with anything.
Making 6s always hit was enough. This change favors elite armies over armies with inherently poor BS and WS. The worst a marine can hit is now on 4s, while boyz can be pushed to hitting on 6s. It's the way cover affects armour saves all over again. Gw overcompensated hard.
In this current paradigm, the best you can do is either a universal invulnerable save to represent reflexes, extra wounds to represent your ability to get out of the way so no hit lands properly, or some arbitrary rule that breaks the core mechanics like - All aeldari models can't be hit on better than a 4+ regardless of modifiers.
Speed hasn't been a real defence since 2nd ed - and once they took initiative away, it wasn't even a defence in Melee anymore.
This is the problem thought - elite armies like Harlequins pay a big premium for their stats, and two of the things they pay a lot for is a 4++ and a -1 to be hit. They already have this, so the -1 to be hit can't be swapped for an invuln (unless they improve it to a 3++, but that won't happen). It just means they're more fragile than they already were. And they were already glass cannons. Now they're... biscuit cannons.
Initiative was eldars main defence back in the old days, but that got removed and eventually replaced with -1 to hit, which has now also been removed. So far thought it hasn't been replaced with anything.
Yup. GW have decided that space marines are the force the game should be built around, and speed and dodgy ness is not their defining trait.
Hence why Necrons are released alongside them in the newest edition - necrons are the closest xenos army to marines in stats - they rely on T, W and Sv to stay alive.
Eldar have always been an army GW struggles with because they have so much variety which is so different (no armies have statlines like wraithguard alongside stalines like guardians) - the crafworld army is like every imperial faction smushed together, trying to balance that is difficult and they inevitably end up with one or two broken units that are used and the rest are ignored.
This new paradigm has a lot of extra wounds being handed out, so it's possible they will just give harlequins +1 wound each. Personally I'd rather 3++ and 1W, to reinforce that glass cannon aspect, but we'll just have to wait and see.
The most I expect for the craftworlds is 2 wound aspects maybe. god forbid they actually make them soft and hard at the same time...
Looks like you found the first "game breaking" thing from the 9th ed rules as far as I'm concerned. This means that as long as an enemy unit is in cover, I can just ignore any and all penalties for moving and firing heavy weapons, firing assult weapons while advancing, as well as any penalties for firing both combi-weapons. L4M3
tauist wrote: Looks like you found the first "game breaking" thing from the 9th ed rules as far as I'm concerned. This means that as long as an enemy unit is in cover, I can just ignore any and all penalties for moving and firing heavy weapons, firing assult weapons while advancing, as well as any penalties for firing both combi-weapons. L4M3
Put another way, a one-legged space marine firing a lascannon while running / hopping, is exactly as accurate as a land raider firing a lascannon while standing still, if they're both aiming at the same guy hiding in a bush. So even 'big guns never tire' becomes unnecessary.
With a D6 design space largely built around the median values, there is always going to be weirdness, there just isn't enough to work with. 40k isn't the only game to get stung by that problem, and it should be clear that anything capable of a -3 modifier or more in a D6 design space that has little or no "+" modifiers is going present problems and should be avoided in the first place as a result and a different mechanic used if necessary.
Capping at 6's can run into issues at the opposite end, where you get Guard or Ork units that can zip around all they want and not care too much, while the elite units eat the full impact of -3 to hit.
A 2d6 design space (where say an Ork may hit on an 8, a Guardsmen would hit on a 7, a Guardian on a 6, a Space Marine on a 5, and a Custodes on a 4) would allow for dramatically more flexibility and differentiation, but doesn't work in a game where you may be rolling 40 attacks at once.
Vaktathi wrote: With a D6 design space largely built around the median values, there is always going to be weirdness, there just isn't enough to work with. 40k isn't the only game to get stung by that problem, and it should be clear that anything capable of a -3 modifier or more in a D6 design space that has little or no "+" modifiers is going present problems and should be avoided in the first place as a result and a different mechanic used if necessary.
Capping at 6's can run into issues at the opposite end, where you get Guard or Ork units that can zip around all they want and not care too much, while the elite units eat the full impact of -3 to hit.
A 2d6 design space (where say an Ork may hit on an 8, a Guardsmen would hit on a 7, a Guardian on a 6, a Space Marine on a 5, and a Custodes on a 4) would allow for dramatically more flexibility and differentiation, but doesn't work in a game where you may be rolling 40 attacks at once.
It works better when you're using the dice as the mediator between two values, rather than as a direct result unto itself.
ie the S vsT table (and the modern one which is more skewed at the ends) works fine with a D6 - it could work fine with any dice value really, because it's used as a comparison rather than as a static score.
Which IMO is what they should have done with BS, rather than changed WS to be more like it, they should have shifted BS to be more like WS.
So long as modifiers stay away from Dice, and stick to stats, then the effect is less pronounced.
ie BS 6 Vs I 6 = 4+ to hit. -2 to BS changes it to a 5+, -3 or more to a 6+.
I understand that the direct roll is simpler mechanically, but ... it's also simpler mechanically and that's what causes issues like this one.
Using the dice as a comparator and not applying modifiers to the dice value directly avoids these issues, but it does make the maths a little more involved.
I would have just applied the current SvsT table to WS and BS and called it a day...
Gadzilla666 wrote: Making 6s always hit was enough. This change favors elite armies over armies with inherently poor BS and WS. The worst a marine can hit is now on 4s, while boyz can be pushed to hitting on 6s. It's the way cover affects armour saves all over again. Gw overcompensated hard.
But then marines were largely ignoring those negatives through rerolls.
This would only hurt Orks if they had the ability to stack negatives themselves, which they typically don't. I think the tailpipe smoke is the only voluntary one available.
The crazy negative modifiers came from primarily elite armies or were used to protect primarily elite units.
I would have just applied the current SvsT table to WS and BS and called it a day...
I actually like this idea. Means -1 is a standard which is common, as -2 won't have much effect on most armies, but stealth armies that can stack to -3 or -4 then get an additional stage of stealth out of it. Same as strength now, where S4 to S5 is a decent jump in power, but after that the next bump is double-toughness so you'd need 8 or more.
There is definitely an oddity in - assuming they live long enough to attack - a Conscript finding it equally as easy (or hard) to hit a Bloodthirster or Hive Tyrant in melee as they do a Nurgling or a Ripper Swarm.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Making 6s always hit was enough. This change favors elite armies over armies with inherently poor BS and WS. The worst a marine can hit is now on 4s, while boyz can be pushed to hitting on 6s. It's the way cover affects armour saves all over again. Gw overcompensated hard.
But then marines were largely ignoring those negatives through rerolls.
This would only hurt Orks if they had the ability to stack negatives themselves, which they typically don't. I think the tailpipe smoke is the only voluntary one available.
The crazy negative modifiers came from primarily elite armies or were used to protect primarily elite units.
If anything it makes full rerolls less relevant.
That's why loyalists need full rerolls taken away. Rerolling everything to hit was a bad idea. Rerolling 1s isn't so bad, but rerolling everything is too much. Yes, this makes full rerolls less relevant, but that's because it makes so many other things less relevant. Is your target already behind dense cover? Go ahead and move with that heavy weapon, or advance with that assault weapon.
It also devalues armies and units that rely on not being hit in the first place as their primary source of durability. And as the OP points out in their Custodes example, it's kind of silly.
That's why loyalists need full rerolls taken away. Rerolling everything to hit was a bad idea. Rerolling 1s isn't so bad, but rerolling everything is too much. Yes, this makes full rerolls less relevant, but that's because it makes so many other things less relevant. Is your target already behind dense cover? Go ahead and move with that heavy weapon, or advance with that assault weapon.
It also devalues armies and units that rely on not being hit in the first place as their primary source of durability. And as the OP points out in their Custodes example, it's kind of silly.
I don't play marines, but I still remember eldar running around with -2/-3 to hit, no melee possible, armies. It was not very fun to non eldar players. And given the option of me having fun, and someone playing other armies having it, I learned that it is smarter to go for your own fun, because the chance is GW is not going to give you fun rules in the future. Being costed like a truck and hiting on +6 is not very fun. And if marines could have been bad for most of 8th, then maybe all those xeno players are going to have to live with the fact, that now they are going to have to wait for 9-12 months to have fun.
That's why loyalists need full rerolls taken away. Rerolling everything to hit was a bad idea. Rerolling 1s isn't so bad, but rerolling everything is too much. Yes, this makes full rerolls less relevant, but that's because it makes so many other things less relevant. Is your target already behind dense cover? Go ahead and move with that heavy weapon, or advance with that assault weapon.
It also devalues armies and units that rely on not being hit in the first place as their primary source of durability. And as the OP points out in their Custodes example, it's kind of silly.
I don't play marines, but I still remember eldar running around with -2/-3 to hit, no melee possible, armies. It was not very fun to non eldar players. And given the option of me having fun, and someone playing other armies having it, I learned that it is smarter to go for your own fun, because the chance is GW is not going to give you fun rules in the future. Being costed like a truck and hiting on +6 is not very fun. And if marines could have been bad for most of 8th, then maybe all those xeno players are going to have to live with the fact, that now they are going to have to wait for 9-12 months to have fun.
So, since the rules on modifiers to hit unfairly favored Eldar at one point it's ok if they now unfairly favor other factions? You do realize that the rules don't have to tilt the tables heavily in one way or the other right? It's better to have an even playing field than to have things swing back and forth constantly.
Bring back the "Initiative" stat.
Make the hit rolls a compared roll between BS / WS and I (as it was in darker times before...) - the same way, a wound roll is resolved.
Yes. I don't remember xeno players being sad that marines were laughable . There was a ton of L2P and "you take gulliman and a lot of razorbacks" which of course didn't help one bit, if you played IH or DA.
I am genuinely suprised, that people think that after 8th people are somehow going to have much sympathy to eldar player. And that them being at -3 to hit should be the natural way.
It doesn't sound to me much like non marine players being worried about balanced. They only worry that their armies aren't the best of the best right now.
Eldar players win ratios were what, 2-3% under that of IH, and they went mental about it, as if this was the end of the world.
Seems to me that w40k is swingy as hell. The difference is that, armies like eldar were in the very powerful camp for a very long time, and now act suprised. As if they didn't knew that other armies were unplayable bad for a very long time. I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.
Nibbler wrote: Bring back the "Initiative" stat.
Make the hit rolls a compared roll between BS / WS and I (as it was in darker times before...) - the same way, a wound roll is resolved.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of an edition where attack rolls have been WS (or BS) vs. I - prior to 8th, WS was compared to WS, while you took your BS away from 7, then applied modifiers to get the value you needed to roll to hit.
WS vs WS made sense and, frankly, BS vs. I doesn't seem that bad an idea, subject to testing.
Karol wrote: Yes. I don't remember xeno players being sad that marines were laughable . There was a ton of L2P and "you take gulliman and a lot of razorbacks" which of course didn't help one bit, if you played IH or DA.
Well, yes, like all codices are full with bad choices , thanks to gw's ruleswriting, when was the last time you saw an aspect warrior, or possessed beyond the bomb shenanigans?
I am genuinely suprised, that people think that after 8th people are somehow going to have much sympathy to eldar player. And that them being at -3 to hit should be the natural way.
Because there are people here that care about the state of the game as a whole and not their egotistical faction, just becaus ei play R&H and CSM doesn't make it fun to roffle over a marine player, GK , tau, etc. Quite to the contrary, if the only fun you garner from this game is rolling over an opponent with the most op broken bs then i feel like you should go play Starcraft 2 competitively.
It doesn't sound to me much like non marine players being worried about balanced. They only worry that their armies aren't the best of the best right now.
Then you are not paying attention, people complained all through 8th about the most broken issue lists. For good reasons.
Eldar players win ratios were what, 2-3% under that of IH, and they went mental about it, as if this was the end of the world.
Do you honestly think it is good for the health of the game, when one faction has a not even 1/10 chance on a win just for existing in such a state? Do you think that is longterm healthy? Maybe you forgot, but i think you were atleast as close to just stop playing GK at some point in 8th, now imagine if more people drop out? That is devastating potentially, especially to smaller communities. Which will then affect the hobby as a whole. Bad rules suport goes also hand in hand with bad model support. Why do you think certain factions just died out in certain areas.
Seems to me that w40k is swingy as hell. The difference is that, armies like eldar were in the very powerful camp for a very long time, and now act suprised. As if they didn't knew that other armies were unplayable bad for a very long time. I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.
That is just spite for the sake of spite mate, if you want to live with such a philosophy, by all means, but the implication is simple, that such balance issues (which atleast got somewhat quickly resovled to a degree) will make the game lose people faster then anything, since you weren't around since 7th i 'll give you a hint, it was bad, to the point where my local store literally kicked GW nearly out of it's sortiment, and it hasn't recovered to the same degree even now.
The hobby is worse off everytime GW pulls something like this, like the initial 9th ed pts, like IH, like formations.
Condoning such behaviour because your community has a lot of gak holes in it, which are not even concerned about a fair match is a sure fire way to make it go poof.
Karol wrote: Seems to me that w40k is swingy as hell.
Yes, but I think most people would agree that it shouldn't be.
Karol wrote: I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.
That's a childishly spiteful position to take, and doesn't make you seem like a very sportsmanlike opponent.
Nibbler wrote: Bring back the "Initiative" stat.
Make the hit rolls a compared roll between BS / WS and I (as it was in darker times before...) - the same way, a wound roll is resolved.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of an edition where attack rolls have been WS (or BS) vs. I - prior to 8th, WS was compared to WS, while you took your BS away from 7, then applied modifiers to get the value you needed to roll to hit.
WS vs WS made sense and, frankly, BS vs. I doesn't seem that bad an idea, subject to testing.
You are completely right, that's how it worked in the past. Got that confused somehow... (thank you for clearing that up)
But at this stage, I really think the Initiative stat would give us a tool to compare swiftness between different units.
I've long thought the D6 needs to change to some other die (D8/D10/D12), this issue seems to be another case validating my thoughts.
But if we must keep using D6, I kinda like the BS vs. I idea and using the same table as S vs. T. Its a simple table to remember and everyone already uses it, so adopting it also for shooting attacks should be quite easy.
Karol wrote: I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.
That's a childishly spiteful position to take, and doesn't make you seem like a very sportsmanlike opponent.
Don't mention the s word around Karol - you'll get some anecdote about it being sportsmanlike to destroy someone's joint in inter-school wrestling...
I'm afraid I think -1 cap has been a great benefit to the game. There will need to be balance changes around it (like... so many things) - but stacking -2/3 to hit wasn't clever by the person doing it, or fun for the person who had to try and shoot into it.
Tyel wrote: I'm afraid I think -1 cap has been a great benefit to the game. There will need to be balance changes around it (like... so many things) - but stacking -2/3 to hit wasn't clever by the person doing it, or fun for the person who had to try and shoot into it.
-1 to hit is a symptom of a vastly to deadly edition.
I feel that the caps are too restrictive, particularly in light of 6s now auto hitting. GW's response to the 'Eldar Flyer Problem' has been too blunt, and a better way to go would be to have a couple of categories of bonus/penalty, and not allow stacking within them; the Alaitoc penalty and the aircraft penalty could have been non-stacking, but it isn't a problem (IMO) allowing Lightning Fast Reactions to increase it to -2.
I think that some of the hate toward hit penalties is ill-considered and kneejerk. Those penalties are generally compensation for a vehicle having low Toughness and Wounds, and alows for a bit of variety in the game design.
harlokin wrote: I feel that the caps are too restrictive, particularly in light of 6s now auto hitting. GW's response to the 'Eldar Flyer Problem' has been too blunt, and a better way to go would be to have a couple of categories of bonus/penalty, and not allow stacking within them; the Alaitoc penalty and the aircraft penalty could have been non-stacking, but it isn't a problem (IMO) allowing Lightning Fast Reactions to increase it to -2.
