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So I understand that this is a tactics thread...

But from a fluff point of view this makes my heart hurt.

Get some Inquisiton Psykers, drop pod it.

 Arkaine wrote:
And yet I bet you guys would bring a Knight in 7th edition or some other super heavy in this one. Try using Magnus or Mortarion and watch your opponent wipe the floor with them to learn how brittle they actually are. Fearsome and powerful for sure!

Brittle? You have got to be joking me. I played recently against a buddy with a dual Morty/Maggie against my combined Raven Guard and Blood Angels.

1500 pts each army x 4 = 6k

Magnus tanked 3 turns of shooting from my entire RG army. On turn 1 he destroyed a LRC; I charged in my redemption dread, hoping to get a power fist through, and Magnus ate him too. The next turn I charged in Shrike, while my buddy charged in 20 Death Company to Morty; I knew I'd lose Shrike but he would be forced to spend 2 CP for close combat interrupt stratagem so that DC could (hopefully) kill Morty (they didnt).

Over 3 turns of shooting, I managed to get Maggie to 1 wound, and he then killed himself by Warp Peril on his 3rd psychic phase.

The resiliency of Maggie is sickening, frankly, and something not matched by any of the superheavies I've seen. You want stats?

Volume Fire? (Armor saves)
486 bolter shots
324 hits (hitting on 3's)
108 (wounding on 5's)
are required for 18 failed saves (only 1/6 wounds with 2+ armor)

486 bolter shots is 243 Marines if rapid firing *13 pts = over 3k worth of space marines required to take out Maggie. That is, according to you, volume fire, the best way to take him down.

I'm sure you can increase the efficiency along the hit/wound rolls by adding in a captain/lt. I don't know how the points efficiency would break down, because I'm not a great mather, but if rerolling 1's (hit and wound) makes you 1/6th more effective, that means you should only need about 202 Space Marines to get the job done, and 41 trimmed Space Marines * 13 pts = 533 pts which is less than the cost of a Captain and Lt. so that's probably a better way to go. You're still looking at 2,800 pts. required to take down a 475 pt. model.

Big Guns (Lascannons vs. rerollable 1 invuln saves)
45 Lascannon Shots
30 Lascannon hits (assuming they didn't move here)
20 Lascannon wounds
5 failed saves
*3.5 average damage per lascannon = 17.5, let's say 18 with a CP reroll.

with a captain and lt rerolling 1's, you get 17% more effective, needing "only" 40 lascannon shots.
That's 6 squads of devastators with armorium cherubs (30 shots), and 5 razorbacks (10 shots), which i understand to be the most cost effective form of lascannon after devastator squad? That's looking like around 1800 points for a Spearhead detachment to gib Maggie in one turn.

Still almost a 4:1 efficiency ratio to Maggie. And that's assuming he doesn't nuke a dev team in his psychic phase and/or a razorback or 2 in his close combat phase.

Rocmistro wrote:

The resiliency of Maggie is sickening, frankly, and something not matched by any of the superheavies I've seen. You want stats?

Volume Fire? (Armor saves)
486 bolter shots
324 hits (hitting on 3's)
108 (wounding on 5's)
are required for 18 failed saves (only 1/6 wounds with 2+ armor)

Question: Are you aware that Magnus does not have a 2+ armor save? Were you even playing against Magnus or just theorycrafting this? Because when I bring him against my enemies, turn 1 is a toss up on whether he survives or not. Units hitting on 5+ and wounding on 6+ drop half his wounds with tanks and autocannons finishing him off, and this is every time I play against Guard. Ever think that Space Marines with bolters are not what I mean by volume of fire because Space Marine bolter troops are some of the LEAST efficient per point cost models when it comes to shooting?

Rocmistro wrote:
486 bolter shots is 243 Marines if rapid firing *13 pts = over 3k worth of space marines required to take out Maggie. That is, according to you, volume fire, the best way to take him down.

No, I did not say that using horribly inefficient wastes of points are the way to kill Magnus, I said volume of fire. Bolters cost you 13 pts for 2 shots within 12" only. Other armies have weaker troops than yours with higher VOF efficiency. Complain to GW about how Space Marines lack viable VOF options or bring high volume dreadnoughts and tanks.


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Example: Twin Assault Cannon Razorback - 100 pts
12 shots at S6 with -1 AP

Hits on 3+, wounds on 5+, saves on 4+.
Each tank will inflict 3 unsaved wounds.

Six tanks (600 pts) will kill a 415 pt model before it even gets to act. Great considering most other units take twice their point cost to murder in one turn. Conscripts being the exception since they sometimes take four times their point cost to murder.

