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Klickor wrote:
Why bother even having different stat profiles if fething basic guardsmen armed only with lasguns should be able to take on a counter unit efficiently? A space marine is to a normal guardsman as a fully armoured knight were against a peasant. The knight is almost invincible unless the peasant have brought the right tools, like a polearm/plasma for the job.If you are so upset by your guardsmen not being good against all the other troops in their basic load out GW for once have done something good(sure they did this decades ago) and allowed you the option to buy special weapons so your guardsmen aren't worthless.

Tactical marines with bolters are even more useless than guardsmen against the troops that Custodes bring. Should we now make Custodes weaker so a marine player with a 100+ bolter marines in his list doesn't feel sad? Or maybe we should expect him to fill his list with not just the most basic troop model, elites and heavy support exist for a reason and if he do insist on a demi company of tacticals he should buy special weapons, heavy weapons and close combat weapons.

Never heard anyone in wfb complain that their basic goblins or basic state troopers were inefficient in killing chaos warriors. But both are core!!!! You had them to take up space and delay the enemy so you could send a unit of Knights in their flank.

I haven't and haven't seen anyone else say that Guardsmen as a unit should be useless against certain targets when it comes to killing. Only the most basic load out and none have said their options should be removed. Unlike the guard players complaining we seem to know that guardsmen can take upgrades.

I mean, to be fair as math above shows 10 guardsmen unloading into space marine tac squads nets on average 1 unsaved wound when in rapid fire range with lasguns. is that still too effective? its not even killing a single marine and then the space marine squad shoots and wipes out the guardsmen in combat. Out of rapid fire range they average just under half a wound to the tactical squad with lasguns, is that too effective? should there be a lasguns cannot actually hurt space marines rule ever?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

I believe most of these posts are arguing "lasguns should not be effective against marines (or other elite, high-sv infantry)" rather than "lasguns are currently effective against marines."

Do you dispute the fact that presently the objective of the game Warhammer 40,000 generally has little to do with killing models? That it has much more to do with having models that exist at critical locations on the battlefield, thus making "more bodies" an inbuilt advantage that probably should, in some way, be paid for?

The minimum point value of a W2 space marine unit to perform an Action is 90 points. That unit has 5 models to hold objectives. As a guard player, the minimum point value of a unit to perform an Action is 55 points, and that unit has 10 models to hold objectives.

it absolutely stands to reason that if those two units are to engage in direct combat, the one with a natural disadvantage at winning the actual game should pretty much always win the combat.

The postulate included in "Lasguns should not be effective against marines [so the two wound change is good]" is "Lasguns were effective against marines but are not now."

I think that's what Insectum is pointing out; they weren't effective then either.

They weren't effective agaisnt useless and cheap point wise tac marines. They were very much efficient agaisnt basically all the other non-terminator marine infantry. Heck stormshields made no difference agaisnt lasguns for the most part of 40k.
And that was literally the worst weapon of the game wielded by the third worst statline of the game.

Regarding stormshields being useless against lasguns for most of 8th edition

To be fair: if one argues that lasguns are "the wrong tool" to target Marines one has to say that any source of an invulnerability save for a Marine statline is "the wrong tool" against an AP0 weapon.

Thats the thing with lasguns as a marine player you could literally do nothing agaisnt that crap shooting from 3rd to 7th be it from orks or pistols or bolters or lasguns to avoid rolling a bunch of 1's and losing 22+ point models of anything that wasn't a barebones tactical marine for each 1 you rolled.

Deffensive buffs and cover were useless, only FNP mattered.

I also just want to be clear, as we're discussing this 'lasguns vs space marines' shtick we're on here:

Am I correct with my math comparison? a guard squad, so 9 lasgun-armed guardsmen and a laspistol-armed sergeant, fire 19 shots and deal just about 1 wound to tactical marines. So that's 9pts of models killed by 55pts of models, 17.2% return on points.

a tactical squad firing at guardsmen makes 10 shots, kills slightly less than 3 so we'll round up, 16.5pts of models killed by 90pts of models, 18.3% return.

This is what we're discussing, right? In a vacuum? Just comparing the core stats to each other, and not talking about potential special weapon upgrades, orders, doctrines, subfactions, all that crap?

Klickor wrote:
Why bother even having different stat profiles if fething basic guardsmen armed only with lasguns should be able to take on a counter unit efficiently? A space marine is to a normal guardsman as a fully armoured knight were against a peasant. The knight is almost invincible unless the peasant have brought the right tools, like a polearm/plasma for the job.

There are exactly three options here.

1. Make Marines not be hard-counters to light infantry that are balanced out by being vulnerable to multi-damage anti-armor weapons. Make them more well-rounded in terms of both strengths and vulnerabilities, not highly resistant to Guardsmen but not points pinatas to plasma either.

2. Actively make Marines less popular, and not the massively meta-dominating (not tournament metas, actual go-out-and-play metas) statline that they are.

3. Accept that Marines are always going to feel like paper because, if you're vulnerable to certain weapons and you're roughly three-quarters of the armies in a shop at any given time, people are generally going to bring lots of your hard counters.

This isn't a historical simulation of peasants and knights, it's a wholly fictional game with no obligation to simulate anything. Gameplay comes first.

