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Browsing a lot of forums and facebook pages I keep seeing the words "Lists are optimised to take out heavy stuff" or "My list has a lot of anti-tanks". After seeing a titan get taken down turn 1 in a non -Apocalypse game yesterday I too wonder if things in 8th edition do a little too much damage to vehicles and heavy walkers while armies of boyz, gants and guards seem to survive until the end of the game.

Personally, I'm unsure what to think as I only have one heavy walker/vehicle (an ork morkanaut) and I tend to play lists that don't have a huge amount of anti-tank. I'm more in the "I don't know" section but I was wondering what everyone else's experiences of the game are?

When the initial index armies were released a few units (like las-preds and lascannons in general) did notably more damage to vehicles and GW seem to have been scaling up to these with new books.

It's worth keeping in mind that anti-horde in this edition seems to have taken a bit of a dive in places. Something like a marine with a heavy bolter is only enough to kill a single guardsmen per turn, flamer weapons aren't all that much, old heavy ordnance weapons now kill one or two models no matter big a hole they would have made in a 3rd-7th ed formation.

So I think it's a mix of things - most anti-horde weapons are simply poor at their job while anti-vehicle weapons are also now for dealing with monsters, characters, and elite units, and old anti-elite infantry weapons have transmuted into anti-vehicle weapons themselves (plasma being better than melta at the job for instance).

Previous editions of 40k, 7th edition being a notable example, had situations where models / units were all but untouchable, from a game mechanics perspective.

For starters, entire sections of infantry would have no (meaningful) interaction at all with something that had high Toughness / AV. So skewing towards being too Tough / high AV could cripple an opponent's damage output, resulting in a viable strategy of being flat-out immune to many attacks.

Next, fishing for Invisibility became a reliable strategy. If you have large point-value units that can only be hit by 1/6 attacks, instead of 3 or 4 / 6 attacks, the durability is tripled / quadrupled. So you could have units that are only damaged by a limited number of weapons, suddenly having a staggering increase in survivability.

And then Invulnerable saves could be rerolled. So the limited pool of viable weapons is then decreased in effectiveness by 75%, you can then save half or more of those damaging results [5+ reroll is 56% success rate] so basically... you had units that were so incredibly difficult to damage that there was no efficient means to deal with them. The pendulum had swung too far to the right.


Now, in 8th, the pendulum has swung too far [in my opinion] to the left, in that nothing is really survivable. Some games work well with that system. Warmachine / Hordes, for example, is as "killy" as 8th, but balanced in that the ranges are much, MUCH shorter and allow for counter play. Whereas 8th edition 40k allows you to reach out and crush someone from the get go.

So, 40k could reduce the effective killing power of all units in some way. Not much fun, really just prolongs the game, but does lessen the impact of 1st turn alpha strike. Hard to balance an overall buffing mechanic, as most anything would result in already good horde armies [IG] becoming even more resistant to damage.

I honestly don't see much of a "working" way to deal with this, other than to either create massive points changes to units, or implement some form of alternating activation. There are so many scale issues with such a limited RNG [d6] that I have difficulty determining any other way to keep a game that plays quickly, has fun, interactive play [non-Invis-2++ rerolling T8 Deathstars] and allows a variety of units that goes from Grot to Marine to Dreadnaught to Imperial Knight and beyond.

To me, the alternative is ultra-skew lists, that you can determine the outcome before you start. Do you have the tools? Yes / No. Win / Lose.


TL : DR - Everything does much more damage than it used to. For me, that's an acceptable negative, if it prevents an "untouchable" class of units from existing that are non-interactive to game with or against.

Also, a poll options that says, "Not ideal, but workable" would be nice.

You're just artificially inflating game length by making things take longer to kill. There is no problem with being able to kill something in 1 turn.

Obviously a couple armies damage is a bit too high in the shooting phase. Eldar with Reapers, for example. Or, Imperial Guard, with their artillery, another example.

Just tone down the egregious offenders.

As someone whose army has never been viable in my entire tenure of 40k until 8th edition, it's refreshing to not put my models down, look at my opponent's list, and sigh, knowing i could do nothing against it. Just having a chance to win, even if it's small, is so much better than how things were.

