Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 EnTyme wrote:
I saw an interesting solution to nerfing soup the other day that could be implemented without hurting mono-codex armies: minimum detachment cost. Say that adding a new detachment costs at least 500 points (just a random number I threw out there). If the units in that detachment cost less than that, you pay 500 points for the detachment instead of the cost of the individual units/gear in it. This way, someone can't just take a couple minimum infantry squads and a cheap HQ for some super cheap CP. Thoughts?

It's a decent idea (though it'd have to be a percentage to make it consistent across all point values). I'm more a fan of the idea that you only get your army special rules if your entire army matches it. That would cause people to decide between soup or their special snowflake rules which opens up other avenues for list building.

P.S. Also a fan of having a chess clock where each player gets 50% of the time in a round and they either lose or can't do anything else once time runs out. So many balance problems in tournaments are also because games never finish.

I don't see how that hurts mono codex armies any less really. You can and probably should have multiple detachments within your mono-codex army for extra CP. It's just kind of a good idea.

Personally, if I were to look to any change, it would probably be to up the base CP to 4 and reduce batallions to +2. Probably give Patrol +1 instead of zero. Brigades I'd probably rethink/remove completely. Make the 3 detachment max an actual rule instead of a suggestion and that makes 7-8 CP pretty plausible for most armies whether they're soup or pure with a max of 10 not being too far ahead of the norm and not terribly practical.

ThePorcupine wrote:
Like someone earlier in this thread said, guard infantry don't actually "do" anything. Marine armies take guard because they're a cheap way to get command points and throw disposable bodies at something to try and hold a turn before they're dead.

Now that's certainly valuable in and of itself, but I think its a bit silly to try and build up infantry firepower or survivability like its worth a damn. It's not. Infantry squads rarely kill anything, or survive if they're shot. Soup lists take naked infantry squads (sometimes with a mortar to deny the "kill 10" in ITC missions).

Guard infantry aren't a problem. If you think soup lists taking infantry IS a problem, it's a problem with soup, NOT with guard. Solo guard lists are borderline not competitive. If infantry was so broken you'd see infantry heavy guard lists everywhere. You don't. And the answer isn't to feth the guard codex even further because some blood angels decided to throw a couple hundred points of naked infantry in their list.

They still do plenty. They aren't THE problem with IG, but they reinforce it.

 Herodius wrote:

Monstrous Rending Claws are regarded by some (if not most) as being too cheap (because they're free) on (Flying) Hive Tyrants. Based on past changes, if you want to look to see which units/weapons will be hit with the nerf bat, look for units that are being spammed. My understanding is that top-placing Tyranid lists have 2+ Flying Hive Tyrants with MRC + (gun of choice).

Bringing 2 HQs suddenly warrants a nerf? That's already almost 400 points of the list in 2 creatures.

People who spam hive tyrants are using double devourers on them. The reason why is that even when they are massively degraded they're still hitting on 4s in shooting.

And those lists aren't making any noise in any tournament, in major part because of the smite nerf.

If flying hive tyrants deserve *another* nerf, Tau Commanders should be deleted from the entire game.

Problem is if you give armies the ability to ignore the -1 to hit army wide traits what do you give those armies to make up for the fact that they end up playing games with no chapter trait?

Remove the ability to stack negs to hit and I think you've solved the biggest part of the problem.

I'm pretty sure Tau will get some over the top op price reductions/strats that will make everyone hate them again and break the game (unless GW has sold enough gundam suits)...

Actually guard CP generation is actually probably a big part of the balance issue, it feels like they didn't expect people to go build list around it, and this is something that guard lists can do like no other army out there.

No other army as yet can regenerate CP's on a 5+, "steel" CP's on a 5+, gain an extra 3 cps for sub 400 points and provide a massive chuck of area denial as a bonus.

Here is a stupid idea.

A battleforged army get say 10 CP.
Every detachment substracts CP from this at the same rate at which it now gains. So a Vanguard is -1 CP, a Battalion -3 ect. Make Patrols a -1 aswell instead of 0.

Souping would cost you CP, rewarding mono armies.

Hordes would have less CP then smaller Elite armies and that is fine. Numbers vs tricks.

bananathug wrote:
Problem is if you give armies the ability to ignore the -1 to hit army wide traits what do you give those armies to make up for the fact that they end up playing games with no chapter trait?

