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 vict0988 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
He is not wrong though, the weapons the benifit the most from this are massed high volume low STR weapons.
Las guns, multi las, punisher cannon, things like that. However it does not REALLY benefit them.
All the benefits that everyone is talking about here assumes that the game rolls perfectly average. Which we all know this is not the case, im sure every one of us has been through their share of games only rolling maybe a handful of 6s.
So even if you are rolling statistically average by some strage force of the universe, you have to hope those 6s appear in the to hit potion of your game, not else where.

The hammer of the emperor buff can best be explained by the old saying "One in the hand is worth two in the bush."
Yeah, the two in the bush are better, but you are assuming you are actually going to be able to grab two of them.
Yeah the hammer of the emperor is better, buts thats assuming you roll 6s when you need to.

AoC doesn't matter because I only roll 1s for saves /s..

I too know that feeling, roll ones for my 2+ saves, and roll 2s for my 3+ saves.

It being random doesnt mean it's not GOOD. Let's break down a few things here. Math wise, it nearly doubles the average damage of infantry squad lasguns against t4 and 5, nearly triples it against t6+, and Armor of Contempt and t5 orks have no effect on lasgun fire. FRFSRF can be AREA ordered now.
And while it's an unreliable benefit (mitigated by huge numbers of dice) that works both ways, getting lucky and rolling multiple 6s can be a big deal, anything that procs on 6s has the potential for getting "critical" rolls.
Multiple squads firing rapid fire 2, auto wound on 6s isn't bad at all, and it's put guardsmen in a place where they can be one of the better options for taking on Astartes or Orkz.

ShadyTheCharacter wrote:
...Armor of Contempt and t5 orks have no effect on lasgun fire...

Uhhhhhhh...

 waefre_1 wrote:

ShadyTheCharacter wrote:
...Armor of Contempt and t5 orks have no effect on lasgun fire...

Uhhhhhhh...

What? He is right. Lasguns are just as effective against Marines as ever (moreso with Hammer of the Emperor) and T4 Orks and T5 Orks make no difference.

This is why I went with the hammer in the poll, though it is random and not given like armor of contempt, because it works with everyone while the armor is protecting imperials only… though this assessment may be objectively wrong, that lasguns now can much more easily wound things that they imho should not makes the rule more absurd, so that motivated my response.

brainpsyk wrote:
Another other choice would have been to reduce the AP and/or damage of almost every other weapon in the game by 1, but that in turn would require a complete points rebalance as well. Another option would have been to just adjust the points values of every PA unit in the game, but GW is really reluctant to change points values. (Case in point, a Guard Basilisk is only worth 40 points compared to any modern codex units, but remains at 115).

The Basilisk is 125 points currently. If it was 115 it’d actually be viable.

Remember if the Russes should be roughly valued at:
- Vanquisher: 110 points
- Eradicator / Exterminator: 115 points
- Executioner: 120 points
- Battle Tank: 125 points
- Demolisher / Punisher: 130 points

Then the Basilisk should be around the 115 mark as well. In terms of raw output, the Earthshaker is twice as good as the Vanquisher. It’s also slightly better than the Exterminator against Armour of Contempt units, but slightly worse than the Eradicator.

You just have to figure out how much to weigh their durability, the fact that the Basilisk can fire indirect, and that the Imperial Guard as a whole was spared from the indirect fire nerf. Though I would argue 115 is a good spot for it.

 jeff white wrote:
This is why I went with the hammer in the poll, though it is random and not given like armor of contempt, because it works with everyone while the armor is protecting imperials only…

They're both random. One has a 1/6 chance turn an attack into an autowound, the other has a 1/6 chance to save you from an AP weapon wound.
And they both also work with everyone. Armor is protecting Astartes and Sisters only, but Hammer is enhancing guard only too. I feel like you're attributing greater significance to one being a defensive buff and one being an offensive buff, they both still only come into play when a faction that uses them is on the table.
Think about it this way: hammer can hurt anyone, and contempt can protect you from (nearly) everyone, and they both have the potential to make a big difference or no difference at all. Contempt is actually closer to being the non-given here since it does nothing against AP0

Jarms48 wrote:

brainpsyk wrote:
Another other choice would have been to reduce the AP and/or damage of almost every other weapon in the game by 1, but that in turn would require a complete points rebalance as well. Another option would have been to just adjust the points values of every PA unit in the game, but GW is really reluctant to change points values. (Case in point, a Guard Basilisk is only worth 40 points compared to any modern codex units, but remains at 115).