I think that some of the hate toward hit penalties is ill-considered and kneejerk. Those penalties are generally compensation for a vehicle having low Toughness and Wounds, and alows for a bit of variety in the game design.
No, the real issue was, that stacking them, especially on Aeldari planes, or possessed for that matter, was too cheap.
Especially on aeldari flyers. Vice versa hiking the price without the stacking associated to be an issue would have ended in the obliterator syndrome.
-1/+1 is far too small and at least for GSC Half of the +1 to hit bonuses that you could have with Stratagem straight up do not work with an Alphus in your list (and even the +2 to wound relic has become useless now).
They need to up it to -2/+2 to avoid stupid and slowed interactions
harlokin wrote: I feel that the caps are too restrictive, particularly in light of 6s now auto hitting. GW's response to the 'Eldar Flyer Problem' has been too blunt, and a better way to go would be to have a couple of categories of bonus/penalty, and not allow stacking within them; the Alaitoc penalty and the aircraft penalty could have been non-stacking, but it isn't a problem (IMO) allowing Lightning Fast Reactions to increase it to -2.
I think that some of the hate toward hit penalties is ill-considered and kneejerk. Those penalties are generally compensation for a vehicle having low Toughness and Wounds, and alows for a bit of variety in the game design.
that's how D&D works. differant bonuses are differant types and the same type doesn't stack. so a magic ring that gives a +2 defelection bonus to AC doesn't stack with a magic amulet that gives a +3 deflection bonus to AC. it could get complicated fast though
Count me among those who feel making 6s auto-hit was enough. It creates a point of diminishing returns without hard-capping on angle of benefit. In such a case, being -4 to hit against a 4+ BS opponent is a wasted effort (when -3 would have the same result) but against a 3+ BS opponent it remains useful so one must evaluate the costs & benefits.
Karol wrote: Yes. I don't remember xeno players being sad that marines were laughable . There was a ton of L2P and "you take gulliman and a lot of razorbacks" which of course didn't help one bit, if you played IH or DA.
I am genuinely suprised, that people think that after 8th people are somehow going to have much sympathy to eldar player. And that them being at -3 to hit should be the natural way.
It doesn't sound to me much like non marine players being worried about balanced. They only worry that their armies aren't the best of the best right now.
Eldar players win ratios were what, 2-3% under that of IH, and they went mental about it, as if this was the end of the world.
Seems to me that w40k is swingy as hell. The difference is that, armies like eldar were in the very powerful camp for a very long time, and now act suprised. As if they didn't knew that other armies were unplayable bad for a very long time. I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.
This kind of attitude is really one of the most discouraging things I've ever read for a hobby community in my life.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Count me among those who feel making 6s auto-hit was enough. It creates a point of diminishing returns without hard-capping on angle of benefit. In such a case, being -4 to hit against a 4+ BS opponent is a wasted effort (when -3 would have the same result) but against a 3+ BS opponent it remains useful so one must evaluate the costs & benefits.
Just adding "6 always hits" can't help creating too many bizarre situations. I thing the people advocating for a "to-wound table solution" for to-hit rolls and modifiers applying to the stat instead of the roll have the right idea.
...actually that should probably go for all the to-wound modifiers, and replacing all the "reroll 1s/fails" abilities with "improve the stat by x" would probably be a significant improvement as well.
Karol wrote: Yes. I don't remember xeno players being sad that marines were laughable . There was a ton of L2P and "you take gulliman and a lot of razorbacks" which of course didn't help one bit, if you played IH or DA.
I am genuinely suprised, that people think that after 8th people are somehow going to have much sympathy to eldar player. And that them being at -3 to hit should be the natural way.
It doesn't sound to me much like non marine players being worried about balanced. They only worry that their armies aren't the best of the best right now.
Eldar players win ratios were what, 2-3% under that of IH, and they went mental about it, as if this was the end of the world.
Seems to me that w40k is swingy as hell. The difference is that, armies like eldar were in the very powerful camp for a very long time, and now act suprised. As if they didn't knew that other armies were unplayable bad for a very long time. I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.
This kind of attitude is really one of the most discouraging things I've ever read for a hobby community in my life.
Its Karol. Sadly their gaming group seems to be the most toxic one around so thats all they know and theyre probably just parroting what they hear at the LGS.
I play eldar and i never did the Alaitoc Airwing list. I found that too many people at my LGS found it unenjoyable. I still think that the nerf was clearly too much and specifically targeted at these lists.
With autohitting on 6's and the airwing detachment gone, spamming planes now has a real cost in 9th that i consider enough of a nerf by itself.
The blanket cap just fethed many different armies' strategies :
Alpha legion Clandestine warlord trait was clearly made "with 9th edition in mind"
Admech's Doctrina imperiatives with datatheter now can't give +2 to hit like they used to.
Eldars classic infantry now are the uber glasscannons that don't actually dish out damage (wraiths are an exception to eldar's fragility and an army only having a subset playable sucks)
Harlequins already have -1 to hit on basically everything except their troupes, so now they basically give their opponent more mobility by negating the penalty to move and shoot heavy weapons.
Again, i might be biased but when i see intercessors tearing through any of my eldar units with their full rerolls, i really feel like i should be allowed to put a -2 to hit on my stuff.
Right, CWE wasn't a problem 3 units where. Why nerf a full armies potential b.c of a few bad units? I've had -2 on many units and vs marines it didn't matter with all of their re-rolls they Fing get while my Quins has almost no re-rolls other than 1 HQ just for melee.
Instead of a cap, 6's auto hit and maybe change Alaitoc and its all good.
Amishprn86 wrote: Right, CWE wasn't a problem 3 units where. Why nerf a full armies potential b.c of a few bad units? I've had -2 on many units and vs marines it didn't matter with all of their re-rolls they Fing get while my Quins has almost no re-rolls other than 1 HQ just for melee.
Instead of a cap, 6's auto hit and maybe change Alaitoc and its all good.
Yeah, make Alaitoc not affect Aircrafts and Eldars are basically fixed. Then find a way for possessed bombs and disco lords to not be able to get so many negative to hits and that whole problem is basically fixed.
The reason these strategies work is that its the only defense these units can have thats actually worthwhile. The exception being the disco lord.
Possessed suck unless youre giving them 2 codexe's worth of buffs. Elfs in general die to regular bolter fire (and thats before the good bolters of primaris + doctrines).
Niiru wrote: This came up in a conversation today, where the basic premise was that currently in 9th edition Eldar (a race that designs all its technology and training around being as evasive as possible, to the point where they no longer wear 'protective' armour) are easier to kill than an ork in a tshirt.
So as a caveat - I personally did not like the 8th edition shenanigans of stacking up -4 / -6 etc to-hit modifiers, making units impossible to hit. It was too much, and it made things boring. Blame GW for leaving so many obvious loopholes and stacking opportunities open.
My opinion, and it is certainly fair to criticize this opinion as being naively over-optimistic, is that GW has designed the Core Rules to have +1/-1 as the max hit roll modifier, but plans to have some race(s?) have an ability or abilities that break the rule. I say this based on the T'au ability to natively fire overwatch without the stratagem. The Core Rules says if you want to overwatch, you have to spend a Command Point and use the Stratagem, but the T'au can do it as much as they want. I think Eldar will end up with some abilities that allow them to penalize shooters To Hit rolls by -2 or even -3.
I'll frankly be surprised if it doesn't come out that way, but like I said above - I can't deny that this idea could fairly be criticized as overly optimistic.
Personally I am very curious how they are going to address the "flimsier" races considering the hit mod cap and the increase in lethality of Marines. Currently the Aeldari codexes rely on a small subset of units to save the day, but overall the units are weak.
I think the hit mod cap was a good change due to how negatively it affected the player experiences, but it goes against the design paradigm of earlier codexes that now have to be updated sooner rather than later.
Too restrictive or not, the problem is they didn't introduce the cap to all rolls.
Charging a Caladius through a forest and a Tanglefoot grenade getting you at worst a -1 to charge, for example, would off-set some of that. But there the new rules-paradigm somehow doesn't apply.
Which obviously skews stuff against the armies that relied on the type of modifiers that are now capped and in favour of armies that can (ab)use modifiers that are not capped.
Admech's Doctrina imperiatives with datatheter now can't give +2 to hit like they used to.
Sure they can. You just only get +1 out of it.
Remember, as it was explained repeatedly by Stu Black of the rules team on the livestreams and repeated here and elsewhere: The +1/-1? That's just the cap of your benefit. Further modifiers are still counted. If you have -3 to hit and I have +2 to hit, you still get your -1.
Personal take: I like the new setup. No more stacking modifiers to make yourself unhittable or able to never miss.
Also, it's about time that Eldar Camocloaks did the same thing as Imperial ones. Imperial ones have been an armor save while in cover modifier rather than the negative to hit that the Eldar ones have been.
Admech's Doctrina imperiatives with datatheter now can't give +2 to hit like they used to.
Sure they can. You just only get +1 out of it.
Remember, as it was explained repeatedly by Stu Black of the rules team on the livestreams and repeated here and elsewhere:
The +1/-1? That's just the cap of your benefit. Further modifiers are still counted.
If you have -3 to hit and I have +2 to hit, you still get your -1.
I know you technically do, but the cases where its gonna be effective are pretty much gone since stacking - to hits isn't a viable strategy anymore. And anyway, they nerfed dragoons to only explode on unmodified 6's.
Also, it's about time that Eldar Camocloaks did the same thing as Imperial ones. Imperial ones have been an armor save while in cover modifier rather than the negative to hit that the Eldar ones have been.
? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.
a -2 to hit means nothing, unless the enemy has +1 to-hit, in which case you are a total of -1, just like you were if the enemy didn't have +1 to-hit in the first place.
if you have +2 to hit and the enemy has -2, you're hitting normally. If the enemy has only -1, you're hitting with +1, which you would be if the enemy just didn't bother.
So things like "lightning reflexes" do literally nothing if the enemy has +2 to hit - using and not using it is exactly the same. wut
I know you technically do, but the cases where its gonna be effective are pretty much gone since stacking - to hits isn't a viable strategy anymore. And anyway, they nerfed dragoons to only explode on unmodified 6's.
Once again: you don't get the full benefits by stacking, but it's not like the -1 to hit benefit that some armies can natively get is bad.
And it's not like some of the popular units didn't come with a -1 to hit as part of their rules.
? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.
Then they could have been called something different.
The unhittable part has already been fixed by making 6's always hit.
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.
? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.
Then they could have been called something different.
Space marines are : Camo Cloaks
Eldars are : Cameleoline Cloaks
The unhittable part has already been fixed by making 6's always hit.
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.
Oh great, let me just always roll 6s!
it used to be possible to make a unit LITTERALLY unhittable. The fact that this isnt the case (even if modifiers were uncapped) means that yes, they did fix this problem.
IMO any modifier that you impose on yourself (moving heavy weapons, advancing and shooting assault, shooting both sides of a combi-weapon, firing into combat, etc) should reduce your BS instead of being -1 to hit, so those stack with -1 to hit modifiers.
Outside of that, I think the cap is fine as stacking those modifiers are an inherently broken mechanic as units punished based on their ballistic skill, not on their effectiveness. 300 points worth of ork shooting get reduced to 150 points by -1 to hit, while 300 points of eldar or marine shooting only goes down to 225.
I think that we should differentiate between the competitive balancing scenario and the narrative scenario.
I can understand that in a competitive context this kind of contradictory thing might happen and then points can be readjusted.
Narrative wise I agree that makes no so much sense, and probably I will house rule something about as some people in my meta play Eldar.
In my opinion, and this is in the side of house ruling, I think that it would be cool something like max cap to -2 / +2 been natural 6 always a 6.
That would boost orks, but I don't care, as orks also don't care about aiming. They just dakka dakka randomly in the air. Their accuracy is the same as bad for a ranger hidden behind a brush or a guardsman confused wandering in the middle of the battlefield
I agree that its unfun to play against, no doubt about that. My main complaint is that at the moment, elfs lost what little durability they had for most of their codexes. Popping LFR on a unit holding a site was a key part of their strategies and now its efficiency is diminished and sometimes even helps your opponents (moving infantry heavy weapons in range to shoot them since theyll still only have -1 to hit anyway). If GW wants to go away with stacking +/-, they need to figure out a way to counterbalance the nerf.
? both pieces of equipment come from races with different approaches on battle and they represent where they get their survivability from. Marines from armor saves, eldars from not getting hit in the first place.
Then they could have been called something different.
Space marines are : Camo Cloaks
Eldars are : Cameleoline Cloaks
The unhittable part has already been fixed by making 6's always hit.
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.
Oh great, let me just always roll 6s!
it used to be possible to make a unit LITTERALLY unhittable. The fact that this isnt the case (even if modifiers were uncapped) means that yes, they did fix this problem.
The point that you missed is that saying they "fixed" the ability to make a unit unhittable by making 6s always hit is goofy.
Do 6s always hit? Yeah, they do. That doesn't mean that leaving stacking modifiers in is a good idea.
If you're able to make it so that 2s through 5s don't hit at all? That is a problem.
Count me as one of those (possibly hopeless) optimistic people who thinks maybe the codexes will address this in some way. The question is, how?
I'm not a fan of the cap either, and it's been a little disheartening to hear so many respected community podcast leaders talk about how great it is. Why? What was the real problem here? Like ... maybe 4 units across the entire game? Just fix those units! Classic GW over-correction.
Right now there are just so many abilities, powers, etc, that ... just don't matter. At all. Because of the cap. And the justification is often "Well, if you have enough to stack a -2 but I have enough to get a +3 it balances out". Honestly, that's setting us up for a lot of needless addition and subtraction and that's my fear. The codexes will end up creating something akin to the 2nd ed to-hit modifiers. I've played long enough to remember the days of "Well, I'm at long range so that's -1, but you're in the open so that's +1, but it's Tuesday so that's-2, but my super-scope gives me +3 ....". It wasn't fun then, and it will be even less fun now - while doing all of that just to see if you end up at +1 or -1 ...
Or even worse, the first few books out the gate will abide by it, and then GW will realize it's a mistake and allow the subsequent books to ignore it. #codexcreep.
Eh - guess in retrospect, I'm not actually that optimistic ...
The point that you missed is that saying they "fixed" the ability to make a unit unhittable by making 6s always hit is goofy.
Do 6s always hit? Yeah, they do. That doesn't mean that leaving stacking modifiers in is a good idea.
If you're able to make it so that 2s through 5s don't hit at all? That is a problem.
Its a combination of factors that fixed it, the biggest one being that 6's autohit. Airwing being gone and missions being much more objective based got rid of the flyer spam.
Making it +2/-2 wouldve kept the clearly intended design of codexes like the Alpha legion supplement, Anything alaitoc and harlequins, while still making some sense fluff-wise.
I know the mechanic is unfun, which is why i basically never used more then -1 to hit except on my quin bikes to give them -2 to hit so they could actually survive.
Again, when stuff like full rerolls are in the game, getting -2 to hit on a key unit seems fair, especially when the second -1 to hit comes from the attacker moving with heavy weapons
The problem is 8th was designed without the cap in mind, but it just got shoe-horned into 9th with no changes. So anything that was based around a greater than a +1/-1 suddenly got nerfed into uselessness with no compensation.
The other problem is that rerolls remained, meaning that the +1/-1 is even more irrelevant. Space marines with full rerolls now hit 75% of the time no matter what. That's just stupid.
