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Just a curious thought experiment.

If you didn't have to worry about t8, 3+ save, 24+ wound models with up to a 4+ invul save roaming around the battlefield, what would the game look like? No Baneblades, no Knights of any kind (including Wraithknights and Stompas), no Guilliman, Mortarion, Magnus, or any other Lords of War.

The toughest thing I can think of at that point would be the Land Raider at t8 with a 2+ save but no invul.

Get rid of all those superheavies, LoW's and other things and then...?

I think the game overall would be poorer. We'd be back to where we were at the dawn of 2e - dreaming about "If oly I could field a ______"

About the same. Few less lascannons few more heavy bolters.

Course Lords of War aren't really meta right now anyway.

With new IH in the meta right now it propably wouldnt change too much. You would still need enough anti tank to kill guard or marine parking lots. Maybe you would see a bit fewer smash captains since trading a captain for a 150pt tank isnt as good as trading for a 350-700pts model and a few more lascannons could do the same job in most cases if there are no more t8 4++. Perhaps also a bit less ROF weapons with good str, low ap and low damage to go around ++ saves and instead a few more pure anti infantry weapons and a few more anti tank weapons. A bit less of the weapons that are ok against most targets but dont shine against everything.

More than that I dont think would change.

Less heavy weapons, thats it. Nothing else would change.

Super-Heavies haven't actually been dominating the tournament meta for awhile now. Looking at recent top 4 results, last weekend across all GT's it was:

Tau
Marines
Marines
Marines
Imperium Soup (Super-Heavy)
Dark Eldar
Eldar Soup
Dark Eldar
Tyranid Soup
Eldar
Marines
Marines
AdMech
Chaos Soup (Super-Heavy)
Orks
Marines
GSC
Marines
Imperium Soup (Super-Heavy)
Dark Eldar
Marines
Marines
Chaos Soup (Maybe Super-Heavy)
Marines

So they're present, but not overbearing. I think p5freak is mostly right. There'd be fewer heavy weapons (including heavy melee weapons) and that's about it.

Less interesting. That's what you get when you limit options/variety in the units people can take in their armies.

Removing baneblade/fellblade variants and stompas would change very little because they don't even have invuls. Their just big things with more wounds and guns. You kill them the same as those landraiders you mentioned. You just need to shoot them more.

We effectively only play without them now, it has been great for mission variety and means can do smaller games without weird results. But we have a highly curated meta when we play.
And a fair bit of modificaitions. The super heavy stuff really add nothing much to the game but large static models, in a ruleset that is not really advanced enough to do much with them.

But getting rid of them was probably the best move we did.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
Less interesting. That's what you get when you limit options/variety in the units people can take in their armies.

I disagree. Superheavies/primarchs make lists less interesting. Because you need heavy weapons, its pretty much the only answer against them. No superheavies, less more heavy weapons, points saved can be used for other stuff. Im pretty sure we would see more different lists without superheavies/primarchs.

Its my personal opinion that superheavies/primarchs have no place in a 2000- pts. 40k game. Its a small skirmish where they cant be bothered to participate.

I think a single LOW for sub 500pts that do not have ++ save, fnp or - to hit modifiers should be allowed. Like a baneblade. Cool models that have clear weaknesses and isnt harder to kill than 2 smaller tanks. And they cant ignore the degradation like knights either so you dont have to kill it in one turn or its a wasted shooting phase. A baneblade that goes down a bracket loses a lot of effectiveness. Doing 14 wounds on a tank commander or a baneblade is reducing the guard players shooting by almost the same amount. And 14 t8 3+ wounds are much cheaper on the TC than the super heavies.

But the knights and primarchs are a different kind of LOW than the guard super heavies.

About the same, as armies are still going to be bringing the same homogeneous weight of fire.

Armies that faired poorly against the big T8 and up super units will do better, but typically these are the factions that have more widespread issues (and now can't take a knight or similar to bail them out)

The trouble is that even without the superheavies you still have a game that has been 'balanced' against their presence

Klickor wrote:
I think a single LOW for sub 500pts that do not have ++ save, fnp or - to hit modifiers should be allowed. Like a baneblade. Cool models that have clear weaknesses and isnt harder to kill than 2 smaller tanks. And they cant ignore the degradation like knights either so you dont have to kill it in one turn or its a wasted shooting phase. A baneblade that goes down a bracket loses a lot of effectiveness. Doing 14 wounds on a tank commander or a baneblade is reducing the guard players shooting by almost the same amount. And 14 t8 3+ wounds are much cheaper on the TC than the super heavies.

