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 Xenomancers wrote:
I didn't vote because I really don't think it's a problem considering the worst offender of blob star (Guilliman) is actually part of the weakest army in the game and even with ultimate blobstar power still can't place highly in tournaments. however - if other armies had access to this style of play - it would be overwhelming to the point it would break the game.

Wooaaah there, share some of that warp dust with the rest of us!

Even if we accept that aura blob-star is as powerful as the previous invisible/2++ re-roll-able invincible deathstars (IMO it isn't even close), its nowhere near as broken as some of the other current mechanics; for example since CA the clarification on character targeting has provided a practically unbeatable counter to the typical Guilliman parking lot or static gunline - an army of chaplain ven dreads with one or two deepstrikers dropping out of LOS. No auras required and would be free to navigate the table taking any/all objectives while casually returning fire as everything is a character with less than 10 wounds and therefore illegal to select as a target.

My take on this is that since psychic activity has shifted away from friendly buff casts (invisibility, endurance, prescience) to offensive power (smite, smite, smite), auras have moved into the power vacuum. This makes a wider range of characters compete for a place in your list so is in general good for the game.

ERJAK wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I didn't vote because I really don't think it's a problem considering the worst offender of blob star (Guilliman) is actually part of the weakest army in the game and even with ultimate blobstar power still can't place highly in tournaments. however - if other armies had access to this style of play - it would be overwhelming to the point it would break the game.

this is factually bullgak

Below is the current breakdown of what armies are winning events. The list combines all the top lists for 8th edition 2017 ITC season events only, taking only the top three from each Major or GT.

20 Astra Militarum
17 Chaos Space Marines
16 Ultramarines
16 Daemons
16 Ynnari
7 Orks
4 Space Marines
4 T’au Empire
4 Grey Knights
3 Officio Assassinorum
3 Blood Angels
3 Sisters of Battle
3 Death Guard
2 Genestealer Cults
2 Imperial Knights
2 Renegade Knights
2 Adeptus Mechanicus
2 Tyranids
1 Space Wolves
1 Adeptus Custodes
1 Dark Angels

Check out the tourney results from since the craft world eldar list was dropped. Um got 9 of those wins in the first months of 8th edition when they were the only codex in town. Check out the most recent FLG podcast for a real good breakdown of how armies are doing now and what the competitive meta has evolved into. It isn't Gman and his blob.

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2017/12/18/chapter-tactics-50-year-in-review-and-which-factions-dominated-2017/

It's 2 hours but will give you a very good basis for how the actual game is being played and what is winning (hint, it's not any flavor of vanilla marines).

I guess bobby G is dominating the local meta scene or something but as far as real competitive warhammer 40k it's AM, Chaos, Demons and Eldar all punching way above their weight (numbers courtesy of my arse but they are just an illustration of my point: 20% of armies are guard but 40% of top 3 finishers are guard vs same 20% of armies are SM and 5% of top 3 finishers are SM)

I still don't think they talk enough about early edition dominance of SM due to codex release schedules in their analysis but they mention it and do a pretty good numbers break down. I'm curious to see what LVO brings but the only "competitive" SM builds with Girlyman feature 3x stormravens (will probably be fire-raptors) and then whatever else to capture some objectives with the 4-500 points left over.

bananathug wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I didn't vote because I really don't think it's a problem considering the worst offender of blob star (Guilliman) is actually part of the weakest army in the game and even with ultimate blobstar power still can't place highly in tournaments. however - if other armies had access to this style of play - it would be overwhelming to the point it would break the game.

this is factually bullgak

Below is the current breakdown of what armies are winning events. The list combines all the top lists for 8th edition 2017 ITC season events only, taking only the top three from each Major or GT.

20 Astra Militarum
17 Chaos Space Marines
16 Ultramarines
16 Daemons
16 Ynnari
7 Orks
4 Space Marines
4 T’au Empire
4 Grey Knights
3 Officio Assassinorum
3 Blood Angels
3 Sisters of Battle
3 Death Guard
2 Genestealer Cults
2 Imperial Knights
2 Renegade Knights
2 Adeptus Mechanicus
2 Tyranids
1 Space Wolves
1 Adeptus Custodes
1 Dark Angels

Check out the tourney results from since the craft world eldar list was dropped. Um got 9 of those wins in the first months of 8th edition when they were the only codex in town. Check out the most recent FLG podcast for a real good breakdown of how armies are doing now and what the competitive meta has evolved into. It isn't Gman and his blob.