You might want to go look that up...because Cameleoline is used by the Imperium as well. The Tanith's cloaks are made of the stuff, and it's been in the fluff forever as what Marine Scouts have too.
Again, when stuff like full rerolls are in the game, getting -2 to hit on a key unit seems fair, especially when the second -1 to hit comes from the attacker moving with heavy weapons
If full reroll were limited to only a specific extremely expensive named character, like guilliman or abbadon, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. You can just ban named characters, like used to be the norm in the old days. But chapter masters are generic.
You might want to go look that up...because Cameleoline is used by the Imperium as well. The Tanith's cloaks are made of the stuff, and it's been in the fluff forever as what Marine Scouts have too.
Again, when stuff like full rerolls are in the game, getting -2 to hit on a key unit seems fair, especially when the second -1 to hit comes from the attacker moving with heavy weapons
Remind me again who has full rerolls?
Oh, right...Chapter Masters.
85pts + 2cp to get full rerolls for the whole game VS 2cp to give -1 to hit for 1 phase....
If full reroll were limited to only a specific extremely expensive named character, like guilliman or abbadon, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. You can just ban named characters, like used to be the norm in the old days. But chapter masters are generic.
Because stacking negatives to hit hurt huge numbers of armies.
To which the cry goes up "we needed it tho, cos Space Marines, and even a stacking -2 to hit still results in 5/9 hits, which is fine".
Sure - for Space Marines - but for everyone else you just had an obnoxious, toxic gameplay.
Sure things should be balanced. But Alaitoc (and its sister doctrines across the codexes) should not have lasted past CA18.
I wouldn't mind if lightning fast reactions was a special once per phase -1 that can stack. But you shouldn't be able to get -2 easily all over the shop. And in a world *hopefully* chock full of terrain (tbh I don't see it - but tournaments etc might manage), that's what you would get.
You can also refer to the 7E Space Marine Codex, "Special Issue Wargear" section.
Camo Cloak wrote:
Space Marine Scouts often wear camo cloaks--loose garments woven from a light-reactive material known as cameleoline, which imitates the appearance of nearby terrain. So garbed, Scouts are almost impossible to see at long distances.
85pts + 2cp to get full rerolls for the whole game VS 2cp to give -1 to hit for 1 phase....
Remind me again how many Chapter Masters you can have in an army?
We know that Captains are getting a "per Detachment" limitation added to them.
Also, let's stop saying "full rerolls" and instead say "full rerolls within 6 inches"...because it's not an armywide thing. It's an aura.
[snip]
The unable to miss is already in the game with the full rerolls of space marines.
I know this is a bugbear for a lot of people, but you do remember that Marines had full to-hit rerolls for most of 8th and they were still garbage right?
I feel like that characterizes a lot the reaction to Codex 2.0. "The rerolls are too much." We had the rerolls to begin with. "Rapid fire at full range is too much." We had that for months before the codex dropped and it wasn't enough. "Marines didn't need all that extra Ap." Marines were already had lots of Ap in an edition when anything past Ap 2 was usually wasted, although adding it to Boltguns finally made them worth firing. The real problem is super-doctines and any given chapter having six pages of strats and three pages of relics. I play several factions, including some low-tier forces like Mono-god Slannesh Daemons and Tryanids; the percentage of good strats and relics for Marines isn't really all that much higher (or higher at all in some cases) but it gets amplified by the sheer volume of them available.
I know this is a bugbear for a lot of people, but you do remember that Marines had full to-hit rerolls for most of 8th and they were still garbage right?
I feel like that characterizes a lot the reaction to Codex 2.0. "The rerolls are too much." We had the rerolls to begin with. "Rapid fire at full range is too much." We had that for months before the codex dropped and it wasn't enough. "Marines didn't need all that extra Ap." Marines were already had lots of Ap in an edition when anything past Ap 2 was usually wasted, although adding it to Boltguns finally made them worth firing. The real problem is super-doctines and any given chapter having six pages of strats and three pages of relics. I play several factions, including some low-tier forces like Mono-god Slannesh Daemons and Tryanids; the percentage of good strats and relics for Marines isn't really all that much higher (or higher at all in some cases) but it gets amplified by the sheer volume of them available.
There were a lot of people (myself included) saying the rerolls were too much even before Marines were good. It was one of the early signs that games of 8th were not going to be the uber quick affair we had been promised. The designers used them in a lazy fashion that only made them worse when all the buffs started getting tossed at them. Marines didn't need the extra AP (Like you I play many factions and lack of AP is not something I ever worried about w/my marines), nor do they need most of the stuff they have continued to get.
The issue is, when 2.0 came out, it took the underlying cracks in the foundation and made them into canyons. Also, while I agree that Marines have plenty of bad strats, they also essentially have one strat for every rule that would hurt them, that let's them ignore that rule. No other army has this on that level with the strats. So now, you take those, combine them with the Super Doctrines, and all the other things they had pre-2.0 and you have .... a monstrosity.
We know that Captains are getting a "per Detachment" limitation added to them. Also, let's stop saying "full rerolls" and instead say "full rerolls within 6 inches"...because it's not an armywide thing. It's an aura.
It's because they're often huddled by at least a plurality of the army and a lieutenant - which I appreciate are significant caveats.
If we compare it to the Tau rule: Kauyon that can be used once per game with the cheapest commander being 93pts baseline IIRC and those effected units have to have remained stationary.
"Once per battle, at the beginning of your turn, a single COMMANDER from your army can declare either Kauyon or Mont’ka: Kauyon: Until the end of the turn, you can re-roll failed hit rolls for friendly <SEPT> units within 6" of the COMMANDER, but these units cannot move for any reason."
It's objectively better, it can be used in 100% of turns as opposed to 20% and does not suffer from the prerequisite that the effected units couldn't move, so you can continue to move forward, towards objectives and opponents. So instead of having to hope that your targets come into range/visibility to gain the reroll with the Chapter Master you can go to them and still get the buff from the aura.
85pts + 2cp to get full rerolls for the whole game VS 2cp to give -1 to hit for 1 phase....
Remind me again how many Chapter Masters you can have in an army?
We know that Captains are getting a "per Detachment" limitation added to them.
Also, let's stop saying "full rerolls" and instead say "full rerolls within 6 inches"...because it's not an armywide thing. It's an aura.
Yes, but a smart loyalist player isn't going to let the important stuff stray to far from that chapter master. You're going to keep those executioners, twin lascannon contemptors, hellblasters, and aggressors within 6. And it's danged annoying on that last example, that's a ridiculous amount of dice rolling, takes forever. That's why I pay 2CP a turn to turn the little buggers off by filling their vox with scrapcode and the screams of a hundred dying worlds. Most factions can't do that though.
Also, it's about time that Eldar Camocloaks did the same thing as Imperial ones. Imperial ones have been an armor save while in cover modifier rather than the negative to hit that the Eldar ones have been.
Nah, maybe from a gameplay perspective that could be used as a balancing tool but since we're whipping out the lore links; Aeldari tech is millions of years old steeped in galactic warfare thousands of times longer than a bunch of apes who just got it relatively "yesterday" in the timelines. It makes sense that an advanced race that's been around that many times longer might be able to eek out a couple improvements/mods/quality out of a similar piece of equipment that has a few materials in common. I can make a "ceramic" vase, that doesn't mean I know ho to get a piece of "ceramic" certified to NIJ standards to be worn as body armor. Like how how anti-grav tech used to before.
Then they could have been called something different.
Well, they are called something different. Camo and Cameleoline are similar words in that they both have the same first three letters, but at the end of the day they're not called the same thing. Even if you just hand wave that fact away, we all know just because something has exactly the same name does not mean it has the same quality, especially if you change manufacturers.
It's all opinion at the end of the day, but let's not act like Aeldari having something a bit better called something vaguely similar that's said to have a common material in the background is some kind of huge logical disconnect just because you didn't like a particular aspect of a defunct game's modifier system.
Karol wrote: I am all for eldar getting a GK level of fun for 2-3 editions. After then they can go back to being super powerful. Yeah, eldar being back to good, when I hit 21 sounds nice.
That's a childishly spiteful position to take, and doesn't make you seem like a very sportsmanlike opponent.
Don't mention the s word around Karol - you'll get some anecdote about it being sportsmanlike to destroy someone's joint in inter-school wrestling...
Just put him on ignore where he deserves to be until he gets banned.
Vaktathi wrote: With a D6 design space largely built around the median values, there is always going to be weirdness, there just isn't enough to work with. 40k isn't the only game to get stung by that problem, and it should be clear that anything capable of a -3 modifier or more in a D6 design space that has little or no "+" modifiers is going present problems and should be avoided in the first place as a result and a different mechanic used if necessary.
Capping at 6's can run into issues at the opposite end, where you get Guard or Ork units that can zip around all they want and not care too much, while the elite units eat the full impact of -3 to hit.
A 2d6 design space (where say an Ork may hit on an 8, a Guardsmen would hit on a 7, a Guardian on a 6, a Space Marine on a 5, and a Custodes on a 4) would allow for dramatically more flexibility and differentiation, but doesn't work in a game where you may be rolling 40 attacks at once.
The words you're looking for are "switch to D8 or D10".
And yeah the change is fething stupid. Now you don't even need to make a choice to move with a Heavy Weapon against any -1 to hit unit because you don't need to care.
Niiru wrote: This came up in a conversation today, where the basic premise was that currently in 9th edition Eldar (a race that designs all its technology and training around being as evasive as possible, to the point where they no longer wear 'protective' armour) are easier to kill than an ork in a tshirt.
So as a caveat - I personally did not like the 8th edition shenanigans of stacking up -4 / -6 etc to-hit modifiers, making units impossible to hit. It was too much, and it made things boring. Blame GW for leaving so many obvious loopholes and stacking opportunities open.
(Lets forget for a moment this recently got partly fixed by making 6s always hit. )
However... capping it at +1/-1... has issues.
An example:
Alaitoc Ranger unit, hiding in a forest. Should be -3 to hit, under the old rules. They're sneaky dudes, from a sneaky race, wearing camouflage. Makes sense.
However it gets capped at -1...
So now we throw in a Custodes unit. Big hulking dude.
He wants to fire his gun... it's a -1 to hit.
Well then he decides to advance first. -2 to hit still -1 to hit
Decides to fire both his weapon profiles. -3 to hit still -1 to hit
So a custodes can now run around the map, jumping and firing his weapons wildly in the air (any Halo fans out there?), and is exactly as accurate as a trained assassin firing his rifle from his snipers nest.
I think a change needed to be made... but I'm not sure this was the right change. Perhaps it can be fixed with a tweak, maybe +2/-2 being the cap instead... it would certainly be more reasonable.
Alternatively, they could change the army's that use this from -1 to hit modifiers, to something else. Maybe "enemy weapons range is reduced by 6inches", or a change to the armour save maybe. Alternatively, a bunch of units need to go down in price by a significant amount (but the best place to read recommendations on this is the Goonhammer site).
But I'd guess GW won't be making any changes like this for a year or so. The imperium just got another huge buff, and they're selling their speshmareens.
The irony is that when the 8th edition Tyranids codex came out, they went to great lengths to make it so that -1 to hit modifiers did not stack. The best you could do in that codex was -2 for ONE unit, your hive tyrant based off a relic that did stack with the aura from Venomthropes. It kept them pretty well leashed, but then the eldar codex came out and all caution was thrown to the wind.
Some people will know that I fething hate Custodes as an army. Half the time they shouldn't even roll, because they've stacked their hit and wound to the point that they have a 1/36 chance of failing. What they can do to their dreadnoughts right now because of that one space marine strat that was nerfed for everyone but them (Why? GW why do you do this crap?) is insane. Literally everything 9th edition did benefited Custodes and gave them zero weakness. It's actually funny to me, they've managed to make the army play as they do in the fluff.
Also, it's about time that Eldar Camocloaks did the same thing as Imperial ones. Imperial ones have been an armor save while in cover modifier rather than the negative to hit that the Eldar ones have been.
Nah, maybe from a gameplay perspective that could be used as a balancing tool but since we're whipping out the lore links; Aeldari tech is millions of years old steeped in galactic warfare thousands of times longer than a bunch of apes who just got it relatively "yesterday" in the timelines. It makes sense that an advanced race that's been around that many times longer might be able to eek out a couple improvements/mods/quality out of a similar piece of equipment that has a few materials in common. I can make a "ceramic" vase, that doesn't mean I know ho to get a piece of "ceramic" certified to NIJ standards to be worn as body armor. Like how how anti-grav tech used to before.
It literally goes back to "different rules for the same thing". Craftworlds got Stealth on Rangers to represent their camo cloaks while Marines and Guard got "+1 to Cover Save, even while in the open".
Then they could have been called something different.
Well, they are called something different. It's similar, but at the end of the day they're not called the same thing. Even if you just hand wave that fact away, we all know just because something has exactly the same name does not mean it has the same quality, especially if you change manufacturers.
It's all opinion at the end of the day, but let's not act like Aeldari having something a bit better called something vaguely similar that's said to have a common material in the background is some kind of huge logical disconnect just because you didn't like a particular aspect of a defunct game's modifier system.
This was literally the issue that existed with previous editions where things like Storm Shields would have different stats across two different codices.
The irony is that when the 8th edition Tyranids codex came out, they went to great lengths to make it so that -1 to hit modifiers did not stack. The best you could do in that codex was -2 for ONE unit, your hive tyrant based off a relic that did stack with the aura from Venomthropes. It kept them pretty well leashed, but then the eldar codex came out and all caution was thrown to the wind.
85pts + 2cp to get full rerolls for the whole game VS 2cp to give -1 to hit for 1 phase....
Remind me again how many Chapter Masters you can have in an army?
We know that Captains are getting a "per Detachment" limitation added to them.
Also, let's stop saying "full rerolls" and instead say "full rerolls within 6 inches"...because it's not an armywide thing. It's an aura.
Yes, but a smart loyalist player isn't going to let the important stuff stray to far from that chapter master. You're going to keep those executioners, twin lascannon contemptors, hellblasters, and aggressors within 6. And it's danged annoying on that last example, that's a ridiculous amount of dice rolling, takes forever. That's why I pay 2CP a turn to turn the little buggers off by filling their vox with scrapcode and the screams of a hundred dying worlds. Most factions can't do that though.
And then never win a game again because you hold all of 1 objective.
No one castling around a character is going to win anything but the most casual of games. The objectives all reward spreading out.
Ginjitzu wrote: Would a to hit table that compares "accuracy" vs "evasiveness" in the same vein as the to wound table be a terrible idea?
This shouldn't be buried because I think it's a really good idea. In a nutshell, just exporting the current SvT calculation to apply to BS vs E (Evasion) increases the number of defensive buffs needed to hit 6+, and simultaneously ensures that you always hit on a 6.
For example, if I'm BS4 (current BS3+), you see no direct benefit from going from E5 (current -2) to E6 (current -3), I hit on 5+ either way; but if I choose to advance and fire (dropping me to BS3), now I'm be hitting E5 on a 5+ and E6 on a 6+. It still has some slight weirdness where at certain levels, minor penalties have no effect, but it'd certainly be better than what the current hard cap does.
It also increases the granularity of stats available, since if we assume an Evasion of 3 is standard, that would mean current BS3+ would become BS4, while current BS2+ would become BS6. That offers an intermediate step (BS5) where you still hit on 3s against normal targets, but are impacted less by penalties.
To take OP's example- A Custode would be BS6, -1 for Advancing, -1 for firing both profiles, for a result of BS4. The Eldar would be E4 base (E3 standard +1 because Alaitoc), then get +2 for being obscured and having camo-cloaks, for E6.
