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CptZach wrote:Why does everyone continue to think Tau are weak? Because of 5th ed rules?

Ok, what in 5th ed hurt Tau?

Also, it seems like GW has picked a power level and stayed there for the last few codices. Meaning they are finally realizing that a quality, balanced game sells more models then putting out the new uber army every 6 months.

- Fish of fury died because of TLOS for starters.

- every army got faster which helps everyone except tau who were already quite fast and now just have fewer turns to shoot people

- cover dramatically improved which helps people get into cc and doesn't really help the shooty armies much

- TLOS killed Jump Shoot Jump

- only troops score meant tau players had to invest more pts into their very weak troop section and/or had to be more conservative with their firewarriors

- assault is even more deadly so when previously suits/kroot could at least bog down a decent cc unit now they will be chased and cut down with ease

- much wargear is redundant, useless or not as effective but still priced at old effectiveness

- KP missions hurts the army with small squads and lots of units

- outflank helps people get to tau lines more easily without being shot

- everything in reserve denies tau players 2 turns of shooting on average but probably still leaves enough rounds of cc to kill the tau



They did however benefit from a few boosts

- optional reserves allow for "ninja tau"

- no more conolidate into assault

- railguns got even better relative to other anti-tank weapons in the game being one of the only long ranged ap1 guns there is.

privateer4hire wrote:

CptZach wrote: Granted, we do play on 5 x 5 tables, giving him additional round of shooting in most cases but he shoots and moves and uses those missiles that hit automatically w/o LOS to great effect.

And you don't realize how much an extra round of shooting helps him? That is something akin to playing a close combat army on a 3 foot wide table and wondering why they are so good.

Da Boss wrote:Fantasy, similarly, has a more tiered system than an actual creep. It's that some armies are at one power level, and others are at a totally different power level. Also, they have edition lag.
Daemons are definitely the worst offender, in fantasy.

In WFB, are the tiers divided into newer vs older? If so, that's prima facie evidence of creep.

Hi all,
As far as I can tell, the power increase seems to vary from slight to very noticable, dependant on how much investment-return ratio GW corperate expect from the new minature releases.
As corperate instruct the development studio on how 'appealing ' they want the new army to be.

Dont blame the game devs/studio staff , they just do the best they can under difficult circumstances.

- assault is even more deadly so when previously suits/kroot could at least bog down a decent cc unit now they will be chased and cut down with ease

- KP missions hurts the army with small squads and lots of units

Dunno, assault is no longer allowed to sweep into secondary units and thus favors tau greatly.
And I dont know how a full sized kroot unit is being "small".

I've never really gotten the feeling that the problem is codex "creep" so much as just the designers being unable to make codices at the same power level. Just looking at the releases since late 4th/early 5th: Orks were very strong, Daemons not as much (they can make a couple good lists, but try doing anything without either Bloodcrushers or Fateweaver), SM was strong, then IG was arguably the strongest of the crop, SW was good, then Nids was arguably the weakest since Daemons. (This is not to say I'm on the "my Nids got nerfed" bandwagon...just that objectively, the Nid 'dex seems lower in overall power level than other recent codex levels, particularly the IG.)

I find it particularly strange that IG (arguably the strongest of the 5th/late 4th codices) and Nids (arguably one of the weakest) were handled by the same person. You'd think those two at least would have similar power levels.

But it's not that they've been tracking upward...I think the overall power level of the books took a step up with Orks and then attempted to pretty much stay in the same place. They're just not very good at it, and not very good at telling how things will compare to each other. My very first read through the IG dex, I was amazed at all the good stuff, all the options, all the ways one could build a strong army...didn't even know where to start. My first read of the Nid book...meh. Clearly some good units here and there, but nowhere close to IG levels.

sirisaacnuton wrote:I've never really gotten the feeling that the problem is codex "creep" so much as just the designers being unable to make codices at the same power level.

I'd like to think that too, but have you ever tried playing a game as DH or DE? Codex creep happens. Not in every case, but it happens.

sirisaacnuton wrote:I find it particularly strange that IG (arguably the strongest of the 5th/late 4th codices) and Nids (arguably one of the weakest) were handled by the same person. You'd think those two at least would have similar power levels.