Remove the ability to stack negs to hit and I think you've solved the biggest part of the problem.

I'm pretty sure Tau will get some over the top op price reductions/strats that will make everyone hate them again and break the game (unless GW has sold enough gundam suits)...

Its already been done its called reaper spam, thats the new normal.

Andnjust because your good at hiding doesn't mean that someone can't just be better at finding people.

No GW moving from infantry only to army wide army traits and not realising the balance issue that causes with costing the trait and that it would shaft all exisiting army's.

GW have already said that the Tau Codex is going to see massive changes, hopefully good and well tested rules that allows balanced lists but they have said commander spam will be gone (bye bye anyone feilding commanders for eighth edition probably).

GW hit TAU hard in the index for GW's crimes in eight edition (looking at you eldar riptide wing) to the point 90% of the list is barely viable in a casual game let alone competitive.
Its a BS4+ army with no psychic phase presence or defence. No easy way past to hid moddifiers. And huge 15-30ft tall mech suits that can't compensate for the recoil of a heavy weapon


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ordana wrote:
Here is a stupid idea.

A battleforged army get say 10 CP.
Every detachment substracts CP from this at the same rate at which it now gains. So a Vanguard is -1 CP, a Battalion -3 ect. Make Patrols a -1 aswell instead of 0.

Souping would cost you CP, rewarding mono armies.

Hordes would have less CP then smaller Elite armies and that is fine. Numbers vs tricks.

That is actually a good idea, it also more realistically represents the difficulties that come with trying to comand larger forces in a combat environment. Small more elite armies tend to have better comand and control system, much better training and deligation of responsibility. Allowing them to react far faster to battlefield changes.

bananathug wrote:
Problem is if you give armies the ability to ignore the -1 to hit army wide traits what do you give those armies to make up for the fact that they end up playing games with no chapter trait?

I think the viability of a single, super strong chapter trait is less important than the viability of an entire army/race. Especially because for the most part it is effectively an auto-take chapter tactic for every army that got it against anyone except Reapers right now.

And if there is one army with lots of direct counters to minus to hit modifiers, why shouldn't it be Tau? They only have shooting, have 0 psychic defense and 0 close combat ability to balance that out.

Heck, give EVERY army strategems and special rules for certain specialized units to counter those modifiers to some extend I say, those Raven Guard/AL/Alaitoc chapter tactics are just that super powerful to justify it.
Maybe then we will actually see some other Craftworlds at events, heh.

bananathug wrote:
Remove the ability to stack negs to hit and I think you've solved the biggest part of the problem

Doesn't solve the issue of 90% of Tau units becoming overpriced dead weight because they are already high PPM and 4+ or 5+ to hit to begin with, even if they "only" get hit by a single -1 modifier (reducing them to 5+ and 6+ to hit respectively).

Ice_can wrote:

bananathug wrote:
Problem is if you give armies the ability to ignore the -1 to hit army wide traits what do you give those armies to make up for the fact that they end up playing games with no chapter trait?

Remove the ability to stack negs to hit and I think you've solved the biggest part of the problem.

I'm pretty sure Tau will get some over the top op price reductions/strats that will make everyone hate them again and break the game (unless GW has sold enough gundam suits)...

Its already been done its called reaper spam, thats the new normal.

Andnjust because your good at hiding doesn't mean that someone can't just be better at finding people.

No GW moving from infantry only to army wide army traits and not realising the balance issue that causes with costing the trait and that it would shaft all exisiting army's.

GW have already said that the Tau Codex is going to see massive changes, hopefully good and well tested rules that allows balanced lists but they have said commander spam will be gone (bye bye anyone feilding commanders for eighth edition probably).

GW hit TAU hard in the index for GW's crimes in eight edition (looking at you eldar riptide wing) to the point 90% of the list is barely viable in a casual game let alone competitive.
Its a BS4+ army with no psychic phase presence or defence. No easy way past to hid moddifiers. And huge 15-30ft tall mech suits that can't compensate for the recoil of a heavy weapon

Yeah, I'm still optimistic that the Codex will deal with all those issues based on how GW's rules team has been handling reactive balancing of major issues for the most part, especially because the folks over at ATT have literally been flooding their community team and support staff with balance suggestions and pleas .

