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the_scotsman wrote:


But, once again, a full wraith army is not in any way overpowered if you don't just go specifically for the ridiculously strong units.

If you'd said oh wraith stuff cool, and gotten a wraithknight, Wraithguard and Wraithlord with some guardian troops you'd have a fine, balanced list that nobody who isn't a total douche could complain against.

It's just when you take specifically Scatter Laser Jetbikes D-cannon knights and Scythe Guard in wave serpents that you'll get complaints if you don't warn people, because for better or worse that army is going to win without a chance from any other army.

It's not like most other balanced games where "you'll win every time because you picked X" is an exaggeration. In 40 k, pick the power build of the strongest army and it's not uncommon to have a 100% winrate even when brand new.

But, once again, this doesn't address my overall point of the "play what you want it's all personal preference" is a popular hypocritical facet that current players tend to present to new ones when there is such large an widespread division and hostility on what is acceptable and not and the fact that this can (and has) changed with with the releases of rules and Codexes. What if I want to play tournaments, and I had 2 or 3 wraithknights in the old rules. They get changed to LoW and now oops, only allowed to have one, sorry about that your 2-300 dollars of models are useless for your style of play. What if I skip the wraiths, and build a Deathwing army and the next DA book has some huge upgrade that makes taking more than a squad or two "bad form"? If I put down the same army I always have, I'll now be "that guy". You're focusing on these small individual examples and how to avoid them when I'm addressing a larger overall context of those examples' effects on the whole.

 adamsouza wrote:

Skitari have sooo much haywire, and nothing that sucks, and no one cares because their armies live in fear of the sky falling under the weight of 30 Eldar Jetbikes.

Playing Skitarii, I have to comment on this.

There is quite a bit in the Skitarii book that "sucks" when playing pure Skitarii(no Blood Angel/Space Wolf allies to throw my boys down in Drop Pods)...but it is not immediately apparent when looking at the book.

The solution is either A) you warn your opponent of your tournament-tier army so they can adapt or decline the game, or B) you find some other way to counts-as those models with less competitive equipment.

Even the guy with 3 wraithknights can field them with a guardian storm host and 3 sun cannons and they're not top-tier.

The odds of someone "accidentally" getting stuck with a tournament tier army is absolutely minimal, because 90% of the time those armies are the shiny new thing GW comes out with

Even now, JUST wraith stuff is not tournament tier. It sucks that WKs moved to LoW so people with expensive models can't be fielded without the special formation. It also sucks that it's very hard for someone to have fun against 3 wraithknights-again, not the players fault but for every person who "unfairly" gets stuck with an overpowered army there's a dozen whose whole collection is Nerfed out from under them and they have no way of standing a chance against the first guy. It is completely in their rights to not want to play against him-it's not in their rights to be a dick about it, but 40k takes hours to play and there's really no fun in it if you stand no chance of winning.

the_scotsman wrote:
The solution is either A) you warn your opponent of your tournament-tier army so they can adapt or decline the game, or B) you find some other way to counts-as those models with less competitive equipment.

Even the guy with 3 wraithknights can field them with a guardian storm host and 3 sun cannons and they're not top-tier.

The odds of someone "accidentally" getting stuck with a tournament tier army is absolutely minimal, because 90% of the time those armies are the shiny new thing GW comes out with

Even now, JUST wraith stuff is not tournament tier. It sucks that WKs moved to LoW so people with expensive models can't be fielded without the special formation. It also sucks that it's very hard for someone to have fun against 3 wraithknights-again, not the players fault but for every person who "unfairly" gets stuck with an overpowered army there's a dozen whose whole collection is Nerfed out from under them and they have no way of standing a chance against the first guy. It is completely in their rights to not want to play against him-it's not in their rights to be a dick about it, but 40k takes hours to play and there's really no fun in it if you stand no chance of winning.

As I said:

BlackSwanDelta wrote:


Specifically, an army getting a significant power reduction (nerfed) with a book release is equally as nuts on the whole.