BS4 vs E6 = 5+ to hit. If the Custode either Advances or fires both profiles, it's still a 5+ (BS5 vs E6). But if the Custode does neither, then it hits on 4+ (BS6 vs E6).
There are then lots of ways to turn re-rolls into modifiers using the new system, and have varying Evasion (maybe have Eldar start at 4 across the board, while superheavies/Knights start at 2) to mix things up.
Of course now that we're in 9th, that ship has already sailed, but maybe it's worth home-brewing.
The Newman wrote: I feel like that characterizes a lot the reaction to Codex 2.0. "The rerolls are too much." We had the rerolls to begin with. "Rapid fire at full range is too much." We had that for months before the codex dropped and it wasn't enough. "Marines didn't need all that extra Ap." Marines were already had lots of Ap in an edition when anything past Ap 2 was usually wasted, although adding it to Boltguns finally made them worth firing.
I would suggest that people are pointing to those things as distinct elements of Marine power, which combine (along with under-costing on a number of problematic units) to make them punch above their weight. It doesn't have to be any one particular smoking gun, and it can be true that those things weren't individually enough to save Marines earlier in the edition, but now could be removed as a balancing factor. I've said before, and will stand behind it, that Primaris were in a good place with just Bolter Discipline and the points drops in CA18, before Doctrines and Super-Doctrines. Maybe they weren't sweeping top competitive tables, but they weren't dominating casual play like they do now.
And besides, the reason full rerolls was brought up is because it impacts game design even if Marines were nerfed. The availability of full re-rolls would still devalue negative modifiers as a defensive mechanism, the high AP across the board + extra AP through Doctrines would still devalue armor as a defensive mechanism, and we'd still be in the current state of needing invulns, FNPs, and/or raw wound (or model) overload to provide meaningful defense.
stratigo wrote: Iunno, this does really come off as a lot of whinging that eldar aren't as good as before.
All xenos armies are terrible compared to the imperium right now. Tau are also about as bad as they've ever been.
No, no they aren't.
Tau still do the stupid triptide and it remains awful to play against. Tau need a new book with a new set of rules. The current book is unsalvagable. You can't make it work in a way that's healthy for the game.
But CE/harley eldar lists? They'll be sitting pretty in the top 8 of many a tourney to come.
Tau still do the stupid triptide and it remains awful to play against. Tau need a new book with a new set of rules. The current book is unsalvagable. You can't make it work in a way that's healthy for the game.
But CE/harley eldar lists? They'll be sitting pretty in the top 8 of many a tourney to come.
I am curious as to how you expect to see CE run now. Alaitoc flyer spam was their primary competitive build in 8th. I can't see players diving into Aspect Warriors, let alone Guardians.
Worth pointing out that in the sole GT so far, xenos were nowhere near the top, which was dominated by Marines, Custodes, and Sisters.
Kanluwen wrote:
This was literally the issue that existed with previous editions where things like Storm Shields would have different stats across two different codices.
Its not the same issue, the names ARE DIFFERENT. Camo cloak != Cameleoline cloak.
And then never win a game again because you hold all of 1 objective.
No one castling around a character is going to win anything but the most casual of games. The objectives all reward spreading out.
Thats what you have intercessors for, to move up the board and hold objective. Having your chapter master + lieutenant babysit your most important source of firepower is trivial in most games.
No, no they aren't.
Tau still do the stupid triptide and it remains awful to play against. Tau need a new book with a new set of rules. The current book is unsalvagable. You can't make it work in a way that's healthy for the game.
But CE/harley eldar lists? They'll be sitting pretty in the top 8 of many a tourney to come.
Triptide got destroyed with the nerf on drones. Its still playable but it loses on objectives hard. And now that the game is all about objective, triptide sucks.
And its not about the codex having representation at the top tables or not. Its about the codex having playable units. 9th is gonna be about staying power, which eldar don't have with the exception of wraiths, wave serpents and shining spears. The rest dies to bolter fire
Tau still do the stupid triptide and it remains awful to play against. Tau need a new book with a new set of rules. The current book is unsalvagable. You can't make it work in a way that's healthy for the game.
But CE/harley eldar lists? They'll be sitting pretty in the top 8 of many a tourney to come.
I am curious as to how you expect to see CE run now. Alaitoc flyer spam was their primary competitive build in 8th. I can't see players diving into Aspect Warriors, let alone Guardians.
Worth pointing out that in the sole GT so far, xenos were nowhere near the top, which was dominated by Marines, Custodes, and Sisters.
Except for the harley list that got near the top you mean? At 4th? At the vanguard GT? Or Aidelaide where Drukhari of all things made 3rd. And, like, orks were number 1. The actual tourneys going on aren't so one sided as far as their actual results. What one GT are you talking about, cause that's two where eldar made it to the top 4
CE provide an extremely effective firebase while harleys do your ob capping and charge assassinations. Warwalkers, actually good now. As are falcons. And, like, all the good firebase units that were good in the last edition. They didn't suddenly get bad. Crimson hunter exarchs are still a good unit.
85pts + 2cp to get full rerolls for the whole game VS 2cp to give -1 to hit for 1 phase....
Remind me again how many Chapter Masters you can have in an army?
We know that Captains are getting a "per Detachment" limitation added to them.
Also, let's stop saying "full rerolls" and instead say "full rerolls within 6 inches"...because it's not an armywide thing. It's an aura.
Yes, but a smart loyalist player isn't going to let the important stuff stray to far from that chapter master. You're going to keep those executioners, twin lascannon contemptors, hellblasters, and aggressors within 6. And it's danged annoying on that last example, that's a ridiculous amount of dice rolling, takes forever. That's why I pay 2CP a turn to turn the little buggers off by filling their vox with scrapcode and the screams of a hundred dying worlds. Most factions can't do that though.
And then never win a game again because you hold all of 1 objective.
No one castling around a character is going to win anything but the most casual of games. The objectives all reward spreading out.
Read what I said. You keep the nasty shooty stuff in the chapter master's aura for max killing efficiency while everything else goes for those objectives. You don't need to keep your entire army in the reroll zone, just the big guns. Those Intercessors in Impulsors and bikes can clear and hold those objectives while your mobile firebase takes care of anything nasty enough to clear them.
And like I said, it's not a problem for me. I just spend 2CP and turn them into paperweights. But most factions can't do that.
I know this is a bugbear for a lot of people, but you do remember that Marines had full to-hit rerolls for most of 8th and they were still garbage right?
I feel like that characterizes a lot the reaction to Codex 2.0. "The rerolls are too much." We had the rerolls to begin with. "Rapid fire at full range is too much." We had that for months before the codex dropped and it wasn't enough. "Marines didn't need all that extra Ap." Marines were already had lots of Ap in an edition when anything past Ap 2 was usually wasted, although adding it to Boltguns finally made them worth firing. The real problem is super-doctines and any given chapter having six pages of strats and three pages of relics. I play several factions, including some low-tier forces like Mono-god Slannesh Daemons and Tryanids; the percentage of good strats and relics for Marines isn't really all that much higher (or higher at all in some cases) but it gets amplified by the sheer volume of them available.
There were a lot of people (myself included) saying the rerolls were too much even before Marines were good. It was one of the early signs that games of 8th were not going to be the uber quick affair we had been promised. The designers used them in a lazy fashion that only made them worse when all the buffs started getting tossed at them. Marines didn't need the extra AP (Like you I play many factions and lack of AP is not something I ever worried about w/my marines), nor do they need most of the stuff they have continued to get.
The issue is, when 2.0 came out, it took the underlying cracks in the foundation and made them into canyons. Also, while I agree that Marines have plenty of bad strats, they also essentially have one strat for every rule that would hurt them, that let's them ignore that rule. No other army has this on that level with the strats. So now, you take those, combine them with the Super Doctrines, and all the other things they had pre-2.0 and you have .... a monstrosity.
I'm chuckling a little bit because you basically pulled the opposite of a tautology there, "thing A is false because thing A is true" rather than "thing A is true because thing A is true".
Although we're talking about entirely different things when it comes to rerolls being "too much"; you care that is slows the game down and I don't care about that at all because a game where multiple units in multiple forces can require 90+ dice to resolve an attack was never going to be fast.
85pts + 2cp to get full rerolls for the whole game VS 2cp to give -1 to hit for 1 phase....
Remind me again how many Chapter Masters you can have in an army?
We know that Captains are getting a "per Detachment" limitation added to them.
Also, let's stop saying "full rerolls" and instead say "full rerolls within 6 inches"...because it's not an armywide thing. It's an aura.
Yes, but a smart loyalist player isn't going to let the important stuff stray to far from that chapter master. You're going to keep those executioners, twin lascannon contemptors, hellblasters, and aggressors within 6. And it's danged annoying on that last example, that's a ridiculous amount of dice rolling, takes forever. That's why I pay 2CP a turn to turn the little buggers off by filling their vox with scrapcode and the screams of a hundred dying worlds. Most factions can't do that though.
And then never win a game again because you hold all of 1 objective.
No one castling around a character is going to win anything but the most casual of games. The objectives all reward spreading out.
Read what I said. You keep the nasty shooty stuff in the chapter master's aura for max killing efficiency while everything else goes for those objectives. You don't need to keep your entire army in the reroll zone, just the big guns. Those Intercessors in Impulsors and bikes can clear and hold those objectives while your mobile firebase takes care of anything nasty enough to clear them.
And like I said, it's not a problem for me. I just spend 2CP and turn them into paperweights. But most factions can't do that.
I think you don't have a great grasp on the points cost of a space marine roster and the survivability of space marines firesupport. There's a reason eradicators are all teleporting in from the board edge, and forgoing all those glorious rerolls. Winning space marine lists aren't playing like you're describing. The way they are dominating the field in 9th is not through aura stacked firebases. It's through aggressively costed models that excel at midrange combat.
stratigo wrote: Iunno, this does really come off as a lot of whinging that eldar aren't as good as before.
All xenos armies are terrible compared to the imperium right now. Tau are also about as bad as they've ever been.
No, no they aren't.
Tau still do the stupid triptide and it remains awful to play against. Tau need a new book with a new set of rules. The current book is unsalvagable. You can't make it work in a way that's healthy for the game.
But CE/harley eldar lists? They'll be sitting pretty in the top 8 of many a tourney to come.
CWE lists largely also have the same issue as Tau, as in they have to run a certain few units in order to be in any way competitive. They may have a couple more viable units, but a huge amount of the book is useless.
Harlequins used to have skyweavers, but they're now more expensive and significantly easier to kill. But then voidweavers are better now, so it might even out. Harlequins have the advantage of being able to grab objectives fast, so its possible they'll win games on objectives while simultaneously getting wiped off the board every game. Which is a weirdly ironic tactic for Eldar, who are the one army that's meant to avoid dying at all costs.
Harlequins did get a decent result recently, 4th or 5th I think, but every other army in that top 8 were imperials. Dark Eldar also got a top 5 recently, but again every other army in the top 5 were wearing power armour.
Kanluwen wrote: [This was literally the issue that existed with previous editions where things like Storm Shields would have different stats across two different codices.
Can you clarify the actual issue here for me, then? The fact they both use "cameleoline" in "camo cloaks" and "cameoline cloaks" means practically nothing when you take into the context of the extensive lore difference between the two factions. Are you talking about "Storm Shields" and "Storm Shields"? Because I can see a problem with that from a game play perspective. However, uniquely named Wargear, like "Camo Cloaks" and "Cameleoline Cloaks" simply do not have that problem, for obvious reasons. Are you talking about stuff like rules affecting "bolter" weapons before the keyword system? Because that's not really a problem anymore because of, well, the keyword system. If this is the case, are "relics" with similar names, models, and stats also an issue, and if so, why or why not?
Dysartes wrote:Didn't that have Eldar in 4th, but only 3/33 (IIRC?) running a Xenos list at all?
stratigo wrote:Except for the harley list that got near the top you mean? At 4th? At the vanguard GT? Or Aidelaide where Drukhari of all things made 3rd. And, like, orks were number 1. The actual tourneys going on aren't so one sided as far as their actual results. What one GT are you talking about, cause that's two where eldar made it to the top 4
CE provide an extremely effective firebase while harleys do your ob capping and charge assassinations. Warwalkers, actually good now. As are falcons. And, like, all the good firebase units that were good in the last edition. They didn't suddenly get bad. Crimson hunter exarchs are still a good unit.
Oops, somehow I totally missed that Harlequin list at 4th. My bad.
I do think if CWE are going to need Harlequin support to do well, then that says they're not in a good place. But I guess we'll have to see.
Dysartes wrote:Didn't that have Eldar in 4th, but only 3/33 (IIRC?) running a Xenos list at all?
stratigo wrote:Except for the harley list that got near the top you mean? At 4th? At the vanguard GT? Or Aidelaide where Drukhari of all things made 3rd. And, like, orks were number 1. The actual tourneys going on aren't so one sided as far as their actual results. What one GT are you talking about, cause that's two where eldar made it to the top 4
CE provide an extremely effective firebase while harleys do your ob capping and charge assassinations. Warwalkers, actually good now. As are falcons. And, like, all the good firebase units that were good in the last edition. They didn't suddenly get bad. Crimson hunter exarchs are still a good unit.
Oops, somehow I totally missed that Harlequin list at 4th. My bad.
I do think if CWE are going to need Harlequin support to do well, then that says they're not in a good place. But I guess we'll have to see.
The changes to Look Out Sir will hurt Harlequins quite badly too. I wouldn't be shocked to see them crumple somewhat, they rely so heavily on characters (Death Jester and Shadowseer in particular) that lose the ability to hide.
If this goes into "muh Xenos meta" I think you have to wait and see.
My cynical view is that Tau are still okay - if not perhaps top tier. On paper its a downgrade - but there was an awful lot of "tau are awful, codex is broken, oh look they seem to have won quite a few tournaments" back in 8th. So I'm sort of suspect on people banging the same old drum as if that victorious interlude never happened. They were never in say the Necron spot.
CWE are probably in a worse space, because they are clearly pointed on the basis of Alaitoc (and old Ynnari) cheese, which I think has deservedly been nerfed. But they probably need a genuine rebalance (i.e. not what's happened) to take account of that. Harlies are in a decent spot.
Even DE are a bit odd, because while I'd say tehy are in a bad spot *on points* venoms/raiders are excellent mechanisms to jump all over the primary, so its sort of a wait and see there too. Not sure DE players (especially people who adopted them in 8th) will necessarily like the build, but they may not be bottom tier as thought.
I've never played an Imperial force, but thanks to this, I'm looking at Custodes, but with converted minis, as I'm really not a fan of the models. I'd rather makesome cool alien race that counts as Custodes (with appropriate sizes and such).
Jidmah wrote: IMO any modifier that you impose on yourself (moving heavy weapons, advancing and shooting assault, shooting both sides of a combi-weapon, firing into combat, etc) should reduce your BS instead of being -1 to hit, so those stack with -1 to hit modifiers.
Outside of that, I think the cap is fine as stacking those modifiers are an inherently broken mechanic as units punished based on their ballistic skill, not on their effectiveness. 300 points worth of ork shooting get reduced to 150 points by -1 to hit, while 300 points of eldar or marine shooting only goes down to 225.
I agree. as for flimsier races, how did eldar survive before 8th edition? because I'm pretty sure 7th and earlier didn't have -Xs to hit. honest question here
Jidmah wrote: IMO any modifier that you impose on yourself (moving heavy weapons, advancing and shooting assault, shooting both sides of a combi-weapon, firing into combat, etc) should reduce your BS instead of being -1 to hit, so those stack with -1 to hit modifiers.
