Bharring wrote:
If "new models" mattered at all, Marines would feel so much pity for Dark Reapers it wouldn't even be funny.

Just being cute man. Space marines got 1 good new model. Repulsors are actually decent because they are functional but still over-costed. I can sympathize with you on all aspect warriors. Still in fine-cast? OMG.


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Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Does anyone else think it's absurd that equal points of well armed company commanders beat a well armed space marine captain in CC? This is clearly proff that they are OP is it not?

I would say less OP just undercosted like most of codex astra BOGOF.

Undercosted and OP mean the exact same thing to me dude.

I would say Alitoc is OP as they realy need a rewrite to be balanced where as most of the guard stuff doesn't need new rules just to pay a fair points cost for what they get. But neither are fun to play against.

Yeah I've been complaining about -1 to hit army traits since the release of the eldar codex. It's problem number 1.

I'd take no invun on my CCs for an additional wound, like what other T3 armies get a la Cadre Fireblade.

It all comes down to people not taking balanced lists these days if you're truly getting miffed about guard company commanders . I get it if a Xenos player, which lacks sniper weapons, complains about the lack of capability to remove buffing characters. And please don't say "but but one guard character is so easy to hide out of LoS" because that guard player has to make the decision to hide that character and not play the game the way he wants. It has an impact. Meanwhile the snipers can do what they please. And scout snipers with camo cloaks are really solid units. I play against space marine armies including them all the time and they are always a hassle to remove, just like any 2+ save units are to guard. Would I really waste battle cannon shots on them? I've had to before to score Maelstrom points, which removed that firepower from bigger threats to my force.

At the end of the day, it's still a guard character. It's quite laughable that anyone is complaining about company commanders and their close combat "prowess." And I play Catachans. They die like dogs the instant they make it into CC.

Ice_can wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Unaware that it was a waste to put decent weapons on units that have 2+ bs 2+ WS....oh yeah...it's not. It's actually a waste NOT to put them there. You guys are just incapable of seeing past your own army. The reality is - that the CC should not even have a 5++ save. That is just more sheer lunacy coming out of the AM codex.

He has a 5++ save or a 5+ save.

What, should he have a 3+ and a 5++?

Truthfully, you are the one incapable of "seeing past" their own army. You dumped points into a CC weapon that has AP-3 against an army where the best saves are not really going to be too intimidated by that since the stuff is already at a fairly high save.

So scions arn't worried by power weapons?

Scions are a 4+ save. All that Power Weapon did was kill a suicide unit that likely already blew its load.

Also power weapons are fairly normal fair for marine HQ's.

They might be normal fare for Marine HQs, but if someone's going to whine about a decked out Marine Captain being more points than a barebones Guard Company Commander, they haven't looked at the Company Commander's options versus role.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Unaware that it was a waste to put decent weapons on units that have 2+ bs 2+ WS....oh yeah...it's not. It's actually a waste NOT to put them there. You guys are just incapable of seeing past your own army. The reality is - that the CC should not even have a 5++ save. That is just more sheer lunacy coming out of the AM codex.

He has a 5++ save or a 5+ save.

What, should he have a 3+ and a 5++?

Well hes in flak armor - I assume he should have a 5+ save with no invulnerable. There's probably more CC than there are space marines in the imperium - if refractor feilds are that common I'm wondering why they don't give them to the astartes - they would make better use of them. Come on man - it's a joke that a CC has a 5++ save.

You have Iron Halos on your Captains. A 3+ save(or in the case of Terminators, 2+) with a 4++.

Kind of like my librarian - hes in power armor so he has a 3+ save - with no invulnerable.

If you want an Invulnerable save, take one in Terminator Armour.

Also, cast Null Zone and that Company Commander has no Invulnerable Save. I mean since you're taking a Librarian anyways...

Terminators are 2+, 5++ not sure where your getting your stats from but they are not correct.

A Company Commander is 5+ or 5++.

Not sure why you're thinking that's related to Terminators. Xenomancers was complaining about Company Commanders having a 5+ Invulnerable Save. They have a 5+ invulnerable or a 5+ standard. I snarked at him about his expectations.

FYI an Iron Halo is 4++ not 3++

Reread the underlined parts.



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Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Does anyone else think it's absurd that equal points of well armed company commanders beat a well armed space marine captain in CC? This is clearly proff that they are OP is it not?

I would say less OP just undercosted like most of codex astra BOGOF.

Undercosted and OP mean the exact same thing to me dude.

I would say Alitoc is OP as they realy need a rewrite to be balanced where as most of the guard stuff doesn't need new rules just to pay a fair points cost for what they get. But neither are fun to play against.

Alaitoc and its -1 to hit by itself wouldn't be a huge issue if it didn't apply to the Flyers as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
I'd take no invun on my CCs for an additional wound, like what other T3 armies get a la Cadre Fireblade.

It all comes down to people not taking balanced lists these days if you're truly getting miffed about guard company commanders . I get it if a Xenos player, which lacks sniper weapons, complains about the lack of capability to remove buffing characters. And please don't say "but but one guard character is so easy to hide out of LoS" because that guard player has to make the decision to hide that character and not play the game the way he wants. It has an impact. Meanwhile the snipers can do what they please. And scout snipers with camo cloaks are really solid units. I play against space marine armies including them all the time and they are always a hassle to remove, just like any 2+ save units are to guard. Would I really waste battle cannon shots on them? I've had to before to score Maelstrom points, which removed that firepower from bigger threats to my force.

At the end of the day, it's still a guard character. It's quite laughable that anyone is complaining about company commanders and their close combat "prowess." And I play Catachans. They die like dogs the instant they make it into CC.

It's not the fact that they have "prowess", it's that apparently it is "inefficient" to kill them with stuff kitted for killing Marines.

Or at least that's the impression I'm getting.

"Yeah I've been complaining about -1 to hit army traits since the release of the eldar codex."

Odd. Others have been complaining ever since the -1-to-hit traits came out. Why is it only a problem when your most-hated-faction gets it?

Bharring wrote:
"Yeah I've been complaining about -1 to hit army traits since the release of the eldar codex."

Odd. Others have been complaining ever since the -1-to-hit traits came out. Why is it only a problem when your most-hated-faction gets it?

To be 100% honest on my part:
I still like the -1 to hit trait. I just think with Aeldari it shouldn't have applied to Flyers.

This appears to have gone wat of topic from is a basic guardsmen worth 5ppm. IMHO yes they are.

On the Company comander vrs Captains debate the cheapest company comander is 74 pointa without weapons or 2.5 commanders, add gravis armour etc and the points get even more lopsided as he's 104 without weapons which are fixed and take him to 134 or 4.5 CC.

Alitoc Hemlocks, Rangers, Flyers basically an entire army of -2 to hit was bad game design, especially when you add in -1 to hit strategum and +1 sv pshycic powers.

Ice_can wrote:
This appears to have gone wat of topic from is a basic guardsmen worth 5ppm. IMHO yes they are.

On the Company comander vrs Captains debate the cheapest company comander is 74 pointa without weapons or 2.5 commanders, add gravis armour etc and the points get even more lopsided as he's 104 without weapons which are fixed and take him to 134 or 4.5 CC.

Alitoc Hemlocks, Rangers, Flyers basically an entire army of -2 to hit was bad game design, especially when you add in -1 to hit strategum and +1 sv pshycic powers.

Someone has to be able survive more than two turns against IG. It ain't standard marines.

Ice_can wrote:
This appears to have gone wat of topic from is a basic guardsmen worth 5ppm. IMHO yes they are.

On the Company comander vrs Captains debate the cheapest company comander is 74 pointa without weapons or 2.5 commanders, add gravis armour etc and the points get even more lopsided as he's 104 without weapons which are fixed and take him to 134 or 4.5 CC.

You mean Captain, right?
Company Commanders are 30 pts each.

Alitoc Hemlocks, Rangers, Flyers basically an entire army of -2 to hit was bad game design, especially when you add in -1 to hit strategum and +1 sv pshycic powers.

Literally all that has to happen is Flyers can't benefit from it. Not too fussed by the Rangers getting a benefit, since it's specific to them.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
This appears to have gone wat of topic from is a basic guardsmen worth 5ppm. IMHO yes they are.

On the Company comander vrs Captains debate the cheapest company comander is 74 pointa without weapons or 2.5 commanders, add gravis armour etc and the points get even more lopsided as he's 104 without weapons which are fixed and take him to 134 or 4.5 CC.

You mean Captain, right?
Company Commanders are 30 pts each.

Alitoc Hemlocks, Rangers, Flyers basically an entire army of -2 to hit was bad game design, especially when you add in -1 to hit strategum and +1 sv pshycic powers.

Literally all that has to happen is Flyers can't benefit from it. Not too fussed by the Rangers getting a benefit, since it's specific to them.

Yeah typo on my part I've got lost as to where this is going as I doubt a Captain is going to be fighting 2.5 company comanders simultaneously.

Personally I would have found it much more balanced if Alitoc got the Always in cover if they don't move bonus rather than -1 to hit

Bharring wrote:
"Yeah I've been complaining about -1 to hit army traits since the release of the eldar codex."

Odd. Others have been complaining ever since the -1-to-hit traits came out. Why is it only a problem when your most-hated-faction gets it?

Well to be honest - The admech players were all playing full mars with cawlbots when the eddition started. Until people figured out stiggies with electric shock priest was the bomb diggity. Also - the -1 to hit trait doesn't affect their vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
I'd take no invun on my CCs for an additional wound, like what other T3 armies get a la Cadre Fireblade.

It all comes down to people not taking balanced lists these days if you're truly getting miffed about guard company commanders . I get it if a Xenos player, which lacks sniper weapons, complains about the lack of capability to remove buffing characters. And please don't say "but but one guard character is so easy to hide out of LoS" because that guard player has to make the decision to hide that character and not play the game the way he wants. It has an impact. Meanwhile the snipers can do what they please. And scout snipers with camo cloaks are really solid units. I play against space marine armies including them all the time and they are always a hassle to remove, just like any 2+ save units are to guard. Would I really waste battle cannon shots on them? I've had to before to score Maelstrom points, which removed that firepower from bigger threats to my force.

At the end of the day, it's still a guard character. It's quite laughable that anyone is complaining about company commanders and their close combat "prowess." And I play Catachans. They die like dogs the instant they make it into CC.

Nah dude - it took me 1 second to break that. You can just hide CC behind hell hounds or LR if they have a ton snipers (which they wont) Snipers are not viable. If they were - we'd see Gman buffing 30 sniper scouts winning tournaments. NOPE.

That's not a perfect solution. The Hellhound blows up on a 4+. So there's danger being close, probably more danger than snipers. If he's behind a Leman Russ, it means he's in the backfield so would probably be hidden anyway. It's not rock paper scissors.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
"Yeah I've been complaining about -1 to hit army traits since the release of the eldar codex."

Odd. Others have been complaining ever since the -1-to-hit traits came out. Why is it only a problem when your most-hated-faction gets it?

Well to be honest - The admech players were all playing full mars with cawlbots when the eddition started. Until people figured out stiggies with electric shock priest was the bomb diggity. Also - the -1 to hit trait doesn't affect their vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
I'd take no invun on my CCs for an additional wound, like what other T3 armies get a la Cadre Fireblade.

It all comes down to people not taking balanced lists these days if you're truly getting miffed about guard company commanders . I get it if a Xenos player, which lacks sniper weapons, complains about the lack of capability to remove buffing characters. And please don't say "but but one guard character is so easy to hide out of LoS" because that guard player has to make the decision to hide that character and not play the game the way he wants. It has an impact. Meanwhile the snipers can do what they please. And scout snipers with camo cloaks are really solid units. I play against space marine armies including them all the time and they are always a hassle to remove, just like any 2+ save units are to guard. Would I really waste battle cannon shots on them? I've had to before to score Maelstrom points, which removed that firepower from bigger threats to my force.

At the end of the day, it's still a guard character. It's quite laughable that anyone is complaining about company commanders and their close combat "prowess." And I play Catachans. They die like dogs the instant they make it into CC.

Nah dude - it took me 1 second to break that. You can just hide CC behind hell hounds or LR if they have a ton snipers (which they wont) Snipers are not viable. If they were - we'd see Gman buffing 30 sniper scouts winning tournaments. NOPE.

Ad mech dogma traits do effect their vehcles.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
That's not a perfect solution. The Hellhound blows up on a 4+. So there's danger being close, probably more danger than snipers. If he's behind a Leman Russ, it means he's in the backfield so would probably be hidden anyway. It's not rock paper scissors.

Russ punishers aren't in the backfeild. Could easily hide 3-4 CC behind one. Not a dang thing anyone could do about. Heck - any russ can do this - they are wasting points on 20-30 sniper rifle (which is what it takes to reliable kill characters with 4+ wounds) they probably gonna struggle to kill a LR anyways. It would only take 1 turn for your 9 mortars to wipe out all their snipers. Then they are free to move about. It seems like it should work - it just doesn't that's why you never seen snipers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
"Yeah I've been complaining about -1 to hit army traits since the release of the eldar codex."

Odd. Others have been complaining ever since the -1-to-hit traits came out. Why is it only a problem when your most-hated-faction gets it?

Well to be honest - The admech players were all playing full mars with cawlbots when the eddition started. Until people figured out stiggies with electric shock priest was the bomb diggity. Also - the -1 to hit trait doesn't affect their vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
I'd take no invun on my CCs for an additional wound, like what other T3 armies get a la Cadre Fireblade.

It all comes down to people not taking balanced lists these days if you're truly getting miffed about guard company commanders . I get it if a Xenos player, which lacks sniper weapons, complains about the lack of capability to remove buffing characters. And please don't say "but but one guard character is so easy to hide out of LoS" because that guard player has to make the decision to hide that character and not play the game the way he wants. It has an impact. Meanwhile the snipers can do what they please. And scout snipers with camo cloaks are really solid units. I play against space marine armies including them all the time and they are always a hassle to remove, just like any 2+ save units are to guard. Would I really waste battle cannon shots on them? I've had to before to score Maelstrom points, which removed that firepower from bigger threats to my force.

At the end of the day, it's still a guard character. It's quite laughable that anyone is complaining about company commanders and their close combat "prowess." And I play Catachans. They die like dogs the instant they make it into CC.

Nah dude - it took me 1 second to break that. You can just hide CC behind hell hounds or LR if they have a ton snipers (which they wont) Snipers are not viable. If they were - we'd see Gman buffing 30 sniper scouts winning tournaments. NOPE.

Ad mech dogma traits do effect their vehcles.

Wow - Well the only admech player I play doesn't take stygies vehicals I guess - he wants the cawl buff for them. He takes just a batallion with 40 electropreist it seems. That is crazy though. Not sure why he doesn't just do all stygies.

Except I do see snipers. Tau sniper drones do serious work. And plenty of Marine players in my store use scout snipers.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
Except I do see snipers. Tau sniper drones do serious work. And plenty of Marine players in my store use scout snipers.

Well those marines should be nice autowins for you, then.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
Except I do see snipers. Tau sniper drones do serious work. And plenty of Marine players in my store use scout snipers.

2 of my local SM players play a 5 or 10 man squad with character to buff them and we suggested to place 1 ML for the stratagem, they actually do a lot of damage when playing semi-comp (we are a semi comp group, we dont net list or take insane soup lists, but we try to take the bests units we can and play the best we can within the limits of what we like, like our BA player will play with Smash Captains and infantry, DC and some Armigers, but not IG, SOB player takes SOB with either Shield capts or a Knight, normally not both, DE player takes Ravagers and Coven but not Venom Spam).

They are actually kinda scary, yeah they die a bit quickly, but hiding them in cover and a good deployment can get them to fire for a couple turns and do some seriously damage for scouts.

18 ppm is soul-crushing.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
Except I do see snipers. Tau sniper drones do serious work. And plenty of Marine players in my store use scout snipers.

2 of my local SM players play a 5 or 10 man squad with character to buff them and we suggested to place 1 ML for the stratagem, they actually do a lot of damage when playing semi-comp (we are a semi comp group, we dont net list or take insane soup lists, but we try to take the bests units we can and play the best we can within the limits of what we like, like our BA player will play with Smash Captains and infantry, DC and some Armigers, but not IG, SOB player takes SOB with either Shield capts or a Knight, normally not both, DE player takes Ravagers and Coven but not Venom Spam).

They are actually kinda scary, yeah they die a bit quickly, but hiding them in cover and a good deployment can get them to fire for a couple turns and do some seriously damage for scouts.

That's mostly what my local store is like. Though there are some guys who run top of the line lists.

Yeah that mortal wounds Stratagem on a scout heavy bolter is tricky.

Martel, I suppose I should disclose we play Maelstrom or those open war cards. So often times it isn't just about killing things and points efficiency, etc. It's about those random OBJs. I've never played ITC but I know enough about it that it plays like an entirely different game. My games are usually very close, so *shoulder shrug*

We stopped using cards because the card draws were too dominant.

Yeah it can be swingy but I think it keeps the game fresh and we seem to have a lot of fun using them.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
Yeah it can be swingy but I think it keeps the game fresh and we seem to have a lot of fun using them.

