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Although next time round, when 6th edition comes out, transports will again be nerfed because presumably everyone has them in their collection now - replaced by, I forsee, more effective infantry

Standard Battle Sister squads with 3rd edition codex ran 215 points. Now I believe most will be running dual meltaguns in a rhino for 170 points.
21% drop


Same weapon set ups

3rd Edition Codex

Palatine
5 Battle Sister Squads /w Veteran Superior and 2 Meltaguns in Rhinos /w SLs
3 Dominion Squads /w 2 Meltaguns in TL MM Immolators /w SLs
3 Excorcists /w SLs

1995 points

5th Edition White Dwarf Codex

1880 points

6% drop is pretty minor, but basic Battle Sisters were extremely cheap under their 3e rules.

Other things in the dex dropped a lot. 5 Retributors /w 4 Heavy Bolters and a VSS went from 129 to 85...

Pacific wrote:Although next time round, when 6th edition comes out, transports will again be nerfed because presumably everyone has them in their collection now - replaced by, I forsee, more effective infantry

Given the trend for ever bigger vehicles and battles, I doubt that.

I rather suspect that the only reason vehicles didn't play a larger part in 40K's early editions was that GW was so limited in what they could produce. These days, the sky is more or less the limit, and they're taking full advantage of that. And as long as people enjoy seeing masses of tanks on the table, I think that trend will continue.

insaniak wrote:

Pacific wrote:Although next time round, when 6th edition comes out, transports will again be nerfed because presumably everyone has them in their collection now - replaced by, I forsee, more effective infantry

Given the trend for ever bigger vehicles and battles, I doubt that.

I rather suspect that the only reason vehicles didn't play a larger part in 40K's early editions was that GW was so limited in what they could produce. These days, the sky is more or less the limit, and they're taking full advantage of that. And as long as people enjoy seeing masses of tanks on the table, I think that trend will continue.

I think it also had to do with sales forecasts at the time too. People would build a space marine army heavy on marines and dreadnaughts because they were cheap to play and cheap to buy. Landraiders were always "expensive" when you cost based them against 10 marines and a drop pod back in the day. Because there was smaller demand for games to be HEAVY in vehicle model counts, I suspect that this is why they were so expensive. Then you watched the price of infantry models creep up to be close to Tank models because of basic supply and demand effects. Imperial Guard armies really changed the demand on tank battles and that spilled out into the rest of the armies. Even now though, you still see higher sales ((by model, not cost)) in infantry because they're core units of course; unless you're a Guard army that already has 6-8 vet squads on hand and a couple other infantry units its ALL about vehicles, which Russ or Basilisk varients to take build this time etc. If you're building a Marine army, once you have 3-4 rhinos, pred, landraider and a couple dreads all you might want is a couple razorbacks and then its on to speeders, bikes, jump infantry. Ork armies tend to be the same, other than a couple tanks its truks and more boys, nobs, etc. Tau is the same, more infantry/suits... really ANY army except Guard once you've sorted out your transports there's few "need" for lots of different tanks on hand.
bit
Perfect example Tau Skyray, who would run 3 of them? I'm not saying you can't, but WHY would you? But Skyray SELLS over the devilfish because players realize they get LOTS more bitz for only $3-4 more, not to mention all the bits to build the Hammerhead as well. 2 tanks for $3-4 more...