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Im quite happy with my Necrons, but im wandering if any of you think there is an overpowered army within 40k. From what i have seen they are reasonabaly fair.

I'd say it's more appropriate to say that the 5th edition rules made some of the armies underpowered.

I don't think one army alone stands out as being overpowered.

Grey Knights>everything!

Grey Knights are horrendously overpowered as their basic troops only cost 2.5 points each!

Oh. Wait.

Nah, I don't think there are any over powered armies.

Well, Orks, Oblit spam and Nidzilla are the closest, but even they are alright. Mainly because 40k is about luck.

**puts up flame shield**

Well, I wouldn't say there is such a thing as an end-all beat-all list, but I think 24 Bloodcrushers plus 4 Heralds on Juggernaut comes pretty close.

Triple Monolith combined with Immortals can be pretty ugly too.

CK

Anything that beats me is unfair. Anything that I beat is weak. Any time I get a tie? Table was the problem.

On a serious note. No no unfair armies. Mostly powergamers give the armies a bad name. Not hard to find something effective and SPAM the hell out of it. It is more the player I am afraid then the army.

Just my 2 cents....

Sha1emade wrote:Anything that beats me is unfair. Anything that I beat is weak. Any time I get a tie? Table was the problem.

On a serious note. No no unfair armies. Mostly powergamers give the armies a bad name. Not hard to find something effective and SPAM the hell out of it. It is more the player I am afraid then the army.

Just my 2 cents....

Sounds like the main problem is Games Workshop, not players. If one unit/squad is more effective than others so much that people would be spamming it, then blizz needs to raise its point cost / lower points cost of alternatives. Also, make the alternatives not suck.

Take chaos, for instance. Give me landraiders as good as ultrasmurfs have, and dreadnaughts they aren't completely useless, and maybe I won't have to just grab 9 obliterators.

A lot of "powergamers" WANT variety but their army codex simply lacks a variety of effective choices.

As a Tau player, I think I should ask:

Do you mean unfair like it's too good, or unfair like it's not good enough?


Just kiddin'

Rmeju

Unfair means what?
There are several top tier armies like Orks, Nidzilla, some Chaos. Possibly some SM armies. But Necrons are not top tier.

TheBloodGod wrote:If one unit/squad is more effective than others so much that people would be spamming it, then blizz needs to raise its point cost / lower points cost of alternatives.

I fully understand that GW and Blizz both suck, but we're talking 40k here not WoW.

24 blood crushers and a fateweaver is cheesy, broken, beardy, and unfair.

I always hated playing Eldar Power builds... Ignores cover multiple ap 3 blasts pfff. Weird Grenades, Swooping hawks could be annoying and flying tanks that change armor values with their weapons pffff. Certainly annoying.

Well I would like to make an ATTEMPT at putting things into perspective.

40k is an organic game. Let me explain that, even if it seems obvious. The game changes allot. New units are added. New fluff is added. Rules change to reflect this. Units rules change from edition to edition. What was once broken and powerful often becomes weak. Nearly every unit and army gets its day in the sun.

We often bitch about imbalance in the game and point fingers at GW for not play testing the stuff they put out. However to be fair they probably do test the stuff pretty well. Problem is that we the players outnumber them my a ton! With a good deal of people looking to exploit some rule or unit in ways not originally intended or expected. So somethings by nature can get a bit out of hand in this game. Given its organic nature expect things like lash, oblit spam, nob biker armies, 24 bloodcrushers with fateweaver and other things to change at some point.

Most of us do not play 40k in anticipation of one game or one tournament. As it is a hobby we are all gonna lose some and win some. Stick around long enough and things will come full circle to where you will be the one people point at and cry cheese. Some players don't have that patience and will always have one of the insane power builds in their back pocket chasing the next best thing. If you dislike the super builds identify those players and avoid them.

Not to mention in RTT the super builds rarely do well as people give them low comp scores, low sportsmanship scores and those type of players trying to keep up with the trends often don't have the time or patience to paint the army well witch means low painting scores. Makes it possible and often not difficult to beat them in the whole of the tournament. They work best in ARD boys were these armies are expected and glorified.

I believe GW realized that they were missing things and people were bitching about them allot. With so many players adopting the power builds and distracting from what a RTT was meant to do, be a platform for the hobby. They created the Ard Boys to hopefully create a rift between those that play as a hobby and those that MUST win games and have THE most powerful army. Kind of smart actually.

Just my 2 cents.

