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On the tabletop? Nothing. You may have missed it, but I stressed the point at the end there with the Storm Speeder vs two Cent Devs. Same general price, same general performance, minor tradeoffs here and there on speed vs number of bases etc. But it doesn't matter. 500 points of Blob A, and 500 points of Blob B means neither A nor B is elite. It means they're 500 points of a blob.
On the tabletop? Nothing. You may have missed it, but I stressed the point at the end there with the Storm Speeder vs two Cent Devs. Same general price, same general performance, minor tradeoffs here and there on speed vs number of bases etc. But it doesn't matter. 500 points of Blob A, and 500 points of Blob B means neither A nor B is elite. It means they're 500 points of a blob.
In that case you're operating using a definition of elite that nobody else I've ever encountered would use. Elite, in pretty much any scenario - real world or otherwise - is a measure of the ability/prowess/quality of one individual against another. That would seem, by definition, to mean that in a scenario with a horde of Orks versus a unit of Custodian Guard the Guard are the elite unit. They are individually more powerful, therefore more elite.
When people say they want SM to feel elite, what they mean is they are, in general, better than most other armies on a one-for-one basis. "Better" meaning overall more skilled, resilient and dependable. Sure, some armies may have access to specialists who are superior to most SM units (Eldar Incubi, for example) but taken as a whole army SM should still feel more elite than DE. One of the problems GW has had since they threw out restrictive army building rules is that many armies can now focus only on their specialised elite troops and that's cheapened the effective eliteness of SM. Combine that with how lethal the game is and SM being so common and you have the perfect recipe for the erosion of the elite feel of SMs.
Where's my 60 Space Marines vs. 140 Ork games. Those were fun. I've also got 120 Termagants painted up but little desire to use them in the current paradigm.
Where's my 60 Space Marines vs. 140 Ork games. Those were fun. I've also got 120 Termagants painted up but little desire to use them in the current paradigm.
This, I've not had chance to use my gsc much and while they're not in huge blobs of 30, having guys whose purpose is to plink off some damage and die is an angle I quite enjoy. I like playing the under dogs and having to drag the elite guys down screaming.
Tyran wrote: I'm pretty sure the infantry squad is more expensive, both in points and in real money, than an Intercessor.
Doesn't look like it - technicallyGW aren't selling an Infantry Squad at the moment, but Cadians are £30 for a squad, while Catachans are £21. Krieg reach £35 a squad, but they've got the extra KT stuff in there too. Intercessors? £36 a squad.
In terms of points? Cadians are 65/squad, Catachans are (oddly) 70/squad, Krieg reach 75/squad (could go as high as 90, if you take all three upgrades), and the unsold basic Infantry Squad are 65/squad (going as high as 75 with two upgrades), all for 10 men. A 5 man Intercessor squad is 90 points, so a fully-upgraded Krieg squad can match them, with double the men.
On the tabletop? Nothing. You may have missed it, but I stressed the point at the end there with the Storm Speeder vs two Cent Devs. Same general price, same general performance, minor tradeoffs here and there on speed vs number of bases etc. But it doesn't matter. 500 points of Blob A, and 500 points of Blob B means neither A nor B is elite. It means they're 500 points of a blob.
In that case you're operating using a definition of elite that nobody else I've ever encountered would use. Elite, in pretty much any scenario - real world or otherwise - is a measure of the ability/prowess/quality of one individual against another. That would seem, by definition, to mean that in a scenario with a horde of Orks versus a unit of Custodian Guard the Guard are the elite unit. They are individually more powerful, therefore more elite.
When people say they want SM to feel elite, what they mean is they are, in general, better than most other armies on a one-for-one basis. "Better" meaning overall more skilled, resilient and dependable. Sure, some armies may have access to specialists who are superior to most SM units (Eldar Incubi, for example) but taken as a whole army SM should still feel more elite than DE. One of the problems GW has had since they threw out restrictive army building rules is that many armies can now focus only on their specialised elite troops and that's cheapened the effective eliteness of SM. Combine that with how lethal the game is and SM being so common and you have the perfect recipe for the erosion of the elite feel of SMs.