Or hey, let's use something that doesn't suck. Because you're using Space Marines and not Tyrannids or Imperial Guard or Noise Marines or Eldar or an army that relies on volume of fire.

A single squad of Hellblasters overcharging, 38 pts per model. Same price as Missile Launcher Devastators if you prefer to do it from long range (and with D6 dmg instead).

Hits on 3+, wounds on 3+, saves on 4++, 2 dmg each.
22% of them will deal their damage, so only 9 shots need to get through.
Rapid Fire range of 15" makes each marine have two chances. You would need 40 shots or 20 Hellblaster units to kill Magnus in one turn, which puts it at 760 pts total cost.

But hey! You're also Space Marines! Shenanigans! Lieutenant, Captain, Librarian, Stratagems, all ways to enhance your killing power.
Throw Null Zone on Magnus and suddenly he gets no saving throw, doubling your efficiency and murdering him with half the points.

Sorry if you took my general statement of effectiveness to be the Sole and Only way to kill Magnus for all instances, armies, and list builds. It's only an indication of what kills him in tournaments, which are not dominated by Chaos but by Imperial Guard or Guilliman dev spam. I.E. Volume of Fire lists.

50 Conscripts - 200 pts
Fires four times each given an Order from an officer
Hits on 5+, Wounds on 6+, saves on 3+.
3.7 wounds lost per blob.
Two Blobs = 400 pts and deal 7+ wounds to Magnus.
The rest gets taken out by heavy weapon teams with autocannons, lascannons, assault cannons, heavy bolters, and tanks that spam more shots than is reasonable.

There's a tiny chance that Magnus survives the 1st turn but generally that doesn't happen. If you think 1500 pts of shooting (well the parts of it in range at least) should always kill 415 pts of my army on the 1st turn of the game then I'm glad you're not in charge of the game balance. That's pretty lethal enough as it is! Losing 1/3 of my army, my warlord, and my aura support all in a single phase.

Apparently the tag team did not go over well at the FLGS tournament over the weekend. Some people who don't usually play tournaments got talked into playing in order to have enough people. Now they're talking about a 1 LOW limit in tournaments after some of the players made it clear they would not be back. You really should expect the worst in a money tournament, so I don't know why they were surprised unless they were given some type of false impression of the lists.

After some of the comments from that, there is no way I'm going to be convinced Magnus is "brittle."

 crimsondave wrote:
Apparently the tag team did not go over well at the FLGS tournament over the weekend. Some people who don't usually play tournaments got talked into playing in order to have enough people. Now they're talking about a 1 LOW limit in tournaments after some of the players made it clear they would not be back. You really should expect the worst in a money tournament, so I don't know why they were surprised unless they were given some type of false impression of the lists.

After some of the comments from that, there is no way I'm going to be convinced Magnus is "brittle."

They were simply annoyed that the armies they built from decades in the hobby don't measure up like they used to. Space Marine blobs are little more than wound carriers while New Marines carry the torch forward. If Magnus was as durable as you think, he'd be topping tournament lists instead of the winners always being Ultramarines or Astra Millitarum.

Number one people do wrong when faced with Magnus or an Imperial Knight or anything large is failing to commit. If you're splitting your shots firing at the encroaching marines or the cultists on an objective or some other non-essential target instead of dumping everything into the guy you're actually trying to remove from the table then you are going to fail. Choose ahead of time: do you want to kill Magnus or do you want to kill his army? He can only smite or kill small parts of your army so letting him run rampant is an option. Half-killing him is not. Either go the distance and commit to your choice or ignore him and let him do what he wants.

Most of my games in 7th I didn't have anything that could stand up to an Imperial Knight. I could maybe knock a few wounds off it before my guys died but I wasn't going to kill it. So I ignored them most games and focused on killing everything else. If you want to kill something worth 415 pts, be prepared to dump a lot of firepower into it to the exclusion of other possible threats.

If ur bringing the amount of anti tank you SHOULD be bringing in a competitive list you should be able to at least remove one a turn.

 Arkaine wrote:

 crimsondave wrote:
Apparently the tag team did not go over well at the FLGS tournament over the weekend. Some people who don't usually play tournaments got talked into playing in order to have enough people. Now they're talking about a 1 LOW limit in tournaments after some of the players made it clear they would not be back. You really should expect the worst in a money tournament, so I don't know why they were surprised unless they were given some type of false impression of the lists.

After some of the comments from that, there is no way I'm going to be convinced Magnus is "brittle."