As I've said before, I don't really mind W2 on the face of it, but it has magnified both the strengths and vulnerabilities of the Marine defensive statline. Guardsmen without special weapons are more efficient against Knights than against Marines, but massed heavy bolters do something like 60% more damage to Marines than they did in 3rd-5th. If Marines didn't make up roughly half the armies in the game, with disproportionate popularity, it wouldn't be an issue.

Klickor wrote:
Never heard anyone in wfb complain that their basic goblins or basic state troopers were inefficient in killing chaos warriors. But both are core!!!! You had them to take up space and delay the enemy so you could send a unit of Knights in their flank.

Chaos Warriors were T4/W1/3+ with shields. Basic State Troopers with Halberds (+1S) were wounding on 4+ and giving them a 4+ save. That wasn't great, but you could kill them reasonably effectively with even basic troops. If you had swords or spears it was the same wounding on 5+ and a 3+ save that Marines get... except now Marines have two wounds.

WHFB also didn't express a unit's combat ability strictly via damage output. Two units of State Troops, even if not optimally equipped to fight a unit of Chaos Warriors, could beat it by flanking; you didn't outright need Knights to make a dent when rank bonus + flanking + denying the enemy their ranks could result in a failed leadership test and the unit being taken out of action. 40K still has utility roles for Guardsmen- screening and objective-holding- but either you give them the right weapons at the listbuilding phase (emphasis on the right weapons, because grenade launcher + autocannon + lasguns still doesn't kill a single Marine) or they don't fight.

And probably most importantly, the Chaos Warrior defensive statline didn't make up roughly half of the armies in the game. If it did, it wouldn't be blocks of State Troopers making up armies, it would be ubiquitous blocks of Handgunners wounding on 4s and dropping them to a 5+ save. And then the Chaos players would probably complain that their expensive, good-against-light-infantry-but-bad-against-armor-piercing-S4 troops are too vulnerable.

Apples and oranges.

It was ubiquitous blocks of Halberdiers and Handgunners precisely because T4 with heavy armour or equivalent was prevalent. Or not even T4, the prevalence of heavy heavy cavalry with 3+/2+/1+ saves alone made handgunners ubiquitous.

Rihgu wrote:
It was ubiquitous blocks of Halberdiers and Handgunners precisely because T4 with heavy armour or equivalent was prevalent. Or not even T4, the prevalence of heavy heavy cavalry with 3+/2+/1+ saves alone made handgunners ubiquitous.

Same phenomenon - everyone builds to counter the most common army in the game, so as long as Marines are the most common army in the game, they will always feel weak.

Rihgu wrote:
It was ubiquitous blocks of Halberdiers and Handgunners precisely because T4 with heavy armour or equivalent was prevalent. Or not even T4, the prevalence of heavy heavy cavalry with 3+/2+/1+ saves alone made handgunners ubiquitous.

Well, WHFB also had a bunch of popular T3 armies, like Elves and Skaven, and even the armies with tougher profiles (Chaos Warriors, Orcs) typically came with weaker units too for support (Marauders, Goblins). You could bring Swordsmen or Spearmen and more often than not they'd have a decent army-wide matchup, or a decent target within a varied roster. Armies that were entirely T4/3+ or better were a small minority.

But by the end of it, yeah, heavy cavalry with good saves made Handgunners (and cannons) pretty much must-haves. People will evolve list composition to match the meta threat, that's just how it goes.

If you want Marines to feel special- uniquely resilient to small arms, with an Achilles' heel to multi-damage armor-piercing weaponry- then they can't be the yardstick by which everything else in the game is judged. Otherwise the takeaway isn't 'Marines are strong against light infantry but weak to heavy weapons', it's just 'Guardsmen and grenade launchers suck, spam as much plasma as you can'. Which isn't really fun for either the player whose effective list composition is railroaded, or the player who gets hard-countered by take-all-comers (read: anti-Marine) lists.

 Galas wrote:
Thats the thing with lasguns as a marine player you could literally do nothing agaisnt that crap shooting from 3rd to 7th be it from orks or pistols or bolters or lasguns to avoid rolling a bunch of 1's and losing 22+ point models of anything that wasn't a barebones tactical marine for each 1 you rolled.

Deffensive buffs and cover were useless, only FNP mattered.

You could put them in a Rhino, making them immune to small arms. For 3-7, you could shoot out the Rhino too. Then, when the Rhino blew up, you could place Marines behind the wreck. Or you could Pod them in and strike on your terms.

But you are right, the fact that cover did nothing for Marines against small arms was really unfortunate.

Additionally, the switch to TLOS in 5th was also bad, especially for an elite army that's supposed to be good at concentrating force.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:
I also just want to be clear, as we're discussing this 'lasguns vs space marines' shtick we're on here:

Am I correct with my math comparison? a guard squad, so 9 lasgun-armed guardsmen and a laspistol-armed sergeant, fire 19 shots and deal just about 1 wound to tactical marines. So that's 9pts of models killed by 55pts of models, 17.2% return on points.

a tactical squad firing at guardsmen makes 10 shots, kills slightly less than 3 so we'll round up, 16.5pts of models killed by 90pts of models, 18.3% return.

This is what we're discussing, right? In a vacuum? Just comparing the core stats to each other, and not talking about potential special weapon upgrades, orders, doctrines, subfactions, all that crap?

1:Lasguns are a proxy discussion for small arms/attacks.

2: "Points returned" is not the only metric you could use. You can also look at "reduction in combat effectiveness", in which case your above example shows Marines recieving 0 combat effectiveness reduction, while Guardsmen lose 30%.

