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It seesm to me that peole are over looking a simple fact here. terrain is a key point of battle. The amount of terain should be agreeded upon by both players, a set number of peices placed by each player in alternating fashion to represent the generals elading eacha rmy taking the time to plan their strategies. We dont fight engagements like we useded to wghere each army lines up on oppisite sieds of an agreeded meeting place and charge onne and other.

the current american war in iraq and afganistan is a perfect example of how a 40k engagement might go minus the "hey we lost declare the planet exterminautus and lets go have lunch." We fight agasint hidden enemies in terrain that is difficult if not somtimes impossible to move through. we have had times of enemy snipers entrenched in buildings while we have heavy artillery pummeling through the place and leveling the building but to no effect.

terrain is often veiwed as Scenery as opposed to a tool of war. When i play i do my best to set my terrain to as much my benefit and the benefit of my troops and to the detriment of my enemy as much as i can, but leavng it open enough to be versitile that when the plan goes to crap, as it always does, that i can manuever and compensate. terrain placement is an artform pure and simple. you jsut have to know how to utilize it, spread out some in it, if you know your fighting IG and they are bringing hella batttle cannons and pie plates pick a side spread out and move as fast as you can to sledghammer their weak flank. Deploying in a battle line where you and the tannks are looking each other dead in the eye, guess what, you lost. Force deployment in terrian is just as crucial as the placement of terrain itself.

But i would have to agree, tournamewnts are in a sad state of affairs witht he ammount of terrain they place, because it becomes less about the skill of the general and more about how big of a hammer he/she is carrying and how fast he/she can swing it. Lets see a mobilized army fight on the jungles of catachan where their skimmers crqash into a tree or tanks break a tread every 6" of movement. or lets see that Mobilized unit wander through the streets of a ruined city with road blocks of las cannon and melta fire around every turn.

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
George S. Patton

Titankiller17:

I ain't over-looking terrain, but well said. Speaking of battle reports, I think it's mercer that usually has the bare minimum of terrain and he has a whack of buildings in his battle reports and it shows.

I wasn't pointing fingers, but alot of people dont use much terrain. the local gw store here has nicley painted and modeled tabled but as far as terrrain like buildings and hills ect it is very sparce. and in my local store when you go more than a coule of peices per player with terrain they tend to get a little antsy.

As above - terrain is the key here.
Bristol has a wonderful gaming centre (Vanguard) who can more than 25% fill 50+ tables. To a theme on every table. LOS blocking buildings or various shapes and sizes, forests, jungles etc abound. Works brilliantly. Fire lane control hampers armies (wow, like 4th ed again, but not quite so complete) that rely on long range shooting, giving more chance to close and kill.

'Proper' terrain is not a cure all. Vehicles are inherently stronger, tougher, faster and just generally all around better than a dude on foot and with the codexes coming out these days many of them actually cost LESS than an individual model contained within them. All bonuses, pathetic drawbacks and pitifully low cost.

Terrain does not give some sort of magical super bonus to non-vehicles that it doesn't give to vehicles. A cover save is a cover save and a vehicle with a cover save benefits the same 50% on a 4+ cover that a dude on foot does only the vehicle then gets it's 'armor save' afterwards anyway because you have to roll to penetrate. Further, the amount of anti-vehicle shots is necessarily limited in a given army because they must be high strength. These types of shots are much more tightly controlled than your average bolter shot.

Terrain is not a panacea.

How would you (as in the collective you) fix this perceived problem? Let us brain storm.

M.

The weaknesses vehicles have are fine and fitting. It's just the cost that needs to be increased.

The costs are fine. The Chimera, for example, may have AV12 to the front, but it has long sides with AV10. Anti-infantry weapons are going to put a hurt on it. Ditto for the Rhino: Autocannons turn them into mince. Squadrons only make vehicles vulnerable to glancing hits, and Land Raiders are expensive.

If you want to deal with massed Razorbacks or Chimeras, do what anyone dealing with multiple small units needs to do: spread your firepower instead of concentrating it.

I think that's why such lists are popular, because they combine the solution to multiple vehicle units with multiple small unit defense. The fact that an army entire without vehicles (or large monsters) is nearly immune to a heavy investment in anti-tank guns seems unspeakable.

