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.

i believe there was no existence of unfair army since the 5th. every army can be fair or not even though i didn't play that much.

Gee, maybe after Orks win all the GT events in the USA in 2009, like they did in 2008, someone will finally admit that the Ork codex is broken. Or maybe we can wait until they win all the events from 2009-2011.

The statement that 'you can win with any army' is refuted by recent tournament results. Orks win. Period. And, now they have Ork battlewagons to give them a third killer version (along with loota spam and Nob Bikers).

Just look at the Dakka threads on anti-Nob Biker tactics and you begin to get a feeling for the desperation that is out there. Three Exorcists fire for two turns at a Nob Warboss, he lives, he kills everything. Eldar players couldn't come up with anything that had a math edge on Nob Bikers after 4 pages of discussion.

Now you can put Lootas on top of the Ork battlewagons, poof, no more LOS problems.
Attach Ghaz and Mad Dok to the Snikrot's unit and bring that on from the board edge.
You'll hear a lot of whining about 5+/4+ fearless kommandos. Since your 2 characters are T5 they are very hard to get rid of, and give you the power klaws you need.


Poor playtesting of the Ork codex. Did Ork Nob bikers really need the smoky 3+ cover save rule? Did Lootas really need the 48 inch range? There is no game now except the search for a green skin antidote.

Ok, i will shoot the nob bikers until they arrive and then i will teleport/veil out of there. Once at a distance i will shoot them to death.

Orks certainly have the most broken codex there is at the moment. Nob Bikers are just totally out of control with new wound allocation rules. I'm just hoping the new Guard codex will have a unit which is extremely strong against the Nob Bikers. That will balance (read: rock, paper, scissor) the game a bit more. The Battlewagon Deffrolla needs to be FAQed as well. It shouldn't be able to damage vehicles, otherwise the Battlewagon spam armies will get out of hand once the new Battlewagon kit hits the stores.

The Chaos codex is another strong codex, though there is just one thing which is causing all the problems here. It's called the Lash of Submission. I don't know what to do about this one though. Obviously, the points cost on the power needs to be increased, but that won't solve all the problems. Reducing the range to 18" (like the Pavene of Slaanesh) wouldn't hurt either.

The rest of the armies seem pretty balanced, though there are some who are just screwed untill they get a new codex (Imperial Guard, Necrons, Tau Empire). For some reason though, I'm not seeing the Tau get a new codex anywhere in the near future. Imperial Guard and Necrons are the next two codici to be redone, so they just need to be patient for little longer.

Then there are the Space Marines, who have the same wargear and weaponry as f.ex. the Dark Angels and the Blood Angels, yet theirs seems to be superior. IMHO this is just a load of bs and GW should just have the balls to create a FAQ which states that all the wargear and weapons of the other Space Marine chapters should be like those in the Space Marine codex. The Ultra Marines shouldn't be the only ones with the awesome Stormshields! And no, a FAQ telling people it's fine if their opponent's agree is not what I mean. The tournament players gain absolutely zero by such statements.

The Battlewagon Deffrolla needs to be FAQed as well. It shouldn't be able to damage vehicles, otherwise the Battlewagon spam armies will get out of hand once the new Battlewagon kit hits the stores.

GW certainly wouldn't want to sell lots of them...

Nob Bikers aren't all that troublesome from a Lash Chaos perspective. Everytime I face them they last 3 turns max.

Battlewagon Orks struggle versus Nidzilla, 6 Str 10 shots a turn helps stop them.

Every list has its match.

leejerrum wrote:Nob Bikers aren't all that troublesome from a Lash Chaos perspective. Everytime I face them they last 3 turns max.

Of course you won't have a problem with a close combat army when you are playing lash of submission. They will never get into charge range. I don't understand how people can think it is even remotely fair for someone to just take control of the other players units. The tactical skill involved just drops as soon as you use this psychic power. Tactics are all about avoiding the units that are dangerous to you while killing your targets. This psychic power just completely removes the difficulty in avoiding the units which are dangerous. At least it doesn't affect vehicles (I play mech), but I still hate to see it used. It's just an I-WIN button against so many army builds that it needs to be tuned down.