For a fun game they are good, but for a competitive setting they can screw one player so bad it's gamebreaking.
ITC does bring in it's own quirks like every giard squad gets a mortor to avoid reaper etc etc, but the new secondary missions should adress that and make it a bit better balanced. But it's hard trying to have a balanced competitive mission pack with codex's dropping and powercreep etc.

 Colonel Cross wrote:
Except I do see snipers. Tau sniper drones do serious work. And plenty of Marine players in my store use scout snipers.

I played a ravengaurd player with my ultras the other day. I ran 2x repuslsors calgar and a lut plus assorted infantry (agressors/hellblasters/intersessors) and a redemptor dread. It's not the most brutal marines list but it is more of a toned down list I use to play against weaker armies. he went first he did practically nothing - put 6 wounds on a repulsor and 4 on another - and killed a few interesessors - where were my 3 characters? hiding being giant repulsors ofc. Now if his 30 sniper scouts had been dev squads. He would have blow both my repulsors up probably - snipers are the biggest joke in the game. It's so easy to counter them I don't know why anyone would bring them.


I practically tabled him the next turn. Killing meq is a complete joke. 18 point scouts? LOL.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Colonel Cross wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Colonel Cross wrote:
Except I do see snipers. Tau sniper drones do serious work. And plenty of Marine players in my store use scout snipers.

2 of my local SM players play a 5 or 10 man squad with character to buff them and we suggested to place 1 ML for the stratagem, they actually do a lot of damage when playing semi-comp (we are a semi comp group, we dont net list or take insane soup lists, but we try to take the bests units we can and play the best we can within the limits of what we like, like our BA player will play with Smash Captains and infantry, DC and some Armigers, but not IG, SOB player takes SOB with either Shield capts or a Knight, normally not both, DE player takes Ravagers and Coven but not Venom Spam).

They are actually kinda scary, yeah they die a bit quickly, but hiding them in cover and a good deployment can get them to fire for a couple turns and do some seriously damage for scouts.

That's mostly what my local store is like. Though there are some guys who run top of the line lists.

Yeah that mortal wounds Stratagem on a scout heavy bolter is tricky.

Martel, I suppose I should disclose we play Maelstrom or those open war cards. So often times it isn't just about killing things and points efficiency, etc. It's about those random OBJs. I've never played ITC but I know enough about it that it plays like an entirely different game. My games are usually very close, so *shoulder shrug*

My ultras will table any marine army in 3 turns. Objectives do not matter in marines vs marines. It's glass vss glass - whoever has more guns wins.


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Martel732 wrote:
We stopped using cards because the card draws were too dominant.

We stopped using cards because the game is over in 3-4 turns. Unless you are playing armies that have 4 point models being spammed.

For the last time... Stop comparing guard to SM. SM need buffs, period end of story. It's not fair to compare guard units to units from the second weakest codex this edition (and only second weakest because of the joke that is GK).

Stux wrote:
Bare bones, the SM Captain does an average of 2.16 wounds to the Company Commanders, or 16pts of damage.

In return, 2 Company Commanders do 0.59 wounds, or 9pts of damage.

This doesn't account for the Company Commanders ordering themselves though, as there's nothing that directly helps the Fight Phase. However in the second turn they could Fix Bayonets themselves and Fight twice, which puts their damage output above the Captain in terms of points worth of damage.

Your math is incorrect.

You are correct when you say that a space marine captain armed with a bolt pistol/chainsword does 2.16 wounds to the commanders.

You are also correct when you say that 2 company commanders do 0.59 wounds to the SM captain.

However the SM captain does 16.2 "points" worth of damage to the commanders and the commanders do 8.73 "points" of damage back. I am going to assume you rounded in your favor to make the numbers look better.

You are also incorrect when you say that "Fix Bayonets" makes the commanders fight better than the SM captain. According to my math, even with "Fix Bayonets" active the commanders are only doing 15.39 "points" of damage to the captain.

Even in a scenario where we are comparing guard commanders to SM captains (which we shouldn't because SM sucks right now) the SM captain still comes out on top. I still stand by my statement that Guard commanders are nothing more than orders on a stick and are only meant to act as mobile buffs for infantry... while characters like SM captains are meant to be counter-chargers in the thick of the fighting as well as act as mobile buff bubbles.

I can see company commanders going up to 35 points if you want to be a stickler about it. But they really aren't worth 40.

Ice_can wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
So I am still sensing that all the people with a problem here think they can only have a fair game against guard if they get 60-90 points extra when playing a typical Guard army? That does seem to be well within the margin of error which does seem to suggest that if you are having a problem playing against Guard the problem is probably a bit bigger?

We are just staying on topic which is are Guardsmen worth 5ppm to which the answer is yes.

No one is saying undercosted infantry squads are the only issues with the codex. It's just the one that comes into every game be it vrs guard or imperial soup.

Against pure guard the tanks outperform atleast marine and tau tanks

Against Soup the CP generation is out of control.

But if you try and tackle evrything with a single magic fix, you make the same mistakes GW has for years with the swings being massive and failing to address the underlying issue.

Isn't this the magic fix you are referring to?

If you are talking CP generation that is an issue with increasing the cost of an army by 30 points. That is honestly neither here nor there. It would solve nothing.

If you think th codex has wider problems and getting 60 less points in your army would make no difference to the outcome, again nothing solved.

If it merely makes you feel troops across different armies looked at in various degrees of isolation to synergy with the rest of their rules and units are more balance, but doesn't fix the problems you see, well you would feel better about it but achieve nothing?

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
So I am still sensing that all the people with a problem here think they can only have a fair game against guard if they get 60-90 points extra when playing a typical Guard army? That does seem to be well within the margin of error which does seem to suggest that if you are having a problem playing against Guard the problem is probably a bit bigger?

We are just staying on topic which is are Guardsmen worth 5ppm to which the answer is yes.

No one is saying undercosted infantry squads are the only issues with the codex. It's just the one that comes into every game be it vrs guard or imperial soup.

Against pure guard the tanks outperform atleast marine and tau tanks

Against Soup the CP generation is out of control.

But if you try and tackle evrything with a single magic fix, you make the same mistakes GW has for years with the swings being massive and failing to address the underlying issue.

Isn't this the magic fix you are referring to?

If you are talking CP generation that is an issue with increasing the cost of an army by 30 points. That is honestly neither here nor there. It would solve nothing.

If you think th codex has wider problems and getting 60 less points in your army would make no difference to the outcome, again nothing solved.

If it merely makes you feel troops across different armies looked at in various degrees of isolation to synergy with the rest of their rules and units are more balance, but doesn't fix the problems you see, well you would feel better about it but achieve nothing?

I can't decide if your trolling or just blind to how undercosted most of the astra Militarum codex is.

Guard Infantry Squad models at 4ppm both buffed and unbuffed beat firewarriors, Skitari, Marines they only loose to alitoc rangers becuase -2 to hit is busted.

At 5ppm they are balanced against FW at 7ppm Rangers at 8ppm
Marines need to come down in points to be balanced against anything else.

That is the context in which Infantry Squad stat guardsmen are clearly worth 5ppm not their current 4ppm cost.

Guard players have used soup as an excuse that guard arn't undercosted.

The maths and gameplay experience of many players say that's wrong mono faction vrs mono faction guard are still a top tier army.


Those other two points are area's of 8th edition that still need fixed. Fixing the infantry squads cost was the topic of the thread and will help balance the game better. It's not the only issue but it is a problem that does need fixed.

Don't forget that you can give a Guard Company Commander Power Armour, a 4++, +1 attack, +1 WS/+1BS, +1 wound and access to combi-weapons and better CC weapons for the low low price of 15 points, if you replace his orders with an aura.

+2 sv, +1 invuln, +1 attack, +1 WS/BS, +1 wound, probably worth 10 pts tops, so yeah, the Guard company commander is probably undercosted by ~5 points. Not a big deal at all, I'd say. In a typical list, that's a difference of 10-20 pts. Guard aren't winning by the margin of the Company Commander alone.

(FYI referring to the Sororitas Canoness here, which has the next closest statline in Imperium to the guard Company Commander, and has a re-rolls 1's aura instead of Orders. She's got Power Armour and a 4++ like a Space Marine Captain, WS 2+ / BS 2+, and 4 attacks, with 5 wounds. T3 S3, LD9 I think. 45 points)

" becuase -2 to hit is busted."

Or necessary vs IG.

Ice_can wrote:
I can't decide if your trolling or just blind to how undercosted most of the astra Militarum codex is.

Guard Infantry Squad models at 4ppm both buffed and unbuffed beat firewarriors, Skitari, Marines they only loose to alitoc rangers because -2 to hit is busted.

At 5ppm they are balanced against FW at 7ppm Rangers at 8ppm
Marines need to come down in points to be balanced against anything else.

That is the context in which Infantry Squad stat guardsmen are clearly worth 5ppm not their current 4ppm cost.

Guard players have used soup as an excuse that guard aren’t undercosted.

The maths and gameplay experience of many players say that's wrong mono faction vrs mono faction guard are still a top tier army.


Those other two points are area's of 8th edition that still need fixed. Fixing the infantry squads cost was the topic of the thread and will help balance the game better. It's not the only issue but it is a problem that does need fixed.

Honestly not trolling. Just a point about how it seems a lot of people think this is a critical issue from reading this thread, when in reality it is a minor one if at the end of the day it is a 30-90 point change to most guard armies.

So you say mono guard (leaving soup aside) is a top tier army. I assume by top tier being an issue it is higher than top tier and unbalanced. I think it is a strong army - I am fairly naff at 40k and yet placed 6th at a reasonably large weekend tourney and didn't get higher because versus a knight army I didn't go first and they got the shadowsword before it got them. Anytime I played a good player I didn't do that well, anytime I played a good player with bad dice it was a slaughter. All this with me only vaguely understanding how the objective cards worked and often forgetting about them...

I think having the issue in isolation makes it look odd to me. You deal with things in isolation if they are a key issue or problem and for the number of points under discussion they honestly aren't. If it was presented in the context of other problems - i.e. the Guard codex is overpowered because of x,y,z. taking the troop selection first guardsmen should be a point more because... It would make more sense to me.

Personally, as I floated several dozen pages previously I think the practice of naked squads to meet minimums is wrong. I would want to see the base cost of a squad be 55 points, but the cost of the vox be 1 point, all the special weapon costs dropped by a point and heavy weapon costs dropped by 5. These changes would cascade across the army so base costs everywhere would increase, but the cost of fully tooled up armies wouldn't. That example of 9 squads to max CPs for other toys now costs the army 135 and you are better off giving them gear and making them part of your plan.

It would appear from my experience the problem isn't well equipped guard armies but ones that min max. They would also be more interesting to play with as well as less numerous and have more firepower which normally means easier to balance.

I did some calculating with equal points of IG vs Tau Firewarriors; with winning equals wiping the other out.
With IG at 4pts; 14 IG vs 8 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 3; If Tau go first IG win on round 5.
With IG at 5pts; 14 IG vs 10 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 4; If Tau go first Tau win on round 5.
With IG at 6pts; 14 IG vs 12 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 7; If Tau go first IG win on round 4.

So if Tau Firewarriors are the benchmark. IG should be about 5pts. I also did some calculations like I did in the SM thread; and Tau are 133% more durable than guard vs lasguns and 133% more firepower than guard vs guard. So basically 133% better than guard. 5 x 133% = 6.65, so 5pt IG and 7pt FW seem to work.

It's a huge issue chris.

an IG battalion is currently around 50 points under-costed. If infantry are worth 5ppm and a CC is worth 40.

In an imperial knights list - that is kinda of like upgrading a warden to a crusader - were talking about a titan super weapon levels of under-costed. If you mutiply that across a whole 2000 point army - it's the equal of 10 titan super weapons.

OFC that is just an analogy. The fact is 50 points off an IG battalion is probably one of the more egregious points imbalances in the game right now because it literally affects every imperial army and in turn makes fixing all the other imbalances seem unnecessary. As you can just spam imperial guard against their undercosted stuff and come out on top 50% of the time.

The game needs balance. It needs it now. People are actually starting to play sigmar at my shop...I am one of them.

Tygre wrote:
I did some calculating with equal points of IG vs Tau Firewarriors; with winning equals wiping the other out.
With IG at 4pts; 14 IG vs 8 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 3; If Tau go first IG win on round 5.
With IG at 5pts; 14 IG vs 10 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 4; If Tau go first Tau win on round 5.
With IG at 6pts; 14 IG vs 12 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 7; If Tau go first IG win on round 4.

So if Tau Firewarriors are the benchmark. IG should be about 5pts. I also did some calculations like I did in the SM thread; and Tau are 133% more durable than guard vs lasguns and 133% more firepower than guard vs guard. So basically 133% better than guard. 5 x 133% = 6.65, so 5pt IG and 7pt FW seem to work.

And this is the problem with doing tests based simply off math.

"14 IG" can actually be done--but only 13 would have Lasguns, since Sergeants literally cannot have Lasguns like their squads. The remaining 4 would be Veterans from a Command Squad, so would be BS3+ rather than 4+.
8 Tau isn't really able to be done, and 12 models in a Strike Team isn't commonly done.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Tygre wrote:
I did some calculating with equal points of IG vs Tau Firewarriors; with winning equals wiping the other out.
With IG at 4pts; 14 IG vs 8 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 3; If Tau go first IG win on round 5.
With IG at 5pts; 14 IG vs 10 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 4; If Tau go first Tau win on round 5.
With IG at 6pts; 14 IG vs 12 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 7; If Tau go first IG win on round 4.

So if Tau Firewarriors are the benchmark. IG should be about 5pts. I also did some calculations like I did in the SM thread; and Tau are 133% more durable than guard vs lasguns and 133% more firepower than guard vs guard. So basically 133% better than guard. 5 x 133% = 6.65, so 5pt IG and 7pt FW seem to work.

And this is the problem with doing tests based simply off math.

"14 IG" can actually be done--but only 13 would have Lasguns, since Sergeants literally cannot have Lasguns like their squads. The remaining 4 would be Veterans from a Command Squad, so would be BS3+ rather than 4+.
8 or 12 Tau isn't really able to be done.

I thought Fire Warriors could be taken in groups of 12.

But yeah, 14 IG is 13 lasguns, 4 at 6PPM and BS 3+.

I'm assuming you took the morale phase into account? Oh wait, I'm sure you didn't.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Tygre wrote:
I did some calculating with equal points of IG vs Tau Firewarriors; with winning equals wiping the other out.
With IG at 4pts; 14 IG vs 8 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 3; If Tau go first IG win on round 5.
With IG at 5pts; 14 IG vs 10 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 4; If Tau go first Tau win on round 5.
With IG at 6pts; 14 IG vs 12 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 7; If Tau go first IG win on round 4.

So if Tau Firewarriors are the benchmark. IG should be about 5pts. I also did some calculations like I did in the SM thread; and Tau are 133% more durable than guard vs lasguns and 133% more firepower than guard vs guard. So basically 133% better than guard. 5 x 133% = 6.65, so 5pt IG and 7pt FW seem to work.

And this is the problem with doing tests based simply off math.

"14 IG" can actually be done--but only 13 would have Lasguns, since Sergeants literally cannot have Lasguns like their squads. The remaining 4 would be Veterans from a Command Squad, so would be BS3+ rather than 4+.
8 or 12 Tau isn't really able to be done.

I thought Fire Warriors could be taken in groups of 12.

Strike Teams can, but it's a legacy option that I don't ever really see anyone take advantage of.

I'll clarify that a bit.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Tygre wrote:
I did some calculating with equal points of IG vs Tau Firewarriors; with winning equals wiping the other out.
With IG at 4pts; 14 IG vs 8 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 3; If Tau go first IG win on round 5.
With IG at 5pts; 14 IG vs 10 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 4; If Tau go first Tau win on round 5.
With IG at 6pts; 14 IG vs 12 Tau. Both starting in rapidfire range; If IG go first IG win on round 7; If Tau go first IG win on round 4.

So if Tau Firewarriors are the benchmark. IG should be about 5pts. I also did some calculations like I did in the SM thread; and Tau are 133% more durable than guard vs lasguns and 133% more firepower than guard vs guard. So basically 133% better than guard. 5 x 133% = 6.65, so 5pt IG and 7pt FW seem to work.

And this is the problem with doing tests based simply off math.

"14 IG" can actually be done--but only 13 would have Lasguns, since Sergeants literally cannot have Lasguns like their squads. The remaining 4 would be Veterans from a Command Squad, so would be BS3+ rather than 4+.
8 or 12 Tau isn't really able to be done.

I thought Fire Warriors could be taken in groups of 12.

Strike Teams can, but it's a legacy option that I don't ever really see anyone take advantage of.

I'll clarify that a bit.

Firewarriors can be 5 to 12 in a squad, in the current codex so I'm not sure what your getting at with legacy.

Ice_can wrote:

Firewarriors can be 5 to 12 in a squad, in the current codex so I'm not sure what your getting at with legacy.