In fairness to Breton, his posts are in response to someone trying to claim that Servitors are more elite than Custodes...
Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.
Kanluwen wrote: This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.
Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...
tneva82 wrote: You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something...
Dudeface wrote: This, I've not had chance to use my gsc much and while they're not in huge blobs of 30, having guys whose purpose is to plink off some damage and die is an angle I quite enjoy. I like playing the under dogs and having to drag the elite guys down screaming.
What's stopping you?
I mean this debate seems a bit weird. "Marines don't feel elite because my opponents won't just spam chaff into me". Okay. But surely they aren't going to do that unless said chaff becomes so effective it has a substantial advantage into ye-generic Marines list? I think its better Orks have a codex where other stuff is worth taking than 150~ Boyz and hoping your opponent didn't have the tools to remove half of them in a turn.
I doubt a 3 Tervigon+180~ Termagants meme list would ever be that effective because its kind of one-dimensional. It seems like you could lose some elements and take other stuff to get more functionality. And eventually you'd probably scrap the whole lot for something quite different. But there's nothing really stopping you running it barring access to the models.
Dudeface wrote: This, I've not had chance to use my gsc much and while they're not in huge blobs of 30, having guys whose purpose is to plink off some damage and die is an angle I quite enjoy. I like playing the under dogs and having to drag the elite guys down screaming.
What's stopping you?
I mean this debate seems a bit weird. "Marines don't feel elite because my opponents won't just spam chaff into me". Okay. But surely they aren't going to do that unless said chaff becomes so effective it has a substantial advantage into ye-generic Marines list? I think its better Orks have a codex where other stuff is worth taking than 150~ Boyz and hoping your opponent didn't have the tools to remove half of them in a turn.
I doubt a 3 Tervigon+180~ Termagants meme list would ever be that effective because its kind of one-dimensional. It seems like you could lose some elements and take other stuff to get more functionality. And eventually you'd probably scrap the whole lot for something quite different. But there's nothing really stopping you running it barring access to the models.
The debate is "marines don't feel elite because they're too common" or "marines don't feel elite because the rest of the game murders them and nullifies their supposed advantage too often".
Nothing is stopping me, but as other have pointed out, there's no incentive atm to run a good large blob of something when a smaller blob of warriors for example are just better all round. The lose more mechanics of morale combined with blast and coherency changes punish hordes unfairly this edition.
I agree orks shouldn't just be boyz or nothing but it shouldn't be an active disadvantage to take a unit of 30 boyz.
In fairness to Breton, his posts are in response to someone trying to claim that Servitors are more elite than Custodes...
Nope, that response about Servitors was someone pointing out why Breton's original definition is problematic. That original definition was tantamount to "words mean whatever I want them to mean".
Dudeface wrote: The debate is "marines don't feel elite because they're too common" or "marines don't feel elite because the rest of the game murders them and nullifies their supposed advantage too often".
Nothing is stopping me, but as other have pointed out, there's no incentive atm to run a good large blob of something when a smaller blob of warriors for example are just better all round. The lose more mechanics of morale combined with blast and coherency changes punish hordes unfairly this edition.
I agree orks shouldn't just be boyz or nothing but it shouldn't be an active disadvantage to take a unit of 30 boyz.
This is true - although I could argue there's still the potential of the "MSU horde" or something similar. You could say take 9 units of 10 Boyz, termagants etc - but there's not much obvious incentive to do so when other units are better. Hopefully 10th look at the horde situation. I think after cries of buff-stacking in 8th (some of which continued into 9th) it was a reasonable precaution. I feel GW have sort of tried to cut buff stacking/wombo-combos down - but it always seems to be one step forward, two steps back.
So 5 Custodian Troops should always wipe the floor with any other troop unit, excluding Clowns, because their entire faction is basically Custodian Xenos. The Ultra Elite of the Ultra Elite Xenos. But yeah, even they cost a fraction of what Custodian Troops cost.
So that being the case, should a Space Marine unit of 5Intercessors, with free gear, ever lose a fight ta full IG squad? Because right now, that can literally happen. A full squad of guard, with free gear, can more than take a Space marine squad extremely easily.
