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Oh, they did it after the fact? No, no, you can't do that to people. You have to be up front with this kind of stuff.

Martel732 wrote:
Not being able to target invisible units with a flamethrower is perhaps the dumbest rule 40K has ever vomited out. That's EXACTLY what one would use vs invisible foes.

Yep. Against an foe you can't see? Shoot wildly and hope something hits, just like Arnie would have done.
Area of Effect weapons are the most efficient at this.

Telepathic invisibility wouldn't even work against automated defenses in any way. So a Wraithknight or dreadnought can't just set its gun to "motion tracker mode"? Lame.

Bolters are only good for free trade for close combat weapons in the CSM codex.

Actually that trade sucks and the lot of csm.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Not being able to target invisible units with a flamethrower is perhaps the dumbest rule 40K has ever vomited out. That's EXACTLY what one would use vs invisible foes.

Yep. Against an foe you can't see? Shoot wildly and hope something hits, just like Arnie would have done.
Area of Effect weapons are the most efficient at this.

And that is exactly the nonsensical sh!t GW writes. I really need to quit this game.

I agree, not being able to fire template or blast weapons at invisible units is just idiotic.

But then, I think not being able to fire snapshots with template/blast weapons is stupid to begin with. Why is it that I can snapshot with a Dark Lance - a Heavy Weapon - but not a Shredder (an Assault weapon). Surely it should be a lot easier to fire such weapons quickly?

But, of course, we all know the real reason why we can't. The developers realised that BS1 wouldn't work for those weapons, and were too lazy or unimaginative to conceive of a different penalty.

As compared to what, lasguns?

If i can take marines with lasguns and they cost 7 pts or 5 pts less then hell yeah!

 Filch wrote:
If i can take marines with lasguns and they cost 7 pts or 5 pts less then hell yeah!

I'm sure most anyone would for that kind of points discount.

 Filch wrote:
If i can take marines with lasguns and they cost 7 pts or 5 pts less then hell yeah!

You mean your marines would cost the same as my Kriegsmen?

 Vaktathi wrote:
And is there some reason it shouldn't be capable of that?

LIkeiwse, it costs the same to take it as it does to take AP2 Starcannons, S8 AP2 Lances, and its only cheaper than EML's because GW hamfisted Skyfire missiles for their universal extra 10pts onto all EML's as basic equipment.

I ask why they're "more" vulnerable because, largely until very recently, I had never seen anyone complain about them in regards to their ability to kill marines, and they've been that way for a long time, looking back to the 2E book they could fire up to 6 times and a marine only saved on 4's against one.

It's a weapon much like an autocannon where it doesn't care about the difference between T3 and T4. If I take a 30mm cannon, I can bring it to bear against an Elephant or a Tiger and it won't have any harder time bringing one of those down that it will killing a person. Same principle.

I mean, are we trying to make the case that Marines just shouldn't have any such vulnerabilities?

pelicaniforce wrote:

I hear it was less than six months after the publication of Rogue Trader for marines to gain t4.

It was about 4 years, RT came out in 1987, and the Compilation book updating marines came out in 1991.

Field armies of any size can be flattened by macro artillery. It seems likely that most battles would then take place on top of said macro artillery, or on the relatively small areas that are too valuable to hit with said giga-plasma, for which you might prefer to have troops who can run straight through lasfire.

You don't even need macro artillery for something like that. A company of basilisks raining fire on a couple square kilometers of ground for a few hours from fifteen kilometers away would be very nasty indeed, and that's not even getting into concentrated artillery. To use a real life example, the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin in some areas had 650 big guns per kilometer of front, and there are fields in France who's geography remains permanently altered by concentrated artillery fire.

As Huron Blackheart said "Though my guards may sleep and ships may rest at anchor, our foes know full well that big guns never tire."

People say that 40k battles are a bit small and simulate portions of larger battles going on around them, and that Epic is more realistically scaled for that reason.

Typically true yes.