They were simply annoyed that the armies they built from decades in the hobby don't measure up like they used to. Space Marine blobs are little more than wound carriers while New Marines carry the torch forward. If Magnus was as durable as you think, he'd be topping tournament lists instead of the winners always being Ultramarines or Astra Millitarum.

Number one people do wrong when faced with Magnus or an Imperial Knight or anything large is failing to commit. If you're splitting your shots firing at the encroaching marines or the cultists on an objective or some other non-essential target instead of dumping everything into the guy you're actually trying to remove from the table then you are going to fail. Choose ahead of time: do you want to kill Magnus or do you want to kill his army? He can only smite or kill small parts of your army so letting him run rampant is an option. Half-killing him is not. Either go the distance and commit to your choice or ignore him and let him do what he wants.

Most of my games in 7th I didn't have anything that could stand up to an Imperial Knight. I could maybe knock a few wounds off it before my guys died but I wasn't going to kill it. So I ignored them most games and focused on killing everything else. If you want to kill something worth 415 pts, be prepared to dump a lot of firepower into it to the exclusion of other possible threats.

Well, this tournament finished: 1. Chaos (tag team) 2. Death Guard 3. Death Guard
Bobby G and the Smurfs didn't place. To be fair, IG wasn't in it. I don't think there are many other pure IG players around here.

Dual Demon Primarch is a silly list from a lore perspective, unless supported by tens of thousands of points of lesser Chaos models.

From a game prespective, it shouldn't be a viable option at 1000 points, but GW love their characters, they spoil them with stats and rules and push the points costs so that everyone'll play them. Because GW want everyone to play them.

 Arkaine wrote:
And yet I bet you guys would bring a Knight in 7th edition or some other super heavy in this one.

Why do you assume things about people with no evidence?

In my experience the ones who love huge expensive characters are the same ones who love huge expensive non-characters like Knights, and the ones who dislike them dislike both.

 crimsondave wrote:
Well, this tournament finished: 1. Chaos (tag team) 2. Death Guard 3. Death Guard
Bobby G and the Smurfs didn't place. To be fair, IG wasn't in it. I don't think there are many other pure IG players around here.

That sounds like just your local meta's problem. When I mention tournaments, I mean larger ones with numerous players and all armies represented in triplicate. It's possible your local Chaos players are just better strategists or play the lists that work, considering all three had Mortarion within months after he released. Were your other players retired veterans with ancient armies of Rhinos and Troops? I can see how that wouldn't stand up in this 8th edition of auras and combos.

Even normal lords can do insane things with the right combination of abilities. I found this example on Facebook in a post about Guilliman counters.





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 Cream Tea wrote:
In my experience the ones who love huge expensive characters are the same ones who love huge expensive non-characters like Knights, and the ones who dislike them dislike both.

In my experience the ones who hate special characters rationalize their knights as just large tanks. Can't ban tanks from a game all about them.

 Arkaine wrote:

 crimsondave wrote:
Well, this tournament finished: 1. Chaos (tag team) 2. Death Guard 3. Death Guard
Bobby G and the Smurfs didn't place. To be fair, IG wasn't in it. I don't think there are many other pure IG players around here.

That sounds like just your local meta's problem. When I mention tournaments, I mean larger ones with numerous players and all armies represented in triplicate. It's possible your local Chaos players are just better strategists or play the lists that work, considering all three had Mortarion within months after he released. Were your other players retired veterans with ancient armies of Rhinos and Troops? I can see how that wouldn't stand up in this 8th edition of auras and combos.

Even normal lords can do insane things with the right combination of abilities. I found this example on Facebook in a post about Guilliman counters.

Spoiler:

Night Lords Jump Pack Chaos Lord w/ Claws of the Black Hunt and Exalted Champion Warlord Trait
Tzeentch Jump Pack Sorcerer w/Warptime and Death Hex

1) Deep strike both as close to Guilliman as possible.
2) At the start of the psychic phase, use Chaos Familiar (1 CP) to get rid of Smite on the Sorcerer and replace it with Diabolic Strength.
3) Cast Diabolic Strength on the Chaos Lord (base 7 strength; 4 starting +1 claws +2 power). Wounds Guilliman on 3s.
4) Cast Warptime on the Chaos Lord and move him 12" closer to Guilliman, jumping over any models in your way.
5) Use The Great Sorcerer (1 CP) to make the Sorcerer able to use an additional power this turn and cast Death Hex on Guilliman to strip him of his invuln save.
6) Charge Guilliman then use Veterans of the Long War (1 CP) in the Fight phase to give you +1 to Wound. Wounds Guilliman on 2s.
7) Attack 7 times (4 base, +1 power, +1 claws, +1 warlord), hitting on 2+ rerolling 1s, wounding on 2+ and rerolling all failed wounds due to claws. Guilliman's save is only 5+ against these attacks.