Outside of that, I think the cap is fine as stacking those modifiers are an inherently broken mechanic as units punished based on their ballistic skill, not on their effectiveness. 300 points worth of ork shooting get reduced to 150 points by -1 to hit, while 300 points of eldar or marine shooting only goes down to 225.
I agree. as for flimsier races, how did eldar survive before 8th edition? because I'm pretty sure 7th and earlier didn't have -Xs to hit. honest question here
At one point, there was Initiative as an extra stat. Eldar had high initiative, so they always went first in combat, which improves your survivability a fair bit. They also had some decent saves. And space marines didn't have widespread rerolls. And custodes didn't really exist, so the hardest things (that weren't tanks) eldar had to worry about were terminators.
Eldar were also faster, being able to run and shoot was their unique trick. Now everyone can do it, even imperial guard can be faster than eldar now.
Blndmage wrote: I've never played an Imperial force, but thanks to this, I'm looking at Custodes, but with converted minis, as I'm really not a fan of the models. I'd rather makesome cool alien race that counts as Custodes (with appropriate sizes and such).
Tyranid Warriors painted gold!! I'd suggest the Hive Guard models too, but they're crazy expensive.
There's probably something you could pull from Fantasy. I wish I knew some alternatives from a non-gw line, but I don't.
Jidmah wrote: IMO any modifier that you impose on yourself (moving heavy weapons, advancing and shooting assault, shooting both sides of a combi-weapon, firing into combat, etc) should reduce your BS instead of being -1 to hit, so those stack with -1 to hit modifiers.
Outside of that, I think the cap is fine as stacking those modifiers are an inherently broken mechanic as units punished based on their ballistic skill, not on their effectiveness. 300 points worth of ork shooting get reduced to 150 points by -1 to hit, while 300 points of eldar or marine shooting only goes down to 225.
I agree. as for flimsier races, how did eldar survive before 8th edition? because I'm pretty sure 7th and earlier didn't have -Xs to hit. honest question here
At one point, there was Initiative as an extra stat. Eldar had high initiative, so they always went first in combat, which improves your survivability a fair bit. They also had some decent saves. And space marines didn't have widespread rerolls. And custodes didn't really exist, so the hardest things (that weren't tanks) eldar had to worry about were terminators.
Eldar were also faster, being able to run and shoot was their unique trick. Now everyone can do it, even imperial guard can be faster than eldar now.
aren't eldar largely a shooting race though? also custodes big things are 2+ dmg weapons that dispropostionatly impacts marines more then it does eldar
aren't eldar largely a shooting race though? also custodes big things are 2+ dmg weapons that dispropostionatly impacts marines more then it does eldar
Eldar have Howling Banshees, Striking Scorpions, and Harlequins, the most skilled and deadly combat specialists in the galaxy.
In the lore, anyway. On the tabletop, the Banshees and Scorpions have been unusable garbage for years, pretty much since initiative was removed. They're so fragile that charging guardsmen can murder them before they get a chance to fight back. Harlequins are still ok though, mostly because they are agile enough to avoid getting charged.
aren't eldar largely a shooting race though? also custodes big things are 2+ dmg weapons that dispropostionatly impacts marines more then it does eldar
Eldar have Howling Banshees, Striking Scorpions, and Harlequins, the most skilled and deadly combat specialists in the galaxy.
Banshees and Scorpions have already been garbage when I started in 5th.
Initiative has nothing to do with it, the issue has always been bad close combat on S3 models.
Jidmah wrote: Banshees and Scorpions have already been garbage when I started in 5th.
Initiative has nothing to do with it, the issue has always been bad close combat on S3 models.
I would agree given my own experience. They worked "ok" in 4E when LoS could be easily blocked by 2" of terrain, Infiltration allowed for setup on turn 1 18" away from the enemy lines by Scorpions, Banshees ignored all armor saves, and they could ride in transports that could cross the board in 1 turn and took substantially more firepower to kill than tracked heavy battle tanks, could hide by consolidating into new combats, the general levels of shooting firepower/wound output available to armies was a fraction of what it is now, and when they only needed to win combat by 1 to break an enemy unit and run them down. Initiative was only a very minor thing relative to these others, not completely irrelevant (particularly for Sweeping Advance), but definitely not the biggest concern.
Niiru wrote: ...In the lore, anyway. On the tabletop, the Banshees and Scorpions have been unusable garbage for years, pretty much since initiative was removed. They're so fragile that charging guardsmen can murder them before they get a chance to fight back. Harlequins are still ok though, mostly because they are agile enough to avoid getting charged.
Maybe they need cheap transports so they can swarm the way Harlequins and DE can. Craftworld Venoms!
Niiru wrote: ...In the lore, anyway. On the tabletop, the Banshees and Scorpions have been unusable garbage for years, pretty much since initiative was removed. They're so fragile that charging guardsmen can murder them before they get a chance to fight back. Harlequins are still ok though, mostly because they are agile enough to avoid getting charged.
Maybe they need cheap transports so they can swarm the way Harlequins and DE can. Craftworld Venoms!
Which is weird, seeing as venoms and starweavers are both based on the Vyper chassis. But the vyper can't carry troops for... reasons.
Also, Venoms/weavers can't screen characters anymore, which is a pretty big nerf for DE and Harlies
BrianDavion wrote: I agree. as for flimsier races, how did eldar survive before 8th edition? because I'm pretty sure 7th and earlier didn't have -Xs to hit. honest question here
Can't speak to 6th/7th, but Back In The Day (3rd-5th), a Space Marine was shooting a S4 attack once out to 24" or twice out to 12", hitting on 3+ with no rerolls, and your basic Aspect Warrior was getting either a 4+ or 3+ save against it.
You have to keep in mind that general lethality was a lot lower across the board. There were very few rerolls, with the most common one being that twin-linked weapons allowed you to reroll hits, whereas currently they're treated as two weapons so you get double the shots. Armor saves being all-or-nothing meant that if you had a 4+ you always got a save against common weaponry, and with a 3+ you still got a save against heavy bolters and autocannons. Even if you were getting hit by heavy weapons, cover gave you a 5+ invuln to fall back on. When it comes to vehicles, the specifics depend on the edition but in general skimmers (flying vehicles) were very hard to hit.
On top of that, mobility was lower across the board, as Advancing wasn't part of the game. More importantly, Heavy weapons couldn't move and shoot at all, and Rapid Fire weapons were limited to 12" range if they moved. Eldar, however, had a lot of Assault-type weapons which suffered no penalty from moving, and had Fleet of Foot, which let them move an extra D6" at the cost of all shooting.
So this basic mobility, plus their very fast/hard-to-hit transports, plus less incoming fire with fewer rerolls and less ignoring their saves, allowed them to control the range in their favor. Melee Aspect Warriors could close the distance quickly and charge, while the shorter-ranged shooting ones could get in and start shooting. They also had the benefit of being able to shoot Assault weapons and then charge (Rapid Fire and Heavy weapons didn't allow you to charge in the same turn), and in melee had high Initiative stats, which dictated who strikes first.
I think that about covers it. Now everyone is faster, everyone can shoot and then charge so Eldar are more likely to be on the receiving end, chargers strike first so if charged Eldar are likely to die before they can swing, general fire output is way higher across the board, those flying transports aren't nearly as hard to kill, and AP devalues those previously-useful 3+/4+ saves. Basically, all the things Eldar relied on, both offensively and defensively, have been either weakened, stripped from the game entirely, or given to everyone else. All that's left is clinging to hit modifiers and a race to the bottom for points costs.
Jidmah wrote: Banshees and Scorpions have already been garbage when I started in 5th.
Initiative has nothing to do with it, the issue has always been bad close combat on S3 models.
I would agree given my own experience. They worked "ok" in 4E when LoS could be easily blocked by 2" of terrain, Infiltration allowed for setup on turn 1 18" away from the enemy lines by Scorpions, Banshees ignored all armor saves, and they could ride in transports that could cross the board in 1 turn and took substantially more firepower to kill than tracked heavy battle tanks, could hide by consolidating into new combats, the general levels of shooting firepower/wound output available to armies was a fraction of what it is now, and when they only needed to win combat by 1 to break an enemy unit and run them down. Initiative was only a very minor thing relative to these others, not completely irrelevant (particularly for Sweeping Advance), but definitely not the biggest concern.
They were a bit more survivable back then due to the AP system, and they reduced incoming attacks by attacking first. I did alright with scorpions and banshees back then.
One of the frustrating things is that GW gimps eldar units structurally and then puts in rules or buffs to help you build them back up to something closer to average. As far as I can see, it's mostly for flavour - scorpions suck but here's a model that if you coordinate well enough, roll well enough and avoid being killed, can boost them to a level slightly below ok. Because eldar are this special coordination king army....
CWE have been too heavily tied to the buffs offered by warlocks and farseers for too long. They've balanced the whole army with the assumption psychic support will always be there. But all this does is create a frustratingly boring army to play, because you HAVE to run warlocks and farseers (and spirit seers now) if you want the rest of your army to be effective AT ALL.
The reason marine rerolls are such a problem is that they're ALREADY GOOD without them. The rerolls just make them AMAZING instead.
While most eldar units are subpar and you've got to jump through hoops to make them work. Almost all conversations around eldar being broken or not are argued against by 'but if you add a farseer or a warlock, then that unit is good'. Because that's so ingrained into the game that no one can see the ridiculousness of having units literally suck if they don't have OTHER units alongside them. Eldar play more like a WFB undead army, where you spammed necromancers to make your units effective. The difference being though that the eldar are not a horde army of lowly skilled chaff, but a highly skilled specialist and advanced fighting force.
If GW are serious about actually balancing the CWE (which I doubt) then apart from refreshing the entire line with updated plastics, they need to balance the army WITHOUT psychic support first and then balance the introduction of farseers et al after that. Because the eldar army should not REQUIRE a farseer to function.
This is the reason that CWE always end up with only one or two competitive builds - the variety of units and themes (it's a combo of knights, guard, sisters and teminators unitwise) make it hard to balance so they nerf units but some slip through and those are the ones the players latch onto with their buffs - when it's already SO HARD to play the army with all the pointless coordination requirements you get good and optimising your formations and plays, so of course they're going to get farseer skyrunners and shining spears, if you can only buff one unit and buffing your units is the only effective build, you're going to need to go all in on those few units you can actually leverage/..
Definitely concur about Eldar being far too built around psychic support, the only way they've been viable without it is basically as a tank/walker company (and even then, only marginally), and that psychic support has often been taken way over the top in terms of support capability (same way SM rerolls are now) while leaving the army utterly toothless without it. A Farseer shouldn't be an auto-include in every Eldar fighting force, and Autarch's should be substantially more common and able to command forces on their own.
As an eldar player I always hated the alitoic CHE spam+ farseer doom&guide..
The issue should have been resolved with a cap to not benefit from alitoic, as well as a hefty point hike. My shadow specters which are T3 3+ 1W infantry priced higher than the intercessor needed a -2 base in order to survive and not fall over to a stiff breeze. In order to improve the modifiers LFR cost CP its not like a free ride, and you needed to throw in a psyker with conceal and hope the power goes off and is not denied. So the strategy was only viable so far because you needed crap troops in order to generate the CP.
I played exclusively without eldar planes or ynnari bullcrap Opness... Because it was OP anyone outside of GW could see it clear as day.. And I can attest to it being HARD against pre-2.0 marines or any army without taking those clealry OP units. So to me the issue was never modifiers. The issue was modifiers on a stupidly strong lowly priced flier units that was for all intents and purposes. I burned through most of my CP in the first turn in 8 dodging and weaving from my army melting away...
6 always hit would have been enough but certainly obscuring terrain stacking on top of alitoic would have been an issue.
Another dakkanaut posted a table a while back when this issue was being discussed last time and people proposed obscuring terrain rules like kill team. A -2 to hit made no difference a BS3 unit that gets the benefit of a full re-roll.
The fact that a unit can advance and shoot/move shoot heavy weapon while shooting through obscuring while a unit standing still is no more accurate is dumb.
I fear for the codex because as someone pointed out GW cant help themselves in doing a 180 and deciding "actually this is stupid lets just from now on ignore this core rule for armies" And if only CWE would get to stack modifers I dont think it would be fair so I certainly dont want that. I remember vaguely in 3rd ed when necrons drop eldar shtic was re-roling saves. Maybe that could be a thing again ? *shudders*
Interestingly, How many combos are there that increase/decrease BS while modifiing the roll? There must be some. I can think of Disco lord improve the BS rather than the hit roll from memory. So that could potentially stack with a +1 to hit from another source? (not a chaos player, but been on receiving end)
Niiru wrote: They're so fragile that charging guardsmen can murder them before they get a chance to fight back.
That's some pretty ridiculous hyperbole...
10 Catachans in range of a Priest kill on average...3.5 Howling Banshees. Maybe you're the kind of person who thinks "my elves are super-speedy and none should die when they get charged by puny mon-keigh!" but in practice I don't think getting charged by Guardsmen is a large part of Eldar melee unit's durability problems given the sheer volume of S3-S5 shooting some armies can put downrange.
Niiru wrote: They're so fragile that charging guardsmen can murder them before they get a chance to fight back.
That's some pretty ridiculous hyperbole...
10 Catachans in range of a Priest kill on average...3.5 Howling Banshees. Maybe you're the kind of person who thinks "my elves are super-speedy and none should die when they get charged by puny mon-keigh!" but in practice I don't think getting charged by Guardsmen is a large part of Eldar melee unit's durability problems given the sheer volume of S3-S5 shooting some armies can put downrange.
Does that include shooting? Even assuming the guard don't shoot for some reason, that leaves 1.5 howling banshees to fight back with, which isn't going to do anything at all.
Which was kinda the whole point of this line of comments - "Why are banshees too fragile to use now, when they used to be better in previous editions". Because they can die en-mass before they get a chance to do anything.
I do think GW reckongizes that some of the older classic units are in a bad spot. they're using marines as a test bed I think but I'd not be suprised to see GW make tweeks as nesscary
It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
Kanluwen wrote: [This was literally the issue that existed with previous editions where things like Storm Shields would have different stats across two different codices.
Can you clarify the actual issue here for me, then? The fact they both use "cameleoline" in "camo cloaks" and "cameoline cloaks" means practically nothing when you take into the context of the extensive lore difference between the two factions. Are you talking about "Storm Shields" and "Storm Shields"? Because I can see a problem with that from a game play perspective. However, uniquely named Wargear, like "Camo Cloaks" and "Cameleoline Cloaks" simply do not have that problem, for obvious reasons. Are you talking about stuff like rules affecting "bolter" weapons before the keyword system? Because that's not really a problem anymore because of, well, the keyword system. If this is the case, are "relics" with similar names, models, and stats also an issue, and if so, why or why not?
You're missing Kan's thought process here. Eldar players are complaining -3 to hit doesn't help so the suggestion was to make their camo cloaks behave the same as marines since they're made of the same stuff. That would give them improved armour rather than stacking modifiers helping out the eldar. There's such a strong knee-jerk of being opposed to literally anything marine-related that you're defending keeping a pointless rule on rangers for the sakes of not having the same as what those apparently OP marines have.
Jidmah wrote: IMO any modifier that you impose on yourself (moving heavy weapons, advancing and shooting assault, shooting both sides of a combi-weapon, firing into combat, etc) should reduce your BS instead of being -1 to hit, so those stack with -1 to hit modifiers.
Outside of that, I think the cap is fine as stacking those modifiers are an inherently broken mechanic as units punished based on their ballistic skill, not on their effectiveness. 300 points worth of ork shooting get reduced to 150 points by -1 to hit, while 300 points of eldar or marine shooting only goes down to 225.