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2017/12/18/chapter-tactics-50-year-in-review-and-which-factions-dominated-2017/

It's 2 hours but will give you a very good basis for how the actual game is being played and what is winning (hint, it's not any flavor of vanilla marines).

I guess bobby G is dominating the local meta scene or something but as far as real competitive warhammer 40k it's AM, Chaos, Demons and Eldar all punching way above their weight (numbers courtesy of my arse but they are just an illustration of my point: 20% of armies are guard but 40% of top 3 finishers are guard vs same 20% of armies are SM and 5% of top 3 finishers are SM)

I still don't think they talk enough about early edition dominance of SM due to codex release schedules in their analysis but they mention it and do a pretty good numbers break down. I'm curious to see what LVO brings but the only "competitive" SM builds with Girlyman feature 3x stormravens (will probably be fire-raptors) and then whatever else to capture some objectives with the 4-500 points left over.

Hum, I'll have to watch that sometime. I must be missing something huge because Chaos Daemons seem to be having a piss-weak index to me.

 Galas wrote:
Characters are at last usefull without needing to be combat mpnsters or psykers. Let them be.

I always thought characters were plenty useful - now, at least for orks, characters are almost a liability. I mean, KFF, warboss, waaagh banner, and to a lesser extent painboyz are helpful, but all of the above, ESPECIALLY warbossi, need to stay far, far away from combat, which is decidedly un-orky.

I mean, the way characters work now, getting a warboss into combat is basically a death sentence. Mega armor helps, and ghaz is decent, but a 4+ armor save boss, even biker bosses like zhard, are just easy kill points in CC. And it feels dumb to not send a warboss into combat, but it feels dumber to just watch them get instantly killed by anything more threatening than fire warriors.

And if you EVER make a positioning mistake and your opponent can target a character, they're just gone.

I just wish characters could be useful, but not so fragile - like last edition.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Characters are at last usefull without needing to be combat mpnsters or psykers. Let them be.

I always thought characters were plenty useful - now, at least for orks, characters are almost a liability. I mean, KFF, warboss, waaagh banner, and to a lesser extent painboyz are helpful, but all of the above, ESPECIALLY warbossi, need to stay far, far away from combat, which is decidedly un-orky.

I mean, the way characters work now, getting a warboss into combat is basically a death sentence. Mega armor helps, and ghaz is decent, but a 4+ armor save boss, even biker bosses like zhard, are just easy kill points in CC. And it feels dumb to not send a warboss into combat, but it feels dumber to just watch them get instantly killed by anything more threatening than fire warriors.

And if you EVER make a positioning mistake and your opponent can target a character, they're just gone.

I just wish characters could be useful, but not so fragile - like last edition.

Bring back IC's I say! Unit attachments helped a lot in this regard, but I get that some people abused these rules (like taking 10 chump troops as obligatory wounds for their awesome HQ), but it worked better than now where you have to decide who is closer to who and if its a legal target, plus the Characters have to be X distance from the unit to distinguish themselves as not being part of that unit, and people still shield their characters anyway with obligatory wounds.... needlessly complicated it. Also, this is where Auras started to come into play; before your IC's would confer benefits to the unit they attached to, now your characters give aura effects to everyone and their mother. How does my Chaos Lord allow my tanks to reroll ones to hit? Who knows... warhammer and stuff.

I just don't see this in actual gameplay, and I only play in competitive settings.

This complaint is beyond my understanding. Yes, there are auras, yes players take advantage of them. Don't like the fact armies group up around their leaders? It's "ugly and looks stupid"? Any other abilities that ruin your enjoyment of the game because you think it should look better? As mentioned, there so many options to play it's odd that instead of playing one you hope that a fundamental aspect of the game be retooled.

