10 Sisters of Battle - 100 points
9 Black Templar initiates and a Sword Brethren - 125 points
10 Intercessors - 170 points
A Sister of Battle is a 1 wound T3 model with 1 strength 3 attack. That hits on a 4.
A Black Templar Initiate has two wounds, is T4 with 5 strength 4 ap-1 attacks. That hit on a 3.
Yet there’s apparently a 2 point difference here per model. Yeah, if they all had meltaguns and devastating hits maybe I guess; but they don’t. Like this is the right hand not talking to the left hand here.
So either the marine squad should be 4 times more expensive to reflect the actual value of the squad and not say “well ten guys should be around 120 points because that’s what an Exocrine costs (which it shouldn’t BTW)” or, you know, maybe Sisters should get a profile increase because it’s not third edition anymore.
The rules are there to sell you on the fantasy of the faction. I mean, the above example just outright isn’t fair even if this was chess. But in the trailers, books etc etc this is meant to be a larger than life faction filled with Joan of Arc style saints in power armour. If a squad of Sisters of Battle ran into some Genestealer cultists they should absolutely massacre them. One of the best equipped fighting forces and where its characters such as in Dawn of Fire are shown keeping pace and fighting with Space Marines. Currently, the rules are forcing you to pay marine points for units where they have half the wounds and a fifth of the attacks. That’s dumb.
Basically let’s compare a marine in 3rd edition to a 3rd edition Sister of Battle
WS4 BS4 S4 T4 I4 A1 W1 LD8 SV3
WS3 BS4 S3 T3 I3 A1 W1 LD8 SV3
So, the Sister does what the marine does shooting wise but is a tier less durable and is a step down in close combat. With the Sister being about 2/3 the value of a tactical marine.
Since then marine got two extra attacks and an extra wound. They also got better guns and close combat weapons with AP and additional rules when before they had the same gear; because reasons. This was done so that people felt like marines were an elite army and to make them more durable without changing strength and toughness. Purely a gameplay mechanic to sell you on the fantasy of the faction. Marines just didn’t feel like marines with 1 wound and 1 attack due to how damage was going up.
So, Sisters of Battle should have their profile increased in line with this. Probably something like
WS3plus BS3 plus S3 T3 A2 W2 SV3 plus
This changes WS, attacks and wounds. This reflects that Sisters of Battle are wearing power armour, meant to be dangerous and makes them durable without changing their strength or toughness which are the main distinctions of marines. They also still have less attacks than a Space Marine and Celestians did have two attacks until the unit was cut. As for weapon skill, 4 plus to hit in melee does not reflect a competent fighter. Genestealer Acolyes hit on 3 as do various other trash units. It simply means that they can do decent in close combat and bully trash units in close combat. Which they should be able to do in the lore.
I much prefer that to slapping a ton of additional rules to give them more damage. Let’s give them all devastating hits and call it sacred rites. Giving them back armour of contempt. No, the statline needs to change and even then those points are still wildly out of line. The above profile is not worth a hundred points if Black Templar squads are 125 and maybe it’s a bit more in line with the Intercessors.
10 Sisters for 100 pts look pretty fine compared to 10 Intercessors for 170 pts.
(Both have a 3+ save and a Bolter of some kind - let's not be disingenuous and pretend that you're getting sisters for that 1 WS4+ S3 melee attack and use that at some kind of argument to boost them because marines have WS3+ and S4.)
MinscS2 wrote: 10 Sisters for 100 pts look pretty fine compared to 10 Intercessors for 170 pts. (Both have a 3+ save and a Bolter of some kind - let's not be disingenuous and pretend that you're getting sisters for that 1 WS4+ S3 melee attack and use that at some kind of argument to boost them because marines have WS3+ and S4.)
The outlier is the Initiates.
Eh... The Intercessors are approximately twice as durable, have twice as many shots at long range, Assault, Heavy, and have AP-1 on their guns instead of AP0. Not to mention, their close combat is useful, whereas a squad of Sisters doesn't have CC worth rolling for, generally speaking.
That being said, I do think the discrepancy between Intercessors and Sisters could be solved via points. If 10 Sisters were 90 points and 10 Intercessors were 180, that seems reasonably fair to me. (Or at least worth testing.) Whether or not that's balanced with the rest of the game is another matter.
MinscS2 wrote: 10 Sisters for 100 pts look pretty fine compared to 10 Intercessors for 170 pts.
(Both have a 3+ save and a Bolter of some kind - let's not be disingenuous and pretend that you're getting sisters for that 1 WS4+ S3 melee attack and use that at some kind of argument to boost them because marines have WS3+ and S4.)
The outlier is the Initiates.
If they keep the profile then just using points they should be 40 percent the points of marines. Not over 50 percent. Sisters squads should be around 75 points if they refuse to boost the faction or increase marine points.
What do you get for those 7 points
- Three times the attacks
- Double the wounds
- Pip of strength
- Pip of toughness
- Hit on 3 instead of 4
- A gun with an additional AP, advance and the heavy key word
A sisters squad has the same close combat punch as an Imperial Guard or Neophyte squad. Sisters should be able to damage units like that in close combat. Two special weapons don’t make up for all the marine guns being better and having the option to reliably kill trash.As it stands, that trailer where the Sisters charge Necron Warriors and win would never happen.
Also Celestians had WS3 and 2A in the last edition for 13 points. It’s really not a massive stretch to say that what all Sisters of Battle are like. That you wouldn’t be given a really expensive power armour without being a capable fighter.
With all the points drops they’re more likely to continue dropping marines in points.
Also if you look in the rulebook and the army description it says Sisters are famed for their durability as they wear power armour. It does not say they’re weak and who want to use MSU to play the objective whilst the real factions fight.
Total War, are you looking at Crusader Squads? Which have 1 Sword Brother, 4-9 Initiates, and 0-10 Neophytes, but only 3 attacks with their Chainswords.
Or are you looking at Primaris Crusader Squads? Which have 1 Primaris Sword Brother, 5-11 Initiates, and 4-8 Neophytes, but do have 5 attacks with their Chainswords.
Totalwar1402 wrote: 3 attacks is the close combat weapon the bolters get. Same as the Intercessor.
5 attacks is what the Astartes Chainsword gets.
Nope. Those are on the primaris unit, the 125 for 10 non-primaris unit has A3 chainswords. Primaris have a significantly higher point cost and can't take pure initiate squads.
JNAProductions wrote: Total War, are you looking at Crusader Squads? Which have 1 Sword Brother, 4-9 Initiates, and 0-10 Neophytes, but only 3 attacks with their Chainswords.
Or are you looking at Primaris Crusader Squads? Which have 1 Primaris Sword Brother, 5-11 Initiates, and 4-8 Neophytes, but do have 5 attacks with their Chainswords.
Ah I thought they’d just merged them.
Yeah so stats I am looking at the Primaris. Which are 140 points. Still ridiculous, same as the Intercessor.. Sisters and marines should not be remotely comparable points costs. If we live in a world where 2 wound 5 attack infantry are cheap line units then Sisters need to massively drop in points.
The normal crusaders lose two attacks for 125 pts. But it’s this left hand not talking to the right. That’s still stupidly cheap compared to what other armies can bring. Twenty Gaunts or ten marines?
You're also not bringing Sisters of Battle for their melee.
A Crusader Squad with Chainswords does not have any Boltguns, making their shooting significantly worse.
JNAProductions wrote: You're also not bringing Sisters of Battle for their melee.
A Crusader Squad with Chainswords does not have any Boltguns, making their shooting significantly worse.
Yeah, the close combat potential to annihilate a good few units for losing 1 strength 4 shot.
Being able to kill a Neopyte squad in close combat is pretty cool. It just gives them another tool to use and role beyond being two special weapons and the help. That’s boring and I shouldn’t be paying an Exocrines point value for 2 Sisters with meltaguns; so I think they should get a modest boost somewhere.
Also, it’s basically just giving them the statline 13 point Celestians had last edition. So, they have had that close combat punch it’s not like there’s no precedent here.
In lore Sisters should be reasonably good in close combat because they do it all the time in the books and with how they’re presented.
Also, Sisters used to have rules like Sacred rites which gives them a boost in close combat. This is just bringing that into the profile like marine got their shock assault. That seems perfectly fair.
Finally, why are all marine units hitting on 3 same as their core troops, but with Sisters they hit on 4 and all suddenly jump a category? Surely it’s easier to just make all Sisters hit on 3 that aren’t the trainee unit. Who actually hit on 3 last edition. Now they’re 4 which makes the literal raw recruits have the same weapon skill as a full Sister of Battle. That’s silly.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Surely it’s easier to just make all Sisters hit on 3 that aren’t the trainee unit.
And therefore continue the power creep where anything that isn't WS/BS 3+ or better is cannon fodder. What GW really needs to do is scale back marine troops to BS/WS 4+, with elite units either getting WS 3+ or BS 3+ but not both.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Surely it’s easier to just make all Sisters hit on 3 that aren’t the trainee unit.
And therefore continue the power creep where anything that isn't WS/BS 3+ or better is cannon fodder. What GW really needs to do is scale back marine troops to BS/WS 4+, with elite units either getting WS 3+ or BS 3+ but not both.
I don't think that's needed.
Because any given damage is a 2-4 roll procedure (Hit, Wound, Save, FNP) even if you hit on a 3+ and wound on a 3+ while completely denying saves, less than half of your shots will do anything.
Because any given damage is a 2-4 roll procedure (Hit, Wound, Save, FNP) even if you hit on a 3+ and wound on a 3+ while completely denying saves, less than half of your shots will do anything.
So then why is it acceptable for other armies to be stuck hitting on 4s?
Because any given damage is a 2-4 roll procedure (Hit, Wound, Save, FNP) even if you hit on a 3+ and wound on a 3+ while completely denying saves, less than half of your shots will do anything.
So then why is it acceptable for other armies to be stuck hitting on 4s?
Because they're less elite?
And many other units from other armies DO hit on a 3+.
If you want to consolidate the hit and wound step into a single attack step, then I think having 4+ be a baseline might actually be a bit too good. (Though 5+ likely not good enough-the granularity of a d6 and all.)
Let me put this another way-you've got a 10-man Marine squad with 20 Bolter shots. (Ordinary AP0 shots.) How much damage should they do to another squad of MEQ?
Crisis suits are more elite than basic marine troops and are BS 4+. And lore-wise making 3+ the standard means anything with BS/WS 4+ feels like a cannon fodder horde, not competent professional soldiers.
Let me put this another way-you've got a 10-man Marine squad with 20 Bolter shots. (Ordinary AP0 shots.) How much damage should they do to another squad of MEQ?
That's the wrong question to ask, the topic here is relative performance and stats. There's nothing inherently correct about 3+ or 4+ or whatever as the target number, the issue is that 3+ has gone from being elite to the standard and now you're advocating making more units have BS/WS 3+ so that stat is even less elite.
The problem with SoB isn't what ever they have +3 or +4 BS. They could be +2 and it wouldn't change much. GW just didn't design their weapons and special rules to fit 10th ed. High cost armies that have to lose units to get access to some of their rules is bad. Bolters and melta as only weapons are a very bad base of an army. The army can't shot, can't melee and have no special rules to make up for it. With their miracles could make them super resilient and/or allowed their squads to go nova, then maybe we could have arguments how much they cost and what unit composition they have been given by GW and how it should be fixed. Right now their infantry could drop 5-10% and the difference would still not be felt.
Oddly I'm gonna agree with Karol here, the problem with Sisters isn't their base stat line, it's that their special rules SUCK
Speaking as someone with a small sisters army, it's not MARINES I'm pissed at.
IT'S ELDAR!
Let's compare the Sisters of Battle special rule to the eldar one.
Sisters of Battle gain 1 mircle die at the start of each turn and gain additional ones each time a SOB unit is destroyed. you can swap out your mircle die for a die when you make an advance roll, battle shock test, charge roll, damage roll hit roll saving throw or wound roll.
Eldar meanwhile get strands of fate, which is the same thing except they start with 12 dice and don't gain anymore.
SOBs have simply weaker rules then the eldar fate dice ability, requiring them to lose 2 units a turn just to generate an amount of mircle dice on par.
so yeah SOBs need some thought, but simply turning them into "Marines with lipstick" isn't the way to go.
SOBs have simply weaker rules then the eldar fate dice ability, requiring them to lose 2 units a turn just to generate an amount of mircle dice on par.
Just a reminder- Cherubs are a 2 for one deal, restoring an MD that you've used; Simulacra allow you to generate an MD for every unit you destroy, and you gain an MD on each of your turns for every objective controlled by a BSS.
I don't disagree with the sentiment of your post- fate dice ARE better, especially on turn 1 and even turn 2. But no, you don't have to die to generate twelve MD.
I was happy to see most Sisters units get cheaper with the data slate, but more could be done. A melta bump is what I'd like to see- especially since we know it can be done in a way that won't affect other armies.
Crisis suits are more elite than basic marine troops and are BS 4+. And lore-wise making 3+ the standard means anything with BS/WS 4+ feels like a cannon fodder horde, not competent professional soldiers.
Let me put this another way-you've got a 10-man Marine squad with 20 Bolter shots. (Ordinary AP0 shots.) How much damage should they do to another squad of MEQ?
That's the wrong question to ask, the topic here is relative performance and stats. There's nothing inherently correct about 3+ or 4+ or whatever as the target number, the issue is that 3+ has gone from being elite to the standard and now you're advocating making more units have BS/WS 3+ so that stat is even less elite.
I agree wholeheartedly, I'd rather see more stuff hit on 4+ than start dragging things up to 3+ as a norm. It might be wiser to lower other units lethality rather than have a race to the top imo.
MinscS2 wrote: 10 Sisters for 100 pts look pretty fine compared to 10 Intercessors for 170 pts.
(Both have a 3+ save and a Bolter of some kind - let's not be disingenuous and pretend that you're getting sisters for that 1 WS4+ S3 melee attack and use that at some kind of argument to boost them because marines have WS3+ and S4.)
The outlier is the Initiates.
Eh... The Intercessors are approximately twice as durable, have twice as many shots at long range, Assault, Heavy, and have AP-1 on their guns instead of AP0. Not to mention, their close combat is useful, whereas a squad of Sisters doesn't have CC worth rolling for, generally speaking.
That being said, I do think the discrepancy between Intercessors and Sisters could be solved via points. If 10 Sisters were 90 points and 10 Intercessors were 180, that seems reasonably fair to me. (Or at least worth testing.) Whether or not that's balanced with the rest of the game is another matter.
I think I'd rather see a stat increase. A small one. Maybve give them two attacks, give them Assault Sisters with 3-4. I'd like to see Sisters be Guard Marines. Have them be similar unit types with Guardsman stats and close to guardsman points - the trade off is they don't get the big or plentiful guard armor - especially the Super Heavies. I think taking a little from both would give them a decent niche.
I think I'd rather see a stat increase. A small one. Maybve give them two attacks, give them Assault Sisters with 3-4. I'd like to see Sisters be Guard Marines. Have them be similar unit types with Guardsman stats and close to guardsman points - the trade off is they don't get the big or plentiful guard armor - especially the Super Heavies. I think taking a little from both would give them a decent niche.
Sisters being inferior to marines point for point is kind of the point of them. They are 'supposed' to make it back through special weapons and faith, but in 10th their special weapons aren't particularly special and their lack of faith is disturbing.
But they don't need stat increases, just better faction mechanics to give them a more decisive swing when needed.
A.T. wrote: Sisters being inferior to marines point for point is kind of the point of them. They are 'supposed' to make it back through special weapons and faith, but in 10th their special weapons aren't particularly special and their lack of faith is disturbing.
But they don't need stat increases, just better faction mechanics to give them a more decisive swing when needed.
Because they aren’t just inferior to marines. They’re one of the worst units in the game and outclassed by things that should be weaker than them lore wise.
10 strength 3 attacks hitting on 4 is the same as an Imperial guard squad.
Whereas Intercessors have 30 strength 4 attacks hitting on 3.
Acolytes which are just random mutants get tons of attacks and hit on 3 for no reason in close combat with AP. They just happen to have doom bombs.
Like even the profile boost I suggested earlier is just giving Sisters the same CC potential as bolter armed Celestians. It just means they have the option to bully Termagaunts instead of being one of the few armies in the game where they’re even in close combat. That’s silly. They’re in power armour.
Also, last edition, through Sacred Rites and Bloody Rose Sisters essentially had 2 attacks -1 ap and sustained hits so could be near 3 attacks in practice. Losing that hasn’t been factored into their cost.
10th edition wants to keep the special rules down. Shock assault just got slapped on the marines core profile, why should sacred rites and Bloody Rose stuff not get folded in. Looking at that Nid Codex we are not getting a crazy Bloody Rose detachment that solves everything. If you want to give them more attacks like Bloody Rose then just give them more attacks instead of a special rule that does the same thing.
Acolytes are not mutants, but Genestealer hybrids. They are a mid point bewteen a human and a Generstealer, and Genestealers are defined by having a tons of attacks with great WS and AP.
A normal human getting into a melee fight with a Genestealer Hybrid should get torn apart.
I do believe Sisters should be hitting in 3+ to represent their very elite training. But they are also just human.
Tyran wrote: Acolytes are not mutants, but Genestealer hybrids. They are a mid point bewteen a human and a generstealer, and genestealers are defined by having a tons of attacks with great WS and AP.
A normal human getting into a melee fight with a Genestealer Hybrid should get torn apart.
I do believe Sisters should be hitting in 3+ to represent their very elite training. But they are also just human.
yeah, and the gear of acolytes is what makes them over the top, remove the demo charges and theyre much less of a nuke.
Same deal with sisters, fix their gear and theyre gonna do much better, their base stat is fine
Tyran wrote: Acolytes are not mutants, but Genestealer hybrids. They are a mid point bewteen a human and a Generstealer, and Genestealers are defined by having a tons of attacks with great WS and AP.
A normal human getting into a melee fight with a Genestealer Hybrid should get torn apart.
I do believe Sisters should be hitting in 3+ to represent their very elite training. But they are also just human.
There’s nothing normal about them. They’re wearing power armour and meant to be a quasi supernatural fighter; no. The 9th Ed trailer has one generic Sister kill four Necron Warriors and behead one of those Destroyers. Of course they should kill the random grocery store mutants and they are not the only ostensibly canon fodder unit to get tons of attacks and better WS because reasons.
Then why do other Sisters units have better WS and Attacks if being just human is the justification?
Technically they do get to hit on 3 plus in CC once they lose a model. I am just saying cut the middle man out and put the sacred rites on the attack profile like the gave marines all their stuff.
There’s nothing normal about them. They’re wearing power armour and meant to be a quasi supernatural fighter; no. The 9th Ed trailer has one generic Sister kill four Necron Warriors and behead one of those Destroyers. Of course they should kill the random grocery store mutants and they are not the only ostensibly canon fodder unit to get tons of attacks and better WS because reasons.
Then why do other Sisters units have better WS and Attacks if being just human is the justification?
Technically they do get to hit on 3 plus in CC once they lose a model. I am just saying cut the middle man out and put the sacred rites on the attack profile like the gave marines all their stuff.
She kills 4 Necron Warriors with her bolter and beheads the Destroyer with a power sword (suggesting she isn't quite as generic as generic Sister but rather a Sister Superior).
What is not normal about them is their equipment and armor, but the human underneath is still just human. Lore wise a Sister will kill Acolytes at range, but she doesn't want to be in melee with one unless she has a dedicated melee weapon (and even then she is risking it).
As Vladimir noted, they should get an improvement to their gear, not their physical stats.
SOBs have simply weaker rules then the eldar fate dice ability, requiring them to lose 2 units a turn just to generate an amount of mircle dice on par.
Just a reminder- Cherubs are a 2 for one deal, restoring an MD that you've used; Simulacra allow you to generate an MD for every unit you destroy, and you gain an MD on each of your turns for every objective controlled by a BSS.
I don't disagree with the sentiment of your post- fate dice ARE better, especially on turn 1 and even turn 2. But no, you don't have to die to generate twelve MD.
I was happy to see most Sisters units get cheaper with the data slate, but more could be done. A melta bump is what I'd like to see- especially since we know it can be done in a way that won't affect other armies.
Melta should either be str 12 at half range or be anti tank/anti monster +4. At str 8 it is just a horribly bad anti tank weapon. It would require for the units that use it to have an option to change the melta wounds in to DW.
When I look at the eldar changes and SoB changes I just have a laugh. It is as if someone at GW told the DT, "okey peeps make them 65% win rate, then it is all going to be okey, 70% is a bit much" How are sisters going to deal with something like orks or necron, planting a bucket of models on objectives and ask to be shifted, with t5 or more and/or resurection of models. In order to dent something like this a basic squad of sisters would have to carry like 4+ flamers each, on top of their other weapons.
it can be "anti" at half range only too. In the end it doesn't matter, I think, what is important is that a melta based army doesn't work this edition.
And while sisters could be succesful, as almost any other army in history of w40k, if they were dropped in points enough, The problem is with the enough part. They would really have to drop to something really low, like 6-7 pts per foot infantry model.
Regarding the Meltas I have a bit of the impression that someone in the design team thought "Hey, Marines and Guard have Meltas and Lascannons as Anti-Tank weapons, what can we do to make both choices worthwhile? I know! Lets make Meltas anti heavy infantry/skimmer/light vehicle and Lascannons anti tank!" and then completely forgot about SoB only having Meltas for anti tank.
If they flat out get more Strength or Anti vehicle Lascannons will fall out of favor again (which I as Guard player would find sad). But I don't see why Meltas should not work better in Sisters hands. So maybe limit that strength boost to our faithfull girls? Because... really believing in him on earth makes them cook hotter?
Alternatively they could also soft fix that by improving the Faith Dice. After all wounding on 5+ doesn't really matter if you can force 5 and 6s from the pool.
Karol wrote: They would really have to drop to something really low, like 6-7 pts per foot infantry model.
Lol no. Basic guardsmen are 6.5ppm, bringing SoB down to that level would be absurdly overpowered.
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Pyroalchi wrote: Regarding the Meltas I have a bit of the impression that someone in the design team thought "Hey, Marines and Guard have Meltas and Lascannons as Anti-Tank weapons, what can we do to make both choices worthwhile? I know! Lets make Meltas anti heavy infantry/skimmer/light vehicle and Lascannons anti tank!" and then completely forgot about SoB only having Meltas for anti tank.
That may have been the thought process but it doesn't make any sense. Melta isn't meaningfully better than lascannons at killing light vehicles or heavy infantry, it's just a bad weapon. In any case where I could take a melta gun I'd rather take a lascannon no matter what I'm expecting to face.
I kind of get the resistance towards Sisters being 2W (I wouldn't personally mind it's whatever) but the resistance towards them being WS3+ and 2A is really weird and stupid.
There is no particular reason why ten Sisters should be tar-pitted all game by ten guardsmen in melee.
Even with the proposed changes they still only kill four guardsmen a turn so they are hardly mulching hordes, but it makes them somewhat less useless except as a tax to get more Miracle Dice.
Which is what they are right now.
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JNAProductions wrote: You're also not bringing Sisters of Battle for their melee.
A Crusader Squad with Chainswords does not have any Boltguns, making their shooting significantly worse.
What are you taking Sisters of Battle for then? Because it surely isn't their shooting or staying power either.
10 Sisters of Battle - 100 points
9 Black Templar initiates and a Sword Brethren - 125 points
10 Intercessors - 170 points
A Sister of Battle is a 1 wound T3 model with 1 strength 3 attack. That hits on a 4.
A Black Templar Initiate has two wounds, is T4 with 5 strength 4 ap-1 attacks. That hit on a 3.
Yet there’s apparently a 2 point difference here per model. Yeah, if they all had meltaguns and devastating hits maybe I guess; but they don’t. Like this is the right hand not talking to the left hand here.
So either the marine squad should be 4 times more expensive to reflect the actual value of the squad and not say “well ten guys should be around 120 points because that’s what an Exocrine costs (which it shouldn’t BTW)” or, you know, maybe Sisters should get a profile increase because it’s not third edition anymore.
The rules are there to sell you on the fantasy of the faction. I mean, the above example just outright isn’t fair even if this was chess. But in the trailers, books etc etc this is meant to be a larger than life faction filled with Joan of Arc style saints in power armour. If a squad of Sisters of Battle ran into some Genestealer cultists they should absolutely massacre them. One of the best equipped fighting forces and where its characters such as in Dawn of Fire are shown keeping pace and fighting with Space Marines. Currently, the rules are forcing you to pay marine points for units where they have half the wounds and a fifth of the attacks. That’s dumb.