I agree. as for flimsier races, how did eldar survive before 8th edition? because I'm pretty sure 7th and earlier didn't have -Xs to hit. honest question here
Stuff like move shoot move for one. Who cares about -X to hit when you can move into open, shoot and then move out of sight.
Marin wrote: It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
That makes the problem worse actually. Why bother stacking modifiers beyond -2 at the most? It literally has no effect on 1 full army and half of some others. Majority of armies are no worse off than with a -1, only marines and eldar are slightly bothered by this, but since you've gone from affecting everyone fairly to 75% of the game not being any different, people simply wouldn't bother stacking - to hit since it's wasted 75% of the time.
Marin wrote: It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
That makes the problem worse actually. Why bother stacking modifiers beyond -2 at the most? It literally has no effect on 1 full army and half of some others. Majority of armies are no worse off than with a -1, only marines and eldar are slightly bothered by this, but since you've gone from affecting everyone fairly to 75% of the game not being any different, people simply wouldn't bother stacking - to hit since it's wasted 75% of the time.
Because there are units that hit on 2s, there are plus to hit modifiers and full rerolls.
Tyel wrote: If this goes into "muh Xenos meta" I think you have to wait and see.
My cynical view is that Tau are still okay - if not perhaps top tier. On paper its a downgrade - but there was an awful lot of "tau are awful, codex is broken, oh look they seem to have won quite a few tournaments" back in 8th. So I'm sort of suspect on people banging the same old drum as if that victorious interlude never happened. They were never in say the Necron spot.
CWE are probably in a worse space, because they are clearly pointed on the basis of Alaitoc (and old Ynnari) cheese, which I think has deservedly been nerfed. But they probably need a genuine rebalance (i.e. not what's happened) to take account of that. Harlies are in a decent spot.
Even DE are a bit odd, because while I'd say tehy are in a bad spot *on points* venoms/raiders are excellent mechanisms to jump all over the primary, so its sort of a wait and see there too. Not sure DE players (especially people who adopted them in 8th) will necessarily like the build, but they may not be bottom tier as thought.
Would like to see some results to back up that theory that Tau are okay.
Xeno armies at the moment are concerned as marines, custodes came out of the edition change hot and marines are getting their 9th edition codex shortly which people are not looking forward to after the OP cheese from Marines 2.0
When one codex is still taking 50% or more of the top ten lists their is a balance problem.
Conversely I don't think the to hit cap should be changed, if you went to bring back stacking hit mods you have to put in a cap somewhere.
Larger Negative to hit modifiers also favour better BS armies anyway, enjoy even more only playing against Primaris.
Tau loose 66% of their hit rate against a -2 thats a bit much.
Unbuffed Marines loose 50% and Custodes only 40%.
The real issues is Marines with CM only loose 40% of their hits against -2
Negative to hit modifiers is not the way to improve balance as your punishing the worse shooting armies more than the problem child Codex.
Marin wrote: It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
That makes the problem worse actually. Why bother stacking modifiers beyond -2 at the most? It literally has no effect on 1 full army and half of some others. Majority of armies are no worse off than with a -1, only marines and eldar are slightly bothered by this, but since you've gone from affecting everyone fairly to 75% of the game not being any different, people simply wouldn't bother stacking - to hit since it's wasted 75% of the time.
Because taking hits on 4's to hits on 6's is a 66% reduction in firepower
Against Marines its not even close give them a Chapter master and they still hit at a rate better than 4+.
Tyel wrote: If this goes into "muh Xenos meta" I think you have to wait and see.
My cynical view is that Tau are still okay - if not perhaps top tier. On paper its a downgrade - but there was an awful lot of "tau are awful, codex is broken, oh look they seem to have won quite a few tournaments" back in 8th. So I'm sort of suspect on people banging the same old drum as if that victorious interlude never happened. They were never in say the Necron spot.
CWE are probably in a worse space, because they are clearly pointed on the basis of Alaitoc (and old Ynnari) cheese, which I think has deservedly been nerfed. But they probably need a genuine rebalance (i.e. not what's happened) to take account of that. Harlies are in a decent spot.
Even DE are a bit odd, because while I'd say tehy are in a bad spot *on points* venoms/raiders are excellent mechanisms to jump all over the primary, so its sort of a wait and see there too. Not sure DE players (especially people who adopted them in 8th) will necessarily like the build, but they may not be bottom tier as thought.
Would like to see some results to back up that theory that Tau are okay.
Xeno armies at the moment are concerned as marines, custodes came out of the edition change hot and marines are getting their 9th edition codex shortly which people are not looking forward to after the OP cheese from Marines 2.0
When one codex is still taking 50% or more of the top ten lists their is a balance problem.
Conversely I don't think the to hit cap should be changed, if you went to bring back stacking hit mods you have to put in a cap somewhere.
Larger Negative to hit modifiers also favour better BS armies anyway, enjoy even more only playing against Primaris.
Tau loose 66% of their hit rate against a -2 thats a bit much.
Unbuffed Marines loose 50% and Custodes only 40%.
The real issues is Marines with CM only loose 40% of their hits against -2
Negative to hit modifiers is not the way to improve balance as your punishing the worse shooting armies more than the problem child Codex.
Marin wrote: It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
That makes the problem worse actually. Why bother stacking modifiers beyond -2 at the most? It literally has no effect on 1 full army and half of some others. Majority of armies are no worse off than with a -1, only marines and eldar are slightly bothered by this, but since you've gone from affecting everyone fairly to 75% of the game not being any different, people simply wouldn't bother stacking - to hit since it's wasted 75% of the time.
Because taking hits on 4's to hits on 6's is a 66% reduction in firepower
Against Marines its not even close give them a Chapter master and they still hit at a rate better than 4+.
Check again, they proposed making it so you can never hit on worse than a 5+, so that's a 33% reduction and no different than is in the game now with the current system in place. The only things it impacts are hitting on 2's and 3's, but given a -2 would barely affect: IG, Nids, GSC, Tau, some effect on ad mech and would have next to no impact on Orks at all - if your meta contains those then your -2 to hit is essentialy as redundant as it is now a lot of the time
Marin wrote: It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
That makes the problem worse actually. Why bother stacking modifiers beyond -2 at the most? It literally has no effect on 1 full army and half of some others. Majority of armies are no worse off than with a -1, only marines and eldar are slightly bothered by this, but since you've gone from affecting everyone fairly to 75% of the game not being any different, people simply wouldn't bother stacking - to hit since it's wasted 75% of the time.
Because there are units that hit on 2s, there are plus to hit modifiers and full rerolls.
If you took loads of -3 to hit as a just in case you say some custodes then got paired up against Orks, you've still wasted points as you have now. The difference is now those Orks don't care at all about it.
Tyel wrote: If this goes into "muh Xenos meta" I think you have to wait and see.
My cynical view is that Tau are still okay - if not perhaps top tier. On paper its a downgrade - but there was an awful lot of "tau are awful, codex is broken, oh look they seem to have won quite a few tournaments" back in 8th. So I'm sort of suspect on people banging the same old drum as if that victorious interlude never happened. They were never in say the Necron spot.
CWE are probably in a worse space, because they are clearly pointed on the basis of Alaitoc (and old Ynnari) cheese, which I think has deservedly been nerfed. But they probably need a genuine rebalance (i.e. not what's happened) to take account of that. Harlies are in a decent spot.
Even DE are a bit odd, because while I'd say tehy are in a bad spot *on points* venoms/raiders are excellent mechanisms to jump all over the primary, so its sort of a wait and see there too. Not sure DE players (especially people who adopted them in 8th) will necessarily like the build, but they may not be bottom tier as thought.
Would like to see some results to back up that theory that Tau are okay.
Xeno armies at the moment are concerned as marines, custodes came out of the edition change hot and marines are getting their 9th edition codex shortly which people are not looking forward to after the OP cheese from Marines 2.0
When one codex is still taking 50% or more of the top ten lists their is a balance problem.
Conversely I don't think the to hit cap should be changed, if you went to bring back stacking hit mods you have to put in a cap somewhere.
Larger Negative to hit modifiers also favour better BS armies anyway, enjoy even more only playing against Primaris.
Tau loose 66% of their hit rate against a -2 thats a bit much.
Unbuffed Marines loose 50% and Custodes only 40%.
The real issues is Marines with CM only loose 40% of their hits against -2
Negative to hit modifiers is not the way to improve balance as your punishing the worse shooting armies more than the problem child Codex.
Marin wrote: It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
That makes the problem worse actually. Why bother stacking modifiers beyond -2 at the most? It literally has no effect on 1 full army and half of some others. Majority of armies are no worse off than with a -1, only marines and eldar are slightly bothered by this, but since you've gone from affecting everyone fairly to 75% of the game not being any different, people simply wouldn't bother stacking - to hit since it's wasted 75% of the time.
Because taking hits on 4's to hits on 6's is a 66% reduction in firepower
Against Marines its not even close give them a Chapter master and they still hit at a rate better than 4+.
Check again, they proposed making it so you can never hit on worse than a 5+, so that's a 33% reduction and no different than is in the game now with the current system in place. The only things it impacts are hitting on 2's and 3's, but given a -2 would barely affect: IG, Nids, GSC, Tau, some effect on ad mech and would have next to no impact on Orks at all - if your meta contains those then your -2 to hit is essentialy as redundant as it is now a lot of the time
That's why it's better than just a flat -2 cap as it effects the problem codex more while not making all BS4+ armies unplayable.
Though really just squating the dang CM strategum would help alot. But really right now we either need the 8th edition codex's or points that make some sence as right now 9th is a mess.
Tyel wrote: If this goes into "muh Xenos meta" I think you have to wait and see.
My cynical view is that Tau are still okay - if not perhaps top tier. On paper its a downgrade - but there was an awful lot of "tau are awful, codex is broken, oh look they seem to have won quite a few tournaments" back in 8th. So I'm sort of suspect on people banging the same old drum as if that victorious interlude never happened. They were never in say the Necron spot.
CWE are probably in a worse space, because they are clearly pointed on the basis of Alaitoc (and old Ynnari) cheese, which I think has deservedly been nerfed. But they probably need a genuine rebalance (i.e. not what's happened) to take account of that. Harlies are in a decent spot.
Even DE are a bit odd, because while I'd say tehy are in a bad spot *on points* venoms/raiders are excellent mechanisms to jump all over the primary, so its sort of a wait and see there too. Not sure DE players (especially people who adopted them in 8th) will necessarily like the build, but they may not be bottom tier as thought.
Would like to see some results to back up that theory that Tau are okay.
Xeno armies at the moment are concerned as marines, custodes came out of the edition change hot and marines are getting their 9th edition codex shortly which people are not looking forward to after the OP cheese from Marines 2.0
When one codex is still taking 50% or more of the top ten lists their is a balance problem.
Conversely I don't think the to hit cap should be changed, if you went to bring back stacking hit mods you have to put in a cap somewhere.
Larger Negative to hit modifiers also favour better BS armies anyway, enjoy even more only playing against Primaris.
Tau loose 66% of their hit rate against a -2 thats a bit much.
Unbuffed Marines loose 50% and Custodes only 40%.
The real issues is Marines with CM only loose 40% of their hits against -2
Negative to hit modifiers is not the way to improve balance as your punishing the worse shooting armies more than the problem child Codex.
Marin wrote: It looks like GW team is to much of space marines fanboys to use their little imagination to balance other factions rules. For instance 2CP strat that negate higher STR weapons is not a problem but 2 CP strat that give you -1 to hit is big problem. First example excuse is because its close to the lore and the second is problem because the feel bad regardless of the lore. There is easy fix to modifiers to hit, just make them unable to modify you more than 5+, that way armies with bad BS will not suffer and you will not delete glasscannon army its main defense, just because i cant kill 240 pts flyer with 1 dread so i`m so sad and i`m crying
That makes the problem worse actually. Why bother stacking modifiers beyond -2 at the most? It literally has no effect on 1 full army and half of some others. Majority of armies are no worse off than with a -1, only marines and eldar are slightly bothered by this, but since you've gone from affecting everyone fairly to 75% of the game not being any different, people simply wouldn't bother stacking - to hit since it's wasted 75% of the time.
Because taking hits on 4's to hits on 6's is a 66% reduction in firepower
Against Marines its not even close give them a Chapter master and they still hit at a rate better than 4+.
Check again, they proposed making it so you can never hit on worse than a 5+, so that's a 33% reduction and no different than is in the game now with the current system in place. The only things it impacts are hitting on 2's and 3's, but given a -2 would barely affect: IG, Nids, GSC, Tau, some effect on ad mech and would have next to no impact on Orks at all - if your meta contains those then your -2 to hit is essentialy as redundant as it is now a lot of the time
That's why it's better than just a flat -2 cap as it effects the problem codex more while not making all BS4+ armies unplayable.
Though really just squating the dang CM strategum would help alot. But really right now we either need the 8th edition codex's or points that make some sence as right now 9th is a mess.
I'd definitely love for re-rolls to be toned right down, the targeted buffs seem a better option, 1 unit in 6" or 2 if you're a chapter master may re-roll 1's would be enough imo.
I'm chuckling a little bit because you basically pulled the opposite of a tautology there, "thing A is false because thing A is true" rather than "thing A is true because thing A is true".
Although we're talking about entirely different things when it comes to rerolls being "too much"; you care that is slows the game down and I don't care about that at all because a game where multiple units in multiple forces can require 90+ dice to resolve an attack was never going to be fast.
No. That wasn't my point. Space marines, even at the launch of the 1.0 dex STILL had a build that was winning tournaments and considered OP. Why was that? Oh yeah. REROLLS!
They were ALWAYS a problem from every possible angle. 2.0 just focused on the problem and blew it clear out of the water. Your premise that "these were never a problem UNTIL 2.0" is a little off base imo. 2.0 took them and just made them a bigger problem.
-1 cap is good. That's really the limit of what a D6 dice curve can handle given you really only have 5 functional values on it.
That said, the one thing I think SHOULD stack with that cap is the Heavy/Assault penalties. Those are self imposed and capping them removes the choice that makes them interesting in the first place.
I'm chuckling a little bit because you basically pulled the opposite of a tautology there, "thing A is false because thing A is true" rather than "thing A is true because thing A is true".
Although we're talking about entirely different things when it comes to rerolls being "too much"; you care that is slows the game down and I don't care about that at all because a game where multiple units in multiple forces can require 90+ dice to resolve an attack was never going to be fast.
No. That wasn't my point. Space marines, even at the launch of the 1.0 dex STILL had a build that was winning tournaments and considered OP. Why was that? Oh yeah. REROLLS!
They were ALWAYS a problem from every possible angle. 2.0 just focused on the problem and blew it clear out of the water. Your premise that "these were never a problem UNTIL 2.0" is a little off base imo. 2.0 took them and just made them a bigger problem.
Yeah, SM players just tend to forget that the first ~4 months of competitive 8th ed was Guilliman in the middle of a gun parking lot and Chapter Master Sanguinoli Guacamole (whoever the flying one is, Michaelangelo Donatello Rerollioni Jumpacko) flying around with a bunch of stormravens.
SM didn't spend all of 8th the worst army, they ended up the worst army having been steadily creeped out, then they got rocketed back up to top dog with 2.0. I would hazard a bet that SM spent more time during 8th as the most competitive army than any other faction including CWE, Ynnari or Guard.
LunarSol wrote: -1 cap is good. That's really the limit of what a D6 dice curve can handle given you really only have 5 functional values on it.
