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Mani is at least good for highlighting the hottest cheese in the building on any given week. If it's broken, and spammable, he's going to run three full units of it (or more if possible).

Fix a lot of jank in 40k? A unit can only benefit from 1 strat or aura at a time in a phase.

Stop this multi layering death ball units and force choice of who gets what buff at the time rather than just all of them.

Necrons are a good example, powerful single unit buffs! 6" aura of reroll 1's is a step back.

That's similar to how AOS does it and I love it(also loving greatly reduced rerolls. Now if stacking of saves was reduced beyond post all modifiers(getting hit by -3 should count for something more than hitting with no rend...) would be even better.

 Jidmah wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
Thanks for doing the math! So about 62 Boyz in two turns on average for an entire army geared toward anti-infantry. Seems relatively reasonable to me as well.

it is worth noting that:

-this is without doctrines (though that would only matter slightly on the infiltrators only and only on turn 2, as everything else already has AP of at least -1)

-this is without chapter tactics, though most marine chapter traits that get used arent direct damage to bolter weapons

-this is with the lieutenant aura on all core models

-90 ork boyz is only about 850pts, if you were talking about how long it would take this 1250pts to destroy 1250pts of just Boyz and Boyz Accessories (say, a cheap foot warboss and weirdboy, who we'd assume the eliminators would be shooting at) if the boyz just stood in the open and didnt do anything, youd be looking at about a turn 4 table roughly. Removng the eliminators and saying that morale would make up for the loss of the extra ~3 boyz (the eliminators would be killing the HQs in about 3 turns, 2 for the warboss) youd lose about a 30-block of boyz per turn and you'd have ~120 boyz plus the two barebones HQs.

-yes I understand this is a somewhat silly example, I'm mostly just using it to disprove the slightly hyperbolic/silly claim that this is something that any given equivalent points value could do to any other given equivalent points value.

-some other examples of this which are technically accurate are reliant on both the major damage buffs GW put forward recently and also do not have nearly the kind of mobility+range in order to make the exact scenario occur. A space marine list that has 3 max size eradicator squads, 3 max size multi-melta devastator squads, and 9 multi-melta attack bikes can indeed table a 2000pt knight list in one turn, but is somewhat limited by the fact that they have to actually get all those guns within 12" with mostly footslogging models against the knights, who not only have plenty of weapons capable of killing those models quite efficiently but need to move into range so that the marines can get all their models within melta range.

- you hand-waved super doctrines, stratagems, warlord traits, relics and chapter tactics. From first hand experience I can tell you that at least Iron Hands, Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, Death Watch, Ultra Marines and many successor chapters all get some non-trivial help to their rank and file shooting during turn one and two, and that lieutenant should totally have target priority as warlord trait.
- Morale casualties are a very significant part of the casualties you deal to orks especially in blocks of 30. If your number are correct and the marine player somewhat spreads damage intelligently, you are sweeping about 18 additional casualties under the rug, suddenly killing 80 out 90 boyz in two turns, painting a completely different picture.
- No matter how you cut it, the ork boyz+HQs would most likely clock in at ~1000 points to be legally running 90 boyz, being an equivalent opponent for two combat patrols.
- the list is not "geared towards killing boyz" but instead consists of mostly of units that are fairly inefficient at killing boyz. It still manages to kill two thirds of them with snipers, utility area control units and a dedicated transport uniformly considered to be bad.
- I honestly didn't even know this terrible box existed. When I was talking about "any two starter sets" I was mostly thinking about picking two out of indomitus, dark imperium, the BA or DA combat patrol or the BT box. Not only are those the things you actually see on the tabletop, they also vastly more powerful and better at killing boyz.
- you didn't show your math. The only reason for me to believe you is that you in specific usually aren't a person that pulls numbers out of their ass, but you still could have made mistakes.
- In 5th edition it was rather unreasonable to expect to kill 90 boyz with ~1k points of marines over the course of a game.

In summary, with all those flaws in your argumentation, you have no right to call the argument silly or hyperbolic.