The Basilisk is 125 points currently. If it was 115 it’d actually be viable.

Remember if the Russes should be roughly valued at:
- Vanquisher: 110 points
- Eradicator / Exterminator: 115 points
- Executioner: 120 points
- Battle Tank: 125 points
- Demolisher / Punisher: 130 points

Then the Basilisk should be around the 115 mark as well. In terms of raw output, the Earthshaker is twice as good as the Vanquisher. It’s also slightly better than the Exterminator against Armour of Contempt units, but slightly worse than the Eradicator.

You just have to figure out how much to weigh their durability, the fact that the Basilisk can fire indirect, and that the Imperial Guard as a whole was spared from the indirect fire nerf. Though I would argue 115 is a good spot for it.

I agree with you on the value of the LRBTs ( just about, I think we should still be ~20% cheaper because of the LRBT 5" movement to get those numbers), but compare the Basilisk to the Vanquisher against an Onager Dunecrawler (which I pick because it's a middle-of-the-road unit):

The Basilisk does 0.9W, Vanquisher does 2.2W. Then the Basilisk is T6/AV3, the LRBT is T8/AV2, which translates to about half the durability per point when the Onager shoots back.

And yet both of them just utterly fail in comparison to the Tau Broaside at 75 points.

Played against guard using hammer. Wow how the internet blows things out of proportion. He got three extra las gun wounds from it the whole game. It was more effective for the tanks etc however it really wasn’t worse than if he got a good roll. And he rolled hot a bunch of times. To bad hammer doesn’t do anything for ap and guards ap is still crap. And their damage is still crap. It might be punishing against low save armies (sorry Orks you draw the short straw again) but anything with decent saves it is a small power up at best.


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Edit; his free weapons in all of the troop squads was a much bigger deal. Still did not save him though. Oh and I have elder so not super resilient

brainpsyk wrote:

The Basilisk does 0.9W, Vanquisher does 2.2W. Then the Basilisk is T6/AV3, the LRBT is T8/AV2, which translates to about half the durability per point when the Onager shoots back.

How are you getting that? Basilisk should be getting around 4.5 shots, 2.25 hits, 1.5 wounds, 1 unsaved, for average of 2 damage against a Dunecrawler. As I said above the hardest thing to consider is the Basilisks ability to indirect fire. Which makes durability irrelevant if it's behind obscuring, and with the latest balance dataslate it's getting a 2+ save against enemy indirect fire weapons.

brainpsyk wrote:
And yet both of them just utterly fail in comparison to the Tau Broadside at 75 points.

I think this is more telling of Imperial Guard simply needing a new codex than roughly what things should cost in points. Broadsides also just lost Core, which will reduce their damage output significantly.


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 xeen wrote:
Played against guard using hammer. Wow how the internet blows things out of proportion. He got three extra las gun wounds from it the whole game. It was more effective for the tanks etc however it really wasn’t worse than if he got a good roll. And he rolled hot a bunch of times. To bad hammer doesn’t do anything for ap and guards ap is still crap. And their damage is still crap. It might be punishing against low save armies (sorry Orks you draw the short straw again) but anything with decent saves it is a small power up at best.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit; his free weapons in all of the troop squads was a much bigger deal. Still did not save him though. Oh and I have elder so not super resilient

Completely agreed. It should be considered a reliability buff, not a damage one. It brings up the average. That's why people were more excited about Scions getting it. Cause with FRFSRF that's roughly 7 AP-2/AP-3 autowounds, which actually is pretty massive. That's basically 2-3 dead marines even after the armour of contempt buff. Though sadly, it's probably also why GW quickly changed the balance dataslate to remove that.