This gives you a 95% chance to hit and wound, you should have no trouble landing all 7 attacks. Guilliman negates 1/3 of your attacks with his 5+ save and the rest do D3 wounds each.

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 Cream Tea wrote:
In my experience the ones who love huge expensive characters are the same ones who love huge expensive non-characters like Knights, and the ones who dislike them dislike both.

In my experience the ones who hate special characters rationalize their knights as just large tanks. Can't ban tanks from a game all about them.

Couldn't find a roster, but from the pictures, there were Chaos Demons, 2 Death Guard, Bobby G and Smurfs, Blood Ravens (looked like a 7th twin-lascannon razorback list with a drop pod), Tyranids, Necrons, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Orks, and there was IG after all for a total of 12. I was told there were no IG, but they were in the pics.

I don't know how good the players were nor their lists. I'm not gonna complain about a list in a tournament. It is what it is. But if you bring Mag/Mort, don't complain when a IG player who doesn't hate cheese as much as I do deep strikes 45 Scions with 20 Plasmaguns, field Cadian doctrine Punisher Pask with 2 Executioner buddies, a manticore, a twin punisher vulture, 3 astropaths, and 90 conscripts.

In case anyone was wondering, Magnus fails 2/9 of saves once Weaver gets cast

 Arkaine wrote:

Rocmistro wrote:

The resiliency of Maggie is sickening, frankly, and something not matched by any of the superheavies I've seen. You want stats?

Volume Fire? (Armor saves)
486 bolter shots
324 hits (hitting on 3's)
108 (wounding on 5's)
are required for 18 failed saves (only 1/6 wounds with 2+ armor)

Question: Are you aware that Magnus does not have a 2+ armor save? Were you even playing against Magnus or just theorycrafting this? Because when I bring him against my enemies, turn 1 is a toss up on whether he survives or not. Units hitting on 5+ and wounding on 6+ drop half his wounds with tanks and autocannons finishing him off, and this is every time I play against Guard. Ever think that Space Marines with bolters are not what I mean by volume of fire because Space Marine bolter troops are some of the LEAST efficient per point cost models when it comes to shooting?

Rocmistro wrote:
486 bolter shots is 243 Marines if rapid firing *13 pts = over 3k worth of space marines required to take out Maggie. That is, according to you, volume fire, the best way to take him down.

No, I did not say that using horribly inefficient wastes of points are the way to kill Magnus, I said volume of fire. Bolters cost you 13 pts for 2 shots within 12" only. Other armies have weaker troops than yours with higher VOF efficiency. Complain to GW about how Space Marines lack viable VOF options or bring high volume dreadnoughts and tanks.


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Example: Twin Assault Cannon Razorback - 100 pts
12 shots at S6 with -1 AP

Hits on 3+, wounds on 5+, saves on 4+.
Each tank will inflict 3 unsaved wounds.

Six tanks (600 pts) will kill a 415 pt model before it even gets to act. Great considering most other units take twice their point cost to murder in one turn. Conscripts being the exception since they sometimes take four times their point cost to murder.

Or hey, let's use something that doesn't suck. Because you're using Space Marines and not Tyrannids or Imperial Guard or Noise Marines or Eldar or an army that relies on volume of fire.

A single squad of Hellblasters overcharging, 38 pts per model. Same price as Missile Launcher Devastators if you prefer to do it from long range (and with D6 dmg instead).

Hits on 3+, wounds on 3+, saves on 4++, 2 dmg each.
22% of them will deal their damage, so only 9 shots need to get through.
Rapid Fire range of 15" makes each marine have two chances. You would need 40 shots or 20 Hellblaster units to kill Magnus in one turn, which puts it at 760 pts total cost.

But hey! You're also Space Marines! Shenanigans! Lieutenant, Captain, Librarian, Stratagems, all ways to enhance your killing power.
Throw Null Zone on Magnus and suddenly he gets no saving throw, doubling your efficiency and murdering him with half the points.

Sorry if you took my general statement of effectiveness to be the Sole and Only way to kill Magnus for all instances, armies, and list builds. It's only an indication of what kills him in tournaments, which are not dominated by Chaos but by Imperial Guard or Guilliman dev spam. I.E. Volume of Fire lists.