I think the whole "vehicles are awesome" attitude is both the result of many people not playing with enough terrain, line of sight blocking and otherwise, and the natural evolution of the meta-game. Considering that most players seem to think in terms of material or army lists rather than tactics or on-table action, it's no wonder that internet list builders favour vehicles.

People seem to assume, for example, that you're going to be hitting the front armour with shooting, that vehicles are always going to be moving 7"+, that Dreadnoughts won't be immobilized, and that they're always going to have a cover save. Not an exhaustive list of common internet assumptions, but one that definitely makes vehicles seem like the better choice.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:They surely can't be complaining about too many Tau vehicles, because Tau vehicles cost about twice as much as SM and IG.

The Tau Codex is also from early 4th, so it's a bad comparison KK. Given recent moves to decrease the cost of transports, we're likely to see the price of Devilfish shrink to meet the same level.

It's a good comparison because it provides a logical explanation for the OP's complaint, which is that compared to 4th edition there are too many vehicles in 5th.

The costs of 4th edition vehicles compared to 5th are directly relevant.

Nurglitch wrote:The costs are fine.

They're obviously not if it's always optimal to always take them for every single list.

Make them sub-optimal by changing the terrain to make vehicles much less useful -- a dense jungle or city board would do.

Play a game in which you can only spend a set proportion of your points on vehicles.

But both of those solutions are just signs of bad game design.

You shouldn't have to use map design or arbitrary restrictions because GW can't balance anything worth crap.

Think of it like this:

Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris, Core Design wrote:What a level design should not be used for is to cover deficiencies in the gameplay...good gameplay consists of choices that are non-trivial. Choices should never just be a question of recognizing that X is always better than Y, and so therefore you should always do X. A level that says, "You can't build bridges; find another way" begs the question, "Why are bridges in the game at all, then?"

Simply put, such restrictions you suggest would serve as a cheap cover to a much bigger problem. If we're going to purposely limit vehicle usage, why are we even putting vehicles on the table at all?

Once more, for the peanut gallery; Terrain is not the solution to vehicles. Seriously I've typed this out in excruciating detail three times now.

If vehicles aren't always a "better option", then why are tournaments currently dominated by Mech from what I can tell?

Is it because Tournament tables aren't essentially covered from head to toe with Jungles that prevent vehicles from moving about?

Do terrain per the rulebook, and vehicles are still able to maneuver around to where they need to go.

And where do they need to go? Towards Objectives!

Objectives that players get an opportunity to place.
Objectives that will always be placed in an optimal position for the player who is placing it.

Fafnir wrote:But both of those solutions are just signs of bad game design.

You shouldn't have to use map design or arbitrary restrictions because GW can't balance anything worth crap.

Think of it like this:

Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris, Core Design wrote:What a level design should not be used for is to cover deficiencies in the gameplay...good gameplay consists of choices that are non-trivial. Choices should never just be a question of recognizing that X is always better than Y, and so therefore you should always do X. A level that says, "You can't build bridges; find another way" begs the question, "Why are bridges in the game at all, then?"

Simply put, such restrictions you suggest would serve as a cheap cover to a much bigger problem. If we're going to purposely limit vehicle usage, why are we even putting vehicles on the table at all?

We put vehicles on the table because people want to play with them.

They are limited by the Force Chart and points costs, which are arbitrary restrictions. It is largely IG and SM, who have access to cheap and/or lots of vehicles, that are part of the problem. That is a codex design issue.

IRL, vehicles are good, and they are affected by terrain. They are good in the game, and they are affected by terrain too.

If you're saying 40K is badly designed, I agree that it has a lot of flaws, and there are better designed games out there. However this is a forum to discuss 40K. It isn't really helpful to blame GW and expect them to fix it because that won't happen.

Players can and ought to make adjustments to the game in order to maximise their enjoyment. Wargamers have always done this.

While the scenario set up section says to put 25% on the table, people aren't required to adhere to that.