Fire Warriors covers Breachers and Strike Teams(Rifles and Carbines).
Only Strike Teams(Rifles and Carbines) can be 12 man squads and that is a "legacy" option because the old box of Fire Warriors(pre-Breacher double build) was 12 models.

I really wish they would have just kept it at 10 man rather than 12, but whatever.

You can take a bolter for 1 point. Most people do to make lists exactly 2000 points. I get that you wish the sargent could take a lasgun - it's really dumb that he can't but he can take a 1 point bolter. So shut it.

 Xenomancers wrote:
You can take a bolter for 1 point. Most people do to make lists exactly 2000 points. I get that you wish the sargent could take a lasgun - it's really dumb that he can't but he can take a 1 point bolter. So shut it.

Then you're finally ready to admit that FRFSRF isn't all that you whine that it is?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
You can take a bolter for 1 point. Most people do to make lists exactly 2000 points. I get that you wish the sargent could take a lasgun - it's really dumb that he can't but he can take a 1 point bolter. So shut it.

Then you're finally ready to admit that FRFSRF isn't all that you whine that it is?

Weve already gone over FRFSRF - these comparisons were done without out it. So you realize that 5 points infantry (nerfed infantry) are still comparable to firewarriors BEFORE they use FRFSRF. If they use it they are about twice as good. Tau cadre only adds 50% firepower not 100% so we know infantry win the buff game too. Firewarriors and kabalites rangers are the next most OP troops. These comparisons prove infantry are the outlier here.

Also - just in theory. Cheaper units should not beat more expensive units point for point in gun fights. They cover more ground - so they are better at screening - they should not win pitched battles with more powerful more expensive units (which are also more suceptable to heavy firepower). So really AM should be 6 points and lose to firewarriors but be better at holding ground. There is no situation they should be worth less than 5 points though.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
You can take a bolter for 1 point. Most people do to make lists exactly 2000 points. I get that you wish the sargent could take a lasgun - it's really dumb that he can't but he can take a 1 point bolter. So shut it.

Then you're finally ready to admit that FRFSRF isn't all that you whine that it is?

Weve already gone over FRFSRF - these comparisons were done without out it. So you realize that 5 points infantry (nerfed infantry) are still comparable to firewarriors BEFORE they use FRFSRF. If they use it they are about twice as good. Tau cadre only adds 50% firepower not 100% so we know infantry. Firewarriors and kabalites rangers are the next most OP troops. These comparisons prove infantry are the outlier here.

Technically, it's an extra 90% efficiency since as you well know the Sergeant has no Lasgun.

Also - just in theory. Cheaper units should not beat more expensive units point for point in gun fights. They cover more ground - so they are better at screening - they should not win pitched battles with more powerful units. So really AM should be 6 points and lose to firewarriors but be better at holding ground. There is no situation they should be worth less than 5 points though.

Then don't engage the cheaper unit in situations more favorable to it...?
12" Rapid Fire range vs 15" Rapid Fire range allows a 3" margin for the Strike Teams to become more effective vs anything but Vostroyan Regiments...which can even be mitigated by running Borkan or having Pathfinders with Pulse Accelerator Drones camped out strategically in your lines to buff them up by 6" for a whopping 18" RF range.

Right. I mean, covering more ground and screening better are bonuses that affect the cheaper unit, but the more expensive unit:
Has fewer issues with force concentration.
Can fit more "points" in a transport per unit of capacity.

The fact that "force concentration" doesn't matter because gun ranges are so long and "transports" are useless is a problem with the current rules and the sizes of the table.

I've always said 40k plays better on a 12x8 than a 4x6. On a board that size, just taking up space is less of a boon, and being able to concentrate 2000 points into a much tighter area is of greater utility.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Right. I mean, covering more ground and screening better are bonuses that affect the cheaper unit, but the more expensive unit:
Has fewer issues with force concentration.
Can fit more "points" in a transport per unit of capacity.

The fact that "force concentration" doesn't matter because gun ranges are so long and "transports" are useless is a problem with the current rules and the sizes of the table.

I've always said 40k plays better on a 12x8 than a 4x6. On a board that size, just taking up space is less of a boon, and being able to concentrate 2000 points into a much tighter area is of greater utility.

But that's not how its played. So those "advantages" should be VERY cheap points-wise and covering ground and screening should cost more. Because they are BETTER.

Actually, transports might be useless vs IG, but against Drukhari, they kinda work out. But against the field, the transports are still largely crap, so they are still disfavored, which lets Drukhari curb stomp marines even HARDER.

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Right. I mean, covering more ground and screening better are bonuses that affect the cheaper unit, but the more expensive unit:
Has fewer issues with force concentration.
Can fit more "points" in a transport per unit of capacity.

The fact that "force concentration" doesn't matter because gun ranges are so long and "transports" are useless is a problem with the current rules and the sizes of the table.

I've always said 40k plays better on a 12x8 than a 4x6. On a board that size, just taking up space is less of a boon, and being able to concentrate 2000 points into a much tighter area is of greater utility.

But that's not how its played. So those "advantages" should be VERY cheap points-wise and covering ground and screening should cost more. Because they are BETTER.

Alternatively, board size can be increased, which I think is easier (as an abstract notion, not a practical one. Space is limited) than rebalancing the entire game. Or, play smaller games: That way, the space is "relatively" larger, compared to the models on the board.

Try playing 1000 points on a 6x4. Suddenly, transports and force concentration matter a whole lot more.

No one I play against is going to agree to that. It's frankly easier to rebalance the entire game than go against 20+ years of table dimensions. I think most units could be determined within a pretty low error by carefully observing how they get used in a variety of settings. Guardsmen are amazing in every setting, which is a bit of a red flag. Units that basically never hit the table clearly need point drops.

Martel732 wrote:
No one I play against is going to agree to that. It's frankly easier to rebalance the entire game than go against 20+ years of table dimensions. I think most units could be determined within a pretty low error by carefully observing how they get used in a variety of settings. Guardsmen are amazing in every setting, which is a bit of a red flag.

That's a problem in your local play area though. My local play area does all sorts of fun and whacky stuff on different sized (and even shaped) tables. Usually, I wouldn't advocate GW to balance around a specific set of data except that from tournaments, and looking at the tournament data doesn't support mono-guard as being a problem, as we've been through before. Soup guard is a problem, and guard are undeniably very strong. Just to get those to counterclaims out of the way.

Soup is a problem, and Guard are suffering from a symptom of it.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No one I play against is going to agree to that. It's frankly easier to rebalance the entire game than go against 20+ years of table dimensions. I think most units could be determined within a pretty low error by carefully observing how they get used in a variety of settings. Guardsmen are amazing in every setting, which is a bit of a red flag.

That's a problem in your local play area though. My local play area does all sorts of fun and whacky stuff on different sized (and even shaped) tables. Usually, I wouldn't advocate GW to balance around a specific set of data except that from tournaments, and looking at the tournament data doesn't support mono-guard as being a problem, as we've been through before. Soup guard is a problem, and guard are undeniably very strong. Just to get those to counterclaims out of the way.

Monoguard without time limits is soul crushing. Arguably, they are better than Guard soup with no time limit, because all the souped in units are less efficient than IG units. I think GW needs to look at both timed and untimed games at a minimum. Plus, ITC tournies and non-ITC as well.

Let me rephrase: I've never seen, or heard of a play group that's going to agree to that. Maybe yours will, but such attitude is likely too rare for this to be viable. The race to the bottom is real, and people just need to accept this. Cheaper is better. More is better. Quality is gak, until you get to custodes captain.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Soup is a problem, and Guard are suffering from a symptom of it.

I wouldn't call being IG suffering.

Acknowledge they're a tall cut above most and enjoy it.

Soup is not the problem. Miscosted units are. Just like formations weren't the problem. Miscosted units were. If you fix miscosted units, you fix soup.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Soup is a problem, and Guard are suffering from a symptom of it.

Soup IS a problem. Every unit being played in soup is a problem in one way or another. The units aren't chosen because they give each other super powers or make the units around them better. They are literally chosen because they are the best at doing something - which means they are under-costed or some facet of their use is exceptional powerful compared to the rest.

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No one I play against is going to agree to that. It's frankly easier to rebalance the entire game than go against 20+ years of table dimensions. I think most units could be determined within a pretty low error by carefully observing how they get used in a variety of settings. Guardsmen are amazing in every setting, which is a bit of a red flag.

That's a problem in your local play area though. My local play area does all sorts of fun and whacky stuff on different sized (and even shaped) tables. Usually, I wouldn't advocate GW to balance around a specific set of data except that from tournaments, and looking at the tournament data doesn't support mono-guard as being a problem, as we've been through before. Soup guard is a problem, and guard are undeniably very strong. Just to get those to counterclaims out of the way.

Monoguard without time limits is soul crushing. Arguably, they are better than Guard soup with no time limit, because all the souped in units are less efficient than IG units. I think GW needs to look at both timed and untimed games at a minimum. Plus, ITC tournies and non-ITC as well.

Let me rephrase: I've never seen, or heard of a play group that's going to agree to that. Maybe yours will, but such attitude is likely too rare for this to be viable. The race to the bottom is real, and people just need to accept this. Cheaper is better. More is better. Quality is gak, until you get to custodes captain.

Perhaps, then, GW could simply publish an FAQ that says "A 1k game is expected to take 1 hr. 15 mins. A 2k game is expected to take 2hr. 30 mins." etc etc. and that way people play the game "correctly." Because it's beginning to sound like a lot of the problems with Guard are problems that stem from issues unrelated to the rules-set (aside from the rules just not mentioning them i.e. time).

Martel732 wrote:
Let me rephrase: I've never seen, or heard of a play group that's going to agree to that. Maybe yours will, but such attitude is likely too rare for this to be viable. The race to the bottom is real, and people just need to accept this. Cheaper is better. More is better. Quality is gak, until you get to custodes captain.

Of course with 2nd ed troop densities 6 or 8x4 was akin to that big spaced table allowing concentration of force etc

Martel732 wrote:
Soup is not the problem. Miscosted units are. Just like formations weren't the problem. Miscosted units were. If you fix miscosted units, you fix soup.

This isn't true though because - much like formations - you have two things at the same price when they are not the same.

I mean take formations. A riptide was worth X.
But if you took 3, you paid 3X, but also got 3 quite valuable buffs on top of it.
So... surely it wasn't worth 3X any more. Your Riptide was better.

This is the same with soup. BA, Custodes, Knights etc on their own are one thing. BA/Custodes able to use 4-6 CP a turn potentially throughout the whole game because guard CP generation is probably more overpowered than basic guardsmen being 4 points is another.

I suspect if soup could be killed IG would be top tier, but lets kill soup first.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No one I play against is going to agree to that. It's frankly easier to rebalance the entire game than go against 20+ years of table dimensions. I think most units could be determined within a pretty low error by carefully observing how they get used in a variety of settings. Guardsmen are amazing in every setting, which is a bit of a red flag.

That's a problem in your local play area though. My local play area does all sorts of fun and whacky stuff on different sized (and even shaped) tables. Usually, I wouldn't advocate GW to balance around a specific set of data except that from tournaments, and looking at the tournament data doesn't support mono-guard as being a problem, as we've been through before. Soup guard is a problem, and guard are undeniably very strong. Just to get those to counterclaims out of the way.

Monoguard without time limits is soul crushing. Arguably, they are better than Guard soup with no time limit, because all the souped in units are less efficient than IG units. I think GW needs to look at both timed and untimed games at a minimum. Plus, ITC tournies and non-ITC as well.

Let me rephrase: I've never seen, or heard of a play group that's going to agree to that. Maybe yours will, but such attitude is likely too rare for this to be viable. The race to the bottom is real, and people just need to accept this. Cheaper is better. More is better. Quality is gak, until you get to custodes captain.

Perhaps, then, GW could simply publish an FAQ that says "A 1k game is expected to take 1 hr. 15 mins. A 2k game is expected to take 2hr. 30 mins." etc etc. and that way people play the game "correctly." Because it's beginning to sound like a lot of the problems with Guard are problems that stem from issues unrelated to the rules-set (aside from the rules just not mentioning them i.e. time).

I disagree - they should make a matched play rule that games can only be determined a victory within certain conditions - time running out shouldn't be one of them. That is the best place to start IMO.

Hrm, formations very much were a problem. Miscosted units dont matter when the price is irrelevant because you're just being given things without having to pay attention to price or scale.

Not that miscosted units were not huge issues, but Formations were botched through and through.

Likewise, Soup is very much an issue. Not that there arent some issues with the IG codex, but allies is where they see by far the most abuse in synergistic useage with things that werent really meant to operate as a single cohesive army but are effectively allowed to do so. For example, IG having a high number of CP is one thing in theory, a small IG contingent being used to supply another force with a glut of CP it wouldn't otherwise have access to (such as Custodes) is a very different thing in practice.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No one I play against is going to agree to that. It's frankly easier to rebalance the entire game than go against 20+ years of table dimensions. I think most units could be determined within a pretty low error by carefully observing how they get used in a variety of settings. Guardsmen are amazing in every setting, which is a bit of a red flag.

That's a problem in your local play area though. My local play area does all sorts of fun and whacky stuff on different sized (and even shaped) tables. Usually, I wouldn't advocate GW to balance around a specific set of data except that from tournaments, and looking at the tournament data doesn't support mono-guard as being a problem, as we've been through before. Soup guard is a problem, and guard are undeniably very strong. Just to get those to counterclaims out of the way.

Monoguard without time limits is soul crushing. Arguably, they are better than Guard soup with no time limit, because all the souped in units are less efficient than IG units. I think GW needs to look at both timed and untimed games at a minimum. Plus, ITC tournies and non-ITC as well.

Let me rephrase: I've never seen, or heard of a play group that's going to agree to that. Maybe yours will, but such attitude is likely too rare for this to be viable. The race to the bottom is real, and people just need to accept this. Cheaper is better. More is better. Quality is gak, until you get to custodes captain.

Perhaps, then, GW could simply publish an FAQ that says "A 1k game is expected to take 1 hr. 15 mins. A 2k game is expected to take 2hr. 30 mins." etc etc. and that way people play the game "correctly." Because it's beginning to sound like a lot of the problems with Guard are problems that stem from issues unrelated to the rules-set (aside from the rules just not mentioning them i.e. time).

I disagree - they should make a matched play rule that games can only be determined a victory within certain conditions - time running out shouldn't be one of them. That is the best place to start IMO.

But how can you make balance decisions around tournaments if the tournaments are limiting things by time?
Remember, Martel's claim is that the data from tournaments is useless for balance because of the temporal limitations on the gamestate. Either you balance the game around those temporal limitations, or you don't. If you are, then tell people to play with those limitations. If you aren't, then tournaments can't be used by GW for data. Given that there is no other source of reliable data, then GW simply can't balance the game well, in this instance.

Tyel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Soup is not the problem. Miscosted units are. Just like formations weren't the problem. Miscosted units were. If you fix miscosted units, you fix soup.

This isn't true though because - much like formations - you have two things at the same price when they are not the same.

I mean take formations. A riptide was worth X.
But if you took 3, you paid 3X, but also got 3 quite valuable buffs on top of it.
So... surely it wasn't worth 3X any more. Your Riptide was better.

This is the same with soup. BA, Custodes, Knights etc on their own are one thing. BA/Custodes able to use 4-6 CP a turn potentially throughout the whole game because guard CP generation is probably more overpowered than basic guardsmen being 4 points is another.

I suspect if soup could be killed IG would be top tier, but lets kill soup first.

Well he is correct in the sense that if all units were properly costed you would kill soup. At least in the sense that soup wasn't auto include over mono armies.

Really though with AM - soup is a preference - not an auto include because gaurd doesn't need to go out of it's codex to find top tier competitive options in every phase of the game. I assure you - if all the gaurd primary armies just played mono guard the results wouldn't be much different in tournaments.

Martel732 wrote:
Soup is not the problem. Miscosted units are. Just like formations weren't the problem. Miscosted units were. If you fix miscosted units, you fix soup.

I may have missed the force composition of every imperial bowl of soup, but I thought it was the chance to pay minimal points for 5CPs to use on your good stratagems, then 5+ to get some points back and 5+ to get some of the enemies? Costing that is a bit different to costing three squads of guardsmen for the their ability to hold ground...

And of course this particular bowl of soup is fixed easily enough by saying detachments can only spend the CPs they generate on their codex's stratagems, not those of an allied formation, and any warlord CP abilities only apply to the CPs his codex troops generate and any he makes can only be spent again on his own stratagems, not the knight household walking alongside...

The tournament data isn't useless, but then you have to go check the untimed case and factor that in. 5 ppm for guardsmen is probably about right, because in a timed game, 4 ppm is at least feasible, but untimed, they are more like a 6 ppm unit. Also, check the ITC case and the non-ITC case. GW could simply this by publishing unified tournament rules and banning TOs from using their own rules.

Martel732 wrote:Soup is not the problem. Miscosted units are. Just like formations weren't the problem. Miscosted units were. If you fix miscosted units, you fix soup.

Xenomancers wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Soup is a problem, and Guard are suffering from a symptom of it.