Leaning into the free wargear will be the way forward for Guard players competitively. There's already pure infantry players who were taking 18 infantry squads. That's the equivalent of 540 points of free upgrades, after taking the 5 point rise into account.

I've played a couple of games with Hammer of the Emperor. It is useful, to be sure, but I have not seen it be game breaking. While some folks are really angsty about Lasguns, I think it is theoretical angst. Where I have really appreciated HotE has actually been with heavy weapons.

I've been running Catachans, and perhaps next week I will field Cadians to really lean into Lasguns and try out the AP strat from Octarius.

Early days, but I concur with the findings that the "free" weapon upgrades to each Infantry Squad are more impactful than HotE.

Between hammer and armor, veterans now do the same damage to out of cover space marines as scions, with guardsmen only a bit behind. You guys are saying it would be better with AP weapons but thanks to AoC AP isn't quite as good as it used to be.
Lasguns' job is to pile on wounds until they slip through the saves.
Your one guy only got 3 more wounds in a game from it? In my test rolling I'm getting around 3 more wounds on target per squad firing 18 shots just about every time. And sometimes more. Against orks, necrons, anything with t4 or 5 it's a big difference. It makes heavy bolters and autocannons and both missile launcher profiles better than before.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
Played the first round of a guard (Emperor's blade assault company) vs craftworld (a silly list made to max out the number of farseers) last night (it's on TTS, so we plan on continuing throughout the week as we have time). My rolls were hilariously good, so HotE came up most times I shot (plus I was first turn). It also came in handy when firing overwatch with an empty chimera (2/9 shots from multilaser+heavy bolter+pintle mounted heavy stubber). Actually, HotE feels like it's made pintel mounts worth the points again (maybe they always were but I never realized it?). My opponent was having more average rolls with his dice, so a fair few of the wounds made it through his saves. I ended up losing an infantry squad that I dumped onto the center objective to concentrated shooting and lost a chimeria to eldritch storm while I almost wiped one guardian squad (thanks to a demolisher tank commander), took another to just over half power (manticore), and picked off a single ranger (center objective guard squad).

Will it make a difference in win/lose? No clue. Will it make a difference in my enjoyment...well rolling 6s is a lot more exciting, so absolutely. Will it decrease the enjoyment of my opponent? Doubtful (probably makes it more enjoyable because now he has to care about my infantry squads at least nominally, providing more meaningful interactions across the board)

An update:
We finally had the chance to finish our game. I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear that I lost. I conceded after the second turn as I was down to a single guard squad and had been pushed off all my objectives (and thus was waaay behind on primary points). My opponent and I both agreed that HotE was a really nice buff to guard that gave them some extra teeth across my army. For my heavy weapons team in each infantry squad, I ran a lascannon (which never fired), a mortar,and two missile launchers. As a side note, I feel like HotE has given frag rounds a nice buff without making them OP (although I didn't have any sort of rerolls or anything for them).

Overall, I feel like it's given guard a solid buff to offense, but the fragility of guard still makes it hard to hold the line (although I was up against a pretty hefty psychic phase, so that might have skewed my perception).

yukishiro1 wrote:
AoC is going to be really bad for the game overall, even if it addresses an immediate problem. It's just such a lazy change. The problem was that high AP was becoming too common, but the fix mostly impacts AP 1, by making it literally worthless vs half the armies in the game. And the biggest impact is going to probably be on AP 2 shooting into terminators in cover, where they'll still get their 2+ save. Needing AP 3 to realistically hurt terminators in cover (or AP4 with indirect) is going to fundamentally change the game. It's not quite the screamer-star from 7th, but it is going to have similar impacts.

It also makes storm shields pretty worthless on terminators, which is dumb from a game design point of view AND dumb from a fluff point of view. And what possible sense does it make that normal space marine terminators have better armor than allarus custodians? This is what happens when you put this kind of band-aid into the game, it warps all sorts of things in dumb and unjustifiable ways.

It's just a really badly designed rule, and people are going to start realizing it once the initial euphoria wears off.

