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.

From what I can tell when I started thinking about what kind of competitive armies you see running around the more I realize that the 3+ Save is near ubiquitous.

"The 3+ Club"

Marines: 3+ or Better on most troops, obviously.
Chaos: Ditto
Tau: Most tournament lists skimp on Fire Warriors and take as many Crisis & Stealth suits as they can fit, all who have 3+ Saves.  The rest of the points go into skimmer tanks.  I put them in the 3+ club because 9 times out of 10 if there is a unit that's not in a transport in a Tau army it's got a 3+ or better Save.
Sisters: 3+ or Better
Demon Hunters: 3+ or Better
Necrons : 3+

"The Diet Coke of the 3+ Club"
Eldar: Not so clear cut on being in the 3+ Club, but more and more I'm seeing 3+ Sv units become standard between Jetbikes and Shining Spears becoming common.  Other units are useful but most of the time you'll see them in Skimmer Tanks for delivery or they have rules that negate their weakness in SV (Harlies)
Nids: I've seen one army in person that wasn't Godzilla, which has most of it's points in 3+ or better Save models.

"The Not 3+ Club"
IG: No Power Armor here, but they get the cheapest troops in the game, but at the same time the  Army is generally considered underpowered. 
Orks: No power armor here and it's probably one of the weakest armies in 40k.
DE: Not as weak as the other two and no power armor, but most lists I've seen rely on lots of raiders, wytches, and web way portals to get the job done.  Very hit or miss, but it manages to work despite not having most models in power armor.

I figure out of all the armies I most commonly see at a store or read about in tournaments online, they'll have a majority in 3+ Save models.  Is this true for anyone else or am I just being a bit crazy here?

I think you've got the general idea...

Space Marines, chaos, and eldar were traditionally the most popular armies. Once third ed, and the end of save modifiers hit, virtually every anti-infantry gun became AP4, making a 3+ save nearly three times better than a 4+ save.

It has been argued that 3+ saves are undercosted throughout all of 40k. I'm not sure if this is the case, but I"m inclined to agree. The classic example includes the difference between stormtroopers and sisters of battle: +1 pt for a bolter instead of hellgun, a 3+ save instead of 4+, faith, access to LD9, and the loss of the plasma option. This is a single example, but it illustrates how overcosted a 4+ is in the game.

Now, non-3+ save armies do well, but IG and Orks generally only win small tournies, and Dark Eldar can take a criminal amount of AP2-3 weapons, plus power weapons.

Um, yes, 3+ save is the norm now.

Also, sky still blue.

Yes

All armies have some form of 3+ save except Orks and IG.

IG can take 3+ allies though.

Posted By Voodoo Boyz on 01/30/2007 10:02 AM
From what I can tell when I started thinking about what kind of competitive armies you see running around the more I realize that the 3+ Save is near ubiquitous.

"The 3+ Club"

You just wake up from a coma or something? 

I keed, I keed.

 

But seriously, there's a reason why every serious tactics thread references how well weapons do against MEQs (marines and their equivilants). That's because in a competitive setting that's easily the most common type of basic trooper you'll face.

 

 

The sad thing is that because there have been so many 3+ save armies since 3rd edition, it's ruined game balance.  What you end up having is 1 army that is played by 3/4 of their gamers, so "game balance" or "popular demand" is what is good for Space Marines.  Look at what happened to the starcannon.  It was always a perfectly balanced weapon in power and cost in 3rd edition IF you played every other army as often as any other... but if you played only Meqs... then it seemed overpowered.  Do you think Nids, IG, and Orks ever really feared Starcannons?

 

The Storm trooper vs. SoB example is a perfect one and you can easily see why either AP3 weapons should be more prevalent or 3+ saves should go up by around 10-20% in cost.  The DA codex rumors limited Assault cannons seems like a good start, but I think GW is too scared of making their marine player rely on tactics to win games and losing their interest (Not to say there aren't good marine players, just that there are a lot that can win with little to no strategy besides deploy and shoot). 

Well, I'd argue that the starcannon was a pretty nice weapon, even when not playing meqs. At S6, it's actually better than a heavy bolter against Orks and Genestealers, it can hurt TMCs, and it'll shred AV10 and glace AV12. It's main popularity was against MEQs, but what made it brutal was that it was good against pretty much anything but all infantry guard.

That said, yes, every army, 3+ or no, has to build their armies to beat the 3+ save. And so you get IG arrmies with every plasma gun they can take, and the starcannon army of doom, etc. I'm not this destroys the near mythical "game balance," it merely creates a new environment of play.

Finally, even with a 3+ save, marines don't always win. Skilled players often select the strongest armies, so there might be a selection bias. Nothing says "easy win" quite like a bad space marine player. Yes, the save keeps them in games, but not when you bring enough AP3 to knock them right back out. The army certainly requires strategy, every army does. Space Marines simply reward skilled play better than most armies. they're not idiot proof, as I've gotten spanked plenty of times with my Marines.

I often get tanked in my soft scores because I play Tyranids, and there is nothing that the MEQs I am playing against can do to counter the horde armies.

Since where I play in San Deigo, they all have marine armies,and anything that does not have a 3+ save they don't know what to do.

They all are static, shooting armies with a bunch of las/plas that are great marine killers, but are next to worthless with 5 point spine gaunts.

And I am make an effort to stay away from MEQ armies, but I sometime regress and play my Thousand Sons.

I don't really think that most armies are 3+, but most people play 3+ armies. Just go and take a look at the GT report Skyth just posted in the 40K BatRep forum. Out of the 20 armies there, 4 of them were not Marines. And, of that 4, one of them was Necrons, another 3+ army. Hell, I was surprised to see someone playing Orks... and I don't think any of us should ever be surprised when we see an Ork army being played.

