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Should GW allow the exact same model cost different amounts of points in different armies? As a GK player I got hit hard by the point increase to storm ravens and assault cannons all because of the effect Rowboat has on Ultramarine models. That got me wondering why should I be penalized for an advantage that I can't get. Also purely from a fluff perspective, why should a unit that is iconic to a specific army but available to others not be cheaper for that iconic army (BT and crusaders come to mind)?
I know that soup exists but if GW would limit effects/advantages to specific chapters/legions/clans then it shouldn't be as big problem for balance issues.

Purely on terms of fluff no. In terms of effect yes though Guillimann bonus should be factored in his price, not assault cannon. Though of course that's impossible to factor fully. How many assault cannons he boosts?

But marines shouldn't pay more on assault cannons due to Guillimann. After all what if he's Imperial fist? No Guillimann there.

I mean, the opposite is if anything more frustrating. As a dark eldar player my bike unit that is identical to the craftworld/Corsair biker but with much worse guns cost 13 points, almost 50% more.

Corsairs got their bikes fixed in CA, we did not.

To answer the fundamental question, I believe that different armies should be paying different prices for the same thing. I believe this relates to creating themes for how each army plays.

Simplistic example: If we say that one of the themes for the Imperial Guard army is to have the cheapest, best tanks - this supports a mechanised Imperial Guard theme. Then when Space Marines have a tank, it should either be not as cheap or not as good for the same price - if it is as good for as cheap, then IG no longer have their theme.

In the example that you gave, it appears that Stormravens in a GK army are collateral damage from other armies imbalance (specifically codex marine assault cannons in combination with RG). The problem is that GK shares units with Codex: Space Marines, but operates in a different meta within the army. With regard to fixing it, options include:
- Rolling GK into Codex Marines, so that they can take advantage of Codex: Marine buffs and therefore the point changes make sense in the context of the army
- Stopping GK from using Codex Marine units, so that there is no overlap in units
- Not changing the units available to GK, but updating points for GK separately to Codex Marines (leads to "Why does GK get cheaper assault cannons?!" whinging)

It's a problem caused by GW splitting GK from Codex Marines without being able to effectively establish a stand-alone theme for them (bringing it back to my point about themes). Marines are "elite, expensive, jack-of-all-trades infantry", GK are the same with less troops, psychic powers and power swords -- there isn't enough difference in how those play.

Thank you Sorcererbob- that was the point that I was thinking. GW is using blanket rulings without regard to effects. I can see that model X may be more useful in Codex 1 as opposed to its usefulness in Codex 2. Therefore GW should adjust model X's point cost in Codex 1 without changing it in Codex 2.
With Key words now in the game there shouldn't be an issue since, presumably, the enhancement comes from something in Codex 1 and would be limited to Codex 1 only. If a player wants the cheaper form of model X from Codex 2 then it will not be able to take advantage of the upgrade from Codex 1.

I believe they should. But it should be based on a fluff perspective. It would be a very simple way to differentiate armies.

Most historical wargames feature this kind of practice, because the availability of certain materials/weapons/units were hugely varied.

I'd like to see certain armies pay more for stuff which is "historically" rarer in their chapter/army etc.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
As a GK player I got hit hard by the point increase to storm ravens and assault cannons all because of the effect Rowboat has on Ultramarine models.

The assault cannon went up one point. And the twin doubled to appropriately match the logic of other twin weapons. The Stormraven base went up, because it's pretty damned durable.

GK needs help in other ways.

The main problem with this is that either units tend not to fill sufficiently different roles or else they fill unique and vital roles.

Ideally, you could give Marines slightly less good tanks than Guard, for their cost. If tanks nevertheless fill an important strategic role, the Marine player will still want to take some of them, but not as many. Marine armies would then tend to be infantry-heavy but would still contain tanks. But you don't actually need tanks. If you give Marines over-costed tanks then they just won't use them at all.

The opposite problem exists with screening units. Screening is absolutely necessary in 8th. Part of why Imperium and Chaos are so strong is that they have access to really efficient screeners. Other factions lack efficient screeners, and this either renders them totally non-competitive or limits them to a small number of archetypes which for whatever other reason are resistant to deep strikers and fast melee. This is a huge problem for pure Marine armies, since Scouts just aren't nearly as good at this as Guard options. This severely limits the sorts of armies Eldar can put together, although Alatoic Rangers now do an okay job of this.

Grey Knights are dead right now. Bring the Dreadknight to other soup lists and move on. In 7th Grey Knights were codex: Dreadknight, and that's how they are in 8th, too.

But the OP makes a great point. Grey Knights are not even close to viable, and this massively hurts them.