That said, the one thing I think SHOULD stack with that cap is the Heavy/Assault penalties. Those are self imposed and capping them removes the choice that makes them interesting in the first place.
LunarSol wrote: -1 cap is good. That's really the limit of what a D6 dice curve can handle given you really only have 5 functional values on it.
That said, the one thing I think SHOULD stack with that cap is the Heavy/Assault penalties. Those are self imposed and capping them removes the choice that makes them interesting in the first place.
LunarSol wrote: -1 cap is good. That's really the limit of what a D6 dice curve can handle given you really only have 5 functional values on it.
That said, the one thing I think SHOULD stack with that cap is the Heavy/Assault penalties. Those are self imposed and capping them removes the choice that makes them interesting in the first place.
Well GW shouldn't be writing off a D6
surprisingly, I do agree.
D10 all day every day.
an d8 would allready represent a massive improvement...
LunarSol wrote: -1 cap is good. That's really the limit of what a D6 dice curve can handle given you really only have 5 functional values on it.
That said, the one thing I think SHOULD stack with that cap is the Heavy/Assault penalties. Those are self imposed and capping them removes the choice that makes them interesting in the first place.
Plenty of games (eg Bolt Action) work fine with stacking modifiers getting your normally 3+ to hit up to a 6+ or rendered outright impossible. The use of a D6 does not in any way preclude heavy modifiers, it's just a game design issue.
40K's problem is just that these modifiers are often innate rather than contextual so they're always active, and few mechanisms are provided to counteract them. In something like Heavy Gear it is very easy to face enemies that are nearly impossible to hit due to high movement, strong electronic warfare, and intervening terrain, but you can counteract those with bonuses to hit from firing at short range or staying stationary to shoot, and generally speaking it is rarely outright impossible to hit the enemy.
The Battletech PC game provides another great example, where rapid movement gives you evasion markers that can make you outright impossible to hit- but each incoming shot strips off an evasion marker whether it hits or not, so concentrated fire rapidly ramps up in effectiveness.
In 40K if your opponent gets a -1 to hit for being a particular subfaction and then another -1 to hit for being an airplane, there is not a lot you can do as a BS4+ army- you don't have any consistent ways to get bonuses to hit to offset the penalties. Having these defensive buffs turn off when within a certain distance is a better idea and makes them counterable, but then there is still the issue where BS3+ armies with rerolls are affected far less than BS4+ armies without rerolls.
A hard cap is a clunky way of addressing this issue. I still like the suggestion from the first page, to make hitting the enemy work similarly to the wound table, with BS compared to a defensive stat. It stretches out the upper (5+ to hit) and lower (3+ to hit) bounds, evening out the playing field a bit and making it much harder to stack defensive buffs to the point of only being hit on 6s.
LunarSol wrote: -1 cap is good. That's really the limit of what a D6 dice curve can handle given you really only have 5 functional values on it.
That said, the one thing I think SHOULD stack with that cap is the Heavy/Assault penalties. Those are self imposed and capping them removes the choice that makes them interesting in the first place.
Well GW shouldn't be writing off a D6
surprisingly, I do agree.
D10 all day every day.
an d8 would allready represent a massive improvement...
Hell, even on a D8 system, say that Guard are all now at BS5+, you throw them at a -2 to hit, that's still a 25% chance to hit compared to 16.7% as of now.
I'm chuckling a little bit because you basically pulled the opposite of a tautology there, "thing A is false because thing A is true" rather than "thing A is true because thing A is true".
Although we're talking about entirely different things when it comes to rerolls being "too much"; you care that is slows the game down and I don't care about that at all because a game where multiple units in multiple forces can require 90+ dice to resolve an attack was never going to be fast.
No. That wasn't my point. Space marines, even at the launch of the 1.0 dex STILL had a build that was winning tournaments and considered OP. Why was that? Oh yeah. REROLLS!
They were ALWAYS a problem from every possible angle. 2.0 just focused on the problem and blew it clear out of the water. Your premise that "these were never a problem UNTIL 2.0" is a little off base imo. 2.0 took them and just made them a bigger problem.
Yeah, SM players just tend to forget that the first ~4 months of competitive 8th ed was Guilliman in the middle of a gun parking lot and Chapter Master Sanguinoli Guacamole (whoever the flying one is, Michaelangelo Donatello Rerollioni Jumpacko) flying around with a bunch of stormravens.
SM didn't spend all of 8th the worst army, they ended up the worst army having been steadily creeped out, then they got rocketed back up to top dog with 2.0. I would hazard a bet that SM spent more time during 8th as the most competitive army than any other faction including CWE, Ynnari or Guard.
Some of us don't play Ultramarines you know. Some of us didn't start playing in 8th until after Codex Creep (tm) had already set in. Not all SM players are forgetful, some of us never saw OP Marines in the first place. I drew a clear line between pre- and post- codex 2.0, so you're talking about four months of being competitive out of a two year run before the codex 2.0 cluster-[censored] threw game balance out the window.
Was the Girly-man parking lot ever as meta-defining as Ynarri/CWE Flyer Spam/Castellans? I never got that impression from these forums, but I wasn't there when it happened so I honestly don't know.
Edit: This was the exchange:
Me: "Marines had full rerolls for most of 8th prior to Codex 2.0 and it barely drug them into the mid-tier. It wasn't until Marines had 6 pages of strats and 3 pages of relics and super-doctrines that they became a problem"
Tycho: "No, that's wrong, marines were mid-tier because of the rerolls, and they became a problem when they got a bunch of strats and relics and super-doctrines layered on top."
To be fair, marine re-rolls pushed them over the top super early with things like the Guilliman + 5 stormravens list, which was promptly smashed into the ground by a panicking GW.
Then it was Guilliman + asscan razorbacks, which eventually also got smashed into the ground only after a bit of dominance.
So it's not like marines were "never" OP. It's just that I think Marine players don't remember those days because they weren't 'casually' OP (i.e. you had to specifically tailor your list tournament-style).
But the theme behind all that OPness was the rerolls in the first place.
LunarSol wrote: -1 cap is good. That's really the limit of what a D6 dice curve can handle given you really only have 5 functional values on it.
That said, the one thing I think SHOULD stack with that cap is the Heavy/Assault penalties. Those are self imposed and capping them removes the choice that makes them interesting in the first place.
Well GW shouldn't be writing off a D6
surprisingly, I do agree.
D10 all day every day.
an d8 would allready represent a massive improvement...
Hell, even on a D8 system, say that Guard are all now at BS5+, you throw them at a -2 to hit, that's still a 25% chance to hit compared to 16.7% as of now.
it would also allow to strengthen the terrain rules again.
which is something gw has considerable down streamlined.
To be fair I argued as hard as anyone else that Marine rerolls were a problem, but not because of the power level or the time involved.
I had an issue with it because unlike practically everyone else Marine rerolls are an aura so everything in the army is designed around standing next to Guilliman, regardless of whether you can take him or not. That's terrible design, but nothing there is an inherent issue with rerolls themselves.
Me: "Marines had full rerolls for most of 8th prior to Codex 2.0 and it barely drug them into the mid-tier. It wasn't until Marines had 6 pages of strats and 3 pages of relics and super-doctrines that they became a problem"
In fact, it had the Gman build as THE top-tier list to the point that it caused multiple and near instant FAQs after Allesio Cavatore attended a major - what was it? Adepticon? And yes, while they were not around at the top as long as CWE, they were pretty darned oppressive - there just wasn't much you could do against it.
Tycho: "No, that's wrong, marines were mid-tier because of the rerolls, and they became a problem when they got a bunch of strats and relics and super-doctrines layered on top."
That's not really what I said though is it? I said the rerolls were a problem from the word "go" (form every angle - not JUST the "power angle" ) and they got even worse when 2.0 came out. Now you add in everything ON TOP of the rerolls, and you go from a book with 1 or 2 (there was another build at one point early on but I can't recall it atm) broken builds and a ton of average builds, to a book with mostly broken builds ...
) not all Marine chapters had access to the same level of reroll shenanigans
Patently false. Gman was souped into MANY strong lists (that were just shy of the actual OP UM one), and on top of that, ALL chpaters get access to that same boatload of non-Gman rerolls. When you can pack a reroll for almost everything a unit does in a single turn, there IS an inherent issue. Period. Rerolls are fine as a game mechanic, but GW used them as a crutch with the Marine books and that's been an issue from the word "go".
To be fair, marine re-rolls pushed them over the top super early with things like the Guilliman + 5 stormravens list, which was promptly smashed into the ground by a panicking GW.
Then it was Guilliman + asscan razorbacks, which eventually also got smashed into the ground only after a bit of dominance.
So it's not like marines were "never" OP. It's just that I think Marine players don't remember those days because they weren't 'casually' OP (i.e. you had to specifically tailor your list tournament-style).
But the theme behind all that OPness was the rerolls in the first place.
The Newman wrote: To be fair I argued as hard as anyone else that Marine rerolls were a problem, but not because of the power level or the time involved.
I had an issue with it because 1) not all Marine chapters had access to the same level of reroll shenanigans, and 2) unlike practically everyone else Marine rerolls are an aura so everything in the army is designed around standing next to Guilliman, whether you can take him or not. That's terrible design, but nothing there is an inherent issue with rerolls themselves.
BS3 converts to a hit ratio of 66%
BS3 with Reroll 1's converts to 77%
BS3 with CM rerolls converts to 89%
The Newman wrote: To be fair I argued as hard as anyone else that Marine rerolls were a problem, but not because of the power level or the time involved.
I had an issue with it because 1) not all Marine chapters had access to the same level of reroll shenanigans, and 2) unlike practically everyone else Marine rerolls are an aura so everything in the army is designed around standing next to Guilliman, whether you can take him or not. That's terrible design, but nothing there is an inherent issue with rerolls themselves.
BS3 converts to a hit ratio of 66%
BS3 with Reroll 1's converts to 77%
BS3 with CM rerolls converts to 89%
BS 2 converts to 83%
Marines with a CM shoot better than BS2 does.
Bs3 with rerolls being better than Bs2 is irrelevant to whether including rerolls is bad design, especially when the only army with Bs2 standard also has rerolls. Where it runs into bad design is when the faction doesn't function without reroll aura spam because every unit is designed assuming it will have those rerolls all the time.
Giving myself a moment to cool down and think abou5 it, I can't say 40k wouldn't probably be in a better spot if rerolls were mostly eliminated. Points would be even more out of whack than they already are and "shoot/fight twice" abilities would need a rebalancing because that's proportionally stronger without rerolls, but overall it probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
40k definataly would be far better balanced without the CM strategum and the damn amount of rerolls.
1 They lead to odd situations where costing the unit appropriately is impossible.
It's either overcosted without the buffs or OP with them.
2 Rerolls slow the game down horrifically, units like aggressors are bad enough but when you opponents got rerolls upon rerolls with that many dice it just takes forever.
Giving myself a moment to cool down and think abou5 it, I can't say 40k wouldn't probably be in a better spot if rerolls were mostly eliminated. Points would be even more out of whack than they already are and "shoot/fight twice" abilities would need a rebalancing because that's proportionally stronger without rerolls, but overall it probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
Purely anecdotal data incoming, but honestly, I think you hit the nail on the head with that. My regular group started to get fed up with the game length of 8th so we started playing a "home brew" version from time to time where both rerolls, and what strats you could use were severely limited, and the games tended to go faster and play better. You are correct in that some rebalancing would need to happen, but honestly, there are just WAY too many rerolls right now than are healthy.
I'm not following how lack of rerolls makes shoot/fight twice abilities comparatively stronger. If anything, it makes them weaker; it's a no-brainer to put a Big Expensive Thing near all your re-roll sources and buffs and then pop shoot/fight twice every turn.
I'm guessing it is something to do with such strats/abilities being the only way to spike your damage with that unit, as opposed to the improved accuracy doing so.
catbarf wrote: I'm not following how lack of rerolls makes shoot/fight twice abilities comparatively stronger. If anything, it makes them weaker; it's a no-brainer to put a Big Expensive Thing near all your re-roll sources and buffs and then pop shoot/fight twice every turn.
Proportionately stronger. I think what Newman means is that right now a unit that shoots/fights twice without a lot of rerolls isn't that much stronger than a unit that shoots/fights once with full rerolls, but if you got rid of most or all rerolls the shoot/fight twice abilities (which are much rarer) would have a greater effect on how good that unit is.
Yeah, SM players just tend to forget that the first ~4 months of competitive 8th ed was Guilliman in the middle of a gun parking lot and Chapter Master Sanguinoli Guacamole (whoever the flying one is, Michaelangelo Donatello Rerollioni Jumpacko) flying around with a bunch of stormravens.
SM didn't spend all of 8th the worst army, they ended up the worst army having been steadily creeped out, then they got rocketed back up to top dog with 2.0. I would hazard a bet that SM spent more time during 8th as the most competitive army than any other faction including CWE, Ynnari or Guard.
Yeah those IH or IF players totaly digged the fact that Gulliman based armies were powerful. And you can't imagine how GK players were happy when GW finaly decided to nerf those OP Gulliman lists by rising the points or razorbacks, storm ravenes etc Now GK at that time didn't really have access to re-rolls, but it was the fairness that mattered.
I don't get the arguments from xeno players, when they accouse all marines of player that one tournament build, even from another codex, but when someone brings up stuff like spears or dark reapers, they of course never used them, and they never played alaitoc. In fact if one would trust the claims, practicaly no one would be playing alaitoc or the good xeno lists.
this makes as much sense as telling BA players that their army was good, they just needed to play a lot of IG and a castellan and limit their BA models to 15 scouts and 2 jump pack captins.
Haven't seen anyone in the discussion claim to be a Xenos player? Until recently I played Marines and DG. I shelved the Marines around the time Iron Hands came out and moved on to Mechanicus and Tsons, but yeah, everything I've said here was from the point of view of someone who played marines throughout a good chunk of 8th.
The Newman wrote: To be fair I argued as hard as anyone else that Marine rerolls were a problem, but not because of the power level or the time involved.
I had an issue with it because unlike practically everyone else Marine rerolls are an aura so everything in the army is designed around standing next to Guilliman, regardless of whether you can take him or not. That's terrible design, but nothing there is an inherent issue with rerolls themselves.
Ah what i call obliterators syndrom, Tell me though what to do about it, cost Units without rerolls? Watch the world burn, cost them at half capacity rerolls?still too good. Cost Units as If allways under such aura influenced and stratagems etc? Well that specific unit with that specific Setup still performs, but what about those that don't take that combination?
See rerolls are just a 3rd of the issue , stratagems and other abilites/traits the other 2...
Dysartes wrote: I'm guessing it is something to do with such strats/abilities being the only way to spike your damage with that unit, as opposed to the improved accuracy doing so.
catbarf wrote: I'm not following how lack of rerolls makes shoot/fight twice abilities comparatively stronger. If anything, it makes them weaker; it's a no-brainer to put a Big Expensive Thing near all your re-roll sources and buffs and then pop shoot/fight twice every turn.
Proportionately stronger. I think what Newman means is that right now a unit that shoots/fights twice without a lot of rerolls isn't that much stronger than a unit that shoots/fights once with full rerolls, but if you got rid of most or all rerolls the shoot/fight twice abilities (which are much rarer) would have a greater effect on how good that unit is.
On consideration I probably should have said "and throw all the shoot/fight twice abilities in the bin along with all those rerolls", doubling your damage output is inherently stronger than any reroll can possibly be.