The solution to AP being dolled out too generously was to go back and retune AP values, not to just make AP1 worthless. But that would have taken work. This just takes 5 minutes. It's a classic GW band-aid solution that ends up making things worse in the long run in favor of an easy short-term solution.

Storm Shields are better against AP0, which is technically more useful against AoC if you can bring sufficient shots to counter not taking higher AP weapons.

People here are complaining about the increases in AP on weapons. If GW had simply cut an AP off all new weapons wouldn't we be in the same position ( aside from boosting all the other armies by proxy ) except no one would be complaining about it?


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yukishiro1 wrote:
The current AP system is fine as a base rule, GW just did what GW always does and couldn't resist stat inflation. Which made the system fall down. And then of course they chose the laziest, worst possible solution with AoC, somehow managing to pile even more distortion on top of the existing distortion by devaluing low AP even further than they already had via the stat inflation.

Like this. If they hadn't inflated the stats then what exactly is the difference beyond simply more words to deal with?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
AoC is going to be really bad for the game overall, even if it addresses an immediate problem. It's just such a lazy change. The problem was that high AP was becoming too common, but the fix mostly impacts AP 1, by making it literally worthless vs half the armies in the game. And the biggest impact is going to probably be on AP 2 shooting into terminators in cover, where they'll still get their 2+ save. Needing AP 3 to realistically hurt terminators in cover (or AP4 with indirect) is going to fundamentally change the game. It's not quite the screamer-star from 7th, but it is going to have similar impacts.

It also makes storm shields pretty worthless on terminators, which is dumb from a game design point of view AND dumb from a fluff point of view. And what possible sense does it make that normal space marine terminators have better armor than allarus custodians? This is what happens when you put this kind of band-aid into the game, it warps all sorts of things in dumb and unjustifiable ways.

It's just a really badly designed rule, and people are going to start realizing it once the initial euphoria wears off.

The solution to AP being dolled out too generously was to go back and retune AP values, not to just make AP1 worthless. But that would have taken work. This just takes 5 minutes. It's a classic GW band-aid solution that ends up making things worse in the long run in favor of an easy short-term solution.

Storm Shields are better against AP0, which is technically more useful against AoC if you can bring sufficient shots to counter not taking higher AP weapons.

People here are complaining about the increases in AP on weapons. If GW had simply cut an AP off all new weapons wouldn't we be in the same position ( aside from boosting all the other armies by proxy ) except no one would be complaining about it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The current AP system is fine as a base rule, GW just did what GW always does and couldn't resist stat inflation. Which made the system fall down. And then of course they chose the laziest, worst possible solution with AoC, somehow managing to pile even more distortion on top of the existing distortion by devaluing low AP even further than they already had via the stat inflation.

Like this. If they hadn't inflated the stats then what exactly is the difference beyond simply more words to deal with?

There's certainly something to be said about reducing rules bloat. If the changes are made on the weapons profile, then there's never a question of whether or not a rule applies to a model or not as the rule would never need to exist.

(I would also imagine reducing rules bloat would make for easier balancing, but I'm not game dev, so that's just a guess.)

DeadliestIdiot wrote:

There's certainly something to be said about reducing rules bloat. If the changes are made on the weapons profile, then there's never a question of whether or not a rule applies to a model or not as the rule would never need to exist.

(I would also imagine reducing rules bloat would make for easier balancing, but I'm not game dev, so that's just a guess.)

By reducing weapon AP you then "buff" all factions. Do Tau, Nids and Eldar need to be taking less AP? ( DE and Custodes don't really care ) While this is bloat it is still a targeted change that doesn't also up-end the rest of the game.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


People here are complaining about the increases in AP on weapons. If GW had simply cut an AP off all new weapons wouldn't we be in the same position ( aside from boosting all the other armies by proxy ) except no one would be complaining about it?

They absolutely should have gone this route but instead of just blanket -1AP to everything, they should have done their jobs and analyzed what needs the AP and what didn't.

I always go back to this but here it is again.

In 4th a Boy was 6ppm and a Marine was 15ppm. To kill 1 Marine in CC on the charge the orkz needed 12 attacks. 12 attacks = 6 hits = 3 wounds = 1dmg. 12 attacks = 3 boyz. 18pts to kill 15 on the charge.

