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 Galas wrote:
To be honest I like that now 6+ and 5+ saves actually matter for the most part. When the most popular, and basic weapon of the game makes those two saves irrelevant... yeah.

They just need to be priced accordingly to their uselfulness in the context of the current edition.

Indeed.

pismakron wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
600 points of Ork boyz vs 600 points of guardsmen in a vacuum. Who wins? Here's a hint. In their first volley that guardsmen will kill on average 1/5th of the Orkz and be beyond Ork range. Turn 2 they walk backwards a bit and shoot again. Turn 3 they repeat and on turn 4 they double tap and then overwatch the survivors for an easy win.


That is why they are too cheap.

I think that is a little disingenious. Forcing your opponent to kite back in his own deployment zone is already half a victory, because you get board control and a lead in victory points. I actually think Orks can deal with Guardsmen better than many other factions simply because we have access to cheap wounds and lots and lots of low-strength attacks. Tyranids can also do some damage with their insane Termagant+stratagem alphastrike. But many other factions just has nothing that can deal with Guardsmen efficiently. They are four points per wound, a decent armour save, they can fall back and shoot, they can fire four shots per model out to 12" (18" for Armageddon). They are just bananas.

And yes, big blobs of fearless cultists (with Abbadon or, what is it, Iron Warriors?) are a tough nut to crack too. Even though they only have a 6+ save and don't get that sweet FRFSRF order.

I don't think its disingenuous at all, I very clearly pointed out in a vacuum. the point is that Pt for Pt a 4pt guardsmen will beat a 6pt Ork. 2 Orkz vs 3 guardsmen and the 3 guardsmen win every time. THAT is why I think they are over powered. I am not arguing that Ork Boyz need to be 5ppm.

Basically You have to look at it this way. An Ork boy and A Guardsmen are basically the same thing. They specialize in one type of warfare and excel at it. For Ork boyz that is CC, for Guardsmen it is ranged standoff and area denial. The key difference is that a Boy is useless at shooting, but slightly tougher and way better in CC while the guardsmen not that great in CC, slightly faster and significantly better at Ranged combat. the problem is that a guardsmen is 2/3rds the price of an Ork boy.

SemperMortis wrote:
The key difference is that a Boy is useless at shooting

A Shoota Boy is not useless at shooting, model for model, they're actually trading casualties at a slightly favorable ratio to Guardsmen when within the 18" Assault range of the Shoota. Now, the Orks cost more, because not only are they matching the guardsmen man for man on the shooting range (albeit with not quite as long of a max range), but they're dramatically and emphatically superior in close combat as well.

The Slugga boy doesn't stack up quite as well, but the Shoota Boy isn't bad.

 Vaktathi wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
The key difference is that a Boy is useless at shooting

A Shoota Boy is not useless at shooting, model for model, they're actually trading casualties at a slightly favorable ratio to Guardsmen when within the 18" Assault range of the Shoota. Now, the Orks cost more, because not only are they matching the guardsmen man for man on the shooting range (albeit with not quite as long of a max range), but they're dramatically and emphatically superior in close combat as well.

The Slugga boy doesn't stack up quite as well, but the Shoota Boy isn't bad.

Except the guardsmen have an ability to double their shooting damage with an order (effectively increasing the cost of a guardsman to 5.5 points, still cheaper than an ork boy.)

Ork Boyzs are a great unit from a balance and design standpoint. Very rewarding when used well, effective at their role, but with a strong weakness as an horde, both to morale and to anti horde weapons (S5 and -1AP weapons like heavy bolters and heavy flamers destroy them, and as they cost 50% more than a guardsmen is actually very efficient, as it should be)

 Vaktathi wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
The key difference is that a Boy is useless at shooting

A Shoota Boy is not useless at shooting, model for model, they're actually trading casualties at a slightly favorable ratio to Guardsmen when within the 18" Assault range of the Shoota. Now, the Orks cost more, because not only are they matching the guardsmen man for man on the shooting range (albeit with not quite as long of a max range), but they're dramatically and emphatically superior in close combat as well.

