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Gentleman, prepare yourselves for a potentially long and rambling post....

Although I don't play 40k at the moment (addicted to Fantasy!) I can't help but notice that people constantly flag up the increase in Cover Saves in 5th Edition, and of course the constant whinging about AP3 or lack thereof etc.

And this got me thinking. Now, I used to play regularly in 3rd Edition and occasionally in 4th Edition. The prevalent Metagame was one of high strength, low AP being most important, as apparently, MEQ's seemed to be the most popular option in both casual and competitive gaming. Thus, 5 man Las/Plas was extremely common, and non-AP3+ weapons were maligned as 'suboptimal' and so on.

But of course, now we have Cover Saves up the wazoo. Standard seems to be a 3+, and with the advent of 'Going To Ground' most units will have the option of a 3+ save, albeit with the negative side of self pinning.

So, when a lowly Guardsmen can hide behind a wall or tree, and be as hard to knack as a Battle Sister, AP becomes less important. So those better versed than I in the Metagame number crunching (I don't have the attention span for that. I just cobble my force together until I think it's cool!) are understandably favouring and reccomending rate of fire over sheer stopping power.

Of course, with this shift in the Metagame, it means long term players are now looking into re-arming their force suitably. Outgoing are Plasma Guns, incoming are Flamers (also bloody useful for clearing objectives before seizing it). Accordingly, this tends to involve a fair proportion of players having to buy lots of lovely new models.

Now for a paranoia alert...WARNING! WARNING! POSSIBLE PARANOIA! POSSIBLE PARANOIA!

Part of me wonders if this rather dramatic shift has been a carefully calculated move by GW. Not just to sell new models (anyone could tell you that) but, as part of a more long term strategy, is it an attempt to sell more non-MEQ armies? I get the feeling that by changing the Metagame so much, and thus selling a better variety of troops, the game will benefit. After all, nobody wants to keep coming up against MEQ's (a main failing before 5th Ed)....

What do you reckon?

I wouldn't be surprised if the change was, in part, to help push models.
GW has openly stated that the rules are created to sell the models.

As for the saves... The most prevalent cover save is 4+.

Eric

Just makes me wonder if they have implemented the change so heavily in order to change the Metagame permanently.

Yes, I am sure that was there intention, and its about god-damn time!


I for one like an ever changing meta-game, otherwise the game will become stagnant.

One thing to keep in mind in all the sturm and drang over cover saves is the fact that they exist as part of a coherent whole: namely one in which the small, cheap units that get the best use of cover also cough up a kill point a piece.

I think 5th edition was an attempt to dramatically shake up the meta-game, but I think all it's really done is replace eldar with orks in the big three (along with marines and chaos).

Widespread 4+ cover benefits armies like Orks directly. It also benefits Sv3+ armies (MEqs) indirectly by reducing the number of AP3 weapons in the game.

KK raises a fair point there. Less AP3 gives Marines an easier time...

But with more cover saves around MEQ are less worried by AP3. Essentially the cover saves act an an equaliser, meaning a 6 point ork gets a save (most the time) almost as good as a marine costing close to three times as much.

Looked at in context its a serious advantage for the non-MEQ style armies. Orks haven't only become popular because of their new codex, similarly the wound allocation system is the reason that big units of nob bikes got catapulted to the top of the table at resisting damage.. under 4th ed rules they'd be much much easier to kill.

Are there any point of taking low AP 2, AP3 , even AP4

weapons now that everything gets so much cover saves?

Are heavy flamers the only way to go now ? D:

AP2 is good at what it's designed to do: crack 2+ saves, which are very hard to get through even with a volume of fire.

AP3 is still good for the times when you get a good shot. Every marine player fears the ability of the Leman Russ to wipe out a tactical squad in a turn. AP3 is pretty uncommon, although it's creeping into basic weapons a lot more (1k sons, sternguard).

AP4 is barely worth paying for. There are still times when you'll get a clean shot, but 4+ saves aren't that common to begin with, and with cover so common it seems like you never really get a good shot. It's a good thing to have thrown in, however.

And there in lies the potential trap..

You see, I suspect GW have been incredibly cunning in upping the ways to get Cover Saves, and that come the next Edition, infantry will give less of a Cover Save, perhaps only a 5+.

The net result is that the variety forcibly introduced by 5th Editions Metagame should still remain, as gamers will realise that sheer weight of firepower is a good substitute for armour penetration....

Or perhaps not. I dunno!

Well, don't forget that it's so much a secret that GW adjusts the rules to sell more, or at least different, models. The real secret is that they were so bad at it for so long, that people forgot the real impact rules changes could have.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:And there in lies the potential trap..

You see, I suspect GW have been incredibly cunning in upping the ways to get Cover Saves, and that come the next Edition, infantry will give less of a Cover Save, perhaps only a 5+.

The net result is that the variety forcibly introduced by 5th Editions Metagame should still remain, as gamers will realise that sheer weight of firepower is a good substitute for armour penetration....

Or perhaps not. I dunno!

There's a way to maybe test this. Try running a few games with some friends using pretty much 5th edition but with the prevalent cover saves reduced to 5+. I'd say run the lists 5 times with your standard 5th edition outfit of heavy weapons, 5 times with multi-shot, low AP weapons, and 5 times with single shot, high AP weapons to get a decent coverage of samples(or more if it's not decisive enough).

Let us know if the 5+ vs 4+ really affects anything.

Fair point. Except my planned army, Tonka's Tuff Gitz, is all about piling into combat and breakin' 'eadz whilst the Wagonz trundle over the enemy!

And it's on hiatus at the size of 5 Nobz until I can get a new job.