BYE

No I didn't just wake up from a coma, I know that tooling to kill MEQ's is the way the game is played but after sitting around looking at other army lists and thinking about the types of armies I've played against it finally dawned on me that almost EVERY single army I'll come into contact with will have 3+ as the majority of their saves I'd say 90% of the time or more.

I mean I knew that Tau maxed on Crisis & Stealth, because they're awesome firepower wise, Eldar took Jetbikes because guardians suck and all the other options were elsewhere, Nids go Godzilla because well it's damn tough. Eventually it all clicked as I started thinking about each army it was like "3+, 3+, 3+, 3+, hay these guys don't get 3+.....and they suck for the most part".

The biggest thing was realizing that just about every army that has a "good build" the vast majority revolve around a 3+ save.

Posted By H.B.M.C. on 01/31/2007 12:29 AM
I don't really think that most armies are 3+, but most people play 3+ armies. Just go and take a look at the GT report Skyth just posted in the 40K BatRep forum. Out of the 20 armies there, 4 of them were not Marines. And, of that 4, one of them was Necrons, another 3+ army. Hell, I was surprised to see someone playing Orks... and I don't think any of us should ever be surprised when we see an Ork army being played.

BYE

This is part of what got me thinking about it.  IG can be somewhat decent by following your rules which either revolve around having a stupidly crazy number of heavy weapons with more bodies to take casualties than they have bullets and combine that with deepstriking suicide squads with yet more crazy guns. 

And even then the IG have an uphill fight.  I just keep thinking what the hell are they going to do for the Orks to get them competitive.  There's no way 'Ard Boyz will go up to a 3+ Save, sure Mega Armor can be made to not completely suck, but it'll be limited still.  Unless they just focus on giving us more numbers in our transports (while making the transports a tiny bit better) we're just going to stay as screwed as we are now being outside of the 3+ Club.

3+ is certainly the vast majority of armies I've seen, in friendly gaming and tournaments.  Ironically the plethora of 3+ armies makes it tactically a more even playing field. If everyone is playing the same thing it comes back to luck and good gaming (but can make them incessantly boring).

Both orks and guard could be helped by making them cheaper.  However, at least with the Guard, the opposite happened. Their basic guys have become more expensive (V3 basic through two codexes) and their heavy weapons also became substantially more expensive.

Orks

-increase their infiltration options

-bring back some serious weaponry (SHOKK ATTACK)

-decrease the cost of basic troops or layer in the feral list options

-make vehicles usable again

Guard

-make their grunts cheaper

-make vehicles usable again.

 

It's funny when I started Marines about a year ago from playing Orks exclusively for a long while (and getting slaughtered after people got over the shock of playing them initially) I distinctly remember some games where I literally thought "Wow, when you have a 3+ save the game seems so much more balanced". Of course at the time I was playing against a 3+ Save army and just noticed how by turn 4 we had about equal losses and the games were a lot closer.

One of the reason's why MEQ's are so popular is that in addition to being undercosted relative to GEQ's, they can more easily preserve their VP cost.  Smart Marine players usually have enough nasty units to throw at you that if you knock one of their las/plas squads to 1 or 2 men you won't want to divert the decent amount of firepower needed to guarantee they will be wiped out.  Against IG a vehicle mounted storm bolter often suffices.

For a horde style army to beat MEQ's it really needs to bulk out its numbers and either its c.c. speed or else its firepower.  A horde list that has added any big characters, vehicles, and wargear is at an inherent disadvantage because the MEQ's will be able to use all of their weapons to their fullest capacity.  I've seen marine players get blindsided by more gaunts than they can aim at, and I've chased marines off the field with an IG gunline, but my experiments with balanced GEQ forces have usually ended badly against competitive Marine builds.  Even if i give as good as I get, the victory points typically line up against me.

Just an observation.

I agree it seems if you run Orks or IG the higher the model count the more successfull the builds. I think all infantry orks with 9 Killa Kans and two truck mobs seem to be the most effective. Use your trucks to go 24' next to cover and kans as a moving cover screen. Armor plates on the kans seem to do well also. Problem with this build is it's extremely costly.

Tanked for playing a horde army? That's ridiculous, Blackmoor.

Posted By malfred on 01/31/2007 8:36 AM
Tanked for playing a horde army? That's ridiculous, Blackmoor.

I have the comp scores to prove it!

 I had thought about this a while back. That there are so many 3+ save armies out there these days, that if you go against the trend you will be more successful.

  I think this is why Orks (Davidn?) did so well at the UKGT. If you take a pure horde army, and stay away from expensive units that lascannons can take out, they will have trouble countering it.  

  For example, all the marine armies I see take a lot of las/plasma squads to kill other MEQs. But how many heavy bolters do you see? With the exception of LS Tornadoes and Terminators, there is little that the marine armies I play against can do to horde armies.  

  Right now to test my theory I am working on an Eldar army with a lot of guardians that takes no skimmers other than Vypers. The convention wisdom says that this army has no chance of working. I am not convinced that it can’t…of course my comp scores may suffer.

having tried to pull off the whole hoard thing with my Orks before, it's really not a good idea, especially for some missions where they can just stay back and shoot you. A refused flank from a marine player means you won't get your models into CC since by necessity your hoard is going to be forced to deploy across the board due to the number of models.

And with the current marine dex if you max out on the good stuff you'll have plenty of anti-hoard: Terminators w/ 2 Assault Cannons also come with 3 Extra Termies w/ Storm Bolters, and the speeders come with Heavy Bolters. For the list I was thinking about taking to the GT, I had 15 Termies, 5 Las/Plas, and 3 Tornados plus a pred. That army should be able to handle just about anything I think.