And there are related issued involving cover, range, LOS, etc. Broader game contexts resulting in this desire for 2w marines.

The WHFB discussion is giving me memory whiplash. In 8th at least you basically had chaff that were not expected to do anything except probably die or in a good world pin a unit in place for a flank. Then you had super-buffed up deathstars likely containing characters who ate everything. Finally you had characters on flying mounts who danced out of charge arcs 6 dicing dwellers on said deathstar, because initiative test or die the end is kind of broken.

Basic guys with Halberds were so-so. But with +1 S and T from the basic Lore of Beast spell (I'm really pushing my memory here, apologies if wrong) they are now a threat to more or less anything in the game - and you are likely to win any fight if you also have +3 rank bonus, a banner, and a flank charge etc. And if your opponent runs away you have a 50/50 chance to just kill them (unless they are fast etc).

Which is sort of a related comment. Close Combat did exist in older editions. Squads like Guardsmen could easily be charged, lose combat, and promptly be swept from the table. Obviously we don't have that today.

 Galas wrote:

They weren't effective agaisnt useless and cheap point wise tac marines.

Tac marines weren't useless. But if they FELT useless where did that problem lie? Defensive capability or offensive capability? In later editiins 5-7 I'd argue offensive capability was a major factor. The fact that a Lascannon could only do a single wound against a MC like a Riptide or Wraithknight was a major problem.

 catbarf wrote:

3. Accept that Marines are always going to feel like paper because, if you're vulnerable to certain weapons and you're roughly three-quarters of the armies in a shop at any given time, people are generally going to bring lots of your hard counters.

This isn't a historical simulation of peasants and knights, it's a wholly fictional game with no obligation to simulate anything. Gameplay comes first.

Hard counters I am fine with and are even arguing for them to be there. Or even soft counters. But like scotsman have demonstrated lasguns aren't even that bad against 1w marines and as long as they remain even remotely points efficient against marines everything else will just trash marines even more. Without 2w marines are vulnerable to almost every weapon in the game except perhaps the biggest LoW weapons. Only because cheaper marines make low shot count weapons extreme overkill. Marines should at least feel strong against some weapons. And it doesnt matter if you need a whole squad to kill a marine if said squad isnt much more expensive than some of the previous 1w, now 2w models. A marine with a heavy weapon or upgraded sergeant can cost close to a whole guardsmen squad so if one guy do almost nothing against a marine is a bad argument when you can have 3-4x as many guardsmen as marines.

Chaos Warriors were T4/W1/3+ with shields. Basic State Troopers with Halberds (+1S) were wounding on 4+ and giving them a 4+ save. That wasn't great, but you could kill them reasonably effectively with even basic troops. If you had swords or spears it was the same wounding on 5+ and a 3+ save that Marines get... except now Marines have two wounds.

I would liken halberd infantry to plasmagun wielding guardsmen. If you only have str3 you wound on 5+ and they get a 2+ or 3+ save (thought they had 4+ base, +1 for shield and +1 for HW+shield for a 2+ but havent played against chaos for over a decade in wfb so might have remembered wrong. Might have just been for chosen). You usually only got 6 attacks in total as well for your whole 25 man unit so even with halberds you still did less than a wound on average in damage if they have 3+ base. With handweapons you are looking at something like 1/6-1/3 of a wound for your 150+pts unit even if you fight first. That is about a 3%-8%(if halberds) return. Never played 8th though so things might have changed there but Marines would have loved chaos warrior survivability in previous editions,

Klickor wrote:

Hard counters I am fine with and are even arguing for them to be there. Or even soft counters. But like scotsman have demonstrated lasguns aren't even that bad against 1w marines and as long as they remain even remotely points efficient against marines everything else will just trash marines even more.

Scotsman has chosen a bad metric.

What his "points returned" scenario does not tell you is that the Space Marines in their ideal use case can nearly wipe out the Guardsman in a single turn through Rapid firing, assaulting, and subsequent morale. Nor does it inform you that Space Marines in cover will reduce the effectiveness of incoming lasgun fire by half.

The Guardsmen on the other hand have no real options available to them. The best they can hope for is to be in cover while the marines stand in the open, and slowly whittle the Marines down. A scenario that they will still loose at long range, and probably still lose even if they'r rapid firing at short range and the marines choose to take no action other than stand and fire.

Klickor wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

3. Accept that Marines are always going to feel like paper because, if you're vulnerable to certain weapons and you're roughly three-quarters of the armies in a shop at any given time, people are generally going to bring lots of your hard counters.

This isn't a historical simulation of peasants and knights, it's a wholly fictional game with no obligation to simulate anything. Gameplay comes first.

Hard counters I am fine with and are even arguing for them to be there. Or even soft counters. But like scotsman have demonstrated lasguns aren't even that bad against 1w marines and as long as they remain even remotely points efficient against marines everything else will just trash marines even more. Without 2w marines are vulnerable to almost every weapon in the game except perhaps the biggest LoW weapons. Only because cheaper marines make low shot count weapons extreme overkill. Marines should at least feel strong against some weapons. And it doesnt matter if you need a whole squad to kill a marine if said squad isnt much more expensive than some of the previous 1w, now 2w models. A marine with a heavy weapon or upgraded sergeant can cost close to a whole guardsmen squad so if one guy do almost nothing against a marine is a bad argument when you can have 3-4x as many guardsmen as marines.