But the knights and primarchs are a different kind of LOW than the guard super heavies.

So Baneblade is fine and all Chaos superheavies that are daemonengines are borked or what?

No if you would want to qualify it then any superheaviy with 4++. These are imo the issue, because they make high end AT weapons useless.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Klickor wrote:
I think a single LOW for sub 500pts that do not have ++ save, fnp or - to hit modifiers should be allowed. Like a baneblade. Cool models that have clear weaknesses and isnt harder to kill than 2 smaller tanks. And they cant ignore the degradation like knights either so you dont have to kill it in one turn or its a wasted shooting phase. A baneblade that goes down a bracket loses a lot of effectiveness. Doing 14 wounds on a tank commander or a baneblade is reducing the guard players shooting by almost the same amount. And 14 t8 3+ wounds are much cheaper on the TC than the super heavies.

But the knights and primarchs are a different kind of LOW than the guard super heavies.

So Baneblade is fine and all Chaos superheavies that are daemonengines are borked or what?

No if you would want to qualify it then any superheaviy with 4++. These are imo the issue, because they make high end AT weapons useless.

I have no idea what kind of stats the chaos superheavies have but if they are anything like the baneblade I wouldnt mind them. I didnt say "only baneblade variants" only used them as an example since im familiar with them. Have only seen them, knights and primarchs being played as LOW.

As long as they have clear weaknesses. A guard superheavies are way more vulnerable to many things than a knight outside of lacking ++, they lack ability to ignore terrain due to foot print and height while also not being good in melee or ignoring damage/degradation. Other superheavies with similar weaknesses while anti tank weapons work fine on them I dont mind at all.

An efficient super heavy or knight automaticly makes most vehicles a non valid options. And it is not even that the super heavy has to be good at anti tank. It is jus that if the super heavy is good, then people will counter it with enough multi shot anti tank to wreck vehicles. this also means bad times for elite armies, as multi shot weapons that do multi damge to tanks are general good at killing 2W or 3W targets too.

I know it would upset the Knight players, but I would remove the option of bringing any of the listed in OP until you hit 2000pts. But I prefer it to be a recommendation, not a rule (because I don't think it's my place to tell someone who only has 1500pts of Imperial Knights that they can't play). This is where TOs need to step up IMHO, mix up the game a little.

1500pts, 1750pts, without these options...would look very different. I'd also remove the Airwing and Supreme Command detachments until 2000pts too.

This would be my suggestion for a tournament circuit..

0-999pts only valid detachments would be Patrol, Battalion, Vanguard, Outrider and Spearhead.
1000-1999pts add Brigade and Fortification Network
2000pts+ add Supreme Command, Air Wing, Super Heavy and Super Heavy Auxiliary.

 bullyboy wrote:
I know it would upset the Knight players, but I would remove the option of bringing any of the listed in OP until you hit 2000pts. But I prefer it to be a recommendation, not a rule (because I don't think it's my place to tell someone who only has 1500pts of Imperial Knights that they can't play). This is where TOs need to step up IMHO, mix up the game a little.

1500pts, 1750pts, without these options...would look very different. I'd also remove the Airwing and Supreme Command detachments until 2000pts too.

This would be my suggestion for a tournament circuit..

0-999pts only valid detachments would be Patrol, Battalion, Vanguard, Outrider and Spearhead.
1000-1999pts add Brigade and Fortification Network
2000pts+ add Supreme Command, Air Wing, Super Heavy and Super Heavy Auxiliary.

I don't see why you would want to remove supreme command detachments... And Air wings are only problematic when the planes in it can get -3 to hit, or move with no penalty and reroll ones.

It would be nice if Super-Heavies didn't just concentrate firepower and wounds into these big blocks that ignore lots of the tactics in 40k. I'm thinking less a drawback, and if there was something slightly more interesting they could do.

6 months ago it would have made a massive difference, but since the Space Marine codex came out not quite as much.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
I know it would upset the Knight players, but I would remove the option of bringing any of the listed in OP until you hit 2000pts. But I prefer it to be a recommendation, not a rule (because I don't think it's my place to tell someone who only has 1500pts of Imperial Knights that they can't play). This is where TOs need to step up IMHO, mix up the game a little.

1500pts, 1750pts, without these options...would look very different. I'd also remove the Airwing and Supreme Command detachments until 2000pts too.

This would be my suggestion for a tournament circuit..