Yeah, I did, I figured since we were going with "2 starter boxes can easily table 90 boyz" we were taking a fairly casual example. I explained exactly why I ignored doctrines (because it was kind of trivial as most things were already AP-1. Similarly, most super-doctrines dont really matter much at all for anti-boyz firepower. You might have a few extra hits from IH RR1s with Heavy weapons, or you might have one unit out of the lieutenant auras from DW that gets RR1s to wound. But, weirdly, when the goalposts of this discussion were initially set up it seemed like a fairly casual scenario you were trying to create - like any old idiot could go out and pick up 2 space marine starter boxes (sorry for using Start Collecting: Space Marines for that lol, I guess that was a bad pick? Hahah silly me picking their SC box...) and casually table that many orks without trying very hard.

Honestly I'd think youd be MORE likely to call bs on me if I picked, say, one of the boxes like the Black Templars box that involves a lot of melee units, because in those instances you dont have a whole army of marines just shooting away at the orks with no orks getting to fight back.

But hey, no, lets look at one of the other ones you said. I'll choose randomly, I'll literally roll a D6 to pick between them. I got a 4, so thats the DA combat patrol, lets see what that is.

2 primaris chaplains, 10 intercessors, 2 redemptor dreadnoughts, and 6 in...feth. the flying ones. This time I will CAREFULLY, PAINSTAKINGLY include all bonuses from them being dark angels, I will look up what the feth a chaplain does so if he can buff up shooting with an ability he gets to choose I'll include that, and I will include some stratagems, and I will try to include morale, but I'm not just going to be playing my orks as complete and total bullet sponges then either, im going to try and play a semi-sensible green tide.

However - and I hope this is a fair concession here from you that you'll respect: if we're assuming this Dark Angels player is semi-competent at all, making use of all the features of his army, I think its fair to assume that he'd build at LEAST half of his units in the tournament competitive configurations - which for the dreadnoughts and the jetpack dudes IS the plasma configuration. He's playing dark angels, he's got the special dark angels plasma stratagem, plasma redemptors are literally in every competitive marine list, I think thats fair if we're talking a general TAC scenario. I'm gonna build the intercessors as a 10-man squad with bolt rifles (as dark angels want to stand still and get their bonus thing), no upgrades on the sgt, the jetpacks as plasma, one dread as plasma and one dread as dakka.

So lets go thru the bonus extras here:

Warlord Trait: I'm reading through the dark angels and basic space marine warlord traits and i'm sorry - im not seeing one that would actually improve the DA's firepower vs ork boyz. Storm of Fire does AP, which we dont need, the doctrine swapping one from dark angels doesnt seem to do anything until turn 3...I think any logical DA player vs orks would actually go for the '+1S on the charge" aura trait. So I'm going to assume that.

Relic: I'm not seeing a relic that gives an aura of any kind that would increase firepower in either the DA or the standard relic list, there is a DA one that gives a chaplain a +1A prayer, so I'll do that.

Chapter Tactic: We're going to give Grim Resolve to anything that would reasonably be within range without moving, which is gonna be anything with greater than 24" range turn 1 and then everything turn 2+.

Chaplain bs: We're going to give one of them the +1 to hit and one of them the +1 to wound prayers. That seems to be the best for shooting.

So the list setup is:

Patrol
2 primaris chaplains
10 intercessors with bolt rifles
1 redemptor with HOGC and OGC
1 redemptor with MPI and OGC
6 inceptors with plasma

so thats 1030.

1030 points of Boyz with Minimal Support Units:

Patrol - we'll do Evil Sunz. My orks are Evil Sunz and I know their gak without having to look it up
Warboss with the Killa Klaw, Brutal But Kunnin
90 boyz

and since I cant fit in any more boyz squads without going over 1030 lets say a KFF mek. I dont want to have to similate "Da jumps" - that gets us to 995 and lets say the nobz all get power klaws or whatever, 90 boyz.

BR1: Chaplain uses the litany strat to automatically get the +1 to wound on the intercessors who are gonna shoot twice and are gonna get +1 to hit from Dark Angels. Other chaplain rolls for the litany on the HOGC dread whos gonna move to get his gak into range, ill increase his hit rolls by "2/3" to simulate the chance of failure. Plasma guys have to move to get in range, plasma redemptor wants the OGC to be in range so also moves slightly, doesnt get resolve.

that firepower burning 4cp (double shoot and chaplain autopass) kills 17x2 boyz, we'll split it evenly to do morale. Morale on squad 1 our ork player autopasses, morale on squad 2 he takes, mob rule means no attrition mods, modifying casualties by .833 because of the 1/6 chance the morale test is passed I get 2.4 casualties from morale on average on the 13 remaining boyz from the squad, but ill round up and say 10 left. so we have killed 27 boyz.

