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Baxx wrote:So now that the new codex is good, I can win some games. 3rd edition codex was fair, the 4th/5th edition pdf codex was terrible. Having played with over prized units for many years, I think most BA players deserve a treat.

Oh, this could be good for the Dark Angels, Dark Eldar, Inquisition, Tau and Necron codices...


Even so, on topic, I thoroughly agree that A HELLUVA LOT of stuff in the Blood Angels codex is just plain silly. eg:
- Blood this, blood that, angel this, angel that etc. (this has been mentioned)
- DS Land Raiders - A, WHY?! B, Why can't other armies do this? C, Why don't they get an opportunity to shoot down the Thunderhawk?
- IC's being unable to join squads - why not? they're a HQ choice...
- Too many aura's available such as FNP and Furious Charge
- Why do they use Storm Ravens but nobody else does?
- Why do they use Librarian Dreadnoughts but nobody else does?
- Why do they use wrist-mounted boltguns but nobody else does?
- Why haven't they been purged yet or even shared SOME of their goodies?
- The Sanguinor's fluff.

The list goes on, I'm not saying all this is overpowered, I think it's stupid and unreasonable.

The Storm Ravens and Librarian Dreadnoughts don't bother me that much. Initially, only Black Templar had the Crusader, the Dark Angels had the Typhoon, and Blood Angels always have had furiosos and baal predators.

Now everyone has Crusaders and Typhoons, and regular marines have gotten a Furioso-esque dreadnought with the Ironclad. The Grey Knights will undoubtedly get Storm Ravens and Librarian dreads, and I expect all the toys to be rolled into the next SM revision.

Most of this is silly stuff, an attempt to give the game more of an 'OMG look at that' factor. Kind of like Magic.

The bubbles of FNP are obnoxious and not many people (outside of IG) can handle more than ten models with FNP. Sure, you can kill them with plasma but how many plasma weapons can tau fit into an army and still feel... well, feel like we're not custom-tooling to beat one army? Seriously, take a tau army versus this FNP horde. It doesn't end well.

Long story short: universal special rules should not be flung onto groups of units willy nilly for peanuts in points costs. This was something the DoC players in fantasy took crap for and I'm sure the BA players will take crap for it soon enough too.

There are Tau armies around *without* plasma? really?

When GW pull out a carbon copy codex people complain. When they do something different people complain.

What ICs cant join units? The issue is the HQs that cant join units as they arent ICs....and that makes sense given who they are.

fireknifes are standard fare in my army lists. When most people play MEQs, a Tau player would be stupid to not have plasma rifle bearing suits.

Brother SRM wrote:If you ignore the really, really out there stuff, it's not a bad codex. Just ignore the loyalist daemon prince (Mephiston), the deep striking dedicated transport Land Raiders, and the Stormraven, and you've got a decent enough codex. I just think of it as Codex: Fast Marines Who Sometimes Get Real Mad Angels.

So you're saying if we ignore the broken stuff it's not that broken?

But those things are only broken in the minds of idiots, so I don't see your point. ???

Anung Un Rama wrote:Where's Kyoto's definition fo the Red Marines when you need it?

Probably needs updating now.

Regardless of how you feel about this book, it's been written, produced, shipped, and people are playing it. I'll also say I am not complaining, just commenting. Either way it doesn't really effect me too much as the army I play shouldn't be too damaged by them, and happily no one plays them in my area.

The problem is, as I've said and so have many others there are just so many benefits for nothing. People can sit around and justify it with point costs and they can justify it with 'well you do this I'll do that.' As Slackermagee said, what are certain armies going to do versus three squads of 10 marines with FNP running at them in fast Rhinos?

What about three FAV13 Dreads flying around with Blood Talons? Mephiston is a joke too. "But he isn't an IC." people all say, does that really matter when he has 24" charge range and is small enough to get a 4+ cover from a bush?

I don't think that they are greatly changing the game, influencing the game in the same degree that DoC apparently did to Fantasy. My issue is that with all these new books pushing the power curve so far, it makes older armies struggle even harder than they were before. Then, people playing the older, more characterful armies get put into a horrible position, keep playing their armies and lose because they chose the wrong army? Or go pick up a new army, or the most drastic of all the options; quiting the game entirely. I know people that have quit the game because the only army they like is a terrible choice.

So, have they gone too far? Fluffwise I don't know because I haven't read the book. List wise, yes. They handed out way too much and broke a lot of what were 40k standards. Assault 2 templates? MC stats on a human sized model?

At the end of the day, have fun with the game.

Here, here! Back to the old standards, the status quo, the un-spoken rules of codex writing!

kaptaink wrote: My issue is that with all these new books pushing the power curve so far, it makes older armies struggle even harder than they were before. Then, people playing the older, more characterful armies get put into a horrible position, keep playing their armies and lose because they chose the wrong army?