Every army can do something that is broken. This whole game is a balance of everybody's brokenness. So I do not think there s any army that is particularly over powered.

If your playing against Crushers or Nob bikers I would say you have a uphill climb ahead of you. As far as one ubber list no because currently thiers a Rock/paper/scissors thing going on.

Not so very long ago I'd have answered:
'Nidzilla
Iron Warriors
Las-plas Marines with asscannon spam.
Demon Bomb

Of those lists, only Nidzilla is still legal. In smaller games, it lacks the Troops slots necessary in 2/3 of missions.

I haven't been playing enough since 5th edition started, so now I'm just going to throw stuff out here for folks to discuss:

So let's go through the exercise of listing what is left:
Teleporting Sternguard Marines
Crusher Demons
Nurgle Demons
Lash Chaos Marines
Mech Eldar
Mech Tau
Nidzilla
Horde Orks
Nob Biker Orks (The new Demon Bomb?)
Preferred Enemy Templars?

In in the also-rans:
Eldar
Necrons
Drop Guard Vets + Tanks
Other Space Marines
Sisters
Grey Knights?


Special Olympics:
Dark Angels (Suck)
Blood Angels (Cost)
Static Tau (/sigh)
Most Guard Builds

Mytholgical:
Dark Eldar

To say that every codex has something broken that all armies get balanced out is completely wrong. What's broken about Tau? Their skimmers suck now in 5th, and their troops sucked even in 4th, so they're not going to claim anything. Tau is a really weak army in 5th. What do Eldar have that's so cheesey now? Skimmers suck compared to how they used to be. Don't even get me started on WH. That codex can't pop out a broken army of any sort in 5th. DH is the same way. Grey Knights weren't very good in 4th and they aren't now. They're just space marines that aren't as good, aren't as flexible, and cost a lot more points. Space Marines don't have any truely broken lists. There are a few decent contenders, but there is no list that's just really hard to beat no matter who you're up against. Necrons have a few handy tricks, and the fact that their rules almost dictate you have to have a decent number of troops helps them some, but they're not a top-table army in tournaments. Chaos isn't very good in either the new codex or the new edition. Dark Eldar are pretty good but you have to know how to run them. Guard CAN be good, especially with 5th being so cover heavy and guard being able to get +1 to all of their cover saves, but they pretty much automatically lose in Annihilation, as they have twice the KP of any other army. Tyranids are still viable depending on your list. Nidzilla ran with as many genestealers as you can take after the fexes and tyrant along with a broodlord is pretty killer, especial with genestealers being able to outflank now, etc. Daemosn are completely broken if you run them with 24 blood crushers, the fateweaver, and so forth. Orks are good, but pretty much only nob bikers.

Wuestenfux, I don't know how you can say Nidzilla is top tier. Maybe I've been lucky in my multiple games against several Nidzilla players (in 4th and 5th Edition), but I've never had serious trouble with them, regardless of whether I'm fielding Guard (shooty), Templars (melta, preferred enemy), or Deathwing (shooty).

I'd be interested to know how many people have ever fought dual or triple-Monolith Necron armies where the player is using them as castle walls. It can be quite disgusting.

As for the OP, I guess I should have been more specific in my answer:

Do I think there are unfair armies? No. Some armies may have advantages or be more prone to having powerbuilds made out of them, but I think all the armies are relatively balanced -- even Codex: Dark Angels (Deathwing can be pretty nasty).

CK

TheBloodGod wrote:
Take chaos, for instance. Give me landraiders as good as ultrasmurfs have, and dreadnaughts they aren't completely useless, and maybe I won't have to just grab 9 obliterators.

A lot of "powergamers" WANT variety but their army codex simply lacks a variety of effective choices.

True that.

(A Little Off-Topic)@ PinkSpaceHippy: As a Tau player who still wins when his Railguns haved rolled 1s for damage an entire game. I have to disagree about our tanks. 5pts for the diruption pods. Still have the RailGun.

Its not that our skimmers suck its just that other tanks got so much better by becoming more difficult to destroy. The only things that really hurt our tanks more than other armies was the reduction in defensive weapon strength. Leaving us now with no defensive weapons for our tanks. This will probably be fixed with a flamer drone upgrade or some such in a couple of years(hopefully) with a new Dex. Until then I can cope.

Where we got really hurt was in our basic troop fire. This was hurt terribly by the coversaves rules that leave our markerlight teams over worked now. Our troops always sucked at trying to hold objectives. Thats why you keep a transport nearby, don't jump the gun and on turn three start heading towards the objectives.

