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Wyldhunt wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


True. Let me rephrase.

Named characters are either a generic character plus that plays too much role in dictating your sub-faction choice, or underpowered and irrelevant. The design space is so small that they're never a lateral choice that does something new and different (except possibly for Chronus and Longstrike, and even then those are just "tanks plus" instead of "generic characters plus"), the only upside to their inclusion is the narrative element.

Which is why they should be narrative-play-only characters that are explicitly not competitively balanced, because if you want to play more seriously GW's current approach either a) forces you to use powerful named characters even when you'd rather play a different sub-faction, or b) forces you to never take the named character because they're crap,...

So a few things here. First, I don't think I agree with the premise that SCs can't be lateral moves. Off the top of my head...
*Yriel is sort of kind of an autarch SC, but his lack of mobility and shooting and relatively good melee punch make him an interesting (though not competitive) alternative to a bike or wing autarch (who arguably aren't very competitive either).
* Vulkan buffs flamers and meltas which (at least prior to the new Salamanders splat) are kind of unpopular. So he's actively promoting less often seen weapon options. You could say something similar about Drazhar and incubi, especially now that his buff is more useful.
* Farsight gives you a speedy melee suit that isn't really comparable to anything else in the army.
* Nothing really behaves like the Yncarne with his crazy teleporting.

That's just a few and not including all the gimmicks that have since been abandoned (but could be picked back up) like Parasite of Mortrex ripper generation, the Epidemeus Tally, characters that turned certain units into troops, and so on. Most of my examples above aren't really top-tier autotake units, but they do offer unique mechanics or encourage you to field options you wouldn't normally take (effectively changing your playstyle at least a bit.)

Ironically, there's another example that comes to mind *that is the focus of this thread*.
The utility that Feirros offers to Iron Hands is completely distinct and unique from anything else in the codex. You could make the argument that he's a Techmarine+, but other than having a healing ability, he doesn't play like a Techmarine in any respect. In fact, post-FAQ, he synergizes better with infantry than with vehicles!

Wyldhunt wrote:
...If you want to make a case for banning all units from matched play that don't have enough mathematical points efficiency or perceived value for their points costs, that would be an interesting thread. But if your argument is that we should only ban units that are too (un)optimized when they also happen to be a 0-1 datasheet, then it feels like you just have something against models with names...

I'm not explaining myself very well.

I don't want to ban all things that aren't efficient. I think the need to make named characters cost-effective and competitively balanced hurts the narrative element because you have to consider how people would min/max to take advantage of a rule in a competitive environment and you can't be as creative with them, and the need to make them narratively interesting hurts the competitive balance element because the writers give them things that make no mechanical sense for narrative reasons. The whole setup where 40k has "three ways to play" but then uses the exact same datasheets, points costs, rules, etc. and pushes updates for all of them at the same time just seems like it makes the game function poorly in all three contexts. Instead of making named characters narrative-only you could give them the 'narrative datasheet' versus the 'competitive datasheet' with different rules on them and it'd address my concerns similarly well.

Named characters are a symptom of the problem because if I want to do something mechanically interesting I have to shoot the narrative in the foot by hopping sub-factions to something my force isn't even painted as, and if I want to do something narratively interesting I might have to shoot the game in the foot by taking a character whose rules are just crap. I miss the 4e Space Marines Codex where the named characters didn't do anything you couldn't do with generic characters and the "Chapter Tactics" structure didn't tie specific rules to specific narrative elements; if the narrative bit isn't so tightly coupled to the rules you don't have to make tradeoffs in one to make the other interesting.

I also find the fact that Guilliman is in 100% of battles fought by the Ultramarines now, or Eldrad is in 100% of the battles fought by Ulthwe, or whatever, kind of silly; named characters feel like they're turning 40k into more of a cartoon caricature of itself where GW's protagonists have to get shoehorned into the entire plot. It's like reading Star Wars EU books that are entirely about "gee, I wonder where the Skywalker family is now?" Nobody can ever do anything without their top-level faction-leader boss leaning over their shoulders micromanaging while getting shot at, they die more times than comic book characters, and it just sort of sends a wrecking ball through any hope of narrative immersion.