I agree with this entirely. My guess is that they've seen the insanity that Orks was and vowed never to let another melee army of that caliber to get out.

sirisaacnuton wrote:But it's not that they've been tracking upward...I think the overall power level of the books took a step up with Orks and then attempted to pretty much stay in the same place. They're just not very good at it, and not very good at telling how things will compare to each other. My very first read through the IG dex, I was amazed at all the good stuff, all the options, all the ways one could build a strong army...didn't even know where to start. My first read of the Nid book...meh. Clearly some good units here and there, but nowhere close to IG levels.

The Nids have some options, but none of the options they really need. They were crippled pretty severely by the loss of EW, individually configurable models, and some options that they only added for people who don't need it (flesh hooks?) I think that if the FAQ goes the way I hope it does, then with any luck they'll get to the point I want to field them, but I fear running them against any Ork army, because I've seen what either can do, and Nids can't hold a candle to them.

Back to topic, Nids was a step back, but that could also have just been because someone looked at the releases at a very high level, and decided to dial the creep back a bit. If I, completely unscientifically, charted them out on how powerful I feel they are, it would be something like this (on a 1-10 scale):
Orks - 9
SM - 8
IG - 8
SW - 9
Nids - 7

Between the "everything is a troop...if you want", the would allocation silliness, and the fact that they have Ghaz (as much as I hate passing judgement on an army over a single model), it's hard to top the Orks. SW comes closest with abilities that seem to specifically cripple armies, such as IG and Nids.

Pika_power wrote:AP1 Strength 10 Lance? I've never seen so many anti-tank attributes in one place at the same time.

Yeh but nids have never had a truly reliable anti tank other than zoanthropes. Sure MC's are nasty, but other than nidzilla, i've never had a nid player get an MC into melee with me. MC's really shine at drawing fire and dishing out some big guns, but they tend to die pretty quickly to plasma and railgun fire. Even pulse fire lol, 30 or so BS 5 S5 shots at a carnifex are going to do some wounds. Nids needed a decent way to take down vehicles at range, and while the 3+ invul is really nice, theyre more flimsy because they arent immune to ID anymore, 1 failed railgun or krak missile save and its over.

As far as my opinion on codex creep, I think nids are pretty balanced, perhaps except for ymral(spelling?) genestealers, and I have only faced them twice and they did a ton of damage. They might be like nidzilla, seemingly OP until you work out a system to killing them then they aren't.

Personally I think space wolves are very OP, I haven't managed to beat them and I'm tired of smarmy SW tournament players who come to my local store and say I lost because tau can't play competetively. Sure, say that with cheap MEQ and 5 HW devastator squads that can split fire.

Another note on codexes, GW annoys me that theyre going to shove aside crons and DE, who really need a new dex, to try to milk people with space marine obsession by printing Blood Angels next. I have nothing against BA, but GW needs to reprint old codexes before making yet another new space marine army. I won't be surprised if DE and crons get pushed back again for a new dark angels dex, granted, DA need a new dex, but I play DE and i can say they are hard as crap to tie, let alone win, in 5th ed. Theyre a fast army who sacrifices firepower for speed and trickiness and fast melee... in an edition where tactics and tricks mean nothing and all that matters is the volume of S4 3+sv models you can get into melee.

If I were to rate armies from 1-10 on a power scale, taking in raw power and tactics I would see it something like this

Orks 8
SW 9
IG 8-9(theyre good on their own, but vendetta swarm is powerful)
Nids 7-8
SM 7
DE 5
WH 6
DH 7
TE 7-8(crisis spam is really powerful if you can run them cheaply enough, and 10-15)
Crons 6
Eldar 6-7
BT 7
CSM 8(dual lash MC's is nasty)

Right now every Codex seems viable in competitive play to me except for Dæmonhunters and Necrons.

Actually I think the Nid dex is on the same level as the other recent releases. Its just it doesn't have any massively overpowered choices and relies on cohesion rather than powerful all rounders. This Nid dex is so much better than the old one. They now have multiple builds as opposed to Nidzilla and even though options have been taken away in places, none of these were massively useful or commonly taken. I also love the way they integrate with the rules with them gaining USRs instead of stat boosts. I hated the way the SW codex felt. All its horrible 'remove models' rules made me ill. I hate rules that ignore another special rules as it feels a bit pointless and reminds me of the pretend fights from primary school where no matter what imaginary weapon you armed yourself with someone would imagine a better one and it would eventually go in a circle. I'm glad they moved away from that in the Nid dex.

I really liked the Guard, Ork and Nid recent releases as they all can be built in masses of different ways and all have weaknesses to make up for their strengths. With the orks it's the paper thin armour and lack of an ability to crack heavy armour. With the IG it's their weak and weedy troops and the amount of KPs they put on a table and a lack of strong close combat. And with the Nids their major weakness comes from a concentration of their best anti tank units in a single slot.