Space Marines are no longer elite. They pay horde prices and can field "elite" level models, but they are not Elite. What moves them into the conversation of elite troops is their access to all sorts of CP stupidity like Transhuman, Red Thirst, Rapid Fire, Gene-Wrought Might, etc.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I'd really like it if Space Marines actually were an "Elite" faction, and had to pay costs appropriate to an "Elite" faction.
GW wants everyone to be elite, Orks are elite, bugs are elite, Guardsmen are elite.
What is the measure of elite?
Because it seems to me, as long as Marines as the most common faction, their baseline will never be elite. Since they're the norm.
Stormcast are the most common faction (i think) in AoS yet they still feel elite.
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Insectum7 wrote: They feel more elite when people actually field hordes, but real hordes seem to be rare these days, in which case Marines seem "average"ish.
If you ask me, the proper fix for Marines is to Make Hordes Great Again. I'm dead serious.
And thats probably why stormcast feel elite : lots of shitters in AoS to contrast with the shiny boys.
But yeah, GW triple nerfing hordes in the core rules was too much.
Revert coherency rules
Make blast min3 on 11+ and max shots on 16+
Make fighting coherency "anything within 2" can fight"
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/06 13:47:49
VladimirHerzog wrote: Stormcast are the most common faction (i think) in AoS yet they still feel elite.
Stormcast and variants thereof don't collectively represent half the armies in the game and a majority of the armies seen played on the tabletop. If Marines were a deviation from the norm, then they'd feel elite. As it stands they're the most common statline in the game, and other armies are incentivized to take their Marine-like elites as you note, so of course they're going to feel like the baseline.
But even if hordes were decent again, having the one Ork player in the shop running bigger blobs of infantry wouldn't make the ten Marine (or Spiky Marine, or Bigger Marine, or Golden Marine, or Nun Marine) armies feel 'elite' as they fight amongst themselves. They're still just the default by virtue of the most heavily represented statline on the table.
And it gets worse when that means that everyone tailors to kill Marines. For the people defining 'elite' as 'better one-on-one than other armies', well, that is how it's always been. It has never been the case that the basic troops of other armies could take on Marines one-on-one. In 8th, we even had a situation where the specialists of other armies (things like Genestealers or Howling Banshees) couldn't beat basic Intercessors one-on-one. But Marine players still complained about their troops not feeling tough and elite because they still died like dogs to massed plasma, and you took lots of plasma and other high-volume decent-AP weapons because you're playing Marinehammer 40K and that's just the way it is.
I'm actually fine with GW making other armies feel more elite- even Guard- just because the ship of Marines being unique has long since sailed. It isn't devaluing Marines so much as making the troops of other armies less worthless by comparison.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/02/06 15:02:31
On the tabletop? Nothing. You may have missed it, but I stressed the point at the end there with the Storm Speeder vs two Cent Devs. Same general price, same general performance, minor tradeoffs here and there on speed vs number of bases etc. But it doesn't matter. 500 points of Blob A, and 500 points of Blob B means neither A nor B is elite. It means they're 500 points of a blob.
In that case you're operating using a definition of elite that nobody else I've ever encountered would use. Elite, in pretty much any scenario - real world or otherwise - is a measure of the ability/prowess/quality of one individual against another.
That's pretty much exactly what I said. Elite is a sliding descriptor. But when talking about X points of Faction A vs X points of Faction B (in theory) there is no elite. X points of this army or that army should be equal. The only difference is cosmetic usually involving counting bases in an arbitrary points bucket. There are any number of cliches you've probably heard of - for example Quantity has a Quality all its own.
Usually this "elite" point is made with "lethality" buzzwords. They want the durable models to get shot up less often. That's a great goal to have. I want all the models to get shot up less often. I want attrition (the play result, not Attrition the rule) to be a grind. I want the "horde" players to feel like their units dwindle but not that they should just put them on magnetized movement trays for faster casualty removal after a wholesale slaughter. 200 points in 20 bases of X going against 200 points in 10 bases of Y should do Z points worth of damage. 200/10 points of Y going after 200/20 points of X should do Z damage. The fact that Z damage whatever it is would be twice as many bases doesn't make either 200 points elite, because they started with twice as many bases giving them a quality in quantity the 10 didn't have.
