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nd the clear winner is.... Space poodles. The second to last tourni i was a part of only one? person out of 30 played space poodles. My guess that they have become a badge of cheese.

BTW this is one of my favorite dakka polls.

There are several overpowered armies.

Take Necrons for example. They are so powerful that our tiny mortal minds do not suffice to comprehend their awesome power. That's why we think they suck.

Or Chaos Spess Mehreens. By having just 4 worthwhile choices and perhaps one or two armybuilds ( which are so deeply mediocre that every attempt to improve them is doomed to fall ) they grant us the power to do something else with our valuable time. Which other armies ( except Necrons of course ) grants us such power?

Then we have Sisters Of Battle. The GW designers in their great wisdom have decided that the new codex's awesome power cannot be contained in a normal book, no! Two issues of the White Dwarf, which is well known for it's high value, are required to contain the awesome power of the new bolterbitches.


What are Furrywolves, Twilight Angels and Draigo's Children compared to such obviously overpowered armies?

Blood Angels for sure! damn those priest!

Stormcallers wrote:Any army my opponent is playing.

Thumbs up for honesty!!!

Space Wolves and Grey Knights. I don't even know why this thread has drug out this long.
And I laugh at anyone who sincerely said DE.

I vote Blood Angels due to the broken combos a correct build can create.

I'm surprised this has not appeared



None, all armies can be beaten by other armies. It simply depends on you're dice rolls, tactics and units. Broken is a term given to armies that seem to be more powerful than you're own.

GK are poopy, they get force weapons on every. Single. Guy, if you don't thing that's overpowered either your high or you use the GK.

Mech IG. The cheesiness level of Space Wolves or Blood Angels doesn't even compare.

ZacktheChaosChild wrote:Mech IG. The cheesiness level of Space Wolves or Blood Angels doesn't even compare.

Nightwalker wrote:GK are poopy, they get force weapons on every. Single. Guy, if you don't thing that's overpowered either your high or you use the GK.

No I don't, neither do I do drugs or play Grey Knights.

ZacktheChaosChild wrote:Mech IG. The cheesiness level of Space Wolves or Blood Angels doesn't even compare.

One will notice IG are a distant 4th in the poll. It's not hard to run SW armies with as much or even *more* long range AT firepower than most IG armies with double-digits of tanks on the board and 6 scoring units, or BA armies with 10+ Fast tanks and melta toting assault troops, half or more of them AV13.

Nightwalker wrote:GK are poopy, they get force weapons on every. Single. Guy, if you don't thing that's overpowered either your high or you use the GK.

Or you play an army that doesn't care about forceweapons (orks, DE, IG, etc...). Against 99% of models, a Force Weapon is no different than a Powerweapon, and units like Genestealers will still inflict higher average casualties against most units given that many GK units have only 1 attack (a genestealer charging a marine will inflict 0.55 unsaved wounds on average including Rending, a GKSS marine charging another marine will inflict an average of 0.50 unsaved wounds). The Force Weapons on everyone is hugely situational. Really good against MEQ's and Deathstars/MC's. Worthless against hordes and tanks.

But seriously, I agree with earlier posters: It's not as much of a "broken" or "unplayable" as "unbalanced." Long Fangs would be A-ok if they were more expensive. Necrons will (probably) be just fine once their stats are cost-appropriate. Afaik, nothing in 40K is "unbeatable," but a number of things are undercosted, or underpowered for their cost.

As for those people who try to defend 40K as perfectly balanced, filled with the laughter of children and cures for all diseases between the covers of the BRB, it's not, and debatably never has been. If I have a player of Skill Level X, with a Power Level Y Necron army faced off against a Space Wolf player of Skill X with a Power Level Y army (or as close to Y as SW can go), it will be an uphill battle for the Necron player, due to a number of factors (Outdated rules, SW codex strength, etc). This is not indicative of player skill (Skill? In a tabletop Strategy game? Naaaah... ), and is indicative of an issue with the game system.

Tl,dr: 40K is fun, but not balanced (Which would probably make it more fun).


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GK, imo, aren't too bad. They ream SM and MEQs, but don't affect hordes and similar lists as much. They either crush you like a bug thanks to the army build, or have an uphill fight the entire game because of their build. If you're an army the list is good against, I see your distress, but they don't kill everything, every time (Like certain other SM armies).

I don't see how it isn't balanced? There are some internal balance problems such as specific units like Long Fangs, Vendettas, Psyflemen etc. that need changes to be considered more balanced.
However, any 5th edition Codex (and even Orks) can beat any other. To me at least that suggests balance.
Some armies are out-dated, that's inevitable with the updating of the core rules system, but I wouldn't say that the up to date armies or the game as a whole are unbalanced or overpowered.

Just Dave wrote:However, any 5th edition Codex (and even Orks) can beat any other. To me at least that suggests balance.