Basically let’s compare a marine in 3rd edition to a 3rd edition Sister of Battle
WS4 BS4 S4 T4 I4 A1 W1 LD8 SV3
WS3 BS4 S3 T3 I3 A1 W1 LD8 SV3
So, the Sister does what the marine does shooting wise but is a tier less durable and is a step down in close combat. With the Sister being about 2/3 the value of a tactical marine.
Since then marine got two extra attacks and an extra wound. They also got better guns and close combat weapons with AP and additional rules when before they had the same gear; because reasons. This was done so that people felt like marines were an elite army and to make them more durable without changing strength and toughness. Purely a gameplay mechanic to sell you on the fantasy of the faction. Marines just didn’t feel like marines with 1 wound and 1 attack due to how damage was going up.
So, Sisters of Battle should have their profile increased in line with this. Probably something like
WS3plus BS3 plus S3 T3 A2 W2 SV3 plus
This changes WS, attacks and wounds. This reflects that Sisters of Battle are wearing power armour, meant to be dangerous and makes them durable without changing their strength or toughness which are the main distinctions of marines. They also still have less attacks than a Space Marine and Celestians did have two attacks until the unit was cut. As for weapon skill, 4 plus to hit in melee does not reflect a competent fighter. Genestealer Acolyes hit on 3 as do various other trash units. It simply means that they can do decent in close combat and bully trash units in close combat. Which they should be able to do in the lore.
I much prefer that to slapping a ton of additional rules to give them more damage. Let’s give them all devastating hits and call it sacred rites. Giving them back armour of contempt. No, the statline needs to change and even then those points are still wildly out of line. The above profile is not worth a hundred points if Black Templar squads are 125 and maybe it’s a bit more in line with the Intercessors.
Didn't we have this thread a few months back? Regardless of that, this analysis is laughably bad, comparing widely different units based on isolated traits and then arguing for a buff. Let's look at it in their totality:
Battle Sister Squad (100 points for Sister Superior and 9 Battle Sisters):
10 Models with T 3, W 1, Sv 3+/6++
Bad Melee capability (1 A, WS 4+, S 3) with a Power Weapon boost on 1 model
7 Boltguns (Rapid Fire 1, A 1, BS 3+, S 4); 1 Special Weapon (Meltagun); 1 Heavy Weapon (Multi-Melta); 1 Superior gun (Combi-Weapon)
Cherub for free extra Miracle Dice after you use one
Defenders of the Faith for extra Miracle Dice for sitting on Objectives (aka doing your job as a Battleline unit)
Simulacrum Imperialis for extra Miracle Dice if this unit destroys a unit
Intercessor Squad (85 points for Intercessor Sgt and 4 Intercessors):
5 Models with T 4, W 2, Sv 3+
Moderate Melee capability (3 A, WS 3+, S 4) with a Powerfist boost on 1 model
5 Bolt Rifles (Assault, Heavy, A 2, BS 3+, S 4, AP -1); 1 Astartes Grenade Launcher
Objective Secured for sticky objectives
Crusader Squad (125 points for Sword Brethren and 9 Initiates with Chainsword):
10 Models with T 4, W 2, Sv 3+
Good Melee capability (3 A, WS 3+, S 4, AP -1) with a Powerfist boost on 1 model
9 Bolt Pistols and a Plasma Pistol
Re-roll Charge and Advance Rolls
Battle Sisters have the worst close combat. Not surprising from a unit that has only been better in close combat than an Imperial Guard Infantry Squad during the days of Order of the Bloody Rose detachment abilities. They are better than Intercessors at shooting due to having 10 models and both a Special Weapon, a Heavy Weapon, and the option for a squad leader weapon upgrade. They are vastly better at shooting than the Crusader Squad, having more than double the firepower and twice the range on most weapons. They are roughly even on resilience to Intercessors with both units have 10 wounds. However the Intercessors having 2 Wound models die much faster to any weapon with D2 or higher. Crusaders are twice a tough as the Sisters, but are both 25% more expensive and have much less reach on the battlefield being armed with pistols and Chainswords.
Intercessors are 15% cheaper than Battle Sisters and have nearly 150% the close combat ability. However, they have less ranged firepower, much less within 12", except at extreme range (greater than 18" and within 24"). Intercessors have a useful ability, but it has much less impact than the three abilities possessed by a Battle Sister Squad. Compared to the Crusader Squad, the Intercessors are only 68% of the points. This makes their lower close combat strength against a melee squad unsurprising. However, they have more than the ranged firepower of the pistol-armed Crusaders within 12" and vastly more firepower beyond 12".
So really, I don't see much problem here. It would be nice if Battle Sisters had 2 attacks per model, but adding more S 3 AP 0 attacks isn't really going to do much in a fight except against weak combatants anyway. Add that Sisters have Pistols to give them a bit more close combat effectiveness in prolonged combats and it becomes nice, but not necessary. The only question I see is should Battle Sisters really be 100 points or should it be a bit cheaper like 95 or 90 points? Or maybe the Astartes units should go up 5 to 10 points? Either way, we are looking pretty close to a reasonably unit to unit comparison.
You’re saying for 25 points you wouldn’t triple your attacks, double your wounds etc etc
Marines are stupidly undercoated. If an Exocrine with D2 can kill them well that goes up in points. Doubling your toughness against D1 guns or close combat is not a trivial bonus.
Three attacks and 2 wounds is a character profile. Every marine should be 20 to 30 points.
I don’t hear these objections to stat increases on Death Guard, Votaan and Mechanicum. Marines did perfectly fine at 1W 1A for decades and nobody claimed that was a poor representation of what marines should be.
If you insist on dropping Sisters point only then it’s a 50 point squad not 95. Like that’s keeping them overcosted.
I think I'd rather see a stat increase. A small one. Maybve give them two attacks, give them Assault Sisters with 3-4. I'd like to see Sisters be Guard Marines. Have them be similar unit types with Guardsman stats and close to guardsman points - the trade off is they don't get the big or plentiful guard armor - especially the Super Heavies. I think taking a little from both would give them a decent niche.
arent repentia the "assault sisters"?
Not really - they're not Bolt Pistol Chain Sword. They're big slow special Chain Sword.
Totalwar1402 wrote: You’re saying for 25 points you wouldn’t triple your attacks, double your wounds etc etc
Marines are stupidly undercoated. If an Exocrine with D2 can kill them well that goes up in points. Doubling your toughness against D1 guns or close combat is not a trivial bonus.
Three attacks and 2 wounds is a character profile. Every marine should be 20 to 30 points.
I don’t hear these objections to stat increases on Death Guard, Votaan and Mechanicum. Marines did perfectly fine at 1W 1A for decades and nobody claimed that was a poor representation of what marines should be.
If you insist on dropping Sisters point only then it’s a 50 point squad not 95. Like that’s keeping them overcosted.
I think you'll find there's been plenty of historic talk about the humble tac marine being less than great for a long time. They've not been relevant for anything other as a weapons caddy for multiple editions in reality. They're not taken at what you consider criminally undercosted values now even.
I feel you're being entirely emotional is your perspective and not able to detach and take a holistic view.
Yes sisters aren't great atm, no it isn't the marines fault and no they don't need to have their points halved or stats doubled.
There’s nothing normal about them. They’re wearing power armour and meant to be a quasi supernatural fighter; no. The 9th Ed trailer has one generic Sister kill four Necron Warriors and behead one of those Destroyers. Of course they should kill the random grocery store mutants and they are not the only ostensibly canon fodder unit to get tons of attacks and better WS because reasons.
Basing the in-game stats on the representation of models in animations/books/videogames is the worst way to balance a unit. Of course units are gonna look OP and badass, and just because Sister Jane Doe managed to do that once doesn't mean every sister has the same power.
Do sisters need a buff? Absolutely, but letting them kill skorpek destroyers isnt the way to do it.
Just fix melta and make it :
[MELTA X]: Increase the Strength and Damage by ‘x’ when
targeting units within half range.
There’s nothing normal about them. They’re wearing power armour and meant to be a quasi supernatural fighter; no. The 9th Ed trailer has one generic Sister kill four Necron Warriors and behead one of those Destroyers. Of course they should kill the random grocery store mutants and they are not the only ostensibly canon fodder unit to get tons of attacks and better WS because reasons.
Basing the in-game stats on the representation of models in animations/books/videogames is the worst way to balance a unit. Of course units are gonna look OP and badass, and just because Sister Jane Doe managed to do that once doesn't mean every sister has the same power.
Do sisters need a buff? Absolutely, but letting them kill skorpek destroyers isnt the way to do it.
Just fix melta and make it :
[MELTA X]: Increase the Strength and Damage by ‘x’ when
targeting units within half range.
this gets my vote, nice and simple, and goes for any weapon with the melta tag, like the T'au fusion weapons that are largely ineffective at the one job they has as well presently
Hellebore wrote: Gw seem to be insistent on keeping data cards unchanged, keeping stats as is.
So you are more likely to see rules change or points costs than anything else.
they changed the Dev Wounds USR, they could change the melta USR too
especially since the function of the USR are not on the cards, just the keyword, indeed one of the main advantages of such is the ability to update text in a single place
Lord Damocles wrote: The Sister in the trailer manages to pray away molecular disintegration.
I'm not sure that we should be looking at her as a baseline...
It does mean extra durability, kinda, depends on the weapon.
Marines having 2 wounds is part of the reason 1D weapons are mostly unused, because they are very bad against Marines that have excellent durability against small arms.
If you were to limit the game to only battleline units, Marines would be kinda broken.
But the game isn't limited in such way and everyone is running with heavy bolters and heavier weapons, and thus the extra durability from the extra wound is mostly negated by the meta.
Oh nice the gaslighting continues, and this time even freaking Art of War(who traditionally overrate Sisters and go by the theoretical peak perfomance of a faction) believe that Sisters will be straight up the worst faction in the game after the "balance" dataslate XD...
BrianDavion wrote: Oddly I'm gonna agree with Karol here, the problem with Sisters isn't their base stat line, it's that their special rules SUCK
No, the problems with Sisters are that their base stat line sucks, that their special rules suck, that most of their datasheets outside of cheap trash units(who often aren't even Sisters) suck, that their Leader interactions(which are additionally like other parts of their Index just straight up schizophrenic) suck and that they have no damage output of note without allied Knights.
Also even in 9th Edition Nephalim, it needed straight up unfair Secondaries to make Sisters with layers over layers over layers of special rules(including Armor of Contempt and the only viable Order Bloody Rose) actually meta-relevant, so to trust such highly incompetent people like GW's rules team to write an army that relies on layers over layers of complex rules interactions is just a recipe to disaster, and simply giving Sisters at least halfway decent base stat lines is a much easier core fix(and anyways wouldn't even be nearly enough but at least a start right now).
Void__Dragon wrote: I kind of get the resistance towards Sisters being 2W (I wouldn't personally mind it's whatever) but the resistance towards them being WS3+ and 2A is really weird and stupid.
There is no particular reason why ten Sisters should be tar-pitted all game by ten guardsmen in melee.
Even with the proposed changes they still only kill four guardsmen a turn so they are hardly mulching hordes, but it makes them somewhat less useless except as a tax to get more Miracle Dice.
Which is what they are right now.
It's all just based on this silly notion that they're just "humans", while normal Sisters are actually comicbook peak humans(and named Sisters even by that metric straight up superhumans) in Sci-Fi Super Armor with straight up Faith magic, and that isn't even going into the fact that we're talking about a setting with freaks like Sly Marbo, where the genetical fever dream called creating Space Marines somehow actually leads to functional Super Soldiers(hell Sisters of Battle were even often enough one of the many especially hippocritical arguments against female Space Marines XD) and in which humans can apparently live for thousands of years on planets that would in reality eradicate them in less than one generation.
Void__Dragon wrote: What are you taking Sisters of Battle for then? Because it surely isn't their shooting or staying power either.
As meat shields for the Simulacrum, and otherwise to have cool looking figures on the shelves XD...
Basing the in-game stats on the representation of models in animations/books/videogames is the worst way to balance a unit. Of course units are gonna look OP and badass, and just because Sister Jane Doe managed to do that once doesn't mean every sister has the same power.
Right, in-game stats should be instead based on tHeY'Re OnLY hUmANs forum opinions, from people who either have no clue about Sisters of Battle or probably also believe Comic Batman if not even Cassandra Cain do what human peak martial artists really do XD...
Do sisters need a buff? Absolutely, but letting them kill skorpek destroyers isnt the way to do it.
Just fix melta and make it :
[MELTA X]: Increase the Strength and Damage by ‘x’ when
targeting units within half range.
Oh dear lord, that's exactly what i see GW in their limitless incompetence do in january, just to make a surprised Pikachu face after finding out why that will be around as much of a fix as the silly below half strength +1 to wound in the gakky detachment rule of Sisters(Spoiler alert: just like any halfway competent opponent will just kill or play around most of the Ultra fragile Sister units instead of leaving them below half strength which is anyways often just a very dubious buff, any halfway competent opponent will also never let any Ultra fragile + not particularly fast glass canon units with meltas get anywhere close to just 9 inches away from a valuable vehicle that will most certainly have notably more range itself anyway).
tneva82 wrote: Hard to take seriously guy that thinks 10 pa marines easily one shotted should cost over 400 pts.
Rookie who thinks extra wound means double durability
It’s hard to take seriously people who think doubling the wounds and tripling the attacks on models isn’t adding value to them. Same as doubling bolter shots, letting them advance and fire, giving them heavy to hit on 2s. If they don’t have any value then why is Sisters getting a buff to distinguish them from trash units like Neopytes and Guardsman a problem?
Just because there’s a few broken units that can kill marines that are also criminally undercosted for what they do, that doesn’t mean marines are balanced. They’re far too cheap for what they do. A marine squad should never be in the same points bracket as a Sisters squad.
Okay, let’s say there’s no value to the close combat difference and let’s compare shooting.
5 Intercessors 85 points
10 sisters 100 points
So the Sisters should be vastly better at shooting then those 5 marines because they cost more and are weaker in every other regard. So let’s have them both shoot at 5 marines
5 marines standing still do 2 wounds to a marine squad at 24
10 Sisters does 1 wound if you give them all bolters at 24
So if they just had bolters that Sisters squad at 24 has only half the firepower of 5 Intercessors
Let’s give the Sisters 2 meltaguns and say they’re within 12
1.66 with bolters
1.11 with a melta which arguably kills a single marine so we’ll round it to 2 wounds
So the Sisters do about four wounds to the marines two. If they get close enough to be charged and butchered in close combat next turn. So you can get better shooting than the marine but you have to get close enough where he can delete you in close combat. So the Sisters will lose this fight in every encounter.
That’s hardly a massive increase in fire power to justify marines being vastly better in every other category. Plus, they can always Oath of Moment if they really wanted to. It’s also entirely reliant on those special weapons being incorporated and is penalising you for not taking the most deadly option.
Okay, I know that 10 AP0 Bolters round to 1 wound to MEQ and 10 AP-1 Bolters round to 2 wounds to MEQ, but that's overstating the difference. It's 1.11 to 1.67.
Also, having thought on it, I'll definitely agree that WS3+ and A2 for baseline Sisters would be fine. It won't fix them, not by a long shot, but it'd be a fine improvement.
Oh dear lord, that's exactly what i see GW in their limitless incompetence do in january, just to make a surprised Pikachu face after finding out why that will be around as much of a fix as the silly below half strength +1 to wound in the gakky detachment rule of Sisters(Spoiler alert: just like any halfway competent opponent will just kill or play around most of the Ultra fragile Sister units instead of leaving them below half strength which is anyways often just a very dubious buff, any halfway competent player will also never get any Ultra fragile + not particularly fast glass canon units with meltas come anywhere close to 9 inches from a valuable vehicle that will most certainly have notably more range itself anyway).
Totalwar1402 wrote: If they don’t have any value then why is Sisters getting a buff to distinguish them from trash units like Neopytes and Guardsman a problem?
Those units both have worse base guns, BS, armour save and no invuln.
Regular battle sisters probably should have 2 attacks with their close combat weapons tbh (but remain WS4+), as this would put them on par with other human elite-units like Kasrkins and Scions who have 2 WS4+ S3 attacks each in combat.
Speaking about Kasrkins (100 pts for 10) and Scions (110 pts for 10), battle sisters look pretty alright @ 100 pts per squad compared to those two;
Both are WS4+ and BS3+.
S4 AP- (Bolters) vs S3 AP1 (H.S Lasguns)
Sisters can have 1 special + 1 heavy.
Scions/Kasrkin can have 2+2 specials.
And then while Scions/Kasrkin have a 4+ save and OC1, sisters have a 3+/6++ save and OC2.
(As for special rules, I'd all 3 units have pretty decent rules. Sisters probably the worst but again, they have a big edge in save and OC.)
So by all means, buff sisters, but don't forget to buff every similar unit in that case. Suddenly if Kasrkin and Sisters are down to 8-9 ppm, isn't it about time we buffed GEQ's too? Is a GEQ really worth 6-6,5 ppm when a Kasrkin/Sister is a mere point or two more expensive but twice as good?
Hopefully you see where I'm going with this. There is a diminishing return at one point where a model with a certain save and loadout can't get cheaper, even if there are more *expensive* models in the game who perhaps are slightly more points-efficient.
Looks to me more like the problem with sisters isn't so much the girls themselves, but that they're restricted to (mainly) meltas and flamers, and that meltas are a bit meh atm. I'd probably support a buff to meltas, but at the same time I don't want previous editions back where meltas where completely dominant and wrecked everything left right and center. Perhaps giving the [melta]-rule +1 to wound against vehicles and monsters if within half range would solve it, but it might also be too much, I can't really tell.
Totalwar1402 wrote: If they don’t have any value then why is Sisters getting a buff to distinguish them from trash units like Neopytes and Guardsman a problem?
Those units both have worse base guns, BS, armour save and no invuln.
So yeah, you consider them peers atm?
Slightly worse base guns. They have access to lascannons, plasma and analogue items such as mining lasers and quake cannons.
They can also regenerate either through cheap CP or just as a built in rule for Genecult.
Also the bolters only got a pip of strength difference ever since AP5 stopped being a thing and they decided to create a new class of boltguns to spite non Astartes units. So now Sisters have the worst bolters in the game where before they had the same guns.
While at the same time they can take two units for every one sisters unit. Which means they have more actions and can handle objectives. Sisters cannot double out marines at their points value so can’t even argue the actions/objective thing. That only happens because the army has even cheaper 2 model trash that are holdovers from Witchhunters.
Also Guard infantry have orders. Genecult have their deep strike and get AP mechanics. Etc etc. Whereas Sisters have to die to get modest buffs. Oh yeah and they can maybe change out one dice.
Whilst having exactly the same close combat potential….
If you wrote any story where Sisters of Battle charged into close combat with an equal number of Neopytes that would be depicted as an even fight. They’ve done books where one Sisters squad pretty much holds off a whole uprising and kill hundreds of them.
Totalwar1402 wrote: If they don’t have any value then why is Sisters getting a buff to distinguish them from trash units like Neopytes and Guardsman a problem?
Those units both have worse base guns, BS, armour save and no invuln.
So yeah, you consider them peers atm?
Slightly worse base guns. They have access to lascannons, plasma and analogue items such as mining lasers and quake cannons.
They can also regenerate either through cheap CP or just as a built in rule for Genecult.
Also the bolters only got a pip of strength difference ever since AP5 stopped being a thing and they decided to create a new class of boltguns to spite non Astartes units. So now Sisters have the worst bolters in the game where before they had the same guns.
While at the same time they can take two units for every one sisters unit. Which means they have more actions and can handle objectives. Sisters cannot double out marines at their points value so can’t even argue the actions/objective thing. That only happens because the army has even cheaper 2 model trash that are holdovers from Witchhunters.
Also Guard infantry have orders. Genecult have their deep strike and get AP mechanics. Etc etc. Whereas Sisters have to die to get modest buffs. Oh yeah and they can maybe change out one dice.
Whilst having exactly the same close combat potential….
If you wrote any story where Sisters of Battle charged into close combat with an equal number of Neopytes that would be depicted as an even fight. They’ve done books where one Sisters squad pretty much holds off a whole uprising and kill hundreds of them.
10 neophytes with a mining laser and a grenade launcher, 10 sisters with a pair of storm bolters to keep it fair:
Sisters at 24" - kill 3.6 neophytes
Sisters at 12" - kill 7.1 neophyes
Neophytes (stationary) at 24" - kill 1.7 sisters
Neohpytes (stationary) at 12" - kill 2.7 sisters
In fisticuffs assuming the same loadout:
Sisters kill 1.8 neophytes, the other way round is unsurprisingly 0.9.
Sisters are at least twice as effective into neophytes as the other way round whilst costing a mere 10 points more, army rules aside. If you consider the chance of the neophytes coming back vs the fact they just gave that sisters unit +1 to hit by killing 1-2 of them, it more or less balances out the maths for another turn. Same again once you're in +1 to wound. This also doesn't count any miracle die to make a save somewhere etc.
Oh dear lord, that's exactly what i see GW in their limitless incompetence do in january, just to make a surprised Pikachu face after finding out why that will be around as much of a fix as the silly below half strength +1 to wound in the gakky detachment rule of Sisters(Spoiler alert: just like any halfway competent opponent will just kill or play around most of the Ultra fragile Sister units instead of leaving them below half strength which is anyways often just a very dubious buff, any halfway competent player will also never get any Ultra fragile + not particularly fast glass canon units with meltas come anywhere close to 9 inches from a valuable vehicle that will most certainly have notably more range itself anyway).
can you at least be coherent in your rant?
What part of meltas at range 9 getting the strength they anyways should have is not going to fix Sisters and GW being incompetent, is not coherent with my rant(that specifically points out that Sisters have several problems, of which damage output is just one)?
Neopytes get 2 special and 2 heavy weapons for every 10. Not 1 special and 1 heavy. Plus quake cannons are a better option for killing Sisters. But those mining lasers are better at getting tanks at range.
It’s a 60 percent chance of a free unit that can arrive and get minus 1AP. Going down to 50 percent later on. So it could in theory still duplicate itself five times.
Whilst being able to tarpit the shooty sisters unit with basically any unit in the game with a unit half its price.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Neopytes get 2 special and 2 heavy weapons for every 10. Not 1 special and 1 heavy. Plus quake cannons are a better option for killing Sisters. But those mining lasers are better at getting tanks at range.
It’s a 60 percent chance of a free unit that can arrive and get minus 1AP. Going down to 50 percent later on. So it could in theory still duplicate itself five times.
Whilst being able to tarpit the shooty sisters unit with basically any unit in the game with a unit half its price.
You're right on the doubles and it was a typo on my part, I did the maths with a seismic cannon.
So 2 grenade launchers and 2 seismic cannons in the wild assumption they're permanently stationary:
24" - 2.6 sisters killed
12" - 3.7 sisters killed
Still heavily skewed to the sisters here. That 60% chance also requires nobody to get close to the marker you broadcast for a turn iirc.
Also Neophytes are 90 points, sisters are 100, that's 10 points difference, not half.
Whilst being able to tarpit the shooty sisters unit with basically any unit in the game with a unit half its price.
Tarpitting isn't a weakness unique to sisters. It's been a vulnerability of nearly every unit since the games creation, and a weakness in basically every game ever.
Can't kill it, or don't want it to go on a rampage through my list? Either run around it or throw something at it can't efficiently deal with and proceed to ignore it until you need to throw more cheese into the mousetrap.
I don't completely agree with you, nor do I completely disagree with you, but tarpitting has and likely will continue to be a solution for most units in the game.
Looks to me more like the problem with sisters isn't so much the girls themselves
Wrong, the problems are with the girls themselves, their special rules, their leader interactions, their datasheets and their vehicles + guns, and whoever wrote that horrible Index needs to get fired asap.
MinscS2 wrote: but that they're restricted to (mainly) meltas and flamers, and that meltas are a bit meh atm.
Meltas are not just a bit meh but hot garbage right now, and nobody who has actual options is taking them, especially not on Ultra fragile + slow units. And that is still just one of many problems Sisters have in 10th Edition.
MinscS2 wrote: I'd probably support a buff to meltas, but at the same time I don't want previous editions back where meltas where completely dominant and wrecked everything left right and center.
At a laughable range of 9 they would need to straight up wreck everything left right and center to even be the slightest bit viable, especially on Ultra fragile + slow units who would have still more than enough trouble to make them work even then.
MinscS2 wrote: Perhaps giving the [melta]-rule +1 to wound against vehicles and monsters if within half range would solve it, but it might also be too much, I can't really tell.
Please tell me you're just joking?
Giving Meltas + 1 to wound at full range against everything for only Sisters would make Sisters a Mid Tier army at best right now, giving Meltas +1 to wound against vehicles and monsters if within half range would not fix Meltas(only freaking Space Marines could even make them work then, and it's not like they even need that) and barely help Sisters at all(at best they would be a less hot contender for the worst faction in the game among the bottom right now).