This is true - although I could argue there's still the potential of the "MSU horde" or something similar. You could say take 9 units of 10 Boyz, termagants etc - but there's not much obvious incentive to do so when other units are better. Hopefully 10th look at the horde situation. I think after cries of buff-stacking in 8th (some of which continued into 9th) it was a reasonable precaution. I feel GW have sort of tried to cut buff stacking/wombo-combos down - but it always seems to be one step forward, two steps back.
I still dream of the day when each (sub)faction has at least two distinctly different viable competitive list styles going at the same time. Puff Puff Pass.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/06 15:06:57
JNAProductions wrote: Okay. And what is the baseline?
Would it be the most common army in the game?
Common in game =/= common in fluff which is what y'all messed up on AGAIN. Otherwise you'd have to argue on whether Harlequins are actually more elite than any other Eldar army.
On the tabletop? Nothing. You may have missed it, but I stressed the point at the end there with the Storm Speeder vs two Cent Devs. Same general price, same general performance, minor tradeoffs here and there on speed vs number of bases etc. But it doesn't matter. 500 points of Blob A, and 500 points of Blob B means neither A nor B is elite. It means they're 500 points of a blob.
In that case you're operating using a definition of elite that nobody else I've ever encountered would use. Elite, in pretty much any scenario - real world or otherwise - is a measure of the ability/prowess/quality of one individual against another.
That's pretty much exactly what I said. Elite is a sliding descriptor. But when talking about X points of Faction A vs X points of Faction B (in theory) there is no elite. X points of this army or that army should be equal. The only difference is cosmetic usually involving counting bases in an arbitrary points bucket. There are any number of cliches you've probably heard of - for example Quantity has a Quality all its own.
Usually this "elite" point is made with "lethality" buzzwords. They want the durable models to get shot up less often. That's a great goal to have. I want all the models to get shot up less often. I want attrition (the play result, not Attrition the rule) to be a grind. I want the "horde" players to feel like their units dwindle but not that they should just put them on magnetized movement trays for faster casualty removal after a wholesale slaughter. 200 points in 20 bases of X going against 200 points in 10 bases of Y should do Z points worth of damage. 200/10 points of Y going after 200/20 points of X should do Z damage. The fact that Z damage whatever it is would be twice as many bases doesn't make either 200 points elite, because they started with twice as many bases giving them a quality in quantity the 10 didn't have.
The general usage of elite would be that a single squad of three doing the damage and having the resilience of three squads of ten is the elite one. Using your definition of "It doesn't exist" is not conducive to communication and understanding.
EviscerationPlague wrote:
JNAProductions wrote: Okay. And what is the baseline?
Would it be the most common army in the game?
Common in game =/= common in fluff which is what y'all messed up on AGAIN. Otherwise you'd have to argue on whether Harlequins are actually more elite than any other Eldar army.
I've been clear that I'm not talking in-universe. I'm talking real-world.
In the actual world we live in, Marines don't generally feel elite because they're the baseline that most things are measured from.
Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne!
I'll admit this may just be a case of the grass being greener - but I think a lot of this "Marines don't feel elite" is because people only play marines. You therefore don't appreciate the fact your T4 3+ SV 2 wound guys don't die to a stiff breeze of bolter fire like T3 5+ 1 wound guys do.
As it stands a Heavy Intercessor isn't far off a Tyranid Warrior (and will probably get moved closer with surely inevitable 10th edition buffs). Terminators and Bladeguard aren't a million miles away from Custodes.
How much more elite do you want them to be? Should a basic tactical marine be 30 points and have rules to match? With the inevitable uplift of all the "Marines but even better" units to follow?
Tyel wrote: I'll admit this may just be a case of the grass being greener - but I think a lot of this "Marines don't feel elite" is because people only play marines. You therefore don't appreciate the fact your T4 3+ SV 2 wound guys don't die to a stiff breeze of bolter fire like T3 5+ 1 wound guys do.
As it stands a Heavy Intercessor isn't far off a Tyranid Warrior (and will probably get moved closer with surely inevitable 10th edition buffs). Terminators and Bladeguard aren't a million miles away from Custodes.