50 Conscripts - 200 pts
Fires four times each given an Order from an officer
Hits on 5+, Wounds on 6+, saves on 3+.
3.7 wounds lost per blob.
Two Blobs = 400 pts and deal 7+ wounds to Magnus.
The rest gets taken out by heavy weapon teams with autocannons, lascannons, assault cannons, heavy bolters, and tanks that spam more shots than is reasonable.

There's a tiny chance that Magnus survives the 1st turn but generally that doesn't happen. If you think 1500 pts of shooting (well the parts of it in range at least) should always kill 415 pts of my army on the 1st turn of the game then I'm glad you're not in charge of the game balance. That's pretty lethal enough as it is! Losing 1/3 of my army, my warlord, and my aura support all in a single phase.

1. No. My bad then. I thought it was a 2+ Armor save. We were rolling massive amounts of dice and doing things a bit out of sequence so he could handle my buddy's close combat attacks against Mortarion. So if we change all the 2+ Armor Saves to a 3+ Invuln, rerolling 1's, we go from a 1/6 failure rate to a 22% failure rate. That still requires 367 bolter shots, 184 Marines, or 2400 pts of Marines.

2. Yes, I had considered SM with bolters are not what you mean. The illustration is labored and flawed, to be sure, and I had hoped that was obvious. And I doubt anyone is ever going to bring 150+ tactical marines to a fight, whether to deal with Maggie or anything else, and regardless of whether or not they think it is a good or bad idea. The point was to establish a benchmark/starting point of what "volume fire" for a SM army might look like, because it's impossible to theorylist every possible iteration of "Space Marine" volume of fire (however it is that one wants to define "Volume of Fire").

3. As for complaining to GW about SM lack good VOF. This is precisely the point, I think. You would contend, I presume, that Magnus is fine, and its SM that don't have the tools to deal with him? I say it's easier to write/balance a single (fairly new to the game) model than it is to re-work an entire Codex, and one that is, by most accounts, one of the most popular if not the most popular codex out there. I would argue that Daemon Primarchs, and in fact any big thing like that, need to be balanced around the existing codexes, and not the other way around.

4. In your example(s) how do you figure that Assback wounds are going to be saved on 4+? (for that matter, how do you figure anything will be saved on 4+?) Thousand Sons are likely to go first, given the fact that they are bringing Magnus, and thus are likely to have fewer drops (taken in tandem with the more expensive everythings that they have). That means he gets his first pyschic phase which means he gets his invuln buff up. Even in those instances where they DON'T go first, the Thousand Sons player is not going to be a complete slow and put Magnus out there to get shot by everything in range of potentially in range. He'll either deploy him out of range, or LOS, or both, and, worst case scenario, put him in reserves. In this (in my opinion, more likely) scenario, each AssBack (lets assume a nearbye captain and lt.) hits 9.34 times, wounds 3.65 times, and gets .9 unsaved wounds through to Magnus. That requires 20 AssBacks to kill Magnus in 1 turn, or ~2200 points (20 assbacks + Lt. and Capt)

5. I think your math is wrong on Hellblasters. You need 90 shots (45 models rapid firing) to get 60 hits (67% hits) to get 40 wounds (67% wounds) to get 9 unsaved wounds (22% after rerollable invuln saves) to get 18 damage. 45 Hellblasters is 1710 points...granted, much better than 2400ish points were seeing necessary to get the job done with Tacticals or Assback Spam, but still a 3.5 ratio in points to Magnus' favor.

6. Yes, understood on the Librarian aspect for Magnus. But this just gets further to my point. If you must have a captain, a lieut, a libby and 4+ squads of hellblasters in order to deal with the threat of Daemon Primarch at a tourney, all clocking in at over 1500 points....that is by definition unbalanced!

7. I didn't actually take your post as a definitive guide, no. I do agree that volume of fire is the best way. My bigger rebuttal is that he's not brittle by any stretch of the imagination. And even if volume of fire is the best way to handle him, not all army codexes can achieve that optimal level of VOF equally (your point about conscripts, guard and SM are noted). But they (GW) could have done a better job balancing him, and the resiliency of Magnus compared to a Knight is not the same (specifically because Knights don't have 3+ rerollable invuln saves).

8. Conscripts are largely considered broken irrespective of the Magnus issue, so I don't know that that is a good comparison.