In fact let’s go the other way and keep the theme up that Sisters are way off what they are:
Celestine in Gathering Storm:
Kills a Daemon Prince
Holds her own against Abaddon (the Dark Lord of the setting)
Kills a dumb number of Chaos Space Marines
Which is in line with other Living Saints such as Sabbat who you know, also kills a Daemon Prince and a load of Chaos Space Marines. Or Demonifuge fighting and killing a Great Unclean One.
So how does that character translate into the rules? The God like superhero characters who kill Daemon Princes and Greater Demons as Avatars of the God Emperor?
5 attacks 2 plus strength 6 ap-3 D2 Dev Wounds
About 3 dead marines.
Versus the Daemon Prince
Either
14 str6 ap0 D1 hitting on 2 with full rerolls
or
6 Str8 ap-2 D3 hitting on 2 plus
So it’s either 6 marines dead with the sweep or 4 with the strike
On a T10 10W 2/4 profile.
There is no way Celestine wins that fight.
Celestine has the statline of a Canoness with jump pack. There’s a complete disconnect between the lore of Living Saints like Celestine versus the rules. Some random Daemon Prince or Chaos Lord is better than an Avatar of the God Emperor. Even though the lore has things like Sabbat butchering Chaos Lords ridiculously easily or Celestine chopping off this Daemon Princes on Cadia head before facing off against Abaddon (suffice to say with those rules she ain’t winning there either).
This is clearly the “well all Sisters have to be worse than marines so we’ll give some cute little profiles to kill one or two marines a turn; but nothing too crazy as that just wouldn’t fit the rest of the army”. Being worse than 60 percent of the armies in the game shouldn’t be a defining trait. Plus, it really isn’t for Living Saints. If a random marine Chaos Lord fights Sabbat or Celestine he ain’t walking away from that fight unless you’re a named character. So again, the rules are totally at odds with the lore.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Neopytes get 2 special and 2 heavy weapons for every 10. Not 1 special and 1 heavy. Plus quake cannons are a better option for killing Sisters. But those mining lasers are better at getting tanks at range.
It’s a 60 percent chance of a free unit that can arrive and get minus 1AP. Going down to 50 percent later on. So it could in theory still duplicate itself five times.
Whilst being able to tarpit the shooty sisters unit with basically any unit in the game with a unit half its price.
You're right on the doubles and it was a typo on my part, I did the maths with a seismic cannon.
So 2 grenade launchers and 2 seismic cannons in the wild assumption they're permanently stationary:
24" - 2.6 sisters killed
12" - 3.7 sisters killed
Still heavily skewed to the sisters here. That 60% chance also requires nobody to get close to the marker you broadcast for a turn iirc.
Also Neophytes are 90 points, sisters are 100, that's 10 points difference, not half.
Because it can come back 5 times. So it’s really a series of 18 point units that might not arrive on the battlefield.
I'm being humble here and you're coming from nowhere and being ultra-snarky. Go argue with someone else...
Bruh..., you talked about making a weapon that don't works at all right now just slightly better, and then honestly claimed that might be too much in context of one of the worst armies in the game right now(except someone somehow pulls an after months still unknown Sisters super-combo out of nowhere). I admit that my reply was maybe a bit too snarky(cause i'm really tired of all the gaslighting regarding Sisters here since their already just bad 10th Edition preview), but you were definitely not being humble but just pretty damn ignorant instead.
MinscS2 wrote: Regular battle sisters probably should have 2 attacks with their close combat weapons tbh (but remain WS4+), as this would put them on par with other human elite-units like Kasrkins and Scions who have 2 WS4+ S3 attacks each in combat.
Speaking about Kasrkins (100 pts for 10) and Scions (110 pts for 10), battle sisters look pretty alright @ 100 pts per squad compared to those two;
Both are WS4+ and BS3+.
S4 AP- (Bolters) vs S3 AP1 (H.S Lasguns)
Sisters can have 1 special + 1 heavy.
Scions/Kasrkin can have 2+2 specials.
And then while Scions/Kasrkin have a 4+ save and OC1, sisters have a 3+/6++ save and OC2.
(As for special rules, I'd all 3 units have pretty decent rules. Sisters probably the worst but again, they have a big edge in save and OC.)
So by all means, buff sisters, but don't forget to buff every similar unit in that case. Suddenly if Kasrkin and Sisters are down to 8-9 ppm, isn't it about time we buffed GEQ's too? Is a GEQ really worth 6-6,5 ppm when a Kasrkin/Sister is a mere point or two more expensive but twice as good?
Hopefully you see where I'm going with this. There is a diminishing return at one point where a model with a certain save and loadout can't get cheaper, even if there are more *expensive* models in the game who perhaps are slightly more points-efficient.
Looks to me more like the problem with sisters isn't so much the girls themselves, but that they're restricted to (mainly) meltas and flamers, and that meltas are a bit meh atm. I'd probably support a buff to meltas, but at the same time I don't want previous editions back where meltas where completely dominant and wrecked everything left right and center. Perhaps giving the [melta]-rule +1 to wound against vehicles and monsters if within half range would solve it, but it might also be too much, I can't really tell.
I agree that the stat line for sisters should be compared to Karksans and Scions, which are literally the "elite of humanity" and not to space marines which are supposed to be quite literally super human Sisters of Battle are NOT FEMALE SPACE MARINES after all, .Also giving Battle sisters 2 attacks seems more like a trap then anything, not sure that it'd have much impact
I also agree that a BIIIG part of the problem with sisters is largely that Melta SUCKS right now.
If Melta was better (and honestly I can't imagine it won't eventually get buffed this edition) it'd go a loong way to making sisters more viable
Sisters of Battle are superhuman though. Characters like Celestine and Demonifuge being the extreme examples of that. They’re like Stormcast, they’re being given powers by a God; just usually to a lesser extent. Scions and Kasrkin are just SAS in space.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Neopytes get 2 special and 2 heavy weapons for every 10. Not 1 special and 1 heavy. Plus quake cannons are a better option for killing Sisters. But those mining lasers are better at getting tanks at range.
It’s a 60 percent chance of a free unit that can arrive and get minus 1AP. Going down to 50 percent later on. So it could in theory still duplicate itself five times.
Whilst being able to tarpit the shooty sisters unit with basically any unit in the game with a unit half its price.
You're right on the doubles and it was a typo on my part, I did the maths with a seismic cannon.
So 2 grenade launchers and 2 seismic cannons in the wild assumption they're permanently stationary:
24" - 2.6 sisters killed
12" - 3.7 sisters killed
Still heavily skewed to the sisters here. That 60% chance also requires nobody to get close to the marker you broadcast for a turn iirc.
Also Neophytes are 90 points, sisters are 100, that's 10 points difference, not half.
Because it can come back 5 times. So it’s really a series of 18 point units that might not arrive on the battlefield.
That's not how this works and I think you know that.
The potential opportunity cost of a unit respawning isn't something that just makes the cost of a unit and its potential divisible by 5.
I understand your frustrations, but you're just hell bent on "make my army better", using narrative fluff from novels and comic book style showdowns as justification. Its good you care so much about your faction, but it feels like it's blinding you to the bigger picture.
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Totalwar1402 wrote: Sisters of Battle are superhuman though. Characters like Celestine and Demonifuge being the extreme examples of that. They’re like Stormcast, they’re being given powers by a God; just usually to a lesser extent. Scions and Kasrkin are just SAS in space.
No, they are not. They get the occasional divine intervention through faith.
Two unique characters does not make the army superhuman. The average Sister of Battle is just a really well-trained human with excellent equipment and extraordinarily fanatic devotion to the God-Emperor of Mankind. They cannot consciously call on Faith to have a specific impact in the world around them like Celestine or the Daemonifuge can do. Things just happen at random.
I agree that the stat line for sisters should be compared to Karksans and Scions, which are literally the "elite of humanity" and not to space marines which are supposed to be quite literally super human Sisters of Battle are NOT FEMALE SPACE MARINES after all
Sisters of Battles are also NOT JUST REGULAR ELITE SOLDIERS, cause those have neither Super-Armor nor straight up Faith magic, also their heroes operate barring complete outliers like Sly Marbo far below the ridiculous lvl of named Sisters let alone outliers like Ephrael Stern, and that is not even going into Celestine who according to lore should eat even whole Space Marines Squads casually for breakfast like Totalwar1402 already rightfully pointed out. And btw one of the most popular arguments against female Space Marines was usually the existence of Sisters of Battle...
BrianDavion wrote: Also giving Battle sisters 2 attacks seems more like a trap then anything, not sure that it'd have much impact
I also agree that a BIIIG part of the problem with sisters is largely that Melta SUCKS right now.
If Melta was better (and honestly I can't imagine it won't eventually get buffed this edition) it'd go a loong way to making sisters more viable
Both of those buffs would be traps then, cause neither can even nearly fix Sisters on their own, although you are right about an actually fixed melta having a notably bigger impact.
No, they are not. They get the occasional divine intervention through faith.
alextroy wrote: Two unique characters does not make the army superhuman. The average Sister of Battle is just a really well-trained human with excellent equipment and extraordinarily fanatic devotion to the God-Emperor of Mankind. They cannot consciously call on Faith to have a specific impact in the world around them like Celestine or the Daemonifuge can do. Things just happen at random.
That's just nonsense, the best trained male peak human soldier in the real world would straight up not even survive the training of the Novitiate, what Sisters do goes well into the realm of comicbook peak humans(aka real world superhumans, even for men let alone for women) + added Super-Armor and Faith Magic(which was on countless occasions shown to be far less random than you claim), what named Sisters do is even by that standard outright superhuman, Ephrael Stern is blatantly an all around superhuman who would make even Spider-Man proud in some regards and that is before we're even talking about her ridiculous magical abilities, and Celestines stats are utterly laughable if we're even remotely going by the lore(cause she should be clearly closer to a Primarch than to even High-End Space Marines, but has partly regular Sister stats below even freaking Scouts).
Totalwar1402 wrote: Sisters of Battle are superhuman though. Characters like Celestine and Demonifuge being the extreme examples of that. They’re like Stormcast, they’re being given powers by a God; just usually to a lesser extent. Scions and Kasrkin are just SAS in space.
st.celestine and stern are NOT TYPICAL sisters of battle.
Sisters of Battle are on the whole not super human. they're normal humans with INTENSE faith, and that faith sometimes manifests in miraculious results. In an edition with more psyker powers Mircle dice would IMHO be something that could be sacrificed for "mircles" that would be a bit akin to psyker powers with every SOB squad being capable of being the "caster"
but 10th edition has basicly neutered psykers into the ground
Claiming that sisters are superhuman and using Celestine as an argument is like saying that space marines aren't superhuman enough and then using primarchs as an argument.
Celestine is your typhical sister just as much as Guilliman is your typhical space marine.
Nothing I have read depicts the average Sister of Battle as superhuman. In fact, they are all too human outside of their faith. They do have some of the best equipment in the galaxy and top notch military training having been drawn from the Schola Progenium, just like Scions and Commissars, for the prime trait of exceptional faith.
So while I will agree that if you compare them to Scions and Kasrkin, they should definitely have 2 attacks with their Close Combat Weapon like those squads, that isn't the problem. The problem is at best lackluster anti-tank capability (S9 Melta is not great when most tanks are T10+) and horrible leader rules. So many characters, but you can only attach one to a squad unless it is a Battle Sister Squad. Inability to place the re-roll granting Cannoness with any squad of consequence. The list goes on.
Totalwar1402 wrote: In fact let’s go the other way and keep the theme up that Sisters are way off what they are:
Celestine in Gathering Storm:
Kills a Daemon Prince
Holds her own against Abaddon (the Dark Lord of the setting)
Kills a dumb number of Chaos Space Marines
Which is in line with other Living Saints such as Sabbat who you know, also kills a Daemon Prince and a load of Chaos Space Marines. Or Demonifuge fighting and killing a Great Unclean One.
So how does that character translate into the rules? The God like superhero characters who kill Daemon Princes and Greater Demons as Avatars of the God Emperor?
5 attacks 2 plus strength 6 ap-3 D2 Dev Wounds
About 3 dead marines.
Versus the Daemon Prince
Either
14 str6 ap0 D1 hitting on 2 with full rerolls
or
6 Str8 ap-2 D3 hitting on 2 plus
So it’s either 6 marines dead with the sweep or 4 with the strike
On a T10 10W 2/4 profile.
There is no way Celestine wins that fight.
Celestine has the statline of a Canoness with jump pack. There’s a complete disconnect between the lore of Living Saints like Celestine versus the rules. Some random Daemon Prince or Chaos Lord is better than an Avatar of the God Emperor. Even though the lore has things like Sabbat butchering Chaos Lords ridiculously easily or Celestine chopping off this Daemon Princes on Cadia head before facing off against Abaddon (suffice to say with those rules she ain’t winning there either).
This is clearly the “well all Sisters have to be worse than marines so we’ll give some cute little profiles to kill one or two marines a turn; but nothing too crazy as that just wouldn’t fit the rest of the army”. Being worse than 60 percent of the armies in the game shouldn’t be a defining trait. Plus, it really isn’t for Living Saints. If a random marine Chaos Lord fights Sabbat or Celestine he ain’t walking away from that fight unless you’re a named character. So again, the rules are totally at odds with the lore.
Your math is wrong.
14 attacks at S6, 2+ to-hit, and rerolling hits and wounds is two dead MEQ.
6 attacks at S8 AP-2 D3, 2+ to-hit, kills just shy of three MEQ.
alextroy wrote: Nothing I have read depicts the average Sister of Battle as superhuman.] In fact, they are all too human outside of their faith They do have some of the best equipment in the galaxy and top notch military training having been drawn from the Schola Progenium, just like Scions and Commissars, for the prime trait of exceptional faith.
So while I will agree that if you compare them to Scions and Kasrkin, they should definitely have 2 attacks with their Close Combat Weapon like those squads, that isn't the problem. The problem is at best lackluster anti-tank capability (S9 Melta is not great when most tanks are T10+) and horrible leader rules. So many characters, but you can only attach one to a squad unless it is a Battle Sister Squad. Inability to place the re-roll granting Cannoness with any squad of consequence. The list goes on.
and many of their characters can only attach to a battle sister squad and maybe one other type of squad. :(
Sisters didn't have many characters until fairly recently too IIRC so that kinda hampered em.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Celestine still ain’t winning that fight, much less standing up to Abaddon.
She has to get the perfect roll to one shot that Demon Prince whilst it can reliably kill her in a single round. She can only chip away at it.
Posting objectively wrong math doesn’t help your case.
can math be SUBJECTIVELY wrong?
You can post math that is correct, but who’s foundations are shoddy.
Like, let’s say you assume a Guard squad is within 6” of an enemy tank (for the Melta bonus) but is also stationary for the Lascannon heavy bonus.
The assumptions present are shoddy, no matter how accurate the math of the calculations are.
Lot of frothing at the mouth posters in here saying "they're just like Scions but in powered armour" but I'm not sure the fluff really supports that.
I do agree they should be inferior to Marines man to woman on average. Making them WS3+ and 2A doesn't change that. Hell adding the extra wound on top of that wouldn't change that.
Sisters regularly get into close quarters engagements at rates beyond the Scions. When we see the Scions fight they drop down and stop blasting. As seen in the ninth edition cinematic Sisters are much more prone to throwing down and acquit themselves well (too well tbh but so did the Space Marines Scorpehks should not be that easy to kill but oh well the Imperium gets plot armour).
Making them WS3+ and 2A wouldn't be out of line in the fluff nor on the tabletop. And anyone who thinks "buffing melta" in this edition would be enough to fix Sisters is completely delusional frankly. Not worth talking to.
BrianDavion wrote: Oddly I'm gonna agree with Karol here, the problem with Sisters isn't their base stat line, it's that their special rules SUCK
I don't think their base statline needs to change, but their weapon statlines do. More attacks on the melee weapons. A couple more units to fill in the holes.
Void__Dragon wrote: Lot of frothing at the mouth posters in here saying "they're just like Scions but in powered armour" but I'm not sure the fluff really supports that.
I do agree they should be inferior to Marines man to woman on average. Making them WS3+ and 2A doesn't change that. Hell adding the extra wound on top of that wouldn't change that.
Sisters regularly get into close quarters engagements at rates beyond the Scions. When we see the Scions fight they drop down and stop blasting. As seen in the ninth edition cinematic Sisters are much more prone to throwing down and acquit themselves well (too well tbh but so did the Space Marines Scorpehks should not be that easy to kill but oh well the Imperium gets plot armour).
Making them WS3+ and 2A wouldn't be out of line in the fluff nor on the tabletop. And anyone who thinks "buffing melta" in this edition would be enough to fix Sisters is completely delusional frankly. Not worth talking to.
The Sisters of Battle are trained to the peak of human ability and stand amongst Mankind's most dedicated and disciplined warriors.
Again, top end human training ala stormtroopers
The intense, unquestioning nature of this faith is a potent weapon indeed, manifesting as divine inspiration that drives the Sororitas to unprecedented feats of martial prowess.
Sisters of Battle gripped with holy fervour banish worldly fears from their minds, shrug off mortal wounds, and summon preternatural strength to smite their foes.
This highlights that they're so robust of faith that their mental state allows them to accomplish beyond what most normal people will. Note, this isn't super human in all cases, some are miracles, some are faith leading to actions that push the human body.
I won't copy the full induction process, but they're human, no implants, no latent super powers, just hard-ass ladies with a lack of self preservation and a belief in a higher power.
This whole thread is "my Sisters aren't female space marines that shrug off wounds at every turn and melt heretics with their magic powers" to dramatacise the issue.
The grounded suggestions of an extra attack or better ws on Battle Sisters, or melta changes are all good valid suggestions. So are criticisms of the army rules. But the weird trip about how they're superhuman is just off base completely.
Regarding the "in novel XY" argument: there always is a certain limit in how well fluff can be transformed into tabletop rules before it gets ridiculous.
It's the same "problem" I see with people complaining that Marines have problems to single handedly wipe out whole Guardsmen squads on the tabletop when they can in the fluff: That would be possible if on the contrary the "horde factions" would get the numerical superiority they would have in the fluff. And that would (in my opinion) require dialing the regeneration mechanics of Guard, Genestealers and Nids up even more or adjust prices in a way that the elite factions have extremely small numbers on the board.
In other words: if you argue that sisters should have drastical advantages over Guardsmen/Gaunts/whatever the lowliest Stealer guys are called because "the novels say so" I as Guardplayer could argue that I want off the board artillery strikes from friendly regiments a mile away because "the fluff says so". Or that prices should be adjusted to reflect that the regiments of Hive worlds like Cadia likely have more tanks than there are space marines in the galaxy. But I think that won't be fun.
But that is just my opinion on the fluff argument
____________________________________________
Back on track: I too think buffing SoBs to two attacks, WS3+ would be fitting. But I'm not sure that would really solve the problem mentioned. I mean: looking at lets say 20 Infantry squad dudes (110 if I'm not mistaken) against 10 battle sisters. If they get into melee they would still only kill something in the ball park of (21 attacks * 2/3 (WS) *1/2 (wounding step) *2/3 (armor save)) ~ 5 Guardsmen a fight phase, needing multiple rounds to remove that squad - only for it to be regenerated. So it still wouldn't be enough to avoid beeing tar pitted.
But of couse: it would be a good start.
Totalwar1402 wrote: In fact let’s go the other way and keep the theme up that Sisters are way off what they are:
Celestine in Gathering Storm:
Kills a Daemon Prince
Holds her own against Abaddon (the Dark Lord of the setting)
Kills a dumb number of Chaos Space Marines
Which is in line with other Living Saints such as Sabbat who you know, also kills a Daemon Prince and a load of Chaos Space Marines. Or Demonifuge fighting and killing a Great Unclean One.
So how does that character translate into the rules? The God like superhero characters who kill Daemon Princes and Greater Demons as Avatars of the God Emperor?
5 attacks 2 plus strength 6 ap-3 D2 Dev Wounds
About 3 dead marines.
Versus the Daemon Prince
Either
14 str6 ap0 D1 hitting on 2 with full rerolls
or
6 Str8 ap-2 D3 hitting on 2 plus
So it’s either 6 marines dead with the sweep or 4 with the strike
On a T10 10W 2/4 profile.
There is no way Celestine wins that fight.
Celestine has the statline of a Canoness with jump pack. There’s a complete disconnect between the lore of Living Saints like Celestine versus the rules. Some random Daemon Prince or Chaos Lord is better than an Avatar of the God Emperor. Even though the lore has things like Sabbat butchering Chaos Lords ridiculously easily or Celestine chopping off this Daemon Princes on Cadia head before facing off against Abaddon (suffice to say with those rules she ain’t winning there either).
This is clearly the “well all Sisters have to be worse than marines so we’ll give some cute little profiles to kill one or two marines a turn; but nothing too crazy as that just wouldn’t fit the rest of the army”. Being worse than 60 percent of the armies in the game shouldn’t be a defining trait. Plus, it really isn’t for Living Saints. If a random marine Chaos Lord fights Sabbat or Celestine he ain’t walking away from that fight unless you’re a named character. So again, the rules are totally at odds with the lore.
Every edition she loses another attack and another wound.
JNAProductions wrote: Perhaps it might be prudent to gather all the suggestions for improving Sisters, and figure out which ones would be good to implement.
I've seen A2 WS3+ brought up a decent amount, and I think that'd be a good (but kinda minor) change.
Honestly, that change would do nothing, so i'm all for GW implementing it.
JNAProductions wrote: Perhaps it might be prudent to gather all the suggestions for improving Sisters, and figure out which ones would be good to implement.
I've seen A2 WS3+ brought up a decent amount, and I think that'd be a good (but kinda minor) change.
Honestly, that change would do nothing, so i'm all for GW implementing it.
They really just need their guns to be better
It'd help them bully weak units off objectives, at least.
Currently, a 10-gal squad of Battle Sisters does 12 S3 AP0 D1 attacks or 9 S3 AP0 D1 attacks and 2 S4 AP-2 D1 attacks. Hitting on 4s across the board.
That's 6 hits, 3 wounds, 2 failed saves on a GEQ squad.
Or 9/2 hits, 9/4 wounds, 18/12 or 1.5 failed saves plus 1 hit, 2/3 wounds, 2/3 failed saves for 2.17 dead GEQ.
Using the Power Weapon profile for the Superior, there's still a nearly 1/3 chance of killing only one GEQ model. Meaning that if they lose one Sister, or just fail to get all 10 on the objective, it stays contested.
Upping them to WS3+ and A2 (A3 on Power Weapon, A4 on Chainsword) gives the following:
18 attacks
12 hits
6 wounds
4 dead GEQ plus
3 attacks
2 hits
4/3 wounds
4/3 dead GEQ
Better than 80% odds of killing at least 4 GEQ, though admittedly only a 2.12% chance of wiping a full 10-strong squad.
Pyroalchi wrote: Regarding the "in novel XY" argument: there always is a certain limit in how well fluff can be transformed into tabletop rules before it gets ridiculous.
It's the same "problem" I see with people complaining that Marines have problems to single handedly wipe out whole Guardsmen squads on the tabletop when they can in the fluff: That would be possible if on the contrary the "horde factions" would get the numerical superiority they would have in the fluff. And that would (in my opinion) require dialing the regeneration mechanics of Guard, Genestealers and Nids up even more or adjust prices in a way that the elite factions have extremely small numbers on the board.
In other words: if you argue that sisters should have drastical advantages over Guardsmen/Gaunts/whatever the lowliest Stealer guys are called because "the novels say so" I as Guardplayer could argue that I want off the board artillery strikes from friendly regiments a mile away because "the fluff says so". Or that prices should be adjusted to reflect that the regiments of Hive worlds like Cadia likely have more tanks than there are space marines in the galaxy. But I think that won't be fun.
But that is just my opinion on the fluff argument
____________________________________________
Back on track: I too think buffing SoBs to two attacks, WS3+ would be fitting. But I'm not sure that would really solve the problem mentioned. I mean: looking at lets say 20 Infantry squad dudes (110 if I'm not mistaken) against 10 battle sisters. If they get into melee they would still only kill something in the ball park of (21 attacks * 2/3 (WS) *1/2 (wounding step) *2/3 (armor save)) ~ 5 Guardsmen a fight phase, needing multiple rounds to remove that squad - only for it to be regenerated. So it still wouldn't be enough to avoid beeing tar pitted.
But of couse: it would be a good start.
Wasting their stat budget on melee is stupid. Especially because you're worried about tar-pitting. BSS ARE the tarpit.
