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But the second tier of SM is on par with the "B+" units in other dexes.

Sure, Tacs don't beat Maelific Lords, but they still beat half the Troop *choices* in the game (emphasis on choices, because otherwise we get dragged into 3 pages proving that there are only 3 troop choices in the game - whichever 3 non-Tacs placed highest last) one way or another.

Razorbacks don't have Ravager firepower, but they outshoot Serpents.

Quadlas Preds can't wipe out Tac squads as fast as a Fire Prism, but they can take down the big things faster.

Assault Marines... Ok, they suck competitively. They suck about as hard as Scorpions or Wyches or Vespids.

Rhinos are still really cheap for METAL BAWKSES, with good durability.

There are many non-B+ units in the SM codex, but the same is true for most other books. The 7E CWE book was an abomination. The 7E SM book was in the same range (more A-level options, fewer B-level options, and more C-level options).

I wish all books were more rounded. But that doesn't mean buff the middleground books. You buff those below average and nerf those above. Just buffing a middleground book makes another book middleground and makes things worse for the bottom half of the books.

I think a biggest problem is that Chaos Space Marines with Chainsword+Bolt Pistol don't have a place with Khorne Berzerkers in the same codex. Even one being troop and the other Elite.

Bharring, you are very wrong. Vespids in 8th are pretty damm good. They are leagues above Wyches, Assault Marines and Scorpions.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
But if you're only taking the "top" lists from the book as the entire book's quality, then the answer is obviously A. Their top lists are pretty good for the moment. But man...that quality dropoff as soon as you don't take the top units is a doozy.

I get what you are saying. But also remember that in 7th ed, Eldar were the top Codex yet only because of 3-4 spammed units. Lists that didn't include any of those specific units never placed.

Clearly Marines are no where near 7th ed Eldar, but the point I am trying to make is that most Codices have a "steep drop-off in quality" once you eliminate what the meta considers their best units.
This doesn't mean the army is bad, it means the designers have a hard time with internal balance. Deciding not to take the "good" units is a personal choice.

If you refuse to take Rock, you'll never beat Scissors. That doesn't mean Paper is the worst choice.

-

7e eldar didn't have as severe a drop off as many people think. My wife has them (and by extension, I've played with them quite a bit,) and I found their "2nd string" in 7e to still be quite workable, even upper middle tables worthy. *Almost* everything in their book was a solid B+ or better unit. One of my favorite cheeky tricks was starting shooting phase, having an enemy knight declare shield facing, and then battle focusing into a different armor arc. Night and day when you compare that to 2nd string marine lists in 8e. No g-man? No ravens or razors or even preds? Sounds like masochist marines!

Aye, 7E Eldar had a very broad spectrum of good units. Yes there were 2++ Seer Councils, Scatterbikes and Wraithknights. There were also Wave Serpents, BS5 Warp Spiders and "AP0/doubleAP1" bonus Fire Dragons, gobs of units with "auto-delete anything" D weapons, insane psychic domination, etc. There were a lot of very powerful and abusive units in that codex, not just like 3 or 4

To be fair though, Eldar are usually an exception, especially that book. In 8E thus far, most armies seem to still have lots of internal balance issues, even the much bemoaned IG codex has its fair share of stinkers (Mordian doctrines, Vanquishers, Chimeras, Banewolfs, Eradicators, Exterminators, Sentinels, etc)

Bharring wrote:
... Clearly we need CTs on Vehicles, so people start taking Tanks and Ravens?

Hey you know. Alpha legion could really use that buff. -1 to hit everything over 12” and the ability to infiltrate anothing in the codex including the game breaking daemon prince would be great.

Honestly though. Giving defilers infiltrate would lend them to greater use outside of Fun n friendly games.

 sennacherib wrote:

Hey you know. Alpha legion could really use that buff. -1 to hit everything over 12” and the ability to infiltrate anothing in the codex including the game breaking daemon prince would be great.

Honestly though. Giving defilers infiltrate would lend them to greater use outside of Fun n friendly games.

Well, the stratagem would still only apply to Alpha Legion Infantry in that case, but I don't disagree that being able to infiltrate obviously silly things would be amusing. It's bad enough thematically that somehow Alpha Legion Berzerkers are calm and collected enough to sneak up on their enemies.

Also, let's be fair, there is only one Daemon Engine worth mentioning, the Lord of Skulls. The rest of them are at best of questionable usefulness.