I think, like I said, that large Epic armies are good candidates for being stepped on by bombardment. Also, on a planetary scale, they will be even easier to "simply go around." A guard army needs as much as a day to pick up sticks and fly to another continent that needs fighting on. Fewer troops, who have no need to encamp and no giant depot for servicing tank companies, are much better for planetary warfare.

They may be better able to maneuver, assuming they haven't been cut off or anything, but being so small they're exceedingly vulnerable to attrition, encirclement, or supplies being cut off if they're having to do things like hold ground, go out on patrol, etc.

There's a reason you don't see wars being won by special forces units today, they support major operations, but don't defeat armies, take cities, etc on their own.

The standard 200 marine deployment seems like a fine amount to take over a /continent/.

How are they going to hold ground? That's simply too small a number of troops to do anything bu raid. Unless they somehow have amazingly perfectly accurate intelligence and no way an enemy can intercept them (earlier disproven in this thread), they won't even be able to carry out commando operations on their own. What are 200 marines going to do after they've seized an enemy base and they start getting shelled from thirty kilometers off while enemy reserves are moving to encircle them? There's too few of them to hold more than a few hundred meters of ground and no artillery capable of responding and few enough aircraft.

Assuming you can shoot down ICBMs, the only weapons that can be used from neighboring continents, taking a continent at a time seems like the thing to do. They wreck the food and energy infrastructure to ruin the society until it either politically submits or becomes culturally dissolved. In fact, once you've done that, you can set up the Imperial government of that planet on that continent, and /they/ can take over the world the same way all the great nations in history have threatened to do.

I'm curious how 200 marines are going to destroy energy and food infrastructure on their own, even assuming unlimited munitions, that's stuff that takes quite a while to do, particularly if you're trying to do it with infantry and tanks, and particularly only with a couple hundred dudes. The Soviets were able to transport thousands of factories away from the Wehrmacht's grasp over a front of thousands of miles and an advance of up to fifty kilometers a day and millions of troops, how would 200 marines stop such a thing?

This is the problem. Your artillery companies and guard-stuff need to seize bases. They need to take and defend cities, because bases and cities have places they can drive their tanks around on while they get refueled, and places for soldiers to lie down on that aren't the ground. They need bases and cities so that there can be a line with the ground they control on one side and the ground they don't control on the other side.

Space Marines do too, particularly on any sort of extended campaign or if they've been cut off from their support in space (or were just dropped off as so often is). And the only way to defeat large armies permanently is to take and hold ground and deny it to the enemy. There are plenty of fluff stories which portray marines doing the same thing, having to hold the entrances to hive cities or the like.

Like the story about 30 Black Templars defeating 5000 cultists? The most ridiculous feth i have ever heard.

Maybe I'm missing something, being not an experienced player, but... if firepower is the key to the game, is then durability not important, as that is what you resist firepower with?

Alcibiades wrote:
Maybe I'm missing something, being not an experienced player, but... if firepower is the key to the game, is then durability not important, as that is what you resist firepower with?

Resisting firepower is something all troops are good at. You don't need a 3+ save and t4 to resist firepower. You just need a cover-save and a lot of wounds - with this tactic you can resist firepower for less points and more than likely - you are dishing out as much or more ranged firepower from this type of units.

Alcibiades wrote:
Maybe I'm missing something, being not an experienced player, but... if firepower is the key to the game, is then durability not important, as that is what you resist firepower with?

Durability is rather hard to quantify, since it's somewhat dependant on the meta. e.g. when vehicles and/or MCs are strong, elite units tend to suffer because most armies include as many anti-vehicle weapons as possible - which are generally also effective against elites. On the other hand, if vehicles are so bad as to be a rarity, then you might see more anti-infantry weapons (flamers, blasts etc.) which would put more pressure on more numerous but lightly-armoured infantry.

 vipoid wrote:
I don't mind the 2++ on a Shadowfield, since it has a pretty severe downside and the model is typically dead on the first failed save.