ThePorcupine wrote:
Like someone earlier in this thread said, guard infantry don't actually "do" anything. Marine armies take guard because they're a cheap way to get command points and throw disposable bodies at something to try and hold a turn before they're dead.

Now that's certainly valuable in and of itself, but I think its a bit silly to try and build up infantry firepower or survivability like its worth a damn. It's not. Infantry squads rarely kill anything, or survive if they're shot. Soup lists take naked infantry squads (sometimes with a mortar to deny the "kill 10" in ITC missions).

Guard infantry aren't a problem. If you think soup lists taking infantry IS a problem, it's a problem with soup, NOT with guard. Solo guard lists are borderline not competitive. If infantry was so broken you'd see infantry heavy guard lists everywhere. You don't. And the answer isn't to feth the guard codex even further because some blood angels decided to throw a couple hundred points of naked infantry in their list.

I'm just going to copy/paste a previous post I made:

IG do NOT have the worst basic weapons in the game. They outrange almost everyone (and tie for longest if Voystron Guardsman), they output equal or more amounts of firepower within 12"/15", and can further double their firepower with a cheap order.

A Guardsman is the best basic infantry handsdown - even at 5ppm, they're still the gold standard.

With orders, they become the most mobile, most shooty, and most versatile basic trooper. They're not amazing in melee, but neither is a lot of other basic troopers; at worst, they tie.

2guardsman = 8ppm
WS/BS4+, S3, T3, W1+1, A1+1, SV5+
Lasgun: 24", Rapid Fire 1+1, S3
Orders, Regiment

1 Eldar Guardian = 8ppm
WS/BS3+, S3, T3, W1, A1, SV5+
Shuriken Catapult, 12", Assault 2, S4, Wound rolls of 6+ are resolved with AP-3 instead of AP-0
Battle Focus, Craftworld

2Termagaunt = 8ppm
WS/BS4+, S3, T3, W1+1, A1+1, SV6+
Fleshborer: 12", Assault 1+1, S4
Hail of Living Ammunition, Hive Fleet, [Instinctive Behaviour]

1 Tau Firewarrior = 8ppm
WS5+, BS4+, S3, T3, W1, A1, SV4+
Pulse Rifle: 30", Rapid Fire 1, S5
For the Greater Good

1 Ork Shoota Boy = 6ppm
WS3+, BS5+, S4, T4, W1, A2, SV6+
Shoota: 18", Assault 2, S4
Mob Rule

--

Pound for pound, IG Guardsman win out - they might not have superior stats, but their durability is almost double everyone elses, have a 5+ save (further increasing saves), and have the Lasgun - which outranges all the other guns except pulse rifles [but can tie with that even if they're Voystron Guardsman], and has double the firepower of any other gun within 12".

Termagaunts are initially close in comparison; but 12" less range and a 6+ save makes them far worse.

I'm not going to go into the fact that IG have access to cheap Orders; doubling their already superior firepower (making them 2-4x as good as any other gun within 12"/15"), or allowing them to move in/around/out of any situation.

Yes, every army has buffs; but pound for pound, their basic trooper is the superior one. Even adding in buffs, the price:effect:value ratios rule supreme.

Then add in the best tanks, artillery, ability to soup it up....

Guardsman need to be 5ppm.

Morale hurts Guard more than Termagants, who will likely just be immune. Remember Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers are also troops.

Basic marines stack up well to guard once you include morale.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Morale hurts Guard more than Termagants, who will likely just be immune. Remember Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers are also troops.

Basic marines stack up well to guard once you include morale.

How do you work out that marines stack up well once you include moral, no one is tacking more than MSU marines and they are almost always wiped wholesale, no moral effect.

Guard even at base ldship requires you to kill 7 guards men to wipe the unit.

But the thing most people are missing is the amount of table control having so many cheap bodies gives.

8th edition is a volume of dice game

 Insectum7 wrote:

Basic marines stack up well to guard once you include morale.

I don't think this really holds up. First, Guard have access to two stratagems that help a lot with morale tests. But more importantly, Marines with bolters should be wiping the floor with Guardsmen with lasguns. That's the whole point of Marines -- you're paying for T4 3+, which does very little to protect them from big guns but which is three times as durable as T3 5+ vs lasguns. That you can take Marines and Guardsmen, kit them each out to kill Guardsmen, and then the Guardsmen still expect to win a fight which is only particularly close if the Guard player doesn't take measures to mitigate morale and we consider the units in a total vacuum without buffs, is reason to think that basic Marines and Guardsmen are not fairly priced relative to each other.