The Slugga boy doesn't stack up quite as well, but the Shoota Boy isn't bad.

60pts of shoota boyz at 18 have 20 shots, about 7 hits and 5ish wounds vs a 5+ save = 3.66 casualties
60pts of guardsmen at 12 have 30 shots, 15 hits and 5 wounds which is over 4 casualties

only at 18 are they better, and even then, barely. at 24-19 its completely one sided, at 12-1 its heavily in favor of guard, so 1/4th of the time orks are slightly better. the rest they get dominated

Infantry Squads should win agaisn't orks in a shooting match. In general IG should be a much better shooting army than a Ork shooting army.

Of course the problem here is the difference margin.

You really have to wait until all the army books ate out before you can honestly compare units in armies. Strategies, army rules and such really need to be considered. GW knows this...Wait to compare that Ork Boy with a guardsmen once he gets clan rules and stratagems.

I play non spam IG and -2 to hit Elder tear me up when I hit them on 6's! Armywide -1 to hit rules and scouts with space marine like +3 saves in cover and dark reapers are just as OP as anything guard has. Maybe GW needs to look at the force of charts again to reduce spam but again, until you have all army bookjs out, it's apples to oranges. That's my opinion anyway.

With the new Magnus rules i think i would need to change my vote, he is fine now.

For those who didn't follow the spoilers, he now no longer rerolls invul, effectively reducing his wounds by 33%. He has a fixed warlord trait (+1 power known), so he loses the 6+++, which together with the forementioned change it means that it has 55% of his former durability. Now he is where he should be, a model which can rack several times his cost in enemy points, but also carries a big risk. High risk, high reward, i like it.

Now i'm waiting for Mortarion's turn.

Edit: Those numbers assumed that he had the +1 invul power. If we instead look at the formed unbuffed durability to the currect unbuffed durability, he kept 69,5% of it. 83,3% against weapons without AP.

Stridarion wrote:
You really have to wait until all the army books ate out before you can honestly compare units in armies. Strategies, army rules and such really need to be considered. GW knows this...Wait to compare that Ork Boy with a guardsmen once he gets clan rules and stratagems.

I play non spam IG and -2 to hit Elder tear me up when I hit them on 6's! Armywide -1 to hit rules and scouts with space marine like +3 saves in cover and dark reapers are just as OP as anything guard has. Maybe GW needs to look at the force of charts again to reduce spam but again, until you have all army bookjs out, it's apples to oranges. That's my opinion anyway.

You forget this is GW we are talking about. Anything good in 4th edition codex was destroyed in 7th and as it stands anything good in 7th was destroyed by the index. Honestly, and I actually believe this, I believe Ork Boyz are not going to get a buff at all, if anything they will receive a nerf.

Crimson wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
The key difference is that a Boy is useless at shooting

A Shoota Boy is not useless at shooting, model for model, they're actually trading casualties at a slightly favorable ratio to Guardsmen when within the 18" Assault range of the Shoota. Now, the Orks cost more, because not only are they matching the guardsmen man for man on the shooting range (albeit with not quite as long of a max range), but they're dramatically and emphatically superior in close combat as well.

The Slugga boy doesn't stack up quite as well, but the Shoota Boy isn't bad.

Except the guardsmen have an ability to double their shooting damage with an order (effectively increasing the cost of a guardsman to 5.5 points, still cheaper than an ork boy.)

But at that point we are not talking about both units in a vacuum, or comparing an equal number of points of them. We are comparing unsupported Orks with a group of Guardsmen and their support units. Plus, unless all the infantry squads are bunched up tight (or we assume this engagement starts on like turn 3 or 4 and both boyz and guard are untouched so that they could spam command points to combine squads), which kind of makes the screen less effective on the whole, you need to invest in vox casters as well to effectively put those orders to use.

SemperMortis wrote:

Stridarion wrote:
You really have to wait until all the army books ate out before you can honestly compare units in armies. Strategies, army rules and such really need to be considered. GW knows this...Wait to compare that Ork Boy with a guardsmen once he gets clan rules and stratagems.