Soup IS a problem. Every unit being played in soup is a problem in one way or another. The units aren't chosen because they give each other super powers or make the units around them better. They are literally chosen because they are the best at doing something - which means they are under-costed or some facet of their use is exceptional powerful compared to the rest.

Err.... no.

Sorry but no, soup is not something that can be solved with points.

If i can take a battalion to infinitely fuel my knights and bananas i will do it even if guards were to cost 7 points.

There are overpowered things.
There are undercosted things.
There are broken things.

They are completely different problems with different fixes.

Guards are not broken, they work as intended. Guards are not overpowered, the effect they have on the game is the one that is expected from that model. Guards are undercosted (probably), they perform better than what the model cost suggests >>>>> You fix it by increasing the point cost

Soup is broken, it is showing non linear interactions with other mechanics of the game, creating unwanted situations. No amount of nerfing will fix it, and no amount of points changes will do it either >>>>> You need to change the way the rule works.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, formations very much were a problem. Miscosted units dont matter when the price is irrelevant because you're just being given things without having to pay attention to price or scale.

Not that miscosted units were not huge issues, but Formations were botched through and through.

Likewise, Soup is very much an issue. Not that there arent some issues with the IG codex, but allies is where they see by far the most abuse in synergistic useage with things that werent really meant to operate as a single cohesive army but are effectively allowed to do so. For example, IG having a high number of CP is one thing in theory, a small IG contingent being used to supply another force with a glut of CP it wouldn't otherwise have access to (such as Custodes) is a very different thing in practice.

If these armies weren't meant to work together then why did GW create a system to specifically allow that? And remember, Custodes have a banner that gives IMPERIUM units a 5++, if that doesn't scream "take IG!" I don't know what does.
Is it badly implemented? Maybe. But it was certainly intended. For all we know GW's designers could be happy that Guard appear in every imperial army.

Maybe. But to fully convince me, I'd have to see a game set largely devoid of miscosted models and then be shown how soup can still break things.

Martel732 wrote:
The tournament data isn't useless, but then you have to go check the untimed case and factor that in. 5 ppm for guardsmen is probably about right, because in a timed game, 4 ppm is at least feasible, but untimed, they are more like a 6 ppm unit. Also, check the ITC case and the non-ITC case. GW could simply this by publishing unified tournament rules and banning TOs from using their own rules.

How do you check the unlimited case? A single playtest game? 30 playtest games?

And GW already tests the non-ITC case, for example it uses data from NOVA. But yes, essentially what I am pushing for is GW making sure to publish their own tournament rules, but they already do that (the tournament packet) and ironically, in the setting of those tournaments, the results have been completely different. IIRC I remember a 2nd place ork finish, then later a 1st place Ork finish, though that guy slowplayed (which is a whole 'nother problem in itself).

Dandelion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, formations very much were a problem. Miscosted units dont matter when the price is irrelevant because you're just being given things without having to pay attention to price or scale.

Not that miscosted units were not huge issues, but Formations were botched through and through.

Likewise, Soup is very much an issue. Not that there arent some issues with the IG codex, but allies is where they see by far the most abuse in synergistic useage with things that werent really meant to operate as a single cohesive army but are effectively allowed to do so. For example, IG having a high number of CP is one thing in theory, a small IG contingent being used to supply another force with a glut of CP it wouldn't otherwise have access to (such as Custodes) is a very different thing in practice.

If these armies weren't meant to work together then why did GW create a system to specifically allow that? And remember, Custodes have a banner that gives IMPERIUM units a 5++, if that doesn't scream "take IG!" I don't know what does.
Is it badly implemented? Maybe. But it was certainly intended. For all we know GW's designers could be happy that Guard appear in every imperial army.

I'm sure they don't mind, but they DO mind primaris being largely absent. At least, so I've been told off the record.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The tournament data isn't useless, but then you have to go check the untimed case and factor that in. 5 ppm for guardsmen is probably about right, because in a timed game, 4 ppm is at least feasible, but untimed, they are more like a 6 ppm unit. Also, check the ITC case and the non-ITC case. GW could simply this by publishing unified tournament rules and banning TOs from using their own rules.

How do you check the unlimited case? A single playtest game? 30 playtest games?

And GW already tests the non-ITC case, for example it uses data from NOVA. But yes, essentially what I am pushing for is GW making sure to publish their own tournament rules, but they already do that (the tournament packet) and ironically, in the setting of those tournaments, the results have been completely different. IIRC I remember a 2nd place ork finish, then later a 1st place Ork finish, though that guy slowplayed (which is a whole 'nother problem in itself).

I'd say 200 games at least given the number factions in 40K. Preferably 1000 games. Blizzard is able to easily collect unit utilization and even build orders from thousands of games. GW needs to at least pretend to be within a couple orders of magnitude.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Tyel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Soup is not the problem. Miscosted units are. Just like formations weren't the problem. Miscosted units were. If you fix miscosted units, you fix soup.

This isn't true though because - much like formations - you have two things at the same price when they are not the same.

I mean take formations. A riptide was worth X.
But if you took 3, you paid 3X, but also got 3 quite valuable buffs on top of it.
So... surely it wasn't worth 3X any more. Your Riptide was better.

This is the same with soup. BA, Custodes, Knights etc on their own are one thing. BA/Custodes able to use 4-6 CP a turn potentially throughout the whole game because guard CP generation is probably more overpowered than basic guardsmen being 4 points is another.

I suspect if soup could be killed IG would be top tier, but lets kill soup first.

Well he is correct in the sense that if all units were properly costed you would kill soup. At least in the sense that soup wasn't auto include over mono armies.

Really though with AM - soup is a preference - not an auto include because gaurd doesn't need to go out of it's codex to find top tier competitive options in every phase of the game. I assure you - if all the gaurd primary armies just played mono guard the results wouldn't be much different in tournaments.

If it were just a preference thing we'd probably see a whole lot more monoIG armies and a lot less soup at top winning tables. If monoIG are just as good, I would posit that superfriends lists would be less popular simply because people wouldnt need to go out and buy extra stuff from other armies, these competitive soup list arent running multifaction armies because they want to display the full panoply of the Imperium for cool factor.

Remember that IG is a hard counter to super friends because IG fields huge numbers of wounds that are all cheap. Even their vehicles are super cheap. The super friends literally can't chop through the army given a full game. IG don't care about their opponent's turn, and that is the greatest super power in 8th ed.

Every guardsmen killed just puts the IG further and further ahead compared to every other list in the game save a grot army.

Martel732 wrote:
I'd say 200 games at least given the number factions in 40K. Preferably 1000 games. Blizzard is able to easily collect unit utilization and even build orders from thousands of games. GW needs to at least pretend to be within a couple orders of magnitude.

Okay. Where/how do you gather this data in house? Assuming you have 4 staff with the time to play once a week, that's 500 weeks, or nearly ten years, before you can get to 1000 playtest games. And, unlike a videogame, you can't canvass the internet, because everyone plays with different rules at home, even if it's just granting line of sight in a situation where another player wouldn't, for example. You have to keep the playtesting consistent and in-house, and to do 1000 games of warhammer 40k, assuming 3 hours per game, is 3000 hours, or 4 months of playing without eating or sleeping. Assuming people spend literally 8 hours a day, 5 days a week playing, that's 18 months of playing warhammer as a full-time job...

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I'd say 200 games at least given the number factions in 40K. Preferably 1000 games. Blizzard is able to easily collect unit utilization and even build orders from thousands of games. GW needs to at least pretend to be within a couple orders of magnitude.

Okay. Where/how do you gather this data in house? Assuming you have 4 staff with the time to play once a week, that's 500 weeks, or nearly ten years, before you can get to 1000 playtest games. And, unlike a videogame, you can't canvass the internet, because everyone plays with different rules at home, even if it's just granting line of sight in a situation where another player wouldn't, for example. You have to keep the playtesting consistent and in-house, and to do 1000 games of warhammer 40k, assuming 3 hours per game, is 3000 hours, or 4 months of playing without eating or sleeping. Assuming people spend literally 8 hours a day, 5 days a week playing, that's 18 months of playing warhammer as a full-time job...

I guess GW has some work to do, then. Or they just need to openly admit their game is gak and will always be gak and no one should buy it. Those are their two HONEST choices.

Dandelion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, formations very much were a problem. Miscosted units dont matter when the price is irrelevant because you're just being given things without having to pay attention to price or scale.

Not that miscosted units were not huge issues, but Formations were botched through and through.

Likewise, Soup is very much an issue. Not that there arent some issues with the IG codex, but allies is where they see by far the most abuse in synergistic useage with things that werent really meant to operate as a single cohesive army but are effectively allowed to do so. For example, IG having a high number of CP is one thing in theory, a small IG contingent being used to supply another force with a glut of CP it wouldn't otherwise have access to (such as Custodes) is a very different thing in practice.

If these armies weren't meant to work together then why did GW create a system to specifically allow that?

Because they're a model company that uses game rules to push sales of model kits, the balance and competitive suitability of the rules being a distant tertiary concern mostly

Same reason we got insane ridiculous formations in 7E, often tied to things like webstore sales bundles.

And remember, Custodes have a banner that gives IMPERIUM units a 5++, if that doesn't scream "take IG!" I don't know what does.

They do, but its a rare exception that appears much more of an afterthought.

Is it badly implemented? Maybe. But it was certainly intended. For all we know GW's designers could be happy that Guard appear in every imperial army.

Ultimately, the armies are designed and balancd around certain concepts and specializations and lack of accesd to certain abilities, and very few abilities that intentionally interact with other factions.

That said, im sure GW are happy IG are in every Imperial list becausw it means theyre selling more guardsmen, but it doesnt mean theyre balancing the codex books around that.

 Quickjager wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Soup is a problem, and Guard are suffering from a symptom of it.

I wouldn't call being IG suffering.

Acknowledge they're a tall cut above most and enjoy it.

The army might be in a fairly good place, but that doesn't mean that they will continue to be as time wears on.

We've already seen Commissars cut off at the knees. We've seen Conscripts change fairly significantly whether you want to admit it or not, Orders being automatic and then getting a requirement for a 4+ on just that unit is a significant change as is their reduction in unit size.
We also saw the, entirely justifiable mind you, shift to having BS specific points costs in response to Scion spam.

Guard are "suffering" from an overrepresentation and overfocus on one specific unit(their core fricking Infantry Squad) by outsiders who only look at the points values and see them getting souped in.

Martel732 wrote:
I'd say 200 games at least given the number factions in 40K. Preferably 1000 games. Blizzard is able to easily collect unit utilization and even build orders from thousands of games. GW needs to at least pretend to be within a couple orders of magnitude.

Blizzard has the advantage of games all being played on their servers, so I'd imagine with a bit of data capture they can see what is going on.

With that said, GW just need to decide what the value is. With a budget of say £1-2 million, I am fairly confident they could have 30 people playtest (they might need to build some armies, but that's not impossible either). So say 2 games a day, that's 150 games a week, 600 or so a month.

Would this give useful information? Considering that, at its peak, StarCraft or whatever must have seen thousands of games an hour? What is the active playerbase for say Hearthstone?

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I'd say 200 games at least given the number factions in 40K. Preferably 1000 games. Blizzard is able to easily collect unit utilization and even build orders from thousands of games. GW needs to at least pretend to be within a couple orders of magnitude.

Okay. Where/how do you gather this data in house? Assuming you have 4 staff with the time to play once a week, that's 500 weeks, or nearly ten years, before you can get to 1000 playtest games. And, unlike a videogame, you can't canvass the internet, because everyone plays with different rules at home, even if it's just granting line of sight in a situation where another player wouldn't, for example. You have to keep the playtesting consistent and in-house, and to do 1000 games of warhammer 40k, assuming 3 hours per game, is 3000 hours, or 4 months of playing without eating or sleeping. Assuming people spend literally 8 hours a day, 5 days a week playing, that's 18 months of playing warhammer as a full-time job...

I guess GW has some work to do, then. Or they just need to openly admit their game is gak and will always be gak and no one should buy it. Those are their two HONEST choices.

I mean, using your critera, no table-top game could ever be playtested sufficiently to satisfy you. May I suggest you're in the wrong hobby?

Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

Are you seriously trying to compare Blizzard, where everything is stored serverside and hundreds if not thousands of games are played every day to GW?

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ultimately, the armies are designed and balancd around certain concepts and specializations and lack of accesd to certain abilities, and very few abilities that intentionally interact with other factions.

Citation needed

90% of BA kits are unplayable atm. If they just dropped that to 50%, that would help sales a lot, I'd bet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dandelion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ultimately, the armies are designed and balancd around certain concepts and specializations and lack of accesd to certain abilities, and very few abilities that intentionally interact with other factions.

Citation needed

Agreed, I have no clue how they design/balance anything.

To be fair, there is a valid point that GW's playtesting and balance is massively poor. They dont have the tools of someone like Blizzard for data gathering and analysis due to the nature of the game, but there is a lot of stuff that gets published that never should have gotten past the most casual of readings or playtesting, and a lot of stuff thats just been garbage or powerful forever over many editions that they never seem to acknowledge.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, there is a valid point that GW's playtesting and balance is massively poor. They dont have the tools of someone like Blizzard for data gathering and analysis due to the nature of the game, but there is a lot of stuff that gets published that never should have gotten past the most casual of readings or playtesting, and a lot of stuff thats just been garbage or powerful forever over many editions that they never seem to acknowledge.

Scatterbikes.

What GW needs is a list building app designed for use in tournaments. If they were truly on the ball, they'd integrate with BCP, and work out an agreement to track aggregated data.

They could have the level of access to tournament data that's being discussed here.

I don't think they'll do anything like that though, because they are very much a "my IP! No touch!" company.

As it stands their balance team is wonky AF. They played in what was it, Adepticon? Their Tyranids rules writers got matched up with the guys running flyrant spam. The Tyranid rules writers got their rules wrong in the game, the players corrected them, and then smashed them with Flyrants. Guess what happened? The BIG FAQ was delayed a week, and the change that came out of it was the Flyrant nerf.

This is how they balance. No idea how people play, show up to a tournament, get rocked, nerf.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Tyel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Soup is not the problem. Miscosted units are. Just like formations weren't the problem. Miscosted units were. If you fix miscosted units, you fix soup.

This isn't true though because - much like formations - you have two things at the same price when they are not the same.

I mean take formations. A riptide was worth X.
But if you took 3, you paid 3X, but also got 3 quite valuable buffs on top of it.
So... surely it wasn't worth 3X any more. Your Riptide was better.

This is the same with soup. BA, Custodes, Knights etc on their own are one thing. BA/Custodes able to use 4-6 CP a turn potentially throughout the whole game because guard CP generation is probably more overpowered than basic guardsmen being 4 points is another.

I suspect if soup could be killed IG would be top tier, but lets kill soup first.

Well he is correct in the sense that if all units were properly costed you would kill soup. At least in the sense that soup wasn't auto include over mono armies.

Really though with AM - soup is a preference - not an auto include because gaurd doesn't need to go out of it's codex to find top tier competitive options in every phase of the game. I assure you - if all the gaurd primary armies just played mono guard the results wouldn't be much different in tournaments.

If it were just a preference thing we'd probably see a whole lot more monoIG armies and a lot less soup at top winning tables. If monoIG are just as good, I would posit that superfriends lists would be less popular simply because people wouldnt need to go out and buy extra stuff from other armies, these competitive soup list arent running multifaction armies because they want to display the full panoply of the Imperium for cool factor.

Just from playing a lot of online competitive games - I know for a fact that "metas" are mostly in the mind. You will have regional metas. Skill based metas. Sometimes metas shift for no reason. Right now the mind of IG players is that they need to play soup to win. It's just what people are playing. People are sheep basically. There is also the monetary cost. it's cheaper to buy 3 sheild captains for 60 bucks that buying 3 manitcores and 3 basalisks - it's also a lot easier to transport. There are a lot of reasons we don't see as many mono guard lists.

Dandelion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ultimately, the armies are designed and balancd around certain concepts and specializations and lack of accesd to certain abilities, and very few abilities that intentionally interact with other factions.

Citation needed

If you dont see the apparent self evidentness of this, nothing I say is going to change that. The armies of 8E are largely the same as the armies of previous editons going back to before allies and soup. Their strengths and weaknesses and availability of certain capabilities forms their archetypes and playstyles didnt change, and the extremely limited and mostly afterthought/bolt-on nature of cross factional abilities testifies to the fact that they are largely designed as self containted forces. The release schedule, product presentation, packaging, product line releases, etc typically are self contained with very few exceptions.

The fact that allies and soup is also wildly variable in terms of what factions can meaningfully take advantage of it also speaks heavily to the fact that deep integration of cross faction armies isnt taken into particularly deep account.

The actual cross factional integration is suuuuuuper afterthought-ey. It's pretty much all in the detachment rules, with a very small handful of actual cross-factional interaction at the codex level.

Mono guard is basically immune to mortal wounds, regardless of how heavily they are spammed. As soon as they add custodes shield capts, mortal wounds become VERY effective again.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, there is a valid point that GW's playtesting and balance is massively poor. They dont have the tools of someone like Blizzard for data gathering and analysis due to the nature of the game, but there is a lot of stuff that gets published that never should have gotten past the most casual of readings or playtesting, and a lot of stuff thats just been garbage or powerful forever over many editions that they never seem to acknowledge.