In 9th a boy is 9ppm and a Marine is 18ppm. To kill 1 Marine in CC on the charge the orkz need 12 attacks. 12 attacks 8 hits, 4 wounds, 2dmg. That assumes AP-1. 12 attacks = 4 boyz now, we lost +1 attack on the charge. So now to kill 1 Marine its 36pts to kill 18pts. The math went from 1.2ppd (Points per Damage) to 2ppd. Which is a decrease in combat effectiveness of about 40%. Strip that AP-1 from Choppas...like they already did with AoC and the math becomes 18 attacks, 12 hits, 6 wounds 2dmg and to get 18 attacks you need 6 boyz so its 54pts to kill 18pts of Marine and the math is now 3ppd which is a massive decrease in dmg output against Marines though it translates basically across the board to all Power armored factions thanks to AoC.

My general rule for ranged units is that for them to be even remotely ok they need to do at least 1/3rd their points cost in dmg a turn to their desired unit, that is the LOW end of the dmg output they should be doing, it can go higher depending on how glass cannon they are but as a general rule its 1/3rd. A CC unit on the other hand needs to do at a minimum 50%. That is because they have to get into CC to even inflict that dmg in the first place. And for some CC units its harder than others. So if a unit against its most common target is only averaging a 1/3rd return rate in CC its drastically under powered for its job.

Some weapons/units need AP to stay relevant or at least somewhat functional. Others it was just another added buff to make them even better than before. GW needs to stop being lazy with these "buffs" and re-design certain units/weapons/rules to make them significantly more balanced.

I think it's a very complicated interaction.

Picking and choosing weapons doesn't work, because if your goal is to make marines more durable then you win up pushing down other factions and then marines are themselves unfettered.

Choppas are still relevant in context of the opponent. Obviously there are still problems. The game is not fixed, but it feels better.

It will be interesting to see if GW rolls back some of the Ork and Admech nerfs with the next CA.

Marines just need to accept that they play the most popular faction, and their design is to be generalists, and just deal with the fact that they have the negatives that come with both.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

DeadliestIdiot wrote:

There's certainly something to be said about reducing rules bloat. If the changes are made on the weapons profile, then there's never a question of whether or not a rule applies to a model or not as the rule would never need to exist.

(I would also imagine reducing rules bloat would make for easier balancing, but I'm not game dev, so that's just a guess.)

By reducing weapon AP you then "buff" all factions. Do Tau, Nids and Eldar need to be taking less AP? ( DE and Custodes don't really care ) While this is bloat it is still a targeted change that doesn't also up-end the rest of the game.

Oh, for sure. This wouldn't be a one step fix. And isn't the issue woth Tau, Nids, amd Eldar that they're too killy not that they're too tanky? Again, not a game dev or anything, but I feel like making things easier to kill is not the best way to balance something that has a really strong offense (at least not in a turn based game like 40k). My thought would be to increase survivability across the board then start taking the nerf bat to stat lines, abilities, and specific rules while trying to minimize the number of new rules when possible.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think it's a very complicated interaction.

Picking and choosing weapons doesn't work, because if your goal is to make marines more durable then you win up pushing down other factions and then marines are themselves unfettered.

Choppas are still relevant in context of the opponent. Obviously there are still problems. The game is not fixed, but it feels better.

It will be interesting to see if GW rolls back some of the Ork and Admech nerfs with the next CA.

Picking and choosing weapons absolutely works.

