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in the days of plague swords i ran them on my DG champs, now that we are I3, the PW is not even on the radar. fists all the way.

the only place i see power weapons are on khorne berserker and noise marine champs.

The Power Fist has so many more advantages than a Power Weapon. Even on Berserkers who would wound on 3's against MEQs they are better off with the Fist since they can now Penetrate a Land Raider and can even wound T7 and T8 reliably. It would only be better for them if the squad has lost several models and fighting something that could easily kill the rest of the squad before the Fist strikes back. The Fist is also remarkably more effective in subsequent rounds of combat. Anything besides Berserkers should definitely never have a Sword. Even Noise Marines.

The Fist is one of things that sucks about the game. It takes a lot of the ingenuity out of list design. I like small advantages and skillful play as opposed to beat sticks.

studderingdave wrote:in the days of plague swords i ran them on my DG champs, now that we are I3, the PW is not even on the radar. fists all the way.

the only place i see power weapons are on khorne berserker and noise marine champs.

The reason to change was when the Trial Assault Rules came out in 3rd edition. Those rules made it so squad upgrades couldn't be targeted like ICs anymore. Almost overnight Power Fist shares jumped from .12 cents to 32 dollars while Power Swords were no longer traded at all.

WC_Brian wrote:The Fist is one of things that sucks about the game. It takes a lot of the ingenuity out of list design. I like small advantages and skillful play as opposed to beat sticks.

I don't think the PF suddenly makes a unit overpowered and incredible. It makes them serviceable (not awesome) against a wider variety of units. How you employe a PF and how your opponent react still leave all kinds of room for skillful play.

WC_Brian wrote:
The Fist is one of things that sucks about the game. It takes a lot of the ingenuity out of list design. I like small advantages and skillful play as opposed to beat sticks.

The fist is a necessary option to prevent marine players from getting shafted. Marines pay a premium for those 3+ armor save, so they need to be able to pose a threat against things that ignore them; such as Monstrous Creatures, Nobs, Walkers, and the like. I know that if it wasn't for fists, a single unit of nobs/Meganobs could pretty much obliterate an entire marine army's troop choices.

I, for one, love it when my opponents bring power weapons rather then power-fists. A power weapon is just 16% more likely to kill a normal boy then a normal attack, power weapons pose virtually no threat to my massive battlewagon lines, and when I do field them for fun, nothing beats not having to worry about my nobs/mega-nobs getting insta-gibbed by fists.

"Ok, so you do one unsavable wound against my mega nobs. Darn, that's bad! Ok, now get rid of those eight marines there..."

I'm an Ork player, so I really don't have much place to give critique about your army, but where I play you can pretty much tell who is a newbie by the number of power weapons they have on their normal taq and assault squads.

ueberyak wrote:

WC_Brian wrote:The Fist is one of things that sucks about the game. It takes a lot of the ingenuity out of list design. I like small advantages and skillful play as opposed to beat sticks.

I don't think the PF suddenly makes a unit overpowered and incredible. It makes them serviceable (not awesome) against a wider variety of units. How you employe a PF and how your opponent react still leave all kinds of room for skillful play.

He never mentioned or even implied that powerfists are "overpowered", just that since they're almost always better than power weapons, it makes things a little boring.

I've never particularly liked the idea of powerfists, I like the idea of blades that cleanly slice right through armored people in a flash, but I'm not going to gimp myself if using power weapons means dying.

Why I dislike the Fist is that is poorly designed, I do not think that it is overpowered. It deforms the enviroment just like Nob Bikers do. Even though Nob Bikers have many bad matchups they absolutely invalidate any sort of run of the mill army. Normally you could play anything and with enough tactical prowess you could at least expect not to get beaten routinely even against the most powerful armies. My thoughts are that something that doubles your strength and ignores armor saves It makes you strong against everything. There is no downside, just alot of advantages and it doesn't cost much at all.

Why would you ever take a Power Sword when you can have a Fist? It is just plain more effective for the lage majority of units in the game. The Fist creates a sad dynamic, alot of stuff in the game is just useless when you can have things like Meltas and Fists. If you have to pick you'll never take an interesting weapon when you can have the all purpose Fist/Melta. It's a shame that the Bugs, Tanks and little dudes can't all share some sort of system that doesn't force you to use Power Fists. It generally costs twice what a Power Sword but kills waaaay more than double the number of models. I think a good solution would be to make Power Swords free for any squad upgrade that can normally field them. Giving it away would be an incentive to use it... since it is mostly useless.

At least they are no longer auto includes thanks to the no bonus attack and the high rates of fire you can dish out these days. For instance in Chaos if you have 2 Lash and Oblits I don't see any point in the squads having Fists. You can just maneuver and shoot the other guy to death. I'm not a hater, I just wish they would redesign the game instead of continuously redevelop it.

TheBloodGod wrote:

ueberyak wrote:

WC_Brian wrote:The Fist is one of things that sucks about the game. It takes a lot of the ingenuity out of list design. I like small advantages and skillful play as opposed to beat sticks.

I don't think the PF suddenly makes a unit overpowered and incredible. It makes them serviceable (not awesome) against a wider variety of units. How you employe a PF and how your opponent react still leave all kinds of room for skillful play.

He never mentioned or even implied that powerfists are "overpowered", just that since they're almost always better than power weapons, it makes things a little boring.

I've never particularly liked the idea of powerfists, I like the idea of blades that cleanly slice right through armored people in a flash, but I'm not going to gimp myself if using power weapons means dying.

I see by his subsequent post that he is not saying it's overpowered but he definitely implied it when he used the term, "beat stick".

WC_Brian wrote:
Why I dislike the Fist is that is poorly designed, I do not think that it is overpowered. It deforms the enviroment just like Nob Bikers do. Even though Nob Bikers have many bad matchups they absolutely invalidate any sort of run of the mill army. Normally you could play anything and with enough tactical prowess you could at least expect not to get beaten routinely even against the most powerful armies. My thoughts are that something that doubles your strength and ignores armor saves It makes you strong against everything. There is no downside, just alot of advantages and it doesn't cost much at all.

Why would you ever take a Power Sword when you can have a Fist? It is just plain more effective for the lage majority of units in the game. The Fist creates a sad dynamic, alot of stuff in the game is just useless when you can have things like Meltas and Fists. If you have to pick you'll never take an interesting weapon when you can have the all purpose Fist/Melta. It's a shame that the Bugs, Tanks and little dudes can't all share some sort of system that doesn't force you to use Power Fists. It generally costs twice what a Power Sword but kills waaaay more than double the number of models. I think a good solution would be to make Power Swords free for any squad upgrade that can normally field them. Giving it away would be an incentive to use it... since it is mostly useless.

At least they are no longer auto includes thanks to the no bonus attack and the high rates of fire you can dish out these days. For instance in Chaos if you have 2 Lash and Oblits I don't see any point in the squads having Fists. You can just maneuver and shoot the other guy to death. I'm not a hater, I just wish they would redesign the game instead of continuously redevelop it.

I may be arguing your point for you but would like to know, do you think the Land Raider is a result of poor design since it's the de facto (only) assault vehicle in a SM/CSM army?

Also, you use the term "interesting" which is a very subjective term. I think having a CC weapon strapped to your arm that is so massive you have to spend the time that you would normally have used for another attack to wait for it to slam closed is awesome. I would open a million pickle jars in a row and then I would crack a billion walnuts if I had one of those.

If you want to argue about the dynamics the weapon brings to the game, fine. But I don't see any difference between putting a PF in every (C)SM squad and Tau putting Railguns on every unit they possibly can. Every codex has "best in slot" units and war gear. I don't see how this will ever change.