Sisters are highly specialized. Outside of the suits, Stuff that's good at melee is ONLY good at melee. Stuff that's good at shooting is ONLY good at shooting.
The problem the index has is that stuff that's supposed to be at melee...isn't good at melee and stuff that's supposed to be good at shooting...isn't good at shooting.
For BSS, We need to go back to 4 special weapons, or 2 specials and 2 heavies per squad of 10.
'But what about dominions?' Give them back the +1 bolters and then give them an actually useful special rule like 'Holy Trinity: If this unit has at least 4 models all equipped with the same special weapon option (Stormbolter, Flamer, Meltagun) models equipped with that weapon gain one of the following rules based on what weapon they have: Artificer Stormbolter: Devasating Wounds, Flamer: Blast, Meltagun: Anti-Monster+Anti-Vehicle 3+.
Give every melee unit in the book +1 attack (+2 for characters). Let Sacresants have 2 character attaches and give them back their 2+ standard save.
Give Retributors their old Armorium Cherub rules. Also, let a canoness attach to them.
Let Preachers and Missionaries attach to Repentia.
Buff the Exorcist missiles to -3 AP and buff the Castigator Battle Cannon to S12 and -2 AP and the Autocannons to -2 AP also.
Point drops to already competent units like Mortifiers, Penitent Engines, Seraphim, Immolators.
Then give us a goddam Detachment Bonus that isn't terrible. Tyranids got the same detachment bonus in an army that is WAY better at using it and still looked at it like someone peed in their cereal.
In other words: if you argue that sisters should have drastical advantages over Guardsmen/Gaunts/whatever the lowliest Stealer guys are called because "the novels say so" I as Guardplayer could argue that I want off the board artillery strikes from friendly regiments a mile away because "the fluff says so". Or that prices should be adjusted to reflect that the regiments of Hive worlds like Cadia likely have more tanks than there are space marines in the galaxy. But I think that won't be fun.
But that is just my opinion on the fluff argument
Imma be honest, that sounds awesome. After all, 40k is a limited space in a larger battle (in theory anyway), so why shouldn't that be a feature? The Inquisition books of 3rd edition had a orbital strike as a Heavy support choice, I don't see why guard couldn't have off-board artillery. Maybe I'm weird, but I would rather they lean in *more* into what makes the factions unique in the lore and on the table than not like they have been over the past couple editions. I understand that's harder to balance, but I feel like some sacrifices should be able to be made. These surely a limit, but if in order to give sisters better stats we need to give guard off-board artillery i'm all for it. Give GSC a way to pre-place demo charges as an area-denial method rather than chucking them out of a single character, bring custodes down to less than 20 models on the table, but so powerful they're like killing a vehicle (I played against a homebrew for 10th like this and it was great fun), Let tau set up automated turrets pre-game or other established assets like the lore, and more.
@ ProfSrlojohn: It sounds cool, I agree, but I think things would go weird and unfun pretty fast. And more importantly the fluff is all over the place in novels etc.
For example you have things like Caiphas cain on one hand killing an Ork Warboss (with a great bit of luck) single handedly with a laspistol to the eye and the very same Caiphas cain being scared out of his mind by a simple Necron Warrior.
On the other hand you have things like the SoB from the mentioned clip killing Skorpek Destroyers.
Sometimes Marines just plow through hundreds of lesser enemies, sometimes an (admittedly damaged) Chaos Dreadnaught is killed by an improvised IED build from a lasgun in one of the Gaunts Ghosts Novels. etc.
Pyroalchi wrote: @ ProfSrlojohn: It sounds cool, I agree, but I think things would go weird and unfun pretty fast. And more importantly the fluff is all over the place in novels etc.
For example you have things like Caiphas cain on one hand killing an Ork Warboss (with a great bit of luck) single handedly with a laspistol to the eye and the very same Caiphas cain being scared out of his mind by a simple Necron Warrior.
On the other hand you have things like the SoB from the mentioned clip killing Skorpek Destroyers.
Sometimes Marines just plow through hundreds of lesser enemies, sometimes an (admittedly damaged) Chaos Dreadnaught is killed by an improvised IED build from a lasgun in one of the Gaunts Ghosts Novels. etc.
to be fair Cain's scared out of his mind by EVERYTHING
JNAProductions wrote: Perhaps it might be prudent to gather all the suggestions for improving Sisters, and figure out which ones would be good to implement.
I've seen A2 WS3+ brought up a decent amount, and I think that'd be a good (but kinda minor) change.
Honestly, that change would do nothing, so i'm all for GW implementing it.
They really just need their guns to be better
It'd help them bully weak units off objectives, at least.
Currently, a 10-gal squad of Battle Sisters does 12 S3 AP0 D1 attacks or 9 S3 AP0 D1 attacks and 2 S4 AP-2 D1 attacks. Hitting on 4s across the board.
That's 6 hits, 3 wounds, 2 failed saves on a GEQ squad.
Or 9/2 hits, 9/4 wounds, 18/12 or 1.5 failed saves plus 1 hit, 2/3 wounds, 2/3 failed saves for 2.17 dead GEQ.
Using the Power Weapon profile for the Superior, there's still a nearly 1/3 chance of killing only one GEQ model. Meaning that if they lose one Sister, or just fail to get all 10 on the objective, it stays contested.
Upping them to WS3+ and A2 (A3 on Power Weapon, A4 on Chainsword) gives the following:
18 attacks
12 hits
6 wounds
4 dead GEQ plus
3 attacks
2 hits
4/3 wounds
4/3 dead GEQ
Better than 80% odds of killing at least 4 GEQ, though admittedly only a 2.12% chance of wiping a full 10-strong squad.
I wouldn't up the WS, but I would give them a BP/CS option on the Sisters Squad similar to Assault Intercessors (I think each army should have at least one shooty and fighty basic troop except the ones it wouldn't be thematic - Tau, Khorne daemons etc) and give them 3-4A chainswords.
Pyroalchi wrote: In other words: if you argue that sisters should have drastical advantages over Guardsmen/Gaunts/whatever the lowliest Stealer guys are called because "the novels say so" I as Guardplayer could argue that I want off the board artillery strikes from friendly regiments a mile away because "the fluff says so".
So the old school master of ordnance from 5th-7th edition?
Pyroalchi wrote: In other words: if you argue that sisters should have drastical advantages over Guardsmen/Gaunts/whatever the lowliest Stealer guys are called because "the novels say so" I as Guardplayer could argue that I want off the board artillery strikes from friendly regiments a mile away because "the fluff says so".
So the old school master of ordnance from 5th-7th edition?
I like WS3 A2, but I'd sacrifice one of those for a melta buff.
I think that it's also worth pointing out that without seeing other detachment rules, we don't know how well any of the proposals we are making will work.
For example, basic sisters get an extra attack and a WS buff. And then the "Not Bloody Rose, just a detachment" rules come out and the army get full rerolls on wounds in Melee.
Or we buff melta, and the Holy Trinity detachment makes that oppressive.
There are some changes that could be made that would be less likely to have these kind of impacts- fixing some of the more egregious character attachment issues... But that's also easier to do in a dex than a data slate.
Nothing about the army should be solved by a detachment rule. The army should function for all detachments with those giving a specific focus and feel. There should be no Holy Trinity detachment to fix shooting nor a Holy Rage detachment to fix close combat.
Pyroalchi wrote: In other words: if you argue that sisters should have drastical advantages over Guardsmen/Gaunts/whatever the lowliest Stealer guys are called because "the novels say so" I as Guardplayer could argue that I want off the board artillery strikes from friendly regiments a mile away because "the fluff says so".
So the old school master of ordnance from 5th-7th edition?
Sort of, though I would expect it to be more like 1d6/2d6/2d3 Bassie shots per turn rather than just one. Guard arty leans more "dear grid coordinates", and IIRC that one shot tended to wander off the board edge or into empty terrain too often to give the appropriate feel.
PenitentJake wrote: I like WS3 A2, but I'd sacrifice one of those for a melta buff.
I think that it's also worth pointing out that without seeing other detachment rules, we don't know how well any of the proposals we are making will work.
For example, basic sisters get an extra attack and a WS buff. And then the "Not Bloody Rose, just a detachment" rules come out and the army get full rerolls on wounds in Melee.
Or we buff melta, and the Holy Trinity detachment makes that oppressive.
There are some changes that could be made that would be less likely to have these kind of impacts- fixing some of the more egregious character attachment issues... But that's also easier to do in a dex than a data slate.
Melta, if it is suppose to be a functioning weapon type in 10th ed, needs a core rules change though. Right now it is as useful as lascanons were in 8th and 9th ed. And in a world where the eldar we have right now, no rules that GW can invent for SoB would be opresive enough to break the game. They would have to do something like DW+Leathel combo on bolters on a +4, for a rule become a problem. Right now Repentia could be given a basic strenght of 5 and it would marginaly affect the meta.
alextroy wrote: Nothing about the army should be solved by a detachment rule. The army should function for all detachments with those giving a specific focus and feel. There should be no Holy Trinity detachment to fix shooting nor a Holy Rage detachment to fix close combat.
Not 100% true.
THEME lists can be solved by detachment rule. The Nid codex's Vanguard Infiltrator detachment solves an entire army being sneaky bugs pretty well.
alextroy wrote: Nothing about the army should be solved by a detachment rule. The army should function for all detachments with those giving a specific focus and feel. There should be no Holy Trinity detachment to fix shooting nor a Holy Rage detachment to fix close combat.
Not 100% true.
THEME lists can be solved by detachment rule. The Nid codex's Vanguard Infiltrator detachment solves an entire army being sneaky bugs pretty well.
Yes, but it doesn't fix Tyranids. All the units in the codex don't become bad without the detachment. The units the detachment focuses on aren't bad without it either. It allows a theme within the army to work, but doesn't allow an otherwise bad faction (the word I should have used) to work because of it's rules.
alextroy wrote: Nothing about the army should be solved by a detachment rule. The army should function for all detachments with those giving a specific focus and feel. There should be no Holy Trinity detachment to fix shooting nor a Holy Rage detachment to fix close combat.
Not 100% true.
THEME lists can be solved by detachment rule. The Nid codex's Vanguard Infiltrator detachment solves an entire army being sneaky bugs pretty well.
Yes, but it doesn't fix Tyranids. All the units in the codex don't become bad without the detachment. The units the detachment focuses on aren't bad without it either. It allows a theme within the army to work, but doesn't allow an otherwise bad faction (the word I should have used) to work because of it's rules.
Maybe but sometimes theme lists struggle due to the rules not really being designed with those themes, some theme lists are definatly going to still suck no matter how you do it, but other theme lists might actually work nicely with the new detachments.
PenitentJake wrote: I like WS3 A2, but I'd sacrifice one of those for a melta buff.
Melta is its own issue, and game wide not faction specific. The change to Sisters fight phase should be independent of Melta. Others have tried to point to sisters as Stormtroopers, but I look at them as Stormtroopers with a Space Marine armoury. So give them stormtrooper stats, and SM Weapons - and the A are now on the weapons, so start there and maybe take one or two steps back on the A to represent the Stormtrooper/Human statline.
PenitentJake wrote: I like WS3 A2, but I'd sacrifice one of those for a melta buff.
Melta is its own issue, and game wide not faction specific. The change to Sisters fight phase should be independent of Melta. Others have tried to point to sisters as Stormtroopers, but I look at them as Stormtroopers with a Space Marine armoury. So give them stormtrooper stats, and SM Weapons - and the A are now on the weapons, so start there and maybe take one or two steps back on the A to represent the Stormtrooper/Human statline.
Melta is a game wide issue to a degree but sisters are hit harder by it then marines or guard by virtue of not having alternatives
I think it's fair to make melta stronger for sisters the way they did storm bolters and flamers; this wouldn't prevent them from ALSO addressing Melta game-wide, but when your faction's identity is based in part upon the Trinity, being the experts of those weapons and more proficient with them is fluffy AF.
I personally don't want to solve sisters anti-tank problems by adding lascannons, missile launchers, etc. to their list. Don't get me wrong, they can go ahead and do that- I just don't want them to make them the only solution to our difficulties with vehicles, because I'd like the choice to not field them.
I think it's fair to make melta stronger for sisters the way they did storm bolters and flamers; because I'd like the choice to not field them.
Also game wide in my view - Salamanders are also Flamer/Melta fans, among other units if not factions. These things need to be viable outside of Sisters as well.
I think it's fair to make melta stronger for sisters the way they did storm bolters and flamers; because I'd like the choice to not field them.
Also game wide in my view - Salamanders are also Flamer/Melta fans, among other units if not factions. These things need to be viable outside of Sisters as well.
You did a weird edit on the piece you quoted- the things I want the choice not to use are the SM weapons that someone suggested adding; you made it look like I want the choice to not lean into the Trinity. I don't mind if GW adds Lascannons or Missile Launchers to the range, but I don't want to use them if GW does because it won't match my headcannon.
Regarding changes to Melta being game-wide vs. Sisters specific, I think GW could do both; buff it game wide, but then give an additional benefit to Sisters. As for Salamanders, giving them an extra buff on top of game-wide stuff is fine too... And it would be cool if their buff was equal to but different from the one Sisters get.
Finally, I feel like the biggest buffs need to be the general ones and keep the faction specific ones impactful, but not rely on those to do the heavy lifting.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the Melta rule. The rule is fine as it is at making such weapons more dangerous within half range.
The problem is that GW didn't do a good job with the Meltagun and Multi-Melta weapons stats given the massive Toughness increases for Vehicles. Most Vehicles gained 2-3 points of Toughness while the MG and MM went up 1 point of Strength. This means formerly T7 vehicles are now T9 (or even T10) reducing the effectiveness of these guns (now S9) by 16% or 33%. Reducing the range on the MM was an additional hit to the weapon.
Given this case, it might be enough to jump increase the Strength of the Meltagun, Multi-Melta, and the poor Inferno Pistol (still S8) to 10. The puts them back to wounding in 3+ against the formerly T7 vehicles and to 4+ against all the now T10 vehicles (many that used to be T7). Vehicles that are now T10 or greater used to be T8 or higher and GW was aiming to make them more resilient against AT by putting them this high now.
Tyel wrote: So who had Sisters on a 64% win rate and best faction in the game.
(Yes, I realise its kind of contrived on 5 players, don't hurt me Erjak).
I mean it's still less anecdotal than "in the novel I read celestine was amazing!"
You put a premium on every time Space marines are uberman killing Imperial Guard. Yet ignore repeated statements that a single boltshell can kill a marine and that their armour can’t take any hits from anything past a lasgun.
Also it’s not the only novel where Living Saints are depicted as powerful. It’s all of them. That’s a pattern. Whereas there’s plenty of books where: three heavy bolters manned by militia kill fifty Night Lords and marine gets head taken off by overcharged lasgun. But those get conveniently left to one side when we’re discussing about if Sisters should be able to kill marines.
If the books has Celestine, Demonifuge and Sabbat wrecking Chaos I don’t see why they should be mediocre fighters in the rules to keep the faction in its lane. Those characters should kill generic Chaos Lords.
Also in Pariah cinematic they had one sister fight against twenty zombies single handedly including in close combat. Emphasising that she’s wearing power armour to boost strength. Explain how a one attack str3 model hitting on 4 does that? That doesn’t scream one of the worst close combat profiles in the game.
The fluff only counts when it shows Space Marines as the greatest warriors in the universe ever with no equal in any race.
If fluff depicts any other race or character as strong, it should be ignored because fluff isn't allowed to influence game design other than Space Marines.
Tyel wrote: So who had Sisters on a 64% win rate and best faction in the game.
(Yes, I realise its kind of contrived on 5 players, don't hurt me Erjak).
I mean it's still less anecdotal than "in the novel I read celestine was amazing!"
You put a premium on every time Space marines are uberman killing Imperial Guard. Yet ignore repeated statements that a single boltshell can kill a marine and that their armour can’t take any hits from anything past a lasgun.
Also it’s not the only novel where Living Saints are depicted as powerful. It’s all of them. That’s a pattern. Whereas there’s plenty of books where: three heavy bolters manned by militia kill fifty Night Lords and marine gets head taken off by overcharged lasgun. But those get conveniently left to one side when we’re discussing about if Sisters should be able to kill marines.
If the books has Celestine, Demonifuge and Sabbat wrecking Chaos I don’t see why they should be mediocre fighters in the rules to keep the faction in its lane. Those characters should kill generic Chaos Lords.
Also in Pariah cinematic they had one sister fight against twenty zombies single handedly including in close combat. Emphasising that she’s wearing power armour to boost strength. Explain how a one attack str3 model hitting on 4 does that? That doesn’t scream one of the worst close combat profiles in the game.
Nobody (me included) is ignoring the claim marines get killed by bolters, the point is bolters aren't designed to kill marines in the fluff since that's our yardstick. Beyond that yes, regular humans do kill marines, sisters kill marines, ripper swarms kill marines. I'm not sure what your point is?
Sisters are humans with good armour on. In Pariah Nexus she kills 2-3 brainless necron zombies by hand, the rest are killed by bolter. These zombies that are such a threat that they left an human guardswoman sat on a rock watching. You're also ignoring that the sisters are decimated, she seems to believe she is one of the last on the world.
Forrix was an Iron Warriors chaos lord who wasn't a big fan of mutations overly and he solo killed a warhound titan if you want to play stupid fluff one-upping.
Or instead we can revert to numbers and theme to army building to define what a sister of battle should be - a human (s3/t3) in power armour (3+) that fights better than most humans (BS 3+ - can concede WS 3+), but is limited by those contraints (1A). They also get superior equipment (lasgun vs boltgun).
To be honest I do believe guardsmen and other standard human should be S2/T2 to make design space for "better than standard human*" that aren't quite marine level.
And also because it is weird that a normal human can punch as hard as a lasgun/autogun. I don't care how much you lift bro, you aren't punching with the force of a rifle.
*Which obviusly applies to Sisters. Their armor makes them stronger than standard humans, but they are not Marines because lack of the latter's augmentations and also because they are far smaller. Even their armor is blatantly much thinner than Astartes Power Armor.
Tyran wrote: To be honest I do believe guardsmen and other standard human should be S2/T2 to make design space for "better than standard human" that aren't quite marine level.
Nope.
It makes no sense to alter the strength(which really isn't a stat on the model itself, but rather the CCW profile...) or toughness to accommodate a perception of "quality".
Frankly though? Marines(spiky and non), Orks, some Tyranid beasties and Necrons need to be bumped up to start letting some stuff that is stuck in the Time Before Going Over 10s for stats shine. AdMech should be starting at T4 as an example.
And also because it is weird that a normal human can punch as hard as a lasgun/autogun. I don't care how much you lift bro, you aren't punching with the force of a rifle.
Do people really forget that the profile isn't usually "bareknuckles and grit" but rather "close combat weapon"? It's the bayonet/knife/rifle used as a club that's S3.
*Which obviusly applies to Sisters. Their armor makes them stronger than standard humans,
It makes them more robust than "standard, unaugmented humans".
Effectively though it's the difference between Bill the Gym Groupie and Ray the Sometimes Works Out. Sisters with their armor can handle heavier weapons with a bit more ease than a standard trooper could.
but they are not Marines because lack of the latter's augmentations and also because they are far smaller.
The augmentations, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter though. They would impact initiative or a similar stat of that nature, which we don't really have in the game.
Even their armor is blatantly much thinner than Astartes Power Armor.
Has literally nothing to do with anything.It's still supposed to be built to the same general specifications of other power armor.
Do people really forget that the profile isn't usually "bareknuckles and grit" but rather "close combat weapon"?
It's the bayonet/knife/rifle used as a club that's S3.
Sure, but a knife/bayonet/butt of a rifle also don't hit like a bullet.
In the case o w40k statline, aside for some tanks, the main culprit here is the d6 as the source of rolling. There is a gigantic stat squish for values like s/t 3 and 4, but not just those.
Now if we used a d10, which we will never use, or a d20, then the statlines could be more spread and lets say a WE could be stronger then a "regular" space marine.
Stats are not the way to fix sob, because marines with a much better statline need and needed rules on top of rules to be valid. The only way to fix sisters, is to give them proper rules, that work both internaly and externaly in regards of both the core rules and what other armies can run. Melta and ap - bolters, are not something that works or can be made to work on stat and point costs alone, aside for making SoB something crazy cheap like 6-7 pts a model.
if a lasgun were to be str 4, then the bolter should have the stat it kin has. Bolter a multi shot GL, should be str 5 or 6, just like a regular one shot GL. Although then a plasma should probably be str 8 and melta str 10 (maybe double at half range), and lascanon a flat str 12.
I guess we should move autoguns and lasguns up to S4. Just to be safe.
Maybe, the point is that the S/T 3 to 4 compresses and simplifies a lot of strenght differences.
Why do you keep harping on S3?
It's the weapon, not the user. If you want to argue that CCWs should be bumped down--do that. Stop pretending that it's tied to the Toughness level.
Kan, just because they moved Strength to the weapons instead of the user doesn't mean that a baseline human soldier is suddenly a completely unknowable enigma for the old statline.
JNAProductions wrote: Kan, just because they moved Strength to the weapons instead of the user doesn't mean that a baseline human soldier is suddenly a completely unknowable enigma for the old statline.
No, but it does mean that it's daft to keep pretending that we're in The Before Times and that somehow, someway the S/T stats are actually linked together.
JNAProductions wrote: Kan, just because they moved Strength to the weapons instead of the user doesn't mean that a baseline human soldier is suddenly a completely unknowable enigma for the old statline.
No, but it does mean that it's daft to keep pretending that we're in The Before Times and that somehow, someway the S/T stats are actually linked together.
They're linked as much as they were before.
Models often had the same Strength and Toughness, but not always.
Now, models often have the same Toughness and Strength (on basic CCW), but not always.
Karol wrote: In the case o w40k statline, aside for some tanks, the main culprit here is the d6 as the source of rolling. There is a gigantic stat squish for values like s/t 3 and 4, but not just those.
Now if we used a d10, which we will never use, or a d20, then the statlines could be more spread and lets say a WE could be stronger then a "regular" space marine.
Stats are not the way to fix sob, because marines with a much better statline need and needed rules on top of rules to be valid. The only way to fix sisters, is to give them proper rules, that work both internaly and externaly in regards of both the core rules and what other armies can run. Melta and ap - bolters, are not something that works or can be made to work on stat and point costs alone, aside for making SoB something crazy cheap like 6-7 pts a model.
Most of those rules such as bloody rose, exploding 6s, extra AP; essentially just boiled down to off balance sheet stats. In practice you were just giving them 3 attacks and -1AP but that would offend peoples sensibilities. I just think it’s a lot easier to just add them to the profile which is what they did with shock assault and bolter discipline. Again, random Khorne cultists and random genecult gets all these attacks and bonuses but the elite army who’ve been granted power armour don’t?
Because Sisters shouldn’t and are not meant to be a horde army. They’re overcosted as is and it’s only because GW are pretending they have better rules to warrant costing as much as a marine. 6 points per model is not crazy cheap at that profile at all.
If you did not have access to Crusaders and Death cult assassins as an exploit then more people would say they were overcosted. It’s a game that’s pretending there’s a lot more T3 trash in the game than there actually is.
Had to dig out my password so I could create my first post in 10 years... Tried to read through this all and didn't see it mentioned. I really want leadership bettered for Sisters. The 10th rule book even talks about them being unwavering. We should get marine leadership, not guard leadership.
I feel like that's a "training, but with faith" stat that no one can argue against.
Most of those rules such as bloody rose, exploding 6s, extra AP; essentially just boiled down to off balance sheet stats. In practice you were just giving them 3 attacks and -1AP but that would offend peoples sensibilities. I just think it’s a lot easier to just add them to the profile which is what they did with shock assault and bolter discipline. Again, random Khorne cultists and random genecult gets all these attacks and bonuses but the elite army who’ve been granted power armour don’t?
Because Sisters shouldn’t and are not meant to be a horde army. They’re overcosted as is and it’s only because GW are pretending they have better rules to warrant costing as much as a marine. 6 points per model is not crazy cheap at that profile at all.
If you did not have access to Crusaders and Death cult assassins as an exploit then more people would say they were overcosted. It’s a game that’s pretending there’s a lot more T3 trash in the game than there actually is.
But then you are , in order to make the faction work, create a sudo space marine stat line at a close to IG point costs. And that may potentialy work, but doesn't have to. And it really makes all marine players not happy. Spreading unhappiness should not be a design goal, even for a company like GW. Fix their faith points/miracle dice system, fix the weapons because that is the problem of SoB not that they aren't str or/and toughness 4. Make their walkers worth taking (same way sentinals are worth taking), make their paragon suits have a goal to exist in an army etc.