Is it frustrating having your playstyle restricted? Heck yes. But this is how a corporation gets you to look forward to buying your next codex. They play off of our competitiveness to make money.

(Horror of horror at admitting this) But do we wish that ,as long as GW continues on a Wizards of the Coast business model, they would simultaneously release all codexs at the same time as the new rule book? Yes, but then we wouldn't have anything to gripe about.

(Back on topic)Unfair as in your necrons get to STAND BACK UP after I killed it(imagine little kid saying,...hey necron I shot you so your out until the next game).
Or how my TAU PEEKED WITH THEIR MARKERLIGHTS and saw you hiding.Seriously, they're not unfair. Just different, and thats what makes the game interesting.
(I do believe some armies have simpler tactics and are easier to command. But thats just my opinion.

In my opinion, typed on an iPod touch... No army is truely overpowered. Sure, it might take more to kill a certain army build but you'll figure it out eventually and then you'll win often. What you really need to do is find out what. The army runs on and strive to kill one unit at a time. Necrons are annoying at best, not overpowered.

Wuestenfux, I don't know how you can say Nidzilla is top tier. Maybe I've been lucky in my multiple games against several Nidzilla players (in 4th and 5th Edition), but I've never had serious trouble with them, regardless of whether I'm fielding Guard (shooty), Templars (melta, preferred enemy), or Deathwing (shooty).

Well, in the GT final in October there were several Nidzilla builds.

I'd be interested to know how many people have ever fought dual or triple-Monolith Necron armies where the player is using them as castle walls. It can be quite disgusting.

In the GT final there was one player with triple-Monolith. He is a decent player in the scene but his army perfomed horribly. Just forget it.

Hey Sha1emade,
I like your post. I sums up many interesting points already made in the discussion sub-forum (where this thread belongs, imho):

Sha1emade wrote:40k is an organic game. Let me explain that, even if it seems obvious. The game changes allot. New units are added. New fluff is added. Rules change to reflect this. Units rules change from edition to edition. What was once broken and powerful often becomes weak. Nearly every unit and army gets its day in the sun.

Well, let's say most. I think we should differentiate between "armies" and "builds", there. In one of the several discussions about new 5th edition codices and which army "deserved" one, when it boiled down to Dark Eldar or Imperial Guard, someone said: IG all the way. Because you can build a at least a single proper tournament list for DE (spamming a few good units, dunno whych, don't care, no DE player around here), but none for IG. So let's agree to say "most".

So there is a difference between armies and builds.

Is it unfair? Well, I cannot play what I want if I want to win. As chaos player, Lash of Submission in combination with some templates is close to a must-have (and you only get called beardy -I prefer competitive- if you use two, it seems). Oblit spam is good even without that. But what if I do not want to use Lash of Submission, Vindicators, Obliterators and maybe do not like Plague Marines (though who in their right mind would not?)?
Let's say I want to make a list based on the theme of "they are no more than empty hulls", using Thousand Sons and TS-themed dreadnoughts (now a walking sarcophagus, that's something...)? That's going to be a bitch to play, although I got anti-infantry and anti-tank choices covered in theory - it's just that the choices themselves bad ones.
Is it unfair that it won't work?
You do not even have to go that far. While Nidzilla was considered one of the top 4th edition builds (and may very well live on with the change to BS on the dakkafexes), you'll actually have a hard time playing something different like a close-combat tyranid swarm (a friend of mine, as a fan of both Aliens and Starship Troopers 1 & 3, tries to). I'd go as far as to say "if Apocalypse has new, cool rules for your preferred setup, chances are it sucked before" (like Endless Swarm in Apoc, which said friend loves).

We often bitch about imbalance in the game and point fingers at GW for not play testing the stuff they put out. However to be fair they probably do test the stuff pretty well. Problem is that we the players outnumber them my a ton!