ERJAK wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I didn't vote because I really don't think it's a problem considering the worst offender of blob star (Guilliman) is actually part of the weakest army in the game and even with ultimate blobstar power still can't place highly in tournaments. however - if other armies had access to this style of play - it would be overwhelming to the point it would break the game.

this is factually bullgak

Below is the current breakdown of what armies are winning events. The list combines all the top lists for 8th edition 2017 ITC season events only, taking only the top three from each Major or GT.

20 Astra Militarum
17 Chaos Space Marines
16 Ultramarines
16 Daemons
16 Ynnari
7 Orks
4 Space Marines
4 T’au Empire
4 Grey Knights
3 Officio Assassinorum
3 Blood Angels
3 Sisters of Battle
3 Death Guard
2 Genestealer Cults
2 Imperial Knights
2 Renegade Knights
2 Adeptus Mechanicus
2 Tyranids
1 Space Wolves
1 Adeptus Custodes
1 Dark Angels

What is the date on all of those ultra marine victories? It's also good to know that Tau and Greyknights are top 10 competitive armies right now.

Beware of unfiltered data. It will lead you to the wrong conclusions 100% of the time.

One could also say to beware of massively over-filtering data through one's own biases.

Space Marines certainly aren't "the meta" currently, but they're nowhere near "the worst army". You almost definitely have Grey Knights, Dark Eldar, Necrons, Admech, Space Wolves, Genestealer Cult, Tau, Thousand Sons, and unless someone finds some bonkers new combo in the new codex that is not immediately obvious Dark Angels behind you.

At this point you've constructed a mental fortress by which any data from the past can be disregarded as out of date because the gigantic nerfs that Space Marines received in chapter approved will surely delete them from the game, any data from the present can be disregarded as of course the game is in a state of flux and every current index army will be receiving huge buffs to make them more powerful than marines in the future, and any possibility of future buffs for marines can be disregarded as impossible because GW has never in their history gone back and rebalanced a flagship faction they released early in an edition to ensure they're keeping up with the joneses (Certainly not in Age of Sigmar with the stormcasts and not in 7th edition with various campaign books and angels of death for Marines). So therefore you can conclude that Marines are and always will be the worst faction ever in 40k, horribly oppressed, impossibly outmatched to auto-lose forever.

the_scotsman wrote:
At this point you've constructed a mental fortress by which any data from the past can be disregarded as out of date because the gigantic nerfs that Space Marines received in chapter approved will surely delete them from the game, any data from the present can be disregarded as of course the game is in a state of flux and every current index army will be receiving huge buffs to make them more powerful than marines in the future, and any possibility of future buffs for marines can be disregarded as impossible because GW has never in their history gone back and rebalanced a flagship faction they released early in an edition to ensure they're keeping up with the joneses (Certainly not in Age of Sigmar with the stormcasts and not in 7th edition with various campaign books and angels of death for Marines). So therefore you can conclude that Marines are and always will be the worst faction ever in 40k, horribly oppressed, impossibly outmatched to auto-lose forever.

Thanks, I was looking for a single statement to summarize all of Xeno's arguments, this will do nicely.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
I always thought characters were plenty useful - now, at least for orks, characters are almost a liability. I mean, KFF, warboss, waaagh banner, and to a lesser extent painboyz are helpful, but all of the above, ESPECIALLY warbossi, need to stay far, far away from combat, which is decidedly un-orky.

I mean, the way characters work now, getting a warboss into combat is basically a death sentence. Mega armor helps, and ghaz is decent, but a 4+ armor save boss, even biker bosses like zhard, are just easy kill points in CC. And it feels dumb to not send a warboss into combat, but it feels dumber to just watch them get instantly killed by anything more threatening than fire warriors.

Honestly, this is the way the game goes in hand to hand for everyone at this point. There are a couple characters that can really wade into melee and not worry too much, but they are honestly few and far between.

Positioning is extremely important for characters now, mistakes will typically end up with dead characters, as it should really. This doesn't just apply to Orks, my Chaos Lord is definitely not the hand to hand monster he used to be, he adds a few extra strong attacks and buffs the mainline troops, but that's about it, I make sure to position him carefully and limit his exposure to return attacks, just like shooting. I think the principles in positioning to mitigate return fire are largely the same ones you have to use in hand to hand.