Putting it bluntly, Corvus Belli has a list builder that is officially integrated into their Infinity Tournament System.

And they still suffer glaring imbalances, units that never get taken, etc. They can 'see' lists that people save vs lists that people take in tournaments thanks to the requirement of the ITS Pins when playing.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Just from playing a lot of online competitive games - I know for a fact that "metas" are mostly in the mind. You will have regional metas. Skill based metas. Sometimes metas shift for no reason. Right now the mind of IG players is that they need to play soup to win. It's just what people are playing. People are sheep basically. There is also the monetary cost. it's cheaper to buy 3 sheild captains for 60 bucks that buying 3 manitcores and 3 basalisks - it's also a lot easier to transport. There are a lot of reasons we don't see as many mono guard lists.

Unless we're going to make the argument that monoguard armies are particularly underrepresented relative to any other monofactionlist, monoIG lists should still be appearing in events and placing very often if they are that strong, but they dont appear to be. That cant just be shrugged off as "eh nobody anywhere feels like playing monoIG, they all went out and bought Celestine just because she looked cool".

Soup/allies/etc has been a major balance issue since GW reintroduced it in 2012, and ive had problems with it since they did that with 6E.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Just from playing a lot of online competitive games - I know for a fact that "metas" are mostly in the mind. You will have regional metas. Skill based metas. Sometimes metas shift for no reason. Right now the mind of IG players is that they need to play soup to win. It's just what people are playing. People are sheep basically. There is also the monetary cost. it's cheaper to buy 3 sheild captains for 60 bucks that buying 3 manitcores and 3 basalisks - it's also a lot easier to transport. There are a lot of reasons we don't see as many mono guard lists.

Unless we're going to make the argument that monoguard armies are particularly underrepresented relative to any other monofactionlist, monoIG lists should still be appearing in events and placing very often if they are that strong, but they dont appear to be. That cant just be shrugged off as "eh nobody anywhere feels like playing monoIG, they all went out and bought Celestine just because she looked cool".

Soup/allies/etc has been a major balance issue since GW reintroduced it in 2012, and ive had problems with it since they did that with 6E.

If it's easier to just play the soup - and everyone is already playing that soup - that is what most people are going to do. This is common sense. There is also 0 restriction on taking soup. It doesn't hurt you in anyway to do it. It's not that "no one feels like" playing mono IG. It's more like people will pay less money to get the same power level almost every time. People will take 1 box of models to a game if they can over 2 boxes if it doesn't hurt their chances of winning.

I don't like allies ether. I wish mono was the only way to play tournaments.

It's worth mentioning that there are mono-guard players showing up at these tournaments. They do exist.

They're just not placing well.

The most recent tournament, I think, had the first mono-guard list coming behind a Tau list (which is of course mono itself since tau lack allies).

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

Hell stream the games. Record some and put them in the archives. Actually have competitive "official" GW battle reports. Monetize that shtuff.

Problem is probably getting that many people to respect a NDA but even then some leaks are great for publicity.

If GW was really invested they'd do a big tourney at the end of the year. Invite only and use that for input into the yearly CA. Invite every GT tourney top 10, podcaster and youtuber. Do a US and EU version. Would be great advertising and would get together a vocal and diverse group of 40k players. Modest prize support (custom/one of a kind minis would be so cool) maybe a modest per diem for food/lodging, would probably cost closer to 100-150k but the advertising/buzz created by getting 40k "celebs" together reporting on it seems like it would be easily worth it and some should be able to be re-cooped through monetizing the vids of the event. Rules FAQs/adjustments, a season based tight tourney rules (would actually make getting CA worth it for the missions) and a couple new/modified strats. It would make the CA a must buy for tourney players and given the popularity of tournaments should be an easy profit generator.

I guess they can get most of the benefit of this by just showing up to the GTs though...

And if GW couldn't tell that Marines (specifically primaris) were busted from inception it's not surprising they showed up to a tourney and got ROFL stomped. Although the majority of Dakka couldn't see it either based on how much hate the marines are trash tier threads got at the beginning of 8th...

 Marmatag wrote:
What GW needs is a list building app designed for use in tournaments. If they were truly on the ball, they'd integrate with BCP, and work out an agreement to track aggregated data.

They could have the level of access to tournament data that's being discussed here.

I don't think they'll do anything like that though, because they are very much a "my IP! No touch!" company.

As it stands their balance team is wonky AF. They played in what was it, Adepticon? Their Tyranids rules writers got matched up with the guys running flyrant spam. The Tyranid rules writers got their rules wrong in the game, the players corrected them, and then smashed them with Flyrants. Guess what happened? The BIG FAQ was delayed a week, and the change that came out of it was the Flyrant nerf.

This is how they balance. No idea how people play, show up to a tournament, get rocked, nerf.

Can you point me to what rules they got wrong, or a discussion there-of?

The sad part is - I'm not even surprised that this occured.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Just from playing a lot of online competitive games - I know for a fact that "metas" are mostly in the mind. You will have regional metas. Skill based metas. Sometimes metas shift for no reason. Right now the mind of IG players is that they need to play soup to win. It's just what people are playing. People are sheep basically. There is also the monetary cost. it's cheaper to buy 3 sheild captains for 60 bucks that buying 3 manitcores and 3 basalisks - it's also a lot easier to transport. There are a lot of reasons we don't see as many mono guard lists.

Unless we're going to make the argument that monoguard armies are particularly underrepresented relative to any other monofactionlist, monoIG lists should still be appearing in events and placing very often if they are that strong, but they dont appear to be. That cant just be shrugged off as "eh nobody anywhere feels like playing monoIG, they all went out and bought Celestine just because she looked cool".

Soup/allies/etc has been a major balance issue since GW reintroduced it in 2012, and ive had problems with it since they did that with 6E.

If it's easier to just play the soup - and everyone is already playing that soup - that is what most people are going to do. This is common sense. There is also 0 restriction on taking soup. It doesn't hurt you in anyway to do it. It's not that "no one feels like" playing mono IG. It's more like people will pay less money to get the same power level almost every time. People will take 1 box of models to a game if they can over 2 boxes if it doesn't hurt their chances of winning.

Oh that I get, the issue is the players that already had full guard armies and didnt need to go buy anything and can play mono IG lists dont appear to consistently be placing anywhere near on par with the soup lists.

I don't like allies ether. I wish mono was the only way to play tournaments.

I'm with ya there, I would love to go back to that and would play such a tournament in a heartbeat. Thats still how I build all my armies, I'm loathe to even mix subfactions generally

 Vaktathi wrote:
Oh that I get, the issue is the players that already had full guard armies and didnt need to go buy anything and can play mono IG lists dont appear to consistently be placing anywhere near on par with the soup lists.

This is one of the reasons why I hated them never doing an actual Conscript kit or throwing "Auxilia" on them.

People were saying Conscripts were a huge issue from the outset for 8th. No denying that. Solutions were weird and randomly thrown out there, but one I was personally fond of was:
6+ save, Autorifles or Autopistols+CCWs or Shotguns.

Something that would require an actual kit for people to purchase. Something that would require an investment rather than just saying "My Guardsmen are Conscripts now!".

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.


But none of that matters anyways, this is the 1st type of game 40k has done that is like 8th ed, there will be mistakes, but over all it is a very solid edition, 8.1 will be a much better game just like 6th to 7th was better and very similar.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

The efficacy of a unit (and a codex) is affected by what point level it is played at. For example, mono-Imperial Knights armies will have 3 CP at 1k games since you can't run 3 Knights in a detachment.

And yes, we can test large amounts of games - by forcing 100 people to play for 60 hours a week with no breaks...

I think you don't get the staggering logistics here.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Soup is a problem, and Guard are suffering from a symptom of it.

I wouldn't call being IG suffering.

Acknowledge they're a tall cut above most and enjoy it.

The army might be in a fairly good place, but that doesn't mean that they will continue to be as time wears on.

We've already seen Commissars cut off at the knees. We've seen Conscripts change fairly significantly whether you want to admit it or not, Orders being automatic and then getting a requirement for a 4+ on just that unit is a significant change as is their reduction in unit size.
We also saw the, entirely justifiable mind you, shift to having BS specific points costs in response to Scion spam.

Guard are "suffering" from an overrepresentation and overfocus on one specific unit(their core fricking Infantry Squad) by outsiders who only look at the points values and see them getting souped in.

And after those nerf's happened the IG second stringers came out to play and still outperform most armies; being part of winning Soup lists and placing well among mono codex armies.

I do believe IG will continue to suffer partly justified because there is a token effort to balance all factions toward a common middle ground and partly unjustified to reduce the power of soup in which they often play a key role. However, at least by looking at the math presented in the thread I believe 5pt Infantry would fall into the former case.

On the bright side, we'll see SW next week who might be lugging some broken stuff in need of fixing and hopefully soon every codex will be released for 8th and we'll have a complete picture to work (gripe and moan about) with

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

The efficacy of a unit (and a codex) is affected by what point level it is played at. For example, mono-Imperial Knights armies will have 3 CP at 1k games since you can't run 3 Knights in a detachment.

And yes, we can test large amounts of games - by forcing 100 people to play for 60 hours a week with no breaks...

I think you don't get the staggering logistics here.

DUDE........ do you understand examples? who said it has to be done in a week? why cant they do it over 3 months? why cant they have a monthly get together and have the few members play test outside of the HQ? why cant they do video conference games? why cant they use PC programs? blah blah blah, you dont need to be at face, you dont actually need the correct models, and you can model CP's for smaller games if needs be..

Why do you even care to argue about this? I gave an example (that you took literally, b.c you cant use your imagination to work out how it can actually be done). take it for what it was, an example so you can have an idea that it could be done.

w1zard wrote:
For the last time... Stop comparing guard to SM. SM need buffs, period end of story. It's not fair to compare guard units to units from the second weakest codex this edition (and only second weakest because of the joke that is GK).

Stux wrote:
Bare bones, the SM Captain does an average of 2.16 wounds to the Company Commanders, or 16pts of damage.

In return, 2 Company Commanders do 0.59 wounds, or 9pts of damage.

This doesn't account for the Company Commanders ordering themselves though, as there's nothing that directly helps the Fight Phase. However in the second turn they could Fix Bayonets themselves and Fight twice, which puts their damage output above the Captain in terms of points worth of damage.

Your math is incorrect.

You are correct when you say that a space marine captain armed with a bolt pistol/chainsword does 2.16 wounds to the commanders.

You are also correct when you say that 2 company commanders do 0.59 wounds to the SM captain.

However the SM captain does 16.2 "points" worth of damage to the commanders and the commanders do 8.73 "points" of damage back. I am going to assume you rounded in your favor to make the numbers look better.

You are also incorrect when you say that "Fix Bayonets" makes the commanders fight better than the SM captain. According to my math, even with "Fix Bayonets" active the commanders are only doing 15.39 "points" of damage to the captain.

Even in a scenario where we are comparing guard commanders to SM captains (which we shouldn't because SM sucks right now) the SM captain still comes out on top. I still stand by my statement that Guard commanders are nothing more than orders on a stick and are only meant to act as mobile buffs for infantry... while characters like SM captains are meant to be counter-chargers in the thick of the fighting as well as act as mobile buff bubbles.

I can see company commanders going up to 35 points if you want to be a stickler about it. But they really aren't worth 40.

Dude. I don't have a horse in this race. I don't really care which is better, I was just supplying numbers. You're seriously complaining about rounding 16.2 to 16 to get a whole number of points? That is ridiculous and shows your own bias quite frankly.

How is a group of units that does 8.73pts of damage in a fight phase only doing 15.39pts if they fight twice exactly anyway?

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

The efficacy of a unit (and a codex) is affected by what point level it is played at. For example, mono-Imperial Knights armies will have 3 CP at 1k games since you can't run 3 Knights in a detachment.

And yes, we can test large amounts of games - by forcing 100 people to play for 60 hours a week with no breaks...

I think you don't get the staggering logistics here.

DUDE........ do you understand examples? who said it has to be done in a week? why cant they do it over 3 months? why cant they have a monthly get together and have the few members play test outside of the HQ? why cant they do video conference games? why cant they use PC programs? blah blah blah, you dont need to be at face, you dont actually need the correct models, and you can model CP's for smaller games if needs be..

Why do you even care to argue about this? I gave an example (that you took literally, b.c you cant use your imagination to work out how it can actually be done). take it for what it was, an example so you can have an idea that it could be done.

Let me go point by point:
1) If it isn't done in a week, then the gamestate will have changed in 3 months, with new codexes being released, for example. 40k is never "finished".
2) Because this would take ages to get the 1000 games Martel wants to have the game count as "playtested". If you have 16 people meeting once a month, you will have played 1000 playtest games after a DECADE of testing.
3) What is a "video conference game"? How does that even work? You mean can random people stream casual games to them? Sure, probably. But they'd have to be able to step in and tell the casual players how to play the game the correct way, to ensure consistency.
4) If you can build a computer program that properly models every single possible interaction in the entire gamespace in which 40k exists at quicker than real-time, then you probably deserve a Nobel Prize for advancing the state of the art in computing.

And you absolutely need to be at face so the rules writers can record the data they need to balance the game, as well as ensure the games are always played to the same exacting standards. You also need the correct models, because a real, effective playtest will test things like the Line-of-Sight rules. I don't know what you mean by modeling CPs...

At any rate, you gave me an example, and I blew it up precisely because it was a silly example. It didn't solve Martel's fundamental problem with playtesting the game at all.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

The efficacy of a unit (and a codex) is affected by what point level it is played at. For example, mono-Imperial Knights armies will have 3 CP at 1k games since you can't run 3 Knights in a detachment.

And yes, we can test large amounts of games - by forcing 100 people to play for 60 hours a week with no breaks...

I think you don't get the staggering logistics here.

DUDE........ do you understand examples? who said it has to be done in a week? why cant they do it over 3 months? why cant they have a monthly get together and have the few members play test outside of the HQ? why cant they do video conference games? why cant they use PC programs? blah blah blah, you dont need to be at face, you dont actually need the correct models, and you can model CP's for smaller games if needs be..

Why do you even care to argue about this? I gave an example (that you took literally, b.c you cant use your imagination to work out how it can actually be done). take it for what it was, an example so you can have an idea that it could be done.

Let me go point by point:
1) If it isn't done in a week, then the gamestate will have changed in 3 months, with new codexes being released, for example. 40k is never "finished".
2) Because this would take ages to get the 1000 games Martel wants to have the game count as "playtested". If you have 16 people meeting once a month, you will have played 1000 playtest games after a DECADE of testing.
3) What is a "video conference game"? How does that even work? You mean can random people stream casual games to them? Sure, probably. But they'd have to be able to step in and tell the casual players how to play the game the correct way, to ensure consistency.
4) If you can build a computer program that properly models every single possible interaction in the entire gamespace in which 40k exists at quicker than real-time, then you probably deserve a Nobel Prize for advancing the state of the art in computing.

And you absolutely need to be at face so the rules writers can record the data they need to balance the game, as well as ensure the games are always played to the same exacting standards. You also need the correct models, because a real, effective playtest will test things like the Line-of-Sight rules. I don't know what you mean by modeling CPs...

At any rate, you gave me an example, and I blew it up precisely because it was a silly example. It didn't solve Martel's fundamental problem with playtesting the game at all.

Im talking about a program like Vassal...... one were the players still moves the sprites and rolls dice.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Just from playing a lot of online competitive games - I know for a fact that "metas" are mostly in the mind. You will have regional metas. Skill based metas. Sometimes metas shift for no reason. Right now the mind of IG players is that they need to play soup to win. It's just what people are playing. People are sheep basically. There is also the monetary cost. it's cheaper to buy 3 sheild captains for 60 bucks that buying 3 manitcores and 3 basalisks - it's also a lot easier to transport. There are a lot of reasons we don't see as many mono guard lists.

Unless we're going to make the argument that monoguard armies are particularly underrepresented relative to any other monofactionlist, monoIG lists should still be appearing in events and placing very often if they are that strong, but they dont appear to be. That cant just be shrugged off as "eh nobody anywhere feels like playing monoIG, they all went out and bought Celestine just because she looked cool".

Soup/allies/etc has been a major balance issue since GW reintroduced it in 2012, and ive had problems with it since they did that with 6E.

If it's easier to just play the soup - and everyone is already playing that soup - that is what most people are going to do. This is common sense. There is also 0 restriction on taking soup. It doesn't hurt you in anyway to do it. It's not that "no one feels like" playing mono IG. It's more like people will pay less money to get the same power level almost every time. People will take 1 box of models to a game if they can over 2 boxes if it doesn't hurt their chances of winning.

Oh that I get, the issue is the players that already had full guard armies and didnt need to go buy anything and can play mono IG lists dont appear to consistently be placing anywhere near on par with the soup lists.

I don't like allies ether. I wish mono was the only way to play tournaments.