Orks turn: there is a squad within 18" (plasceptors) but we'll say the marine player positioned correctly to keep the 30-block he wasnt targeting out of charge range, but we are gonna call the waaagh to get the 10 and 13 in if we can. average movement is 10.5", average charge with a reroll is approximately 8, I think its a bit more than 8 and we do need a 7 to get in on the dice. I'll randomly pick between warboss, 10 boyz, and 13 boyz to fail the charge.

I got 13 boyz fails the charge. 10 boyz and warboss are still in. The BBK/Klaw boss and 10 boyz all on the waaagh do kill the inceptors on the charge - warboss kills 5 himself, so I wont bother doing a combat interrupt for them.

BR2: We've got the boss and 10 boyz closer, so our marine player is gonna focus on taking them out. we'll assume all stand still, same stratagems. The HOGC dread and the auxiliary weapons from the second dread can take out the 10 boyz together with average rolls, and the plasma dread will overcharge his plasma into the boss, which gets an average of just about exactly 1 unsaved wound for 3 damage. The warboss with 3 wounds remaining is a credible threat and our marine player doesnt want the dreads to get 'orks is never beaten'd so rather than charge in melee he'll try to kill using one round of the ints shooting, which does 4 wounds and kills him on average rolls. Second round of int shooting takes out 7/30 of the big boyz squad. The morale casualties again modified by .833 for the chance to autopass, average out to 4. 11/30 gone from squad 3.

our Boyz squads started out 24" from the dreads and 30" from the ints and characters, and moved 10.5 last turn, so now are looking at 6" charge rolls to get in with a reroll. We'll give them each the charge roll, KFF mek advances to keep squads in aura, and we'll represent the non-ideal circumstances by saying each squad charges 1 dread instead of 2 on 1 dreadnought.

the 17 boyz on the waagh can deal an average of 8.5 wounds normally to one redemptor, so we'll use the tankbusta bomb stratagem and basically guarantee it lands with an extra CP to take it out. Random roll says that was the plasma dreadnought. We have used...let me see. We have used all our CP for the dark angels so the other dread does not interrupt, 13 waaaghing boyz deal 6.72 to the other redemptor we'll round up to 7.

OK.

It's BR3 now, marines' turn, we've got the firepower and punch from the intercessors even without the double shooting to shoot+charge in to the 17 boyz and pretty much whack them down to a couple of models, the redemptor is probably gonna sort out the remaining boyz by hook or by crook.

My estimate of "basically gone by turn 3" still seems fairly reasonable to me.

 Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
Fix a lot of jank in 40k? A unit can only benefit from 1 strat or aura at a time in a phase.

Stop this multi layering death ball units and force choice of who gets what buff at the time rather than just all of them.

Necrons are a good example, powerful single unit buffs! 6" aura of reroll 1's is a step back.

TBH, I'm getting so sick and tired of layered strats, auras etc. I'd go one step further and make every single strat, possibly barring the re-roll strat, a once per game thing, on top of your suggestion about preventing layered buffs.

Decisions on whether to use strats are too binary, IMO. For most of the powerful ones it's literally a question of "do I have enough CPs?" If there were a real opportunity cost to using them we might see an increase in impactful decisions as players need to worry about going all-in on strats too early. Of course, we still need to reduce overall lethality otherwise the correct play is to front-load your stratagem use into turn 1 to go for the alpha strike and I think removing stacking buffs probably helps with that.

You could almost make it so you have a deck of strats you bring to a game, say maybe 10 max. You can also only use 2 per turn so you have to manage the ones you have throughout the game, plus a one time use only for each strat. Perhaps these would not include the generic ones in the rulebook so you could repeat these ones but still limits you to 2 strats per turn (not battle round).

The thing is, that is simply a house rule situation. Comp players want access to everything as it is the complexity and orchestration of it all that they want to achieve their goals.

edit: The deck would also be visible in the list submission so players no what strats are available to avoid possible "gotcha" moments.