I enjoy the extra level of complexity involved in trying to get the most out of your characters without leaving them exposed.

the_scotsman wrote:
One could also say to beware of massively over-filtering data through one's own biases.

Space Marines certainly aren't "the meta" currently, but they're nowhere near "the worst army". You almost definitely have Grey Knights, Dark Eldar, Necrons, Admech, Space Wolves, Genestealer Cult, Tau, Thousand Sons, and unless someone finds some bonkers new combo in the new codex that is not immediately obvious Dark Angels behind you.

At this point you've constructed a mental fortress by which any data from the past can be disregarded as out of date because the gigantic nerfs that Space Marines received in chapter approved will surely delete them from the game, any data from the present can be disregarded as of course the game is in a state of flux and every current index army will be receiving huge buffs to make them more powerful than marines in the future, and any possibility of future buffs for marines can be disregarded as impossible because GW has never in their history gone back and rebalanced a flagship faction they released early in an edition to ensure they're keeping up with the joneses (Certainly not in Age of Sigmar with the stormcasts and not in 7th edition with various campaign books and angels of death for Marines). So therefore you can conclude that Marines are and always will be the worst faction ever in 40k, horribly oppressed, impossibly outmatched to auto-lose forever.

Of course - you are wrong and I am right. Ultra marines winning some tournaments with storm raven spam in the first few weeks of 8th edition before anyone had a codex or when they had the only codex is 100% worthless data. Use a good filter like...say...tournament results since the release of the tyranid codex. You'll see they aren't even a middle tier army - they are flatly on the bottom even with Guilliman and are outperformed by several index books.

Space Marines are bottom tier with Guilliman and are outperformed by several index books?

 Galas wrote:
Space Marines are bottom tier with Guilliman and are outperformed by several index books?

Sisters of battle and daemons to be specific.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Of course - you are wrong and I am right. Ultra marines winning some tournaments with storm raven spam in the first few weeks of 8th edition before anyone had a codex or when they had the only codex is 100% worthless data. Use a good filter like...say...tournament results since the release of the tyranid codex. You'll see they aren't even a middle tier army - they are flatly on the bottom even with Guilliman and are outperformed by several index books.

Obligatory Xeno response:
At this point you've constructed a mental fortress by which any data from the past can be disregarded as out of date because the gigantic nerfs that Space Marines received in chapter approved will surely delete them from the game, any data from the present can be disregarded as of course the game is in a state of flux and every current index army will be receiving huge buffs to make them more powerful than marines in the future, and any possibility of future buffs for marines can be disregarded as impossible because GW has never in their history gone back and rebalanced a flagship faction they released early in an edition to ensure they're keeping up with the joneses (Certainly not in Age of Sigmar with the stormcasts and not in 7th edition with various campaign books and angels of death for Marines). So therefore you can conclude that Marines are and always will be the worst faction ever in 40k, horribly oppressed, impossibly outmatched to auto-lose forever.

Anyways, I'll try asking again, but Xeno never shows his work, so here we go. Where are you pulling your results from Xeno? As mentioned previously, the guy selling them off the back of a truck downtown, not reliable.

 Galas wrote:
Space Marines are bottom tier with Guilliman and are outperformed by several index books?

Here's my attempt at current meta power rankings. Mostly based around % of entrants vs % of top finishers. If an army is 5% of entrants yet 20% of top finishers it would be upper tier vs an army that is 40% of entrants and 25% of top finishers would be mid-bottom tier.

Top:
AM
CSM
Chaos soup (partially index?)
Ynarri (index)
CWE

Mid:
Orcs (index)
Nids (TBD? I really want to put them top tier but isn't born out by the data YET)
GSC (index)
UM
Blood Angels
Dark Angels (maybe bottom?)
SOB (index)

Bottom:
AdMech
Vanilla SM (non guilliman)
Demons (index)
Tau
Wolves
Grey Knights (perform better in soup but mono faction?)
Inquisition (Knights, custodes, SoS, Assassins and Inquistion should really all be the same faction right?)