I mean, no. I'm not. I'm not arguing that lasguns 'arent even bad' against marines, a 17% points return is super low in 9th edition when "the norm" is that your unit shows up, blows away its points value or more in enemy models, and then gets evaporated in the following turn.

Mostly what I'm pointing out is that there isnt as much of this "small arms suck against elites, but elites rule against chaff" as people are actually saying. There's some, for sure, elites generally get better multiplicative buffs and dont have to deal with morale while chaff often does, but if you look at a damage breakdown between two units and it's low one way and low the other way, typically you go "Oh, I get it - this unit is a DEFENSIVE unit, not an OFFENSIVE unit."

guardsmen use their low cost to bottom out opposing units, even units that are designed to be able to kill guardsmen. This allows them to retain board control and win the game. This is how guardsmen work. They dont tend to be offensively oriented unless you give them offensive buffing units or offensive upgrades, which increases their cost, and increases the points return that enemy units get by targeting them.

This isnt rocket science. It's kind of what I'd consider 'pretty obvious."

 the_scotsman wrote:

Am I correct with my math comparison? a guard squad, so 9 lasgun-armed guardsmen and a laspistol-armed sergeant, fire 19 shots and deal just about 1 wound to tactical marines. So that's 9pts of models killed by 55pts of models, 17.2% return on points.

a tactical squad firing at guardsmen makes 10 shots, kills slightly less than 3 so we'll round up, 16.5pts of models killed by 90pts of models, 18.3% return.

You are not correct with your math comparison.

0 points of models are killed by a 55pts of models for a 0% return on points vs 2w marines.

Vs 1 wound marines. 16.3% return on points.

If you double the output its now 110pts of models for a return of 16.3%.

 Insectum7 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:
I also just want to be clear, as we're discussing this 'lasguns vs space marines' shtick we're on here:

Am I correct with my math comparison? a guard squad, so 9 lasgun-armed guardsmen and a laspistol-armed sergeant, fire 19 shots and deal just about 1 wound to tactical marines. So that's 9pts of models killed by 55pts of models, 17.2% return on points.

a tactical squad firing at guardsmen makes 10 shots, kills slightly less than 3 so we'll round up, 16.5pts of models killed by 90pts of models, 18.3% return.

This is what we're discussing, right? In a vacuum? Just comparing the core stats to each other, and not talking about potential special weapon upgrades, orders, doctrines, subfactions, all that crap?

1:Lasguns are a proxy discussion for small arms/attacks.

2: "Points returned" is not the only metric you could use. You can also look at "reduction in combat effectiveness", in which case your above example shows Marines recieving 0 combat effectiveness reduction, while Guardsmen lose 30%.

And there are related issued involving cover, range, LOS, etc. Broader game contexts resulting in this desire for 2w marines.

yeah dude, it's like thats how having more bodies always works. You can go up the scale, too - YOU were just pointing out as a gotcha that lasguns are technically more effective at removing more points of Predators than they are at removing points of space marines....but the number of lasguns it takes to cause 4 wounds to a predator causes 8 wounds to MEQs, which reduces the effectiveness of a squad of MEQs by 80% while reducing the effectiveness of the Predator by 0%.

But hey, look, that squad of MEQs gets to have 5 bodies on an objective, while the Predator gets 1! Its almost like thats an inherent trade-off that you get when you consider the units in this board game the objective of which is to hold the objectives and score the points and win the game!

I feel like I'm going crazy at this point. Like I'm standing at a blackboard with a pointer going "Come on, kids, one...plus one...lets say I have one apple, and now I get a second apple...you can do it..."

Honestly I wouldn’t mind 2w marines if everything else got that big of a defensive buff for that few points.
Orks have gone from 6 to 9 points, only gaining an extra point of toughness, while losing the ability to get a 5++ and taking massive morale. Marines go up comparatively less, then gain the ability to use cover to get a massive bonus, and the whole second wound, combined with whatever flavor of stuff comes with the power armor color.

not worth the time.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:
I also just want to be clear, as we're discussing this 'lasguns vs space marines' shtick we're on here:

Am I correct with my math comparison? a guard squad, so 9 lasgun-armed guardsmen and a laspistol-armed sergeant, fire 19 shots and deal just about 1 wound to tactical marines. So that's 9pts of models killed by 55pts of models, 17.2% return on points.

a tactical squad firing at guardsmen makes 10 shots, kills slightly less than 3 so we'll round up, 16.5pts of models killed by 90pts of models, 18.3% return.

This is what we're discussing, right? In a vacuum? Just comparing the core stats to each other, and not talking about potential special weapon upgrades, orders, doctrines, subfactions, all that crap?

1:Lasguns are a proxy discussion for small arms/attacks.

2: "Points returned" is not the only metric you could use. You can also look at "reduction in combat effectiveness", in which case your above example shows Marines recieving 0 combat effectiveness reduction, while Guardsmen lose 30%.

And there are related issued involving cover, range, LOS, etc. Broader game contexts resulting in this desire for 2w marines.

yeah dude, it's like thats how having more bodies always works. You can go up the scale, too - YOU were just pointing out as a gotcha that lasguns are technically more effective at removing more points of Predators than they are at removing points of space marines....but the number of lasguns it takes to cause 4 wounds to a predator causes 8 wounds to MEQs, which reduces the effectiveness of a squad of MEQs by 80% while reducing the effectiveness of the Predator by 0%.