The points of some bigger units should probably come down, excluding Baneblades, these should go up in price. Imperial Knights could easily shave off 100 points. Or, make them T10 2+.

Also, I didn't vote. What is it with Dakka Dakka and dumb poll questions?

A.T. wrote:
Something like a marine with a heavy bolter is only enough to kill a single guardsmen per turn, flamer weapons aren't all that much, old heavy ordnance weapons now kill one or two models no matter big a hole they would have made in a 3rd-7th ed formation.

No, I think the mindset was "bring tools to take down Magnus, Stormravens, and Asscan Razorbacks" and the internet just never came down from that level.

It is now a self defeating cycle - "I need to bring lascannons to kill tanks and the best point per lascannon is a las pred, which means I need more lascannons in case they have las preds, which means..." and so on.

Flamers need a little help, but heavy bolters kill twice as many IG as a lascannon would at far less cost. I am of the mind that the Infantry Squad problem is a little column A and a little column B. IS are strong and versatile, but people also are overly obsessed with AV and forgo anti infantry weapons. It's also why you don't often see Dark Reapers without ML and/or Shining Spears.

I did not vote, because this poll doesn't represent my views in any form.

Vehicles are in kind of an odd spot.

It seems like basic troop transports, like rhinos, are too tough. Last edition, it would take a relatively minor miracle for a warboss to not krump a rhino in half. Now, a rhino will endure like 3-4 rounds of combat with a warboss.

But big stompy units like knights, morkanauts, wraithknights, aren't tough enough. They just fold like wet paper to any dedicated amount of firepower.

It's kind of odd, and I don't know exactly how to fix it. I think being less stingy with T9 would help.

They can always just go the route of adding wounds, but hell, a T8 garg squiggoth with 35 wounds still goes down INCREDIBLY fast more often than not.

 Marmatag wrote:
You're just artificially inflating game length by making things take longer to kill. There is no problem with being able to kill something in 1 turn.

Obviously a couple armies damage is a bit too high in the shooting phase. Eldar with Reapers, for example. Or, Imperial Guard, with their artillery, another example.

Just tone down the egregious offenders.

As someone whose army has never been viable in my entire tenure of 40k until 8th edition, it's refreshing to not put my models down, look at my opponent's list, and sigh, knowing i could do nothing against it. Just having a chance to win, even if it's small, is so much better than how things were.

The points of some bigger units should probably come down, excluding Baneblades, these should go up in price. Imperial Knights could easily shave off 100 points. Or, make them T10 2+.

Also, I didn't vote. What is it with Dakka Dakka and dumb poll questions?

But now with killiness being this good games are decided on basically first turn or two there isn't any real reason to take out models. Just roll dice and use pen or dice as wound counters as that's what models are reduced to

I'd say 40K 8th is absolutely "too" killy for me. It doesn't ruin the game, but the aim of GW is "more models, less time", and you can see it in the game.

Things in general are extremely deadly almost across the board, be it statwise or weight of dice. I do feel strongly that "nothing is safe" when playing a game without tons of terrain or special rules.

Damage? No.

Are there to many invul saves? Hell yeah there are. They are handing invul saves out to everyone yo the point of the only gimik daemons had is a run of the mill thing.

I think so.
Its mixed, but I don't like the fact the game is so skewed to "this unit comes on and deletes this unit". Or "I have first turn, Im going to kill 25-30% of your stuff, sucks for you."

Or that you have to do this or you get the same back. Not sure what the answer is - but it isnt strategy for me. Its just applied maths.

There are a handful of models that are too killy which are negatively impacting the meta, if those are fixed, i don't see a problem.

Or just play at 1500 points where lists are way less killy.

I like that anything can now be brought down with enough fire power. Previous editions basically made tanks untouchable for the most part once your own heavy weapons were taken out. But saying that I do get very frustrated that my Renegade Knight dies within the first two turns of a game when everything gets thrown at it. I pay the points for it and I want it to at least do something in a game. It is a tough line to balance.

tneva82 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You're just artificially inflating game length by making things take longer to kill. There is no problem with being able to kill something in 1 turn.

Obviously a couple armies damage is a bit too high in the shooting phase. Eldar with Reapers, for example. Or, Imperial Guard, with their artillery, another example.

Just tone down the egregious offenders.