0-999pts only valid detachments would be Patrol, Battalion, Vanguard, Outrider and Spearhead.
1000-1999pts add Brigade and Fortification Network
2000pts+ add Supreme Command, Air Wing, Super Heavy and Super Heavy Auxiliary.

I don't see why you would want to remove supreme command detachments... And Air wings are only problematic when the planes in it can get -3 to hit, or move with no penalty and reroll ones.

Because I feel they should only exist in bigger games when armies bring in bigger assets.
Supreme Command are your big leaders with bodyguard (elite slot), plus it allows a lord of war so has to go.
Airwing is ridiculous IMHO, just look at the Aeldari flyer lists. Make them bring 3 detachments if they want excess flyers.

I really don't understand the hate boner against superheavies dakka seems to have. They're not unstoppable killing machines... they have clear and obvious counters. They're not considered "meta" anymore, every army has ways to deal with them.

 Horst wrote:
I really don't understand the hate boner against superheavies dakka seems to have. They're not unstoppable killing machines... they have clear and obvious counters. They're not considered "meta" anymore, every army has ways to deal with them.

For many, I dont think that is the reason. It's about scale.
Look at what 40k used to be back in 2nd and 3rd, thats what I feel people would like to see return.

Well, many of us didn't play until later editions, when the scale was already ratcheted up. I played in 5th edition, and am playign 8th now. In 5th, I remember Apocalypse coming out, and playing with my trio of baneblades, or massive tank companies. 40k, for me, has always been about massive battles with huge tanks and large formations of vehicles. I understand you may not like it if you originally liked a smaller skirmish game, but it hasn't been that way for at least a decade.

With bigger targets you need bigger guns. Even if someone showed up with an av 14 land raider or a monolith they alone werent enough to win the game if left unchecked so you didnt really need enough fire power tontake them out reliably. You could ignore them some what if you didnt want to put a lot of str9-10 in your list. Also max 3 heavy units allowed in a list so no more than 750 out of 1750pts were heavy tanks. Which meant that lighter vehicles werent auto killed even if AV system was flimsy. But now you really need to be able to kill a castellan turn 1 due to how much it shoots, in some matchups which means anything smaller have a hard time surviving. And you can have most of 2000pts now in LOW if you want and even if not the best list can make for very boring games.

Klickor wrote:
With bigger targets you need bigger guns. Even if someone showed up with an av 14 land raider or a monolith they alone werent enough to win the game if left unchecked so you didnt really need enough fire power tontake them out reliably. You could ignore them some what if you didnt want to put a lot of str9-10 in your list. Also max 3 heavy units allowed in a list so no more than 750 out of 1750pts were heavy tanks. Which meant that lighter vehicles werent auto killed even if AV system was flimsy. But now you really need to be able to kill a castellan turn 1 due to how much it shoots, in some matchups which means anything smaller have a hard time surviving. And you can have most of 2000pts now in LOW if you want and even if not the best list can make for very boring games.

You weren't playing the same game I was during the AV era. Someone showing up with an AV 14 land raider or monolith were idiots because it would pop like a balloon the first time someone looked at it funny considering all the AP-1 and AP-2 that were kicking around to deal with monstrous creatures. You never needed to ignore them because a single shot blew them up the majority of the time.

The amount of heavy support was also irrelevant because the only way a light vehicle wouldn't get instantly glanced out by S6 or ALSO popped by a single melta shot was if you could get a 2+ cover save. Even then, you'd just have smashfether or a chaos dog blob nuke it in one round of combat. The only way you would even CONSIDER bringing something like a rhino was if it was free. Land speeders and the like were absolutely out of the question.

With the nerfs to the castellan, having that much firepower isn't really necessary anymore. You sac off a rhino or two per turn to eliminate the very small army the opponent has and just camp out on objectives for the rest of the game. Or if you're ironhands you just eat the shooting and heal it back up.

ERJAK wrote:

Klickor wrote:
With bigger targets you need bigger guns. Even if someone showed up with an av 14 land raider or a monolith they alone werent enough to win the game if left unchecked so you didnt really need enough fire power tontake them out reliably. You could ignore them some what if you didnt want to put a lot of str9-10 in your list. Also max 3 heavy units allowed in a list so no more than 750 out of 1750pts were heavy tanks. Which meant that lighter vehicles werent auto killed even if AV system was flimsy. But now you really need to be able to kill a castellan turn 1 due to how much it shoots, in some matchups which means anything smaller have a hard time surviving. And you can have most of 2000pts now in LOW if you want and even if not the best list can make for very boring games.