How much more elite do you want them to be? Should a basic tactical marine be 30 points and have rules to match? With the inevitable uplift of all the "Marines but even better" units to follow?
But the t4 3+ save 2 wound guys do die to the indiscriminate volume of ap-1+ d2 at pretty much the same rate as the t3 5+ guys. The issue isn't the defensive profile, the issue is the defensive profile isn't worth much in the game right now given the freedom of access to shed loads of decent ap and damage attacks out there.
Tyel wrote: I'll admit this may just be a case of the grass being greener - but I think a lot of this "Marines don't feel elite" is because people only play marines. You therefore don't appreciate the fact your T4 3+ SV 2 wound guys don't die to a stiff breeze of bolter fire like T3 5+ 1 wound guys do.
As it stands a Heavy Intercessor isn't far off a Tyranid Warrior (and will probably get moved closer with surely inevitable 10th edition buffs). Terminators and Bladeguard aren't a million miles away from Custodes.
How much more elite do you want them to be? Should a basic tactical marine be 30 points and have rules to match? With the inevitable uplift of all the "Marines but even better" units to follow?
But the t4 3+ save 2 wound guys do die to the indiscriminate volume of ap-1+ d2 at pretty much the same rate as the t3 5+ guys. The issue isn't the defensive profile, the issue is the defensive profile isn't worth much in the game right now given the freedom of access to shed loads of decent ap and damage attacks out there.
make damage spread like in AoS and then marines will feel tougher maybe?
a damage 2 shot would kill one marine but two guardsmen, instead of 1 of each for example
Tyel wrote: I'll admit this may just be a case of the grass being greener - but I think a lot of this "Marines don't feel elite" is because people only play marines. You therefore don't appreciate the fact your T4 3+ SV 2 wound guys don't die to a stiff breeze of bolter fire like T3 5+ 1 wound guys do.
As it stands a Heavy Intercessor isn't far off a Tyranid Warrior (and will probably get moved closer with surely inevitable 10th edition buffs). Terminators and Bladeguard aren't a million miles away from Custodes.
How much more elite do you want them to be? Should a basic tactical marine be 30 points and have rules to match? With the inevitable uplift of all the "Marines but even better" units to follow?
But the t4 3+ save 2 wound guys do die to the indiscriminate volume of ap-1+ d2 at pretty much the same rate as the t3 5+ guys. The issue isn't the defensive profile, the issue is the defensive profile isn't worth much in the game right now given the freedom of access to shed loads of decent ap and damage attacks out there.
make damage spread like in AoS and then marines will feel tougher maybe?
a damage 2 shot would kill one marine but two guardsmen, instead of 1 of each for example
I'm not against it personally, it does lead to some weird circumstances like multi damage sniper weapons etc. But by and large it works imo. As people keep pointing out, use keywords for it as well, make the spill over specific to certain keyword interactions.
Tyel wrote: How much more elite do you want them to be? Should a basic tactical marine be 30 points and have rules to match? With the inevitable uplift of all the "Marines but even better" units to follow?
There is no conceivable stat line that can ever make marines feel elite. The overwhelming most common army in the game will always feel, by definition, average. You can turn every non-marine unit into unplayable cannon fodder where you need to buy 1000 orks to play a 2000 point army but marines vs. orks will still feel like average vs. dear god these are trash. The only thing that will ever make marines feel elite is for GW to somehow make them no longer the majority. Take the lore and advertising focus away from marines, make a rule that marines can only ever be taken as a single squad in a normal army, I don't know what exactly the answer is. But it can not come from buffing marines.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
VladimirHerzog wrote: make damage spread like in AoS and then marines will feel tougher maybe?
a damage 2 shot would kill one marine but two guardsmen, instead of 1 of each for example
How does that even work on a conceptual level? A lascannon, a precisely aimed single beam intended to do massive damage to a point target, suddenly kills multiple guardsmen per hit? Now that lascannon is the best anti-tank weapon and also a great anti-horde weapon. The balance effects from this change would be horrific.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/06 16:52:28
How does that even work on a conceptual level? A lascannon, a precisely aimed single beam intended to do massive damage to a point target, suddenly kills multiple guardsmen per hit? Now that lascannon is the best anti-tank weapon and also a great anti-horde weapon. The balance effects from this change would be horrific.
big laser goes through puny guardsmen and hits steve,joe,bob and ryan behind him.... not super hard to imagine. Or you give it a keyword "precise" that means it doesnt spread or whatever.