Bolt Action used a D6, when they did the Sci-Fi version, Gates of Antares, they moved to a D10 and the game was much better because of it
D6 works when all factions are basically similar, e.g. infantry of some sort of broadly the same strength. gives enough variation for equipment and training.
the moment you start adding non-human factions you need the wider range
Frankly I'd be happy if GW went with weird, trademarked, D11 or something so long as they get better ranges of results and cut down the number of dice rolled
leopard wrote: Bolt Action used a D6, when they did the Sci-Fi version, Gates of Antares, they moved to a D10 and the game was much better because of it
D6 works when all factions are basically similar, e.g. infantry of some sort of broadly the same strength. gives enough variation for equipment and training.
the moment you start adding non-human factions you need the wider range
Frankly I'd be happy if GW went with weird, trademarked, D11 or something so long as they get better ranges of results and cut down the number of dice rolled
Your wallet won't be happy when you need to by GW exclusive dice.
leopard wrote: Bolt Action used a D6, when they did the Sci-Fi version, Gates of Antares, they moved to a D10 and the game was much better because of it
D6 works when all factions are basically similar, e.g. infantry of some sort of broadly the same strength. gives enough variation for equipment and training.
the moment you start adding non-human factions you need the wider range
Frankly I'd be happy if GW went with weird, trademarked, D11 or something so long as they get better ranges of results and cut down the number of dice rolled
Your wallet won't be happy when you need to by GW exclusive dice.
this, if GW introduced exclusive dice you know they'd charge 50 bucks for a small pack of 6
To summarise the "dice discussion": part of GWs success with WHF and 40K is their accessibility and ease of use, due to using D6 over alternatives that would benefit the gameplay complexity. This comes up every now and then, nothing has changed. It is extremely unlikely GW will ever move to a D10 system for their flagship games, no matter how compelling an argument anybody here can make in favor of it.
a good example is battletech, where your odds to hit something are based on how you and your opponent moved, gunnery skill, any terrain and or cover etc. movement and position are INSANELY important in that game and it simply uses 2d6 to resolve all actions
5 variations on success chance is plenty. It only looks bad when it's a static value that ignores the opposition.
Static values are very simple to use though which is why gw has shifted to them more (AOS completely).
You get far better results though when your success chance changes based on the relative match up.
I recall a post from ages back indicating that you could get the same overall probabilities you have now from hit-wound-save if you just had a WS/BS vs. Defence, then S vs. T and skip the save altogether. Could maybe keep an invulnerable save or FNP mechanic for characters if you really want one, but otherwise you've got the same effect with fewer rolls.
BrianDavion wrote: a good example is battletech, where your odds to hit something are based on how you and your opponent moved, gunnery skill, any terrain and or cover etc. movement and position are INSANELY important in that game and it simply uses 2d6 to resolve all actions
and typically if you have "multiple" of a weapon firing, e.g. LRM20 you do not roll 2d6 20 times.. you roll it once to hit, then roll on a look up to see how many hits you got
GW could learn from that, squad of marines firing bolters, say 10 shots, one 2d6 roll with a lookup on a table, reference your roll to find a column, with any modifiers applied, and find a row based on "10" shots, oh look, you got "x" hits
and note that decent games doing this stick a probabilistic curve in there fire enough shots at anything, no matter how hard to hit and some will land.
leopard wrote: Bolt Action used a D6, when they did the Sci-Fi version, Gates of Antares, they moved to a D10 and the game was much better because of it
D6 works when all factions are basically similar, e.g. infantry of some sort of broadly the same strength. gives enough variation for equipment and training.
the moment you start adding non-human factions you need the wider range
Frankly I'd be happy if GW went with weird, trademarked, D11 or something so long as they get better ranges of results and cut down the number of dice rolled
Your wallet won't be happy when you need to by GW exclusive dice.
this, if GW introduced exclusive dice you know they'd charge 50 bucks for a small pack of 6
to be honest if the game got significantly better it could be worth it, especially as alternatives would be available quite quickly
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Darnok wrote: To summarise the "dice discussion": part of GWs success with WHF and 40K is their accessibility and ease of use, due to using D6 over alternatives that would benefit the gameplay complexity. This comes up every now and then, nothing has changed. It is extremely unlikely GW will ever move to a D10 system for their flagship games, no matter how compelling an argument anybody here can make in favor of it.
do agree, its a pity but GW's "model" is Yahtzee with models, more dice == more fun, apparently, leading to situations where you are rolling enough dice you may as well just use a stats look up table and not bother as the chances of a result outside +/- 1 standard deviation is pretty remote
So we can put the nail in the coffin of the stupid comparison to the sister in pariah:
Spoiler:
Yes the intercessor marine kills more of the zombies in melee than the sister does, with far less effort and with more strength.
There is a marine ripping off a necrons head with their bare hands. A skorpekh gets shot down by 3 sisters (including a superior) but they don't even draw melee weapons before being cut down.
Fluff is as fluff does and there will always be some outliers, but it generally lines up to some degree.
Dudeface wrote: So we can put the nail in the coffin of the stupid comparison to the sister in pariah:
Spoiler:
Yes the intercessor marine kills more of the zombies in melee than the sister does, with far less effort and with more strength.
There is a marine ripping off a necrons head with their bare hands. A skorpekh gets shot down by 3 sisters (including a superior) but they don't even draw melee weapons before being cut down.
Fluff is as fluff does and there will always be some outliers, but it generally lines up to some degree.
We can kill this whole discussion.
It was supposed to be about improving the Sisters of Battle rules to make them more viable without simply dropping their points down to Ork horde levels.
Instead it got overtaken by a bunch of FAAC people whining back and forth about whose mom can beat up whose dad, but they're in Canada and go to a different school.
Dudeface wrote: So we can put the nail in the coffin of the stupid comparison to the sister in pariah:
Spoiler:
Yes the intercessor marine kills more of the zombies in melee than the sister does, with far less effort and with more strength.
There is a marine ripping off a necrons head with their bare hands. A skorpekh gets shot down by 3 sisters (including a superior) but they don't even draw melee weapons before being cut down.
Fluff is as fluff does and there will always be some outliers, but it generally lines up to some degree.
We can kill this whole discussion.
It was supposed to be about improving the Sisters of Battle rules to make them more viable without simply dropping their points down to Ork horde levels.
Instead it got overtaken by a bunch of FAAC people whining back and forth about whose mom can beat up whose dad, but they're in Canada and go to a different school.
It's been completely irrelevant for 4 pages.
The OP is one of them
The rules are there to sell you on the fantasy of the faction. I mean, the above example just outright isn’t fair even if this was chess. But in the trailers, books etc etc this is meant to be a larger than life faction filled with Joan of Arc style saints in power armour. If a squad of Sisters of Battle ran into some Genestealer cultists they should absolutely massacre them. One of the best equipped fighting forces and where its characters such as in Dawn of Fire are shown keeping pace and fighting with Space Marines.
The army isn’t fun to play, is badly designed and isn’t selling you the fantasy of the faction.
Ten strength 3 attacks hitting on 4 is terrible for any unit in the game. It might have been reasonable in third edition and in 9th with off balance sheet stats but it’s ridiculous on its own.
The army isn’t fun to play, is badly designed and isn’t selling you the fantasy of the faction.
Ten strength 3 attacks hitting on 4 is terrible for any unit in the game. It might have been reasonable in third edition and in 9th with off balance sheet stats but it’s ridiculous on its own.
The army isn’t fun to play, is badly designed and isn’t selling you the fantasy of the faction.
Ten strength 3 attacks hitting on 4 is terrible for any unit in the game. It might have been reasonable in third edition and in 9th with off balance sheet stats but it’s ridiculous on its own.
It's perfectly normal for a lot of units...
I'm pretty sure your basic Sister has always been offensively equivalent to a Guardsman (sub-faction bonuses aside, at least) in close combat. So yeah, that seems perfectly reasonable here. Relatively speaking, nothing has changed.
The army isn’t fun to play, is badly designed and isn’t selling you the fantasy of the faction.
Ten strength 3 attacks hitting on 4 is terrible for any unit in the game. It might have been reasonable in third edition and in 9th with off balance sheet stats but it’s ridiculous on its own.
Hmm. Maybe melee isn't this units intended primary use.
Just a thought....
A guardsman is half the points of a Sister of Battle. Sisters are costed the same as marines, not Guardsman. 100 points is not a cheap squad. Which is why they should be boosted to justify that cost. They’re 30 to 40 percent cheaper than Intercessors for a vastly better statline. A statline that is BTW not even considered to be that powerful or dangerous.
Well it’s not shooting as their main purpose as they’re mostly equipped with one shot boltguns with no AP and damage 1. All other bolters in the game got better except Sisters of Battle. It’s not being ablative wounds to hold objectives since despite being stated in their rules as “famed for their durability” a T3 1W is incredibly easy to kill. So why am I paying a 100 points for two meltaguns that can’t hurt tanks?
Because if you take the armour off the Sisters of Battle they magically get a load of additional attacks and weapon skill? Why shouldn’t the units profile be in line with the rest of army. Marines have equipment instead of raw stats be the main difference.
Because Sisters should be able to kill things like Chaos Cultists in close combat. Currently the rules tell you they are worse in close combat than cultists. Even if you let them hit on 3 and have 2 attacks, that is still not a stellar profile. Every other army has had stat boosts and it just brings back things like Sacred Rites.
In 9th a Sister of Battle with bloody rose and sacred rites had -
2 attacks hitting on 4 with minus 1 AP and exploding hits on 6. It is a huge nerf to lose Bloody Rose and Sacred Rites on the Sisters of Battle squad. It’s not silly to expect the unit to be better because it was until fairly recently.
Tl;Dr I liked the 9th rules and don't have them now, the faction doesn't live up to bolter porn, give buffs.
Marine bolters, the same one in the hands of chaos marines and tac marines is 24" 2 shot s4 ap- d1. They are 2 shot no rapid fire due to bolter discipline being baked in, as marines were better with bolters in 9th.
Battle sisters need to be better, sister of battle as an army need some work, nobody is denying it. But ground it in some believable maths and scenarios other than "a sister isn't as good as an intercessor" because they're not supposed to be.
You're ignoring the special weapons, you're ignoring the miracle dice, you're ignoring the buff for taking wounds. Exactly as you're ignoring the (now nerfed) Oath of Moment and doctrines etc.
You're ignoring that a tac marine is a nearer comparison.
Others have done the hard work of pointing out the holes in the army and the rules, but you keep cycling back to either "a battle sister isn't awesome enough" or "check this fluff".
If you were arguing for a different army or detachment rule, a change to anti-big stuff options or a suggestion that allows them to play the missions better, people would be on board.
But you're not. You're just stating they're not amazing enough.
And in 9th my Synapse creatures had free transhuman (Leviathan), my ranged weapons had extra AP (Kronos) and I could give basically everything a 5++/4++.
Oh and Tyranid Warriors had 4 attacks S7 (which could be buffed to 8 or even 9) AP-2 D2 and heavy venom cannons were 3 attacks AP-3 D4 and wounded pretty much everything on at worst a 3+
Everyone lost a lot of rules from 9th to 10th, get over yourself.
I'm pretty sure your basic Sister has always been offensively equivalent to a Guardsman (sub-faction bonuses aside, at least) in close combat. So yeah, that seems perfectly reasonable here. Relatively speaking, nothing has changed.
in 2E they were slightly better than guardsmen offensively. WS3 and S3 with basic CCW, but I4 so they would win draws in close combat.
One interesting quirk of 2E was that you could use pistols in close combat, meaning a bolt pistol would give you S4 -1AP attacks, and probably explains why basic sisters didn't have pistols. Close combat weapon attacks would also be based on the abilities of the weapon, rather than being linked to the wielder. Suffice to say, a Veteran Sister superior, on the charge, with a power sword, would plough through guardsmen, and orks, and any other basic troops, and stood a reasonable chance at killing 1-2 basic marines on her own.
I would say I would love to see sisters go back to T4, since with the other quirks they had in 2E, despite being just nuns with guns, the way they were equipped gave them some severe weaknesses, despite their superior Toughness and save to standard humans, and they were never a match for marines. Marines had all round more consistent stats, and bolter drill, and 'shaken'.
Sisters weren't even the best bit about the 2E codex, that would be Frateris militia.
Because the Intercessor is the standard marine profile and the stat increases I put forward wouldn’t remotely make them as good as an Intercessor. It’s also a unit that costs the same and fulfils a similar role. Relatively cheap troop unit that kills trash and sits on objectives. So it’s a clear point of comparison instead of a legacy unit Games Workshop will likely retire in a few years.
Why should marines have got bolter discipline and shock assault baked into their profile but Sisters didn’t get Sacred Rites and Deny the Witch baked into their profile?
Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule. Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use. Versus a rule that gives you full reroll hit and wound on target priority in a game where killing that one tank or monster is really important. So, again, marines have the better rules. Also trading out on dice only makes sense if you’re plugging that into an army that either has high damage weapons (which nerfing melta hurts) or has access to lethal hits or dev wounds to allow exploding which Sisters have limited access to in their rules and squad size issues.
There’s a reason tacticals are on the way out. It’s lovely that GW tried to recreate the metal Sisters range in plastic. But the philosophy of having 2 decent guns and 8 ablative wounds is terrible. I’d rather have all decent guns or all flamers or all melta that really specialise on one thing. You get a mismatched squad that doesn’t do anything,
Sisters units aren’t durable enough to get advantage of that rule to get plus 1 to hit. Even if they do. Four sisters are not going to have the attacks and damage to do all that much. Again, that is a consolation prize for losing the game; not a powerful ability. I am certainly not getting free units that can deploy anywhere on the board with -1AP. The Devs clearly assumed damage was going down and thought “wow that means they’re ignoring 66 percent of damage and that these units will have multi turn combats chipping away at each other”. This was not accurate. Short of a Pintle storm bolter you aren’t getting much utility here.
Marines already got heavy on their guns to hit on 2. Giving them extra shots to represent accuracy is stupid. If we’re okay heaping rules onto marines to sell their faction fluff then how is it an issue that Sisters should have nice things? One faction has had absurd rules inflation and another has their third edition profile.
In order for miracle dice to be realy impactful and somehow balance the weak unit rules and bad weapon stats, the SoB would have to be costed in a such a way that the SoB player get a 4000pts army for 2000pts. It wouldn't be 50% cost on everything. Some "strong" SoB units, probably all vehicles and most elite, should probably cost the same, but the regular bolter sisters would have to cost like 1/3 or less of what they cost now. Then SoB would be some sort of hybrid between GSC and Eldar mechanic wise, and probably a good army. Trading your units for ability to use rules, that maybe have impact on other units, will never work other wise.
But as we , but maybe not GW, would rather want to avoid seeing 250-350 model SoB armies, the better way to fixing sisters is to fix their weapons and their rules. GW can give weapons rules of any kind they want. Give SoB "holy" melta that actualy work, unlike the regular one. Or tie it to the trinity, so SoB bolter/melta/flamers get some sort of a buff, if they hit something that was hit by other weapons from the trinity.
GW could give SoB intercessor stats tomorrow, even cost the like assault intercessors. And the army would still not function very well. Bar maybe repentia spam. A unit of 10 assault "SoB" with 10 eviscerators with buffs would, maybe turn the SoB in to some sort of WE without Angron army. Which would still be rather meh.
Karol wrote: In order for miracle dice to be realy impactful and somehow balance the weak unit rules and bad weapon stats, the SoB would have to be costed in a such a way that the SoB player get a 4000pts army for 2000pts. It wouldn't be 50% cost on everything. Some "strong" SoB units, probably all vehicles and most elite, should probably cost the same, but the regular bolter sisters would have to cost like 1/3 or less of what they cost now. Then SoB would be some sort of hybrid between GSC and Eldar mechanic wise, and probably a good army. Trading your units for ability to use rules, that maybe have impact on other units, will never work other wise.
But as we , but maybe not GW, would rather want to avoid seeing 250-350 model SoB armies, the better way to fixing sisters is to fix their weapons and their rules. GW can give weapons rules of any kind they want. Give SoB "holy" melta that actualy work, unlike the regular one. Or tie it to the trinity, so SoB bolter/melta/flamers get some sort of a buff, if they hit something that was hit by other weapons from the trinity.
GW could give SoB intercessor stats tomorrow, even cost the like assault intercessors. And the army would still not function very well. Bar maybe repentia spam. A unit of 10 assault "SoB" with 10 eviscerators with buffs would, maybe turn the SoB in to some sort of WE without Angron army. Which would still be rather meh.
You realize that would be 40- points for a 10-Gal squad?
That is cheaper than IG Infantry Squad.
That's less than an eighth of your list for 60 3+ Save bodies, with OC 2 on each model.
And 30 points for a 10-Gal Noviate squad.
Less than half the price of an Infantry Squad.
180 points for 54 4+ save bodies and 6 more 3+ save, again with OC 2 each.
There are two different issues being discussed here:
One is whether SOB units have the correct melee effectiveness. I will agree that they are less effective in melee than they should be. Historically, a Battle Sister squad had the exact same stats as a Storm Trooper unit (aka Tempestus Scions) except the better Save. This made sense since both units were supposed to be among the best trained human infantry and graduates of the Schola Progenium. For that to be true today, Battle Sisters (and thus all SOB Infantry) need to gain an additional attack since Tempestus Scions have 2 attacks on their Close Combat Weapon and go up from there.
The broader question is how to make the Adepta Sororitas army effective. The problem there is bad synergy, bad leader rules, and a marked lack of sufficient, effective Anti-Tank firepower. The best strength in the entire army is 10 outside of the Paragon Warmace and Hunter Killer Missiles. The army is simply not equipped to deal with 10th Edition targets.
JNAProductions wrote: You realize that would be 40- points for a 10-Gal squad?
That is cheaper than IG Infantry Squad.
That's less than an eighth of your list for 60 3+ Save bodies, with OC 2 on each model.
And 30 points for a 10-Gal Noviate squad.
Less than half the price of an Infantry Squad.
180 points for 54 4+ save bodies and 6 more 3+ save, again with OC 2 each.
Yes, that is why I said that it would be bad for the game. the same GSC playing with 3000-3250pts pre changes were bad. I am strict talking about the viability of a mechanic, which in order to function requiers the opponent to kill units. This creates an additional layer of problems. W40k already has the problem that top armies can kill your counter or lynch pin units already. That is why a lot of armies run two or even three of something. Now for a faction that requiers units to die this means that they not only need to have good units, they also have to have good units left to use their special rules on. Having your units die and then be left with miracle dice to use on chaff, will not make the army work. Which means that in order for the type of tactic to function the SoB player would need to have 4-6 units, when others have 2-3. Now this is not precise math, maybe it is 3-5 units. But what matters is the fact that they need more units to use their rules. And the only way to get more units is points. And it doesn't matter how the points are delivered, if it is a respawn mechanic, summoning etc unimporant what is important is the fact the army need more models the the normal one. And that is just for the rule to kick in, in order for it to work vs various types of builds, they would need to have either units that counter everything or multiple specific hard counters to different armies. The last option would requier SoB to be even cheaper , because now they need multiple of times X units and the first option would just outright break the game with super efficient units followed by a ton of chaff. This is why my conclusion to this was that healthy way to fix SoB is changing their rule set and that of their weapons. There is also another option, but that won't happen in this edition, as codex seems to be very similar to the index from what we are seeing. The option would be to drop the miracle dice for dead units mechanics. Either make SoB rules free on build in to units , which more or less would be the same as giving them better rules or re write the faction from ground up. I think the second option is Impossible considering how GW writes their rules.
Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule.Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use.
But there's a 4/6 chance that I roll better than that.
Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule.Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use.
But there's a 4/6 chance that I roll better than that.
Considering the lack of resiliance SoB units have that is only a theoretical number, because in practics, the opposing army, especialy a good one will kill or neutralise the SoB units that could be efficient while using the miracle dice. So it is turns in to something like 4/6 chance, but only when opponent fails to do what his army should be build to do over a span of 2-3 turns. That just doesn't happen unless someone build a bad army on purpose or plays a medium army in a bad way.
Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule.Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use.
But there's a 4/6 chance that I roll better than that.
Considering the lack of resiliance SoB units have that is only a theoretical number, because in practics, the opposing army, especialy a good one will kill or neutralise the SoB units that could be efficient while using the miracle dice. So it is turns in to something like 4/6 chance, but only when opponent fails to do what his army should be build to do over a span of 2-3 turns. That just doesn't happen unless someone build a bad army on purpose or plays a medium army in a bad way.
You know that has nothing to do with the odds concerning wether or not I roll higher than a 2, right?
Tyran wrote: And in 9th my Synapse creatures had free transhuman (Leviathan), my ranged weapons had extra AP (Kronos) and I could give basically everything a 5++/4++.
Oh and Tyranid Warriors had 4 attacks S7 (which could be buffed to 8 or even 9) AP-2 D2 and heavy venom cannons were 3 attacks AP-3 D4 and wounded pretty much everything on at worst a 3+
Everyone lost a lot of rules from 9th to 10th, get over yourself.
But not everyone got rules to make an army that functions. tyranids have an army that functions in 10th. SoB for example, do not have an army that functions.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
ccs 811493 11595445 wrote:
You know that has nothing to do with the odds concerning wether or not I roll higher than a 2, right?
I think it has everything to do with it. With good armies can make you be unable to use your army rules, then the rules may as well not work. Knights in early 9th for example, had a ton of potential sources of damage. But because the game moved to being about both killing and scoring at the same time, and knights were meh at first and unable to do the first, all their rules, no matter what they were may as not have existed. And it shows in tournament results too. The really bad factions have close to 0 representation comparing to factions that are actualy played. Or to make it realy simple, the odds of rolling a die don't matter, if on avarge a good army will not let the SoB player to roll dice in a way that can impact the game in the favour of the SoB player.
Tyran wrote: And in 9th my Synapse creatures had free transhuman (Leviathan), my ranged weapons had extra AP (Kronos) and I could give basically everything a 5++/4++.
Oh and Tyranid Warriors had 4 attacks S7 (which could be buffed to 8 or even 9) AP-2 D2 and heavy venom cannons were 3 attacks AP-3 D4 and wounded pretty much everything on at worst a 3+
Everyone lost a lot of rules from 9th to 10th, get over yourself.
But not everyone got rules to make an army that functions. tyranids have an army that functions in 10th. SoB for example, do not have an army that functions.
The detachment rule is gak, not going to disagree there. Sadly that isn't likely going to be fixed until the codex drops. On the bright side chances are you will get at least one somewhat functional detachment rule.
alextroy wrote: There are two different issues being discussed here:
One is whether SOB units have the correct melee effectiveness. I will agree that they are less effective in melee than they should be. Historically, a Battle Sister squad had the exact same stats as a Storm Trooper unit (aka Tempestus Scions) except the better Save. This made sense since both units were supposed to be among the best trained human infantry and graduates of the Schola Progenium. For that to be true today, Battle Sisters (and thus all SOB Infantry) need to gain an additional attack since Tempestus Scions have 2 attacks on their Close Combat Weapon and go up from there.
The broader question is how to make the Adepta Sororitas army effective. The problem there is bad synergy, bad leader rules, and a marked lack of sufficient, effective Anti-Tank firepower. The best strength in the entire army is 10 outside of the Paragon Warmace and Hunter Killer Missiles. The army is simply not equipped to deal with 10th Edition targets.
Wait, Scions have 2 attacks (there is not a single Guard player I play with)? And there are still people frothing at the mouth over the idea of giving Sisters that?
It's so interesting how adamantly opposed to the idea people are to giving Sisters WS3+ and 2 attacks. This still leaves them with less melee ability and less durability than intercessors or even TacMarines.
Scions/kasrkin have 2 ws 4+ attacks, which I don't think would break the bank here.
But it comes back to the why this is needed/a good idea. Does it fit with the faction and identity? Maybe? Does it help balance them out in any way? Not meaningfully. Is the inspiration simply "I want to be more like a space marine and/or see fluff XYZ where a sister punches some cultists!"? Quite likely.
Dudeface wrote: Scions/kasrkin have 2 ws 4+ attacks, which I don't think would break the bank here.
But it comes back to the why this is needed/a good idea. Does it fit with the faction and identity? Maybe? Does it help balance them out in any way? Not meaningfully. Is the inspiration simply "I want to be more like a space marine and/or see fluff XYZ where a sister punches some cultists!"? Quite likely.
I assume its partly trying to resurrect Bloody Rose, which GW sort of made mandatory, then took away.
Quite clearly buffing Sister's melee on non-dedicated melee units will have negligible impact on anything. As DE sink to being possibly the worst faction in the game, let me tell you how impactful Kabalite melee is...
Wait, Scions have 2 attacks (there is not a single Guard player I play with)? And there are still people frothing at the mouth over the idea of giving Sisters that?