I pre-acknowledge any following posts presenting the various particular instances in which non-Lord of Skulls daemon engines are able to shine.

A friend of mine said he will stop bringing the Gman to tournies as soon as Chaos players stop bringing Magnus and Morty.

Maybe once all the Primarchs are out, we should organize a community event that kills them all off, so they don't hose up our tables again?

I know it'll be Heresey. Perhaps call it the 'House Heresy' or 'Sans-Horus Blasphamy'?

I want Horus on my team.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 sennacherib wrote:

Hey you know. Alpha legion could really use that buff. -1 to hit everything over 12” and the ability to infiltrate anothing in the codex including the game breaking daemon prince would be great.

Honestly though. Giving defilers infiltrate would lend them to greater use outside of Fun n friendly games.

Well, the stratagem would still only apply to Alpha Legion Infantry in that case, but I don't disagree that being able to infiltrate obviously silly things would be amusing. It's bad enough thematically that somehow Alpha Legion Berzerkers are calm and collected enough to sneak up on their enemies.

Also, let's be fair, there is only one Daemon Engine worth mentioning, the Lord of Skulls. The rest of them are at best of questionable usefulness.

I pre-acknowledge any following posts presenting the various particular instances in which non-Lord of Skulls daemon engines are able to shine.

Alpha Legion Berzerkers follow the "pop goes the weasel" strategy; stuff them in a crate disguised as an ordinary supply cache, and when the time comes...

I want Guilliman to be able to ride in a drop pod like the swarmlord.

Although AL Infiltrate vs RG Infiltrate is a good case study in why the same rules have very different value applied to two different armies.

I don’t think anybody is seriously contending that the SM codex is actually the worst. Not when GK are a thing. It’s an effective clickbait thread title, but the discussion that’s fallen out of it is very interesting - hence 40+ pages.

A couple of notes on the top 11 I posted earlier:

- The points limit was 2250, with a cap of 32PL per model
- The two Magnus + Smite Spam lists only used 1 Renegade and Heretic unit (Malefic Lord - one list used 4 of them, the other 5); the rest were CSM/Daemons/DG/1kSons
- The double Primarch list used a close to even split of R&H/DG/1kSons
- The Guard+ list was all Guard except for Celestine (no Geminae)
- The 2 Alaitoc lists used one unit of Shadow Spectres each (5 models and 9 models)

What you define as a soup army is up to you. The Guard+ list and the 2 Alaitoc lists each allied in a single unit that used less than 10% of the army points. In my eyes that’s doesn’t make them soup lists - it’s similar to adding a single Inquisitor or Assassin to a Marine list. While it’s not strictly a ‘pure’ list, I wouldn’t call it soup. The army mechanically functions as a pure list. (Also, now that Corsairs are gone, aren’t Shadow Spectres Craftworlds units anyway?)

If you use that definition, you get 4 soup armies to 6 pure(/ish).


To use a horrible analogy, the easiest way to see if somebody is actually crippled is to kick the crutch out from under them and see if they still stand. If you remove the crutch from each army, you’ll get a better idea of relative Codex power. And to stick with that awful analogy, they don’t count as standing if their friend hold them up - so no allying.

So take out Guilliman, Mortarion, Magnus, Celestine, Cawl, Malefic Lords, GM Dreadknight, Swarmlord(?)... Guard and Eldar don’t have crutches that I can think of, so let’s take away the Catchan and Alaitoc traits. And just to kick the top armies a bit harder, take out the Shadowsword, Genestealers and Dark Reapers. Now we get a better picture.

GK slam into ground zero. Sorry GK players, you guys are in a rough place right now.

Guard and Tyranids barely notice. Along with Eldar they still take the top spots.

AdMech are stung but Kastelans are still crazy, as are Electropriests. The chicken walkers are pretty handy, and Kataphrons and Dune Crawlers can still get some work done, as can Knights. Not a lot of variation there but they do have a very small Codex, and their Stratagems are top notch. Watch this space - Fires of Cryaxus has the potential to give these guys everything they’re currently lacking.

Which leaves DG and loyalist/traitor marines. I don’t have enough experience with DG to say much there.

Loyalists are left with Stormravens and Assbacks as competitive options. And those are rumoured to be getting cost increases. They also have the worst Stratagems. Chaos has Berserkers, Noise Marines, Obliterators and Daemon Princes, and much stronger Stratagems. Both can field Las Predators as solid B+ options (without Guilliman). Where Chaos really pulls away here are having native chaff units, and that the Chaos Forgeworld units are often stronger than their Loyalist equivalents.