Now, nobody's holding up Marines with bolters as a good or even average unit -- I think I have literally never seen someone take a squad of bolter Marines -- but Guardsmen do really well against basically everything. Most factions would happily trade their best basic troop unit for Infantry Squads and Company Commanders. I think 5 ppm would be pretty easy to justify, if that's in fact what GW does with them.

Ice_can wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Morale hurts Guard more than Termagants, who will likely just be immune. Remember Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers are also troops.

Basic marines stack up well to guard once you include morale.

How do you work out that marines stack up well once you include moral, no one is tacking more than MSU marines and they are almost always wiped wholesale, no moral effect.

Guard even at base ldship requires you to kill 7 guards men to wipe the unit.

Ok, so kill 21 Guardsmen from 3 different units and 30 total die to morale. If the Guard player wants to spend CP to save the last 3 guys, let him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Basic marines stack up well to guard once you include morale.

I don't think this really holds up. First, Guard have access to two stratagems that help a lot with morale tests. But more importantly, Marines with bolters should be wiping the floor with Guardsmen with lasguns. That's the whole point of Marines -- you're paying for T4 3+, which does very little to protect them from big guns but which is three times as durable as T3 5+ vs lasguns. That you can take Marines and Guardsmen, kit them each out to kill Guardsmen, and then the Guardsmen still expect to win a fight which is only particularly close if the Guard player doesn't take measures to mitigate morale and we consider the units in a total vacuum without buffs, is reason to think that basic Marines and Guardsmen are not fairly priced relative to each other.

If you math it out they come close to even, point for point. Favoring Guard if you ignore morale, favoring Marines if you include it. So equal points winds up being about equal.

Morale don't hurt infantry squads. And it doesn't hurt space marines because you run them in 5-man squads.

And how do you kill exactly 7 infantrymen from 3 different units? With loaded dice?

 Galas wrote:
Morale don't hurt infantry squads.

Can you elaborate?

 Galas wrote:

And how do you kill exactly 7 infantrymen from 3 different units? With loaded dice?

By using your army. Like, more than is used in these ridiculous vacuum scenarios.

 daedalus wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Morale don't hurt infantry squads.

Can you elaborate?

If you are shooting an infantry squad you are most probably killing it. If you are not, one of two options has occurred:
-Theres only 1-2 guys left, in that case yeah, they have lost 4-8pt to morale.
-You have only kill a couple of dudes so they are gonna lost max 1-2 for the same amount of points.
If Infantry Squads could go up to 20 or 30 men, then yeah, morale would be an legitimate issue for them.

Compare that with a Ork mob, where killing 15-20 (Something far, far easier that killing the same number of IG infantry) will instantly make the rest run away. And thats 40-60 points lost to morale.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Galas wrote:

And how do you kill exactly 7 infantrymen from 3 different units? With loaded dice?

By using your army. Like, more than is used in these ridiculous vacuum scenarios.

You are talking about vacuum scenarios? The one that put an example where you kill the mathemathical ideal number of guardsmen for max morale damage in three different units at the same time, in a unit that for the kind of damage you want to kill hit (High number of low quality shoots) overkill is the most probable scenario.


But personally I don't like to compare guardsmen to marines (To be honest I don't like comparing anything to TAC marines). The problem of guardsmen is that compared with all other horde or just "cheap" infantry units in the game they are too resilient, and in return have a respectfull offensive power. Like, it doesn't matter. You can compare all "anti-horde" weapons of the game agaisn't horde and they do a respectable amount of damage for the points invested. Unless they are firing at Infantry Squads. Then all sucks at firing at them. (Things were worse for Brimstone horrors but in return Brimstone horrors did 0 damage)

 Insectum7 wrote:

If you math it out they come close to even, point for point. Favoring Guard if you ignore morale, favoring Marines if you include it. So equal points winds up being about equal.

