Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Eldar, as an army, exist because they break the standing game rules. If they didn't do that, they wouldn't work.

Everyone just complains when Marines break the rules as they seem to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Well, come the end of the year when they get Jervised, and they join the Special Olympic ranks of Codex design like the Dark Angels, I think that feeling might go away.


Anyway, on reflection I do like the sound of this Guard Codex. I've often said that the Doctrines were a fantastic concept executed badly, and whilst I'd rather they try to fix the Doctrine system rather than dumping it completely, this is Jervis Edition 40K, thus 'more options' will always be dumped in favour of a wargear section with pretty pictures, so it was kinda inevitable.

The Guard Codex I've been writing (or attempting to write, as it is by far one of the harder ones I've had to do - Chaos was easier), has mutable Guard platoons and the like, but finding ways to do it has been difficult.

The only thing I will say is that if there are any options that involve removing Guard heavy weapons in favour of things like Infiltration, they'll be ignored.

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:The only thing I will say is that if there are any options that involve removing Guard heavy weapons in favour of things like Infiltration, they'll be ignored.

I wish there was an option that'd let me ignore the useless cannon fodder lasgunner models in favor of units that actually matter (i.e. plasma guns and heavy weapons), myself.

5th Ed wound allocation will take care of that for you.

BYE

I would love to be able to have enough lasguns, with enough range, to have enough concentration to do the damage that the "mass of lasgun fire" is mythologically able to do. S3 always just seems to lose out to T4, no matter how many shots I get off, mathhammer be damned.

grizgrin wrote:I would love to be able to have enough lasguns, with enough range, to have enough concentration to do the damage that the "mass of lasgun fire" is mythologically able to do. S3 always just seems to lose out to T4, no matter how many shots I get off, mathhammer be damned.

Considering that I had 5 DC die to massed lasgun fire from three squads in one round just today, I wouldn't call it a myth.

Anecdotes are not evidence. Statistics are. Statistics say lasguns are worthless. QED.

Valhallan42nd: 3 squads is, what; 30 lasguns if your opponent took no heavy or special weapons? Unless one of them was a command squad. Unless my mathhammer is really rusty, those 30 LED's should have knocked out about .55 DC. I think that opponent of yours had to roll REALLY well, and you had to save equally bad, for this to happen unless there's something you didn't mention. I feel your pain as a BA player, don't worry! But anecdotes DO work both ways. I had a guy scatter a battle cannon shot onto MY DC, failed to kill anyone in the squad with a S8 AP3 pieplate that was full coverage on all the models, no partials even. I didn't even have to make any saves. He rolled (8) 1's. He deserved it b/c he was a real jerk know-it-all (read:know-naught!), but would I COUNT on that happening every time? Uh, NO. Sorry for the loss of your DC, dude.

Agamemnon2: Ain't it the truth? What could they do to make it more "the way it SHOULD be"?

Agamemnon2 wrote:Anecdotes are not evidence. Statistics are. Statistics say lasguns are worthless. QED.

Yet experience says they are not.

As a guard player, I've done more damage to big things (Daemon Princes, etc) with massed lasgun fire than with my heavy/special weapons, which invariably miss when I need them to hit. I'll trust experience more than mathhammer.

Experience is great, but only for things which aren't directly calculable. Believing that your lasguns are better for killing MCs than your heavies and specials are is superstition, nothing more. It's like believing that heads come up more often than tails because of your experience flipping coins and getting ten heads in a row.

Experience is good,

Statistics are better,

Faith in the Emperor is BEST. *Beats fist on chest*

"I may fire my lasgun, but it is my faith in HIM that shall destroy my enemies!"

The usefulness of breaking rules depends on why it's done and factors such as how much it costs, how easy it is to do, how useful it is and whether the enemy can defend against it.