But hey, look, that squad of MEQs gets to have 5 bodies on an objective, while the Predator gets 1! Its almost like thats an inherent trade-off that you get when you consider the units in this board game the objective of which is to hold the objectives and score the points and win the game!

I feel like I'm going crazy at this point. Like I'm standing at a blackboard with a pointer going "Come on, kids, one...plus one...lets say I have one apple, and now I get a second apple...you can do it..."

Well good, we can agree that "points returned" isn't the end-all-be-all metric then. Good job.

Now all of that talk about "Guardsman are a defensive unit, duh", sure sounds to me like another way of saying "Just accept that your troops suck". Additionally, as I pointed out above, the Marines still win out against Guardsmen in cover even when the Marines are standing in the open, so I dunno how great Guardsmen are defensively. Guardsmen appear to lose in every scenario. Is that good design/an enjoyable experience for either player? No desperate charges to save the day from the Guardsmen? No forcing of the Marine player to engage in a particular way to avoid the strength in numbers that the Guardsmen supposedly have as their advantage? Is winning while doing nothing but standing on an objective as fun or as interesting as being able to effectively engage an opponent and kill models with good tactics/play?

This speaks nothing of Fire Warriors, Dire Avengers, Hormagaunts, etc. and how their effectiveness vs. Marines has just been cut in half, either.

Question: If the lasgun-armed members of an Infantry Squad should be mowed down with abandon and do nothing but scratch paint in return, why not just have the Infantry Squad be a 10W special weapon gunner with a special rule stating that all multidamage weapons count as D1 against it? Why even bother having glorified wound counters that just waste time moving separately and complicate LoS determination?

 waefre_1 wrote:
Question: If the lasgun-armed members of an Infatrny Squad should be mowed down with abandon and do nothing but scratch paint in return, why not just have the Infantry Squad be a 10W special weapon gunner with a special rule stating that all multidamage weapons count as D1 against it? Why even bother having glorified wound counters that just waste time moving separately and complicate LoS determination?

I'm kind of fine with lasguns in and of themselves being bad, though they just keep getting worse as creep sets in. What is annoying is the buckets of dice being rolled for almost no damage. I mostly just fear that GW's response in the Guard Codex is going to be MORE DICE!!! And suddenly we'll see lasguns throwing out more and more shots for diminishing returns. Rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice, or for the purpose of "I might hurt something, so I have to roll it gets tiring.

Same goes for other chaff infantry really. A full unit of 30 Termagants throws out 90 shots and averages 2.5 dead marines based on a mathhammer ap. I keep hearing they got buffed lately though not quite sure how, I'm not fully caught up on the meta as I used to be.

I kind of just hope that we end up with a situation where these traditionally chaff units can function decently - whether its giving them the ability to dig in, slightly better damage output (though not too much), or even simply the ability to effectively respawn, as reinforcements from the back lines trudge forwards.

SIdenote, I'm kind of curious on what 9th will bring with Scions. Hot-shot lasguns have been pretty decent vs Marines since 5th edition (they were still S3, but got AP3 then) - I'm kind of curious if they'll give them an extra pip of strength, or change them to D2 to make Scions the anti-Marine infantry of Guard.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:
I also just want to be clear, as we're discussing this 'lasguns vs space marines' shtick we're on here:

Am I correct with my math comparison? a guard squad, so 9 lasgun-armed guardsmen and a laspistol-armed sergeant, fire 19 shots and deal just about 1 wound to tactical marines. So that's 9pts of models killed by 55pts of models, 17.2% return on points.

a tactical squad firing at guardsmen makes 10 shots, kills slightly less than 3 so we'll round up, 16.5pts of models killed by 90pts of models, 18.3% return.

This is what we're discussing, right? In a vacuum? Just comparing the core stats to each other, and not talking about potential special weapon upgrades, orders, doctrines, subfactions, all that crap?

1:Lasguns are a proxy discussion for small arms/attacks.

2: "Points returned" is not the only metric you could use. You can also look at "reduction in combat effectiveness", in which case your above example shows Marines recieving 0 combat effectiveness reduction, while Guardsmen lose 30%.

And there are related issued involving cover, range, LOS, etc. Broader game contexts resulting in this desire for 2w marines.

yeah dude, it's like thats how having more bodies always works. You can go up the scale, too - YOU were just pointing out as a gotcha that lasguns are technically more effective at removing more points of Predators than they are at removing points of space marines....but the number of lasguns it takes to cause 4 wounds to a predator causes 8 wounds to MEQs, which reduces the effectiveness of a squad of MEQs by 80% while reducing the effectiveness of the Predator by 0%.

But hey, look, that squad of MEQs gets to have 5 bodies on an objective, while the Predator gets 1! Its almost like thats an inherent trade-off that you get when you consider the units in this board game the objective of which is to hold the objectives and score the points and win the game!

I feel like I'm going crazy at this point. Like I'm standing at a blackboard with a pointer going "Come on, kids, one...plus one...lets say I have one apple, and now I get a second apple...you can do it..."

Well good, we can agree that "points returned" isn't the end-all-be-all metric then. Good job.