A nice river would stop a lot of vehicles dead, and give the advantage to skimmers and the Chimaera. Other ideas are a densely built-up city, or a featureless flat plain which is an ice floe thick enough for infantry to move on but too think for vehicles.

SumYungGui wrote:Once more, for the peanut gallery; Terrain is not the solution to vehicles. Seriously I've typed this out in excruciating detail three times now.

Once again, terrain is not the ultimate solution, but it is a means to an end. its effective board control is what it boils down too. My las cannons tear through armor just as well now as they did in 3rd, now they jsut get another chance to ignore it. But i alos get a save agaisnt their attacks the same way they do agasint mine, iif that vindi shoots my guys in cover and i am spread proberly i cna limit its kill power and then potentialy out right negate its hit. Vehicles became more popular becasue Los and terrain became mroe useful. they dint change vehicles that much from when i played in 3rd. Land Raiders are still 250 points, still have the same weaponry, now they jsut get a larger transport capacity. people are just to over taken witht he fact that for whatever reason tnaks dont fit their play style so they dont feild them and they get stuck plaing agasint razorspam ect.

The fact is you have to adapt and overcome. its like in MTG, when a particular metagame rules the field, go rouge and find what beats the meta game. once you steam roll them you foce them to adapt and the next "hey thast unfair" isssue comes along. This game is about strategy, if they bring Av 72 tanks to a fight, then you find a way around it (like lance weapons), and push on.

But i have to say that i like alot of the new changes. necorns took a big ht on gauss weaponry, but i am happy that unit of 12 warriors cant first turn destroy my land raider and kill the entire unit inside anymore on a lucky roll. I'm not saying all the changes were for the better but it comes down to this. you can't please everyone and when you can't, your gonna piss someone off. So rather then trying to change the game itself try to change YOUR game to better use the rules to your advantage. its all you can do other than siply not play until the next ed comes out and see if things went better for you this time around.

Fafnir:

Except it's not always optimal to maximize vehicles in every list.

A well built IG gunline army can utterly destroy a mechanized army... without using a single vehicle if you prefer, though vehicles as support can really give variety to the list.

Pretty much. One of the things that makes an all mechanized list preferred, if not preferable, is that the paper to its rock is all infantry so that all the anti-vehicle its toting is really inefficient, and it's trading shots with an army that can concentrate on anti-tank weapons because anti-infantry is covered by basic weapons.

For example:

Space Marine Tactics Squad (5) with Razorback (Las-Plas, Extra Armour, Storm Bolter) = Space Marine Tactical Squad (10) with Plasma Gun, Lascannon

You get two units, one with a Lascannon and a Plasma Gun. The Mechanized group gets 12 Bolter shots, 1 Lascannon shot, and 2 Plasma shots re-rolled. The Infantry group gets 16 Bolter shots, 1 Lascannon shot, and 2 Plasma shots. The Lascannon can pot a Marine, or it can pot a Razorback. The Razorback can be wrecked by four damage results, whereas a combat squad needs at least five unsaved wounds. The Razorback can be Shaken, but the Infantry cannot be pinned.

Fafnir wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

SumYungGui wrote:At the end of the day vehicles are extremely effective, horrendously cheap and so close to completely lacking any sort of drawback that they have become the gold standard. It's a mech or nothing metagame, and everyone loses because of it.

What do you consider too cheap? What would you consider the 'right' price? And where does the Rhino - the least threatening vehicle in all of 40K - fit into this?

The right price is whatever would cause you to have to actually think about whether it's worth the investment, where it's no longer something you automatically buy for every squad just because you can, but rather, something you buy for a squad to fullfill a specific purpose.

I agree with fafnir.

As a gamer fond of infantry, I haven't played 5th in quite some time now. Vehicles are totally undercosted.

Not only are they far tougher yet cheaper then before. Not only is it generally safer to hide you units in transports. Mobility is such a huge factor with objectives and what not. Not having vehicles is a huge disadvantage IMO.


Finally

The fact is most tables are scantily terrained. And will remain that way.

Well, if you're going to be defeatist instead of using it as an excuse to engage in some terrain building, then it's probably a good thing you're not playing the game.