Take Nids' Synapse immunity to Instant Death. Cost is nothing, ease of use is high, usefulness is high, and it's hard for the enemy to oppose. OTOH, it was done because Nids having no tanks, their various heavy creatures are highly vulnerable to ID. So fair enough and no-one complains about it.

Doesn't matter what the math says IMO because dice are totally random. You shouldn't need algebra or calculus to play with army men.

I've had scores of marines get wiped off the board from tons of lasguns, tons of hormgaunts, tons of shuriken catapults... the more dice you have to roll, the more wounds you can cause, the more wounds you cause the more saves he has to make and the more chances he has to fail a few. That's all the math ya need :p

Sorry but no.

Necros wrote:Doesn't matter what the math says IMO because dice are totally random. You shouldn't need algebra or calculus to play with army men.

I've had scores of marines get wiped off the board from tons of lasguns, tons of hormgaunts, tons of shuriken catapults... the more dice you have to roll, the more wounds you can cause, the more wounds you cause the more saves he has to make and the more chances he has to fail a few. That's all the math ya need :p

Ignorance of odds works for some things, but in serious discussions of how dice interact, knowing is half the battle. Basically you don't need it, but it sure helps. On the other hand, ignorance never helps.


edit: Your post has been edited to remove the completely unwarranted insult. See you your point still stands without the insult? Please refrain from insulting other posters in the future or your posting privileges will be temporarily suspended. --yakface

Kilkrazy wrote:The usefulness of breaking rules depends on why it's done and factors such as how much it costs, how easy it is to do, how useful it is and whether the enemy can defend against it.

Take Nids' Synapse immunity to Instant Death. Cost is nothing, ease of use is high, usefulness is high, and it's hard for the enemy to oppose. OTOH, it was done because Nids having no tanks, their various heavy creatures are highly vulnerable to ID. So fair enough and no-one complains about it.

Really?

Then pre and post FAQ complaining about how x or y can or cannot kill the bugs is just a false memory?

I do indeed like the Codex. Now theres a lot more of interesting things to do.

ST in Valks. and a gun line covering them to the objective. nice

So math says you can't kill tons of marines with lasguns, even though it happens all the time? 10 lasguns might not do much, but 30? or 50?

You'll have to define "tons of marines" and "all the time."

You do agree that on balance, one plasma gun or lascannon is more likely to take a wound off a fex than a lasgun is, right? And that a 2+ save is more likely to work than a 5+? If your answer is yes, you've just demonstrated that you do, in fact, believe that statistics matter. You're just not applying the principle consistently.

tons of marines = a squad or 2
all the time = just about any time I try

all I was saying is if you have more dice, you have a better chance of doing what you need to do. So, 30 lasgun shots on a squad of marines will do a lot better than 10. There will be times when you roll bad, and times when you roll really good. If a carnifex is right in front of my lines and the only shot I can really take, I will dump my lasguns on it because I might get lucky. and shooting something is better than shooting nothing. I wouldn't expect to do much, but ya never know... of course a higher str weapon will do better.

back on topic..

when is the new IG codex rumored to come out? is it just "2009" or "after Xmas" or "next fall"? I'm probably going to be shelving my army for a bit so I can get some games in with my chaos army till the new codex comes out

I like some of the new changes , with mathhammer OOO this was IG rumors not the mathhammer thread my bad

tegeus-Cromis wrote:Experience is great, but only for things which aren't directly calculable. Believing that your lasguns are better for killing MCs than your heavies and specials are is superstition, nothing more. It's like believing that heads come up more often than tails because of your experience flipping coins and getting ten heads in a row.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Statistics are the only reliable yardstick with which to measure specified scenarios such as "10 guardsmen fire at 10 marines at 14 inches" (just to state an example). They don't lie, unless your dice do (this is possible, as gaming dice are not of a particularly high quality and tests, while not conclusive, have shown trends towards skewed distributions).

