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How do!

Here’s a thread for you, and it’s not something I have a particularly strong, let alone informed opinion on. Hence I’m putting it to other Dakkanauts in the hope of some interesting and possibly enlightening conversation.

Title isn’t quite the full shilling, so I’ll explain the topic now.

Across the different Codexes, we see that not every race has the same breadth of options. Some, like Space Marines, have an absolute wealth of options. At the other extreme end of the spectrum we have Harlequins and Custodes, both of whom are comprised of less than a dozen options.

And as much as any given Codex might have no-brainer and absolute stinker options within it, not all armies having the same level of variety seems pretty unfair to me.

Consider if you will a pick up game. If I’m facing a lower unit count Codex (say, Genestealer Cults) I can start considering what tricks my opponent is likely to field before he begins to deploy. But if the answer is simply “Space Marines”, I’ll have little clue as to exactly what I might face. Will it be all first born? All Primaris? If it’s all Primaris, am I needing to think about countering Heavy Intercessors, Vanguard or what?

This is the same for pre-arranged games, except there I’m likely at more of a disadvantage if I’ve a low unit variety army compared to a high unit variety army. I’ll have little way to second guess my opponent and pick a force appropriate to give them a run for their money. Whilst they’ll be more likely to successfully guess what I’ll be fielding. Perhaps not exactly, but still a more informed guess than I can manage.

And whilst not the focus of this thread, yes lopsided Codexes, where some units are just not worth taking outside of certain combos, make this worse. Especially if my opponent is fielding a force from a fairly well internally balanced Codex with lots of options to choose from.

Indeed, the size of the current Space Marine range, it seems entirely possible that if we could ever truly settle on what’s the wheat and what’s the chaff, a Space Marine player will still up with more wheat units than I started with in my Codex to begin with.

Now I’m asking this because it’s not something I’ve really noticed being discussed before. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been of course, just that it’s passed me by.

What do you reckon, Dakka?

I've complained about this before. Especially in the context of allies in 8th edition, when "IMPERIUM" keyword detachments were all the rage.

The main current problem with it has to do with the way the multiplicative layers of rules bloat interact with the literal hundreds of options present in a space marine list. I've pointed out before that if you take an Assault Intercessor, and you paint him Black, and you say

"This Assault Intercessor is from the Black Templars chapter"

then that assault intercessor does roughly 2.5x damage by default than if you say

"This Assault Intercessor is from the Iron Hands chapter"

and what this does is create a situation whereby no space marine unit in existence can ever be allowed to be a balanced choice in non-ideal chapter/rule circumstances, because then the ideal chapter/rule circumstance instance of that unit or option becomes overly powerful.

the only other issue with the sheer volume of options marines (and some other armies, say, CSM, Orks, Eldar) have relative to other armies (Custodes, Harlequins, Knights, GSC) is purely logistical.

It appears to be basically an inevitability that you will never ever ever ever be able to create a situation where all the possible units that exist for anti light infantry firepower within the marine codex will be able to all have their own unique role and instance where they should be fielded over any other option. At the end of the day, either some units will have to be identical in terms of various stats, or some unit will end up mathematically 'the best'.

From the perspective of armies that have few options, I think it really only creates an issue when those armies are forced to be skew lists. Knights must have 175+pt vehicles as their whole army. As a harlequin player, I cannot not have 4++ invulnerable saves and I cannot have a toughness value above 5. That seems to be more of a 'moral' issue than a 'real balance' issue though, as at the end of the day any faction-based setting is going to have those faction-wide statistical differences. But you are going to see more limited factions more often pushing towards extreme skew because they have no other option than to do so, which does create negative experiences as skew tends to do.

At the end of the day, a lot of people look at WH40k and see a 'faction based' system where you pick Space Marines, Tau, Necrons, Guard, Knights, etc as your faction and it's like Hordes or World of Warcraft or Starcraft or whatever. But it is not that. Loyalist Space Marines are nearly half the codexes, half the releases, well over half the fluff and supporting media, and at any given time between 1/3 and 1/2 of the playerbase.

This is a situation that was directly and indirectly created by Games Workshop over the years, and it is what it is.

Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Consider if you will a pick up game. If I’m facing a lower unit count Codex (say, Genestealer Cults) I can start considering what tricks my opponent is likely to field before he begins to deploy. But if the answer is simply “Space Marines”, I’ll have little clue as to exactly what I might face. Will it be all first born? All Primaris? If it’s all Primaris, am I needing to think about countering Heavy Intercessors, Vanguard or what?