If you want mobility, get some Jump Infantry, or Bikes, or simply get some infantry that you're willing to run with instead of shooting. Use the innate Deep Strike ability of so many units (it's like there's an actual use for Storm Troopers...).

If you think vehicles are protective and mobile, take all the long range anti-tank you can lay your hands on. Where a tank and an Infantry squad duel with Lascannons the advantage goes to the Infantry.

Titankiller17 wrote:

SumYungGui wrote:Once more, for the peanut gallery; Terrain is not the solution to vehicles. Seriously I've typed this out in excruciating detail three times now.

Once again, terrain is not the ultimate solution, but it is a means to an end. its effective board control is what it boils down too. My las cannons tear through armor just as well now as they did in 3rd, now they jsut get another chance to ignore it. But i alos get a save agaisnt their attacks the same way they do agasint mine, iif that vindi shoots my guys in cover and i am spread proberly i cna limit its kill power and then potentialy out right negate its hit. Vehicles became more popular becasue Los and terrain became mroe useful. they dint change vehicles that much from when i played in 3rd. Land Raiders are still 250 points, still have the same weaponry, now they jsut get a larger transport capacity. people are just to over taken witht he fact that for whatever reason tnaks dont fit their play style so they dont feild them and they get stuck plaing agasint razorspam ect.

Your lascannon may tear through armor just the same as it did in 3rd Ed, except now in 5th Ed the rolls on the damage chart are far, far more forgiving to the tank. Glancing hits are even more forgiving than they were previously.

That and your opponent has the opportunity to use Cover (or bring their own) in order to cut the number of successful penetrating hits you get per turn in half.

Vehicles became much harder to kill with the 5th Ed rules change; while at the same time, the ability to negate Penetrating or Glancing hits via Cover (and via Wargear).

Of course this goes out the window once you can guarantee the ability to get a lot of Meltaguns close enough to said tanks, which is easier said than done for many armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:
If you think vehicles are protective and mobile, take all the long range anti-tank you can lay your hands on. Where a tank and an Infantry squad duel with Lascannons the advantage goes to the Infantry.

Except in missions where you have to capture objectives, and therefore can't move and fire "all the long-range anti-tank you can get your hands on".

Where as vehicles can either advance towards objectives (and Troops can score on objectives if they're inside said vehicles), or sit back and shoot you if the matchup/terrain/mission favor that approach.

I will say again, that there are some exceptions to the "all mech is better" approach - and a nearly all infantry army can be the Rock to the mech Scissors. Except only really Orks, IG, and potentially Sisters can do it (the girls want some tank support). For all the other lists, Mech is the way to go generally.

Again, if vehicles weren't super-awesome in 5th, why are tournaments (and more importantly, tournament winning armies) chock full of "Mechanized <insert army here>"?

Especially in missions where you have to capture Objectives. If someone burned all those points on vehicles and anti-tank weapons when you invest in infantry and anti-tank weapons, then you're going to shut down their transport options and have more bodies to take the objective when you both make a run for it (or simply use your anti-tank weapons to proportionately greater effect on the numerically lesser force).

I've explained that tournaments are full of mechanized armies because the terrain is usually missing, and the natural evolution of the meta-game.

To understand the natural evolution of the meta-game, you have to understand both evolutionary game theory, and the role of noise. Evolutionary game theory is simple, as it simply describes how a selection process (for strategies in multiple iterations of games) can focus players on a subset of optimal strategies. Noise is basically all the bluster, analysis, and so on that goes on on the internet, sometimes obscuring the truth of what actually goes on thanks to the vocal minority principal, sometimes actually influencing the truth as players begin to replace their gaming experiences with theoretical perspectives.

Mechanized has seemed like an optimal configuration because it has all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages of semi-mechanized lists, and as lists became more mechanized in response to the refrain of "Mech up!", the game reached an equilibrium point with mechanized lists composed of multiple small units being considered to dominate because they both maximized the principle of mechanization being good, and were the armies that tournament winners used.