You weren't playing the same game I was during the AV era. Someone showing up with an AV 14 land raider or monolith were idiots because it would pop like a balloon the first time someone looked at it funny considering all the AP-1 and AP-2 that were kicking around to deal with monstrous creatures. You never needed to ignore them because a single shot blew them up the majority of the time.

The amount of heavy support was also irrelevant because the only way a light vehicle wouldn't get instantly glanced out by S6 or ALSO popped by a single melta shot was if you could get a 2+ cover save. Even then, you'd just have smashfether or a chaos dog blob nuke it in one round of combat. The only way you would even CONSIDER bringing something like a rhino was if it was free. Land speeders and the like were absolutely out of the question.

With the nerfs to the castellan, having that much firepower isn't really necessary anymore. You sac off a rhino or two per turn to eliminate the very small army the opponent has and just camp out on objectives for the rest of the game. Or if you're ironhands you just eat the shooting and heal it back up.

Since no one played AV 14 vehicles really not that many had good options to destroy them. Why take lascannons when you can have missile launchers, not that good odds of seeing AV 14 anyway. Dont think we played in the same editions since AP-2 didnt do a thing to vehicles when I played back then. Only ap 1 and ap - had any effect on vehicles. No saves at all for vehicles at that time. The point is still kinda the same. You didnt have many tough vehicles that were a threat so you didnt have to build your lists around beating lists that were mainly tough tanks. Sure you dont have to build your list for 1500+ pts invested in T8 units but damn the game will suck if you cant kill any of them if you were to face it. And since they have a strat to ignore degradation you either kill them or ignore. Both lead to boring decisions. Either you are boring and build a list that can kill it and kill any other vehicle with ease or instead you play a boring game sitting on objectives and hope the opponent doesnt roll too hot with his knights.

 Horst wrote:
Well, many of us didn't play until later editions, when the scale was already ratcheted up. I played in 5th edition, and am playign 8th now. In 5th, I remember Apocalypse coming out, and playing with my trio of baneblades, or massive tank companies. 40k, for me, has always been about massive battles with huge tanks and large formations of vehicles. I understand you may not like it if you originally liked a smaller skirmish game, but it hasn't been that way for at least a decade.

I started in 8th and never played smaller point games, and I still dislike the fact that super heavies and flyers are practicaly unkillable, specially in larger numbers, when at the same time they have no problems killing 300-400pts units in a turn.

Exactly the same as it is now?

Yall know the meta is space marine parking lot/gun line right now, yes? Not superheavies.

Karol wrote:

 Horst wrote:
Well, many of us didn't play until later editions, when the scale was already ratcheted up. I played in 5th edition, and am playign 8th now. In 5th, I remember Apocalypse coming out, and playing with my trio of baneblades, or massive tank companies. 40k, for me, has always been about massive battles with huge tanks and large formations of vehicles. I understand you may not like it if you originally liked a smaller skirmish game, but it hasn't been that way for at least a decade.

I started in 8th and never played smaller point games, and I still dislike the fact that super heavies and flyers are practicaly unkillable, specially in larger numbers, when at the same time they have no problems killing 300-400pts units in a turn.

The only flyer that's practically unkillable are aeldari airwing due to the stacking -to hits and pivot twice rule.

I've forced plenty aircrafts to destroy themselves with positioning alone.

I played against IH flyers last week, and today. They seem to be just as annoying as eldar ones. only difference is the numbers. When eldar run 5-7 flyers here, the marines run 2 or 3. Fewer, but not really less unfun to play against.

Karol wrote:

 Horst wrote:
Well, many of us didn't play until later editions, when the scale was already ratcheted up. I played in 5th edition, and am playign 8th now. In 5th, I remember Apocalypse coming out, and playing with my trio of baneblades, or massive tank companies. 40k, for me, has always been about massive battles with huge tanks and large formations of vehicles. I understand you may not like it if you originally liked a smaller skirmish game, but it hasn't been that way for at least a decade.

I started in 8th and never played smaller point games, and I still dislike the fact that super heavies and flyers are practicaly unkillable, specially in larger numbers, when at the same time they have no problems killing 300-400pts units in a turn.

Yea, but you play Grey Knights, so pretty much everything is unkillable to you. :(

I don't think I've ever had a Knight Crusader kill 300-400 points worth of units in a single turn.. a Castellan can do it, but it's also 700 points, so if it's not killing 300 points per turn minimum it's not going to do it's job very well, since they don't usually last more than 2 turns to incoming fire.