How are you getting that? If you just have a ton of minimum Marine and Guardsmen squads standing around shooting each other from 24" simultaneously, and the Marines are being careful about always splitting fire and picking targets so as to leave exactly 3 Guardsmen alive in each unit of 10, equal points of Guardsmen win pretty convincingly. Even if you assume that all of the surviving Guardsmen in a 3-man unit always end up running (which only happens most of the time), 1000 points of Marines kill 130 points of Guardsmen (~90 from shooting and ~40 from running) while 1000 points of Guardsmen kill 180 points of Marines, right? I guess I'm ignoring that the Guard sergeant can't shoot, but even without him that's 162 points of Marines. Once all the Marines are dead you're going to have quite a few Guardsmen left standing. In more realistic situations where sometimes the Marines don't leave exactly 3 men alive in the squad and when sometimes the Guardsmen don't catastrophically fail their morale test, it's a lot worse for the Marines.

But also I feel like you're avoiding my main point. Even if the two were fighting each other to a draw, that would be strong evidence that Guardsmen are too good relative to Marines. Like, obviously the fact that a Shadowsword's main gun kills a lot more points of Marines than it does Guardsmen is perfectly appropriate, right? Marines are paying for durability against small arms, and in return they're a lot less efficient at absorbing heavy weapons fire. Fighting Guardsmen with lasguns should be where Marines absolutely shine.

 Galas wrote:

If you are shooting an infantry squad you are most probably killing it. If you are not, one of two options has occurred:
-Theres only 1-2 guys left, in that case yeah, they have lost 4-8pt to morale.
-You have only kill a couple of dudes so they are gonna lost max 1-2 for the same amount of points.
If Infantry Squads could go up to 20 or 30 men, then yeah, morale would be an legitimate issue for them.

Compare that with a Ork mob, where killing 15-20 (Something far, far easier that killing the same number of IG infantry) will instantly make the rest run away. And thats 40-60 points lost to morale.

Okay, I was wondering if you were counting them something like that. You have roughly a 50% chance to lose 1-3 models at 4 dead. That's base without any other modifiers or auras. It gets worse with more casualties, as we all know, until it starts wiping out the entire squad.

If you have a squad with zero other upgrades as a screen, yeah, sure. it's 4 points per model. You're not out anything.

If you have any weapons on any of them, you're out about 20 points per model. That hurts a good deal more.

I'm not going to claim that this is as crippling as losing half an Ork squad, but the reality is a little bit more nuanced than 4 points per model.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

If you math it out they come close to even, point for point. Favoring Guard if you ignore morale, favoring Marines if you include it. So equal points winds up being about equal.

How are you getting that? If you just have a ton of minimum Marine and Guardsmen squads standing around shooting each other from 24" simultaneously, and the Marines are being careful about always splitting fire and picking targets so as to leave exactly 3 Guardsmen alive in each unit of 10, equal points of Guardsmen win pretty convincingly. Even if you assume that all of the surviving Guardsmen in a 3-man unit always end up running (which only happens most of the time), 1000 points of Marines kill 130 points of Guardsmen (~90 from shooting and ~40 from running) while 1000 points of Guardsmen kill 180 points of Marines, right? I guess I'm ignoring that the Guard sergeant can't shoot, but even without him that's 162 points of Marines. Once all the Marines are dead you're going to have quite a few Guardsmen left standing. In more realistic situations where sometimes the Marines don't leave exactly 3 men alive in the squad and when sometimes the Guardsmen don't catastrophically fail their morale test, it's a lot worse for the Marines.

Sadly I don't have the time to counter-math at the moment, but when I've looked at it in the past it's not as you say. Even then, in "real" scenarios the marines probably ought to be charging too.

Dionysodorus wrote:

But also I feel like you're avoiding my main point. Even if the two were fighting each other to a draw, that would be strong evidence that Guardsmen are too good relative to Marines. Like, obviously the fact that a Shadowsword's main gun kills a lot more points of Marines than it does Guardsmen is perfectly appropriate, right? Marines are paying for durability against small arms, and in return they're a lot less efficient at absorbing heavy weapons fire. Fighting Guardsmen with lasguns should be where Marines absolutely shine.

A Shadowsword main gun probably kills more points of Tank than it kills points of Marines, as different weapons are meant for different things. I understand where you're coming from on this, but I think we need to drop the fantasy of bolters straight annihilating guard like they did in previous editions, and either take advantage of cover (bringing Marines to a nice 2+) or assaulting to seal the deal.

In practice I find that a sort of "divide and conquer" thing works pretty well, using vehicles to block LOS from part of a horde and concentrating on it piecemeal.