With only two competitive options and rumoured inbound nerfs to those, I would say that competitively loyalists are edged out by AdMech, but Chaos strides ahead of both. So IMO the order of least to most crippled army after taking out their crutch is:

1. Guard
2. Eldar
3. Tyranids (maybe 2nd)
4. Chaos Marines
5. AdMech
6. Loyalist Marines
7. Grey Knights
Not sure: Death Guard

Remember this is strictly competitive, nothing to do with breadth of units available or anything. So depending on where DG are placed in that list, IMO loyalist Marines are either top of the bottom, or bottom of the middle.

kombatwombat wrote:
I don’t think anybody is seriously contending that the SM codex is actually the worst. Not when GK are a thing. It’s an effective clickbait thread title, but the discussion that’s fallen out of it is very interesting - hence 40+ pages.

A couple of notes on the top 11 I posted earlier:

- The points limit was 2250, with a cap of 32PL per model
- The two Magnus + Smite Spam lists only used 1 Renegade and Heretic unit (Malefic Lord - one list used 4 of them, the other 5); the rest were CSM/Daemons/DG/1kSons
- The double Primarch list used a close to even split of R&H/DG/1kSons
- The Guard+ list was all Guard except for Celestine (no Geminae)
- The 2 Alaitoc lists used one unit of Shadow Spectres each (5 models and 9 models)

What you define as a soup army is up to you. The Guard+ list and the 2 Alaitoc lists each allied in a single unit that used less than 10% of the army points. In my eyes that’s doesn’t make them soup lists - it’s similar to adding a single Inquisitor or Assassin to a Marine list. While it’s not strictly a ‘pure’ list, I wouldn’t call it soup. The army mechanically functions as a pure list. (Also, now that Corsairs are gone, aren’t Shadow Spectres Craftworlds units anyway?)

If you use that definition, you get 4 soup armies to 6 pure(/ish).


To use a horrible analogy, the easiest way to see if somebody is actually crippled is to kick the crutch out from under them and see if they still stand. If you remove the crutch from each army, you’ll get a better idea of relative Codex power. And to stick with that awful analogy, they don’t count as standing if their friend hold them up - so no allying.

So take out Guilliman, Mortarion, Magnus, Celestine, Cawl, Malefic Lords, GM Dreadknight, Swarmlord(?)... Guard and Eldar don’t have crutches that I can think of, so let’s take away the Catchan and Alaitoc traits. And just to kick the top armies a bit harder, take out the Shadowsword, Genestealers and Dark Reapers. Now we get a better picture.

GK slam into ground zero. Sorry GK players, you guys are in a rough place right now.

Guard and Tyranids barely notice. Along with Eldar they still take the top spots.

AdMech are stung but Kastelans are still crazy, as are Electropriests. The chicken walkers are pretty handy, and Kataphrons and Dune Crawlers can still get some work done, as can Knights. Not a lot of variation there but they do have a very small Codex, and their Stratagems are top notch. Watch this space - Fires of Cryaxus has the potential to give these guys everything they’re currently lacking.

Which leaves DG and loyalist/traitor marines. I don’t have enough experience with DG to say much there.

Loyalists are left with Stormravens and Assbacks as competitive options. And those are rumoured to be getting cost increases. They also have the worst Stratagems. Chaos has Berserkers, Noise Marines, Obliterators and Daemon Princes, and much stronger Stratagems. Both can field Las Predators as solid B+ options (without Guilliman). Where Chaos really pulls away here are having native chaff units, and that the Chaos Forgeworld units are often stronger than their Loyalist equivalents.

With only two competitive options and rumoured inbound nerfs to those, I would say that competitively loyalists are edged out by AdMech, but Chaos strides ahead of both. So IMO the order of least to most crippled army after taking out their crutch is:

1. Guard
2. Eldar
3. Tyranids (maybe 2nd)
4. Chaos Marines
5. AdMech
6. Loyalist Marines
7. Grey Knights
Not sure: Death Guard

Remember this is strictly competitive, nothing to do with breadth of units available or anything. So depending on where DG are placed in that list, IMO loyalist Marines are either top of the bottom, or bottom of the middle.