Yeah, that one was okay. Or the act of faith that cost one Faith point to get the non-rerollable 2++ on a Canoness with T3 for one phase (not round, phase), and that could just not work.

 vipoid wrote:
Can I also nominate 'Invisibility' as a further failure of game design?

Of course. Dumber than the dumbest dumb, times infinity!

 Filch wrote:
Like the story about 30 Black Templars defeating 5000 cultists? The most ridiculous feth i have ever heard.

Means each Black Templar defeats what, 166 ish cultists? Seems entirely reasonable, as long as they don't have plasma guns or something.

I mean, what are the cultists going to do exactly? They are cultists, they have no plot armour. If it had been the protagonists of an IG story then it's another matter, but without plot armour involved the cultists will get rekt.

5000 cultist generating 10,000 attacks in melee or 5000 las gun shots and 30 Black Templar tactical marines make all their armor saves thanks to plot armor.

If it was 300 Marines then I would absolutely believe it like king Leonidas and his 300 Spartan Body Guards defeating a horde of 5000. But just 30?

Wait, did they fight all 5000 at one time or were they pulling hit-and-run attacks along with divide-and-conquer so they were only facing a few dozen at a time?

 Xenomancers wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
Maybe I'm missing something, being not an experienced player, but... if firepower is the key to the game, is then durability not important, as that is what you resist firepower with?

Resisting firepower is something all troops are good at. You don't need a 3+ save and t4 to resist firepower. You just need a cover-save and a lot of wounds - with this tactic you can resist firepower for less points and more than likely - you are dishing out as much or more ranged firepower from this type of units.

cover saves typically mean staying in one place, you give up mobility to gain that save. You also have to hope nobody is running a Prescience psyker/IG orders/running any one of a number of cover save ignoring weapons and hope nothing makes it into close combat. Also, the cover typically will need to be substantial, both in size and type. A 5+ cover save isn't going to make up for not having 3+ armor, nor will only having six of twenty guys able to fit in the terrain.

 Filch wrote:
5000 cultist generating 10,000 attacks in melee or 5000 las gun shots and 30 Black Templar tactical marines make all their armor saves thanks to plot armor.

If it was 300 Marines then I would absolutely believe it like king Leonidas and his 300 Spartan Body Guards defeating a horde of 5000. But just 30?

One must remember, it was Leonidas who was defeated

(He also had other Greeks with him from several other city states, and the final rearguard probably numbered closer to 2,000 than 300, with total Greek forces present numbering roughly twenty thousand during the entire battle by most modern estimates)

 Filch wrote:
Like the story about 30 Black Templars defeating 5000 cultists? The most ridiculous feth i have ever heard.

Well their bolters must not have been str 4 ap5 rapid fire. lol. 30 marines could MAYBE beat 75 cultist.


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nobody wrote:
Wait, did they fight all 5000 at one time or were they pulling hit-and-run attacks along with divide-and-conquer so they were only facing a few dozen at a time?

Marines aren't allowed to use tactics cause tsknf so they must have taken them on all at once.

nobody wrote:
Wait, did they fight all 5000 at one time or were they pulling hit-and-run attacks along with divide-and-conquer so they were only facing a few dozen at a time?

Marines aren't allowed to use tactics cause tsknf so they must have taken them on all at once.

nobody wrote:
Wait, did they fight all 5000 at one time or were they pulling hit-and-run attacks along with divide-and-conquer so they were only facing a few dozen at a time?

Nah, you are right. They only killed 1000-2000 while the rest killed them selves.

That's the good thing about cultists. You just have to give them a few hints and they top themselves.

Honestly, while the Bolter is by no means an impressive basic small arm (the only worse one is the Lasgun in my opinion, but that comes on super-cheap dudes; if I could take Guardsmen as my troops in a Marine list, I would) , the greater problem with Marines, in my opinion, is how saves work in 40k, particularly cover.