The same goes for Nob Bikers. This is a lot easier to solve though, as it doesn't involve completely game changing abilities like the Lash of Submission. The Nob Bikers are simply to strong for their points. Either add more ways to other armies to counter them, tone them down or increase the points cost.

Every list has its match.

While this may be true it is usually in a rock, paper, scissors format between a few competitive army builds. For example:

Competitive army build 1 >>>>>>>>>>>>> Competitive army build 2
^^^^^^^^^^^ ---------------------------------------- vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Competitive army build 4 <<<<<<<<<<<<< Competitive army build 3

This means that, while every list has its match, the only armies which are dominating are those competitive army builds, which are few.
This is simply unfair to the other armies, which simply don't stand a chance in a tournament setting.

With this said, I feel that 40k has become a more balanced game since the start of 5th edition. There are just 2 armies which need to be toned down a little bit (chaos and orks) and 3 armies which are in need of a new codex due to not having any viable builds (IG, Necrons, Tau).

Airmaniac wrote:
Of course you won't have a problem with a close combat army when you are playing lash of submission. They will never get into charge range. I don't understand how people can think it is even remotely fair for someone to just take control of the other players units. The tactical skill involved just drops as soon as you use this psychic power. Tactics are all about avoiding the units that are dangerous to you while killing your targets. This psychic power just completely removes the difficulty in avoiding the units which are dangerous. At least it doesn't affect vehicles (I play mech), but I still hate to see it used. It's just an I-WIN button against so many army builds that it needs to be tuned down.

The same goes for Nob Bikers. This is a lot easier to solve though, as it doesn't involve completely game changing abilities like the Lash of Submission. The Nob Bikers are simply to strong for their points. Either add more ways to other armies to counter them, tone them down or increase the points cost.

Everything can be beaten.

leejerrum wrote:Every list has its match.

Yup. But you should not have to look for that match in a different army... in my little, perfect world, every codex should have several viable lists in it. Or, to break it down to unit level, every unit should have value. This does not have to be a value in itself, it may be a synergetic effect or maybe a counter. An example for a counter: To my understanding, while not being involved in playing with Orks at all or powerbuilt Eldar, "Mind war" looks great as a counter power, if you subscribe to the interpretation of "leadership of the model counts" instead of the "leadership of the group counts": It does not do much in a normal game (maybe I am wrong here), but for killing off an attached doc/painboy (whatever, he model that grants FnP to the nob bikers), it is great (*). But I am getting distracted, what I really wanted to do was say something controversial:

Orks aren't broken! Orks have one of the only two proper codices in the game!
Space Marines have the other proper codex.

Why do I have this opinion? Because you can play more than one competitive build. If you see that you're going to go against a Chaos player in a competition, the questions are only
a) how many Lashes will he bring, one or two?
b) will he be using sorcerers or demon princes to carry them?
If you play against an Ork player, there might be hordes, bikers(**), kanz, which all work reasonably well. Same (albeit imho on a slightly lower level) with SM with sternguard-spam or razorback-spam or dreadnough-spam or (on the same level) with Shrike's assault terminators or Vulkans hotties. So again: These codices are not broken! They are what makes this game interesting. I think all other codices need some varieties like this. If you look at it from the standpoint of potential variety, Chaos is as broken as IG.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to this idea: If all codices where like this, you could actually play the one army whose theme you're interested in -- instead of buying flavour-of-the-business-quarter armies. So this would only work if GW settled on trying to sell miniatures instead of armies, which then implies a business concept that thinks farther than one codex release cycle. Not much hope there, eh?