I'm with ya there, I would love to go back to that and would play such a tournament in a heartbeat. Thats still how I build all my armies, I'm loathe to even mix subfactions generally

Part of the issue is the top tournament players aren't pure guard players and at the very top level luck and skill are what makes the last difference. Also Guard placed as the second mono faction list just behind Tau who are enforced mono faction.
Thats not exactly bad.

Also a lot of the soup ingredients will drop a lot of power when GW fix the CP mechanics specifically the guard 5+, 5+ and 5 for 195 points. A raven Castellen without 5CP a turn isn't rocking a 3++, rerolling every one. Slamguinius isn't going to be destroying everything without eating all those pregame and fight twice CP.

Ice, you're saying the CP battery is an issue. To which I agree 100%, and I think most Guard players do too.

But that's not a Guard issue-Guard with unlimited CP are stronger than Guard with limited CP by a decent, but not overwhelming margin. It's others that need the CP that's real bad.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ice, you're saying the CP battery is an issue. To which I agree 100%, and I think most Guard players do too.

But that's not a Guard issue-Guard with unlimited CP are stronger than Guard with limited CP by a decent, but not overwhelming margin. It's others that need the CP that's real bad.

However Mono Knights, Mono Blood Angles and Mono Custodes arn't making the top 20/25 of the BAO like Astra Militarum. Remove that CP and their power drops a lot.
Guard don't see remotely the same drop in power when you swap Shield captains and knights for guard units.

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ice, you're saying the CP battery is an issue. To which I agree 100%, and I think most Guard players do too.

But that's not a Guard issue-Guard with unlimited CP are stronger than Guard with limited CP by a decent, but not overwhelming margin. It's others that need the CP that's real bad.

However Mono Knights, Mono Blood Angles and Mono Custodes arn't making the top 20/25 of the BAO like Astra Militarum. Remove that CP and their power drops a lot.
Guard don't see remotely the same drop in power when you swap Shield captains and knights for guard units.

That's fair. But, with the exception of Blood Angels, the three non-Guard armies you listed are DESIGNED to be allied into other forces.

Blood Angels, on their own, have issues similar to all Space Marines, though they have some standouts that rock in soup.

Standout. Singular. Scouts are just life support and 4 more cp.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ice, you're saying the CP battery is an issue. To which I agree 100%, and I think most Guard players do too.

But that's not a Guard issue-Guard with unlimited CP are stronger than Guard with limited CP by a decent, but not overwhelming margin. It's others that need the CP that's real bad.

However Mono Knights, Mono Blood Angles and Mono Custodes arn't making the top 20/25 of the BAO like Astra Militarum. Remove that CP and their power drops a lot.
Guard don't see remotely the same drop in power when you swap Shield captains and knights for guard units.

That's fair. But, with the exception of Blood Angels, the three non-Guard armies you listed are DESIGNED to be allied into other forces.

Blood Angels, on their own, have issues similar to all Space Marines, though they have some standouts that rock in soup.

You got a primary source for that statement that Knights and Custodes are "Designed to be allied" statement as the knight codex doesn't say it's designed to not be used solo.
Fairly sure custodes don't have said "Designed to be allied" statement in their codex.

No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ok it's so bad I moved it to the unusable strategums pile (my bad) But on that note admech already have a 6++ that can be boosted with a +1Sv for 1CP anyway dont they? So maybe its just GW'S rules team not having a clue. But give up moving and spend 2 CP for a 5++ weak sauce.

Well yeah, it sucks. That doesn't change that IK are intended to be used with other Imperium factions.

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ok it's so bad I moved it to the unusable strategums pile (my bad) But on that note admech already have a 6++ that can be boosted with a +1Sv for 1CP anyway dont they? So maybe its just GW'S rules team not having a clue. But give up moving and spend 2 CP for a 5++ weak sauce.

No, Admech cannot boost their 6++ with any stratagems.

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ok it's so bad I moved it to the unusable strategums pile (my bad) But on that note admech already have a 6++ that can be boosted with a +1Sv for 1CP anyway dont they?

Rotate Ion Shields is Questor Mechanicus and only applies to things from Questor Mechanicus that have an Invulnerable Save. That unit gets to add 1 to their Invulnerable Save until the end of the enemy shooting phase.

So maybe its just GW'S rules team not having a clue. But give up moving and spend 2 CP for a 5++ weak sauce.

I mean, 2 CP for a 5++ aura on something that can't normally get it when you're a unit that isn't going to move anyways?
That doesn't sound too shabby to me.

But this is where these kinds of issues lie...you see something you've "moved to the unusable stratagems pile" while someone else might see a cool, fluffy way to get some extra utility out of a big allied piece.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ok it's so bad I moved it to the unusable strategums pile (my bad) But on that note admech already have a 6++ that can be boosted with a +1Sv for 1CP anyway dont they?

Rotate Ion Shields is Questor Mechanicus and only applies to things from Questor Mechanicus that have an Invulnerable Save. That unit gets to add 1 to their Invulnerable Save until the end of the enemy shooting phase.

So maybe its just GW'S rules team not having a clue. But give up moving and spend 2 CP for a 5++ weak sauce.

I mean, 2 CP for a 5++ aura on something that can't normally get it when you're a unit that isn't going to move anyways?
That doesn't sound too shabby to me.

But this is where these kinds of issues lie...you see something you've "moved to the unusable stratagems pile" while someone else might see a cool, fluffy way to get some extra utility out of a big allied piece.

Spending CP to give stuff with a 5++ or better a 5++ is useless. Not to mention my Marines can already do this while moving and without spending CP.

Ice_can wrote:
Spending CP to give stuff with a 5++ or better a 5++ is useless. Not to mention my Marines can already do this while moving and without spending CP.

You understand that my statement was predicated upon:
I have a unit that does not already have an Invulnerable Save (at all) or better than a 5++ Invulnerable Save
I have a type of Knight that wants to stay still and fire or has some special rules relating to staying still and getting benefits
I have Command Points in abundance.

It isn't "useless" to do that. It means I've given myself something I didn't already have by virtue of a Stratagem that's intended to give me something I might not have already had.

Yep. I can fairly trivially give a Baneblade a 5++ thanks to the Knight, and make it a 4++ with psychic powers to boot.

Heck, in a big enough game, I could do it to 3 Baneblades.

That's why it's two CP.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yep. I can fairly trivially give a Baneblade a 5++ thanks to the Knight, and make it a 4++ with psychic powers to boot.

Heck, in a big enough game, I could do it to 3 Baneblades.

That's why it's two CP.

Hmm i didnt read the wording on it, that sounds fun honestly in larger games.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yep. I can fairly trivially give a Baneblade a 5++ thanks to the Knight, and make it a 4++ with psychic powers to boot.

Heck, in a big enough game, I could do it to 3 Baneblades.

That's why it's two CP.

if you can get one wholely withing 6inches of the base your doing well

fe40k wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
What GW needs is a list building app designed for use in tournaments. If they were truly on the ball, they'd integrate with BCP, and work out an agreement to track aggregated data.

They could have the level of access to tournament data that's being discussed here.

I don't think they'll do anything like that though, because they are very much a "my IP! No touch!" company.

As it stands their balance team is wonky AF. They played in what was it, Adepticon? Their Tyranids rules writers got matched up with the guys running flyrant spam. The Tyranid rules writers got their rules wrong in the game, the players corrected them, and then smashed them with Flyrants. Guess what happened? The BIG FAQ was delayed a week, and the change that came out of it was the Flyrant nerf.

This is how they balance. No idea how people play, show up to a tournament, get rocked, nerf.

Can you point me to what rules they got wrong, or a discussion there-of?

The sad part is - I'm not even surprised that this occured.

No, these are from eye-witness accounts from some folks I know who were there.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ultimately, the armies are designed and balancd around certain concepts and specializations and lack of accesd to certain abilities, and very few abilities that intentionally interact with other factions.

Citation needed

If you dont see the apparent self evidentness of this, nothing I say is going to change that. The armies of 8E are largely the same as the armies of previous editons going back to before allies and soup. Their strengths and weaknesses and availability of certain capabilities forms their archetypes and playstyles didnt change, and the extremely limited and mostly afterthought/bolt-on nature of cross factional abilities testifies to the fact that they are largely designed as self containted forces. The release schedule, product presentation, packaging, product line releases, etc typically are self contained with very few exceptions.

The fact that allies and soup is also wildly variable in terms of what factions can meaningfully take advantage of it also speaks heavily to the fact that deep integration of cross faction armies isnt taken into particularly deep account.

The actual cross factional integration is suuuuuuper afterthought-ey. It's pretty much all in the detachment rules, with a very small handful of actual cross-factional interaction at the codex level.

Self evidence is not a good argument for someone else's motive.

But a citation is.

BATTLE BROTHERS The beta version of Battle Brothers is a brand new matched play rule we’d like to test. When we originally wrote this edition of Warhammer 40,000 we wanted to make sure that your army could include appropriate allies. For example, in an Imperium army, Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines should be able to fight side-by-side, and in a Chaos army Chaos Space Marines should be able to burn the galaxy alongside their daemonic minions. The rules for what units could be included in each Detachment were therefore very relaxed, but this has since led to some very ‘mixed’ Detachments that include units from far more Factions than we originally envisioned. We feel that these esoteric mixed Detachments are far better suited to narrative or open play, and so we have decided to trial this rule for matched play games. This means that you can still include appropriate allies, but now they might need to be included in a different Detachment.

Now they do expound on the notion of "appropriate allies" but my take away is that allies and "soup" were certainly one of the main considerations of 8th, not an "afterthought".

So Field of Fire gaming just put out a blog post about the best armies at BAO, listing them via the average score. Of note to this discussion is the fact that Guard came in below the average score, behind Tau, Eldar, and Tyranid's. make of it what you will but it's a solidly mid tier result. https://fieldoffiregaming.com/best-armies-of-bao-2018/

 gbghg wrote:
So Field of Fire gaming just put out a blog post about the best armies at BAO, listing them via the average score. Of note to this discussion is the fact that Guard came in below the average score, behind Tau, Eldar, and Tyranid's. make of it what you will but it's a solidly mid tier result. https://fieldoffiregaming.com/best-armies-of-bao-2018/

This is for "main" armies correct? How main IG players had IG lists competitive and not fun tank spam lists? How many of them had allies with Knights, BA or custodes, etc..?

We just need all the information before saying its good or not.

 gbghg wrote:
So Field of Fire gaming just put out a blog post about the best armies at BAO, listing them via the average score. Of note to this discussion is the fact that Guard came in below the average score, behind Tau, Eldar, and Tyranid's. make of it what you will but it's a solidly mid tier result. https://fieldoffiregaming.com/best-armies-of-bao-2018/

I linked these stats from FLG like 20 pages back and they were never replied to.

The fact is as a primary army (this includes soup that increases its competitiveness) IG did not make the top list in points earned per round or win percentage.

Asmodios wrote:

 gbghg wrote:
So Field of Fire gaming just put out a blog post about the best armies at BAO, listing them via the average score. Of note to this discussion is the fact that Guard came in below the average score, behind Tau, Eldar, and Tyranid's. make of it what you will but it's a solidly mid tier result. https://fieldoffiregaming.com/best-armies-of-bao-2018/

I linked these stats from FLG like 20 pages back and they were never replied to.

The fact is as a primary army (this includes soup that increases its competitiveness) IG did not make the top list in points earned per round or win percentage.

But no mono army does, thats why i asked if they are mono, or fluff, or if they are soup but with the main army as IG. ?

Again, time limits hurt IG a lot, imo.

Martel732 wrote:
Again, time limits hurt IG a lot, imo.

But if those lists were mono faction then its not fair to compare against soup b.c almost no mono faction gets to top of tournaments.

List like these really needs to say how many points they are taking, those DA might be 700pts, but we dont know without looking many lists.

Martel732 wrote:
Again, time limits hurt IG a lot, imo.

The BAO has chess clocks for all tables with a winning record on day 2 and only one single game had a player run out of time and not make it to the natural conclusion.... did you even bother to watch the FLG video on the event?


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Again, time limits hurt IG a lot, imo.

But if those lists were mono faction then its not fair to compare against soup b.c almost no mono faction gets to top of tournaments.

List like these really needs to say how many points they are taking, those DA might be 700pts, but we dont know without looking many lists.

Primary faction means the majority of points went into that faction. This means statistically the more IG you brought compared to things like DA your win percentage actually went down. The only pure army in the top 10 was a knight player next closest was 19th with Tau

No, I didn't watch the video. Chess clocks are still time limits.

Asmodios wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Again, time limits hurt IG a lot, imo.

The BAO has chess clocks for all tables with a winning record on day 2 and only one single game had a player run out of time and not make it to the natural conclusion.... did you even bother to watch the FLG video on the event?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Again, time limits hurt IG a lot, imo.

But if those lists were mono faction then its not fair to compare against soup b.c almost no mono faction gets to top of tournaments.

List like these really needs to say how many points they are taking, those DA might be 700pts, but we dont know without looking many lists.

Primary faction means the majority of points went into that faction. This means statistically the more IG you brought compared to things like DA your win percentage actually went down. The only pure army in the top 10 was a knight player next closest was 19th with Tau

Well according to ITC its what is the most points in 1 detachment, so you could have 2 detachments of IG and 1 Detachments of DA, the DA could be 700 points and the 2 IG detachments could be 650pts each., over all its more IG but its army type of DA.

If you remember the top five lists I linked, they all just used Guardsmen as a CP battery.

It's why I asked earlier-is this change intended for competitive play, or casual play?

That's why i say that guardsmen could probably go to 5 points but i suggest to wait for it. It's not ruining any one's game (it's only a small point difference in the majority of lists), and i want to wait for the soup CP fix before wielding the nerf bat. After guards are no longer used as CP batteries, we can have some clear and useful data. Before that, we only get some muddy informations that we don't know if they come truly from the IG codex or from some strange interaction.

Stux wrote:
Dude. I don't have a horse in this race. I don't really care which is better, I was just supplying numbers. You're seriously complaining about rounding 16.2 to 16 to get a whole number of points? That is ridiculous and shows your own bias quite frankly.

Bullgak. Your rounding totaled about half a point (both ways) which is actually a pretty significant margin considering that a wound for a commander is worth 7.5 "points". You spent the effort to get the original math right but then were dishonest about the numbers and got called on it.

Stux wrote:
How is a group of units that does 8.73pts of damage in a fight phase only doing 15.39pts if they fight twice exactly anyway?

Because fighting twice doesn't mean they get to shoot their pistols twice. You factored in the pistol shots for both the SM captain and the company commanders in the original calculation.

Guard were present in quite a few of the top 10 lists. More than any other faction.

It is not fair at all to have Knight stratagems fueled by Guard. Knights have *amazing* stratagems, but they're costed and designed around Knights having a much smaller CP pool, due to their cost. They are not supposed to be spamming stratagems the entire game with complete disregard for resource management.

Speaking purely from a tournament standpoint, this balance aspect is absurd. Regenerating CP should be very restricted.

 Marmatag wrote:
Guard were present in quite a few of the top 10 lists. More than any other faction.

It is not fair at all to have Knight stratagems fueled by Guard. Knights have *amazing* stratagems, but they're costed and designed around Knights having a much smaller CP pool, due to their cost. They are not supposed to be spamming stratagems the entire game with complete disregard for resource management.

Speaking purely from a tournament standpoint, this balance aspect is absurd. Regenerating CP should be very restricted.

I don't think anyone is arguing against that. IMO CP regeneration all together should be taken out of the game. It gives such an insane advantage to any faction that has access to it and is always the "obvious" choice while list building.


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Martel732 wrote:
No, I didn't watch the video. Chess clocks are still time limits.

Just to get the logic down.... All but 1 game not coming to its natural conclusion somehow hurt guard because there is a limit... even though only one guy managed to hit the limit in one game?

 Marmatag wrote:
Guard were present in quite a few of the top 10 lists. More than any other faction.

It is not fair at all to have Knight stratagems fueled by Guard. Knights have *amazing* stratagems, but they're costed and designed around Knights having a much smaller CP pool, due to their cost. They are not supposed to be spamming stratagems the entire game with complete disregard for resource management.

Speaking purely from a tournament standpoint, this balance aspect is absurd. Regenerating CP should be very restricted.

Yes, in very small amounts, primarily as a CP Battery.

And I'd be down for removing Kurov's entirely and nerfing Grand Strategist to a 5+ per strat you spend, or even replacing it with something different entirely.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Guard were present in quite a few of the top 10 lists. More than any other faction.

It is not fair at all to have Knight stratagems fueled by Guard. Knights have *amazing* stratagems, but they're costed and designed around Knights having a much smaller CP pool, due to their cost. They are not supposed to be spamming stratagems the entire game with complete disregard for resource management.

Speaking purely from a tournament standpoint, this balance aspect is absurd. Regenerating CP should be very restricted.

Yes, in very small amounts, primarily as a CP Battery.

And I'd be down for removing Kurov's entirely and nerfing Grand Strategist to a 5+ per strat you spend, or even replacing it with something different entirely.