Seems to be the current state of the Meta from all results I can find.

I think the real problem is the power difference between those armies which are top tier vs the rest of the pack where 80-90%% of top finishers come from that top group and the rest of the armies are fighting for scraps. If the jump from tier 1 to tier 2 wasn't so bad (could actually have a competitive game between reasonably competitive lists from both tiers) I personally would be much less salty.

Also the complaint of those in the mid-bottom tier which already have their codexes seems to be that codex creep seems to be a real thing this edition (DA seem to have gotten the short end of that stick but for the most part codex armies are much stronger than their index iteration) so the fear that index armies performing near/above codex armies will out-perform those same codex armies once the index armies has a codex seems to be based on pretty solid precedent. So as it stands now UM are pretty solid mid tier, problem is mid tier may as well be bottom tier when facing a well constructed top tier army (not to mention the salt in the wound of CA nerfing the most viable SM build and the new ITC champion missions further reducing the Tournament viability of those armies to solid bottom tier)

Meta hasn't settled yet, there are a lot of codexes yet to come for some traditionally powerful factions (tau) and I don't think the meta has digested Nids yet but the fact that people are still hung up over the early success of guilliman armies has lead to (IMnot so humbleO) an over nerf of that faction without proper attention paid to other more powerful armies and the issue of codex power creep.

As someone whose played tyranids, small aura ranges are extremely annoying. At the same time, buffs that work from anywhere can be problematic as well. I’d like to see commander buffs have a range of about 18”, possibly limited to X number of units for balance. This allows some lattitude in speading units out, while forcing the buffer to remain somewhat close to the action. The unit limitation enforces some strategizing and prioritizing.

I wish there was a hiearchy to auras - supercommanders like Primarchs handing down buffs/commands to officers, and then those officers passing commands down to their troops. But that system would slow things down too much, I think.

If you blob your entire army in one place, how you're gonna score objectives?

Curious that you've separated "Ultramarines" and "non-UM" here just for Marines but we don't see where "Non-alaitoc CWE" or "non-mars Admech" or "non-Alpha Legion CSM" fall.

You've also listed Ynnari as top tier. You know they basically got deleted except for a single two-unit combo right? As an army, they are gone. CSM without soup also appear just about as much as Marines without guilliman.

An accurate tier list would be:

Top: Guard Eldar Nids Chaos Imperium

Mid: Orks SOB Marines

Low: Admech GSC

Too early to call: BA DA

Sir not appearing in this film: DE Tau SW GK Necrons

That top tier is about 75% of top lists, mid tier about 20, low about 5.

BA and DA still suffer heavily from working with... marines. They're probably better than SM without Bobby G, and worse than marines with. And that makes them 100% irrelevant I fear.

I think BA were supposed to be a foil to -1 to hit armies, but we have no way around screens still.

With my DG list, I don't have the option NOT to blob up. I have a huge squad of Plague Marines supported by characters and screened by cultists. Un-blobbed, any single element of it would easily be killed. In a blob, it's slightly less easy. In certain cases blobbing is heavily incentivized, but it's not the entire meta by any means. I pretty much must do it, but that doesn't make my list competitive.

back in the day GW had characters divided into Heros, Mighty Heros and Champions for stats.

If the new characters could be divided as such you would have like Warlocks, Commisaars, Meckboyz and such as Heros
Marine Captains, Farseers and Archons as Mighty Heroes

Special and Named characters as Champions.

If you then decided Heroes could only buff 1 unit, Mighty Heros could buff 2 units and Champions could do 3 then the blob would spread out more.

I don't really have a huge problem with the blobs.

There's not enough space on the board not to be a blob in games larger than 1000-1500 points. I think the BRB recommends 4x8 for 2k and up, which I can honestly agree with.

The game works a lot better at the 1500 points mark, that's for sure. It's just that we got used to the points creep and to field 2 Prymarchs, tanks and loads of infantries on a table, so when 8th edition made big stuff and big weapons cost more, we answered by increasing the standard point limit (from 1850 to 2000).