Which "older armies" are you talking about?

My Eldar has played as Ranger Disruption, Wraithlord Assault, and Aspect Strike. My Guard has played as Drop Specials and Armored Pie. My Marines played as Death Company Generator along with Stand and Deliver. Very "characterful", also brutally effective rules exploitation armies.

The newer Codices are doing a better job at revalidating many older armies that have fallen by the wayside, although there are a number of (admittedly broken) things which aren't really possible anymore.

Fundamentally, GW's interest is to keep people buying some new stuff, and it's hard to begrudge them that.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

kaptaink wrote: My issue is that with all these new books pushing the power curve so far, it makes older armies struggle even harder than they were before. Then, people playing the older, more characterful armies get put into a horrible position, keep playing their armies and lose because they chose the wrong army?

Which "older armies" are you talking about?

My Eldar has played as Ranger Disruption, Wraithlord Assault, and Aspect Strike. My Guard has played as Drop Specials and Armored Pie. My Marines played as Death Company Generator along with Stand and Deliver. Very "characterful", also brutally effective rules exploitation armies.

The newer Codices are doing a better job at revalidating many older armies that have fallen by the wayside, although there are a number of (admittedly broken) things which aren't really possible anymore.

Fundamentally, GW's interest is to keep people buying some new stuff, and it's hard to begrudge them that.

To be frank, they could go about getting people to buy more of their own army without trying to, not so, subtly shift people into a new army. What would be wrong with small pdf updates on a regular basis for all armies? You could even make it market based: tau stealthsuits not moving enough units (or moving at ALL)? Give 'em a quick tune up to make them competitive for that elites slot again. Wraithguard got you down? Aside from making a plastic kit, perhaps making them playable first would be a good plan.

How is points cost not an acceptable way of balancing unit power?

Seriously, it's a basic pillar of the game's mechanics. If this is such an issue, you may be playing the wrong game.

Monster Rain wrote:How is points cost not an acceptable way of balancing unit power?

Seriously, it's a basic pillar of the game's mechanics. If this is such an issue, you may be playing the wrong game.

I agree with you, it is a very basic pillar of the game. Half the cost of a Captain is not enough to balance out 10, 20, 30 or more space marines getting FNP, unless you think that it does. Armies with plasma weapons get two-ish turns of long range fire and one turn of close in fire before the assault begins. Given that no more than two guys are usually firing plasma guns that's something like 5-8 casualties to one squad. Now there's two more bearing down on you. In the assault phase, eldar and other Space Marines ought to be fine (along with, perhaps, a small horde of genestealers) but most everything else gets toasted. IG can bring down S8 AP3 large blasts and smoke them out, but I don't think anyone else has access to that kind of Space Marine Horde killing power.

CSM players don't like it when their Icon bearer dies, either...

Eldar have mind war, Space Marines have Tellion and vindicators, and almost everyone can field a bunch of power weapons.

30 assault marines depending on one 50 point 1-wound model for FNP doesn't strike me as a very sound tactic.

Terminus wrote:Eldar have mind war, Space Marines have Tellion and vindicators, and almost everyone can field a bunch of power weapons.

Just to tag that...

Eldar have Banshees and Doom, and that would put a hurting on many a unit in the BA Codex. Pretty much all of them, really, other than TH/SS Terminators which cost more than they do for Vanilla Marines.

Arschbombe wrote:30 assault marines depending on one 50 point 1-wound model for FNP doesn't strike me as a very sound tactic.

Nobody sayd Blud Anglez were the brightest folks...

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Arschbombe wrote:30 assault marines depending on one 50 point 1-wound model for FNP doesn't strike me as a very sound tactic.

Nobody sayd Blud Anglez were the brightest folks...

Blood blood blood, nipples nipples nipples.


I've been curious, what is everyone's win/loss record against the new codex? has it blown you away or just underwhelmed you?

The closest I've come to losing to the Blood Angels so far was on a table where the terrain pretty much blocked all LOS to the other side of the table, so I only got one half-assed shooting phase before he was engaging the outskirts of my lines. We both held one objective at the end, so the game ended with a tie. He had 9 KPs to my 8.

But keep in mind that their main gimmicks that I've seen so far (those being the FNP marine swarm, and the razorback/predator swarm), are largely meaningless to the IG. We don't care how good you are in melee, since we'd be losing anyway, so any points you put in special combat weapons are mostly a waste. Marine tanks are total autocannon/lascannon bait, and IG has plenty of both. FNP is worthless when you have S8+ and/or AP1-2 ordnance and guns coming out of your ears.