As far as Choppas being relevant...yes, but they lost their entire 9th edition buff against about 50% of the meta, and it is only going to get worse as AoC really kicks off and more people go back to playing Power armor. Last big major was the Bristol GT which had 191 players. Ready for this? Armor of Contempt armies and armies that don't give a damn about -1AP (Harlequins/Daemons) 81 armies. 81 out of 191. And that didn't include custards who have -1AP on a lot of their stuff.

ok, so last week i played a tsons vs guard game at 1500points. the full report is in the tsons tactics thread if anyone wants to read it.

anyway, based on my experince in that game, the AoC is MUCH more powerful than HotE. Hammer did generate a steady slew of auto-wounds, but they paled in contrast the massive increase in survivability my rubrics and scarabs got from the Armour. During the game, my scarabs were never saving at worse than 4+, dispite the concentated efforts of multiple tanks, and absorbed about 6 to 8 tank-rounds of fire before finally dying. my 10 man rubric unit, sat in cover and with a 4++ buff, was literally untouched in the centre and was able to keep him off the objectives and win me the game.


its not unbeatable, and his list wasnt built to optimise hammer wounding, but still, very fun and intresting game.

Gonna clarify that even though I think Hammer is good, I think Contempt is better because it protects marines against the weapons that used to be the hardest counters against them. My biggest complaint about marines used to be their durability/point was bad when faced with their counters, and not very impressive against weapons that aren't.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Marines just need to accept that they play the most popular faction, and their design is to be generalists, and just deal with the fact that they have the negatives that come with both.

Marines players aren't going to be able to handle that. Or, more accurately, GW doesn't want them to have to handle that, as they're worried it will negatively affect the privileged players.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Marines just need to accept that they play the most popular faction, and their design is to be generalists, and just deal with the fact that they have the negatives that come with both.

For that to be true, they would have to have generalists rules and generalists army builds. But that is not the case. Both historically and in 9th, a marine army that does everything is going to do very bad. Plus melee marines can do okeyish with at least some units. Engaging in firefights is something marines are really bad at in 9th.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Marines just need to accept that they play the most popular faction, and their design is to be generalists, and just deal with the fact that they have the negatives that come with both.

I don't see how popularity should shape a faction's design at all. Should Orks suddenly become generalists if they explode in popularity? Should Tau suddenly get Pyskers and good melee if they reach a certain threshold of fans? Space marines are probably popular partly due to being generalists, but they certainly don't have to be generalist because they are popular. An idea like that would mean any faction that becomes popular should abandon in design ethos in favor of being more general. Do you see how silly that is?

Space Marine player should probably accept they are the faction more players are going to list tailor against their faction...including other space marine players* Which is fine when you have a popular faction like space marines. Especially when MEQ isn't what it used to be. In early 9th, my two most common opponents were Death Guard and Thousand Sons. Both marines, but had durability done in different ways partly counter to each other. Even now, I can build a space marine army with nary of T:4 unit if I wanted to.

I'm personally a big fan of 40k moving away from, 'take ______ weapon(s), it's good at killing everything'. I am really enjoying the increasing rarity of those highly efficient attacks in favor of less efficient gear making due as fewer factions exist to allow for perfect counters. It takes the game out of list building and onto the table.

*Of course, one's actual meta shapes this more, as gaming groups are homogenized microcosms of faction popularity percents. And top player should probably focus of upper tier factions that merely countering space marines.

I mean orks are a sort of generalist faction, historically they’ve been able to do melee, shooting, or a bit of both. I’m including popularity as a factor of “if 50 percent of the players bring high armor, elite models, im going to bring things to counter them.”
You’re entirely misinterpreting my argument here.

Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

I don't see how popularity should shape a faction's design at all. Should Orks suddenly become generalists if they explode in popularity? Should Tau suddenly get Pyskers and good melee if they reach a certain threshold of fans? Space marines are probably popular partly due to being generalists, but they certainly don't have to be generalist because they are popular. An idea like that would mean any faction that becomes popular should abandon in design ethos in favor of being more general. Do you see how silly that is?

Space Marine player should probably accept they are the faction more players are going to list tailor against their faction...including other space marine players* Which is fine when you have a popular faction like space marines. Especially when MEQ isn't what it used to be. In early 9th, my two most common opponents were Death Guard and Thousand Sons. Both marines, but had durability done in different ways partly counter to each other. Even now, I can build a space marine army with nary of T:5 unit if I wanted to.

I'm personally a big fan of 40k moving away from, 'take ______ weapon(s), it's good at killing everything'. I am really enjoying the increasing rarity of those highly efficient attacks in favor of less efficient gear making due as fewer factions exist to allow for perfect counters. It takes the game out of list building and onto the table.