It's so interesting how adamantly opposed to the idea people are to giving Sisters WS3+ and 2 attacks. This still leaves them with less melee ability and less durability than intercessors or even TacMarines.
it's not about being against it, its about recognizing that it wont have any impact anyway and that the problems with the faction are greater than "Basic sisters have no melee capabilities".
Oh, and pointing out that game balance shouldnt be dictated by cinematics/books.
leopard wrote: GW could always go down the route of requiring fiction to match whats possible in the game...
You mean they don't already do that? All their fiction is already just pure toy commercial. "And the Primaris Intercessors(TM) shot their Auto Bolt Rifles(TM) at the Ork Boys(TM), doing three casualties and forcing a morale test..."
it's not about being against it, its about recognizing that it wont have any impact anyway and that the problems with the faction are greater than "Basic sisters have no melee capabilities".
Oh, and pointing out that game balance shouldnt be dictated by cinematics/books.
That is why I said that even if tomorrow GW gave sister the old marine stat line 4/4/1/1, the army would still be bad. SoB problems as an army isn't the fact, although it does not help, that they are str 4 and being 1 W 1T is no going to help sisters survive on a UK event table, because marines with double the wounds and armour of contempt die on those tables in droves. Maybe doubling of terrain would help, and by doubling I mean to get something close to an US infinty table, or at least what we call a US table. But that won't happen, because it would make any vehicle that is not a skimmer impossible to use.
And there is already problems with deploying and moving stuff like Land Raiders out of the deployment zone with less terrain.
it's not about being against it, its about recognizing that it wont have any impact anyway
Being able to more effectively bully chaff off of objectives and flip them has an impact on overall strength.
and that the problems with the faction are greater than "Basic sisters have no melee capabilities".
So because the change would not single-handedly fix Sisters it is a bad change?
Oh, and pointing out that game balance shouldnt be dictated by cinematics/books.
This goes past being wrong and is arguably outright delusional.
Factions should be and already are balanced around their portrayal in the fluff. A Gretchen is a worthless little goblin whose sole quality is that there is a gigantic amount of them. The tabletop more or less adheres to this fluff portrayal. Shalaxi Helbane is portrayed as a supreme duelist capable tooling some of the most formidable fighters in the galaxy in melee combat and her rules as of right now certainly reflect that.
Fluff has always impacted unit balance. Howling Banshees are portrayed as extremely agile warriors who can cut up Space Marines in melee handily. The fact that they are rather bad at doing that atm is a shame, as is them being rather bad in general.
This goes past being wrong and is arguably outright delusional.
Factions should be and already are balanced around their portrayal in the fluff. A Gretchen is a worthless little goblin whose sole quality is that there is a gigantic amount of them. The tabletop more or less adheres to this fluff portrayal. Shalaxi Helbane is portrayed as a supreme duelist capable tooling some of the most formidable fighters in the galaxy in melee combat and her rules as of right now certainly reflect that.
Fluff has always impacted unit balance. Howling Banshees are portrayed as extremely agile warriors who can cut up Space Marines in melee handily. The fact that they are rather bad at doing that atm is a shame, as is them being rather bad in general.
Abilities can be brought from the fluff. Powerlevel of these abilities should not.
No. It’s totally fine for lore to inform power-points should be used to balance fluffy models.
feth no, everything is OP in the lore. If we try to emulate that on the tabletop, every unit is gonna kill every unit and we're gonna end up with the dullest game ever
I despise how GW has done balancing for a while and concluded for a long time that the simple answer should just be changing and uncapping toughness across the board vs how it was actually done which was very silly. Marines should be Toughness 5 because Transhuman + Power armor, Scouts should be Toughness 4 because of only Transhuman, Sisters should also be Toughness 4 because power armor. However they shouldn't have a bump in WS, BS, or attacks because modern 40k is suffering from a terminal case of dice bloat cancer and everything should be going back to 1 whopping attack.
Dudeface wrote: So. Sisters just went 8-0 and won a 291 player event. Does this reassure anyone?
Not really.
The faction is much better than we gave it credit for in terms of win/loss ratio, but I watched those games. They did not look enjoyable for the sisters player. It's a lot of 'line one get mulched, line 2 get mulched, line 3 get mulched, cool I win on points.'
We're also bouyed up a little bit by the perception we're a bad army. The finals came down to Jack Harpster going for a home run play with Angron that didn't ultimately work out for him, and an absolutely brutal overwatch from Vahl and her suits. It looked like his plan was to run Angron up, murder an immolator, if he survived; kill something else next turn, if he didn't, rez him turn 2 or 3. I doubt that Jack, an accomplished Sisters player himself, had very many reps into the army and didn't necessarily realize how low the chance was that Angron would survive his run up AND he just didn't have the RNG on his side to get Angron back.
While our winrate is fine and the overall power of the faction is fine, it's just fine in a way that is deeply uninteresting. We're closer to 'MSU green tide' than we are to traditional Sisters gameplay.
Dudeface wrote: So. Sisters just went 8-0 and won a 291 player event. Does this reassure anyone?
Not really.
The faction is much better than we gave it credit for in terms of win/loss ratio, but I watched those games. They did not look enjoyable for the sisters player. It's a lot of 'line one get mulched, line 2 get mulched, line 3 get mulched, cool I win on points.'
We're also bouyed up a little bit by the perception we're a bad army. The finals came down to Jack Harpster going for a home run play with Angron that didn't ultimately work out for him, and an absolutely brutal overwatch from Vahl and her suits. It looked like his plan was to run Angron up, murder an immolator, if he survived; kill something else next turn, if he didn't, rez him turn 2 or 3. I doubt that Jack, an accomplished Sisters player himself, had very many reps into the army and didn't necessarily realize how low the chance was that Angron would survive his run up AND he just didn't have the RNG on his side to get Angron back.
While our winrate is fine and the overall power of the faction is fine, it's just fine in a way that is deeply uninteresting. We're closer to 'MSU green tide' than we are to traditional Sisters gameplay.
Isn't that fitting Sister's gameplay though? Dying in droves for the cause, getting a miracle that causes the enemy plan to fail, and the few survivors walking away from the battle ready to tell tales of divine intervention and martyrdom by their fellow sisters.
Not Online!!! wrote: Sisters are fanatic,truly so, but dying in droves is the guards job... Or pdf
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Isn't that fitting Sister's gameplay though? Dying in droves for the cause, getting a miracle that causes the enemy plan to fail, and the few survivors walking away from the battle ready to tell tales of divine intervention and martyrdom by their fellow sisters.
It's an Order of Our Martyred Lady thing, specifically. I mean, all sisters respect their Martyrs... But OoOML take Martyrdom to the next level.
Right now, of course, the only detachment we have is the one designed to suit OoOML.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
Not Online!!! wrote: Sisters are fanatic,truly so, but dying in droves is the guards job... Or pdf
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Another reason why the R&H list was superior to the guard dex, atleast you could field and replace enough man on the table.
Honestly i feel a Lot of factions haven't been handled well on the rules side on the tabletop in correlation to lore really starting with 4th csm onwards.
Then in 5th quality in regards to balance for factions also decayed and 6/7 was just a shitshow in the basegame that covered the degeneration in faction rules design.
8 onwards simplified the rules too much in the base area which leads to overcompensation bloat on the faction side whilest not resolving the core issues provoked by the removal of mechanics...
Then there is the bad to wound table still creating issues.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
man, its a fething GAME, of course its not gonna be a true representation of the ridiculous fluff. PLEASE tell me your comment isnt advocating for it to actually represent the fluff.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
man, its a fething GAME, of course its not gonna be a true representation of the ridiculous fluff. PLEASE tell me your comment isnt advocating for it to actually represent the fluff.
My comment is advocating to recognize the tabletop cannot represent the fluff either way. A hundred termagants is nothing in the lore yet a significant force on the tabletop. Ten marines is nothing on the tabletop but a significant force on the lore.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
I always rationalized this as many marines being rendered combat ineffective after a battle without being outright killed. That does fix other issues of scale though and I agree that the tabletop is well divorced from the fluff.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
I always rationalized this as many marines being rendered combat ineffective after a battle without being outright killed. That does fix other issues of scale though and I agree that the tabletop is well divorced from the fluff.
Yeah, that's an easy abstraction.
A Guardsman takes a bolter and is removed from the table? Almost certainly dead.
A Marine takes a bolter and is removed from the table? Combat-ineffective, but they'll be back.
It works less well when it's higher-powered weapons, though.
Guardsman takes a melta to the face? Dead.
Marine takes a melta to the face? Kinda hard to walk that off.
A Marine being combat ineffective while being surrounded by World Eaters/Daemons/Orks/Tyranids?
That's a very dead Marine.
EDIT: Although I guess that is still is kinda lore friendly with the Fall of Malvolion being maybe the best example of how getting a hundred Marines killed in a few minutes.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
man, its a fething GAME, of course its not gonna be a true representation of the ridiculous fluff. PLEASE tell me your comment isnt advocating for it to actually represent the fluff.
Frankly it could be, and it wouldn't even be that hard to do so, the issue is that 40k is, even when completely throwing out the baby with the bathwater, still dragged down by insisting on certain traditional stats for units instead of embracing a total rescaling of everything. Best point of this being properly done is probably Epic, where Marines actually feel like Marines and Terminators trudge through macro weapon fire with greater reliability than most vehicles.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
I always rationalized this as many marines being rendered combat ineffective after a battle without being outright killed. That does fix other issues of scale though and I agree that the tabletop is well divorced from the fluff.
Now I admit I haven't read the greatest array of BL novels, but I don't think the lore routinely shows Marines surviving tank blasts to the face either. In the novels the situation where marines feel badass is when they're room clearing or ambushing a smattering of cultists. As soon as the big guns come out, and the Marines aren't in heavy fortifications, they start dying pretty quick.
On the tabletop we're deploying armies often in LOS to each other, and there are lots of high powered weapons around. That Marines start getting killed is totally lore accurate. The issue is more that merely deploying as we do represents some sort of catastrophe that's already taken place. C n C effed up to get us there in the first place.
Well there is the further issue that tank blasts, either the old templates rules or the current D6 random shots, treat every hit as a direct hit.
Meanwhile in reality only one marine would get a direct hit by the tank projectile and everyone else would get hit by the blast which would have a fraction of the power.
So I expect a Marine to die to a direct hit from a 120mm tank round. But his buddies? they may be thrown around by the blast but likely would survive it.
EDIT: Which is actually a thing in Genefather
Rockets streaked from the carapaces of Vanitas and Danubia. Vanitas’ repeater battlecannon pumped, spitting shells at the foe. Mud and water fountained high where they hit. Heretic Astartes were lofted skywards or knocked off their feet, but it took more than mere explosives to fell a man blessed by the Emperor and the Dark Gods, and most of them hauled themselves back onto their feet.
Tyran wrote: Well there is the further issue that tank blasts, either the old templates rules or the current D6 random shots, treat every hit as a direct hit.
Meanwhile in reality only one marine would get a direct hit by the tank projectile and everyone else would get hit by the blast which would have a fraction of the power.
So I expect a Marine to die to a direct hit from a 120mm tank round. But his buddies? they may be thrown around by the blast but likely would survive it.
EDIT: Which is actually a thing in Genefather
Rockets streaked from the carapaces of Vanitas and Danubia. Vanitas’ repeater battlecannon pumped, spitting shells at the foe. Mud and water fountained high where they hit. Heretic Astartes were lofted skywards or knocked off their feet, but it took more than mere explosives to fell a man blessed by the Emperor and the Dark Gods, and most of them hauled themselves back onto their feet.
I guess I disagree. The blast of the Battlecannon has been good at killing Marines in the game since it's inception. Real life antipersonnel munitions are horrific things too. My interpretation is that the author of that passage is writing for rule of cool. One guy got hit, most were out of the killzone, and the other guy/s under the blast template got lucky.
Tyran wrote: Large blast with high strenght and good AP were cancer as far as I'm concerned.
Something the HH2 writers seem to agree with considering all the nerfs blast weapons got in that edition.
It works fine when you can't get too many on the table. It's never really the stats of a weapon, but more how many of them you can spam and their ease of use, IMO.
Like AP3 Battlecannons were great in 3rd-4th edition because there weren't many of them, units couldn't move and fire with them, and there were mechanics to suppress them (Stunning/Shaking a vehicle, even if you didn't destroy them). Later editions we got Riptides dancing around throwing large Blast templates llike nobody's business. That's when it sucks.
Was it ever a thing in older editions that blast templates would have different stats for center hole vs the radius, or was the specific to WHFB?
Quite liked that stone throwers would do a strength 10 hit that ignored armor and did d6 wounds to the unlucky guy that got hit by the rock, but the shrapnel was usually much weaker.
One thing HH 2.0 could certainly benefit from with how anemic their blast templates are right now, and seems fitting for the reality of how these weapons operate as described by others.
Not... that that has much to do with Sisters of Battle, though...
Rihgu wrote: Was it ever a thing in older editions that blast templates would have different stats for center hole vs the radius, or was the specific to WHFB?
There was one apocalypse template that worked like that, but overall no they used the same stats for center and radius... except against vehicles.
Tyran wrote: Well there is the further issue that tank blasts, either the old templates rules or the current D6 random shots, treat every hit as a direct hit.
Meanwhile in reality only one marine would get a direct hit by the tank projectile and everyone else would get hit by the blast which would have a fraction of the power.
So I expect a Marine to die to a direct hit from a 120mm tank round. But his buddies? they may be thrown around by the blast but likely would survive it.
EDIT: Which is actually a thing in Genefather
Rockets streaked from the carapaces of Vanitas and Danubia. Vanitas’ repeater battlecannon pumped, spitting shells at the foe. Mud and water fountained high where they hit. Heretic Astartes were lofted skywards or knocked off their feet, but it took more than mere explosives to fell a man blessed by the Emperor and the Dark Gods, and most of them hauled themselves back onto their feet.
I guess I disagree. The blast of the Battlecannon has been good at killing Marines in the game since it's inception. Real life antipersonnel munitions are horrific things too. My interpretation is that the author of that passage is writing for rule of cool. One guy got hit, most were out of the killzone, and the other guy/s under the blast template got lucky.
This is more an issue of one of the chronically poor understandings of explosives on part of the rules writers. A bit similar to how some artillery works in WHFB, the central point of impact of the blast template should be S8, but as mere high explosives the surrounding area of the strike should be far less harmful against anything with serious armor. Pretty sure that's how catapult templates are resolved in WHFB usually.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Or it's just abstracted out for the sake of simplicity. I mean, if a 120mm shell hits a guy should we even be rolling to wound?
Yes, since to wound and to hit are part of the same system of abstraction as the game should be running on a 1d100, with the two folding together for what otherwise would be one roll. That's why instant death used to exist however, to prevent silly gak like a death ball hero being able to shrug off artillery hits even if their saves. Which is also why it was silly that wounds weren't increased in the old system rather than the new one, since it was pitifully easy to resolve the issue of small arms being bad at killing tanky things but high powered armor piercing weapons shredding them outright. Instead of needing bad ideas like 'damage' stats.
Rihgu wrote: Was it ever a thing in older editions that blast templates would have different stats for center hole vs the radius, or was the specific to WHFB?
Quite liked that stone throwers would do a strength 10 hit that ignored armor and did d6 wounds to the unlucky guy that got hit by the rock, but the shrapnel was usually much weaker.
One thing HH 2.0 could certainly benefit from with how anemic their blast templates are right now, and seems fitting for the reality of how these weapons operate as described by others.
Not... that that has much to do with Sisters of Battle, though...
The Particle Whip from the 3rd Edition Necron Codex was S9, AP3 Ordnance, Large Blast and was AP1 for anything under the center whole regardless of unit type.
Since then the Particle whip has been mostly relegated to anti-infantry except in 9th when it was boosted to S12 AP-3 Damage 3 which made it feel closer to its original power back in 3rd.
The lore reason for this? The Particle whip hits the target much like an actual whip, striking a very small point which causes a shock wave (blast) from there. Something newer writers have probably forgotten about.
Rihgu wrote: Was it ever a thing in older editions that blast templates would have different stats for center hole vs the radius, or was the specific to WHFB?
Quite liked that stone throwers would do a strength 10 hit that ignored armor and did d6 wounds to the unlucky guy that got hit by the rock, but the shrapnel was usually much weaker.
One thing HH 2.0 could certainly benefit from with how anemic their blast templates are right now, and seems fitting for the reality of how these weapons operate as described by others.
Not... that that has much to do with Sisters of Battle, though...
The Particle Whip from the 3rd Edition Necron Codex was S9, AP3 Ordnance, Large Blast and was AP1 for anything under the center whole regardless of unit type.
Since then the Particle whip has been mostly relegated to anti-infantry except in 9th when it was boosted to S12 AP-3 Damage 3 which made it feel closer to its original power back in 3rd.
The lore reason for this? The Particle whip hits the target much like an actual whip, striking a very small point which causes a shock wave (blast) from there. Something newer writers have probably forgotten about.
The other rules for blast weapons was that if it hit a vehicle, the vehicle had to be under the center hole--otherwise it did damage to that vehicle at half strength, which was essentially almost a 0 chance of doing diddly.
Nobody ever dies in proper droves on the table anyway. A SoB player getting tabled won't ever lose more than 150 models total. By 40k standards that's nothing.
Not true, a Space Marine player getting tabled is a crippling blow that will take centuries to recover from if ever as some loses cannot be replaced (Terminator suits and dreads)
A Custodes player being tabled is pretty much an unheard tragedy.
I always rationalized this as many marines being rendered combat ineffective after a battle without being outright killed. That does fix other issues of scale though and I agree that the tabletop is well divorced from the fluff.
And the fact that people are seriously arguing that it's 'lore accurate' that marines are now resistant to anti tank weapons, is a classic case of fan-cum-writer flanderisation, fanwankery to make marines even more juvenilely OP. A casualty from small arms? Sure, marines can survive those. A melta gun to the face? No. But then orks can also survive small arms fire, necrons too, and dark eldar seem to ignore it. Eldar have advanced psychoreactive suits that can bind their injuries. But they all die to AT weapons.
A space marine hit by an anti tank weapon is dead (and always has been), none of this 'genes of the emperor' crap...
Space marines have to got to be one of the most fascinating scifi concepts - they are everything and the kitchen sink even if contradictory in order to make them supa cool for customers. Limited numbers - except the imperial population is so large that their recruitment pool is effectively limitless (and thus the limit on their numbers has 0 effect).
It's like the writers took the concept of the mary sue and decided to distill it down into a whole 40k faction, all their downsides are actually upsides, all their skills are overblown.
I just can't look at marines in modern 40k with any seriousness whatsoever, because fan apologism just makes them unpalatable an unbearable. Any discussion of them just sounds like my dad can beat up your dad.
BrianDavion wrote: Whose argued Marines should be immune to anti-tank weapons? I've not seen a single person say that
You find it implied whenever someone is saying something like "Marines don't feel like marines" on the tabletop.
Examples:
Tyran wrote: Ten marines is nothing on the tabletop but a significant force on the lore.
Wyzilla wrote: . . .
Frankly it could be, and it wouldn't even be that hard to do so, the issue is that 40k is, even when completely throwing out the baby with the bathwater, still dragged down by insisting on certain traditional stats for units instead of embracing a total rescaling of everything. Best point of this being properly done is probably Epic, where Marines actually feel like Marines and Terminators trudge through macro weapon fire with greater reliability than most vehicles.
40k is a game where a bunch of vehicles get deployed in a combined arms force where a common weapon type is an anti-tank/anti-elite weapon. These are weapons which, even in lore, should kill a Marine. Knight armies are deployed with the expectation that they can be effectively countered. Marines just die quickly in an environment like that. People would like their Marines to feel like they can survive battles better, but 40k by it's very nature pits them against weapons designed to kill them, in terrain that doesn't help them too much.
For a game of 40k "They don't feel like Marines", not because the Marines aren't tough enough, but because the very deployment phase represents a catastrophic or desperate event.
Besides, Marines are arguably too tough already. It takes 9 Marines, Rapid Firing, to take a Marine out of action. Hell, it takes the same number of Marines (9) to take a single Marine down in close combat. That doesn't seem fluff accurate in the slightest.
To make Marines feel tough in the context of 40K you really have to reduce the amount of high AP weapons around.
If it was 1v1 sure, in a squad combat 9 marines would'nt be conceivably all fighting 1 marine anyway. I don't see how that description is not loreful. Same with shooting as 9 marines would be firing at a group of opposing Marines instead of one single marine, some shots missed, others were blocked by armour, and finally a few rounds managed to kill a already toughended-up marine that's supposedly able to survive grievious wounds a normal human cannot.
Anyways I will always say this -- the two wounds things wouldn't be here if Primaris wasn't a lore construct made specifically for GW to sell both truescale marines and older heroic stockpiles simultaneously. They had to differentiate the two in stats back in 8th/9th with an extra wound, instead if they just introduced new armour & weapons variants instead they'd all still be 1W now. They had already been producing up-scaled vanilla marines with their "Space Marine Heroes" mystery box anyways, so scale wasn't even an issue that they could have just slowly replaced older stocks.
Bah -- I haven't been paying attention post 8E anyways, but I am generally for restricting access to AP in the game in general; but then, you run into the problem of too many high SV units that would take forever to kill. What you gonna do.
lcmiracle wrote: If it was 1v1 sure, in a squad combat 9 marines would'nt be conceivably all fighting 1 marine anyway. I don't see how that description is not loreful. Same with shooting as 9 marines would be firing at a group of opposing Marines instead of one single marine, some shots missed, others were blocked by armour, and finally a few rounds managed to kill a already toughended-up marine that's supposedly able to survive grievious wounds a normal human cannot.
Anyways I will always say this -- the two wounds things wouldn't be here if Primaris wasn't a lore construct made specifically for GW to sell both truescale marines and older heroic stockpiles simultaneously. They had to differentiate the two in stats back in 8th/9th with an extra wound, instead if they just introduced new armour & weapons variants instead they'd all still be 1W now. They had already been producing up-scaled vanilla marines with their "Space Marine Heroes" mystery box anyways, so scale wasn't even an issue that they could have just slowly replaced older stocks.
Bah -- I haven't been paying attention post 8E anyways, but I am generally for restricting access to AP in the game in general; but then, you run into the problem of too many high SV units that would take forever to kill. What you gonna do.
It's a bold assumption they wouldn't arbitrarily increase them to 2w anyway without a fluff reason or range change. Same way terminators gained wounds over the editions.
lcmiracle wrote: If it was 1v1 sure, in a squad combat 9 marines would'nt be conceivably all fighting 1 marine anyway. I don't see how that description is not loreful. Same with shooting as 9 marines would be firing at a group of opposing Marines instead of one single marine, some shots missed, others were blocked by armour, and finally a few rounds managed to kill a already toughended-up marine that's supposedly able to survive grievious wounds a normal human cannot.
Anyways I will always say this -- the two wounds things wouldn't be here if Primaris wasn't a lore construct made specifically for GW to sell both truescale marines and older heroic stockpiles simultaneously. They had to differentiate the two in stats back in 8th/9th with an extra wound, instead if they just introduced new armour & weapons variants instead they'd all still be 1W now. They had already been producing up-scaled vanilla marines with their "Space Marine Heroes" mystery box anyways, so scale wasn't even an issue that they could have just slowly replaced older stocks.
Bah -- I haven't been paying attention post 8E anyways, but I am generally for restricting access to AP in the game in general; but then, you run into the problem of too many high SV units that would take forever to kill. What you gonna do.
It's a bold assumption they wouldn't arbitrarily increase them to 2w anyway without a fluff reason or range change. Same way terminators gained wounds over the editions.
I don't see them do this without the example set by the primaris tho. Discussions like W2 SM was there around 5/6E, I recall distinctively, but always shut down over one excuse or another. Primaris were the first non-char SM infantry model to get 2 wounds, and IIRC, death guards SMs followed suit around 9E I think. It was only then GW doubled downe on the W2 after 9E. As far as i am concerned, the Primaris open the can, too many players started asking for it that pushed GW to comply.
On the other hand, my point on Primaris stands that they needed no be a distinct upgraded version of the vanilla marines, both lore-wise and gameplay-wise.
lcmiracle wrote: If it was 1v1 sure, in a squad combat 9 marines would'nt be conceivably all fighting 1 marine anyway. I don't see how that description is not loreful. Same with shooting as 9 marines would be firing at a group of opposing Marines instead of one single marine, some shots missed, others were blocked by armour, and finally a few rounds managed to kill a already toughended-up marine that's supposedly able to survive grievious wounds a normal human cannot.
