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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Marines specifically are an incredibly flexible force, with a noticeably wider range of options. If they know they’re facing say….Dark Eldar? Their collection allowing, they can produce a list more challenging to Dark Eldar, whether or not they’re really working at it.

An army could have 500 units, and they could be 500 poor choices, there has to be more that just quantity.

Though quantity does increase the chance of being able to abusively list tailor - you mention in your original post that it is difficult to list tailor against a huge faction, and by the same token a huge faction probably has multiple units that can all fit in a sweet-spot against a known opponent while performing different tasks.

Also means you largely will end up with bad army with GW's ever changing imbalance. GW nerfs one unit, something gets buffed up.

If you have 500 choices you are more likely something goes good compared to having 10 choices. And one unit getting nerfed doesn't neccessarily mean death knell to faction.

Seeing gw is aiming for changing imbalance more choices gives some stability. Especially if you have old collection with lots of everything so you dont' even need to buy new models to go for new hotness.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Marines specifically are an incredibly flexible force, with a noticeably wider range of options. If they know they’re facing say….Dark Eldar? Their collection allowing, they can produce a list more challenging to Dark Eldar, whether or not they’re really working at it.

An army could have 500 units, and they could be 500 poor choices, there has to be more that just quantity.

Given GWs scattershot ability to balance rules there's am argument to be made that the more options you have the greater the chance that you'll end up with something abusable.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Given GWs scattershot ability to balance rules there's am argument to be made that the more options you have the greater the chance that you'll end up with something abusable.

True. Also much safer carrying a codex between editions.

PenitentJake wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
The overall number of options available to a faction is not important. It is the number of quality options that matters. If every codex has 8 quality options, then it does not matter if Codex A has 15 options while Codex B has 150 options.

Except that quality is in the eye of the beholder.

Especially for the folks who are more interested in stories that competition or balance.

There was an awesome story hook in some of the Charadon Flashpoints about an abhuman prison break. It was one of the coolest things I've read in a longtime. You don't think I want to set up a spacehulk board prison for the ratlings and ogryns to break out of so they can fight the chaos invaders?

You think it matters to me that those units don't perform well in 40k?

Narrative battles are not necessarily the most balanced battles. It would be nice if they were, but not surprising they they aren’t unless both players work together to make them so.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
If every codex has 8 quality options, then it does not matter if Codex A has 15 options while Codex B has 150 options.

I think it would matter quite a bit if a Codex had 150 options and only 8 of them were worthwhile.

Certainly not optimal and it would be a indictment against the designers, but the presence of bad options doesn’t prevent you from using the good ones.