But I think dropping the save down would be a dramatic change, but not dramatic enough to suddenly make the high AP weapons (or should that be low AP...stupid semantics) prevalent once again, as troops would still give cover...hmmm!

And Polonius, I totally agree. I really think the whinging that has come hand in hand with the increase in cover availability is actually a good sign. The change has genuinely forced people to change the way they game, arguably (and only arguably, feel free to disagree in a rational matter folks) for the better.

Sigh... Whenever somebody at my FLGS starts one of a predictably long-winded soliloquy about the metagame, there is a resounding silence that does not end until he gets the point and wanders out, mumbling and looking at us from the corners of his eyes. It's usually somebody who's going to college and considers himself to be smarter than us rubes anyway, so we don't consider it to be a loss. The only real shift that I've noticed is that it's like pulling teeth to get players to put terrain in the middle of the table anymore. They want some buildings that they can huddle their troops in when they deploy so they can basically sit there and do little or nothing while the elites and/or heavy support shoots the enemy to pieces from the very edge of their range. Because of this, I'm not investing in more flamers or masses of troops, I'm buying more troop transports and upgrading them as much as possible.

Polonius wrote:AP2 is good at what it's designed to do: crack 2+ saves, which are very hard to get through even with a volume of fire.

Not quite true, a termiantor is more fragile for the points than regular marines are. While a guy in power armour is twice as lightly to die, the cost so much less that there can be more than twice as many to kill. Death by armour saves is nasty stuff for terminators and one of the reasons why the 3++ stormshields aren't the end of the world that was widely predicted, the application of enough regular hits renders them irrelevent.

AP3 is still good for the times when you get a good shot. Every marine player fears the ability of the Leman Russ to wipe out a tactical squad in a turn. AP3 is pretty uncommon, although it's creeping into basic weapons a lot more (1k sons, sternguard).

One thing I've found is that you're also much more likely to get a clear shot on things like marines than you are against a horde, getting more than half of a 10 strong unit into clear LOS is much easier than with a unit that has 30 models. If theres 14 orks of the unit in the open and 16 of them behind a building out of LOS then they're all in for a coversave... that makes it real hard to kill as many orks with a battlecannon as you can kill marines.

Having majority of unit instead of majority of the unit that you can see being counted for what makes a unit in cover is part of what pushes the cover save thing to favour hordes further than the numbers would often suggest.

Hymirl wrote:

Polonius wrote:AP2 is good at what it's designed to do: crack 2+ saves, which are very hard to get through even with a volume of fire.

Not quite true, a termiantor is more fragile for the points than regular marines are. While a guy in power armour is twice as lightly to die, the cost so much less that there can be more than twice as many to kill. Death by armour saves is nasty stuff for terminators and one of the reasons why the 3++ stormshields aren't the end of the world that was widely predicted, the application of enough regular hits renders them irrelevent.

that's a good point in theory. 6 wounds will kill two 17pt marines or one 40pt terminator. The problem is that marines seldom stay at 17pts a peice. Kitted with combi-melta, melta, and multi-melta they're at 19.5pts a peice, or almost the same cost as assault terminators. Assault marines, sternguard, or even any tactical squad with a fist cost more per model than terminators. I think that in practice, marines tend to run a little pricier than termies. There's also the fact that termies are generally more dangerous, pt for pt, than regular marines, and need to be killed faster.

In addition, ap2 is good against tyranids, obliterators, and anything with FNP.

But VPs are largely immaterial now.

Terminators, in terms of KPs, may be harder to put down, but I would wager they are the bigger threat than Tactical Marines, because they can genuinely take down pretty much anything in the game.

Of course, Tactical Marines are always Troops, Terminators only occasionally.

Another Metagame shift? Target priority is now based not so much on threat level, but capabilities....

Hmmm.

Or..."capabilities" is part of "threat level" and what determines threat level just changes. There were objectives in 5e, and people would want to kill things like landspeeders or piranhas not necessarily because they were such powerful gun platforms, but to avoid some annoying 24" objective claim at the end of the game.

Anyway...I don't get it. Every change to the rules changes the metagame in some way. Cover rules haven't changed nearly as much in the metagame as the fact that orks are now a super codex and therefore hordes are a risk. I guess there is synergy in hordes+abundant cover causing a shift from AP2 weapons, but I dont feel either would be enough on its own.

And yet the Horde army became deadly because of the increased cover save, and troops being the only scoring units.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:And yet the Horde army became deadly because of the increased cover save, and troops being the only scoring units.

Well, the Ork Horde Army became deadly. Nids are still far too fragile and can't kill enough, IG get reamed on Kill Points, and DE/Guardian hordes are both fragile and spendy for one or two heavy weapons per squad.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:And yet the Horde army became deadly because of the increased cover save, and troops being the only scoring units.

And yet? what? did you even read what I said?

Lambadomy wrote:I guess there is synergy in hordes+abundant cover causing a shift from AP2 weapons, but I dont feel either would be enough on its own.

if the most recent ork codex did not come out, and we played 5e rules with the old codex, people would not fear that horde. Ork boyz were just too expensive. As was pointed out - only the new Ork codex has a real, working horde.

The new cover rules (not an increased cover save, but the fact that you get cover from intervening units) + an actual effective horde codex, is what has caused any metagame shift from say plasma to flamers/massed small arms. As I said, either on its own probably wouldn't have been enough. And I think that the new ork codex is more of the reason than the new cover rules. I find plenty of things to pump plasma into that are not in cover (or would have had the same cover in 4e rules and not caused me to bemoan the fact that I was wasting plasma on them)

As for changing target priority in game - not really a metagame shift, thats an in-game change. You shoot at different things. There are a few armies (tau and...uh...tau?) which take more troops now than they used to, but for the most part I don't feel the troops-as-scoring has had a huge effect on army composition.