And you would obviously rebalance the points if that was the case.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/06 16:57:54
VladimirHerzog wrote: big laser goes through puny guardsmen and hits steve,joe,bob and ryan behind him.... not super hard to imagine. Or you give it a keyword "precise" that means it doesnt spread or whatever.
Sorry, but the idea that your target guardsmen are all lining up in perfect formation to be killed by the lascannon is just absurd. And yes, you can give it a special rule that it ignores the standard damage rules, but if you have to hand out special "no, don't use this after all" rules as commonly as you'd need to do with this one then the general rule is probably not a good one.
And you would obviously rebalance the points if that was the case.
And how long are you willing to suffer through broken balance before GW can figure out how to make such a fundamental change work? How many pendulum swings between "always take nothing but lascannons" and "lascannons suck, never take them"?
Tyel wrote: How much more elite do you want them to be? Should a basic tactical marine be 30 points and have rules to match? With the inevitable uplift of all the "Marines but even better" units to follow?
There is no conceivable stat line that can ever make marines feel elite. The overwhelming most common army in the game will always feel, by definition, average. You can turn every non-marine unit into unplayable cannon fodder where you need to buy 1000 orks to play a 2000 point army but marines vs. orks will still feel like average vs. dear god these are trash. The only thing that will ever make marines feel elite is for GW to somehow make them no longer the majority. Take the lore and advertising focus away from marines, make a rule that marines can only ever be taken as a single squad in a normal army, I don't know what exactly the answer is. But it can not come from buffing marines.
Much like a lot of people here assume to be confusing elite with rare. Elite, by literal definition is:
"the richest, most powerful, best educated, or best trained people in a particular group or society"
They can be the most common army in the game if they feel like they're the well trained and equipped specialists able to fight up into tough odds, such as being outnumbered.
The number of people on here who seem to think it must mean that each model singularly butchers entire forces is unreal. 10 marines facing down 30 guardsmen is enough to make them look elite, lasguns that actually bounce off them and having a Swiss army knife of skills without over committing to any one of them will make them feel elite in thar scenario.
The old adage they should be better at whatever the other factions bad at but worse than what they're great at.
To use orks, Marines should be outnumbered and at a disadvantage in melee, however they should be better at range and more organised via higher leadership. Against tau they should be worse at range but more mobile and better in melee and so on.
That's the concept of the "elite" marine force. The 8th/9th progressive stats bloat and watering of identity in a lot of places has stopped a lot of this.
Dudeface wrote: Much like a lot of people here assume to be confusing elite with rare. Elite, by literal definition is:
"the richest, most powerful, best educated, or best trained people in a particular group or society"
By definition that means rare. "The best in the group" has to be a small minority or it is no longer the best. Elite education means the best students from the best schools. Elite wealth means the handful of billionaires. Etc. If you define a sub-group so broadly that it is no longer rare then it is also no longer elite, you've included a whole bunch of average members of the group along with the best.
10 marines facing down 30 guardsmen is enough to make them look elite, lasguns that actually bounce off them and having a Swiss army knife of skills without over committing to any one of them will make them feel elite in thar scenario.
Except that's not how it works. The perception of marines is defined by the total experience across all games, not by individual game scenarios. Having marines face down 30 guardsmen and win makes guardsmen look like cannon fodder (arguably the way it should be) but marines still feel average overall because they're the majority of the game and the most common game scenario is red marines vs. blue marines or green marines vs. spiky marines.
And it only gets worse once you account for the marine meta in list building. You don't see a marine squad facing down 30 guardsmen with lasguns, you see 30 dual plasma Cadians where the lasguns are just meatshields for the plasma gunners and the primary role of the 30 guardsmen is to stand in front of the plasma LRBT that is busy killing marines. So not only are marines by definition average they don't even get to face very many situations where they are elite and dominate an inferior enemy because nobody ever brings stuff that isn't good against marines.