So, back to the topic of fairness: I do not think Orks per se (**) are currently broken and therefore unfair. I think the other armies are broken. The reception of Orks being broken stems from the fact that we, as long-time GW sufferers, get pretty sceptical if you can create even one good army build from a new codex - and more than one... well that must be outright broken, right? Now imagine you could build great armies with all the given space marine named characters instead of just two - we probably would have lynched (***) the codex' author outright ;-)

Bye,
Tierlieb

Footnotes, might have been interesting, but would have distracted from the main point of the post:
(*) As I think about it, specialized counters always ought to be realized as psi-powers, because that saves a lot of modelling and makes it more flexible. Even letting psi-powers be a wildcard that is not written on the army list sheet would add more versatility to tournament lists. There are a lot of problems, though, from different point values to the game-chaning powers of the psi powers. Just an idea.

(**) Notabene: I admit that nob bikers are broken. Their main power does not stem from the combination several interesting abilities, that 3+ coversave is annoying enough, but from an exploit of the wound-allocation rules. This ought to be solved. It could be easily done by re-defining what "different models" means. Us programmers do this quite often, overriding methods like "equals" or "==" to better match a system. So let our new "equals", for example, say "multi-wound models in a group are equal if they have the same weapons" and this stupid use of tiny addons to make them different stops right there. Imho, this is the main problem with nob bikers. Without that, they are still powerful, but also very expensive, which in my book would make them (at least more) balanced.

(***) On the topic of lynching: Maybe there is some rope left for the guy that created Chaos' possessed and dreadnoughts -- now this is a prime example for units that have neither stand-alone potential nor can be used to counter something specific nor even provide a synergy - unless you consider synergy with the opponent's troops?

So, in essence, your saying GW isn't fair. Because, they don't release an entire balanced system with codices all at the same time.

focusedfire wrote:So, in essence, your saying GW isn't fair. Because, they don't release an entire balanced system with codices all at the same time.

Yep, they have said it before. They aren't looking to make a balanced game system, they are looking to sell models. The game system is just something that helps push models. Some might say a balanced game system would help sell models but I disagree. Make new models in unbalanced book, everyone flocks to it. Repeat forever and occasionally nerf everything down so power creep doesn't have everything with 10s across the board.

focusedfire wrote:So, in essence, your saying GW isn't fair. Because, they don't release an entire balanced system with codices all at the same time.

Close. As close as a one-line summary will get, I figure ;-)
Yes: They did not release an entirely balanced system. Honestly, they did not release a balanced system at all - but since it is a two-player game with lots of options, the players will do the balancing themselves. As far as possible, which includes some builds and excludes a lot of others. A look at the top 10 of a GT will show that there are several builds - the "tier 1 armies". Even those are not balanced among each other, but after a certain number of games against each other and a lot of tier-2-or-less armies, they are able to come out at the top.(*)

No: They would not have to release all codices at the same time. That's why I mentioned a longer-lasting business plan would be called for. Of course you want to release the codices one after another - this way you can cash in on the undecided, the collectors and on you own balancing mistakes (which are bound to happen - just fewer in case you plan ahead). Just be a Cylon, have a plan: GW doesn't seem to be able to do that - that's why we've had the doctrines and traits system, then got a heroes-change-the-FOC-system. And by then end of 5th edition books, we'll have an entirely new approach again, with new bugs that would not be in there had they stuck to an already established system (**).

Typeline wrote:Yep, they have said it before. They aren't looking to make a balanced game system, they are looking to sell models. The game system is just something that helps push models. Some might say a balanced game system would help sell models but I disagree. Make new models in unbalanced book, everyone flocks to it. Repeat forever and occasionally nerf everything down so power creep doesn't have everything with 10s across the board.

Yes, I agree the scheme is intriguing. As I wrote beforehand, I think it should be named "selling armies", or even better "selling lists", instead of "selling models". You sell a lot of specific models (those you build the current working army list with), but this is only a subset of all offered models (which you still have to keep in stock). The others you might sell to collectors - unless they want to use them for gaming, which won't work.

I am not sure if it is the smartest way: From my experience in trying to recruit friends of mine into the hobby, it's the cool models and the fluff that draws them towards the hobby. Once I've convinced them that they might be able to paint the models with a little help and a lot of dipping, they start making a list of things they want. Then I tell them that this won't make an army to win with. Then they decide to invest into another hobby instead. (***)
The system you described works for people already invested in the game. It does not work for people thinking about buying in.