9. Finally...no, I don't think any combination of 1500 points of shooting should always kill Magnus in 1 turn, no. But I never said that and that is not the point. In the game I played against my buddy, I had a balanced mix of shooting at 1500 points. High volume, low damage (bolters, stormbolters, hurrican bolters pistols), Med Volume, medium damage (heavy bolters, plasma pistols), and low volume, high damage (lascannons and multimelta)). I fired, literally, EVERYTHING over 3 turns at Magnus.

Turn 1: everything except my LRC (which he crunched turn 1): 1200 points of mixed shooting.
Turn 2: everything except my LRC and Redempt Dread (which he crunched turn 1 in close combat): 1000 points of mixed shooting.
Turn 3: everything except LRC, Red Dread, and some various outher models: about 800 points of mixed shooting.

That's 3000 points of mixed shooting over 3 turns. AND IT STILL HAD NOT KILLED HIM. That also includes mortal wounds from sniper rifles and hellfire mortal wounds from heavy bolter.

And no, I don't think any single model should be able to handle that much damage, at 475 points, and live through it. THAT is not balanced.


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 znelson wrote:
In case anyone was wondering, Magnus fails 2/9 of saves once Weaver gets cast

Correct. 22% of your wounds are getting through once he has it up. I had mistakenly calculated it at 25% at one point.


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 crimsondave wrote:

I don't know how good the players were nor their lists. I'm not gonna complain about a list in a tournament. It is what it is. But if you bring Mag/Mort, don't complain when a IG player who doesn't hate cheese as much as I do deep strikes 45 Scions with 20 Plasmaguns, field Cadian doctrine Punisher Pask with 2 Executioner buddies, a manticore, a twin punisher vulture, 3 astropaths, and 90 conscripts.

And thus begins the arms race, or "how 8th edition just turned into another 7th edition cheese escalation orgy".

 znelson wrote:
In case anyone was wondering, Magnus fails 2/9 of saves once Weaver gets cast

Yep, about a 22% chance to fail a save. Gets worse if Weaver hasn't been cast and practically negated if Null Zone is used on him. Since it's all invulns too this applies to both the weakest and strongest shooting in the game. Magnus is effectively immune to AP which is why volume of fire works well on him. You can either spam low point cost efficient no AP weapons that fire 12 times or you can rely on high strength weapons that do multiple wounds.

As far as durability, check out the Knight Atropos.

Knight - 405pts, Magnus 415pts
Knight has a 4+ invuln for 50% saves most of the time (has 3+ armor too), Magnus saves 22% of the time w/Weaver cast
Knight has 27 wounds and T8, Magnus has 18 wounds and T7, making the Knight 50% more healthy but also harder to wound

In the end, the Knight might take twice the damage due to his save but he doesn't die from it because he's tougher than Magnus innately.

I think people are simply not used to seeing a Lord of War on the table. They're all very tanky and Magnus isn't special other than his defense relies more on RNG than attrition (and casting the same psychic power successfully every turn). Mortarion meanwhile has even less invuln capacity than Magnus yet makes up for it with extra wound negating rolls. All in all both fall to shot volume through sheer average dice weight. In this edition everything can be wounded and if it can be wounded it can fail a saving throw. Throwing more opportunities to fail at it works instead of constantly relying on AP weapons against a guy immune to AP.

Last edition we had similar problems with 3++ stormshields being everywhere, 2+ re-rollable cover saves on bikers, and other janky stuff while the titanic stuff was just untouchable by your average marine. That's dead and gone at last.

---

@Rocmistro

1) Applies if he succeeds in casting Weavers. Trust me this is not guaranteed and leaves him vulnerable when it fails for any reason, including denial.

2) Volume of fire in a space marine is never "a bunch of tacticals". To quote the tournament thread:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Tactical Marines aren't meant to wipe out masses of troops. That's what you have assault cannons and missiles for.

Better volume of fire options exist.

3) Who said Space Marines don't have the ability to contend with him? Null Zone is a universal Marine psyker power and strips invuln saves and all of the math previously calculated is ultra enhanced by tacking on support characters. You could easily kill Magnus with a few missile launcher devs supported by auras. He's not a heavy, he's a Lord of War, and like every other Lord of War on the table he's going to be resilient but he's easily the flimsiest of them all due to his 7 toughness and how that translates to what is effective against him. His immunity to AP makes volume of fire your best bet. On top of which, have you kept up on news? Check out this tournament listing https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/742235.page and you'll see what real Space Marine volume of fire looks like. First place proving that the Space Marine Primarch is scarier than any daemon primarch ever will be and that volume of fire is not dead to Space Marines. Second place played Raven Guard and *gasp* didn't use a Primarch at all, only Primaris Marines. How is it that a non-cheese list did so well in a meta of daemon primarchs? Space Marines.