It's too strong you either have to give every army an equivalent (which is boring and stifles creativity in builds) or just remove it completely. Removing CP regeneration also makes balance as a whole much easier

While I agree that a Guard player should be able to fit in their entire game in the time limit allowed, evidence that few, if any, were stopped by the clock does not necessarily negate the argument.

Players knew when selecting/building their list/army for this even that they would be timed. *If* the clock would hurt a way of building an IG army - or even IG as a whole - *then* players would not typically bring that build/army to the event.

I still think it's enough time to do everything the IG player needs to do, but the lack of scads of IG players failing to the chess clock doesn't necessarily mean IG players wouldn't be better off without it.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Guard were present in quite a few of the top 10 lists. More than any other faction.

It is not fair at all to have Knight stratagems fueled by Guard. Knights have *amazing* stratagems, but they're costed and designed around Knights having a much smaller CP pool, due to their cost. They are not supposed to be spamming stratagems the entire game with complete disregard for resource management.

Speaking purely from a tournament standpoint, this balance aspect is absurd. Regenerating CP should be very restricted.

Yes, in very small amounts, primarily as a CP Battery.

And I'd be down for removing Kurov's entirely and nerfing Grand Strategist to a 5+ per strat you spend, or even replacing it with something different entirely.

This is factually untrue, people bring more than the minimum of guard. They provide far more value than just CP.

What I've gleaned from this thread:
1) 5ppm Guardsmen *might* be an improvement, but its the CP combo that's really OP in the IG book. Fixing that would have more general agreement and impact on the game.
2) [Some negative things just shouldn't be said. So I'll filter myself before posting.]

Bharring wrote:
While I agree that a Guard player should be able to fit in their entire game in the time limit allowed, evidence that few, if any, were stopped by the clock does not necessarily negate the argument.

Players knew when selecting/building their list/army for this even that they would be timed. *If* the clock would hurt a way of building an IG army - or even IG as a whole - *then* players would not typically bring that build/army to the event.

I still think it's enough time to do everything the IG player needs to do, but the lack of scads of IG players failing to the chess clock doesn't necessarily mean IG players wouldn't be better off without it.

So if you follow this thread the BAO is being used as evidence that IG is broken

Then when presented with the fact that IG as a primary faction did not make the top of win percentage or points earned per round its now morphed into "you cant use this event because clocks hurt guard"

I mean seriously its got to be one or the other.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Guard were present in quite a few of the top 10 lists. More than any other faction.

It is not fair at all to have Knight stratagems fueled by Guard. Knights have *amazing* stratagems, but they're costed and designed around Knights having a much smaller CP pool, due to their cost. They are not supposed to be spamming stratagems the entire game with complete disregard for resource management.

Speaking purely from a tournament standpoint, this balance aspect is absurd. Regenerating CP should be very restricted.

Yes, in very small amounts, primarily as a CP Battery.

And I'd be down for removing Kurov's entirely and nerfing Grand Strategist to a 5+ per strat you spend, or even replacing it with something different entirely.

This is factually untrue, people bring more than the minimum of guard. They provide far more value than just CP.

People that brought more then minimum guard saw their win percentage and points per round fall on average

Asmodios wrote:

Bharring wrote:
While I agree that a Guard player should be able to fit in their entire game in the time limit allowed, evidence that few, if any, were stopped by the clock does not necessarily negate the argument.

Players knew when selecting/building their list/army for this even that they would be timed. *If* the clock would hurt a way of building an IG army - or even IG as a whole - *then* players would not typically bring that build/army to the event.

I still think it's enough time to do everything the IG player needs to do, but the lack of scads of IG players failing to the chess clock doesn't necessarily mean IG players wouldn't be better off without it.

So if you follow this thread the BAO is being used as evidence that IG is broken

Then when presented with the fact that IG as a primary faction did not make the top of win percentage or points earned per round its now morphed into "you cant use this event because clocks hurt guard"

I mean seriously its got to be one or the other.

I mean you're looking at a snippet of data and making an argument with 0 knowledge of how those games went though. Saying Guard had a bad showing at BAO because you read names and factions on BCP doesn't really mean anything, and it's also false.

Forcing them to play quicker hurts them too. Time limits hurt them, not just turn. My opponents have been known to make 30+ measurements per turn just to make sure my charges are all foiled perfectly.

 Marmatag wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

Bharring wrote:
While I agree that a Guard player should be able to fit in their entire game in the time limit allowed, evidence that few, if any, were stopped by the clock does not necessarily negate the argument.

Players knew when selecting/building their list/army for this even that they would be timed. *If* the clock would hurt a way of building an IG army - or even IG as a whole - *then* players would not typically bring that build/army to the event.

I still think it's enough time to do everything the IG player needs to do, but the lack of scads of IG players failing to the chess clock doesn't necessarily mean IG players wouldn't be better off without it.

So if you follow this thread the BAO is being used as evidence that IG is broken

Then when presented with the fact that IG as a primary faction did not make the top of win percentage or points earned per round its now morphed into "you cant use this event because clocks hurt guard"

I mean seriously its got to be one or the other.

I mean you're looking at a snippet of data and making an argument with 0 knowledge of how those games went though. Saying Guard had a bad showing at BAO because you read names and factions on BCP doesn't really mean anything, and it's also false.

No what im doing is actually presenting Data while you don't have any to counter argue with. Guard had a great showing..... when taken in minimal amounts as CP regeneration for other armies


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Forcing them to play quicker hurts them too. Time limits hurt them, not just turn. My opponents have been known to make 30+ measurements per turn just to make sure my charges are all foiled perfectly.

>presented with actual data
>ummmmm chess clocks crushed guard

Do you have any relevant sources or data to back up that the reason guard had a lower win percentage and points per round then other factions was because of chess clocks? Is the necessary time to play any army not subjective?

It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

Marmatag, I posted the top five lists. All of them that had Guard had Guard as a battery.

Was my source wrong? Are there, perhaps, a bunch of primary-Guard lists in the 6-20 area? If so, can you provide evidence?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Marmatag, I posted the top five lists. All of them that had Guard had Guard as a battery.

Was my source wrong? Are there, perhaps, a bunch of primary-Guard lists in the 6-20 area? If so, can you provide evidence?

None other than i've stood next to the list in bits form lol.

It's also worth pointing out that Geoff Robinsons list is beyond the minimum for a CP battery. He was at the final table.

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

It's not weird really. You should expect it. Deep down they know - AM is going to get the nerf bat. Eldar players know it too.

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

That's not what I'm saying..... factions marked primary IG (more IG then any other faction) did not make the top list for win percentage or points earned per round

Of the top 10 lists, what % of their points were IG?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(of each list, not overall)

Asmodios wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

That's not what I'm saying..... factions marked primary IG (more IG then any other faction) did not make the top list for win percentage or points earned per round

The problem is, its the most points in a SINGLE detachment, if you have 700pts IG in 1 detachment and 650pts of Knights in 2nd detachments and the another 650pts in the 3rd detachment, that means you are still IG army, even tho you have 1300pts in Knights.

All these stupid lists should show how many points the "Main" faction has (or on average at least)

Asmodios wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

That's not what I'm saying..... factions marked primary IG (more IG then any other faction) did not make the top list for win percentage or points earned per round

Your also looking at avarage values which make the data (as its just data not information) a little more squeewed. All it takes is one or two players who go 0 and 5 and the 20 players achieve 4and 1 and 5 and 0 don't look so good.

While 4 tau players going 3 and 2 and 4 and 1 look better.
Avarages without context are nice but still don't tell the story.

I think the top 5 or top 10 or top 20 would be much more meaningful to analyse.

And it's more effective if you make the prediction before crunching the numbers.

Ice_can wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

That's not what I'm saying..... factions marked primary IG (more IG then any other faction) did not make the top list for win percentage or points earned per round

Your also looking at avarage values which make the data (as its just data not information) a little more squeewed. All it takes is one or two players who go 0 and 5 and the 20 players achieve 4and 1 and 5 and 0 don't look so good.

While 4 tau players going 3 and 2 and 4 and 1 look better.
Avarages without context are nice but still don't tell the story.

So I'm not allowed to point to this data but somehow people in this thread can definitively draw that IG is broken because they were included in the soup that did well at tournaments..... I smell a double standard

ALso if these are for full tournaments results, you ALSO need to look at, is there a best painting reward? or best conversion rewards? B.c some players will dont take tournament lists but just general list to win best painting.

And how many of them its there 1's or are newer to tournaments and just not a very good player in general.

You should only look at the top 10 results due to these, plus other reasons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Asmodios wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

That's not what I'm saying..... factions marked primary IG (more IG then any other faction) did not make the top list for win percentage or points earned per round

Your also looking at avarage values which make the data (as its just data not information) a little more squeewed. All it takes is one or two players who go 0 and 5 and the 20 players achieve 4and 1 and 5 and 0 don't look so good.

While 4 tau players going 3 and 2 and 4 and 1 look better.
Avarages without context are nice but still don't tell the story.

So I'm not allowed to point to this data but somehow people in this thread can definitively draw that IG is broken because they were included in the soup that did well at tournaments..... I smell a double standard

Im just saying we need less variables in data to use it. If you have a 100man tournament and use all 100 results thats not good data, what if a person wanted best painting and didnt even try to win his games? w/e army he is playing just skewed the results, if you have 5 people doing that, well, your data is pointless now.


I like to add, its only b.c there is so little data with 100 people that when you spread out that list into 10+ different armies you might only have 5 players in 1 faction, and if that faction had 1 of the players not in it to win it, that really is a huge %, 20% skewed data is really bad.

Asmodios,
I think that data has value. I think the concerns you're responding to detract, but do not invalidate, the data.

My point is that certain other data may be of more use. That doesn't mean there's no use in the data.

There is good reason to believe the top, say, 10% of participants are more serious about competing than the bottom 10% of participants. I would expect the primary army of the list that got dead last at each tournament to *not* be more biased towards what is OP than the general distribution of armies taken - some people who play either aren't that smart or aren't playing competitively.

As such, a reasonable cutoff on placement to consider relative faction strengths would be ideal - provided the cutoff were selected before the results of the tourny were known. Hence why I threw out "top 10" - I don't actually know who/what placed where.

As for a specific claim, I think that what all this data points to is that IG are more broken as an ally than as a monofaction. Not necessarily conclusive, but certainly suggestive. That doesn't mean Guardsmen would be less balanced at 5ppm. But it does suggest moving Guardsmen to 5ppm won't fix the biggest imbalances relating to the IG codex.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
ALso if these are for full tournaments results, you ALSO need to look at, is there a best painting reward? or best conversion rewards? B.c some players will dont take tournament lists but just general list to win best painting.

And how many of them its there 1's or are newer to tournaments and just not a very good player in general.

You should only look at the top 10 results due to these, plus other reasons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Asmodios wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not really data. It's the same stuff we all see at the very top level. And you're the one saying a faction declared as "Astra Militarum" is taking minimal guard? Get out, this is (a) factually incorrect and (b) based on nothing other than you wanting it to be true for some weird reason.

That's not what I'm saying..... factions marked primary IG (more IG then any other faction) did not make the top list for win percentage or points earned per round

Your also looking at avarage values which make the data (as its just data not information) a little more squeewed. All it takes is one or two players who go 0 and 5 and the 20 players achieve 4and 1 and 5 and 0 don't look so good.

While 4 tau players going 3 and 2 and 4 and 1 look better.
Avarages without context are nice but still don't tell the story.

So I'm not allowed to point to this data but somehow people in this thread can definitively draw that IG is broken because they were included in the soup that did well at tournaments..... I smell a double standard

Im just saying we need less variables in data to use it. If you have a 100man tournament and use all 100 results thats not good data, what if a person wanted best painting and didnt even try to win his games? w/e army he is playing just skewed the results, if you have 5 people doing that, well, your data is pointless now.

Firstly it was an FLG ITC event so painting is only used as a tiebreaker in very rare instances and the "hobby track" is separate from things like win % and points earned per round.

Secondly, I said way back in this post that people need to look at the results of an army over time before yelling for changes but people wanted to point at the BAO as a reason to nuke guard (even though knight soup dominated the event). But I find it amusing that when the actual tournament data does not support the hypothesis that guard is busted we now can't look at the tournament data because its not conclusive.

Also some people lose one game and drop out. At the *very least* you should look at people who played all of their games. This should be an absolute minimum.

I would personally restrict it to the top 20 or so. Because you're still seeing really good lists, with really good players. One bad matchup or dice roll can drop you from top 5 to 18th.

 Marmatag wrote:
Also some people lose one game and drop out. At the *very least* you should look at people who played all of their games. This should be an absolute minimum.

I would personally restrict it to the top 20 or so. Because you're still seeing really good lists, with really good players. One bad matchup or dice roll can drop you from top 5 to 18th.

Then please, post the top 20. I posted the top 5, and the Guard were batteries, excepting the number one player, who didn't take Guard at all.

Bharring wrote:
Asmodios,
I think that data has value. I think the concerns you're responding to detract, but do not invalidate, the data.

My point is that certain other data may be of more use. That doesn't mean there's no use in the data.

There is good reason to believe the top, say, 10% of participants are more serious about competing than the bottom 10% of participants. I would expect the primary army of the list that got dead last at each tournament to *not* be more biased towards what is OP than the general distribution of armies taken - some people who play either aren't that smart or aren't playing competitively.

As such, a reasonable cutoff on placement to consider relative faction strengths would be ideal - provided the cutoff were selected before the results of the tourny were known. Hence why I threw out "top 10" - I don't actually know who/what placed where.

As for a specific claim, I think that what all this data points to is that IG are more broken as an ally than as a monofaction. Not necessarily conclusive, but certainly suggestive. That doesn't mean Guardsmen would be less balanced at 5ppm. But it does suggest moving Guardsmen to 5ppm won't fix the biggest imbalances relating to the IG codex.

Oh yes it 100% shows that guard is OP when being taken in soup. I haven't argued against this at all. The issue is 5ppm guardsmen does next to nothing to change this issue but does hurt mono guard that is not an issue. The faction that was most prevalent in the top 10 was knights (renegade and imperial). Now I personally don't think knights are broken either but I do believe that knights were never balanced around having infinite CP. The funny thing is the only mono faction to place in the event was a mono knight list that lost on the second table in the final round to a knight soup player. Yet somehow mono guard has been bashed repeatedly in this thread and not mono knights

Hilariously, wouldn't fixing IG CP shenanigans address both IG and IK?

Bharring wrote:
Hilariously, wouldn't fixing IG CP shenanigans address both IG and IK?

Yes and its what should happen

It would fix one of the biggest issues with imperial soups in general.

Still think soup should be banned in matched.

 Earth127 wrote:
It would fix one of the biggest issues with imperial soups in general.

Still think soup should be banned in matched.

Even though I don't like soup I wouldn't want to limit the way people play, but there needs to be a downside of taking soup. Soup is also just way to good of an idea from a selling point so its not going anywhere

There is no reasonable way to restrict soup. You're barking up the wrong tree. Doing so would invalidate quite a few models.

The best solution is just to nerf the *obvious* problem.

 Marmatag wrote:
There is no reasonable way to restrict soup. You're barking up the wrong tree. Doing so would invalidate quite a few models.

The best solution is just to nerf the *obvious* problem.

Limiting to 2 books is a way, this lets you still have 3 subfactions for things like Aeldari and SM, but you can have something like IG, IK, BA

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
There is no reasonable way to restrict soup. You're barking up the wrong tree. Doing so would invalidate quite a few models.

The best solution is just to nerf the *obvious* problem.

Limiting to 2 books is a way, this lets you still have 3 subfactions for things like Aeldari and SM, but you can have something like IG, IK, BA

Still solves nothing.

IG get command points too easily. This is a core problem. Whether you guys want to see it or not.

 Marmatag wrote:
There is no reasonable way to restrict soup. You're barking up the wrong tree. Doing so would invalidate quite a few models.

The best solution is just to nerf the *obvious* problem.

CP can only be utilized by the detachments that have the same keyword as the detachment that generated it. <imperial guard> CP cannot be used by <imperial knights> ect.

Simple fix that still gives people the tactical flexibility to use soup to plug gaps in their army but does not allow them to share CP around.

So you agree that the CP battery is the problem, and not Guardsmen themselves? Because I'll agree to that.

I'm not sure there's wide agreement that 4ppm Guardsmen *aren't* a problem. But I think we are seeing just how widespread the agreement is that the CP battery is the bigger problem.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So you agree that the CP battery is the problem, and not Guardsmen themselves? Because I'll agree to that.

I'll agree that *a* problem is the CP battery.

I would also go further, and say that Guard is a top-tier faction and should be adjusted, relative to the mid-tier.



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Asmodios wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
There is no reasonable way to restrict soup. You're barking up the wrong tree. Doing so would invalidate quite a few models.

The best solution is just to nerf the *obvious* problem.

CP can only be utilized by the detachments that have the same keyword as the detachment that generated it. <imperial guard> CP cannot be used by <imperial knights> ect.

Simple fix that still gives people the tactical flexibility to use soup to plug gaps in their army but does not allow them to share CP around.