I play non spam IG and -2 to hit Elder tear me up when I hit them on 6's! Armywide -1 to hit rules and scouts with space marine like +3 saves in cover and dark reapers are just as OP as anything guard has. Maybe GW needs to look at the force of charts again to reduce spam but again, until you have all army bookjs out, it's apples to oranges. That's my opinion anyway.

You forget this is GW we are talking about. Anything good in 4th edition codex was destroyed in 7th and as it stands anything good in 7th was destroyed by the index. Honestly, and I actually believe this, I believe Ork Boyz are not going to get a buff at all, if anything they will receive a nerf.

To be fair, from my limited understanding of Orks, Boyz are one of the few things that don't need a buff. If Boyz stay mostly the same and everything else gets buffed, things would work out fairly well for them.

kurhanik wrote:

But at that point we are not talking about both units in a vacuum, or comparing an equal number of points of them. We are comparing unsupported Orks with a group of Guardsmen and their support units.

I was comparing equal points, that's why I said that in this situation a guardsman effectively costs 5.5 points (one 30 point commander can buff 20 guardsmen, so +1.5 points per guardsman.) And you absolutely have to take buffs into account, especially as they're so cheap and so powerful. Being able to double the firepower is pretty damn significant.

SemperMortis wrote:

Stridarion wrote:
You really have to wait until all the army books ate out before you can honestly compare units in armies. Strategies, army rules and such really need to be considered. GW knows this...Wait to compare that Ork Boy with a guardsmen once he gets clan rules and stratagems.

I play non spam IG and -2 to hit Elder tear me up when I hit them on 6's! Armywide -1 to hit rules and scouts with space marine like +3 saves in cover and dark reapers are just as OP as anything guard has. Maybe GW needs to look at the force of charts again to reduce spam but again, until you have all army bookjs out, it's apples to oranges. That's my opinion anyway.

You forget this is GW we are talking about. Anything good in 4th edition codex was destroyed in 7th and as it stands anything good in 7th was destroyed by the index. Honestly, and I actually believe this, I believe Ork Boyz are not going to get a buff at all, if anything they will receive a nerf.

Boyz and Stormboyz are fine. With Klan Tactics and Stratagems they'll become even more powerfull. Is the rest of the codex the thing that needs buffs.

 Crimson wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
The key difference is that a Boy is useless at shooting

A Shoota Boy is not useless at shooting, model for model, they're actually trading casualties at a slightly favorable ratio to Guardsmen when within the 18" Assault range of the Shoota. Now, the Orks cost more, because not only are they matching the guardsmen man for man on the shooting range (albeit with not quite as long of a max range), but they're dramatically and emphatically superior in close combat as well.

The Slugga boy doesn't stack up quite as well, but the Shoota Boy isn't bad.

Except the guardsmen have an ability to double their shooting damage with an order (effectively increasing the cost of a guardsman to 5.5 points, still cheaper than an ork boy.)

Then we're no longer talking about things in a vacuum, we're making a different comparison than the one originally proposed, and we're assuming it's a Company Commander being split among multiple units, not one by themselves and not a Platoon Commander, and that they're nearby.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
The key difference is that a Boy is useless at shooting

A Shoota Boy is not useless at shooting, model for model, they're actually trading casualties at a slightly favorable ratio to Guardsmen when within the 18" Assault range of the Shoota. Now, the Orks cost more, because not only are they matching the guardsmen man for man on the shooting range (albeit with not quite as long of a max range), but they're dramatically and emphatically superior in close combat as well.

The Slugga boy doesn't stack up quite as well, but the Shoota Boy isn't bad.

60pts of shoota boyz at 18 have 20 shots, about 7 hits and 5ish wounds vs a 5+ save = 3.66 casualties
60pts of guardsmen at 12 have 30 shots, 15 hits and 5 wounds which is over 4 casualties

I'm not denying that, point for point, the Guardsmen are better at shooting, my point was that, model for model they are effectively identical at shooting while *also* being dramatically superior in CC, hence the cost disparity.