4) Invuln saves against armor shredding assault cannons. If and when Magnus casts Weaver then his invuln goes up but it doesn't suddenly take FOUR times the number of points to kill a model that has improved its save from 50% to 22%. You even added a captain and LT yet they apparently have the reverse effect in your calculation of making the vehicles suck at shooting. Your calcs are wrong, as they were previously with 2+ armor, and it's leading to incorrect results. 600 pts of razorbacks doesn't suddenly turn into 2200 pts of stuff just because a model saves twice as often.

5) Are you seriously this confused about point effectiveness? Let's look at Tactical Marines... 13 pts per model, shooting other Tactical Marines. They fire twice in rapid fire hit 67% of the time, wound 50%, and fail saves 33% of the time. There is only a 1/9 or 11% chance of killing a Tactical Marine with a bolter shot. It takes 9 Tactical Marines to kill 2 Tactical Marines. 117 pts to kill 26 pts. That gives Tactical Marines a 4.5 ratio of killing themselves. It's perfectly normal to get outclassed depending on what's firing at you. Noise Marines are the best unit for shooting at Conscript for Chaos yet it takes FOUR times the points of Noise Marines to kill them in a single shooting phase. I feel like you're never dealt with Lords of War before if only a 3.5 point ratio is your idea of horrible. Magnus is one of the easiest LOWs to kill.

6) Lords of War are by definition centerpiece models that take attention off the rest of the army and must be dealt with. They are in no way the gods you make them out to be but they do require paying attention. Magnus is one of the most brittle Lords of War in the game. What you're really complaining about is not having a Lord of War on your side of the field to balance things out. If you don't bring anti-tank or heavies, don't complain when heavy tanks roll through your list. The Falchion is a Space Marine super heavy tank destroyer that fires 2D6 shots for 2D6 dmg each. This thing could one-shot Magnus with just its turret and then still have all its other guns and lascannons to fire at other things. On top of being T9, 2+ save, and 26 wounds. Check out my comparison with the Knight Atropos, considered one of the weakest knights in the new edition and nothing compared to the Acheron. If you think Magnus is a problem then please... just ban ALL Lords of War from your table.

7) He's brittle compared to other Lords of War. Not everything needs a rerollable invuln, that is a double edged sword that is heavily luck dependent and 2s will always fail regardless. You always have at least a 1/6 chance of suffering from a shot and the more 2s you roll the worse it gets. It's far better to have higher toughness and turn wounding anti-tank weapons into misses because they can't even glance your armor. You could try to Volume of Fire such a tank as you did with Magnus, but that tank has better volume of fire than Magnus does as well. He can obliterate your lineup without even needing to get close to you for melee attacks or an 18" smite range. Because I actually field and play against Lords of War regularly, I know their durability and effectiveness quite well. You're intimidated by one that dies turn 1 almost every game and I can safely say that's not a strong arguing position.

8) Doesn't have to be conscripts. Taurox Primes, Lemun Russ, deep striking Elysians with plasma, Death Korps of Krieg players with hot shot las spam, normal Guardsmen themselves, heavy weapon teams, there are so many ways to field volume of fire. One of our players, the Krieg one, even hates using tanks so his army is 100% infantry. He normally kills Magnus turn 1 or 2 and tables the opponent by turn 3 or 4. The volume they put out is sickening because it doesn't matter how tough your titan is. Past toughness 5, Krieg wounds everything on 6s anyway.

9) Then you might want to correct your list. As I said, and as even tournaments have proven, Magnus drops turn 1 alarmingly often. If your list isn't good then it's not going to happen. Many units are simply not worth their point cost over others and efficiency is paramount. But hey, which Lord of War did you bring? Or did you not bring any at all? Magnus being a Lord of War still makes him something that takes an army of shooting to drop, he just happens to be the Rhino-class among Lords of War and easy to drop. Space Marines being a tanky or defensive army compared to a lot of other all-out slaughter armies means you will take a while to drop him unless you bring the right tools to do so. Things like those Twin Assault Cannon Razorbacks that fire more dakka than invulns can handle. Though I still prefer missile launchers given how you can spend CP to reroll the dmg and get better than a 3.5 average result. Honestly, if the only two things you had on the table that were scary were a land raider and a dreadnought then I can see why he did so well. Your list was incapable of handling a Lord of War to begin with and was geared towards elite armies. This meta and this edition are so contrary to how 7th worked that we cannot field the same lists or build them the same way and expect them to work. This is the Horde spam meta of flooding the field with cheap things that have tons of wounds, tons of shots, and Space Marines have very limited options as to how to go about doing that. But as I linked above, players have found ways including those playing your army without the cheese.