Actually, having the stratagems increase in cost by 1 CP every time they are used, would be a cool rule variant.

 bullyboy wrote:
You could almost make it so you have a deck of strats you bring to a game, say maybe 10 max. You can also only use 2 per turn so you have to manage the ones you have throughout the game, plus a one time use only for each strat. Perhaps these would not include the generic ones in the rulebook so you could repeat these ones but still limits you to 2 strats per turn (not battle round).

The thing is, that is simply a house rule situation. Comp players want access to everything as it is the complexity and orchestration of it all that they want to achieve their goals.

edit: The deck would also be visible in the list submission so players no what strats are available to avoid possible "gotcha" moments.

Honestly, IMO: burn it down. replace it with the way AOS does Command Abilities, which is far more sane, far more approachable, and just feels way way better.

Any strats that are really 100% critical to the function of a unit? Add it in as a once-per-game datasheet ability.

Any strats that are really critical to the identity of a faction? put them onto Commander-type HQs as datasheet command abilities, and remove passive auras.

So, for example, for Drukhari you might have Lightning Reactions on a Succubus, Never Still on an archon, and Butcher's Craft on a Haemonculus, with Screaming Jets as a once per game on Raiders, Eviscerating Flyby as a once per game on Reaver jetbikes (As IIRC they were the ones originally that had that ability on their datasheet and Hellions seem strong enough without it) and hell - maybe Lurk in the Shadows as a once per game on Kabalite Warriors to enable them to sort of semi-competently play as footslogging infantry rather than just always being mounted. Why not.

Then youve just got to rework the core stratagems to be...actually usable, and badabing badaboom you got yourself a better system.

Wyldhunt had some excellent ideas for reworking Strategems in this thread.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/799359.page

My personal favorites from that thread was to limit the number of Strategems you can take with you to a match and pre-selecting them before a match. For instance, you can only pick three Strategems to use in your game and you must select them before the match starts at the same time you pick Secondaries.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
Wyldhunt had some excellent ideas for reworking Strategems in this thread.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/799359.page

My personal favorites from that thread was to limit the number of Strategems you can take with you to a match and pre-selecting them before a match. For instance, you can only pick three Strategems to use in your game and you must select them before the match starts at the same time you pick Secondaries.

I like this idea but dislike the approach. You will just see the same strats over and over.

It would be better if your CP allowed you to pick that many CP worth of starts at the start of a match. You will see some key strats repeated but then secondary ones with more variety.

It also scales with battle size and adds a other layer into taking +CP characters and spending CP on detachments etc during list creation.

First of all, thanks for doing that, scotsman. It really honors you to put all that work into it.

 the_scotsman wrote:
But, weirdly, when the goalposts of this discussion were initially set up it seemed like a fairly casual scenario you were trying to create - like any old idiot could go out and pick up 2 space marine starter boxes (sorry for using Start Collecting: Space Marines for that lol, I guess that was a bad pick? Hahah silly me picking their SC box...) and casually table that many orks without trying very hard.

Actually, it's not a scenario I was pulling out of thin air - it's the reality how marine players start the game these days or how semi-competitive players branch into marines. They get a box set simply because of the hype, subscribed to the conquest magazine, bought a set for their army that was half marines or found a deal on ebay. After their first few games, they add one of the combat patrols to it because it's the cheapest way to get a "real" army and buy a unit they like or two. I could point to at least five players who started like this.

However - and I hope this is a fair concession here from you that you'll respect: if we're assuming this Dark Angels player is semi-competent at all, making use of all the features of his army, I think its fair to assume that he'd build at LEAST half of his units in the tournament competitive configurations - which for the dreadnoughts and the jetpack dudes IS the plasma configuration. He's playing dark angels, he's got the special dark angels plasma stratagem, plasma redemptors are literally in every competitive marine list, I think thats fair if we're talking a general TAC scenario. I'm gonna build the intercessors as a 10-man squad with bolt rifles (as dark angels want to stand still and get their bonus thing), no upgrades on the sgt, the jetpacks as plasma, one dread as plasma and one dread as dakka.