Now, statistics can't answer some questions, such as "What's the best special weapon in an IG infantry squad", because those have much too many variables, such as opponents, terrain, and even psychology (maybe your opponent has a deep-seated dread of plasmaguns and will eradicate squads with such faster than squads with meltaguns, to use a silly example).

I've seen the Avatar killed in HTH by Firewarriors. Therefore, Firewarriors are excellent Monstrous Creature killers in HTH. See how that thinking doesn't make any logical sense, even if it happens 'all the time'.

No - just remember this:

Anecdotal evidence isn't.

... and you'll never go wrong!



Anyway...


Given the (supposed) release schedual, I think we'll see Marines (HURR!), Space Wolves (HURR w/teeth), Dark Eldar and Necrons (I hope!) first. So we're looking at 2010 here. We should all have jetpacks and flying cars by then.

BYE

I thought the release schedule was SMs, SWs, DE and then IG. Where's this Necron stuff coming from?

With all that dismissing of statistics, it is almost as if one of the Design Team has managed to sneak in here.

(Maybe it is Jervis himself, in disguise!)

Alpharius wrote:With all that dismissing of statistics, it is almost as if one of the Design Team has managed to sneak in here.

(Maybe it is Jervis himself, in disguise!)

He doesn't use words. He uses pretty pictures now, so we all know what's what. Remember?

BYE

MinMax wrote:I thought the release schedule was SMs, SWs, DE and then IG. Where's this Necron stuff coming from?

Just a process of logical deduction (not that anyone at GW would comprehend such a thing, but stick with me).

What Codices haven't been redone for 5th, or ever. In the category of 'Ever', we have DE, Necrons and Wolves. In the category of 5th we have Guard and Marines.

We know Marines are coming. We know Wolves are coming. DE are probably after them. For the next one, I'd say Necrons because they have the most room to expand and after the Wolves are done are the oldest Codex besides the soon to be done DE. For Guard there are limited options. A new plastic sprue for the Russ, maybe plastic Hellhound-y things. New Rough Riders?

'Crons they have a world of possibilities to open up, much like DE, as they are fairly 1 dimensional and present far more creative depth (something the design team actually does well at).

BYE

efarrer wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The usefulness of breaking rules depends on why it's done and factors such as how much it costs, how easy it is to do, how useful it is and whether the enemy can defend against it.

Take Nids' Synapse immunity to Instant Death. Cost is nothing, ease of use is high, usefulness is high, and it's hard for the enemy to oppose. OTOH, it was done because Nids having no tanks, their various heavy creatures are highly vulnerable to ID. So fair enough and no-one complains about it.

Really?

Then pre and post FAQ complaining about how x or y can or cannot kill the bugs is just a false memory?

Could be

I never saw any. I saw plenty of moaning about Eldar holo-field skimmers after their new codex.

Maybe I read the wrong web sites?

Necros wrote:

spacewolflord wrote:Well I am NOT liking what I see with Guard. I love my Grenadier/Veteran Army and now it seems its going away. I refuse to get Platoons of troops, hopefully the Inquisitor makes Storm Troopers Troops at least.

I wonder what they are going to do with Ad-humans.

didn't it say Vets would be troops? Instead of having a grenadier/vets army you might be able to end up with a vets/stormtrooper army instead

The way I read the statement is that ONE squad out of the Platoon of Six, will become a Vet not every squad in the Platoon. Thats how I read it.

As for some one that said I don't have a "real" guard army, I like my shooting to be effective and have troops live through bolter fire. And it also throws people way off since they expect a horde or armor army, not Elite.

tegeus-Cromis wrote:Experience is great, but only for things which aren't directly calculable. Believing that your lasguns are better for killing MCs than your heavies and specials are is superstition, nothing more. It's like believing that heads come up more often than tails because of your experience flipping coins and getting ten heads in a row.

That may come from early fifth eddition, where even though they still had t6 most monstrous creatures only had a 5+ inv save. Meaning about 2 wounds in 30 shots with laspointers.