Bye,
Tierlieb
(*) Imho, that's not balancing in a concious way. I would wager the results come pretty close to what Chebishev's Inequality would let you expect.
(**) Sceptics might ask why the market leader is copying a newscomer instead of making its own thing - unless the newcomer invested a lot more though in that issue. Maybe it is a stupid thing to fire all those designers...
(***) Whether a different system would work out better, I am not sure either. It would be shame to see another competitor win with a different approach, though.

Mine was more of a counter-whine to some ones whine about tau being rubbish. Same issue with autarchs abilities & exarch spyder skills.

You gain some & loose some. As it hasnt been mentioned in the FAQ's then it must be a fairly fair trade-off. My (extra) beef is loosing out on flavour when rules get made redunant.

Although countering that, tasty flavours were added with the scout/infiltrating & flanking rules.

Edit:

The Battlewagon Deffrolla needs to be FAQed as well. It shouldn't be able to damage vehicles, otherwise the Battlewagon spam armies will get out of hand once the new Battlewagon kit hits the stores.

It has been clarifyed quite well. Pay attention and look for these amendmants before you whinge.

I'm sorry but the 4+ cover save on Tau vehicles is FAR inferior to flat out not getting shot at when you could put your units behind area terrain and have it block line of sight. 50% chance to get hit is a MASSIVE increase over 0% chance (obviously) and the entire VP denial mechanic of good Tau armies was blown to bits when 5e came out strictly because of that. IMO this puts Tau at the bottom of the power barrel for sure in 5th edition. I'm unhappy about it because Tau are the only army I really actually like in terms of fluff and models. OTher armies have cool models but I don't care for the story or visa versa. My solution to this is to continue to love Tau, but enjoy playing a different army for a while until the new Tau book is developed and released and the nuances of switching editions with an old book are resolved. Does this play into GWs scheme of simply selling mroe product? Of course it does. It would simply be foolish to try and boycott this scheme though, because it won't work and GW won't care if a few players drop the game or w/e.

As for overpowered/broken armies... this game (Warhammer 40,000 5th edition, and previous editions of Warhammer 40k) is very well suited for tailoring to the level of competition each player desires. If you don't wnat to play against the strongest armies in the game then don't bother with tournaments and stick with fun games against other people looking to field fun armies. Its just like Magic in that sense. You can play casual magic and have a blast if you don't like the high power level and extreme competition that the tournament scene offers. Basically, the game is only as cutthroat and powerhungry for you as a player as you let it be.

Personally, I see things that are perceived as "overpowered" and I get excited to find a way to beat them. I'm currently playing lash chaos because it has a decent matchup with Nob Bikes and if I'm careful (and a little lucky, howver luck is a part of this game and that must be accepted), can beat on the battlewagon/loota spam lists as well. If people are asking for balance and defining balance as "every army has an equal chance against every other army" then you're basically asking for every army to be the exact same thing. This is impossible, and guts the character from the game. It should be a blatantly obvious fact that when the game changes to a new edition, there will be clear rules issues between the new rulebook and older codexes. It should also be blatantly obvious that GW cannot update every single book flawlessly into the new edition of the rules with the snap of their fingers, and players need to be patient while they wait for their army's new book. If you don't want to wait then play something else with a book designed for 5th edition, that way you won't have to deal with rules clashes between your codex and the rulebook. You can also avoid some discrepencies in power levels due to old/outdated army books by doing this. I understand that people become attached to a particular race and thats fine, but whining and complaining won'y get you anywhere. Maybe it'll help you get over the frustration, but I know for me, it only makes it worse because you'll never get the answer you're looking for.

I think marines armies are pretty cheap now!!!! Lame ass first turn drop pods, deep striking charging vanguards and various teleportation lockers. Not to mention special abilities to allow everything to fleet and flank.

Yes, marines are definetly unfair.