As someone whose army has never been viable in my entire tenure of 40k until 8th edition, it's refreshing to not put my models down, look at my opponent's list, and sigh, knowing i could do nothing against it. Just having a chance to win, even if it's small, is so much better than how things were.

The points of some bigger units should probably come down, excluding Baneblades, these should go up in price. Imperial Knights could easily shave off 100 points. Or, make them T10 2+.

Also, I didn't vote. What is it with Dakka Dakka and dumb poll questions?

But now with killiness being this good games are decided on basically first turn or two there isn't any real reason to take out models. Just roll dice and use pen or dice as wound counters as that's what models are reduced to

I have found that it is generally in my advantage to go second. But, I play competitive ITC.

And T8 doesn't mean much when an increadibly cheap manticore wounds it on 3s and does solid damage, as well as cutting a vehicle to its invuln, if it even has one.

Some weapon's damage ranges (Lascannan's D6), does mean that in some games you're going to spike high and lose big things that shouldn't be lost turn 1. I had Mortarion die to a Las Pred and Missile Devs turn 1 in a tournament, which sucked, but that was my fault for taking a unit that is vulnerable to spikes like that. When my opponents don't spike, which is the average, Mortarion is a beast.

Infantry, hordes of them, provide a great base level, and a threat at all turns in the game. This, for me, is a great thing. I love Infantry vs Infantry battles. Infantry are much more resilient to damage spikes right now, since being 1W means they don't care about those damage spikes. If an opponent goes too anti-horde, then the big stuff can still come in, but you can't just take big stuff and win either.

Ultimately, I do think there are a few weapons that deal too much damage (Plasma should either only be 2 damage, or only go up to S8, not both in my opinion, and Dark Reapers need 1 lower damage across the board on their shooting modes), but that's hardly across the board.

EDIT: There's no "No. I like where things are at." option. I will refrain from voting until there's a different "No" answer.

One thing that might be an interesting change is to have 2 AP modifiers. One for troops and the other for vehicles/monsters. Then you could do things like have flamers do more damage to troops and be less effective against vehicles (Say -3AP vs troops -0 vs Vehicles) without totally neutering the weapon against vehicles.

Anyway that's just a quick thought from someone who doesn't play often or well.

Another one of these threads....

 Marmatag wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You're just artificially inflating game length by making things take longer to kill. There is no problem with being able to kill something in 1 turn.

Obviously a couple armies damage is a bit too high in the shooting phase. Eldar with Reapers, for example. Or, Imperial Guard, with their artillery, another example.

Just tone down the egregious offenders.

As someone whose army has never been viable in my entire tenure of 40k until 8th edition, it's refreshing to not put my models down, look at my opponent's list, and sigh, knowing i could do nothing against it. Just having a chance to win, even if it's small, is so much better than how things were.

The points of some bigger units should probably come down, excluding Baneblades, these should go up in price. Imperial Knights could easily shave off 100 points. Or, make them T10 2+.

Also, I didn't vote. What is it with Dakka Dakka and dumb poll questions?

But now with killiness being this good games are decided on basically first turn or two there isn't any real reason to take out models. Just roll dice and use pen or dice as wound counters as that's what models are reduced to

I have found that it is generally in my advantage to go second. But, I play competitive ITC.

And T8 doesn't mean much when an increadibly cheap manticore wounds it on 3s and does solid damage, as well as cutting a vehicle to its invuln, if it even has one.

Could you tell me how you feel going second is an advantage? I am a relative new player and I had a similar feeling, but only if there is eough terrain, so I can hide atleast my squishy units. If my wave serpent and flyers are out in the open and beeing shot at is fine, as long as my important stuff stays same. When I go second then, I see most of the enemys stuff and can counterstrike.

Whats your view on the topic? Thank you!

Going second in the "the relic" is super strong.

The lack of a proper cover mechanic and real cover save means that AP is king where as you needed AP and ignore cover to melt units with only markerlighting with Tau or psychic/relic shenanigans could reliably do both which made positioning more important and target priority less straight forward.

Vehicles are in a weird place with a lot of their points costs and durability not really matching up all that well.

I don't think it's a problem of how much damage weaponry inflicts, I think it's much more a problem of how 40k is generally played.