No, the Orks are never going to be as cost effective as the Guardsmen at shooting, because they have a wider array of abilities, and have to pay for them. If they're just as good as Guardsmen at shooting *and* are superior in CC, they *should* cost more, so they do.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Then we're no longer talking about things in a vacuum, we're making a different comparison than the one originally proposed, and we're assuming it's a Company Commander being split among multiple units, not one by themselves and not a Platoon Commander, and that they're nearby.

So? You can't just ignore the fact that a unit has an easy way to double their firepower, that is an insanely powerful advantage.

You don't even have to compare other stats. Guardsmen have a better save for less points. That makes them by far the best space-filler in the game, which is the name of the game. Assaulting is for chumps, especially because guardsmen exist.

Martel732 wrote:
You don't even have to compare other stats. Guardsmen have a better save for less points. That makes them by far the best space-filler in the game, which is the name of the game.

By that logic assault marines are better than harlequins and firewarriors better than genestealers.

None of the units you listed are as cheap as guardsmen, and only fire warriors are deployed for space-filling purposes.

The 4 ppm with 5+ armor is a special price point for sure.

 Crimson wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Then we're no longer talking about things in a vacuum, we're making a different comparison than the one originally proposed, and we're assuming it's a Company Commander being split among multiple units, not one by themselves and not a Platoon Commander, and that they're nearby.

So? You can't just ignore the fact that a unit has an easy way to double their firepower, that is an insanely powerful advantage.

Because that's called a moving goalpost from what the original scenario proposed and to which I was responding.

Including officers and support characters is another scenario, in which case, yeah the guardsmen dramatically outshoot the Shoota Boyz at 12" and under when splitting a Company commander who's in range. That's a pretty optimally set up situation for the IG. One would hope that, at now roughly the same cost (pending list design) and conditional on battlefield setup (gotta be close enough to issue orders and be in that sweet spots for the quad shots), they'd massively outshoot the other unit that can otherwise match them at shooting model for model and simultaneously dramatically outfight them. By the same token, I'm not going to complain about the Boyz massively overkilling the Guardsmen in close combat by generally a 4-1 margin in average casualties inflicted either, because they should.

Slugga Boyz should definitely be cheaper however, they compare less favorably to either guardsmen or shootaboyz.

where are grots? Reece says grots are very strong.

I voted the Astra Militarum Infantry Squads.

I would personally like to see Astra Militarum Infantry go up a few points. They are quite difficult to deal with, though that is more due to the current meta of the game favoring horde armies rather than the unit itself being powerful.

I suppose Azrael is pretty much an auto-take whenever I face Dark Angels, due to his Invul bubble. I'd also like to see him get more expensive.

As a Tyranid player this thread makes me happy.

Why..

In the entire thing I have heard Tyranids mentioned maby 3 times and never as broken just strong. I find our new codex light years ahead of what we had and top tyre competitive but with great internal and external balance. We have tons of viable builds and wile we have our stronger units (Flyrants, Hive guard, Genestealers, Dev Gaunts, Biovores) they are not instant win buttons by a long shot. I wish every codex was as well designed as tyranids. (That beeing said there are still some issues with GW's quality control and decisions that leave a lot to be desired)

I think nids are borderline broken but next to IG its tough to tell.

I like Tyranids, from a balance standpoint. They've got a wide variety of good builds, and I've never left a game against them thinking "What could I possibly have done to deal with that, then?". They work well without making anything unplayable or useless.

Martel732 wrote:
I think nids are borderline broken but next to IG its tough to tell.

I don't know man. I have faced a pretty hard list (It wasn't all that bad) in a tournament. It had mortal wound spam with Zoantropoes and 6 biovores, 4 Dakkafexes, 9 Tyranid Guards (The ones that shoot without LOS), with my totally unoptimiced and gakky Dark Angel list (Like, Deathwing Ancient with dual LC+Company Master in Terminator with TH/SS+ 5 Tartaros with dual LC, a venerable dreadnought with heavy plasma cannon, etc...) and even then I wasn't anihilated. We ended 8 points to 18 in his favour.