 Galas wrote:

If you are shooting an infantry squad you are most probably killing it. If you are not, one of two options has occurred:
-Theres only 1-2 guys left, in that case yeah, they have lost 4-8pt to morale.
-You have only kill a couple of dudes so they are gonna lost max 1-2 for the same amount of points.
If Infantry Squads could go up to 20 or 30 men, then yeah, morale would be an legitimate issue for them.

Morale really is a significant issue for Infantry. It's not as bad as assuming that you're always killing 7 and the other 3 always run, but if you're using naked Guard squads it's important to factor this into their durability if you want them to stick around for multiple turns (it's not an issue for their use as turn 1 screens, since of course they don't run until the end of the turn). It's especially an issue when your opponent has easy access to Ld modifiers. A Hemlock is actually a major asset when dealing with a Guardsman horde despite its guns being terrible at killing them.

IME when you upgrade your Guard squad, e.g., with a plasma gun, morale becomes a lot less important. Your opponent will kill the squad off totally rather than risk you saving the plasma gun with a stratagem or a lucky roll. Of course, when you upgrade the squad you're lowering its durability per point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Sadly I don't have the time to counter-math at the moment, but when I've looked at it in the past it's not as you say. Even then, in "real" scenarios the marines probably ought to be charging too.

So, this is also wrong and I would urge you to find the time to re-check your math. Guardsmen beat Marines in CC for exactly the same reason that they do at range -- it's ~3 S3 attacks vs 1 S4 attack either way, unless you're assuming a really drawn-out fight where the bolt pistols play a huge role. I was being generous to you by keeping everyone at 24" and shooting. When you close in it becomes impossible for the Marines to guarantee leaving only 7 Guardsmen alive. In CC it's totally implausible that you're managing to split your attacks from and between different units so as to kill exactly 7 from each Guard squad. Of course, in a real game it matters who acts first since things don't attack simultaneously, and if you're the one trying to close in then probably the Guardsmen are getting the first volley or rapid fire volley in.

Guard Infantry squad with mortar 45 points = 8 lasguns and mortar at 12-24, sarge is out of range
Kills 2 guards men not moving or 1.85 moving
Kills .74 marines not moving or .64 moving
21 to 24 points to kill a 4.5ppm guardsman, 20% return
61 to 70 pointa to kill a 13ppm marine, 20% return

5 tacticals 65 points 5 bolters moving and static damageis the same.
Kills 1.5 guards men or .56 marines.
Or 44 points of marines to kill a guard 4.5ppm smuck, 10% return
117 points of marines to kill a 13ppm marine, 11% return

Guard IS are twice as efficent at killing guard and Marines as marines.
Even with guard at 5ppm and marines at 12ppm guard are still more cost effective than a tac squad.

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

bananathug wrote:
Problem is if you give armies the ability to ignore the -1 to hit army wide traits what do you give those armies to make up for the fact that they end up playing games with no chapter trait?

I think the viability of a single, super strong chapter trait is less important than the viability of an entire army/race. Especially because for the most part it is effectively an auto-take chapter tactic for every army that got it against anyone except Reapers right now.

Actually, it wasn't. Because on both Alpha Legion and Raven Guard, it only applied to infantry and Dreadnoughts and you had no additional way to stack it.

And if there is one army with lots of direct counters to minus to hit modifiers, why shouldn't it be Tau? They only have shooting, have 0 psychic defense and 0 close combat ability to balance that out.

Not getting too in-depth for this but quite frankly? Markerlights allow for Tau to "counter" the minus To Hit modifiers by making the units hit on their basic BS. They're also able to be fairly mobile while still firing Heavy weapons with no additional penalties.

Plus we don't know what some of their Special Wargear will allow for.

Heck, give EVERY army strategems and special rules for certain specialized units to counter those modifiers to some extend I say, those Raven Guard/AL/Alaitoc chapter tactics are just that super powerful to justify it.
Maybe then we will actually see some other Craftworlds at events, heh.

We won't. Because Eldar have the ability to stack negative Hit modifiers. There's a reason there were Rangers and Hemlocks in Alaitoc lists; both got their Craftworld benefits and got their actual abilities that gave you a negative Hit modifier.