In a ruin, which is where most infantry spend their free time unless they're Assault Terminators, 1ksons or something else with a good invuln, or only an invuln, a Marine is only marginally more survivable versus non AP3 weapons than a Guardsman, Fire Warrior, Guardian or whatever, and against Ap3 or better, is just as survivable. Cover is simply put much better for cheap infantry than heavy infantry, but the massive creep in AP1/2/3 weapons means Marines need to hunker down as much as a lowly Cultist, which in the end means a lot of what you're paying for doesn't come into play.

Marines will edge out most other basic troops due to better durability versus small arms, and how most basic troops have a 5+ save or lower, but again, chances are those other basic troops will be in cover and will still probably come out ahead in cost effectiveness, or not lose by very much. Against any other target is where tacticals/bolter marines go from "meh" to "Please don't hurt me."

A boltgun is just as effective vs MCs as any other small arm, save Eldar whose pseudo-rending puts them ahead. The marine carrying said boltgun is also no more effective in close combat against MCs than a conscript, dying on twos, hitting on 4s (most of the time), wounding on 4s with Krak (a slight advantage, but Guardsman can have it too for 6ppm total) and striking after everything but a Riptide.

Against vehicles, they are only superior to a lasgun, able only to glance the weakest of vehicles or rear armour, and are inferior to Gauss weapons and their auto-glance on 6s. Marines are slightly better in CC with vehicles having Krak standard, but against walkers the same situations as MCs occur, with marines dying in droves to glance an AV12 walker to death.

But the biggest problem with the boltgun is the platform it's on. Tacticals are only really good for beating other basic infantry, but where they are strongest is CC. AP3 or better CCWs are still rare and expensive, and thus unpopular, and much of the Marine's statline comes into play most in CC, but the boltgun prevents that; rapid fire on a platform which is best suited to punching Guardsmen, Guardians and the like.

Now, the boltgun on a henchmen is actually pretty good; 6ppm for a boltgun toting Guardsman? Now that's pretty good, and in terms of cost effectiveness will beat out pretty much everything but Fire Warriors, who will gun them down from further away and aren't vulnerable to the AP5. Throw in a magic monkey for some funny additional boltgun shenangins. Heck, i've given most of veteran squad sergeants Boltguns in the most recent Guard codex as 1ppm to not have a laspistol is pretty swell.

On a 13/14ppm unit whose statlines says "charge" but doesn't allow that, and who the entire game is basically designed to kill? Thanks, but no thanks. There is no synergy between a boltgun and a Marine, while Shuriken Catapults, lasguns, Shootas, Gauss Flayers, Pulse Rifles and so on all work exactly as intended with the statline of the unit carrying them.

The boltgun isn't bad, but it doesn't work in the hands of a Marine, and is very much a victim of the power creep in 40k, and is constrained by the fact it is present in so many codexes and implementations, much like the Heavy Bolter; can't change it one codex without having to FAQ every other one (something GW seems to loathe, along with FAQs in general), and you risk making it too good in one book to simply make it decent in another (imagine if HBs became Salvo 5/3 or something like that, to make it a viable choice for Devs/Havocs: imagine Guard tanks! [of course, if GW didn't find the idea of changing points values in FAQs anathema, they could work around that, but you know...]).

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Honestly, while the Bolter is by no means an impressive basic small arm (the only worse one is the Lasgun in my opinion, but that comes on super-cheap dudes; if I could take Guardsmen as my troops in a Marine list, I would) , the greater problem with Marines, in my opinion, is how saves work in 40k, particularly cover.

In a ruin, which is where most infantry spend their free time unless they're Assault Terminators, 1ksons or something else with a good invuln, or only an invuln, a Marine is only marginally more survivable versus non AP3 weapons than a Guardsman, Fire Warrior, Guardian or whatever, and against Ap3 or better, is just as survivable. Cover is simply put much better for cheap infantry than heavy infantry, but the massive creep in AP1/2/3 weapons means Marines need to hunker down as much as a lowly Cultist, which in the end means a lot of what you're paying for doesn't come into play.