The argument (not your argument AnomanderRake, I'm swinging back to the general topic now) is that rerolls are abusive and slow the game down, how about this thought exercize: a D6 system with two different levels of rerolls has almost as many accuracy brackets as a D20 system. Who here really thinks they could resolve 3 Centurions (54 shots) or a decent Daemonette charge (30-45 swings) rolling D20s and looking for a 5+ faster than they could roll the same number of D6s picking out and rerolling the 1s? I know I couldn't do it. D12s have the same problem. You'd be making it feel better but it wouldn't actually improve anything.
But then what do you do about dexes that were Designed around such stratagems and stacking ablities /rerollauras.
Basically the cleanest Way imo would be to just drop the pretense of auras stratagem and other abilites can be balanced when coexisting...
The rule should have been max +/- 1 to hit or wound excluding modifiers from terrain and movement. You're in cover so I can ignore the penalty to fire on the move with a heavy weapon is just dumb.
As an aeldari player, I'm glad there's a cap now. Stacking to-hit mods was a pane for people. Honestly, the scenarios where you could get a -3 or -4 to hit weren't that big a problem because they were kind of an inefficient investment of resources. But being to put a -2 on a huge chunk of your army made playing against them a pain. Fishing for 6s just isn't very enjoyable, and that's why I don't feel that letting everyone always hit on a 6+ alone would not have been an adequate fix.
That said, without stacking to-hit penalties, my pointy ears do feel like they're missing something. Moving a couple of extra inches compared to our imperial counterparts usually doesn't make much of a difference and is seldom viscerally satisfying. Heck, my Nephrekh necrons with their automatic advance distance of 6", veil of darkness, Deceiver's Grand Illussion, and the ability to charge my canoptek stuff after advancing makes them feel strangely more mobile than my craftworlders; at least in the early game.
We used to have initiative as a nod to our speed. That's gone. Fine. It wasn't an ideal mechanic.
We used to be able to charge after advancing with basically every non-vehicle in the army. That's gone. We used to be able to functionally move-shoot-move with Battle Focus. That is no longer the case.
At various points our skimmers could only be hit on 6s in melee if we moved fast enough or could ignore half the attacks that got through with a flat out or jink save. Now craftworld tanks have the same save as marine vehicles, and drukhari vehicles have a 4+/5++.
We used to be able to leave melee and shoot without penalty. Not any more. And of course, last edition we could stack a bunch of to-hit modifiers, but not any more.
In the past, when we lost one of the above representations of our mobility, we got something else in return. Unless I'm missing something, we don't seem to have gotten any replacement mechanics this edition.
If mobility and evasiveness are supposed to be part of our gimmick, what mechanics do we have that really support that? We don't need to-hit mods specifically, but what do we have?
The Newman wrote: To be fair I argued as hard as anyone else that Marine rerolls were a problem, but not because of the power level or the time involved.
I had an issue with it because unlike practically everyone else Marine rerolls are an aura so everything in the army is designed around standing next to Guilliman, regardless of whether you can take him or not. That's terrible design, but nothing there is an inherent issue with rerolls themselves.
Ah what i call obliterators syndrom, Tell me though what to do about it, cost Units without rerolls? Watch the world burn, cost them at half capacity rerolls?still too good. Cost Units as If allways under such aura influenced and stratagems etc? Well that specific unit with that specific Setup still performs, but what about those that don't take that combination?
See rerolls are just a 3rd of the issue , stratagems and other abilites/traits the other 2...
Cost the reroll source higher. Simple as that. Units need to be able to function as intended by themselves. Otherwise you get Codex: CSM syndrome
I really have mixed feelings. I mean if my tomb blades still have a -1 to be hit then basically any troops with heavy weapons can dol a full move at me and fire with no effective penalty vs not moving, assault weapons can move and fire at me with no penalty, and it does me n good at all to use cover.
So in a real sense if robs my tomb blades of their advantage as people can do things that would normally incur a shooting penalty if firing at them and not get it.
Of course I'm not playing the holy space marines so my issues are insignificant.
It's too restrictive. Maybe a rules that allowed unit specific things, like tomb blades -1 to be hit with shooting, then at most a -1 external penalty, like terrain, and at most a -1 penalty for the firer's actions like running.
As is, my blades are out in the open and a dev unit doesn't move and fires. -1 to be hit,
My blades are in cover and the dev moved and fired. still -1 to be hit.
A total 3 mod cap might be ok. 1 for innate issues like tomb blade modifiers, 1 for terrain and 1 for firer actions which he doesn't have to take. Plus the firer can not only not take an action that incurs a penalty he could use a strategem or wargrear that gives a plus one, or the plus one from a squad ability is not counted towards a limit.
The Newman wrote: The argument (not your argument AnomanderRake, I'm swinging back to the general topic now) is that rerolls are abusive and slow the game down, how about this thought exercize: a D6 system with two different levels of rerolls has almost as many accuracy brackets as a D20 system. Who here really thinks they could resolve 3 Centurions (54 shots) or a decent Daemonette charge (30-45 swings) rolling D20s and looking for a 5+ faster than they could roll the same number of D6s picking out and rerolling the 1s? I know I couldn't do it. D12s have the same problem. You'd be making it feel better but it wouldn't actually improve anything.
d20's? Probably not - a, they're generally bulkier than d6, so I can't roll as many in one go; b, they actually roll, so a dice tray is definitely needed, or we'll be playing "hunt the die" all day; c, they're less stable once they've stopped rolling, so knocking them from one result to another by "accident" would be a concern; and d, they tend to have smaller individual faces, making them tougher to read at a distance. Not much of an issue when you're rolling one or two for an RPG, but a problem if you're trying to resolve 30+, I'd say.
Infinity is one of the few wargames I'm aware of to use a d20 as a main die type, and I think you only roll one or two at a time, so they get around some of the issues.
The d12, on the other hand, generally has a face size about the same as a d6, tend to be stable when rolled, and aren't that much bigger than a d6. Assuming sensible colours (black lettering on a light die, white lettering on a dark die), and a non-Q-workshop font choice, I think they'd be fairly simple to resolve, though testing would be required for empirical evidence. I might have to go through my box of dice and see how many readable d12's I have.
The Newman wrote: To be fair I argued as hard as anyone else that Marine rerolls were a problem, but not because of the power level or the time involved.
I had an issue with it because unlike practically everyone else Marine rerolls are an aura so everything in the army is designed around standing next to Guilliman, regardless of whether you can take him or not. That's terrible design, but nothing there is an inherent issue with rerolls themselves.
Ah what i call obliterators syndrom, Tell me though what to do about it, cost Units without rerolls? Watch the world burn, cost them at half capacity rerolls?still too good. Cost Units as If allways under such aura influenced and stratagems etc? Well that specific unit with that specific Setup still performs, but what about those that don't take that combination?
See rerolls are just a 3rd of the issue , stratagems and other abilites/traits the other 2...
Cost the reroll source higher. Simple as that. Units need to be able to function as intended by themselves. Otherwise you get Codex: CSM syndrome
Oh absolutely, doesn't change that even IF the source is priced correctly that the surounding factors like chapter traits stratagems and othe abilities are, respectively that the sum becomes larger then the components....
@Dysartes, d12 would indeed seem like the best course of action, but even a good bunch of D8's would solve a lot of issues.
Overall tho, i don't think the cap is inherently bad (unless you had a subfaction built for 9th supposedly using -1 to hit stacking) but it should apply seperatly from cover and movement of heavy weapons.
The argument (not your argument AnomanderRake, I'm swinging back to the general topic now) is that rerolls are abusive and slow the game down, how about this thought exercize: a D6 system with two different levels of rerolls has almost as many accuracy brackets as a D20 system. Who here really thinks they could resolve 3 Centurions (54 shots) or a decent Daemonette charge (30-45 swings) rolling D20s and looking for a 5+ faster than they could roll the same number of D6s picking out and rerolling the 1s? I know I couldn't do it. D12s have the same problem. You'd be making it feel better but it wouldn't actually improve anything.
That's not quite the argument. It's not that "rerolls" as a general mechanic are bad and slow the game down. It's the fact that the GW rules team couldn't figure out a stat-line and points level that would allow marines to consistently perform the way they wanted them to, so rather than work that out, they basically just said "rerolls for everyone all the time, in every part of every phase". It's the sheer amount of rerolls. If they just toned down the amount of marine rerolls even that would go a long way towards fixing the issue.
I'm probably missing something, but I'm not seeing how increasing the die size helps with to-hit penalties.
If we switch to using d12s instead of d6s, then we basically give ourselves twice the faces to work with. So rolling a 3 on a d12 is like rolling a 1.5 on a d6. So you get more granularity, but does that really give us room to fix the issues with stackable to-hit penalties? Do people feel that a -2 to hit in 8th was too much, but a -1.5 would have been fine?
That's not quite the argument. It's not that "rerolls" as a general mechanic are bad and slow the game down. It's the fact that the GW rules team couldn't figure out a stat-line and points level that would allow marines to consistently perform the way they wanted them to, so rather than work that out, they basically just said "rerolls for everyone all the time, in every part of every phase". It's the sheer amount of rerolls. If they just toned down the amount of marine rerolls even that would go a long way towards fixing the issue.
I agree. Before 8th I never had the feeling that re-rolls slow down the game and with my orks re-rolls are very limited, as they should be. However even them could abuse the re-rolls + exploding 6s as a Goff army with Ghaz and 90+ boyz works with mechanics that really slow down the game: re-rolling 1s and exploding 6s for that many dudes is not very different than the typical SM army, it's just limited to the assault phase. I avoid that type of list for many things, one is rolling and rolling and rolling.
The Newman wrote: The argument (not your argument AnomanderRake, I'm swinging back to the general topic now) is that rerolls are abusive and slow the game down, how about this thought exercize: a D6 system with two different levels of rerolls has almost as many accuracy brackets as a D20 system. Who here really thinks they could resolve 3 Centurions (54 shots) or a decent Daemonette charge (30-45 swings) rolling D20s and looking for a 5+ faster than they could roll the same number of D6s picking out and rerolling the 1s? I know I couldn't do it. D12s have the same problem. You'd be making it feel better but it wouldn't actually improve anything.
d20's? Probably not - a, they're generally bulkier than d6, so I can't roll as many in one go; b, they actually roll, so a dice tray is definitely needed, or we'll be playing "hunt the die" all day; c, they're less stable once they've stopped rolling, so knocking them from one result to another by "accident" would be a concern; and d, they tend to have smaller individual faces, making them tougher to read at a distance. Not much of an issue when you're rolling one or two for an RPG, but a problem if you're trying to resolve 30+, I'd say.
Infinity is one of the few wargames I'm aware of to use a d20 as a main die type, and I think you only roll one or two at a time, so they get around some of the issues.
The d12, on the other hand, generally has a face size about the same as a d6, tend to be stable when rolled, and aren't that much bigger than a d6. Assuming sensible colours (black lettering on a light die, white lettering on a dark die), and a non-Q-workshop font choice, I think they'd be fairly simple to resolve, though testing would be required for empirical evidence. I might have to go through my box of dice and see how many readable d12's I have.
It's not the size of the dice faces, it's the difference between dots and characters. A normal d6 is equally readable from any angle, a normal d12 depends entirely on how good you are at reading numbers that are upside-down or sideways. Telling a 9 from a 6 or a 5 from a 2 isn't that hard when there are only three or four of dice to look at, but it gets to be a problem really fast as the number of dice you have to scan over increases.
It's just too much of a sledgehammer solution. If they made it so that the defending unit could add a maximum of -1 to the roll but if the attacker advanced or moved with a heavy weapon they could add in an additional -1 too. Keep the always hits on sixes rule and I think you've got a good balance between the unfair old system and the overly generous new system.
The Newman wrote: It's not the size of the dice faces, it's the difference between dots and characters. A normal d6 is equally readable from any angle, a normal d12 depends entirely on how good you are at reading numbers that are upside-down or sideways. Telling a 9 from a 6 or a 5 from a 2 isn't that hard when there are only three or four of dice to look at, but it gets to be a problem really fast as the number of dice you have to scan over increases.
Have the 6 and 9 be underlined, making it clear.
Moreover, part of the issue with modern 40k is a unit of 6 rolling an average of more than 250 dice for their shooting phase.
The Newman wrote: The argument (not your argument AnomanderRake, I'm swinging back to the general topic now) is that rerolls are abusive and slow the game down, how about this thought exercize: a D6 system with two different levels of rerolls has almost as many accuracy brackets as a D20 system. Who here really thinks they could resolve 3 Centurions (54 shots) or a decent Daemonette charge (30-45 swings) rolling D20s and looking for a 5+ faster than they could roll the same number of D6s picking out and rerolling the 1s? I know I couldn't do it. D12s have the same problem. You'd be making it feel better but it wouldn't actually improve anything.
d20's? Probably not - a, they're generally bulkier than d6, so I can't roll as many in one go; b, they actually roll, so a dice tray is definitely needed, or we'll be playing "hunt the die" all day; c, they're less stable once they've stopped rolling, so knocking them from one result to another by "accident" would be a concern; and d, they tend to have smaller individual faces, making them tougher to read at a distance. Not much of an issue when you're rolling one or two for an RPG, but a problem if you're trying to resolve 30+, I'd say.
Infinity is one of the few wargames I'm aware of to use a d20 as a main die type, and I think you only roll one or two at a time, so they get around some of the issues.
The d12, on the other hand, generally has a face size about the same as a d6, tend to be stable when rolled, and aren't that much bigger than a d6. Assuming sensible colours (black lettering on a light die, white lettering on a dark die), and a non-Q-workshop font choice, I think they'd be fairly simple to resolve, though testing would be required for empirical evidence. I might have to go through my box of dice and see how many readable d12's I have.
It's not the size of the dice faces, it's the difference between dots and characters. A normal d6 is equally readable from any angle, a normal d12 depends entirely on how good you are at reading numbers that are upside-down or sideways. Telling a 9 from a 6 or a 5 from a 2 isn't that hard when there are only three or four of dice to look at, but it gets to be a problem really fast as the number of dice you have to scan over increases.
I think this image, while obviously exaggerated, says a lot about how excessive mods can feel like to people, and the marines have the biggest list of mod gear, rules strats, etc, in the game. So they get to pull ths more than anyone.
I’m only surprised it took this long for this thread to be made. As soon as they announced that minuses where capped at -1/+ 1 along side with 6’s all hit, my reaction was “great, another Castellan like-nerf GW made to please the crowd.” Like no-one even mentioned that 6’s always hitting doesn’t even mean anything if you cap modifiers at -1/+1, as nothing in the game has a natural BS of 6+ and a ranged weapon. Just like the Castellan nerf GW’s thought process was probably “well the community hates this thing because it was heavily abused, let’s nerf it into the ground so there’s no chance the community will accuse us of not doing enough!”
Jidmah wrote: Leman Russ Battle Tank with 1-3 wounds left.
Well I stand corrected. I thought bs 4+ Tanks always degraded to a max 5+ like the plague burstcrawler does, my bad here. I guess that does give a reason for that 6’s always hit Clause to exist. That said, A badly damaged tank now being to hit a-1 unit isn’t exactly a big gain for this rule.
Maybe the problem is that wide spread "to hit" modifiers in a D6 system with units having vastly different stat lines and weapons is a bad idea. It generally wasn't bad in 6th and 7th where it generally was normal shooting or snap shooting (which was usually self inflicted, shooting at flyers, the byproduct of failing morale, or from a USR such as blinding). You would think GW would of seen how disruptive flyers could be (without ample skyfire options) and game breaking invisibility was but alas they didn't.
I said the rerolls were a problem from the word "go" (form every angle - not JUST the "power angle" ) and they got even worse when 2.0 came out. Now you add in everything ON TOP of the rerolls, and you go from a book with 1 or 2 (there was another build at one point early on but I can't recall it 