Just because one army *can* beat another doesn't necessarily imply any sort of balance. Victory does not lie only in the relative strength of the forces opposing each other but also generalship, luck, and circumstance (e.g. deployment, turn order, etc). Now, they may not be *hugely* disparate the way say 7E Daemons to O&G were, but I find it hard to see say, Tyranids, as anything near the level of Space Wolves or Blood Angels, and I don't think I'd be alone in this. If the nids are having to face 11 Las/Plas Razorbacks, 3 five ML toting long fang units and 2 rune priests along with 6 scoring units in a 2k game, or 6 Fast Predators and a clutch of Fast Razorbacks sporting assault troops around, it's difficult to see where your average competitive Tyranid list for instance is going to have an equal footing. Short of some rather favorable dice luck and much more inspired command, just about any Tyranid army is likely to lose such matchups much more often than not.

Vaktathi wrote:

Just Dave wrote:However, any 5th edition Codex (and even Orks) can beat any other. To me at least that suggests balance.

Just because one army *can* beat another doesn't necessarily imply any sort of balance. Victory does not lie only in the relative strength of the forces opposing each other but also generalship, luck, and circumstance (e.g. deployment, turn order, etc).

I disagree. I feel that these being ably to beat each other definitely implies balance, whether or not this implication is correct.
I didn't claim - and never have - the game to be solely dependant on armies; as you said, many other factors have a significant impact on the game (which adds further weight against the idea of 'overpowered'), however Codices can too.
The point remains that IMHO any 5th edition army, which are designed for the current environment, can beat any other. This most certainly suggests balance to me; that they therefore encourage good generalship/luck/other factors due to similar power within different armies.
At the very least this strongly opposes the idea of a single army being 'overpowered', which was my original point.
Some armies (Wolves, IG) may have an advantage, but they are by no means overpowered or unbeatable IMHO. It's pretty balanced I'd argue, not perfectly, but reasonably so.

Regarding Tyranids, whilst they do have a reputation for being weak, I wouldn't claim this to be entirely the case. Genestealers, Trygons, Hive Guard, Tervigons, Swarmlords, etc. are all good units and players such as hyv3mynd, Reecius, Hulksmash, Janthkin and many more all attest to the Tyranids being a competitive army who can even beat the Space Wolf army (who I don't believe can get 11 las/plas Razorbacks, 3 Long Fang squads, 6 scoring units and 2 Rune Priests at 2000pts) you described. That certain armies have a harder learning curve doesn't make them underpowered in the typical definition of the term.

Just Dave wrote:
I disagree. I feel that these being ably to beat each other definitely implies balance, whether or not this implication is correct.

Just because every book has the potential to beat another doesn't mean it's balanced. It just means it's possible. Imbalanced or OP doesn't mean invincible, just that it's far harder to defeat than it should be, requiring far less skill/can mitigate terrain/mission/luck factors far more than others.

At the very least this strongly opposes the idea of a single army being 'overpowered', which was my original point.

Again however, just because it can be beaten doesn't mean it's not necessarily broken or overpowered. Daemons in 7E Fantasy *could* be beaten, but still overwhelmingly would crush their opponents and damn near killed competitive Fantasy gaming without some severe comp restrictions.

Regarding Tyranids, whilst they do have a reputation for being weak, I wouldn't claim this to be entirely the case. Genestealers, Trygons, Hive Guard, Tervigons, Swarmlords, etc. are all good units and players such as hyv3mynd, Reecius, Hulksmash, Janthkin and many more all attest to the Tyranids being a competitive army

It's not unplayable, but I think it's difficult to say that they're on an even footing assuming generalship and other factors are held constant. This primarily comes from my experiences against them, I've only lost one game to them (with my CSM's, I couldn't roll for squat, had a 12 strong squad of genestealers in the open get rapid fired/flamer'd by a full 10 strong squad of CSM's and killed 3 of 12 the game went downhill from there) and have tabled them more often than not, which makes me sad :(

(who I don't believe can get 11 las/plas Razorbacks, 3 Long Fang squads, 6 scoring units and 2 Rune Priests at 2000pts) you described. That certain armies have a harder learning curve doesn't make them underpowered in the typical definition of the term.

6 squads of 5 GH's with Las/Plas RB is 900pts, 3x 5ML LF squads with Razorbacks is 645pts, 2 squads of 3 Wolf Guard each with a Las/Plas RB is 258pts, and 2 Runepriests are 200pts, so it's 2003pts, so I'm 3pts off

Notice all the current leaders on the poll are Marines.

What a fething shock

When I think "overpowered," I think of Street Fighter II Akuma, who was not just competitively the best character, he was ten times better than any other character.

No current army fits that description, IMO, some may be a bit better than others, and codex creep is a factor, but there is no big balance issue, not really.

I guess it depends on your tolerance of imbalances.

Also, I love how Orks is last on the list

blood reaper wrote:
None, all armies can be beaten by other armies. It simply depends on you're dice rolls, tactics and units. Broken is a term given to armies that seem to be more powerful than you're own.

Two different things. Noone ever said there were armies that are unbeatable in 40K. There aren't, luckily. But just because every army can beat every army, doesn't mean that the odds are distributed fairly across the board and every army can beat every other army with a 50:50 probability given equally skilled players.

I would say the Space wolves, or the Imperial Guard.