Sure. ETB inceptors and redemptors are super common, but I don't think that will make a big difference. The intercessors tend to be rapid fire and rarely assault though, which makes quite the difference in this case. Stalker intercessors have fallen out of favor ever since DG got their codex and I presume that ramshackle has furthered that trend for TAC lists. Personally, I haven't seen the heavy variant since DA got their supplement.
In general, that army is a really good example, since I actually face one very similar to that regularly when playing crusade. Only difference is that they run an interrogator chaplain, a lieutenant and a storm speed instead of one dread.
I'm not going to pick apart everything in detail - while there are some odd things (mek would be a MA mek, chaplains would have a melee relic), it's close enough to real armies facing each other, so let's just run with it.

BR1: Chaplain uses the litany strat to automatically get the +1 to wound on the intercessors who are gonna shoot twice and are gonna get +1 to hit from Dark Angels. Other chaplain rolls for the litany on the HOGC dread whos gonna move to get his gak into range, ill increase his hit rolls by "2/3" to simulate the chance of failure. Plasma guys have to move to get in range, plasma redemptor wants the OGC to be in range so also moves slightly, doesnt get resolve.

that firepower burning 4cp (double shoot and chaplain autopass) kills 17x2 boyz, we'll split it evenly to do morale. Morale on squad 1 our ork player autopasses, morale on squad 2 he takes, mob rule means no attrition mods, modifying casualties by .833 because of the 1/6 chance the morale test is passed I get 2.4 casualties from morale on average on the 13 remaining boyz from the squad, but ill round up and say 10 left. so we have killed 27 boyz.

Personally, I wouldn't use the liturgy stratagem as you can just hope for one or the other chaplain to succeed, but it makes the math easier, so fine.

If you drop the "you are stationary" stratagem (2CP) on rapid fire intercessors as well as the shoot twice and +1 to wound, they already kill 13.88 boyz by themselves.
6 plasma inceptors with no buffs whatsoever shoot six times each thanks to blast and will kill another 13.33 boyz.
assuming no buffs for the dreads:
gatling dread kills 6.66 +1.85 from fragstorms
plasma dread kills 4.72 because blast +1.85 from fragstorms
With +1 to hit, the gatling dread kills 1.66 additional boyz plus .55 for the launchers. You can also use your last CP to pop wisdom of the ancients (1CP) on one of the dreads for an additional 16.66% more damage on either dread.
Chaplains aren't going to shoot anything turn 1.

Which means you hit one mob for 14 casualties, one for 13 and one for at least 12, but up to 19 depending on distance and liturgy roll (or even more if the dreads are within 6" of each other).
The best the ork player can do to reduce casualties is auto-pass morale on the biggest mob (2CP), and smack another mob for d3 MW (2CP) to reduce casualties during morale to 2 MW, 1 moral and 2-3 attrition. This leaves with total of 44 dead boyz, about six saved by KFF. Outside of cold dice, this is the best case for the ork.
Under optimal circumstance, they could push the casualties on two mobs past 15, and the attrition casualties would increase by about 2. Worst case (once again assuming average dice), there are 54 boyz dead now.

In a middling case, if the liturgy passed, but fragstorms aren't in range we are now looking at 3 mobs of boyz with 13 (shot by intercessors, keepin da order), 17 (shot by inceptors, insane heroism) and 12 (shot by dreads).

Orks turn: there is a squad within 18" (plasceptors) but we'll say the marine player positioned correctly to keep the 30-block he wasnt targeting out of charge range, but we are gonna call the waaagh to get the 10 and 13 in if we can. average movement is 10.5", average charge with a reroll is approximately 8, I think its a bit more than 8 and we do need a 7 to get in on the dice. I'll randomly pick between warboss, 10 boyz, and 13 boyz to fail the charge.

I got 13 boyz fails the charge. 10 boyz and warboss are still in. The BBK/Klaw boss and 10 boyz all on the waaagh do kill the inceptors on the charge - warboss kills 5 himself, so I wont bother doing a combat interrupt for them.

Why would the inceptors be within 18.5" (+1 for ES) of the warboss? Two mobs charging them, sure, but 3 of them and the warboss? That's some serious self-sabotage for the DA player.
With 28" effective range there is no need to be that suicidal, and even if you wanted to throw them away, why not keep them in reserve and drop them behind the orks turn 2? So assuming one mob makes it, I can't see boyz killing more than 2-3 of them, with them punching back for a casualty or two. However, this would mean forcing them to fall back, so the difference to killing them for this exercise is not that big.