*Of course, one's actual meta shapes this more, as gaming groups are homogenized microcosms of faction popularity percents. And top player should probably focus of upper tier factions that merely countering space marines.

Marines are/were a generalist faction. They do have specialized builds though, Blood Angels for assault, White Scars for biker/speed lists, DA for traitor lists etc. But they don't suffer because they are generalists, they suffer because they are POPULAR. And yes, if Orkz suddenly became the most popular faction in the game they would suffer as well because everyone would build their lists to combat the most likely defensive profiles and builds IE orkz. With Marines its never going to happen where they aren't the most popular faction though because you now have over a dozen independent armies that are basically the same faction. Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Iron Hands, Salamanders, Grey Knights etc etc etc. Even the chaos Marines share the same profile for all intents and purposes so it just makes sense to build an army that can target that more than any other build, at least from a generalist standpoint. When the tournament meta was like 60% Ad Mech/Drukhari people were list building against those 2 armies as well

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I mean orks are a sort of generalist faction, historically they’ve been able to do melee, shooting, or a bit of both. I’m including popularity as a factor of “if 50 percent of the players bring high armor, elite models, im going to bring things to counter them.”
You’re entirely misinterpreting my argument here.

Which I wouldn't think is a contentious idea worth saying, but I apologize regardless. I do think an army tailored toward fighting marines and a marine army may knock each other out, opening up the field or other players to win the majority of the time. Which I think quite possibly makes up the bulk of more wins than losses in a tournament player. Classic gatekeeping army type stuff. I have just accepted that as the way things are.

Even when marines are kinda bad, I figure the natural inclination is for an opponent to build their army to combat marines outside an obvious faction. I kinda like it. It means I am likely not to win through a kind of mismatched skew, and more so; I'll have to overcome an army somewhat purpose built to take mine down. That's a good win if I can get it.

I don't even know if it is really all that necessary. I might be in an anomalous area, but I found the majority of Codex: Space Marine players to either fairly new, fairly seasoned (read: long time player) or fair weather (they break out their marine collection when SM rules are good). New players generally don't require list tailoring to beat (even with coaching), seasoned players know most opponents build their army lists with MEQ in mind and adjust or just play for the love of the game, and fair weather players mean most other faction players aren't showing up to game night or are ravenous for a non-marine opponent. But that may hardly be universal.

Results are in from post-dataslate tournaments. Imperial Guard are sitting at 26%, the "buffs" barely changed anything.

This is what I believe Impy Guard really need to bring us to at least a 40% winrate:

1) Improve Army Wide Abilities:
- Allow custom regiments to take 3 doctrines. - Allow named regiments to take 1 custom doctrine in addition to their own.
- Allow Commissars to gain the Militarum Tempestus keyword, and as a result the <Tempestus Regiment> keyword, if taken in a Militarum Tempestus detachment.

This would add another layer of customisation in list building. For example Catachan's could take Slum Fighters for exploding 6's in melee to make them better in close combat. Vahallan's could take Gunnery Experts which could stack nicely with their better damage brackets on vehicles.

While Commissars are a thematic bonus. In lore they train in the same schools as Scions, as well as belong to the same organisation the Ordo Tempestus.

2) Give Militarum Tempestus the Hammer of the Emperor ability without breaking it for regular Guard.

This also opens up more list building options. Now you can have pure Guard, pure Scions, or a mixture of the two.

3) Massive point costs reduction, for example:
- Vanquisher: 110 points (with hull heavy bolter)
- Eradicator and Exterminator: 115 points (with hull heavy bolter)
- Executioner: 120 points (with hull heavy bolter)
- Battle Tank: 125 points (with hull heavy bolter)
- Demolisher and Punisher: 130 points (with hull heavy bolter)

These costs are heavily compared to the Dunecrawler. Which is strikingly similar statistically to the Leman Russ in both durability and firepower. Then just internally balance the other codex vehicles around these costs.

This is only for fixing the current codex. Not wishlisting the next codex.