Getting nerfed will not make you a social outcast, but an OP change will draw outright hostility, banning of units/rules, etc. Getting nerfed may lessen your ability to play effectively, but getting OP'd can completely eliminate it. Hurting a handful of people more severely isn't better than hurting a larger number in a much lesser fashion. One side isn't more or less justified or righteous over the other, but people will argue it and usually, not always mind you, which side of the line they've been put on by GW.

If people don't want to play each other because of it, that's fine and their choice. But they also shouldn't tell new players en masse to "play what you want, it's all good, personal preference" because it is anything but and that's the over reaching attitude of all the communities I've seen. Odds don't matter when it's your number that comes up, getting nerfed or getting OP'd. It's reckless and hypocritical, it's rampant, and it has nothing to do with "who has it worse" or "who is meaner" self pity people keep arguing over.

BlackSwanDelta wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


But, once again, a full wraith army is not in any way overpowered if you don't just go specifically for the ridiculously strong units.

If you'd said oh wraith stuff cool, and gotten a wraithknight, Wraithguard and Wraithlord with some guardian troops you'd have a fine, balanced list that nobody who isn't a total douche could complain against.

It's just when you take specifically Scatter Laser Jetbikes D-cannon knights and Scythe Guard in wave serpents that you'll get complaints if you don't warn people, because for better or worse that army is going to win without a chance from any other army.

It's not like most other balanced games where "you'll win every time because you picked X" is an exaggeration. In 40 k, pick the power build of the strongest army and it's not uncommon to have a 100% winrate even when brand new.

But, once again, this doesn't address my overall point of the "play what you want it's all personal preference" is a popular hypocritical facet that current players tend to present to new ones when there is such large an widespread division and hostility on what is acceptable and not and the fact that this can (and has) changed with with the releases of rules and Codexes. What if I want to play tournaments, and I had 2 or 3 wraithknights in the old rules. They get changed to LoW and now oops, only allowed to have one, sorry about that your 2-300 dollars of models are useless for your style of play. What if I skip the wraiths, and build a Deathwing army and the next DA book has some huge upgrade that makes taking more than a squad or two "bad form"? If I put down the same army I always have, I'll now be "that guy". You're focusing on these small individual examples and how to avoid them when I'm addressing a larger overall context of those examples' effects on the whole.

An example of this in practice is my BA and Necrons.
I have 6 baal preds, 5 of which are flamestorms and now useless, and 5 annihilation barges for my necrons which are now very poor for their points, as well as tons of scarabs which are now awful. I cannot play a royal court either unless I go decurion which will require me to invest in immortals and bikes.
So in the space of 2 months and 2 releases, ~£500 of my models got completely shelved.

On the flip side - whilst my foot DC may not get a game, my JP DC and SG have come out to play again now.

The funny thing is that very few people will actually concede that when it comes right down to it, Codex Eldar Craftworlds is **weaker** than Codex Eldar, both for RAW and ITC. Yes, jetbikes are really good, but you know what? 60" Wave Serpents were better. Yes, D weapons were really good, but being able to take multiple cheap Wraithknights was better. How many people b*tching about CWE have actually played against 4 Wraithknights and 30 jetbikes? No, most just imagine the hypothetical crash of heavy and destroyer weapons and moan, when in real play, it isn't nearly as broken to overcome as 5+ wave serpents.

For a lot of people who are unhappy, they didn't want Eldar to come out slightly weaker; they wanted Eldar to be ground down to the point of Orks, so that the folks who had been enjoying a high win ratio for years would be rendered totally impotent.

@BlackSwanDelta & Poly Ranger -- yeah, 40k mixes things up every couple of years, and it's unlikely that an army will remain the same from edition to edition. This has been so since the very first version of the game, and even between codex changes, the meta change or core rules change will often force you to adjust your battleforce, if you actually want to be semi-competitive. 40k is a poor gaming choice if you wish to build an army and play it unchanged for many years. On the bright side, what was good may become junk, but eventually, it will probably be great again Might take a decade or so, though.