I'm sorry, but the very foundation of this breakdown is flawed. You say that this is a look at the armies as they perform competitively, but you remove units that you deem to be "crutch" units (IE their best units, IE their most competitive units). You have no set definition or criteria for what a "crutch" unit is other than "things that I or the internet think are OP". You cannot do a proper analysis of how good or bad a codex if you are arbitrarily not including certain units. You don't get to just say "Oh yeah, this codex is terrible so long as you ignore unit A, unit B, and unit C, they don't count." Would you accept someone saying that Malefic Lords suck if you ignore Smite? No, you wouldn't, cause Smite is a part of how that unit functions. Much like how these "crutch" units are parts of how their codices function.

I'm starting to get real tired of checking this thread and seeing this kinda disingenuous crap. "Yeah, if you ignore all the good/great/OP units in this codex, this codex sucks! And that's how we have to judge this codex cause I say so!" But the fact that we are on page 43 of a thread trying to argue that SM is somehow the worst codex when that is blatantly not true should be all I need to understand that I'm not going to get what I want to see.

By the definitions found in this thread, Death Guard are a Horrible, Unworkable load of crap.

1. they have only got a few good units and not much variety since you can only take one set of chapter tactics. Terrible. Terrible.

2. The chapter tactics they do have only apply to infantry and dreads since they don’t even have bikes they can use. Ohhh. The horror.

3. The only good troop unit that they do have is the best 8n the game. Cultists are tops. Period. Pox walkers are too slow. Can’t get any work done. A terrible unit.

4. Foul blightspawn. Ok. Has some good special rules.

5. Foetid bloat drones. The only other good unit in the codex. It has that all powerful key word Fly and it’s pretty versatile.

6. Mortarion is junk. He dose t give his army 200% bonus the way that the row boat does. Just junk. Why would anyone take him.

Sorry for the sarcasm. But that’s how allmost all the space marine players in this thread would have responded. Only look at the best things others have, complain about not being the best etc. I am very much enjoying my codex despite having less than 1/3 as many unit choices as space marines get. I have units like defilers, possessed and plague marines which are frankly over costed. Terminators are too slow and the daemons not being usable in detatchment kind of stinks. However I very much enjoy playing them. I beat a Guard army yesterday. They scored 0 vp against me and surrendered at the bottom of turn 4 when I destroyed their bane blade in their deployment zone leaving them with a chimera and a nearly dead pask. They were unbeaten in our local league.

Point being. All codex have some units that are not the best. I fielded a defiler and it did pretty well. Sometimes with a good general and a little luck anything is possible. I feel like DG are in a fun place.

 GI_Redshirt wrote:
I'm sorry, but the very foundation of this breakdown is flawed. You say that this is a look at the armies as they perform competitively, but you remove units that you deem to be "crutch" units (IE their best units, IE their most competitive units). You have no set definition or criteria for what a "crutch" unit is other than "things that I or the internet think are OP". You cannot do a proper analysis of how good or bad a codex if you are arbitrarily not including certain units. You don't get to just say "Oh yeah, this codex is terrible so long as you ignore unit A, unit B, and unit C, they don't count." Would you accept someone saying that Malefic Lords suck if you ignore Smite? No, you wouldn't, cause Smite is a part of how that unit functions. Much like how these "crutch" units are parts of how their codices function.

First up, I said at the very start of that post that nobody is actually contending that the Marine Codex is the worst!

Second, are you telling me that Roboute Guilliman is ‘part of how my Black Templars function’? Because if you are, I would like to have words with you. So would a lot of Imperial Fist, Crimson Fist, Salamanders, White Scars, Raven Guard and Iron Hands players. Not to mention the lesser known Chapters.

I’ll try to clarify my reasoning: the easiest way to see if an army is depending upon a crutch is to yank the unit out and see if the Codex can still stand competitively. Let me put it to you this way: say the 7th Ed Eldar Codex has the points cost for every single unit quadrupled, except Wraithknights which were dropped to 100 points a pop. That Codex would be unstoppable; you could fit 15 Wraithknights in 2000 points and still have a few other units. Is that a strong Codex? No, it’s a terrible Codex with one strong ‘crutch unit’. Take the crutch away - say by playing a Craftworld that doesn’t use Wraith Constructs for fluff reasons - and the whole army collapses competitively.

I don’t think anyone would disputes that the three Primarchs and Cawl are the most likely contenders for being ‘crutch units’ from their respective forces. So for my analysis of ‘strong Codex, not weak Codex with a strong crutch’ I took them out. Then, to try and make the comparison a bit more apples to apples, I took out each of the other books’ strongest unit that I could think of. It wouldn’t be fair to compare ‘Marines with Guilliman’ to ‘Death Guard without Mortarion’ for example.