Now all of that talk about "Guardsman are a defensive unit, duh", sure sounds to me like another way of saying "Just accept that your troops suck". Additionally, as I pointed out above, the Marines still win out against Guardsmen in cover even when the Marines are standing in the open, so I dunno how great Guardsmen are defensively. Guardsmen appear to lose in every scenario. Is that good design/an enjoyable experience for either player? No desperate charges to save the day from the Guardsmen? No forcing of the Marine player to engage in a particular way to avoid the strength in numbers that the Guardsmen supposedly have as their advantage? Is winning while doing nothing but standing on an objective as fun or as interesting as being able to effectively engage an opponent and kill models with good tactics/play?

This speaks nothing of Fire Warriors, Dire Avengers, Hormagaunts, etc. and how their effectiveness vs. Marines has just been cut in half, either.

How do you propose to offset the natural advantage of numbers and footprint on the objective?

Also, YOU play space marines. Last I checked, I'M the one who plays almost exclusively light infantry armies, lol. I'm arguing that MY troops should be the ones struggling in combat versus elite armies given the current setup of how the game works.

Leave guardsmen and lasguns to the side for a second - what if I told you that there was a unit called Poxwalkers that gets NO RANGED WEAPON AT ALL, and just has to sit there and take it from the space marines? ZERO percent damage return - how unfair! What could possibly be the use of this unit? People use them in competitive lists! Whats the point?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 waefre_1 wrote:
Question: If the lasgun-armed members of an Infantry Squad should be mowed down with abandon and do nothing but scratch paint in return, why not just have the Infantry Squad be a 10W special weapon gunner with a special rule stating that all multidamage weapons count as D1 against it? Why even bother having glorified wound counters that just waste time moving separately and complicate LoS determination?

How about you tell me.

Lets replace a guard squad with exactly what you say here - a 10W special weapon gunner who costs 60pts who can only take 1 damage at a time.

How does this make a guard squad less effective in the game?

What cant you do with this guy that you could do with a regular guard squad?

I'll give you a hint: it is the objective of the game warhammer 40,000. The thing you have to do...to win the game.

All this absurd comparisons of infantry squads vs marines when in 8th I had games were my dark angels had as many marines as my IG opponent has vehicles because I ran a bunch of 2w terminators, 1w veterans with special equipement and characters.


If someone just brings gretchins I don't expect im to do anything but die. If my opponent just brings barebones infantry squads (the third worst profile of the game with the second worst main infantry weapon in the game only worse than gretchind and conscripts) in an army than can have 90+ bodies covering ground and still have 1500 points left for heavy artillery and vehicles and special and elite units then feth him.

And I know right now imperial guard are weak but this comparison of unit vs unit in a vacuum just makes no sense. Is completely ignoring how each army is supposed to play, how the game is actually played, and all the sinergyes and tactics of each army. Is ok to say a marine player "Of course your tactical and marines are completely shreded in the open! Take them in rhinos or in drop pods!" but not to a IG player "Of course your light infantry unit, the third cheapest unit in the game, with no equipement cannot hurt heavy infantry, take artillery and special weapons and vehicles!" is horrible and criminal and whatever. So feth marines that want to play marines and dreadnoughts because thats the fantasy of the army but not IG players that ... want to play... just infantry squads with lasguns?

If basic infantry squads with only lasguns are killing tacticals marines they are killing devastators and assault marines and veteran marines just as good. Infantry Squads with barebones lasguns exist for two things and two things only: Occupy space and fight other light infantry chaff.

And thats good and how they should be. Should 10 or 15 or whatever infantry take to kill a marine? I could not care less. Make marines more expensive to balance the game and not force the imperial guard player to bring 200 models that don't do anyhing I could not care about that. But stop this nonsense arguments that mix in the worse faith arguments fluff with mathematics with old editions with new mechanics with old statlines ignoring all support but applying it when it matters like doctrines to support different perspectives.

Call me a bolter porn fanboy. I came back to the game with 8th and tried playing heavy infantry dark angels for most of 8th. A misserable experience. I jumped to Custodes and could not be more happy about that (And I ran them with 0 shields and mostly infantry and dreadnoughts so feth me again but at least my units feel powerfull enough). But thats why I play ogres in fantasy and minotaurs in 40k not because I care about power but because I like when my guys feel tought and elite. Make them more expensive I actually like that more, less miniatures I need to play.

When I play my 40 kroot and 60 firewarriors Tau list I don't expect them to kill stuff they are there to die. And thats fun for me, watching the enemy shoot at my medium horde of infantry. Is the list I'm choosing to play and I don't expect my kroots to start killing marines or elite infantry left and right.

 kurhanik wrote:

 waefre_1 wrote:
Question: If the lasgun-armed members of an Infatrny Squad should be mowed down with abandon and do nothing but scratch paint in return, why not just have the Infantry Squad be a 10W special weapon gunner with a special rule stating that all multidamage weapons count as D1 against it? Why even bother having glorified wound counters that just waste time moving separately and complicate LoS determination?

I'm kind of fine with lasguns in and of themselves being bad, though they just keep getting worse as creep sets in. What is annoying is the buckets of dice being rolled for almost no damage. I mostly just fear that GW's response in the Guard Codex is going to be MORE DICE!!! And suddenly we'll see lasguns throwing out more and more shots for diminishing returns. Rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice, or for the purpose of "I might hurt something, so I have to roll it gets tiring.

Same goes for other chaff infantry really. A full unit of 30 Termagants throws out 90 shots and averages 2.5 dead marines based on a mathhammer ap. I keep hearing they got buffed lately though not quite sure how, I'm not fully caught up on the meta as I used to be.