1. Come on, man. It casts on a 6, right? And he's got +2 to cast at full health. And command points. Sure, it's not a guarantee...but if you're making a plan for dealing with him (Maggie), you have to PLAN on it going off, because odds are high that it's going to. Dice gods can always be fickle.

2. I already conceded it wasn't. The point was to establish a benchmark.

3. So...in point 1, above, you tell me that Magnus rolling a 4+ for Weaver is not a "guarantee", but now you tell me that throwing a Psyker within 6" of him and hoping he gets his 8+ psychic power off is a tool to contend with him? And I didn't say SM don't have what they need to contend with him. I'm sure they do. The problem is making a take-all-comers list that deals with Maggie, as well as Elites, as well as hordes. I haven't decided one way or another if its possible (well, clearly it is, as, you pointed out, a Smurf player toook the last tourney.) My arguings is really about figuring out what the magic formula for it is, because so far, what you've provided is not convincing. Again, it's not balanced if you have to build your entire army around the potential presence of a single model, especially given one of the selling points of this edition was about how "Anything can wound/kill anything else! No, really, it can!"

4. Show me exactly where I'm wrong, please? I haven't intentionally twisted the math. If i'm wrong on something please let me know. You're the one that came up with the original Assback example. I think your calculations were wrong on that too, for what it's worth, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. Twin Assault cannon is Str 6, 1 damage, yes?

5. Omg. Yes, of course...tactical marines vs. tactical marines sit there and do nothing against each other. But there are other guns/units that are hard counters to an equal number of Tacs. (2 plasma on 2 tacs cost 52 points against 4 tac marines, will make short work of the 4 naked tacs). The point is that most units, if they are balanced, tend to fit into the rock/paper/scissors spectrum (or at least, I would argue, should). They are good against something, bad against something, and a wash against others. I'm not advocating that EVERYTHING should be a hard counter to Magnus. My complaint is rather than NOTHING seems to be a POINT-TO-POINT hard counter to Magnus. Now we could say "he's a LOW/Daemonic Primarch/ he should have no hard counter". I don't think that's the right approach. If he's that badass, he should have been left in fluff. Can you honestly find me 475 points of hard counter in an RG SM army to Magnus? And even if you can, does it matter to you that some people (myself included) would argue that you shouldn't have to have such a specifically keyed tool in order to deal the threat which is Magnus, and if you don't, well, too bad, I guess you lose this game! People seem to like the idea that, within reason, it should matter less what you bring to the table, and more what you do with it. If Primarchs break that mold, there's a perfectly good reason why people are looking to ban primarchs from 2k or less tourneys.

So, no, actually, I'm not confused. It seems *you* are, however.

6. No i'm not. I don't want nor do I want to HAVE to take a LoW in my army. I want 8th edition to live up to its promise about balanced codexes and everything can kill everything else. Yes, I know...150 tacs with boltguns should not be able to handle every threat out there. But a balanced army with a mix of weapon and troop types should.

7. Hoping my opponent rolls "2's" is not a strategy (not to mention "yay i'll burn a command point against that lascannon hit, oh look a 3!". And it's not fun. We've already established, regardless of how you look at it, that Magnus will bounce 78% of any hits against him when Weaver is up. I don't know what the rest of your paragraph is really on about. Bouncing 50% hits is not the same as bouncing 78% hits. My lascannons actually get through on super heavy tanks, and they still wound on 3's. Also, many of the IG super heavies are more expensive than Magnus, so to the extent that it's true that Magnus is more brittle than they are, well, he should be. That still doesn't mean he's balanced. (And anytime we talk about such subjective concepts, it must go without saying that the natural caveat is "...for its points/cost". Surely you would not argue that Magnus was a brittle LoW if he only cost 50 points, right??)

8. I'll concede to not having any experience with those alternate methods for taking down Magnus. But *I* don't have them in my RG army. And I have a pretty varied RG army. I would think I have enough variety and tools to take care of Magnus in my all-comers list.

9. Again, as I already stated...I *DID* shoot my entire army at Magnus...for 3 turns. And didn't kill him. I didn't bring a LOW because i don't have one...and I don't want one, as I said above. And I don't want to have to have one. If you're telling me I must have a LoW to defeat Magnus, I would argue you've proven my point; that he's not balanced.

What a spicy meatball! It's get hypey af in here. Kappa

Death hex + obliterators makes for a sad LoW.