To add to this, the opposite direct, that of massed Infantry, has mainly been done with Tyranids, Daemons, and Orks which are weaker in the longer ranged anti-tank capabilities that Infantry armies need (Yes, Lascannons are expensive for a reason). There are many impediments to such radical change of strategic direction, such as the lack of terrain, popular emphasis on mechanization, and the general conservatism of gamers (think how long it took to get to this stage where mechanization is the received wisdom rather than simply something I advocated back near the end of 4th edition...).

But as Melissia points out, the new Imperial Guard can do infantry as well as mechanized. And I think people are figuring out how Tyranids work, and thus how anti-mech infantry can work.

So what you're saying is that in tournaments, or when you're playing "competitively" it's better to be Mech "because of the terrain".

I'd posit that it's that way for "normal games" when you use the recommended amount of terrain in the rulebook as well. No table/terrain setup has so much terrain that vehicles won't be able to maneuver, and as a Mechanized player you should be placing Objectives in open areas that are easy to reach with Vehicles.

If that's the case, then what's the point of posting in the thread? To say "well if you theoretically play on a jungle board then infantry become better!"

Yes, IG can make an infantry gunline that will give many all Mech Lists fits. IG can also make a Gunline that moves, shoots, and has lots of vehicles in addition to bodies that give almost any list fits; it's called "The Leafblower".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:
To add to this, the opposite direct, that of massed Infantry, has mainly been done with Tyranids, Daemons, and Orks which are weaker in the longer ranged anti-tank capabilities that Infantry armies need (Yes, Lascannons are expensive for a reason). There are many impediments to such radical change of strategic direction, such as the lack of terrain, popular emphasis on mechanization, and the general conservatism of gamers (think how long it took to get to this stage where mechanization is the received wisdom rather than simply something I advocated back near the end of 4th edition...).

I don't know how I missed that on my first reading.

You simply can't be serious.

4th Ed 40k you didn't go Mech unless you were Tau or Eldar - because you had Skimmers and they were godly survivable. Nothing else really went "mech" that was competitive until 5th Edition came out and the rules changed to:

1.) Make it impossible for non-AP1 Glancing hits to Destroy a Vehicle in a single shot.
2.) Make it harder for non-AP1 Penetrating hits to Destroy a Vehicle in a single shot.
3.) Give the ability to take "Saves" against Penetrating or Glancing hits to vehicles through terrain or Wargear - diluting the power of firing multiple shots at a single tank.

Voodoo Boyz

So did you somehow completely miss all that I wrote about the evolution of the metagame, or did you just ignore it?

It's quite disheartening to try and patiently explain these things to you if you're not going to bother to engage with what I'm writing. It would be nice if you gave me the same consideration I'm giving you.

Also, I'm quite serious: I advocated mechanization at the end of 4th edition. Feel free to look it up on here or Warseer.

I've been saying for months (though quietly and intermittently) that Tyranids got an early reputation as a weak codex because there isn't an obvious power build that jumps out and grabs you by the throat, like some other codexes have.

People now are talking about Zoanthropes as one of the best AT units in the game.

BTW it was Eldar vehicles that were godly survivable in 4th edition, because of the Holo-Field.

Tau were good, because of SMF and the Disruption Pod, but they were never nearly as good as Eldar, they just got tarred with the same brush for being alien skimmers.

Nurglitch wrote:Voodoo Boyz

So did you somehow completely miss all that I wrote about the evolution of the metagame, or did you just ignore it?

It's quite disheartening to try and patiently explain these things to you if you're not going to bother to engage with what I'm writing. It would be nice if you gave me the same consideration I'm giving you.

Also, I'm quite serious: I advocated mechanization at the end of 4th edition. Feel free to look it up on here or Warseer.

I frankly don't agree with most of what you're saying about the "evolution of the metagame". You're explanation of the "Dominance of Mech" is based on the idea that a vocal minority advocated it, which lead to more people using it at tournaments, hence it won more tournaments, hence it becomes more dominant.

This is simply not true. Players looked at the rules, saw what looked good on paper, tested it, and then re-enforced it with "spam" to optimize its effectiveness.

This happens fairly quickly with people who play a lot. What is "most powerful" in a new Codex is identified fairly quickly and is then maximized. The only lag is in buying/painting/assembling models and then getting to a tournament. Mech wasn't "always good" except in specific cases in 4th (for two armies!), it took rule changes to the core game, and then some changes in codex's to make it "optimal".