I kind of just hope that we end up with a situation where these traditionally chaff units can function decently - whether its giving them the ability to dig in, slightly better damage output (though not too much), or even simply the ability to effectively respawn, as reinforcements from the back lines trudge forwards.

SIdenote, I'm kind of curious on what 9th will bring with Scions. Hot-shot lasguns have been pretty decent vs Marines since 5th edition (they were still S3, but got AP3 then) - I'm kind of curious if they'll give them an extra pip of strength, or change them to D2 to make Scions the anti-Marine infantry of Guard.

The issue with S3 AP-2 D2 Hellguns is... Well, let me put it this way.

580 points of 43rd Iotan Dragons kills one Questoris Knight out of Deep Strike, assuming a 4+ Invuln.
If the Knight isn't able to Rotate Ion Shields or otherwise only has a 5++, you can do it with just shy of 500.

If Laurels of Command stacks with the new Orders mechanic, that number drops to 400 points. 310 if the Knight only has a 5++.

Those same 310 points of Scions kills, with two orders, kills 18-19 MEQ out of Deep Strike. 14 if they're in Cover.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 waefre_1 wrote:
Question: If the lasgun-armed members of an Infantry Squad should be mowed down with abandon and do nothing but scratch paint in return, why not just have the Infantry Squad be a 10W special weapon gunner with a special rule stating that all multidamage weapons count as D1 against it? Why even bother having glorified wound counters that just waste time moving separately and complicate LoS determination?

How about you tell me.

Lets replace a guard squad with exactly what you say here - a 10W special weapon gunner who costs 60pts who can only take 1 damage at a time.

How does this make a guard squad less effective in the game?

What cant you do with this guy that you could do with a regular guard squad?

Very little, as far as I can tell. Unless my math is off, one mini is significantly easier to hide than ten and since the special weapon was the only one we cared about, it shouldn't matter that we're not getting extra spotting off with other Guardsmen. And since we're already condensing the squad down into a single mini, it would only be fair to count the number of remaining Wounds as its number of models for ObSec tests.

Now, your turn: If the only real benefit to having nine warm bodies is completely negated by a simple, logical special rule tacked on to the hypothetical Special Weapon Guardsquad, why should we bother having the extra bodies?

 waefre_1 wrote:
Question: If the lasgun-armed members of an Infantry Squad should be mowed down with abandon and do nothing but scratch paint in return, why not just have the Infantry Squad be a 10W special weapon gunner with a special rule stating that all multidamage weapons count as D1 against it? Why even bother having glorified wound counters that just waste time moving separately and complicate LoS determination?

Because:
I'll lose out on taking my +1 heavy weapon,
+1 Sgt. upgrades,
I'll lose x shots that while aren't great DO generate more hits/wounds than not having them,
I'll lose x melee attacks that while aren't great DO generate more hits/wounds than not having them,
the squad will have an absurdly small footprint that'll do nothing to control table space (not just objectives),
the squad will have an absurdly small footprint that'll allow it to hide in tiny parcels of terrain,
the entire squad will now be vulnerable to any effect that targets a single model,
would force other rules like Transport capacity, Look Out Sir, & moral to have to be completely reworked
Is 100% against both GW & your FLGS interests in selling you more models.

Did I miss anything?

Oh yeah, and it'll look fething stupid on the table.

 the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:
I also just want to be clear, as we're discussing this 'lasguns vs space marines' shtick we're on here:

Am I correct with my math comparison? a guard squad, so 9 lasgun-armed guardsmen and a laspistol-armed sergeant, fire 19 shots and deal just about 1 wound to tactical marines. So that's 9pts of models killed by 55pts of models, 17.2% return on points.

a tactical squad firing at guardsmen makes 10 shots, kills slightly less than 3 so we'll round up, 16.5pts of models killed by 90pts of models, 18.3% return.

This is what we're discussing, right? In a vacuum? Just comparing the core stats to each other, and not talking about potential special weapon upgrades, orders, doctrines, subfactions, all that crap?

1:Lasguns are a proxy discussion for small arms/attacks.

2: "Points returned" is not the only metric you could use. You can also look at "reduction in combat effectiveness", in which case your above example shows Marines recieving 0 combat effectiveness reduction, while Guardsmen lose 30%.

And there are related issued involving cover, range, LOS, etc. Broader game contexts resulting in this desire for 2w marines.

yeah dude, it's like thats how having more bodies always works. You can go up the scale, too - YOU were just pointing out as a gotcha that lasguns are technically more effective at removing more points of Predators than they are at removing points of space marines....but the number of lasguns it takes to cause 4 wounds to a predator causes 8 wounds to MEQs, which reduces the effectiveness of a squad of MEQs by 80% while reducing the effectiveness of the Predator by 0%.

But hey, look, that squad of MEQs gets to have 5 bodies on an objective, while the Predator gets 1! Its almost like thats an inherent trade-off that you get when you consider the units in this board game the objective of which is to hold the objectives and score the points and win the game!

I feel like I'm going crazy at this point. Like I'm standing at a blackboard with a pointer going "Come on, kids, one...plus one...lets say I have one apple, and now I get a second apple...you can do it..."

Well good, we can agree that "points returned" isn't the end-all-be-all metric then. Good job.