BR2: We've got the boss and 10 boyz closer, so our marine player is gonna focus on taking them out. we'll assume all stand still, same stratagems. The HOGC dread and the auxiliary weapons from the second dread can take out the 10 boyz together with average rolls, and the plasma dread will overcharge his plasma into the boss, which gets an average of just about exactly 1 unsaved wound for 3 damage. The warboss with 3 wounds remaining is a credible threat and our marine player doesnt want the dreads to get 'orks is never beaten'd so rather than charge in melee he'll try to kill using one round of the ints shooting, which does 4 wounds and kills him on average rolls. Second round of int shooting takes out 7/30 of the big boyz squad. The morale casualties again modified by .833 for the chance to autopass, average out to 4. 11/30 gone from squad 3.

Not really. Inceptors fall back and can't shoot, Intercessors get one more round of shooting with the chapter trait and liturgy for 9.64 dead orks, dreads stay put, use wisdom (1CP) and kill 12.96 (gatling) and (plasma) 8.55 boyz. Chaplain pistols kill half a boy.
Gatling goes after the biggest mob, dropping it to 4, intercessors probably have to stick with their target because of how the liturgy works, also dropping it to 4, plasma shoots the last mob dropping it to 4.
The two chaplains have served their purpose and can tag-team the warboss. Even if it interrupts, BKK cannot split attacks and hitting both 4++ models twice without the trait is unlikely, so the warboss will be stuck there, ready to be shot off the board next turn - assuming the chaplains don't just smash it.
If no other units can charge, morale will then kill two boyz of each mob, leaving 84 out 90 boyz dead when the ork's second turn starts.
If the liturgy fails, one mob will go down to 8 and then lose 3 to morale, leaving just 81 out of 90 boyz dead.

The three pairs of boy+nob will be killed by anything they charge, and while the MA mek could proably shoot something, orks will be tabled next turn.

My estimate of "basically gone by turn 3" still seems fairly reasonable to me.

I think orks holding out that long in your example is due to some sub-optimal choices on the DA side (bringing stalker rifles, pointing plasma cannon that would have gotten max shots when shooting at boyz at warboss instead, sacrificing inceptors), going second, plus the KFF actually saving a ton of them. On the flip side, facing double redemptors without any anti-tank is problem of its own and you could probably prolong the life of your boyz by blowing the KFF.

It's also worth noting that nuking the warboss first turn is a valid option in this match-up by just wiping out the mob that is protecting him and then gunning him down to prevent the Waaagh! from happening at all. This will cause boyz to die less fast, but take away the ork's ability to put up a fight at all.

In any case, the important takeaway is that
a) you can't assume marines to be french vanilla when measuring their effectiveness. They can stack buffs like liturgies, stratagems, chapter tactics and characters to double or tripple the output of a unit.
b) a somewhat well piloted beginner army not specifically geared to gun down boyz can still do so with shocking efficiency.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to properly answer my post.

I mean orks and admech are pretty much out of the top rankings and those poor manhandled drukari with the best win rates in only had a better weekend with 60%+ win rates again But everyone is cool with it so whatever.

Regarding fixing Strats since we are wishlisting for 10th Ed stuff.

Just put 5 strats in the rulebook
Extra warlord trait
Extra relic
Auto pass morale
Overwatch
Reroll

Wash out all 9th edition stuff except datasheets and klan/regiment/doctrine/canticle/whatever.

When an army gets a new codex they get a deck of 10 strategems. You can use them each only 1 a game and only 1 per unit.

After every army gets a codex.. start pushing out supplements with 3 new Strats that can replace 1 in the deck and put these cards in white dwarf or something.

Do something similar for warlord traits, relics, psychic powers.

5 in rule book
3 in codex
1 in supplement

Pretty sure everyone that everyone that called for orks to be nerfed also called for drukhari and admech to be nerfed as well.

What if subfaction rules were all included in the main rule book and each faction got to pick whichever they felt would bring their codex out the best on the table top?

The codex could have recommendations or what to use to represent each sub faction.