Mehh just an opinion. Feel free to ignore

daedalus wrote:

sirisaacnuton wrote:I've never really gotten the feeling that the problem is codex "creep" so much as just the designers being unable to make codices at the same power level.

I'd like to think that too, but have you ever tried playing a game as DH or DE? Codex creep happens. Not in every case, but it happens.

Well, like I said, I think the books as a whole took a step up in power starting with Orks. I don't think DE, DH, Nec, Tau, or even Eldar stand on quite the same power level as Orks, SM, IG, SW, and CSM. Not to say there are no good armies from those books, but as a whole they have a lower power level than the newer stuff. But within the new stuff (just like within the old) it seems hit or miss. Nids and Daemons feel like they fall in a kind of half-step up from the old books but down from the other newer books. And it's nothing I can quantify, just my impression of the books and the armies they produce.

In terms of quantifying books, my personal opinion puts IG as the best. Not to say that they are necessary the best army, but their Codex just strikes me as the best codex. They seem like an army could be made to beat any particular army, that they can make all-comers lists with no huge glaring weaknesses against certain builds (like the weaknesses of Nids vs. JotWW, Nob Bikerz vs. PBS or Lash, etc.), and that they have one of the best books for making a variety of diverse but still strong/competitive armies.

Since I have them at the top, I'll assign them a value of 10. Doesn't mean I'm saying it's perfect, I'm just normalizing my scale so that the top army gets the top value. From there:

IG - 10
SW - 9 (maybe like 8.5-8.75, but we'll round to the nearest whole)
SM - 9 (ditto)
CSM - 8
Orks - 9 (a solid 9 as opposed to the rounded 9 of SW and SM)
Nids - 7
Daemons - 7
Eldar - 7
Tau - 6
WH - 6
DH - 5
Necrons - 6

And I don't know enough about the DE codex to rank, but it's not super high.

Edit: since I normalized my scale with the top book getting a 10, I should also have had the bottom book getting a 1. Oh well, I guess it's a 5-10 scale. Imagine it's like a video game rating, where 5/10 means abysmally bad as opposed to average.

I agree with the chart for the most part but I've seen some Eldar put massive hurt on the newer books. Mech Eldar exceptionally.

Oooh! Oooh! I love it when threads turn into list rankings!

(Weighted in terms of number of viable builds, as well as overall power of the best builds from that codex)

Imperial Guard- 5
Space Wolves- 5
Tyranids- 4.5
Orks- 4.5
Space Marines- 4
Eldar- 3.5
Chaos Space Marines- 3
Daemons- 3
Dark Eldar- 2.5
Tau- 2.5
Witch Hunters- 2.5
Necrons- 2.0
Daemon Hunters- 1.5

5=Most competitive, and 1=not competitive at all.

Back OT, I'm really hoping that the overall power level of armies has plateaued. Codex creep sells models, but I know that I'd like to see a more balanced game. It seems like everything from Orks onward is more or less on-par with other 5e codexes. Whether or not this trend will continue, however, remains to be seen.

codex creep will always be a part of the game as GW will always try to make fair and equal armies i.e for all the kiddies out there in the eighties space marines were toughness 3 so when the orks were made tougher rick priestly made space marines tougher see wd 129 this carries on ad infinitum. like a friend said to me, in twenty years time i wouldnt be suprised to see toughness 10 marines

I really like wht yani said. I'm of the opinion that armies don't have to have options to win against all armies equally. If so you end up with a game with litle differences between armies. 'nids should struggle to deal with armour, guard troops should be bested in cc by everyone else, marines should be expensive so you only have a few, and i know people will moan but grey knights should be super-super human but very limited to put some off playing with them. They're the minority so fewer players should use them to my mind. But hey ho, GW don't seem to care about that sort of thing or they're main lines would be guard plus X alien!

chub wrote:codex creep will always be a part of the game as GW will always try to make fair and equal armies i.e for all the kiddies out there in the eighties space marines were toughness 3 so when the orks were made tougher rick priestly made space marines tougher see wd 129 this carries on ad infinitum. like a friend said to me, in twenty years time i wouldnt be suprised to see toughness 10 marines

Yeah, it was cool when Space Marines were T4, okay when they were upgraded to T5, and then pretty weird that they needed to be T6, but I think GW really started rubbing codex creep in our faces when Space Marines became T7.