You shouldn't be looking or needing to list-tailor against a specific opponent.
Ideally the game should have a structure that means you don't shoot yourself in the foot or otherwise have too many bases to cover with an all-comers list. It's an issue with the game as a whole.

Unequal options are a problem in other ways - more unintended synergy and opportunities for cherry picking and skew lists, usually fewer weaknesses or missing parts, more for an opponent to have to deal with on the day in terms of trying to remember all of the rule combinations of their opponents faction.

 oni wrote:
Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

The barriers here are many- calling it a mental hurdle understates the problem.

The special rules we would sacrifice by taking allied factions are sometimes critical to the function of the army and removing them kills a lot of synergies with strats, auras, WL traits an relics, which severely impacts competitiveness. Beyond that, some are so narratively cool that they reflect the spirit of the army, and you can't really enjoy the story of the game without them. Any let's not forget that the detachment system in 9th imposes a CP penalty for additional detachments in addition to the loss of army purity rules.

I also find the use of the word "should" problematic. "Could" would have been a better choice, because it would still serve your underlying point- that we do have ways to mitigate the problem- without making people feel like you are telling them there is one right way to play.

For me, this issue goes beyond balance though. It is pretty much my biggest problem with the game, and has been since 1989, though at that time, the differences weren't so stark. It isn't just about competitiveness or even the story- it's a feeling of fairness; a feeling that GW cares about players who are uninterested in marines. It's the chicken and the egg argument too- that Marines don't get more stuff because they are more popular, but they are more popular because they get more stuff. I'm not arguing that this is true; I'm arguing that GW has no clue, and neither do we because a serious attempt at marine equivalency for any other fation hasn't been tried since 2nd ed.

What would that look like? At least 3 bespoke units per subfaction in addition to enough rules and fluff content for each subfaction to justify full supplements, as well as a common pool of 5 or more choices for every battlefield role.

I think the edition churn business model is a factor, and it's the primary reason I've wanted a persistent edition since 3rd. If we have to reinvent the wheel every 3-5 years, we're never going to develop air travel. If an edition last a decade, you might get enough time to build a faction that genuinely rivals space marines.

 oni wrote:
Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

Yeah, you know, you're right. I will sacrifice my army-wide rules and take allied faction detachments - lets say I know my opponent is playing Space Marines, who have a number of bolt weapon options equivalent to the number of ranged weapon options in the Tau codex, and I'm playing Tau.

Now: Which allies would you recommend I bring with my Tau to add good options? Maybe a solid melee allied army to allow me to act in all phases of the game, with some psyker support!

Oh dang, the same game system that set up unequal numbers of options also set up massively unequal numbers of available allied factions! Well ding dang darn it! Maybe we should just stop acting like this is a thing that players have to take the onus on themselves to correct, and accept that the system is set up unequally.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Consider if you will a pick up game. If I’m facing a lower unit count Codex (say, Genestealer Cults) I can start considering what tricks my opponent is likely to field before he begins to deploy. But if the answer is simply “Space Marines”, I’ll have little clue as to exactly what I might face. Will it be all first born? All Primaris? If it’s all Primaris, am I needing to think about countering Heavy Intercessors, Vanguard or what?

You shouldn't be looking or needing to list-tailor against a specific opponent.
Ideally the game should have a structure that means you don't shoot yourself in the foot or otherwise have too many bases to cover with an all-comers list. It's an issue with the game as a whole.

Unequal options are a problem in other ways - more unintended synergy and opportunities for cherry picking and skew lists, usually fewer weaknesses or missing parts, more for an opponent to have to deal with on the day in terms of trying to remember all of the rule combinations of their opponents faction.

It’s more the flip side.

Marines specifically are an incredibly flexible force, with a noticeably wider range of options. If they know they’re facing say….Dark Eldar? Their collection allowing, they can produce a list more challenging to Dark Eldar, whether or not they’re really working at it.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 oni wrote:
Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

Yeah, you know, you're right. I will sacrifice my army-wide rules and take allied faction detachments - lets say I know my opponent is playing Space Marines, who have a number of bolt weapon options equivalent to the number of ranged weapon options in the Tau codex, and I'm playing Tau.

Now: Which allies would you recommend I bring with my Tau to add good options? Maybe a solid melee allied army to allow me to act in all phases of the game, with some psyker support!

Oh dang, the same game system that set up unequal numbers of options also set up massively unequal numbers of available allied factions! Well ding dang darn it! Maybe we should just stop acting like this is a thing that players have to take the onus on themselves to correct, and accept that the system is set up unequally.