Marines will edge out most other basic troops due to better durability versus small arms, and how most basic troops have a 5+ save or lower, but again, chances are those other basic troops will be in cover and will still probably come out ahead in cost effectiveness, or not lose by very much. Against any other target is where tacticals/bolter marines go from "meh" to "Please don't hurt me."

A boltgun is just as effective vs MCs as any other small arm, save Eldar whose pseudo-rending puts them ahead. The marine carrying said boltgun is also no more effective in close combat against MCs than a conscript, dying on twos, hitting on 4s (most of the time), wounding on 4s with Krak (a slight advantage, but Guardsman can have it too for 6ppm total) and striking after everything but a Riptide.

Against vehicles, they are only superior to a lasgun, able only to glance the weakest of vehicles or rear armour, and are inferior to Gauss weapons and their auto-glance on 6s. Marines are slightly better in CC with vehicles having Krak standard, but against walkers the same situations as MCs occur, with marines dying in droves to glance an AV12 walker to death.

But the biggest problem with the boltgun is the platform it's on. Tacticals are only really good for beating other basic infantry, but where they are strongest is CC. AP3 or better CCWs are still rare and expensive, and thus unpopular, and much of the Marine's statline comes into play most in CC, but the boltgun prevents that; rapid fire on a platform which is best suited to punching Guardsmen, Guardians and the like.

Now, the boltgun on a henchmen is actually pretty good; 6ppm for a boltgun toting Guardsman? Now that's pretty good, and in terms of cost effectiveness will beat out pretty much everything but Fire Warriors, who will gun them down from further away and aren't vulnerable to the AP5. Throw in a magic monkey for some funny additional boltgun shenangins. Heck, i've given most of veteran squad sergeants Boltguns in the most recent Guard codex as 1ppm to not have a laspistol is pretty swell.

On a 13/14ppm unit whose statlines says "charge" but doesn't allow that, and who the entire game is basically designed to kill? Thanks, but no thanks. There is no synergy between a boltgun and a Marine, while Shuriken Catapults, lasguns, Shootas, Gauss Flayers, Pulse Rifles and so on all work exactly as intended with the statline of the unit carrying them.

The boltgun isn't bad, but it doesn't work in the hands of a Marine, and is very much a victim of the power creep in 40k, and is constrained by the fact it is present in so many codexes and implementations, much like the Heavy Bolter; can't change it one codex without having to FAQ every other one (something GW seems to loathe, along with FAQs in general), and you risk making it too good in one book to simply make it decent in another (imagine if HBs became Salvo 5/3 or something like that, to make it a viable choice for Devs/Havocs: imagine Guard tanks! [of course, if GW didn't find the idea of changing points values in FAQs anathema, they could work around that, but you know...]).

I think you've got it man.

I wish I could play one of these games where:

- Every single weapon is AP3 and S6+, so T4 and 3+ saves are both entirely irrelevant. Most of mine seem to be S3 AP-, but I'm guessing they don't count.

- There are no templates, blasts or anything else that tend to hurt numerous, light-infantry more than less-numerous medium- or heavy-infantry.

- Every single one of my guardsman - even when I'm running multiple platoons - can fit perfectly into ruins without making themselves highly vulnerable to blasts/flamers, blocking LoS from their HWTs and/or exposing their HWTs to enemy fire.

- My guardsmen can still always fit into ruins even when advancing. And, either my enemies use no blasts/flamers whatsoever, or else these ruins are so extensive that I can still spread out just fine. Also, apparently said ruins do not impede their mobility in any way (presumably I never roll anything but 6s when trying to move through cover).

- This extensive amount of ruins nevertheless does nothing to limit either my firing lanes or the movement of my vehicles.

 vipoid wrote:
I wish I could play one of these games where:

- Every single weapon is AP3 and S6+, so T4 and 3+ saves are both entirely irrelevant. Most of mine seem to be S3 AP-, but I'm guessing they don't count.