The best way to prevent obsolescence is to NOT have a totally spammy army (ie taking just the best of the codex), because you won't get nailed by that unit getting nerfed (like wave serpents or GC Wraithknight). If you spread your collection out to interesting units instead of just the most singularly effective ones, not only do you have more versatility, but you're likely to be less effected by edition changes. And other people will enjoy playing you more. A lot of people are actually surprised (and angry!) when they are shown how their min/max army can get just stomped by a more diverse army by a better player.

It has never been about "play what you want, it's all personal preference". Even in the broadest sense, some units synergize better with other units, and some selections make for poor combinations. For example, if you have an assault-centric army, and you take one squad of midrange shooters, that squad will probably struggle to find its purpose. If you take an tactical squad with 2 melta guns, 1 missile launcher, and krak grenades your squad will have an identity crisis -- does it shoot from afar or get in range for the specials?

In fairness, it isn't like this in any game. You can't just replace a bishop with a third knight and expect the same efficiency, even though they are roughly the same value; you can't just play the prettiest models in Warmachines and expect to win. What's unique to 40k is that in some factions, there are models that are just so terribly weak (or become so terrible after an edition change) that nobody who wants a competitive army would ever take even 1 of them (like tactical terminators or wyches or most dreadnoughts).

Uh, I must have missed where you can't still take "multiple cheap Wraithknights"?

For the low price of a Guardian Battlehost, you can take 12 Wraithknights.

Sure, you have a points tax in the form of the Battlehost but it's not like the FOC matters at that point.

Tbf my armies aren't 'spammy' as such. I just happen to have ~10k of BA and ~4k of Crons, so am bound to have lots of vehicles. And I really don't like doomsday arks and don't have any ghost arks so my only vehicles were CCBs, ABs, NSs and 1 monolith.
With my BA I have 6 baals, 2 normal preds, 4 vindis, 2 LRs, 1 Sicaran, 2 Ravens, 2 Land Speeders, 3 rhinos, 3 drop pods, 1 normal dread, 1 fragioso, 2 DC dreads and a Knight. So all was not lost, I wasn't spamming the baals, I just happened to have a lot of vehicles as I tend to get carried away on ebay.
Both my regular playstyles I had been running though - mech BA (with FA baals) and Necrons with CCBs, ABs, scythes, scarabs and veiltek/stormteks royal courts were completely and utterly shafted.

 Talys wrote:

For a lot of people who are unhappy, they didn't want Eldar to come out slightly weaker; they wanted Eldar to be ground down to the point of Orks, so that the folks who had been enjoying a high win ratio for years would be rendered totally impotent.

Massive assumption here. I think most people who are unhappy wanted GW to actually attempt to give a crap about balance, and have Eldar on the same level as most of the 7th ed books. Because even if Eldar are slightly weaker than the last dex, they're still pretty far ahead of anything that isn't Decurion Crons. It's not about wanting them to be stupidly weak to spite Eldar players or anything like that. It's wanting some semblance of a balanced game.

I can't understand how anyone can think the new Eldar dex is worse overall in power level than the old one.

Sure, Wave Serpents are no longer the end-all, be-all, but just about every other unit got buffed, some pretty significantly.

I can only hope GW doesn't try and one up the Eldar dex, because only madness that way lies.

 Talys wrote:
The funny thing is that very few people will actually concede that when it comes right down to it, Codex Eldar Craftworlds is **weaker** than Codex Eldar, both for RAW and ITC. Yes, jetbikes are really good, but you know what? 60" Wave Serpents were better. Yes, D weapons were really good, but being able to take multiple cheap Wraithknights was better. How many people b*tching about CWE have actually played against 4 Wraithknights and 30 jetbikes? No, most just imagine the hypothetical crash of heavy and destroyer weapons and moan, when in real play, it isn't nearly as broken to overcome as 5+ wave serpents.

Nobody is going to argue that Wave Serpents weren't busted, but the Jetbikes are putting out even more firepower if built properly, and the D weapons are a much greater hardcounter to lots of units, paticularly the type of units that Wave Serpents weren't effective against.

For a lot of people who are unhappy, they didn't want Eldar to come out slightly weaker; they wanted Eldar to be ground down to the point of Orks, so that the folks who had been enjoying a high win ratio for years would be rendered totally impotent.

You like to make statements like this a lot, but there's not much too this.