If there was an army in 40k right now that could easily counter Mech Spam, without having distinct problems in popular missions/matchups, then it would be popular and people would know about it. It really wouldn't be that hard to figure out; and there are enough people posting and playing that it would be disseminated fairly quickly.

Hell, even you have admitted that "Mech is popular in tournaments because the terrain favors it". Guess what, that is competitive 40k. When you post on a Tactics forum, 99% of the time, people are playing with terrain like that, in that kind of "meta-environment". If that's what's "best" there, then that's what's best in the vast majority of 40k scenarios that people play when they're trying to be "competitive".

Finally, in terms of you advocating mech in 4th, and it taking "the internet majority to slowly agree with your always true wisdom"; that's crazy. As I said, only two lists in 4th did Mech and did well: Tau & Eldar. It wasn't because vehicles were great, it was because their skimmers were very hard to kill. Marines or IG in Razorbacks/Chimeras wasn't some super-secret awesomely good army in 4th Edition that people didn't realize existed. It wasn't effective under those rules and those codex's.

Mech became popular when the rules and codex's changed to make it effective. That didn't happen till after 4th Ed died.

I don't know, I like the fact tanks are useful. A battlefield with only infantry just doesn't speak to me of futuristic space battles as massive tanks like Vindicator and Land Raider or sleek hovercrafts like Fire Prisms and Wave Serpents shooting at each other from across the field.

What I don't like is how the most successful builds for mech armies seem to be multiple cheap vehicles with just bare minimum troops parked on an objective. For Eldar it's the same, Wave Serpents are really hard to crack and putting 5 Dire Avengers inside makes them scoring. In kill points it's not such an issue, but 2/3 mission types deals with objectives.

Wouldn't the easiest solution be to simply remove the ability to make transports scoring with troops inside? Vehicles as such can only ever contest, why are transports exempt to that rule?

Voodoo Boyz wrote:I frankly don't agree with most of what you're saying about the "evolution of the metagame". You're explanation of the "Dominance of Mech" is based on the idea that a vocal minority advocated it, which lead to more people using it at tournaments, hence it won more tournaments, hence it becomes more dominant.

Of course this isn't true, because it isn't what I said. Your paraphrase is incorrect, and thus you are arguing against a straw man. I guess there's no point in continuing this conversation.

Nurglitch wrote:

Voodoo Boyz wrote:I frankly don't agree with most of what you're saying about the "evolution of the metagame". You're explanation of the "Dominance of Mech" is based on the idea that a vocal minority advocated it, which lead to more people using it at tournaments, hence it won more tournaments, hence it becomes more dominant.

Of course this isn't true, because it isn't what I said. Your paraphrase is incorrect, and thus you are arguing against a straw man. I guess there's no point in continuing this conversation.

This is what you said:

Mechanized has seemed like an optimal configuration because it has all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages of semi-mechanized lists, and as lists became more mechanized in response to the refrain of "Mech up!", the game reached an equilibrium point with mechanized lists composed of multiple small units being considered to dominate because they both maximized the principle of mechanization being good, and were the armies that tournament winners used.

Sounds a lot like what I paired it down to.

The previous paragraph was "noise" about defining the metagame; not applicable. The following paragraph was basically stating that the horde armies (Orks, Nids, Demons) lacked long-ranged anti-tank, and weren't a good counter to lots of vehicles. It then went on to insinuate that Mech was always good, and you advocated it at the end of 4th Edition; it only took the entirety of the tournament players and the internet community to realize this because they're "slow to change".

I'm countering this by saying: "Mech is dominant because the rules changed to make it better. The players have responded by taking more of what's good rules wise and less of what's not."

The entire point of the thread is that "Mech seems too dominant. So dominant that for my Marine army, it's way better to just stay in my transports and not get out. Most competitive armies I read about online or see at tournies has tons and tons of vehicles." So far you have tried to argue otherwise. Or present other scenarios that aren't representative of the competitive game-environment (ie. Tournaments) where it may not be the best choice.