As someone involved with QA and testing, I'd say: If you test and someone finds a bug, then you do not test enough!
That is why, for example, all proper security alogrithms and their implementations are open source: More testers.
I think GW really needs to involve more people in their game-balancing process. This calls for either a propper open beta-test (including well-known power-gamers) or an ongoing-process of product improvement. Though both a really cool buzzwords in business, it plays against GW's main strength, the fact that they control the whole hobby (from intellectual properties to the frickin' paint to use) with an Iron Hand(trademarked, along with ""Chaos", "Codex", "Ork" and probably "your mom", too). Also, this is process more problematic with printed rule sets than with digital ones, but
a) even I, while fully lobotomized, with my hands stappled to my back, hanging upside down from a piece of razor wire could devise a better system than GW for their FAQ and their customer feedback handling (writing "5th ed." to a pdf does not update it, eh?)
b) Privateer Press seems to get it done from what I hear, FoW after some bitching, too.
c) whether printed material has a purpose for changing documents is open to debate (not here, though) - and the FAQs are digital. They just suck.

With a good deal of people looking to exploit some rule or unit in ways not originally intended or expected.

That's the basics of designing a system, I'd say:
If you design it only that people can play it who do not exploit the system, you do not need a system at all. Those people get along quite well. For example, a long time ago, my rpg group abandoned all rulesets. Worked excellent because of common understanding. But you only get a pat on your back for doing so, you won't make much money with a book containing a one-liner saying "your will shall be the only law" (well...).
You need to design a system to deal with a certain class of exploits (strategy and tactics both are "exploits", too).
Notabene: Inquisitor did not, they even acknowledged it (yet added character attribute values anyway), and now everybody uses the fluff but no one uses the rules. =I=munda all the way...

So somethings by nature can get a bit out of hand in this game. Given its organic nature expect things like lash, oblit spam, nob biker armies, 24 bloodcrushers with fateweaver and other things to change at some point.

The organic approach is a good one. As a programmer, I work with genetic algorithms quite often. The good thing about those is: If they do not work, they get discarded. Easily.
An army build, on the other hand can not be so easily discarded, because even "counts as" gets you only so far (CSM as PM, okay, but Vindicator as Oblit?).

You pointed out the solution to that:

Stick around long enough and things will come full circle to where you will be the one people point at and cry cheese.

GW will love this approach. And from my collector's standpoint, it is a good one. Yet this makes 40k a game that is interesting either for less than 6 months (until a new codex comes out) or more than 5 five years (unless a full cycle is done).

Plus, this only works for those into the "pro gaming" aspect of the game. Hobbyists that just want to be able to play with a well-painted and converted army (the main advantage over Warmachine) of their choice will not be happy with having to wait a full cycle until their army is playable. And if those decided to rely mostly on Possessed CSM or Dreadnoughts, a cycle might not be enough. ;-)

So, back to the OP's question:
If you look at it on an army level, I think it is pretty balanced.
If you look at it on a troop level, it sucks.
I'd love for that to change.

Edit: Expanded three sentences to be easier to understand.

Well Answered!

Agreed.

Playing a pure-GK army, I can't really complan anymore; I just go with the flow.. every edition and/or codex that comes out something always gets nerfed' one way or another..

Hopefully in the long run no one has to question what army is broken and/or unfair.. or maybe its the same as hoping for the benevolent Emperor to wake up from his 'sleep'..

There is always going to be strong lists (some that push into the realm of cheese/overpowered), with all the armies/units/rules/characters, it is virtually impossible to have a completely balanced game. Right now I would say there are a few very strong lists (nob bikes, shooty orks, lash/oblits, zilla, ect), but things may change.

Just remember, if you change your army into an "uber" army, just be ready to redo your army when they change the rules in the future.

Tau disruption pods? Tanks get a 4+ cover save for 5pts. Thats in response to whomever whined about tau.

Once everything becomes 5ed ill be fine. Its just there some redundencies with certain rules in 4ed codexes that dont apply anymore. Makes you feel cheated.

Off-topic)There's a difference between whining and a realistic assesment of a need for an up date.

You want to find out whose whining? Ask them how much those diruption pods should be. If they tell you they're priced fine but still want to change, then they're whining. If they tell you they need to cost at least 15-20pts then it's someone who is reasonably looking for an update.

Those disruption pod rules are thouroughly 4th ed., Just as same priced decoy launchers dont do diddley any more. One of the strength of $th(Typo, but oddly appropriate) edition Tau was wargear flexibility. The new rules outdated some of the wargear and limited tactics.

As I said before, I still play my tau. It's just more difficult.


On-topic) You can still win with any Army. Some may be a bit more tournament friendly due to rule optimization. But hey I probably should be over on warseer because I enjoy the game and experimenting with unorthodox builds and tactics.(Fortunatley I have friends that have been playing since rogue trader and they feel the same way,)

i believe there was no existence of unfair army since the 5th. every army can be fair or not even though i didn't play that much.