Tables are set up with barely any LOS covering terrain, and this means that the strategic mobility of shooting armies is magnified in importance by quite a large margin. HVTs have nowhere to hide, so an army can focus all it's firepower and delete said models quickly. This is a sensible outcome in war, but generally you also get some significant cover on the table to help both forces engage on more favorable terms if manipulated properly.

That being said, the way LOS ignoring weaponry is handled is also a big problem, as there is actually no effect to accuracy and no requirement to paint targets for bombardment. If GW handles this problem and we play with larger/denser terrain, this problem will be mitigated and the game will play out with more of a focus on maneuver warfare.

alexxk wrote:

Spoiler:

 Marmatag wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You're just artificially inflating game length by making things take longer to kill. There is no problem with being able to kill something in 1 turn.

Obviously a couple armies damage is a bit too high in the shooting phase. Eldar with Reapers, for example. Or, Imperial Guard, with their artillery, another example.

Just tone down the egregious offenders.

As someone whose army has never been viable in my entire tenure of 40k until 8th edition, it's refreshing to not put my models down, look at my opponent's list, and sigh, knowing i could do nothing against it. Just having a chance to win, even if it's small, is so much better than how things were.

The points of some bigger units should probably come down, excluding Baneblades, these should go up in price. Imperial Knights could easily shave off 100 points. Or, make them T10 2+.

Also, I didn't vote. What is it with Dakka Dakka and dumb poll questions?

But now with killiness being this good games are decided on basically first turn or two there isn't any real reason to take out models. Just roll dice and use pen or dice as wound counters as that's what models are reduced to

I have found that it is generally in my advantage to go second. But, I play competitive ITC.

And T8 doesn't mean much when an increadibly cheap manticore wounds it on 3s and does solid damage, as well as cutting a vehicle to its invuln, if it even has one.

Could you tell me how you feel going second is an advantage? I am a relative new player and I had a similar feeling, but only if there is eough terrain, so I can hide atleast my squishy units. If my wave serpent and flyers are out in the open and beeing shot at is fine, as long as my important stuff stays same. When I go second then, I see most of the enemys stuff and can counterstrike.

Whats your view on the topic? Thank you!

Hi, absolutely!

The ITC missions used in tournaments feature progressive scoring for both kills and objectives. At the core, you have between 2-6 objective markers on the table for a mission. The board is entirely symmetric, as well, with the objective marker locations pre-determined.

You score points at the end of your turn:

Did you hold at least 1 objective? Yes/No. Yes = 1 point.
Did you kill at least 1 enemy unit? Yes/No. Yes = 1 point.

And at the end of the *game* turn, both players can score:

Did you hold *more* objectives than your opponent? Yes/No. Yes 1 = point.
Did you kill *more* units than your opponent? Yes/No. Yes = 1 point.

And of course everyone has equal opportunity secondaries.

By going second, I can knock you off of objectives and get that extra point, or better understand if i need to commit to killing a unit entirely or just seriously degrading it. This will allow me an easier path to scoring 2 extra points, per turn.

Considering both players have the same overall opportunity to score, 6 points (2 over 3 turns) is actually incredibly significant.

Also, if you deploy and construct your list with denying secondaries in mind, you will get punched in the mouth going second, but it won't hurt that bad.

I recently took first place in another ITC tournament, opting to go second twice in 3 games. I was forced to go first in another. In the games I went second, the extra 4 points in 2 turns effectively iced the game regardless of what happened on turn 3+.

You do need to adjust how you deploy and build your list, but planning on going second has given me an immense advantage. Think about it. How often would your opponent chose to go first? Pretty often, right? So if you build a list that is designed to go second, you're fairly well insulated from losing that roll off, and when you do win the roll and have the choice, telling your opponent to go second is just another instance of "As planned." You are effectively insulating yourself from bad luck in the roll off.

When you start seeing people not taking set piece models to any form of competitive game due to risk of losing it before you even get a turn to play with it, you have to think something is wrong with the damage. Now if that is fixed by nerfing anti tank or making new rules to take some of the piss out of alpha strike builds (like a rule stating all models who have no had their first turn gain a +1 to either its armor or invlun save).