In the same tournament, the next round a Eldar army spamming Dark Reapers anihilated 70% of my army in my first turn (To be honest he played much better than me, and I deployed like gak, but yeah)

 Vaktathi wrote:
I'm not denying that, point for point, the Guardsmen are better at shooting, my point was that, model for model they are effectively identical at shooting while *also* being dramatically superior in CC, hence the cost disparity.

No, the Orks are never going to be as cost effective as the Guardsmen at shooting, because they have a wider array of abilities, and have to pay for them. If they're just as good as Guardsmen at shooting *and* are superior in CC, they *should* cost more, so they do.

Points for points Guardsmen are BETTER at shooting and have BETTER durability, they also have access to BETTER buffs that enhance both their durability and damage. A guardsmen will statistically kill a 6pt Ork before that ork gets into CC, Fact. So the only way that Orkz have an upper hand is by overloading a flank OR by using other shenanigans like Da Jump, and when you do that you have to factor in that cost. So a 30 unit of Boyz with a weirdboy punting them forward is 242pts, and gives the Ork player a 40%ish chance to get into CC. for that same cost an IG player can take 50 Guardsmen AND a company commander AND still have points left over. So those 30 orkz maybe get the charge off (likely they don't) and if they fail they then face anywhere from 60-140 shots depending on orders going off and range of other units of Guardsmen to the unit that was assaulted. 60 will statistically kill 10 Boyz, 140 will statistically kill about 23, which wipes the squad due to morale. the middle ground (100 shots) kills 16 which kills another D6 +2 due to morale leaving the squad with on average 9 models, or in other words, Useless.

But lets say the unthinkable happens and the Guardsmen decide to go kamikazi and assault the orkz. They will lose but not nearly as badly as the orkz would lose in a shooting match. Ohh and in case you are wondering, 30 shoota boyz kill about 9-10 Guardsmen in a single shooting phase, unless the guardsmen are in cover then its 6 or 7.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Again though, I am not advertising for Orkz to get a buff for boyz, I am merely pointing out that guardsmen are better and should probably be 5ppm not 4ppm.

Another thing to look at would be to compare Guardsmen (4ppm) to Grots (3ppm) Grots are worse in every way imaginable to guardsmen and yet they are only 1ppm cheaper.

Err...no. Sorry to spoil this, but mathwise grots are even a better screen than guards, for the exact reason we say that guards are better than boyz i.e. lots and lots of cheap buffs.

You don't hear people complaining about them because orks have nothing worthy to screen, but if they had credible long range shooting, you wouldn't hear the end of it.

Spoletta wrote:
Err...no. Sorry to spoil this, but mathwise grots are even a better screen than guards, for the exact reason we say that guards are better than boyz i.e. lots and lots of cheap buffs.

You don't hear people complaining about them because orks have nothing worthy to screen, but if they had credible long range shooting, you wouldn't hear the end of it.

Except none of those "cheap" buffs are worth using on Grots. +1 attack on a S2 model? +1 WS on a 1 attack model? what cheap buffs do you see as worth it? The only buff I can think of is the Herders who make them borderline fearless. No, Grots are crap for the exact reason that I pointed out, while they are cheap, they serve no purpose because they lack any kind of damage output, Guardsmen can push out 1 S3 shot at 24 or 2 at 12, Grots can do 1 shot at 12, thats it. Guardsmen also have access to heavy weapons and other benefits, Grots have access to literally NOTHING.