- There are no templates, blasts or anything else that tend to hurt numerous, light-infantry more than less-numerous medium- or heavy-infantry.

- Every single one of my guardsman - even when I'm running multiple platoons - can fit perfectly into ruins without making themselves highly vulnerable to blasts/flamers, blocking LoS from their HWTs and/or exposing their HWTs to enemy fire.

- My guardsmen can still always fit into ruins even when advancing. And, either my enemies use no blasts/flamers whatsoever, or else these ruins are so extensive that I can still spread out just fine. Also, apparently said ruins do not impede their mobility in any way (presumably I never roll anything but 6s when trying to move through cover).

- This extensive amount of ruins nevertheless does nothing to limit either my firing lanes or the movement of my vehicles.

Why move guardsman? Just shoot laz cannon. When MEQ comes forward just shoot them with plasma gun. This strategy seems to work fine for guards in my meta.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Why move guardsman? Just shoot laz cannon. When MEQ comes forward just shoot them with plasma gun. This strategy seems to work fine for guards in my meta.

Even if they don't move, there's still the aspect that going in ruins typically makes you more vulnerable to blasts/flamers and either limits the firing lanes for your lascannons or exposes them such that they're among the first casualties.

Plus, what about objectives? If you're doing Maelstrom than the lack of mobility could really hurt you. And, if you're doing Eternal War, then you're hoping that your objectives are all on your table edge - rather than in the middle of the table. And, even if they are on your table edge, surely the opponent can just play for a draw by not moving his MEQ towards the gunline? It seems like the IG player won't have an easy time shooting his opponent off his objectives if neither of them advance, and he certainly won't be taking any of his opponent's objectives.

Also, is this IG player using infantry platoons, or veterans (or a mixture)?

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Why move guardsman? Just shoot laz cannon. When MEQ comes forward just shoot them with plasma gun. This strategy seems to work fine for guards in my meta.

Even if they don't move, there's still the aspect that going in ruins typically makes you more vulnerable to blasts/flamers and either limits the firing lanes for your lascannons or exposes them such that they're among the first casualties.

Plus, what about objectives? If you're doing Maelstrom than the lack of mobility could really hurt you. And, if you're doing Eternal War, then you're hoping that your objectives are all on your table edge - rather than in the middle of the table. And, even if they are on your table edge, surely the opponent can just play for a draw by not moving his MEQ towards the gunline? It seems like the IG player won't have an easy time shooting his opponent off his objectives if neither of them advance, and he certainly won't be taking any of his opponent's objectives.

Also, is this IG player using infantry platoons, or veterans (or a mixture)?

Aside from myself, the only Guard lists I've seen as of late have the minimum two vets in Chimeras with plasma, and everything else is tank/vehicle based.

Most of the pie plates I see floating around are AP3 or better, and over St6, or are Eldar/Tau weapons which simply ignore most of the game's rules.

But do keep in mind I am a little more bitter than most; in the last 6 months before I left Canada, my group had become extremely power-gamey, the culmination of a slow arms race that started about the year before which I and two others intentionally took no part of, and now get to watch our armies get wrecked by triple Wraithknight/serpent spam or Chaos psyker spam, Guard tank lines or whatever Tau feels like doing.

I simply speak from my own meta where you really only do see the best stuff; when fighting those few other people who exercise some restraint, the bolter isn't a awful weapon and marines do have some advantages, but I'd reaffirm that even in friendly, fluffy games, Marines seriously underperform as a combination of schizophrenic stats and wargear which don't complement one another or give the Marine a clearly defined role, but then again, those specialists like ASM are also hilariously bad at what they do compared to other options in other books, largely in face due to outdated statlines which are probably the most divorced from any fluff save ones which include MULTILASERS EVERYWHERE out of any of the armies, and paying for rules and wargear which has been made increasingly obsolecent by the rising power levels of most units in the game.