Anyways I will always say this -- the two wounds things wouldn't be here if Primaris wasn't a lore construct made specifically for GW to sell both truescale marines and older heroic stockpiles simultaneously. They had to differentiate the two in stats back in 8th/9th with an extra wound, instead if they just introduced new armour & weapons variants instead they'd all still be 1W now. They had already been producing up-scaled vanilla marines with their "Space Marine Heroes" mystery box anyways, so scale wasn't even an issue that they could have just slowly replaced older stocks.
Bah -- I haven't been paying attention post 8E anyways, but I am generally for restricting access to AP in the game in general; but then, you run into the problem of too many high SV units that would take forever to kill. What you gonna do.
It's a bold assumption they wouldn't arbitrarily increase them to 2w anyway without a fluff reason or range change. Same way terminators gained wounds over the editions.
I don't see them do this without the example set by the primaris tho. Discussions like W2 SM was there around 5/6E, I recall distinctively, but always shut down over one excuse or another. Primaris were the first non-char SM infantry model to get 2 wounds, and IIRC, death guards SMs followed suit around 9E I think. It was only then GW doubled downe on the W2 after 9E. As far as i am concerned, the Primaris open the can, too many players started asking for it that pushed GW to comply.
On the other hand, my point on Primaris stands that they needed no be a distinct upgraded version of the vanilla marines, both lore-wise and gameplay-wise.
Rubrics in 4th (I think?) had 2 wounds, it's happened before.
lcmiracle wrote: If it was 1v1 sure, in a squad combat 9 marines would'nt be conceivably all fighting 1 marine anyway. I don't see how that description is not loreful.
So as a corollary, a unit of four Marines, assaulting a single Marine defender, takes three rounds of CC on average to get resolved. How does that make any kind of sense, game or lorewise?
1: Outnumbering bonuses should totally be a thing.
2: Marines are just too tough. The fact that it takes a full squad to take one down in CC is crazy. Pit 10 Marines against 10 Marines in CC, and I wonder how long that takes to get resolved.
Rubrics in 4th (I think?) had 2 wounds, it's happened before.
I think that's right, but Rubrics are warp-powered automatons without any body in their armor, and I believe they paid through the nose for the privledge in points.
lcmiracle wrote: If it was 1v1 sure, in a squad combat 9 marines would'nt be conceivably all fighting 1 marine anyway. I don't see how that description is not loreful.
So as a corollary, a unit of four Marines, assaulting a single Marine defender, takes three rounds of CC on average to get resolved. How does that make any kind of sense, game or lorewise?
1: Outnumbering bonuses should totally be a thing.
2: Marines are just too tough. The fact that it takes a full squad to take one down in CC is crazy. Pit 10 Marines against 10 Marines in CC, and I wonder how long that takes to get resolved.
IMO it should be forever because they are equals
Anyways it's good they are too tough, because the games also has too many weapons seemingly optimized to kill marines.
Rubrics in 4th (I think?) had 2 wounds, it's happened before.
I think that's right, but Rubrics are warp-powered automatons without any body in their armor, and I believe they paid through the nose for the privledge in points.
There also wasn't such a thing as flat 2 damage weaponry and their save wasn't impacted by low AP. So I'd argue its worth a lot less of a permium now anyway.
Insectum7 wrote: ...and I believe they paid through the nose for the privledge in points.
A flat 10 points, less the five finger discount on the sorcerer.
Which was fair enough on the power armour (around a 70% hike for double wounds but single attacks), but of course everyone comboed it with the terminator armour and then it cost only 30% more for double wounds, and fearless, and protection from all those S8 AP3 weapons that would instant death them.
The one faction that did run quite heavily with multi-wound models back then were tau in battlesuit/farsight lists. If anyone wanted to play Primaris in oldhammer they were 2 wounds, T4, 3+ saves with excessive numbers of special weapons and hovertanks. They even have the early primaris theme for forgetting to bring any proper close combat weapons and just about all of the expansion rules were for new variants of squad leader models.
Rubrics in 4th (I think?) had 2 wounds, it's happened before.
I think that's right, but Rubrics are warp-powered automatons without any body in their armor, and I believe they paid through the nose for the privledge in points.
There also wasn't such a thing as flat 2 damage weaponry and their save wasn't impacted by low AP. So I'd argue its worth a lot less of a permium now anyway.
Which is funny when you remember that the proliferation of D2 weapons in 9th was entirely due to the stat-inflation of Marines.
Rubrics in 4th (I think?) had 2 wounds, it's happened before.
I think that's right, but Rubrics are warp-powered automatons without any body in their armor, and I believe they paid through the nose for the privledge in points.
There also wasn't such a thing as flat 2 damage weaponry and their save wasn't impacted by low AP. So I'd argue its worth a lot less of a permium now anyway.
Which is funny when you remember that the proliferation of D2 weapons in 9th was entirely due to the stat-inflation of Marines.
Kinda the point, if you make something 2w then spread the D2 profile everywhere, have you really made them 2w?
The impact isn't really on the Marines or overall meta, the impact of 2W Marines is that D1 weapons and thus most troops are pretty much worthless.
Which I guess it kinda was the point, as 2W Marines are partly the result of Marine players complaining that guardsmen and gaunts were killing their Marines and that wasn't loreful.
Tyran wrote: The impact isn't really on the Marines or overall meta, the impact of 2W Marines is that D1 weapons and thus most troops are pretty much worthless.
Which I guess it kinda was the point, as 2W Marines are partly the result of Marine players complaining that guardsmen and gaunts were killing their Marines and that wasn't loreful.
I would argue that requiring 9 Marines, Rapid Firing, in the open, to take down a Marine isn't loreful either. Or 20 Guardsmen, 10 Tau, etc . . .
Which I guess it kinda was the point, as 2W Marines are partly the result of Marine players complaining that guardsmen and gaunts were killing their Marines and that wasn't loreful.
I would argue that requiring 9 Marines, Rapid Firing, in the open, to take down a Marine isn't loreful either. Or 20 Guardsmen, 10 Tau, etc . . .
It’s bizarre how ineffectual a marine is against a marine. In the case of bolt guns, and on topic for a sisters thread, you *could* easily say bolt guns are d2 or 3 against infantry. Eg, against guard officers, since they’re used to one-shot execute them.
That’s so annoying. It’s more stat inflation, more “bloat.”
Which I guess it kinda was the point, as 2W Marines are partly the result of Marine players complaining that guardsmen and gaunts were killing their Marines and that wasn't loreful.
I would argue that requiring 9 Marines, Rapid Firing, in the open, to take down a Marine isn't loreful either. Or 20 Guardsmen, 10 Tau, etc . . .
It’s bizarre how ineffectual a marine is against a marine. In the case of bolt guns, and on topic for a sisters thread, you *could* easily say bolt guns are d2 or 3 against infantry. Eg, against guard officers, since they’re used to one-shot execute them.
That’s so annoying. It’s more stat inflation, more “bloat.”
To be fair, in-lore, the Boltgun was never meant to be used against other marines anyway. They were meant for squishy mortals during compliances. When something nasty showed up, or a bit later marines in the heresy, that's when you broke out the Plasma and Volkite.
Though I agree, Marines being 2W was a step too far.
2W marines helped separate the elite infantry from the chaff hordes. Which is something that needed to happen. For many editions marines paid for the 3+ and T which was mostly irrelevant. People were already spamming anti-MEQ weapons, as that’s what you were likely to see across the table. And what killed marines killed guard and gaunt just fine.
By going to 2W GW has opened up more design space to help differentiate units, and the corresponding “best” gun to deal with them. Did they squander this design space by spamming things that are just best in class vs everything? Probably. But this is nothing new. Finding the best option and spamming it hard has been with us for a long time.
You also have the issue where marines are supposed to be rare and special, but make up 80% (not a real stat) of your opponents. If you were more likely to see gaunt/guard spam everytime you headed down to the FLGS you would not default your list to be able to deal with MEQ. But that’s not the world we live in. So we lean hard into plasma, like we’ve been doing forever.
Nevelon wrote: 2W marines helped separate the elite infantry from the chaff hordes. Which is something that needed to happen. For many editions marines paid for the 3+ and T which was mostly irrelevant. People were already spamming anti-MEQ weapons, as that’s what you were likely to see across the table. And what killed marines killed guard and gaunt just fine.
By going to 2W GW has opened up more design space to help differentiate units, and the corresponding “best” gun to deal with them. Did they squander this design space by spamming things that are just best in class vs everything? Probably. But this is nothing new. Finding the best option and spamming it hard has been with us for a long time.
You also have the issue where marines are supposed to be rare and special, but make up 80% (not a real stat) of your opponents. If you were more likely to see gaunt/guard spam everytime you headed down to the FLGS you would not default your list to be able to deal with MEQ. But that’s not the world we live in. So we lean hard into plasma, like we’ve been doing forever.
Well you've just described the circular thinking that got us here. A common opponent is a Marine, so a common weapon is an anti-MEQ weapon, so in response people complain that Marines aren't tough anymore. So GW buff Marines, then people adjust and spam a slightly different array of anti-MEQ weapons. The main difference now is at this new MEQ level, everybody else's infantry feel like ***t.
You also wrote that anti-MEQ weapons had the same effect against Marines back when they were one wound. . . so maybe the culprit is just the cheap availability of anti MEQ weapons. . . right? So one could reduce the Marines toughness while also reducing the availability of anti-MEQ weapons, and you'd have infantry interactions that start to make more sense. Not only that but you'd have a more lore-appropriate starting point during the deployment phase. I don't think I've read the story where the DE show up simply spamming Disintegrator Cannons etc. and send hordes of Marines into their graves.
Nevelon wrote: 2W marines helped separate the elite infantry from the chaff hordes. Which is something that needed to happen. For many editions marines paid for the 3+ and T which was mostly irrelevant. People were already spamming anti-MEQ weapons, as that’s what you were likely to see across the table. And what killed marines killed guard and gaunt just fine.
By going to 2W GW has opened up more design space to help differentiate units, and the corresponding “best” gun to deal with them. Did they squander this design space by spamming things that are just best in class vs everything? Probably. But this is nothing new. Finding the best option and spamming it hard has been with us for a long time.
You also have the issue where marines are supposed to be rare and special, but make up 80% (not a real stat) of your opponents. If you were more likely to see gaunt/guard spam everytime you headed down to the FLGS you would not default your list to be able to deal with MEQ. But that’s not the world we live in. So we lean hard into plasma, like we’ve been doing forever.
Well you've just described the circular thinking that got us here. A common opponent is a Marine, so a common weapon is an anti-MEQ weapon, so in response people complain that Marines aren't tough anymore. So GW buff Marines, then people adjust and spam a slightly different array of anti-MEQ weapons. The main difference now is at this new MEQ level, everybody else's infantry feel like ***t.
You also wrote that anti-MEQ weapons had the same effect against Marines back when they were one wound. . . so maybe the culprit is just the cheap availability of anti MEQ weapons. . . right? So one could reduce the Marines toughness while also reducing the availability of anti-MEQ weapons, and you'd have infantry interactions that start to make more sense. Not only that but you'd have a more lore-appropriate starting point during the deployment phase. I don't think I've read the story where the DE show up simply spamming Disintegrator Cannons etc. and send hordes of Marines into their graves.
It's also funny because if morale would've been a relevant factor, like in another GW game, 1W marines are perfectly servicable...
oh well.
There isn’t really a good answer here. And a lot of things feed into it, including inertia and tradition. I understand why we are here, and the problems, but there is no magic bullet to fix things. Just a bunch of flawed solutions. And a bunch of the “better” fixes in game will not happen due to out of game (sales/marketing/popularity) reasons.
Some of it is the D6 system. There is just not a lot of design space to work with. And proliferation. Lethality has climbed year after year. Armories used to be a single partial page in the codex, now they are bloated messes filled with hyper lethal stuff.
Marines are popular. It’s 40k. They are the reason a lot of us are here. So they will always be the primary foe across the table. So we need to gear to be able to face them.
There are so many barriers to the horde army. Cost of models and time to paint them. Just getting them to the game store. Time to play (more relevant in timed tournaments, but also a factor in local games). And that before even looking at if the rules for the edition are even good. I’d love to see them be more viable. Where a green tide, gaunt swarm, or ranks of gaurdsmen was a common sight.
At that point we might see people pass over the plasma in the armory and grab a flamer.
OK, I’m getting a bit generalist rambling (sorry, working on the first cup of coffee for the day)
Sisters underwent a big paradigm shift from 2nd to 3rd. Between stats and points they went from “Space Marines, but ladies” to “Guardsmen with better gear” Their fluff, like all 40k, has always been over the top and loaded with plot armor. I do think their current stat line is a little shy of where they should be. They are top tier elite human troops, basically as far and you can go without crossing the line into posthuman a/o cyborg. You basic battle sister should be on par with scions, karskin and other human elites. The issues is a very tight design space imposed by the d6. T3 and 1W is human. You need to be an hero with plot armor or some major enhancements to transcend that. Step away from that and you are no longer a human with faith, but something else. Sisters always shot like marines, and they still have the BS. I do think their melee stats could use a buff to bring them up to other eiltes. The point less S is a big hit, that prevents the basic troop from being truly viable in both shooting/CC.
Nevelon wrote: 2W marines helped separate the elite infantry from the chaff hordes. Which is something that needed to happen. For many editions marines paid for the 3+ and T which was mostly irrelevant. People were already spamming anti-MEQ weapons, as that’s what you were likely to see across the table. And what killed marines killed guard and gaunt just fine.
By going to 2W GW has opened up more design space to help differentiate units, and the corresponding “best” gun to deal with them. Did they squander this design space by spamming things that are just best in class vs everything? Probably. But this is nothing new. Finding the best option and spamming it hard has been with us for a long time.
You also have the issue where marines are supposed to be rare and special, but make up 80% (not a real stat) of your opponents. If you were more likely to see gaunt/guard spam everytime you headed down to the FLGS you would not default your list to be able to deal with MEQ. But that’s not the world we live in. So we lean hard into plasma, like we’ve been doing forever.
Well you've just described the circular thinking that got us here. A common opponent is a Marine, so a common weapon is an anti-MEQ weapon, so in response people complain that Marines aren't tough anymore. So GW buff Marines, then people adjust and spam a slightly different array of anti-MEQ weapons. The main difference now is at this new MEQ level, everybody else's infantry feel like ***t.
This.
I think a big part of the problem was that SMs became twice as hard to kill with D1 weapons but their cost only went up slightly.
It would have been far better to price them in the 25-30pt range (even if it meant also upping their damage output). That way, they can still feel tough, but D1 weapons won't be stupidly inefficient against them.
Moreover, you wouldn't have needed the massive proliferation of D2 weapons to deal with undercosted 2W Marines. Thus helping Marines to feel more durable overall.
Nevelon wrote: 2W marines helped separate the elite infantry from the chaff hordes. Which is something that needed to happen. For many editions marines paid for the 3+ and T which was mostly irrelevant. People were already spamming anti-MEQ weapons, as that’s what you were likely to see across the table. And what killed marines killed guard and gaunt just fine.
By going to 2W GW has opened up more design space to help differentiate units, and the corresponding “best” gun to deal with them. Did they squander this design space by spamming things that are just best in class vs everything? Probably. But this is nothing new. Finding the best option and spamming it hard has been with us for a long time.
You also have the issue where marines are supposed to be rare and special, but make up 80% (not a real stat) of your opponents. If you were more likely to see gaunt/guard spam everytime you headed down to the FLGS you would not default your list to be able to deal with MEQ. But that’s not the world we live in. So we lean hard into plasma, like we’ve been doing forever.
Well you've just described the circular thinking that got us here. A common opponent is a Marine, so a common weapon is an anti-MEQ weapon, so in response people complain that Marines aren't tough anymore. So GW buff Marines, then people adjust and spam a slightly different array of anti-MEQ weapons. The main difference now is at this new MEQ level, everybody else's infantry feel like ***t.
This.
I think a big part of the problem was that SMs became twice as hard to kill with D1 weapons but their cost only went up slightly.
It would have been far better to price them in the 25-30pt range (even if it meant also upping their damage output). That way, they can still feel tough, but D1 weapons won't be stupidly inefficient against them.
Moreover, you wouldn't have needed the massive proliferation of D2 weapons to deal with undercosted 2W Marines. Thus helping Marines to feel more durable overall.
Sort of, the more expensive the marine the more efficient the d2 weapon as well, so it doesn't help unless the d2 weaposn cost more or are less available, which is what the root cause needed to be.
Nevelon wrote: 2W marines helped separate the elite infantry from the chaff hordes. Which is something that needed to happen. For many editions marines paid for the 3+ and T which was mostly irrelevant. People were already spamming anti-MEQ weapons, as that’s what you were likely to see across the table. And what killed marines killed guard and gaunt just fine.
By going to 2W GW has opened up more design space to help differentiate units, and the corresponding “best” gun to deal with them. Did they squander this design space by spamming things that are just best in class vs everything? Probably. But this is nothing new. Finding the best option and spamming it hard has been with us for a long time.
You also have the issue where marines are supposed to be rare and special, but make up 80% (not a real stat) of your opponents. If you were more likely to see gaunt/guard spam everytime you headed down to the FLGS you would not default your list to be able to deal with MEQ. But that’s not the world we live in. So we lean hard into plasma, like we’ve been doing forever.
Well you've just described the circular thinking that got us here. A common opponent is a Marine, so a common weapon is an anti-MEQ weapon, so in response people complain that Marines aren't tough anymore. So GW buff Marines, then people adjust and spam a slightly different array of anti-MEQ weapons. The main difference now is at this new MEQ level, everybody else's infantry feel like ***t.
This.
I think a big part of the problem was that SMs became twice as hard to kill with D1 weapons but their cost only went up slightly.
It would have been far better to price them in the 25-30pt range (even if it meant also upping their damage output). That way, they can still feel tough, but D1 weapons won't be stupidly inefficient against them.
Moreover, you wouldn't have needed the massive proliferation of D2 weapons to deal with undercosted 2W Marines. Thus helping Marines to feel more durable overall.
Sort of, the more expensive the marine the more efficient the d2 weapon as well, so it doesn't help unless the d2 weaposn cost more or are less available, which is what the root cause needed to be.
That's my point - if Marines hadn't been inflated to 2 wounds apiece at barely any cost, you wouldn't have also needed to upgrade a ton of other weapons (Heavy Bolters, Shuriken Cannons etc.) to D2 to compensate.
The most sensible alternative would have been to stick with 1W Marines and look for another way to make them a little tougher without doubling their resilience against standard weapons. Maybe give them the Armour of Contempt rule, so that they still get a 3+ save against AP-1 weapons?
BrianDavion wrote: Whose argued Marines should be immune to anti-tank weapons? I've not seen a single person say that
You find it implied whenever someone is saying something like "Marines don't feel like marines" on the tabletop.
Examples:
Tyran wrote: Ten marines is nothing on the tabletop but a significant force on the lore.
Wyzilla wrote: . . . Frankly it could be, and it wouldn't even be that hard to do so, the issue is that 40k is, even when completely throwing out the baby with the bathwater, still dragged down by insisting on certain traditional stats for units instead of embracing a total rescaling of everything. Best point of this being properly done is probably Epic, where Marines actually feel like Marines and Terminators trudge through macro weapon fire with greater reliability than most vehicles.
40k is a game where a bunch of vehicles get deployed in a combined arms force where a common weapon type is an anti-tank/anti-elite weapon. These are weapons which, even in lore, should kill a Marine. Knight armies are deployed with the expectation that they can be effectively countered. Marines just die quickly in an environment like that. People would like their Marines to feel like they can survive battles better, but 40k by it's very nature pits them against weapons designed to kill them, in terrain that doesn't help them too much.
For a game of 40k "They don't feel like Marines", not because the Marines aren't tough enough, but because the very deployment phase represents a catastrophic or desperate event.
Besides, Marines are arguably too tough already. It takes 9 Marines, Rapid Firing, to take a Marine out of action. Hell, it takes the same number of Marines (9) to take a single Marine down in close combat. That doesn't seem fluff accurate in the slightest.
To make Marines feel tough in the context of 40K you really have to reduce the amount of high AP weapons around.
Marines shouldn't kill marines in melee fast at all without power weapons. From the statistics of pretty much any historical matter of melee, two peers grinding against each other in melee results usually in a boatload of casualties but without that many dead until one party gets routed from the field. Likewise the principle marine weapons don't penetrate armor in the first place, nor do their smalls arms either, so I don't see why they should be quickly mowing each other down when that's Black Library brain bugs in the first place. The whole reason for Vengeance Rounds existing is that normal bolters are supposed to be awful at killing power armor. Arguably a normal boltgun should be AP 4 but that's pushing it really. 40k in general suffers from being far too deadly as a game with small arms while also chronically ignoring how morale should play out in the first place.
Also as I mentioned prior, part of the problem is that GW is so eager to increase wounds while ignoring toughness and strength in literally all of its games. Rather than hiking wounds for non character units the immediate go-to should just be increasing the toughness of units which suffers less from the problem of throwing the game into chaos. Hike toughness ratings across the board, change weapon strengths to account for it while having more granularity from the inflation, while still having the ability to pump up lascannons or meltaguns to strength 12 or 14 or whatever so infantry gets instead death'd all the same.
Realistic (human) morale is a bit tricky in a game that also contains brain-controlled alien-bugs and emotionless killer robots.
Really none of the factions in the game are a good representation of a typical, sane human...
HMint wrote: Realistic (human) morale is a bit tricky in a game that also contains brain-controlled alien-bugs and emotionless killer robots.
Really none of the factions in the game are a good representation of a typical, sane human...
this is why 1st edition with four psychology stats worked nicely, Leadership, Intelligence, Cool and Willpower.
suddenly became possible to have well led and trained troops who were easily spooked, or those two stupid to know when they should run, or those remarkably good at resisting mind games but easily broken by brute violence etc
The only thing that the 2W marines teaches us is that we shouldn't use lore as a reason to limit stats or to balance the game beyond a certain point.
Primaris Marines are 2W. In theory, they're 2W for the health of the game, or at least their faction. The lore reason of them having 2W just because they're Just So Damn Cool* doesn't really hold water when you look at the plethora of other models that should be at least as tough if not tougher than a Primaris (like a Necron Warrior) that have 1W or models which should be significantly squishier than a Primaris but have multiple wounds. For the most part, in thirty plus years of gaming, Marines were 1W. Now they're 2. GW let that genie out of the bottle.
So not only should Sisters get a stat bonus, they should get a stat bonus for the health of their faction, regardless of if it can be justified with existing lore (especially to Marine players). In a perfect world, all decisions regarding gameplay should be made for the health of the game but GW is GW and it doesn't always happen.
Unit1126PLL wrote: 4th edition outnumbering worked on Marines (or it does in our games and I can't find why it wouldn't)
Yeah Marines could still fail Morale tests, and the outnumbering bonuses worked on them too, it's just that you couldn't wipe out Marines with a Sweeping Advance.
Why is it that 'marines don't feel like marines' is the most consistent complaint in the history of 40k?
People don't say 'Admech don't feel like Admech' or 'Eldar don't feel Eldar' or 'Tyranids don't feel like Tyranids' ANYWHERE near as often. Usually only when their books are aggressively terrible.
My theory is that it's down to the fundamental nature of why people start playing space marines.
People are drawn to Space Marines because they want completely flat characters with no complexity or room for growth.
They want unstoppable, unflappable badasses that beat all the bad guys forever and it's not even hard; because they want to superimpose themselves over that type of character, explicitly.
Space marine players crave being Mary Sue's. So the only way they can be happy with Space Marine representation on the table is if they're Mary Sue enough.
This is a trap though, because no matter how Mary Sue the marines become, the game still has to be technically interactive. The game still has to have marines that can be killed, this means that the gnawing hole at the center of each Space Marine player can never truly be filled by the game.
Thus, 'Space Marines don't feel like Space Marines.' because they don't make ME, the Space Marine player, feel complete.
It's also one of the most broadly accurate things to be said. Marines don't feel like described for a number of reasons. Ranging from the fact that they can be pushing a large number of models for what's supposed to be an elite faction to the fact that their deployment and scoring methods feel incongrous.
Kanluwen wrote: It's also one of the most broadly accurate things to be said. Marines don't feel like described for a number of reasons. Ranging from the fact that they can be pushing a large number of models for what's supposed to be an elite faction to the fact that their deployment and scoring methods feel incongrous.
Couldn't that apply to just about every faction? Especially the scoring thing.
Insectum7 wrote: Well, in some sort of reversal it would be Tyranids don't feel like Tyranids because they only bring 100 models or so to the table.
100 might feel about right for nids if marines weren't pushing 50+ with support.
I mean, yes the number is expressed within the typical context of a 2k battle.
Not to mention that it's possibly easier than ever to bring 100+ Marines to the table, and strangely it seems harder to bring lots of Nids, now that squad sizes are capped at 20.