 Paradigm wrote:


Agreed. You can fix Eldar in about 25 words:
- All Distortion weapons use the 6th Edition Distort rules
- Scatter Lasers are available to one in every three Jetbikes

Done.

As an Eldar player, I find that completely reasonable, Paradigm. I probably won't use D weapons at all for awhile, and I'll self-limit one HW for every three bikes when I pull them out. Eldar lists can still be pretty good without D-weapons, there's some great variety in there.

Having played every edition at one point or another (as a lot of folks here have), you see the 'power creep' and you see a different army have its 'day in the sun' at one point or another. Now it's Necrons/Eldar. Next fall it will be someone else, and so on. It's the GW way, and no veteran should be surprised by this. But thankfully, the 'solution' is pretty easy.

For casual play - talk to your opponent. It's -casual-. As long as players are reasonable, there's no reason an agreeable game can't be enjoyed by both. If one or both players are unreasonable, then likely the game wouldn't have been fun anyway.

For competitive play - suck it up and accept it. It's -competitive play-, where players are going to milk their book for all its worth (within the confines of the tournament rules), usually. That might produce a few TFGs, but from what I have seen competitive play is generally WAAC, especially with prizes and such involved. But if you're willingly going into that environment, you should be prepared to see all the things you hate most about the game, and complaining about it just seems silly. This is the primary reason I don't play competitively myself, anymore. Just not worth the annoyance.

It really just boils down to this being a game, a hobby, and when two people play, we hope that they are both mature enough to want both players to have a good time.

"Its always been crappy" isn't a good excuse. Especially with new books and editions coming out all the time...and compition that makes GW rules look amateurish.

But going back to OP's point, you why do you even have to wait for a new Codex to do this? There seems to be this huge focus on negotiating all these complex changes in individual tables, roll values, units, rules, play styles, and "reigning in" the OP armies when there seems to be much simpler solutions.

It's much more appealing to be able to use all of my units, rules, and tactics and give the other guy some extra padding if it's really imbalanced and give him some extra points to work with for his army. I would MUCH rather play like this. How can I be WAAC TFG if I'm playing at a handicap? That's literally the opposite of what the WAAC concept is, but I still get to field and play how I want, it's much simpler to negotiate (even if there are disagreements, you still don't have a huge laundry list to argue over), and both players can reach a point where they feel they have a reasonable chance of success. It isn't any different than all those individual changes since you're still getting the same outcome, you're changing the effectiveness vs points value that you can field. Why mess around with all that and just use the much simpler solution?

 Kanluwen wrote:
Uh, I must have missed where you can't still take "multiple cheap Wraithknights"?

For the low price of a Guardian Battlehost, you can take 12 Wraithknights.

Sure, you have a points tax in the form of the Battlehost but it's not like the FOC matters at that point.

You could not field 12 Wraithknights in a standard 2000pt. game of 40k even without the Guardian Troop Tax the most you could field is 6, no reason to so blatantly exaggerate. And even then every tournament format I have seen this will not be allowed and if anyone brought 6 Wraithknights to a game I would annihilate them without breaking a sweat. If you want to point out something realistic why not the Knight Gallant Formation where you can take x6 of them in a 2000pt. game and still have 50pts. left over for a relic or some stuff to add on to them?

 gmaleron wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Uh, I must have missed where you can't still take "multiple cheap Wraithknights"?

For the low price of a Guardian Battlehost, you can take 12 Wraithknights.

Sure, you have a points tax in the form of the Battlehost but it's not like the FOC matters at that point.

You could not field 12 Wraithknights in a standard 2000pt. game of 40k even without the Guardian Troop Tax the most you could field is 6, no reason to so blatantly exaggerate. And even then every tournament format I have seen this will not be allowed and if anyone brought 6 Wraithknights to a game I would annihilate them without breaking a sweat. If you want to point out something realistic why not the Knight Gallant Formation where you can take x6 of them in a 2000pt. game and still have 50pts. left over for a relic or some stuff to add on to them?

Well, you couldn't bring 12 WKs before as well. Kanluwen's point was that you can still field more than 1 WK in 7th.