That's the concept of the "elite" marine force.
No, that's a concept of "jack of all trades, master of none". Being average at doing many things does not feel elite, especially when the force in question is by far the most common in the game. Not only does it make marines literally the average it makes them feel like a deliberate reference point, like how the theoretical all-3s stat line used to be the intended average human reference in old editions. Marines are average, Eldar are fast. Marines are average, Tau shoot well. Etc.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/02/06 18:00:43
JNAProductions wrote: Okay. And what is the baseline?
Would it be the most common army in the game?
Common in game =/= common in fluff which is what y'all messed up on AGAIN. Otherwise you'd have to argue on whether Harlequins are actually more elite than any other Eldar army.
Dudeface wrote: Much like a lot of people here assume to be confusing elite with rare. Elite, by literal definition is:
"the richest, most powerful, best educated, or best trained people in a particular group or society"
By definition that means rare. "The best in the group" has to be a small minority or it is no longer the best. Elite education means the best students from the best schools. Elite wealth means the handful of billionaires. Etc. If you define a sub-group so broadly that it is no longer rare then it is also no longer elite, you've included a whole bunch of average members of the group along with the best.
10 marines facing down 30 guardsmen is enough to make them look elite, lasguns that actually bounce off them and having a Swiss army knife of skills without over committing to any one of them will make them feel elite in thar scenario.
Except that's not how it works. The perception of marines is defined by the total experience across all games, not by individual game scenarios. Having marines face down 30 guardsmen and win makes guardsmen look like cannon fodder (arguably the way it should be) but marines still feel average overall because they're the majority of the game and the most common game scenario is red marines vs. blue marines or green marines vs. spiky marines.
And it only gets worse once you account for the marine meta in list building. You don't see a marine squad facing down 30 guardsmen with lasguns, you see 30 dual plasma Cadians where the lasguns are just meatshields for the plasma gunners and the primary role of the 30 guardsmen is to stand in front of the plasma LRBT that is busy killing marines. So not only are marines by definition average they don't even get to face very many situations where they are elite and dominate an inferior enemy because nobody ever brings stuff that isn't good against marines.
That's the concept of the "elite" marine force.
No, that's a concept of "jack of all trades, master of none". Being average at doing many things does not feel elite, especially when the force in question is by far the most common in the game. Not only does it make marines literally the average it makes them feel like a deliberate reference point, like how the theoretical all-3s stat line used to be the intended average human reference in old editions. Marines are average, Eldar are fast. Marines are average, Tau shoot well. Etc.
The protagonists are humans, the 3's statline is still the intended human. Marines are above average in the stats distribution for the game, or are supposed to be. They can be common, but that doesn't mean their stats aren't above average.
JNAProductions wrote: Okay. And what is the baseline?
Would it be the most common army in the game?
Common in game =/= common in fluff which is what y'all messed up on AGAIN. Otherwise you'd have to argue on whether Harlequins are actually more elite than any other Eldar army.
I've been clear that I'm not talking in-universe.
Then what you're saying doesn't matter then
Why does the fictional matter more than the real?
This is not the background forum. This is the general discussion forum.
Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne!
No they aren't. The protagonists are marines. They're the face of the franchise, they get the most lore, they are the literal protagonists in most of the books, they have the largest model range with constant new content, and they're the most common army on the table. Normal humans are background NPCs and secondary factions.
Marines are above average in the stats distribution for the game, or are supposed to be. They can be common, but that doesn't mean their stats aren't above average.
How exactly can a stat line be above average if that stat line is 75% or more of the game? If I have the set of values {3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5} then 4 is very clearly the average. It doesn't matter if some 30 year old reference document says that 3 is supposed to be the average, the reality of the actual game being played is that 4 is the average.
so by that definition marines can never feel elite because people IRL will always make lists with them in mind
Even if marines have 10 wounds each and a 1+ save, people bringing the best guns against that profile will make them feel no elite
You want them to feel elite, make the game deeper and bring rules that play on that depth. (Make morale matter for real, make positioning matter, etc.)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/06 18:25:02