Now we cry about alpha strikes, blobs and such, but that is a byproduct of playing at a non standard point mark.

The table is too small because 2000 point is exactly the divider between using a 4x6 or a 4x8.

IMHO the game should be played at 500, 750, 1250, 1500, 1750.

Insularum wrote:
Even if we accept that aura blob-star is as powerful as the previous invisible/2++ re-roll-able invincible deathstars (IMO it isn't even close), its nowhere near as broken as some of the other current mechanics; for example since CA the clarification on character targeting has provided a practically unbeatable counter to the typical Guilliman parking lot or static gunline - an army of chaplain ven dreads with one or two deepstrikers dropping out of LOS. No auras required and would be free to navigate the table taking any/all objectives while casually returning fire as everything is a character with less than 10 wounds and therefore illegal to select as a target.

My take on this is that since psychic activity has shifted away from friendly buff casts (invisibility, endurance, prescience) to offensive power (smite, smite, smite), auras have moved into the power vacuum. This makes a wider range of characters compete for a place in your list so is in general good for the game.

How would that work? Isn't the unit out of LOS supposed to be closest target? In 8th ed getting unit reliably out of LOS at will seems awfully tricky proposition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gwarok wrote:
This complaint is beyond my understanding. Yes, there are auras, yes players take advantage of them. Don't like the fact armies group up around their leaders? It's "ugly and looks stupid"? Any other abilities that ruin your enjoyment of the game because you think it should look better? As mentioned, there so many options to play it's odd that instead of playing one you hope that a fundamental aspect of the game be retooled.

Good luck finding non 40k game that has 40k fluff, works with 40k models and has opponents to play with. Tell me answer to that riddle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:
If you blob your entire army in one place, how you're gonna score objectives?

How often you get to play more than 3 turns without one side getting wiped out?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:
The game works a lot better at the 1500 points mark, that's for sure. It's just that we got used to the points creep and to field 2 Prymarchs, tanks and loads of infantries on a table, so when 8th edition made big stuff and big weapons cost more, we answered by increasing the standard point limit (from 1850 to 2000).

Which then was responded by GW lowering points from indexes with codex releases so suddenly 2000 pts codex army is more like 2100-2200 index army. And GW thanks all the extra sales as players need to buy more models to make 2k list.

Only 3 missions out of 12 use scoring at the end of the game.

Also, you are right that Codex armies do have around 100 points more to play on after the transition, but those come from points reductions on models that didn't get much spotlight, if you played a top competitive army list, chances are that you got the same or even less points to play with.
Naturally at this point you will buy even MORE models, since what you had is no longer the absolute best and you will revamp your army completely to get that 2% more of efficency!

Generally point drops were often precisely on units that got hefty point increases in indexes. In particular vehicles. Model was vehicle? Index point up. Codex? Point drop. Point increases didn't really happen from index to codex at least in significant amount. Generally it was index + rule boosts+free bonuses+point drops.

And unless you house rule(with new scenarios) wipeout is pretty much win always regardless of scenario points.

the_scotsman wrote:
Curious that you've separated "Ultramarines" and "non-UM" here just for Marines but we don't see where "Non-alaitoc CWE" or "non-mars Admech" or "non-Alpha Legion CSM" fall.

You've also listed Ynnari as top tier. You know they basically got deleted except for a single two-unit combo right? As an army, they are gone. CSM without soup also appear just about as much as Marines without guilliman.

An accurate tier list would be:

Top: Guard Eldar Nids Chaos Imperium

Mid: Orks SOB Marines

Low: Admech GSC

Too early to call: BA DA

Sir not appearing in this film: DE Tau SW GK Necrons

That top tier is about 75% of top lists, mid tier about 20, low about 5.

This seems about right.
Really though its hard to talk of a meta when the game is shifting - often quite considerably - every 6 weeks. I think Chaos has potentially been hit by chapter approved and the psychic changes - or at least the more skewed lists have been.

the_scotsman wrote:
One could also say to beware of massively over-filtering data through one's own biases.

You must be new here.

tneva82 wrote:

How often you get to play more than 3 turns without one side getting wiped out?

Pretty much always.