Terminus wrote:The closest I've come to losing to the Blood Angels so far was on a table where the terrain pretty much blocked all LOS to the other side of the table, so I only got one half-assed shooting phase before he was engaging the outskirts of my lines. We both held one objective at the end, so the game ended with a tie. He had 9 KPs to my 8.

But keep in mind that their main gimmicks that I've seen so far (those being the FNP marine swarm, and the razorback/predator swarm), are largely meaningless to the IG. We don't care how good you are in melee, since we'd be losing anyway, so any points you put in special combat weapons are mostly a waste. Marine tanks are total autocannon/lascannon bait, and IG has plenty of both. FNP is worthless when you have S8+ and/or AP1-2 ordnance and guns coming out of your ears.

So, hypothetically you're not playing as IG. Would your views on the whole FNP bubbles or fast Rhino chassis, or Dreadnought spam be the same?

I play Salamanders with Vulkan, how do you think they would fair against them? Again, I've never played against the new BA.

Well, my Chaosy Space Wolves wouldn't be concerned. The 2000 point list shoots 14 missiles and two lascannons a turn at long range, and there are plenty of meltas/powerfists/S10 thunderhammers among the rest of the list, so I'm not very concerned about the armor spam (except for the outflanking Baal with flamestorm... that thing is SCARY good for 115 points). Melee-wise, Space Wolves and Angels match up pretty well, especially if you can deny the charge (and piling in also forces him to expose the Sanguinary Priest).

With a Vulkan list, you have the tools to deal with vehicles, and your Vulkan + Assault Terminator combat block is a match for anything they can throw at you. Watch out for those fast vindicators, though! The lack of good long-range AT of the typical Vulkan list is definitely a weakness, but podding a dreadnought can definitely cause some problems for his predators.

Don't get me wrong, Blood Angels are not a push-over for any of these armies, but neither are they overwhelming. They are a solid challenge, and although so far my IG and "Wolves" have had the advantage, Blood Angels tactics are yet to fully mature. They are definitely a contender, especially in larger games where they can stretch their wings a bit.

Terminus wrote:FNP is worthless when you have S8+ and/or AP1-2 ordnance and guns coming out of your ears.

And that is why my Guard army starts with 3 Demolishers. I've yet to encounter any tactical problem that 3 S10 AP2 pie plates can't do a fair job of solving...

My preference is Executioner with plasma sponsons and two Manticores. 3-6 S10 ordnance templates and 5 plasma cannon blasts, oh yeah.

Monster Rain wrote:Wow.

"I can deal with giant bugs and violent fungus fighting colorfully armored, genetically engineered warrior monks in SPEHSS! But riding wolves? This is officially beyond the scope of my suspension of disbelief."

Yes. A genetically engineered man in brightly coloured powered armour is fantastical, but quite cool. A man in power armour riding a wolf into battle is stupid.

It's just my opinion, of course, there's no objective measure for when cool becomes stupid, but everyone has a point and there's been a lot of comments about how things have gone too far towards being stupid in the last few codices.

Are you arguing that there's no point where people can say 'that's just too stupid', or are you saying that no-one can consider a man on powered armour riding a wolf anywhere near that position?


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nosferatu1001 wrote:When GW pull out a carbon copy codex people complain. When they do something different people complain.

Yes, people will always complain. But that doesn't mean every complaint is illegitimate.

Riding wolves is beyond the scope of my suspension of disbelief because unless this wolf is about 5x larger than the Space Marine, its spine would collapse when it tried to run (considering in power armor a Marine probably weighs a good half a ton). Canines and horses are very different animals.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Anung Un Rama wrote:Where's Kyoto's definition fo the Red Marines when you need it?

Probably needs updating now.

Thanks. Is there already a thread where you posted them all?

Lupines you mean.

And there ARE NO wolves on Fenris.

I laugh at people calling Mephiston "broken" - erm, no, dies to decent shooting like any other lone creature. Any psychic defence and you have a 50% chance of cripppling that "24"" charge range (how? he's not fleet, so 18" with Wings, or if you put JUST HIM in a vehicle you get to add 3" to that)

Stormraven "broken"? How? It's an AV12 skimmer - shoot it with S6+ weapons and it will die, and it isnt getting cover saves unless it goes flat out.

Flamestorm Baals are nasty, especially on the outflank, but everything else is just slightly too expensive to be broken. Meaning it isnt broken.....

He IS fleet.

Given that Space Wolves ride on giant wolf-looking creatures called "thunderwolves", are frequently followed around by smaller (but also wolf-looking) creatures called "Fenrisian wolves", bedeck themselves with animal trinkets like "wolf tail talismans" and "wolftooth necklaces", and about 90% of the Chapter's nomenclature involves the word "wolf" in some way, I'm pretty damn sure there are some friggin' wolves on Fenris.