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I actually like the Guard codex too.
It could use some better internal balance, and it could be better when thrown up against some of the new codices, but apart from that I think it's fairly good.

I concur that Guard Codex was well done. Doctrines was a good way of making armies characterful without making them overpowered.

Also like Codex Orks (of course!). A lot of the units are very good and the background sections returned a lot of the humour of this race missing from the thin 3rd Edition book.

What I hated was the dumbing down of Codexes (take a bow Dark Angels), but it seems this trend has been reversed for the time being.

I like codexes where you don't shake your head and wonder why anyone would ever take a unit. I like it when it appears that the codex writers actually have a clue how the game plays.

While I love my IG, doctrines are for the most part rather poor. Yes there are some good ones (ID, COD, LI) but for the few that are worth it, the most are not. And if you take any of those, then you limit the type of units you can field :(

But that's a different thread...



For the most part I like the new SM codex and think is shows GW moving in the right direction. Yes, there are some annoying aspects (wargear all over the place, emphasis on SC), but for the most part I think it is rather balanced and filled out well.

But basically, I think everyone wants a codex that gives them *viable* (read: not over or under powered) options and interesting units. So that they can have fun, purchase a wide range of units and not be pigeon holed into 1 army type.

Flashman wrote:I concur that Guard Codex was well done. Doctrines was a good way of making armies characterful without making them overpowered.

Not quite.

The Guard Codex was full of excellent concepts, but marred by many failed executions. The idea of the Doctrine system was fantastic; the actual rules they wrote were not. Let me explain.

The point of the Doctrine System (and this applies to the Trait system as well) was to allow you to tweak and improve your force based upon the fluff that you wanted. If you wanted a Drop Troop army or a Steel Legion army, you could do it. Jungle Fighters? Camo-Cloaked Tanith guys? All there. Great.

The problem lies in the fact that most of the Doctrines were just plain awful and, much worse than that, the 'restricted units' that you 'give up' caused the system to collapse upon itself. What I mean by that is if you never had any plans to take Priests, Psykers, Enginseers or Ogryn (all of which were useless, so who would), then you are not really giving them up. If your MechInf army wasn't going to include Rough Riders, Conscripts, Heavy or Special Weapon squads, then you lose nothing when you take Close Order Drill and Iron Discipline as you were never going to take these units in the first place. Even the inter-Doctrine limitations didn't give a choice. Can't combine Drop Troops and Mechanised? Well... I wasn't going to take Drop Troops anyway because I want to play Mechanised, so who cares?

They tried to correct this with the Traits system, albeit in a clumsy manner, by introducing mandatory downsides. This is a bad way to do it, a better way would be to actually force you to give things up and make a choice. Of course, the Trait's systems downsides were all made moot by the 'I Stand Alone' trait, which gave you a 'Get out of taking a disadvantage free' card by stopping you from taking allies you were never going to take in the first place.

There were other problems as well, aside from just writing a bunch of really, really terrible and/or redundant Doctrines (Die Hards, Chem Inhalers, Cybernetic Enhancements, Hardened Fighters, Jungle Fighters). The special equipment Doctrines were not well conceived. Rather than doing it on a platoon by platoon basis, you had to do it for the whole army. I for one was really looking forward to having a mixed army of Light and Heavy Infantry. I couldn't do that because Carapace had to be given to everyone - I couldn't just give it to a platoon.

So was the Guard Codex a good book? I'd say yes.
Was it a lot of fun to play with? Certainly. Miles better than the previous edition, even if our Lascannons got needlessly expensive (25 points vs the Marines' - at the time - 15 points per gun).
Was it well done though? No. Decidedly undercooked actually, with a Doctrine system that presented the illusion of choice.

BYE

Be fair, now, HBMC. For all it's failings, the IG codex offered a greater variety of *viable* builds than anything this side of v3.5 Chaos: "standard" gunline infantry were viable, as was a LI/camo army, as was Drop Guard, as was Mech Inf.

I'd MUCH rather have a book with a bunch of useless extras, than hope GW can produce a more narrowly-focused book with similar versatility. That way lies Dark Angels-like inadequacy (4 builds, none especially viable).

I'd be satisfied with 2 minor changes: some means of fixing Kill Points (my suggestions: killing the PHQ nets a KP; platoon squads are only scoring while their PHQ is alive); and drop the price of a Guardsman to 5 pts. It'd be nice if, say, Chimerae got cheaper and/or improved side armor, but I think we could cope with just those tiny changes.

Janthkin wrote:I'd MUCH rather have a book with a bunch of useless extras, than hope GW can produce a more narrowly-focused book with similar versatility.

Sigged

Janthkin wrote:Be fair, now, HBMC. For all it's failings, the IG codex offered a greater variety of *viable* builds than anything this side of v3.5 Chaos: "standard" gunline infantry were viable, as was a LI/camo army, as was Drop Guard, as was Mech Inf.

Yes that is quite true. The Guard books offers a number of very viable army configs. It just has to over 10 times as many useless builds as well. But we know by now that all that is going bye-bye next year. There will be one list to rule them all, and the only changes we'll get will be through Special Characters.

It's one thing to make special characters so much better than standard ones that no one ever takes the regular ones (Eldrad, Dante, Corbolou (or however you spell him), Snikrot, Blue Scribes, Changelling), but it's another to take an army you already have and make it only legal if you buy a special character. Guard are heading down that route, and there's not a damned thing we can do about it.

BYE