ERJAK wrote: Why is it that 'marines don't feel like marines' is the most consistent complaint in the history of 40k?
Even leaving power fantasies aside, the way they play in 40K is a reflection of the game structure and doesn't match up with their lore.
Play a game of 40K where the defender only has a few squads of Guardsmen on the field and brings in stronger assets piecemeal while the Marine player gets in, accomplishes their objective with overwhelming force, and extracts, and you'll get something closer to the typical Marine mission profile in the background. The 2K vs 2K perfectly even attrition match slugfest (where the other guy has an avalanche of plasma guns) is not generally what they're doing in fiction. And that's not even getting into how the game doesn't distinguish between 'combat ineffective' and 'dead', because it's a wargame and not an RPG.
Beyond that I think a lot of players have trouble disentangling protagonist bias from ground truth in a fictional context. You can watch Die Hard and intuitively understand that in real life a random unarmed New York cop probably isn't an even match for a dozen military-trained terrorists with assault rifles. It's harder to read stylized sci-fi fiction and understand whether the author is trying to tell you that any random Marine Captain can solo an Avatar, or show that this protagonist is cool and amazing because he manages to do that. Or even just reading background text, whether a single company of Marines killing thirteen billion Orks is meant to be an exceptionally heroic feat or business as usual.
GW used to understand this. They made a ruleset called Movie Marines that was a tongue-in-cheek representation of bolter-porn-novel Marines. Well, a good chunk of the fanbase seems to have missed the satire, as I now see it often referred to as 'a more lore-accurate Marine list'. And maybe GW has too, as Marines power creep ever further, going from brainwashed convicts in fancy armor to nine foot tall invulnerable ubermensch, while their growth in stature on the tabletop has been considerably more restrained.
And then, yeah, you've got the people who want to feel like Captain Titus and that doesn't happen when a Zzap Gun turns him to paste.
tl;dr Player expectations do not line up with the tabletop reality for a bunch of reasons, and I think it's unfair to chalk it up to people wanting to play Mary Sues.
The Captain Titus thing is another level of insane. The times I've seen "That's what a Marine should feel like." but somehow disregarding that he's a Captain, representing a particularly heroic individual to start out with, conveniently only fighting small groups of enemies at a time, somehow regenerating hit points using a Chainsword, and completely disregarding how often a player might fail and die anyways during the course of the campaign. But somehow people conflate their completion of the campaign as somehow representative of a normal Space Marine. Boggles the mind.
catbarf wrote: Play a game of 40K where the defender only has a few squads of Guardsmen on the field and brings in stronger assets piecemeal while the Marine player gets in, accomplishes their objective with overwhelming force, and extracts, and you'll get something closer to the typical Marine mission profile in the background.
Isn't this true of almost every faction in 40k? Especially for engagements at the scale of 40k. (An offensive would look different when the theatre is a planet (or several) and the army numbers in the millions/billions).
I think the issue with Marines is that their relative position in the 40k pecking order has fallen. (Given the ever increasing rise of monsters/tanks/daemon primarchs, Custodes etc etc).
I mean without the upgrades what would a basic Marine be? A guy with a boltgun and a single WS3+/S4/AP- punch? What's that worth in old money? 12 points? 8th edition Codex CSM would have suggested perhaps even less. For where GW seem to want to imagine a Marine, that doesn't seem very reasonable. Its a few more points than a guardsman or a termagant.
This has happened to a lot of factions. For instance the forum has seen repeated discussion over the decline of the Necron Warrior (and I don't really want to go down that road). To my mind however, GW have not being contradictory there. At some point - 5th edition, maybe later, they started to see Necron Warriors as nameless and numberless chaff. You may not like that - because it wasn't the case an ever increasingly number of years ago - but that's the case. They didn't like Marines going the same way - and I suspect nor did a lot of Marine players.
To come back to the thread title - I don't see Sisters as being "bigger" than their current stats. I think I upset the OP with this last time - but I see them at the same of tier as Eldar (and perhaps especially Dark Eldar). Sisters have been a bit more expensive - but this was because they had a 3+ while Guardians and Kabalites were running around with a 5+ (which often meant no armour save at all). I think the more elite Sisters were - and should be - priced like Aspect Warriors/Incubi. Should instead say Sacresants be more like Bladeguard? I'm not really seeing it myself.
To come back to the thread title - I don't see Sisters as being "bigger" than their current stats. I think I upset the OP with this last time - but I see them at the same of tier as Eldar (and perhaps especially Dark Eldar). Sisters have been a bit more expensive - but this was because they had a 3+ while Guardians and Kabalites were running around with a 5+ (which often meant no armour save at all). I think the more elite Sisters were - and should be - priced like Aspect Warriors/Incubi. Should instead say Sacresants be more like Bladeguard? I'm not really seeing it myself.
As a space elf player, I agree with this. A guardian should be roughly on par with a battle sister. A dominion squad should be roughly on par with a reaper squad. Etc. Obviously there are differences (exarchs should be leagues stronger than sister superiors), but it's a good rough comparison.
I think the issue with Marines is that their relative position in the 40k pecking order has fallen. (Given the ever increasing rise of monsters/tanks/daemon primarchs, Custodes etc etc).
Mmm . . . I would say the opposite is true. Marines have always existed beside giant threats. Greater Daemons, Vehicles and Titans have been slaughtering Marines since I began in 2nd edition. The difference isn't that the threats have gotten bigger (I played games with an Armorcast Reaver Titan in 2nd ed), but that there are simply more of them on a typical table. On the other hand, many "average" units back then have dropped in value compared to Marines in the time since. The 2W thing is a big jump for Marines, but even before that other losses were taken. You mentioned the Necron Warrior thing, but did you know that the common lesser Daemons were valued comparably to Marines? They all hung around the MEQppm for several editions.
Marines haven't fallen in the pecking order, they've been inflated themselves to deal with an environment where anti-MEQ solutions can be endlessly spammed, and their alternative engagement strategies have been removed. (Morale, "pinning"vehicles, flanking vehicles, use of grenades, aggressive Drop-Podding, etc.)
Tyel wrote: Isn't this true of almost every faction in 40k? Especially for engagements at the scale of 40k. (An offensive would look different when the theatre is a planet (or several) and the army numbers in the millions/billions).
Insectum7 wrote:and their alternative engagement strategies have been removed. (Morale, "pinning"vehicles, flanking vehicles, use of grenades, aggressive Drop-Podding, etc.)
I totally forgot to mention this before, but one of the big things about how Marines are portrayed in fiction is their operational tempo. Physically fast, perfectly coordinated, responding to new threats in an instant, lightning fast reflexes. That's one of the big things in the novels, even if it does get wanked up as 'transhuman dread'; the idea that they move way faster than their stature implies. I've seen a lot of people praise the Astartes animation for depicting all of this, with the Marines acting as a well-oiled machine to immediately overpower every novel threat.
How does that translate to tabletop? It doesn't. Not one iota. They're just Guardsmen with bigger guns and better armor and higher stats, shoved into a 60"x44" meat grinder against peer threats in an environment where 'take-all-comers' means 'kills Marines'.
Then you look at Epic and while it doesn't represent individual reflexes at all, Marines have the highest command rating plus mobility options for every unit plus good individual stats. It means that even if you theoretically outgun them, even if you bring tons of heavy infantry and emplaced weapons, you can't concentrate force as well as they can and while you're trying to bring that firepower to bear they're blitzing through your lines, taking you apart piecemeal while you struggle to react.
They're the ultimate special forces. They don't feel like that in 40K because they're treated like grunts. Most armies in 40K are maybe a bit off from how they're described in the fiction, but I don't think any have such a fundamental disconnect between how the operate in lore and how they operate on the table.
To come back to the thread title - I don't see Sisters as being "bigger" than their current stats. I think I upset the OP with this last time - but I see them at the same of tier as Eldar (and perhaps especially Dark Eldar). Sisters have been a bit more expensive - but this was because they had a 3+ while Guardians and Kabalites were running around with a 5+ (which often meant no armour save at all). I think the more elite Sisters were - and should be - priced like Aspect Warriors/Incubi. Should instead say Sacresants be more like Bladeguard? I'm not really seeing it myself.
As a space elf player, I agree with this. A guardian should be roughly on par with a battle sister. A dominion squad should be roughly on par with a reaper squad. Etc. Obviously there are differences (exarchs should be leagues stronger than sister superiors), but it's a good rough comparison.
I'm not sure that Tyel was suggesting Sisters should be equivalent to Guardians, which are the closest Eldar get to a chaff unit. I always figured Sisters were supposed to be right in between Guardsmen and Marines, while Guardians have historically been closer to Guardsmen.
I think it's worth noting that Eldar have been beefed up over the years, with Guardians getting upgraded to WS4/BS4 at some point and then the more recent increase in armor to 4+, while Sisters have stayed the same. With the general expansion of statlines across most factions, a bit of a buff to Sisters doesn't seem unreasonable, but I'm not sure what would be appropriate.
I totally forgot to mention this before, but one of the big things about how Marines are portrayed in fiction is their operational tempo. Physically fast, perfectly coordinated, responding to new threats in an instant, lightning fast reflexes. That's one of the big things in the novels, even if it does get wanked up as 'transhuman dread'; the idea that they move way faster than their stature implies. I've seen a lot of people praise the Astartes animation for depicting all of this, with the Marines acting as a well-oiled machine to immediately overpower every novel threat.
Although one of the downsides of standard bolter porn is that it usually fails to portray what happens when Marines lose said tempo and are forced into attritional fights against peer enemies (aka the tabletop) that are able to bring their full weight against them.
Fall of Malvolion is probably one of the few that does show it:
In the first twenty minutes from drop, the Lamenters had cut a hole in the alien assault that had punished them cruelly. Now, in just five more minutes, they were being annihilated.
I mean who are Space Marines "operationally better than"? Guard and Orks? Tau perhaps? "They are fast" = well, so is everyone else (depending on which version of the lore you use).
And again - in a game where the movement phase is the most important phase, I don't know how you'd represent this without being overpowered. (I'm sure the response will be that Marines didn't win every game of Epic but you'd have to explain how.)
I feel the same on Transhuman dread. (Or Reivers have scary masks). Who in-universe cares? Guardsmen? Guardians? Fire Warriors?
Do Orks care? I don't think so. Dark Eldar? No. Aspect Warriors? No. Anything Chaos? No. Ad Mech? No. Sisters? I don't think so. Tyranids? Hard no. Necrons? Hard no. GSC? Depends on what stage they are at - but if kicking off, probably no. Squats? I'm not up on the latest LoV lore but probably not.
In universe maybe Marines are meant to strike hard and then get out. In 40k I think their thing is being resilient. Toughness, armour save and wounds. Which I feel is where GW have tried to go.
Then you look at Epic and while it doesn't represent individual reflexes at all, Marines have the highest command rating plus mobility options for every unit plus good individual stats. It means that even if you theoretically outgun them, even if you bring tons of heavy infantry and emplaced weapons, you can't concentrate force as well as they can and while you're trying to bring that firepower to bear they're blitzing through your lines, taking you apart piecemeal while you struggle to react.
I want to be clear here: I'm not defending 10th or GW here, and I don't even disagree with your overall point, but the quality in Marines that you are praising Epic for having sounds word for word like Oath of Moment to me.
When Marines concentrate fire, they do it better than any other faction.
As I said though, I don't disagree with the overall point, because everyone can focus fire. Marines get bonuses when they do it, but that still doesn't feel the same as, say testing on leadership to aim at anything except the closest target and giving Marines a bonus to the check.
To take it back to Sisters, I think that dealing with melta is an easy fix. Whether it's the only fix, or the best fix, it's certainly the easiest. I also think the dex could make a big difference.
I mean who are Space Marines "operationally better than"? Guard and Orks? Tau perhaps? "They are fast" = well, so is everyone else (depending on which version of the lore you use).
And again - in a game where the movement phase is the most important phase, I don't know how you'd represent this without being overpowered. (I'm sure the response will be that Marines didn't win every game of Epic but you'd have to explain how.)
I feel the same on Transhuman dread. (Or Reivers have scary masks). Who in-universe cares? Guardsmen? Guardians? Fire Warriors?
Do Orks care? I don't think so. Dark Eldar? No. Aspect Warriors? No. Anything Chaos? No. Ad Mech? No. Sisters? I don't think so. Tyranids? Hard no. Necrons? Hard no. GSC? Depends on what stage they are at - but if kicking off, probably no. Squats? I'm not up on the latest LoV lore but probably not.
In universe maybe Marines are meant to strike hard and then get out. In 40k I think their thing is being resilient. Toughness, armour save and wounds. Which I feel is where GW have tried to go.
It isn't just that Marines are "fast", but that they are highly armored, equipped and flexible that allows them to bully the light infantry of other factions.
But they are fethed if their enemy starts bringing heavy weapons and vehicles to bear on them.
In other words, they need an operational advantage if they want to survive against most things you can find in a 40k table (because almost no one plays light infantry spam).
Tyel wrote: And again - in a game where the movement phase is the most important phase, I don't know how you'd represent this without being overpowered. (I'm sure the response will be that Marines didn't win every game of Epic but you'd have to explain how.)
It works in Epic because that game has an activation system that abstractly models command and control. Marines can activate more reliably and are better able to press their luck by chaining activations, and pack more force into each activation. When combined with their army-wide access to mobility options, it gives them the ability to do a lot of damage or significantly reposition a large chunk of their army before the enemy can respond.
The flipside is that Marines are expensive for their raw combat stats, so against armies like Guard, Orks, and Tyranids they have to maintain the initiative and avoid a straight-up slugfest. So you typically beat Marines by bogging them down long enough to bring fire superiority to bear, then surrounding them and wiping them out. Find, Fix, Flank, Finish.
So, how do you represent high operational tempo and initiative in a game that has zero modeling of operational tempo and initiative to begin with? Probably can't. You could use some kind of activation system, or a reaction system, or like, anything other than pure IGOUGO with perfect omniscient instant control over every trooper, and then you'd have a lever you could tweak to give Marines a tangible advantage. Otherwise, of course Marines aren't going to feel like their lore in a game where they might as well be Orks in fancier armor.
I genuinely don't think this is a fixable incongruity in the current incarnation of 40K because all GW has to play with are offense, defense, and movement rates, but the way a squad of centuries-old perfectly-synchronized veterans functions is completely identical to a horde of screaming green idiots literally born yesterday.
PenitentJake wrote: but the quality in Marines that you are praising Epic for having sounds word for word like Oath of Moment to me.
Concentration of force in Epic is an organic result of having an army with the best C&C, good mobility, and individual eliteness. It's the result of capabilities that allow you to out-play your opponent, rather than just out-shoot or out-punch them in a stand-up fight. If you just shove Marines straight into the enemy in Epic you will get creamed.
Oath of Moment is a magic 'I want this to die faster because reasons' button that facilitates Marines as brainless bruisers on a board too small for anything beyond a point-blank cage match.
If you had an alternate activation game, and Marines always got to activate extra units before the opponent could go, you might have something.
And if you had actual suppression mechanics, and Marines were better at initially ignoring the effects, you'd have another piece of it.
And if you had decent Morale rules, you could leverage another mechanic to effect.
And while I'm at it I'll shill for the "Use Leadership to determine freedom of targeting" mechanic from 4th ed too. Yet another interaction to help define "elite".
ERJAK wrote: Why is it that 'marines don't feel like marines' is the most consistent complaint in the history of 40k?
People don't say 'Admech don't feel like Admech' or 'Eldar don't feel Eldar' or 'Tyranids don't feel like Tyranids' ANYWHERE near as often. Usually only when their books are aggressively terrible.
My theory is that it's down to the fundamental nature of why people start playing space marines.
People are drawn to Space Marines because they want completely flat characters with no complexity or room for growth.
They want unstoppable, unflappable badasses that beat all the bad guys forever and it's not even hard; because they want to superimpose themselves over that type of character, explicitly.
Space marine players crave being Mary Sue's. So the only way they can be happy with Space Marine representation on the table is if they're Mary Sue enough.
This is a trap though, because no matter how Mary Sue the marines become, the game still has to be technically interactive. The game still has to have marines that can be killed, this means that the gnawing hole at the center of each Space Marine player can never truly be filled by the game.
Thus, 'Space Marines don't feel like Space Marines.' because they don't make ME, the Space Marine player, feel complete.
Nah.
I've found that most SM player start SMs because:
1) they come in all the starter boxes.
2) SMs are often recommended as being fairly easy to play.
3) They are easy to paint.
4) They look cool. Always have.
5) Simple advertising. Being the poster boys of the franchise their image is everywhere & they are well represented model/kit wise.
The problem with marines not feeling like marines is simple, because they don't feel like marines. They aren't durable enough, they became a fething HORDE army in 7th, and their mobility sucks because for some reason movement treats all humans as the absolute same in editions where differentiated movement is a thing. I've long argued/felt that the way marines should play is by basically fielding a bike army only the "bikes" are just marines, especially in older editions where you got the bump to T5. Eldar are arguably in the same boat save for durability since they're supposed to be fiendishly superhuman in their speed yet at their speediest move a whopping 7" if they want to shoot.
And, coming from the angle of a Deathwing guy, the only edition wherein Terminators were ever truly worth a damn and felt like Terminators is 2e, otherwise Epic is the only other game where they're done justice and feel flufy. Otherwise their durability is a right joke in the game where the only time they were good was when having a 3++ at the cost of no ranged weapons was a good deal. Arguably 9th was a heyday for Terminators but I despise the mechanics to achieve such results so much that it made me quit the game outright.
In nu40k too, Custodes are basically the movie marines army/what and how marines should feel in combat, while ideally Custodes wouldn't exist on the table.
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Insectum7 wrote: The Captain Titus thing is another level of insane. The times I've seen "That's what a Marine should feel like." but somehow disregarding that he's a Captain, representing a particularly heroic individual to start out with, conveniently only fighting small groups of enemies at a time, somehow regenerating hit points using a Chainsword, and completely disregarding how often a player might fail and die anyways during the course of the campaign. But somehow people conflate their completion of the campaign as somehow representative of a normal Space Marine. Boggles the mind.
"Captain Titus is what marines should feel like" they say as Captain Titus manages to kill something like 100-200 Chaos Space Marines in course of the campaign. I've encountered such a non-sequitur sentiment before and it makes me laugh madly every time. My biggest grief with that game is that for some reason Titus is on crack cocaine and buzzsaws through a company or two of CSM like it's nothing lmao.
I'd guess "marines don't feel like marines" because their tough power armor is a core part of the army's identity. There are a few issues with reflecting that on the tabletop:
- gw putting ever more models in 2k pts, plus the tools to delete them in droves
- the game featuring superheavies with their giant guns, plus the tools to delete those in one turn
- probably some other stuff I'm forgetting
Marines are never going to feel tough in a game like this, simply because they aren't even close to being the toughest unit in the game. And that's even before things like "marines are the meta" or "general lethality inflation".
Honestly even before superheavies all it took was a single battlecannon shell to splat the better part of a tactical squad. I think you'd need something like killteam (? Don't know the state of it) to make them shine.
It’s already been said, but the game is so flat now.
There is really no command or control, there is little room for tactical play.
Deployment has some thought, but the reach of units on a small table makes even bad deployment trivial to correct.
List building and army construction has been very stripped down. And tactical design of a list can really be summed up with do you counter what’s on the other side.
Elite units will always suffer in that environment, as they have to pay to just be blown up.
8-10 editions fixed non of this but I would argue it really started in 6.
Where they ramp up the attempts to make bring what ever a viable option.
Rather than attempting to make multiple builds and styles work.
Throwing a lot of good ideas at it, and showing little to no understanding.
Also something a term I think should be used more is narrative or internal realism!
Within the game, or world there is a realism that you stick to that gives the whole thing a neutral place to work from.
Often I think GW more went into Forge the narrative as a way to just push stupid things out and expect it to be smooth.
How elite should a marine be, when compared to a tank, and a cultist.
Marines are never going to feel tough in a game like this, simply because they aren't even close to being the toughest unit in the game. And that's even before things like "marines are the meta" or "general lethality inflation".
Honestly even before superheavies all it took was a single battlecannon shell to splat the better part of a tactical squad. I think you'd need something like killteam (? Don't know the state of it) to make them shine.
I would like to challenge this statement. Marines can feel elite in a game like 40k without giving up 90% of the model range for all armies. The game needs to be designed around it, though. If 5 Marines (Legionares) cost me 90pts, then giving 4 of them a Lascannon that can and will delete a Marine with no problem (Havocs) should not only cost 45pts. High end weapons as well as Marine profiles are too cheap. You don't even have to change the general Marine profile, if it wouldn't be possible and viable to just spam the best weapons. If hordes were cheaper, then lower end weapons with a higher rate of fire would be necessary to deal with them.
Marines are never going to feel tough in a game like this, simply because they aren't even close to being the toughest unit in the game. And that's even before things like "marines are the meta" or "general lethality inflation".
Honestly even before superheavies all it took was a single battlecannon shell to splat the better part of a tactical squad. I think you'd need something like killteam (? Don't know the state of it) to make them shine.
I would like to challenge this statement. Marines can feel elite in a game like 40k without giving up 90% of the model range for all armies. The game needs to be designed around it, though. If 5 Marines (Legionares) cost me 90pts, then giving 4 of them a Lascannon that can and will delete a Marine with no problem (Havocs) should not only cost 45pts. High end weapons as well as Marine profiles are too cheap. You don't even have to change the general Marine profile, if it wouldn't be possible and viable to just spam the best weapons. If hordes were cheaper, then lower end weapons with a higher rate of fire would be necessary to deal with them.
I agree, that'd reduce lethality by a bunch and would definitely help them. This would have some knock-on effects though, how do we deal with a knight army with fewer heavy weapons?
Marines are never going to feel tough in a game like this, simply because they aren't even close to being the toughest unit in the game. And that's even before things like "marines are the meta" or "general lethality inflation".
Honestly even before superheavies all it took was a single battlecannon shell to splat the better part of a tactical squad. I think you'd need something like killteam (? Don't know the state of it) to make them shine.
I would like to challenge this statement. Marines can feel elite in a game like 40k without giving up 90% of the model range for all armies. The game needs to be designed around it, though. If 5 Marines (Legionares) cost me 90pts, then giving 4 of them a Lascannon that can and will delete a Marine with no problem (Havocs) should not only cost 45pts. High end weapons as well as Marine profiles are too cheap. You don't even have to change the general Marine profile, if it wouldn't be possible and viable to just spam the best weapons. If hordes were cheaper, then lower end weapons with a higher rate of fire would be necessary to deal with them.
I agree, that'd reduce lethality by a bunch and would definitely help them. This would have some knock-on effects though, how do we deal with a knight army with fewer heavy weapons?
Knights would also have reduced firepower and presumably fewer wounds. I don't think knights are overly robust at present anyway.
Models and weapon profiles need to be looked at individually, but the general idea is:
- Chaff units are really cheap.
- High end weaponry like lascannon are expensive.
- Only spamming low rate of fire / high quality weapons will leave you struggling to effectively combat 100 Gaunts / Boys / Cultists / ... + extras on the opposing side of the table.
- By bringing more weapons and models that are relatively harmless against a Marine profile (and similar or better), they do feel more elite in return by being more durable and threatening to the enemy.
a_typical_hero wrote: Models and weapon profiles need to be looked at individually, but the general idea is:
- Chaff units are really cheap.
- High end weaponry like lascannon are expensive.
- Only spamming low rate of fire / high quality weapons will leave you struggling to effectively combat 100 Gaunts / Boys / Cultists / ... + extras on the opposing side of the table.
- By bringing more weapons and models that are relatively harmless against a Marine profile (and similar or better), they do feel more elite in return by being more durable and threatening to the enemy.
On the point of weapons being expensive, I think this is one of the big issues with 9th-10th.
Both editions have largely integrated weapon costs into unit costs (the latter doing so entirely). The problem is that this means the 'cheap' weapons are rarely ever worth it over the expensive ones, because you've already paid more for the model than the cheap weapon is worth. That or you end up making weapons much more samey because the costs are so similar.
Insectum7 wrote: The Captain Titus thing is another level of insane. The times I've seen "That's what a Marine should feel like." but somehow disregarding that he's a Captain, representing a particularly heroic individual to start out with, conveniently only fighting small groups of enemies at a time, somehow regenerating hit points using a Chainsword, and completely disregarding how often a player might fail and die anyways during the course of the campaign. But somehow people conflate their completion of the campaign as somehow representative of a normal Space Marine. Boggles the mind.
If it makes you feel any better, now he's 'just' a lieutenant and is going to single-handedly stop a tyranid invasion on two worlds along with *ahem* another faction's invasion.