The very fact that I struggled to find a crutch to yank out from under Eldar, Guard or Tyranids shows that they probably don’t have a crutch and can stand on their own. Which is why those three sit so firmly at the top of the tree. A similar but opposite phenomenon occurred for GK - they had neither a strong Codex nor a crutch to lean on, poor buggers. It actually makes some sense that the Codexes away from the extremes are the ones you would question if they are strong-ish, or weak with a crutch.

Army choice is as much a part of competitive 40k as list building is currently. A suboptimal army choice (e.g. Black Templars) is just as crippling as a suboptimal list or suboptimal play.

Whether or not this is desireable, it is truth. To say "Black Templars are bad" may be true, but to then say "Codex: Space Marines is bad therefore" is an error.

Some armies have more tools than others. The ones that lack tools are suboptimal for competitive play.

kombatwombat wrote:

 GI_Redshirt wrote:
I'm sorry, but the very foundation of this breakdown is flawed. You say that this is a look at the armies as they perform competitively, but you remove units that you deem to be "crutch" units (IE their best units, IE their most competitive units). You have no set definition or criteria for what a "crutch" unit is other than "things that I or the internet think are OP". You cannot do a proper analysis of how good or bad a codex if you are arbitrarily not including certain units. You don't get to just say "Oh yeah, this codex is terrible so long as you ignore unit A, unit B, and unit C, they don't count." Would you accept someone saying that Malefic Lords suck if you ignore Smite? No, you wouldn't, cause Smite is a part of how that unit functions. Much like how these "crutch" units are parts of how their codices function.

First up, I said at the very start of that post that nobody is actually contending that the Marine Codex is the worst!

Second, are you telling me that Roboute Guilliman is ‘part of how my Black Templars function’? Because if you are, I would like to have words with you. So would a lot of Imperial Fist, Crimson Fist, Salamanders, White Scars, Raven Guard and Iron Hands players. Not to mention the lesser known Chapters.

I’ll try to clarify my reasoning: the easiest way to see if an army is depending upon a crutch is to yank the unit out and see if the Codex can still stand competitively. Let me put it to you this way: say the 7th Ed Eldar Codex has the points cost for every single unit quadrupled, except Wraithknights which were dropped to 100 points a pop. That Codex would be unstoppable; you could fit 15 Wraithknights in 2000 points and still have a few other units. Is that a strong Codex? No, it’s a terrible Codex with one strong ‘crutch unit’. Take the crutch away - say by playing a Craftworld that doesn’t use Wraith Constructs for fluff reasons - and the whole army collapses competitively.

I don’t think anyone would disputes that the three Primarchs and Cawl are the most likely contenders for being ‘crutch units’ from their respective forces. So for my analysis of ‘strong Codex, not weak Codex with a strong crutch’ I took them out. Then, to try and make the comparison a bit more apples to apples, I took out each of the other books’ strongest unit that I could think of. It wouldn’t be fair to compare ‘Marines with Guilliman’ to ‘Death Guard without Mortarion’ for example.

The very fact that I struggled to find a crutch to yank out from under Eldar, Guard or Tyranids shows that they probably don’t have a crutch and can stand on their own. Which is why those three sit so firmly at the top of the tree. A similar but opposite phenomenon occurred for GK - they had neither a strong Codex nor a crutch to lean on, poor buggers. It actually makes some sense that the Codexes away from the extremes are the ones you would question if they are strong-ish, or weak with a crutch.

Cawl isn't a crutch as much as the regular Dominus is so bad that you might as well play Mars with Cawl.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Army choice is as much a part of competitive 40k as list building is currently. A suboptimal army choice (e.g. Black Templars) is just as crippling as a suboptimal list or suboptimal play.

Whether or not this is desireable, it is truth. To say "Black Templars are bad" may be true, but to then say "Codex: Space Marines is bad therefore" is an error.

Some armies have more tools than others. The ones that lack tools are suboptimal for competitive play.

The 6th Edition Tyranid codex won games often, but nobody will say it's good.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Army choice is as much a part of competitive 40k as list building is currently. A suboptimal army choice (e.g. Black Templars) is just as crippling as a suboptimal list or suboptimal play.

Whether or not this is desireable, it is truth. To say "Black Templars are bad" may be true, but to then say "Codex: Space Marines is bad therefore" is an error.