Simply cutting the points of super heavies only works in the aspect that it helps super heavies but it still leaves things like primarchs as a auto loss to a alpha list. now if you hate primarchs then this will tickle your fancy but it is not balanced.

I think GW will do something about the alpha strike because they gain a lot of profit from center piece models (primarchs, riptides, wraith knights) and at the rate the meta is going in my area is that people have stopped bringing any model worth more than 300 points (with exceptions). We have a few DG players who have stopped running morty due to first turn kills. I doubt il see Magnus anytime until the next edition or codex drop because his nerf to his aura left him even more in the breeze against alpha strikes. I know I have stopped running him in anything but a very casual setting.

But yes, the big problems with 8th at this moment are hordes are to cheap, elite models and armies cost to much, anti tank is to potent and anti horde is far to flacid (until flamers are halved in cost they wont be a effective deterrent. Because of the above you see lists that make use of lots of cheap bodies are on the top.

If am not sure what the answer is to be honest. A damage nerf seems the best upfront answer along with a slashing of flamer or flamer like weapons prices to boot. But I am sure that is a very unpopular stance for me to be taking.

TLDR. No player or army should be losing center piece high value models before they even take a turn with them. And flamers need a price slashing.

Table wrote:
When you start seeing people not taking set piece models to any form of competitive game due to risk of losing it before you even get a turn to play with it, you have to think something is wrong with the damage. Now if that is fixed by nerfing anti tank or making new rules to take some of the piss out of alpha strike builds (like a rule stating all models who have no had their first turn gain a +1 to either its armor or invlun save).

Set piece or not its a war game, you are going to lose models

a lot of people seem to have an aversion to taking things off the table and to an extent i can understand that. especially a cool big thing you spent days on painting or what not.

Maybe because I play Tyranids I just don't see the problem. It's still difficult to remove T8 targets in this game, much more so than T7.

I would rather they tone down the obvious abusers like Reapers and Guard before they start fundamentally changing things.

It's not just that things are too powerful it is that they are too powerful and too mobile. If I don't kill morty/magnus turn 1 they are going to be in my face and killing my army on their turn.

There is so much deepstriking/turn 1 charges that the game has really turned into delete them before they delete you.

It is too easy to get firepower exactly where it is needed turn 1 instead of taking a couple turns to maneuver or be able to force your opponent to split fire or shoot at things you want them to.

Also, toughness as a defense has really lost it's ability to differentiate targets. I still think we should go to more a toughness vs save model instead of a toughness and save. Big beasts should have high toughness t9+ while elites should have high armor values 2+.

That way strong weapons can work against high toughness but if they don't have a good save modifier they won't work against elites. A leman russ could be t12 5+ while a predator could stay t7 3+.

A lascannon should be s9 -1 d6. Plasma could be s6 -2/s7 -3 2d. Short ranged high power weaponry could be a combo of both (meltas/fire dragons keep that s9 -3). The more variety of weapons we are forced to bring the less we can spam the more tactical the game becomes.

Also too many invuln saves. All those 4++s in response to deal with the high str + high AP weapons skew the game because you need so many shots to hit, wound and then punch through that invuln.

Also the board is too small for the amount of models on it. 1st turn engagements should be rare and positioning for a turn or two should be the norm but then we'd have to either get huge boards that would be impractical to play on/store or GW would have to sell less models.

Games would become all day affairs lasting many turns which would be great sometimes but would further relegate 40k to a niche market because not all of us have 6+ hours to play.

I'm not sure how to solve the problem. I'd start with adjusting toughness, saves, weapon str and ap values. Then ranges, then points and then finally game size.

 Desubot wrote:

Table wrote:
When you start seeing people not taking set piece models to any form of competitive game due to risk of losing it before you even get a turn to play with it, you have to think something is wrong with the damage. Now if that is fixed by nerfing anti tank or making new rules to take some of the piss out of alpha strike builds (like a rule stating all models who have no had their first turn gain a +1 to either its armor or invlun save).

Set piece or not its a war game, you are going to lose models

a lot of people seem to have an aversion to taking things off the table and to an extent i can understand that. especially a cool big thing you spent days on painting or what not.