 Jidmah wrote:

I think orks holding out that long in your example is due to some sub-optimal choices on the DA side (bringing stalker rifles, pointing plasma cannon that would have gotten max shots when shooting at boyz at warboss instead, sacrificing inceptors), going second, plus the KFF actually saving a ton of them. On the flip side, facing double redemptors without any anti-tank is problem of its own and you could probably prolong the life of your boyz by blowing the KFF.

It's also worth noting that nuking the warboss first turn is a valid option in this match-up by just wiping out the mob that is protecting him and then gunning him down to prevent the Waaagh! from happening at all. This will cause boyz to die less fast, but take away the ork's ability to put up a fight at all.

In any case, the important takeaway is that
a) you can't assume marines to be french vanilla when measuring their effectiveness. They can stack buffs like liturgies, stratagems, chapter tactics and characters to double or tripple the output of a unit.
b) a somewhat well piloted beginner army not specifically geared to gun down boyz can still do so with shocking efficiency.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to properly answer my post.

point of order 1 - I didnt assume stalker rifles, I assumed bolt rifles due to them being generically the best choice for DA in a TAC situation, as DA want to be standing still. Just wanted to note that in case you made the claim that I was strawmanning by not giving them auto bolts, all HOGC, bolter inceptors etc.

Regardless, I guess part of me kind of struggles to have too much sympathy for the plight of the green tide here: it's not exactly a list that displays a whole lot...or any thinking or tactics or anything at all. It's a plain and simple skew list, which operates basically the same as any skew list - shunts the whole list into a single defensive profile and hopes that an opponent with a TAC list doesnt have the tools or firepower to take that down before it just bluntly rolls over it. And just like basically any skew list, it lives or dies on the question of: Are the things youre skewing into overtuned, or are they not? And sure, last edition boyz skew with ghaz and whatnot was highly tuned enough to act as a solid foil list in a lot of metas when people were dealing with marines or harlequins or whatever else that required different tools to take down than boyz. But it's not because the playstyle required any more thought or decision making to play, you just had a bunch of completely obvious non-decisions like "hmm, should I spend CP to bring this whole unit of boyz back, or should I do something else that doesnt drop another 200pts of models onto the board?"

All-boyz green tide is a classic, lore based way to play orks. But so is all drop pod space marines. Do I think 40k as a competitive game would be healthier if either of them were extremely solid viable approaches in competitive play? Not really, if we're being honest. It feels a bit like arguing that a person should be able to go to a fighting game tournament, pick a character, and button mash a single attack and still have a chance of winning against someone who's actually trying to make use of all the options at their disposal.

A whole ork horde being able to get removed in 3 turns feels gakky. Absolutely 100% agreed there. But that is also kind of the generic reality for most armies in 9th edition. Play any given game of 9th and 75% or more casualties by turn 3 is basically typical. it's the #1 thing I'd like to see changed in the game, theres way too many ways to stack up ridiculous offense - I mean, my example involved +1 to hit, +1 to wound, double shooting space marine intercessors shoveling off 14/30 ork boyz in a max size squad from a 30" max range...that sucks ass. its exactly the kind of gak I think needs to be done away with.

 the_scotsman wrote:
point of order 1 - I didnt assume stalker rifles, I assumed bolt rifles due to them being generically the best choice for DA in a TAC situation, as DA want to be standing still. Just wanted to note that in case you made the claim that I was strawmanning by not giving them auto bolts, all HOGC, bolter inceptors etc.

Ok, then I just misunderstood what you wrote. As I said, everything else about that army is a perfectly valid choice.
I only see auto-bolts when someone is running a character like Azrael or Lazarus because they advance to get into combat faster.

Regardless, I guess part of me kind of struggles to have too much sympathy for the plight of the green tide here: it's not exactly a list that displays a whole lot...or any thinking or tactics or anything at all. It's a plain and simple skew list, which operates basically the same as any skew list - shunts the whole list into a single defensive profile and hopes that an opponent with a TAC list doesnt have the tools or firepower to take that down before it just bluntly rolls over it. And just like basically any skew list, it lives or dies on the question of: Are the things youre skewing into overtuned, or are they not? And sure, last edition boyz skew with ghaz and whatnot was highly tuned enough to act as a solid foil list in a lot of metas when people were dealing with marines or harlequins or whatever else that required different tools to take down than boyz. But it's not because the playstyle required any more thought or decision making to play, you just had a bunch of completely obvious non-decisions like "hmm, should I spend CP to bring this whole unit of boyz back, or should I do something else that doesnt drop another 200pts of models onto the board?"