I'm in the camp of "when there is an obvious problem with 1 faction, adjust that faction, rather than fundamentally changing the entirety of the rest of the game." Your suggestion hoses a few smaller armies pretty hard.

 Marmatag wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
So you agree that the CP battery is the problem, and not Guardsmen themselves? Because I'll agree to that.

I'll agree that *a* problem is the CP battery.

I would also go further, and say that Guard is a top-tier faction and should be adjusted, relative to the mid-tier.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Asmodios wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
There is no reasonable way to restrict soup. You're barking up the wrong tree. Doing so would invalidate quite a few models.

The best solution is just to nerf the *obvious* problem.

CP can only be utilized by the detachments that have the same keyword as the detachment that generated it. <imperial guard> CP cannot be used by <imperial knights> ect.

Simple fix that still gives people the tactical flexibility to use soup to plug gaps in their army but does not allow them to share CP around.

I'm in the camp of "when there is an obvious problem with 1 faction, adjust that faction, rather than fundamentally changing the entirety of the rest of the game." Your suggestion hoses a few smaller armies pretty hard.

The problem is you have failed to provide any evidence that there is "an obvious problem with faction 1" (I'm assuming you mean IG). Mono IG does not only not place high but even taking it as your primary faction statistically lowers your average win % and points per round compared to other imperial primary factions (when looking at recent ITC data). Actually, the most consistent thing across all recent tournaments is the prevalence of soup in all factions that can take it. Thus there is more data to suggest the issue is soup and CP vs any one specific faction.

For the purpose of CP battery mono or soup IG doesn't matter. Mono IG are still winning GTs, and some of the best players in the world run Mono-Guard. But it doesn't matter for the purpose of this specific discussion.

Regardless, you can't look at one tournament and try and draw sweeping conclusions, which is exactly what you're doing. Also, you're discounting Guard as being just soup when in reality they are a big contributor because you can get a lot done with lesser points.

For instance, your answer to IG generating way too many CP is to nerf ynnari, harlequins, assassins, knights, and any faction that depends on allies to function. Enough already.

 Marmatag wrote:
For the purpose of CP battery mono or soup IG doesn't matter. Mono IG are still winning GTs, and some of the best players in the world run Mono-Guard. But it doesn't matter for the purpose of this specific discussion.

Regardless, you can't look at one tournament and try and draw sweeping conclusions, which is exactly what you're doing. Also, you're discounting Guard as being just soup when in reality they are a big contributor because you can get a lot done with lesser points.

For instance, your answer to IG generating way too many CP is to nerf ynnari, harlequins, assassins, knights, and any faction that depends on allies to function. Enough already.

Please post the GT and full list for mono IG guard that won

Marmatag,
What do you mean by "CP Battery mono or soup"?

Do you consider IG armies with nothing but IG that use those strats CP Battery IG? I had assumed that term was used to reference IG used to generate CP for another faction. Which, obviously, mono-anything can't do.

To my knowledge, mono-IG have never won a single GT. Mono-IG is 100% guard with no datasheets from any other faction. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

w1zard wrote:
To my knowledge, mono-IG have never won a single GT. Mono-IG is 100% guard with no datasheets from any other faction. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

There are more GTs then ever but other than the pre-rule of 3 16 hellhound list I haven't seen a mono guard list win anything. Or you have to go all the way back to before the conscript and earthshaker nuke

w1zard wrote:
To my knowledge, mono-IG have never won a single GT. Mono-IG is 100% guard with no datasheets from any other faction. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

It is well documented that mono-Guard won the Boise GT recently. The same one that was won by ravenspam in early 8th, if memory serves.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
Marmatag,
What do you mean by "CP Battery mono or soup"?

Do you consider IG armies with nothing but IG that use those strats CP Battery IG? I had assumed that term was used to reference IG used to generate CP for another faction. Which, obviously, mono-anything can't do.

My point is the ability to generate volumes of CP is a problem whether it's present in soup or not.

 Marmatag wrote:

w1zard wrote:
To my knowledge, mono-IG have never won a single GT. Mono-IG is 100% guard with no datasheets from any other faction. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

It is well documented that mono-Guard won the Boise GT recently. The same one that was won by ravenspam in early 8th, if memory serves.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
Marmatag,
What do you mean by "CP Battery mono or soup"?

Do you consider IG armies with nothing but IG that use those strats CP Battery IG? I had assumed that term was used to reference IG used to generate CP for another faction. Which, obviously, mono-anything can't do.

My point is the ability to generate volumes of CP is a problem whether it's present in soup or not.

Can you please post the full list from this GT. Also, it would help to have more than a single example to call an entire faction "broken". If we use that as an indicator for OP then we need to nuke blightlord terminators as they are obviously running rampant

In this *particular* case, he's countering that it's *never* happened (which will be countered by sharing the list, if it's pure).

As to the 'is mono-IG OP' question, a single win by a single list over a wide period of time is not very supportive of mono-IG being OP.

 Marmatag wrote:

w1zard wrote:
To my knowledge, mono-IG have never won a single GT. Mono-IG is 100% guard with no datasheets from any other faction. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

It is well documented that mono-Guard won the Boise GT recently. The same one that was won by ravenspam in early 8th, if memory serves.

I tried googling Boise GT 2018 and only got the flyer for the event saying it took place in June of this year. I couldn't find any lists of the winners, so can you please post a link so we can all see it?

Wizard's claim could be adjusted to "Mono-IG rarely ever win GTs", and it would certainly be true. (His original was specificly to his knowledge, so is technically true anyways.)

Would the stronger point of evidence be:
-Out of the past 10 GTs, how many mono-IG lists were top 10?
-Out of the past 10 GTs, how many monofaction lists were top 10 - and of which factions?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I could find rankings, and top was listed as IG. But it did not have their lists or an indicator of pure/not (that I saw).

I found this... https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Which only seems to say that the winning list was "Asta Militarum" but doesn't specify what the criteria for that is. It could be primary detachment only... We need the actual list to see if it is mono-IG.

1,800 points of guard and 200 points of something else is still not mono-IG.

I found the list or at least I think I did (its a blurry snapshot of the paper list) and it is indeed pure IG. I also read a little about the tournament and it was a total of 58 players over 5 rounds making it a major. I still believe that one mono guard list winning one tournament is a far cry from an "obviously broken" faction

https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Brandon runs a pure IG list, with a Shadowsword. This was also discussed and shared on facebook.

Here's another one from June:
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brenden-Chrustie-1st-Overall-Plains-of-War-GT-2018.pdf

Can we pause for a moment and discuss how it's perfectly acceptable for guard players to say "mono IG aren't winning GTs" and they provide no evidence for this ridiculous claim, yet the burden of proof falls on me to counter what is obviously false?

And these are just first place finishings. Coming in 2nd or third in a 50+ person GT is actually really damn good, too.

w1zard wrote:
I found this... https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Which only seems to say that the winning list was "Asta Militarum" but doesn't specify what the criteria for that is. It could be primary detachment only... We need the actual list to see if it is mono-IG.

1,800 points of guard and 200 points of something else is still not mono-IG.

1800 points of a list from one faction is probably not an underperforming faction though.
Also by that metric only 2 Codex's are mono Tau and Necrons. As almost every other codex is going to want something else allied in but that doesn't mean that codex is weak.

Also the maths was done time and again 4ppm guardsmen out shoot and out CC evryone elses troops except Drukari or Codex Emo Cheese.

 Marmatag wrote:
https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Brandon runs a pure IG list, with a Shadowsword. This was also discussed and shared on facebook.

Here's another one from June:
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brenden-Chrustie-1st-Overall-Plains-of-War-GT-2018.pdf

Can we pause for a moment and discuss how it's perfectly acceptable for guard players to say "mono IG aren't winning GTs" and they provide no evidence for this ridiculous claim, yet the burden of proof falls on me to counter what is obviously false?

And these are just first place finishings. Coming in 2nd or third in a 50+ person GT is actually really damn good, too.

When you continually talk about one event, it shouldn't be exceedingly difficult for you to provide the list.

Ice_can wrote:

w1zard wrote:
I found this... https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Which only seems to say that the winning list was "Asta Militarum" but doesn't specify what the criteria for that is. It could be primary detachment only... We need the actual list to see if it is mono-IG.

1,800 points of guard and 200 points of something else is still not mono-IG.

1800 points of a list from one faction is probably not an underperforming faction though.
Also by that metric only 2 Codex's are mono Tau and Necrons. As almost every other codex is going to want something else allied in but that doesn't mean that codex is weak.

Also the maths was done time and again 4ppm guardsmen out shoot and out CC evryone elses troops except Drukari or Codex Emo Cheese.

His list is pure Astra Militarum.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Brandon runs a pure IG list, with a Shadowsword. This was also discussed and shared on facebook.

Here's another one from June:
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brenden-Chrustie-1st-Overall-Plains-of-War-GT-2018.pdf

Can we pause for a moment and discuss how it's perfectly acceptable for guard players to say "mono IG aren't winning GTs" and they provide no evidence for this ridiculous claim, yet the burden of proof falls on me to counter what is obviously false?

And these are just first place finishings. Coming in 2nd or third in a 50+ person GT is actually really damn good, too.

When you continually talk about one event, it shouldn't be exceedingly difficult for you to provide the list.

Considering i just gave you two examples, it shouldn't be hard for you to immediately change your tune and stop spewing false claims.

1) On a technical level, to his knowledge they weren't. That was true. Now, he knows better.

2) On a practical level, 2 wins in June out of how many GTs have there been shows IG being reasonable, but not necessarily OP. How many other factions have been in the top 2?

That's why I wish we could just pull up a list of the top 10 for the last 10 GTs. That'd give us a more even playing field. What we have now is selection bias - there could be 2 top-10 IG lists in the last 3 months, and we found them - or there could be 200. We need more reliable data sources than hunting for tournies.

On that note, when looking at the most recent top 5, none of them were even majorly IG. Much less mono.

w1zard wrote:
I found this... https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Which only seems to say that the winning list was "Asta Militarum" but doesn't specify what the criteria for that is. It could be primary detachment only... We need the actual list to see if it is mono-IG.

1,800 points of guard and 200 points of something else is still not mono-IG.

They aren't
This was a team tournament I believe. In the discussion about the event the top 3 gaurd armies all took
Castellans
Multiple artimis hell hounds with CP farm
and double slamquinious with scouts

How much worse is this army with a shadow sword and 3 manticores or LR commanders instead of the blood angels batallion.

The answer is - it's really not any worse - it will just struggle more against eldar.

Bharring wrote:
1) On a technical level, to his knowledge they weren't. That was true. Now, he knows better.

2) On a practical level, 2 wins in June out of how many GTs have there been shows IG being reasonable, but not necessarily OP. How many other factions have been in the top 2?

That's why I wish we could just pull up a list of the top 10 for the last 10 GTs. That'd give us a more even playing field. What we have now is selection bias - there could be 2 top-10 IG lists in the last 3 months, and we found them - or there could be 200. We need more reliable data sources than hunting for tournies.

On that note, when looking at the most recent top 5, none of them were even majorly IG. Much less mono.

Why is that relevant as to are guardsmen 4ppm or 5ppm.

It's the fake news strategy of facts not aligned with your narative are hand waived away with "fake news anti guard bias claims"

 Marmatag wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

w1zard wrote:
I found this... https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Which only seems to say that the winning list was "Asta Militarum" but doesn't specify what the criteria for that is. It could be primary detachment only... We need the actual list to see if it is mono-IG.

1,800 points of guard and 200 points of something else is still not mono-IG.

1800 points of a list from one faction is probably not an underperforming faction though.
Also by that metric only 2 Codex's are mono Tau and Necrons. As almost every other codex is going to want something else allied in but that doesn't mean that codex is weak.

Also the maths was done time and again 4ppm guardsmen out shoot and out CC evryone elses troops except Drukari or Codex Emo Cheese.

His list is pure Astra Militarum.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Brandon runs a pure IG list, with a Shadowsword. This was also discussed and shared on facebook.

Here's another one from June:
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brenden-Chrustie-1st-Overall-Plains-of-War-GT-2018.pdf

Can we pause for a moment and discuss how it's perfectly acceptable for guard players to say "mono IG aren't winning GTs" and they provide no evidence for this ridiculous claim, yet the burden of proof falls on me to counter what is obviously false?

And these are just first place finishings. Coming in 2nd or third in a 50+ person GT is actually really damn good, too.

When you continually talk about one event, it shouldn't be exceedingly difficult for you to provide the list.

Considering i just gave you two examples, it shouldn't be hard for you to immediately change your tune and stop spewing false claims.

I mean I'm not sure why anyone would "change there tune" after posting 2 relatively small events. I mean I can go find tournaments in the last couple months won by almost all factions including some obviously underpowered ones like orks and crons. When you call a faction "obviously OP"I expect to see them winning large events regularly. Once again i haven't seen a single person in here claiming guard are "bad" just that they are not a OP powerhouse that is stomping everyone in sight. You have a gun trying to win best IG faction for the ITC winning a 58 person GT. Also, I find it funny that your upset for people asking you to show a list you kept refering to. I linked the ITC stats i refered to when i brought them up. Typically its on the person using an example for evidence that is supposed to link the source.

 Marmatag wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

w1zard wrote:
I found this... https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Which only seems to say that the winning list was "Asta Militarum" but doesn't specify what the criteria for that is. It could be primary detachment only... We need the actual list to see if it is mono-IG.

1,800 points of guard and 200 points of something else is still not mono-IG.

1800 points of a list from one faction is probably not an underperforming faction though.
Also by that metric only 2 Codex's are mono Tau and Necrons. As almost every other codex is going to want something else allied in but that doesn't mean that codex is weak.

Also the maths was done time and again 4ppm guardsmen out shoot and out CC evryone elses troops except Drukari or Codex Emo Cheese.

His list is pure Astra Militarum.

That's fine. It doesn't change that his list is seemingly an outlier rather than the standard.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Brandon runs a pure IG list, with a Shadowsword. This was also discussed and shared on facebook.

Here's another one from June:
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brenden-Chrustie-1st-Overall-Plains-of-War-GT-2018.pdf

Can we pause for a moment and discuss how it's perfectly acceptable for guard players to say "mono IG aren't winning GTs" and they provide no evidence for this ridiculous claim, yet the burden of proof falls on me to counter what is obviously false?

And these are just first place finishings. Coming in 2nd or third in a 50+ person GT is actually really damn good, too.

When you continually talk about one event, it shouldn't be exceedingly difficult for you to provide the list.

Considering i just gave you two examples, it shouldn't be hard for you to immediately change your tune and stop spewing false claims.

Right, "spewing false claims".

I'm not the one arguing tournament representation matters more than actual lists. Crap showing up in tournaments where lists are written months in advance and have to be turned in by a certain deadline, where some tournaments disregard/ignore FAQs because of their timing and basically exist using nothing but house rules means nothing for the actual game.

I'm the one arguing that making a change to a core unit based upon its interaction with the blight that is soup lists is ridiculous when we've literally already seen that soup will just hop from one thing to the next.
Conscripts got nerfed, Infantry Squads became the new hotness.
Commissars got nerfed, Primaris Psykers and Inquisitors started coming up.
Custodes dropped with their banner--oh gee, I wonder what happened...

TLDR:
I don't care about tournament numbers. I really don't. Tournaments are their own thing at this point. Until GW has their own tournament system in place, I think discussing it in relation to what are effectively 'house rules' that just get shared and adopted is patently ridiculous.

 Marmatag wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

w1zard wrote:
I found this... https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Which only seems to say that the winning list was "Asta Militarum" but doesn't specify what the criteria for that is. It could be primary detachment only... We need the actual list to see if it is mono-IG.

1,800 points of guard and 200 points of something else is still not mono-IG.

1800 points of a list from one faction is probably not an underperforming faction though.
Also by that metric only 2 Codex's are mono Tau and Necrons. As almost every other codex is going to want something else allied in but that doesn't mean that codex is weak.

Also the maths was done time and again 4ppm guardsmen out shoot and out CC evryone elses troops except Drukari or Codex Emo Cheese.

His list is pure Astra Militarum.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/9eb9prk3

Brandon runs a pure IG list, with a Shadowsword. This was also discussed and shared on facebook.

Here's another one from June:
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brenden-Chrustie-1st-Overall-Plains-of-War-GT-2018.pdf

Can we pause for a moment and discuss how it's perfectly acceptable for guard players to say "mono IG aren't winning GTs" and they provide no evidence for this ridiculous claim, yet the burden of proof falls on me to counter what is obviously false?

And these are just first place finishings. Coming in 2nd or third in a 50+ person GT is actually really damn good, too.

When you continually talk about one event, it shouldn't be exceedingly difficult for you to provide the list.

Considering i just gave you two examples, it shouldn't be hard for you to immediately change your tune and stop spewing false claims.

Whats interesting about AM armies is - they all look a little different. It's almost like they have a lot of really good options or something.....

Sometimes hellhounds
Sometimes Manitcores
Sometimes russ commanders.
Lots of infantry is pretty standard though. As well as endless command points and mortars.
Sometimes Cadian
Sometimes Catachan
Sometimes Tally