I did not type or even hint that my problem was this. I am sure some people do indeed have this problem. I am simply stating that the current amount of long ranged AT firepower is getting so profound that in my local meta no one is taking primarchs or super heavies. This hurts GW by slowing sales of the most profitable kits they make and it hurts the meta by making hordes even more of a no brainer. It hurts list diversity and in turn hurts fun. I am not qualified to talk on a tournament level of play. I can only guess at what happens at LVO is a reflection of this but it is just a guess.

In full disclosure I own three full armies over 4k points of minis in each. Out of those three ( Thousand Sons, Night Lords and World Eaters with DG being my next project ) I own ONE super heavy, which is Magnus. I have five lists I run with my sons. Only one of those five make use of Magnus.
Im am simply stating what I am seeing and my personal thoughts are that super heavies (in moderation) are a fun part of the game for many players and that those players should not be losing those models before they take a turn. If the meta was that hordes evaporated on turn one it would be bad as well. When alpha is to strong it hurts the game.

I hope this clears up my stance.

I think so, IMO games are more fun when you dont have a 100% kill chance rate along with real/more target priority and turn management is needed.

Table wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Table wrote:
When you start seeing people not taking set piece models to any form of competitive game due to risk of losing it before you even get a turn to play with it, you have to think something is wrong with the damage. Now if that is fixed by nerfing anti tank or making new rules to take some of the piss out of alpha strike builds (like a rule stating all models who have no had their first turn gain a +1 to either its armor or invlun save).

Set piece or not its a war game, you are going to lose models

a lot of people seem to have an aversion to taking things off the table and to an extent i can understand that. especially a cool big thing you spent days on painting or what not.

I did not type or even hint that my problem was this. I am sure some people do indeed have this problem. I am simply stating that the current amount of long ranged AT firepower is getting so profound that in my local meta no one is taking primarchs or super heavies. This hurts GW by slowing sales of the most profitable kits they make and it hurts the meta by making hordes even more of a no brainer. It hurts list diversity and in turn hurts fun. I am not qualified to talk on a tournament level of play. I can only guess at what happens at LVO is a reflection of this but it is just a guess.

In full disclosure I own three full armies over 4k points of minis in each. Out of those three ( Thousand Sons, Night Lords and World Eaters with DG being my next project ) I own ONE super heavy, which is Magnus. I have five lists I run with my sons. Only one of those five make use of Magnus.
Im am simply stating what I am seeing and my personal thoughts are that super heavies (in moderation) are a fun part of the game for many players and that those players should not be losing those models before they take a turn. If the meta was that hordes evaporated on turn one it would be bad as well. When alpha is to strong it hurts the game.

I hope this clears up my stance.

eh sorry wasn't implying that it was your stance its just a thing i notice with a lot of people.

BUT i will say are the mega models really a door buster for gw?
they are cool but they only ever sell one of them. (in general) AND they are often a massive chunk of your army meaning less models purchased to fill out the rest of the list. mind you people that buy those are probably the kinda person that already has a decent sized collection in the first place. i dont often see new players just grabbing one of those after their first starter set. (mind you this is entirely anecdotal)

if anything this pushes people to buy more normal dudes which outside of starts are probably going to make gw more cash. (possibly)

bananathug wrote:
It's not just that things are too powerful it is that they are too powerful and too mobile. If I don't kill morty/magnus turn 1 they are going to be in my face and killing my army on their turn.

There is so much deepstriking/turn 1 charges that the game has really turned into delete them before they delete you.

It is too easy to get firepower exactly where it is needed turn 1 instead of taking a couple turns to maneuver or be able to force your opponent to split fire or shoot at things you want them to.

Also, toughness as a defense has really lost it's ability to differentiate targets. I still think we should go to more a toughness vs save model instead of a toughness and save. Big beasts should have high toughness t9+ while elites should have high armor values 2+.

That way strong weapons can work against high toughness but if they don't have a good save modifier they won't work against elites. A leman russ could be t12 5+ while a predator could stay t7 3+.

A lascannon should be s9 -1 d6. Plasma could be s6 -2/s7 -3 2d. Short ranged high power weaponry could be a combo of both (meltas/fire dragons keep that s9 -3). The more variety of weapons we are forced to bring the less we can spam the more tactical the game becomes.

Also too many invuln saves. All those 4++s in response to deal with the high str + high AP weapons skew the game because you need so many shots to hit, wound and then punch through that invuln.