No, I fully agree with this sentiment - and green tide isn't just toxic to the meta an people playing against it, it also hurts ork players. Whenever it has become competitive, it has been pushing out other, more interesting builds and the vast majority of ork players actually doesn't like playing that archetype. It sucks to transport, sucks to set up, sucks to move, charge, pile in, consolidate. Playing it all day also hurts your back.
However, me (and many other ork players) miss the days where 40 boyz coming out of battlewagons, 4-6 sets of trukk boyz or just four blocks of 20 marching across the board were actually considered a able to archive something. Currently there is just no point in doing so because most armies can just gun down as many boyz each turn as your average 5th edition army killed per game, barring sweeping advances and tank-shock+template combos.
There is an entire thread going on over in general, so I won't go into that in more detail here. Let's just agree that an army should be able to bring boyz without automatically being gak and that green tide should stay out of the competitive meta for everyone's sake.

All-boyz green tide is a classic, lore based way to play orks.

Is it though? I don't really remember any lore blurbs that specified that none of the boyz were lootas, no one had a bike or a burna or was a storm boy and that there were no groups of nobz around.
The lore based army would be an all-infantry army, not an all-boyz army.

But so is all drop pod space marines. Do I think 40k as a competitive game would be healthier if either of them were extremely solid viable approaches in competitive play? Not really, if we're being honest. It feels a bit like arguing that a person should be able to go to a fighting game tournament, pick a character, and button mash a single attack and still have a chance of winning against someone who's actually trying to make use of all the options at their disposal.

Agree. That's also why I think the squig buggy spam had to go. It just should have been solved in a different way.

A whole ork horde being able to get removed in 3 turns feels gakky. Absolutely 100% agreed there. But that is also kind of the generic reality for most armies in 9th edition. Play any given game of 9th and 75% or more casualties by turn 3 is basically typical. it's the #1 thing I'd like to see changed in the game, theres way too many ways to stack up ridiculous offense - I mean, my example involved +1 to hit, +1 to wound, double shooting space marine intercessors shoveling off 14/30 ork boyz in a max size squad from a 30" max range...that sucks ass. its exactly the kind of gak I think needs to be done away with.

Eh, in my example the boyz were almost gone before moving a second time. The issue here is that it's not just boyz evaporating that fast - it's also lootas, burnas, storm boyz, tank bustas and many more. Kommandoz aren't just popular because of their infiltrate, but also because they actually can take some fire. 1000 points of ork specialists would be 100% wiped out T1.

Currently all issues 40k has always come back to the same one root cause - damage is just too god damn high.

I was happy with Green Tide when it came about in 5e because it was a reasonably strong Ork army I could run with the models I already had, but I agree, after a while of playing it I wanted to find other, more interesting and more combined arms approaches.

I think the game is much more interesting if the breadth of what is in factions can generally be seen in the game. So factions should generally be a couple of squads of basic troops, a couple of elite units, a fast unit, a tank or two and some characters. Add transports and walkers to taste.

We never talked much about "skew" when I was playing competitively, but I can see what you guys mean about it being bad for the game overall. Although the greatest "skew" is just the sheer number of space marine players compared to others.

 Da Boss wrote:
We never talked much about "skew" when I was playing competitively, but I can see what you guys mean about it being bad for the game overall. Although the greatest "skew" is just the sheer number of space marine players compared to others.

As an anecdote about that, during 5th marines were actually quite hated in my area (at least in the three stores I visited, plus multiple playing groups), people playing them were openly antagonized and made fun of. People were told to stop playing easy mode, house rules were in place to sanction them in campaigns and tournaments, new players were openly discouraged to play them and it was common to make crunching noises when a marine player was walking by in reference to all the "sugar blown up their but" (a German proverb for overly pampering someone) by GW. This caused them to be a fairly rare faction overall, the most commonly played armies were guard, eldar and chaos (CSM+daemons) at that time.

My first run-in with "everyone is marines" has actually been during 8th when everyone and their dog started a primaris army.