Some armies have more tools than others. The ones that lack tools are suboptimal for competitive play.

That certainly is truth. It is also horrible game design. The idea that i am excluded from being competitive because I painted my dudes the colour that was shown on the 3rd Ed box set that I got them in is inexcusable.

I should probably point out that I’m not actually a competitive player. I play this game as a social hobby, and I thoroughly enjoyed taking ten Terminators to the state Masters, getting my backside handed to me by Magnus/Mortarion/Baneblade and somehow clawing my way to being 2 VP total across 6 games away from being in the top third. I have no skin in the competitive game, but I do think the discussion is interesting.

It is horrible game design.

Not sure what to say beyond "I agree."

@Slayer Fantasy - you are equivocating "good" and "competitive." It is possible for a badly written or badly designed codex to be competitive. Conversely, it is also possible for a well-designed and well-written codex to be ass in tournaments.*

That's a long thread. I'm a marine player myself and while I think that our army is far from the worst, our stratagems are really boring and or weak compared to others.

kombatwombat wrote:
That certainly is truth. It is also horrible game design. The idea that i am excluded from being competitive because I painted my dudes the colour that was shown on the 3rd Ed box set that I got them in is inexcusable.

Except since paint scheme has zero effect on what chapter tactic you must use it doesn't.

I really like many of the stratagems and find them useful. A good example is Hellfire.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Army choice is as much a part of competitive 40k as list building is currently. A suboptimal army choice (e.g. Black Templars) is just as crippling as a suboptimal list or suboptimal play.

Whether or not this is desireable, it is truth. To say "Black Templars are bad" may be true, but to then say "Codex: Space Marines is bad therefore" is an error.

Some armies have more tools than others. The ones that lack tools are suboptimal for competitive play.

Meh, I would say given that the Space Marine codex is supposed to be designed to allow you to field Black Templars if they are bad the codex is bad, just not uncompetitive. Essentially IMO if a codex is mono-build competitively it is a bad codex, that doesn't make it wholly uncompetitive.

Shadow Spectres have been a Craftworld unit for a long time. IIRC, technically Corsairs could take them, but they were not Corsairs.

I was calling out FW, Soup, and Primarchs as 3 different things this thread has been discounting. FW isn't in the codex (and Spectres are FW). Soup isn't an individual Codex (and the Chaos lists and anything with Ynnari are Soup).

I don't consider FW units added directly to codecies to be Soup, but it isn't part of the Codex. It would be relevant when ranking armies, but now we have about a dozen more that SM outperform (Orkz, Necrons, DE, etc. Even Corsairs, if you want to count them).

People have been very specific about this conversation only being about codexes (in part because it's the only way to not make SM look good).

At least as a Space Marine player you have the knowledge that you won't be forgotten for a long amount of time. If any other army was ever left in an noncompetitive state (not that SMs are), there wouldn't be much hurry to fix it.

tneva82 wrote:

kombatwombat wrote:
That certainly is truth. It is also horrible game design. The idea that i am excluded from being competitive because I painted my dudes the colour that was shown on the 3rd Ed box set that I got them in is inexcusable.

Except since paint scheme has zero effect on what chapter tactic you must use it doesn't.

Well if you painted the army as Iron Hands and used Ultramarines Chapter Tactics it's kinda frowned upon.

But then what's this talk of all CWE being Alaitoc?

Or infiltrating Berzerkers? (betting most aren't painted in camo...)

Bharring wrote:
But then what's this talk of all CWE being Alaitoc?

Or infiltrating Berzerkers? (betting most aren't painted in camo...)

That's not such a big problem. It's only when an armies viability relies on a special character that it becomes a problem. Also - with eldar - alaitoc can take eldrad and it doesn't shut down any army traits. Basically Eldrad is a generic special chracter that happens to be Ulthwe. Unlike guilliman who only buffs Ultra marines.

If the books were written well, Iron Hands and Iyanden and World Eaters would all be viable. That's not an SM-only issue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Conversely, over half the CWE special characters can never get an Attribute or Warlord trait.

Bharring wrote:
But then what's this talk of all CWE being Alaitoc?

Or infiltrating Berzerkers? (betting most aren't painted in camo...)

Almost no Marines are painted camo.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
If the books were written well, Iron Hands and Iyanden and World Eaters would all be viable. That's not an SM-only issue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Conversely, over half the CWE special characters can never get an Attribute or Warlord trait.

World Eaters are...okay.