Also the board is too small for the amount of models on it. 1st turn engagements should be rare and positioning for a turn or two should be the norm but then we'd have to either get huge boards that would be impractical to play on/store or GW would have to sell less models.

Games would become all day affairs lasting many turns which would be great sometimes but would further relegate 40k to a niche market because not all of us have 6+ hours to play.

I'm not sure how to solve the problem. I'd start with adjusting toughness, saves, weapon str and ap values. Then ranges, then points and then finally game size.

Morty may be to strong but as a player who owns Magnus I can safely say that if he is evaporating your army on turn two then you are doing something wrong. Yes he can get mega smites but more often than not hes throwing d6 smites out and even more often than that he isnt landing 3 smites or are getting denied. On average I would say he puts out 6 mortal wounds a turn through smites and his melee profile is only good for taking out non super heavy vehicles. If your army cannot handle 6 mortal wounds a turn targeting the unit closest to him then the problem lies with your army or play and not the model. I am also not saying Magnus is strong, because he is. I am saying he is not this monster beat stick people like to make him out to be. That would be Morty.

And thats the problem. When a game comes down to whoever goes first wins and games running two turns then you know your meta is trashed. And you are correct, Las Cannons and their ilk are to strong., to much high invuln saves would be problem if we did not have multiple sources of mortal wounds and things like death hex. They have just nerfed Magnus for this very reason and it would be a good nerf if the ranged AT alpha was not as crazy strong as it is. I like the idea of max 4+ invuln saves with no invuln re-rolls.

While I am sure that alot of comp players love two turn games, most people that I know do not and it often leaves one side feeling very cheated.


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 Desubot wrote:

Table wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Table wrote:
When you start seeing people not taking set piece models to any form of competitive game due to risk of losing it before you even get a turn to play with it, you have to think something is wrong with the damage. Now if that is fixed by nerfing anti tank or making new rules to take some of the piss out of alpha strike builds (like a rule stating all models who have no had their first turn gain a +1 to either its armor or invlun save).

Set piece or not its a war game, you are going to lose models

a lot of people seem to have an aversion to taking things off the table and to an extent i can understand that. especially a cool big thing you spent days on painting or what not.

I did not type or even hint that my problem was this. I am sure some people do indeed have this problem. I am simply stating that the current amount of long ranged AT firepower is getting so profound that in my local meta no one is taking primarchs or super heavies. This hurts GW by slowing sales of the most profitable kits they make and it hurts the meta by making hordes even more of a no brainer. It hurts list diversity and in turn hurts fun. I am not qualified to talk on a tournament level of play. I can only guess at what happens at LVO is a reflection of this but it is just a guess.

In full disclosure I own three full armies over 4k points of minis in each. Out of those three ( Thousand Sons, Night Lords and World Eaters with DG being my next project ) I own ONE super heavy, which is Magnus. I have five lists I run with my sons. Only one of those five make use of Magnus.
Im am simply stating what I am seeing and my personal thoughts are that super heavies (in moderation) are a fun part of the game for many players and that those players should not be losing those models before they take a turn. If the meta was that hordes evaporated on turn one it would be bad as well. When alpha is to strong it hurts the game.

I hope this clears up my stance.

eh sorry wasn't implying that it was your stance its just a thing i notice with a lot of people.

BUT i will say are the mega models really a door buster for gw?
they are cool but they only ever sell one of them. (in general) AND they are often a massive chunk of your army meaning less models purchased to fill out the rest of the list. mind you people that buy those are probably the kinda person that already has a decent sized collection in the first place. i dont often see new players just grabbing one of those after their first starter set. (mind you this is entirely anecdotal)

if anything this pushes people to buy more normal dudes which outside of starts are probably going to make gw more cash. (possibly)

I forget where I heard this and probably should not be saying it, but I think GW makes alot more profit from big kits than infantry kits. Which is why we now have super heavies outside of apoc games (is apoc even still a supported format?). And it makes sense. I would own more super heavy models if I was a player that was comfortable using 1/4th of my list on one model. Magnus is a fluff take for me. Anything more than a fluff match and Ahriman will always be my HQ.

Honestly, for the points paid per wound, I kinda feel like everything that has more than one wound needs another one.