TL;DR - Aggressors are better at killing hordes of infantry than las cannon devs are at killing LRBTs, that's not an opinion, that's math. So if you guys could kindly stop parroting the (debunked) idea that hordes have no counter in 8th ed that would be great. Math follows,

I explained this with math in a prior thread but I suppose I'll have to explain this in a simpler manner than I did last time, since I didn't seem to clearly get my ideas across. Instead of doing this roundabout like last time, I'll try and establish the scoring system right off of the bat, so we can all be on the same page from the outset. Prepare for some moneyball,

So the question is how do we rank a units effectiveness at killing another unit? The answer is by measuring the time it takes a unit to kill a target and the number of points you have to commit to kill a unit as a measure of effeincy. The below is the formula I've been using:

(Rounds to kill * Point cost of attacker)/(point cost of the target) = Attack Effectiveness

This gives us a number between generally between 1 and 6, it can be less than 1 in extremely favorable matchups and more than six in really bad matchups. This is our rating, but we still need a scale, which is where turns to table comes into it.

Lets say your goal is to table your opponent, but that's only half a goal, because it doesn't have a deadline, so let's set it for tabling your opponent by turn six. Assuming equal starting points, and no casualties, you would need to inflict an average of 1/6th of your armies point value per turn to accomplish a tabling by turn six. But that's silly, of course your opponent is going to kill your guys, and we'll assume he and his forces are as capable as you and your own. So You'll start with all of your forces and end with a negligible amount, so you'll have an average available value of half of your army. Assuming you are giving as good as you are getting, to tabel your opponent by turn six you need to inflict a third of your points as damage per round. So first round you'd need to inflict points worth of 667 damage, 444 on the second, 296 on the third round, 197 on the fourth round, 131 on the fifth round, 87 on the sixth round. That will get you within 10% of tabling your opponent, which is close enough for our purposes.

So we plug those into the above formula, (3 * 2,000)/(2,000) we get three. So to table a worthwhile opponent you need an average Attack effectiveness of three, thus we have our scale, an attack effectiveness of 3 or less is decent, more than 3 is bad, Simple enough.

With the goalpost firmly fixed, let's start looking at some of the examples I gave:

Target is a 30 man guard squad, no upgrades, and we'll assume no immune to morale shenanigans. So 120 points,

Aggressors, 111 points, 9.5 shots per aggressor, S4 AP -. So without double fire that's 29 shots, 2/3 chance to hit 2/3 chance to wound, and a 2/3 chance to fail the save. So you'll end up with 29 * 8/27 or 9 dead, with leadership 7 that's another 5.5 lost due to morale.so call it 15 dead in a single volley. Based on those number, it will take them about 2 rounds to kill a 30 man guard blob, plug those into the formula from above:

(2 * 111)/120 = 1.85, which is a great attack effectiveness, if you entire army was this good you could table an opponent by turn 4. Double shot from aggressors will go well below 1, so yes despite what you guys think hordes have hard counters.

Just to give another example, how does the math look for a dev squad shooting at a LRBT with 4 las cannons. 4 shots, 2/3 chance to hit, 2/3 chance to wound, and a 5/6 chance to fail the save 3.5 damage per failed save. So the damage per round is 4 * 10/27 * 3.5 (damage per failed save) for 5 damage inflicted per round. So about 2.4 rounds required to kill a LRBT,

( 2.4 * 165)/152 = an attack effectiveness of 2.6.

Why stop there, to close out I'll compare hell blasters and aggressors against a Tac squad.

Hell blasters - 2/3 chance to hit, 5/6 chance to wound, and no saves, and we'll split the difference between rapid fire and not with 1.5 shots per blaster. So they inflict 4 wounds per round, for a 1.25 rounds to kill so here is rating:
(1.25 * 165)/65 = 3.17

Aggressors - 2/3 chance to hit, 1/2 chance to wound, 1/3 chance to fail a save with 29 shots, so 3 wounds inflicted per round, so 1.66 rounds.
(1.66 * 111)/65 = 2.83

Whelp you heard it here first, in addition to being good anti-horde aggressors are also better at taking out tac marines than hell blasters are. It's like that unicorn you guys said didn't exists, something that works against hordes of light infantry and small units of heavy infantry.

Tyranids and also eldar are not even remotely overpowered, be honest about that. I don't see them dominating competitive metas, although they're very good in casual ones since they have lots of viable combinations.