Same thing goes with Stygives VIII and Dragoons.

bananathug wrote:
Remove the ability to stack negs to hit and I think you've solved the biggest part of the problem

Doesn't solve the issue of 90% of Tau units becoming overpriced dead weight because they are already high PPM and 4+ or 5+ to hit to begin with, even if they "only" get hit by a single -1 modifier (reducing them to 5+ and 6+ to hit respectively).

The only 5+s in the Tau arsenal are Drones. Are you really going to try to say that Drones in a bad place when you can throw a Drone Controller onto a Commander or other Suit and make them even out that -1 to Hit?

Ice_can wrote:

bananathug wrote:
Problem is if you give armies the ability to ignore the -1 to hit army wide traits what do you give those armies to make up for the fact that they end up playing games with no chapter trait?

Remove the ability to stack negs to hit and I think you've solved the biggest part of the problem.

I'm pretty sure Tau will get some over the top op price reductions/strats that will make everyone hate them again and break the game (unless GW has sold enough gundam suits)...

Its already been done its called reaper spam, thats the new normal.

Except Reaper spam really is only good at countering Eldar...since they're the only army that has multiple units that can stack negative To Hit modifiers.

ThePorcupine wrote:
Like someone earlier in this thread said, guard infantry don't actually "do" anything. Marine armies take guard because they're a cheap way to get command points and throw disposable bodies at something to try and hold a turn before they're dead.

Now that's certainly valuable in and of itself, but I think its a bit silly to try and build up infantry firepower or survivability like its worth a damn. It's not. Infantry squads rarely kill anything, or survive if they're shot. Soup lists take naked infantry squads (sometimes with a mortar to deny the "kill 10" in ITC missions).

Guard infantry aren't a problem. If you think soup lists taking infantry IS a problem, it's a problem with soup, NOT with guard. Solo guard lists are borderline not competitive. If infantry was so broken you'd see infantry heavy guard lists everywhere. You don't. And the answer isn't to feth the guard codex even further because some blood angels decided to throw a couple hundred points of naked infantry in their list.

I think this is what people demanding nerfs (at least those who are demanding them for the perceived good of the game and not out of an apparent irrational hatred for Guard) are missing. Solo Guard lists are indeed right on the borderline between being competitive or not. I dare say they are in a pretty good place, not too weak, not too strong. There is nothing wrong with Guard having good, versatile, cost effective infantry. That's nearly the WHOLE POINT of the faction and the theme it's built around. If the true balance issue is soup, which it is, then address that particular issue and don't keep driving solo Guard back into 7th edition.

People upset that guard have "cost-efficient" infantry compared to marines don't let out a peep when you point out guard don't have an equivalent of devastating 1st turn charge units like blood angels or tyranids (or any worthwhile combat units in general), or mass -1 to hit like chaos or eldar do, or a primarch, or an amazing flyer like the hemlock, or amazing psykers, or the insane durability with feel-no-pain like death guard, or the amazing buff stacking of marines with captains, ancients, and the rowboat.

Yes, guard has very cheap chaff infantry and artillery. Congrats. You found what an army is good at. Every army is particularly good at something and not great at other things.

Guard's strengths aren't really even good enough to have them compete at top level. Why do you want to bring them down even lower.

ThePorcupine wrote:
People upset that guard have "cost-efficient" infantry compared to marines don't let out a peep when you point out guard don't have an equivalent of devastating 1st turn charge units like blood angels or tyranids (or any worthwhile combat units in general), or mass -1 to hit like chaos or eldar do, or a primarch, or an amazing flyer like the hemlock, or amazing psykers, or the insane durability with feel-no-pain like death guard, or the amazing buff stacking of marines with captains, ancients, and the rowboat.

Yes, guard has very cheap chaff infantry and artillery. Congrats. You found what an army is good at. Every army is particularly good at something and not great at other things.

Guard's strengths aren't really even good enough to have them compete at top level. Why do you want to bring them down even lower.

Yeah, they just have that devastating first turn shooting AND the ability to totally bubble wrap everything important from assault.

But no good assault CLEARLY means they're bottom tier. They also only have the cheapest psykers around, and free orders.

ThePorcupine wrote:
People upset that guard have "cost-efficient" infantry compared to marines don't let out a peep when you point out guard don't have an equivalent of devastating 1st turn charge units like blood angels or tyranids (or any worthwhile combat units in general), or mass -1 to hit like chaos or eldar do, or a primarch, or an amazing flyer like the hemlock, or amazing psykers, or the insane durability with feel-no-pain like death guard, or the amazing buff stacking of marines with captains, ancients, and the rowboat.