Now all of that talk about "Guardsman are a defensive unit, duh", sure sounds to me like another way of saying "Just accept that your troops suck". Additionally, as I pointed out above, the Marines still win out against Guardsmen in cover even when the Marines are standing in the open, so I dunno how great Guardsmen are defensively. Guardsmen appear to lose in every scenario. Is that good design/an enjoyable experience for either player? No desperate charges to save the day from the Guardsmen? No forcing of the Marine player to engage in a particular way to avoid the strength in numbers that the Guardsmen supposedly have as their advantage? Is winning while doing nothing but standing on an objective as fun or as interesting as being able to effectively engage an opponent and kill models with good tactics/play?

This speaks nothing of Fire Warriors, Dire Avengers, Hormagaunts, etc. and how their effectiveness vs. Marines has just been cut in half, either.

How do you propose to offset the natural advantage of numbers and footprint on the objective?

This assumes that there are no advantages to having a small footprint or being fewer bodies. Being able to fit more combat power into a transport is a useful trait, as is being less/unaffected by the current Blast mechanics. My understanding is that Lictors and Rippers are popular among Nid players because they are tiny units that can tuck away into cover and still score/perform actions.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Also, YOU play space marines. Last I checked, I'M the one who plays almost exclusively light infantry armies, lol. I'm arguing that MY troops should be the ones struggling in combat versus elite armies given the current setup of how the game works.

What I play shouldn't matter, I'm concerned for the overall health of the game. But I do play Tyranids as well, and have a budding GSC collection (mostly for Necromunda atm, but it could grow). I also have a large collection of Eldar models that I'd like to paint and play with at some point.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Leave guardsmen and lasguns to the side for a second - what if I told you that there was a unit called Poxwalkers that gets NO RANGED WEAPON AT ALL, and just has to sit there and take it from the space marines? ZERO percent damage return - how unfair! What could possibly be the use of this unit? People use them in competitive lists! Whats the point?

Sure, unit without gun can't shoot. I bet they're less effective at slowly dragging down Marines in CC and eating their brains now that Marines have 2w.

Look, obviously playing for objectives is "how to win", but is that type of play as fun as killing the opponents models through effective movement and attacking? In prior editions, if a couple squads of Guardsmen were able to maneuver to get the drop on a Marine position, the Guardsman player would be awarded with more kills for their efforts. When two Devilfish float up and unload some Fire Warriors to storm the Marine position by unloading their Pulse Rifles at point blank range, the return should feel good for the Tau player. That's the sort of play that I'd want available for probably every basic troop, the ability to actually be somewhat effective on attack if used well. 2W Marines make that much harder, harming the ability of infantry-on-infantry actions. In return, it doesn't help much against the sort of weapons which are actually the ones that make Marine players go "screeeee" and give them the badfeels. The Plasma, the Dissie Cannons, the six Earthshaker gun carriages, whatever.

Basically at it's roots I think 40K should be balanced around infantry combat. When the most popular faction can laugh off the attacks of the basic infantry of other factions, there's a problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
Is ok to say a marine player "Of course your tactical and marines are completely shreded in the open! Take them in rhinos or in drop pods!" but not to a IG player "Of course your light infantry unit, the third cheapest unit in the game, with no equipement cannot hurt heavy infantry, take artillery and special weapons and vehicles!" is horrible and criminal and whatever. So feth marines that want to play marines and dreadnoughts because thats the fantasy of the army but not IG players that ... want to play... just infantry squads with lasguns?

Galas. . . were your Marines really getting shredded by Lasguns in the open? REALLY?

Right now I'm thinking you're the poster-child for negative bias.

As a Marine player, I want to play Marines and Dreadnoughts too. I just don't want that to come at the expense of everyone else's core infantry, especially core infantry that used to be able to reasonably combat Marines in their respective arenas.

Oh no, they weren't shredded by lasguns.

They didn't needed to be because my opponent used his cheaps as chips infantry to block me from reaching his parking lot of 3 manticores and 3 basilisks.

And I have to say, not a single time I eard my opponent say "man are my lasguns useless" while I was removing squad after squad of marines under artillery fire.

Maybe I came a little too energetic. But is a little tiresome to take this absurd comparisons ignoring everything else that make factions work as a whole.

 Galas wrote:
Oh no, they weren't shredded by lasguns.

They didn't needed to be because my opponent used his cheaps as chips infantry to block me from reaching his parking lot of 3 manticores and 3 basilisks.

And I have to say, not a single time I eard my opponent say "man are my lasguns useless" while I was removing squad after squad of marines under artillery fire.

Maybe I came a little too energetic. But is a little tiresome to take this absurd comparisons ignoring everything else that make factions work as a whole.

Righto. Ok, so THAT particular scenario is an 8th edition problem. But the problem there isn't that Marines weren't tough. The problem there is that Marines couldn't kill Guardsmen fast enough, like they used to be able to do pre 8th, using template weapons, Drop Pods, and Morale. Additionally, the Guardsmen could just Fall Back out of CC, so you couldn't "hide in CC" the way you could prior to 8th. Also, due to the AP change, Guardsmen were now 30% tougher against Bolter Fire.

Aka, the solution is NOT 2w Marines.

Note that 2W Marines will also not help you against the Manticores, Basilisks, or the Heavy Bolters that they have as secondary weapons. Nor the Veteran Drop Plasma that was always mysteriously on call in that scenario.