Yes, guard has very cheap chaff infantry and artillery. Congrats. You found what an army is good at. Every army is particularly good at something and not great at other things.

Guard's strengths aren't really even good enough to have them compete at top level. Why do you want to bring them down even lower.

Because they are busted as hell still.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Otto von Bludd wrote:

ThePorcupine wrote:
Like someone earlier in this thread said, guard infantry don't actually "do" anything. Marine armies take guard because they're a cheap way to get command points and throw disposable bodies at something to try and hold a turn before they're dead.

Now that's certainly valuable in and of itself, but I think its a bit silly to try and build up infantry firepower or survivability like its worth a damn. It's not. Infantry squads rarely kill anything, or survive if they're shot. Soup lists take naked infantry squads (sometimes with a mortar to deny the "kill 10" in ITC missions).

Guard infantry aren't a problem. If you think soup lists taking infantry IS a problem, it's a problem with soup, NOT with guard. Solo guard lists are borderline not competitive. If infantry was so broken you'd see infantry heavy guard lists everywhere. You don't. And the answer isn't to feth the guard codex even further because some blood angels decided to throw a couple hundred points of naked infantry in their list.

I think this is what people demanding nerfs (at least those who are demanding them for the perceived good of the game and not out of an apparent irrational hatred for Guard) are missing. Solo Guard lists are indeed right on the borderline between being competitive or not. I dare say they are in a pretty good place, not too weak, not too strong. There is nothing wrong with Guard having good, versatile, cost effective infantry. That's nearly the WHOLE POINT of the faction and the theme it's built around. If the true balance issue is soup, which it is, then address that particular issue and don't keep driving solo Guard back into 7th edition.

IG are too strong mono faction and souped. The only thing saving the field are a handful of broken units and -1 to be hit traits. Those armies that don't have that stuff are in a world of hurt.

 Wolfblade wrote:

ThePorcupine wrote:
People upset that guard have "cost-efficient" infantry compared to marines don't let out a peep when you point out guard don't have an equivalent of devastating 1st turn charge units like blood angels or tyranids (or any worthwhile combat units in general), or mass -1 to hit like chaos or eldar do, or a primarch, or an amazing flyer like the hemlock, or amazing psykers, or the insane durability with feel-no-pain like death guard, or the amazing buff stacking of marines with captains, ancients, and the rowboat.

Yes, guard has very cheap chaff infantry and artillery. Congrats. You found what an army is good at. Every army is particularly good at something and not great at other things.

Guard's strengths aren't really even good enough to have them compete at top level. Why do you want to bring them down even lower.

Yeah, they just have that devastating first turn shooting AND the ability to totally bubble wrap everything important from assault.

But no good assault CLEARLY means they're bottom tier. They also only have the cheapest psykers around, and free orders.

Just about everyone can get devastating turn one shooting. Ever go up against three Leviathans with double butcher cannons? Say goodbye to anything in range of those.

You know what the Guard don't have? Meaningful mobility. Sure, I can 'move move move' a squad an average of 19" onto an objective. But that squad is dead the following turn and I'll have to do it again to score that again in a progressive points mission. I can only do that so many times before my screen is compromised or I run out of infantry.

Cheapest Psykers are fixed if you've played the beta rules. Also, nobody is saying they're bottom tier, but they're not the juggernaut they were when 8th launched and it'd be nice if people started catching on to that and moved onto the next offender. Two pure guard lists made it to top 25 at LVO and zero made top 8. Five of the top 8 were Alaitoc/Ynnari.

I went 3-3 there with the prototypical Guard gun line of dudes, tanks, and artillery. Two of my three losses we're to RG and DA. Granted, if those went to six turns, I'd have tabled both of them, but their mobility gave them the lead on points they needed to win.

Also, will you guys quit it with the morale doesn't matter to infantry squads bs? It definitely matters. Try deliberately shooting for causing 6-8 casualties across multiple squads and watch what happens after the Guard player burns 3 CP trying to save the first two. At the worst case, in ITC, you've set yourself up for a easy DBTC secondary and EoR kill point primary the next turn.

Morale doesn't matter to IG infantry because it doesn't matter if t they live or die; there are always more infantry to be had because they cost nothing.