But, given that GW can do no wrong a priori and the axiom that there is nothing whatsoever that can be fixed about 40k (as it is flawless) who else's fault could it be?

 the_scotsman wrote:

 oni wrote:
Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

Yeah, you know, you're right. I will sacrifice my army-wide rules and take allied faction detachments - lets say I know my opponent is playing Space Marines, who have a number of bolt weapon options equivalent to the number of ranged weapon options in the Tau codex, and I'm playing Tau.

Now: Which allies would you recommend I bring with my Tau to add good options? Maybe a solid melee allied army to allow me to act in all phases of the game, with some psyker support!

Oh dang, the same game system that set up unequal numbers of options also set up massively unequal numbers of available allied factions! Well ding dang darn it! Maybe we should just stop acting like this is a thing that players have to take the onus on themselves to correct, and accept that the system is set up unequally.

Sure, why not? You're playing Tau - whom according to everyone are already unplayable in this edition. Clearly your army-wide rules/strats/etc already aren't helping you. So if you're not Battleforged what are you sacrificing? Take a detachment of ____, maybe do some conversion work on them, & justify them as being some of those Auxillaries everyone's always wishing for.
What's the worst that'll happen? You'll lose a game? Wich would be oh so different from what was already going to happen how?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Consider if you will a pick up game. If I’m facing a lower unit count Codex (say, Genestealer Cults) I can start considering what tricks my opponent is likely to field before he begins to deploy. But if the answer is simply “Space Marines”, I’ll have little clue as to exactly what I might face. Will it be all first born? All Primaris? If it’s all Primaris, am I needing to think about countering Heavy Intercessors, Vanguard or what?

You shouldn't be looking or needing to list-tailor against a specific opponent.
Ideally the game should have a structure that means you don't shoot yourself in the foot or otherwise have too many bases to cover with an all-comers list. It's an issue with the game as a whole.

Unequal options are a problem in other ways - more unintended synergy and opportunities for cherry picking and skew lists, usually fewer weaknesses or missing parts, more for an opponent to have to deal with on the day in terms of trying to remember all of the rule combinations of their opponents faction.

It’s more the flip side.

Marines specifically are an incredibly flexible force, with a noticeably wider range of options. If they know they’re facing say….Dark Eldar? Their collection allowing, they can produce a list more challenging to Dark Eldar, whether or not they’re really working at it.

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh to SOME extent. But not entirely.

They can certainly design a force that can present a real issue for COMMON dark eldar units, for sure, absolutely. But you just have to take a look at Seigler's post-nerf drukhari list (TLDR: Roughly 30 wracks, a haemonculus, 4 Talos, a large unit of Grotesques, 6 Cronos, a beefy Court of the Archon and a Black Heart archon to get the strat deny) vs a "Typical" drukhari list (lots of raiders with glass cannon W1 infantry in it) to see how that falls apart.

I a dark eldar player have basically every tool available to me within my dex to present basically all types of unit to my opponent. The only thing I cant bring is psykers, categorically, and I dont *think* i have the option to take anything that would not invalidate an opponent's AP-4 weaponry. I dont think theres any unit in the 'dex with an invuln more than 3 away from its core armor save.

But i can take melee units fast units slow units mechanized units close range units long range units deep striking units infiltrating units anti tank anti infantry anti MEQ vehicles monsters heavy infantry light infantry character heavy fly heavy all footslogging...

Reminds me of one of my classic "Dunked on That Guy" stories - i was playing in a campaign once and had to go up against a guy who I knew i didnt like and who I knew basically had his whole IG army magnetized/dry-swappable and who would massively massively tailor his lists, just taking the same stuff but vs marines everything owuld be a plasma gun, everything would be an executioner, etc. I got him in the matchup and I said "The orks will be ready, WAAAAGH!"

So i showed up at the game day with my ork list - dread mob, with my 4 deff dreads, 6 killa kanz, 1 battlewagon full of spanna boyz and a stompa. A terrible list that versus any decent TAC list would get taken apart, this was the height of 7th ed silliness after all. But of course, my opponent was a bunch of punisher/heavy bolter leman russes, heavy bolter HWS, flamer special weapon squads, flamer guard squads, hellhounds...yeah.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 oni wrote:
Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

Yeah, you know, you're right. I will sacrifice my army-wide rules and take allied faction detachments - lets say I know my opponent is playing Space Marines, who have a number of bolt weapon options equivalent to the number of ranged weapon options in the Tau codex, and I'm playing Tau.

Now: Which allies would you recommend I bring with my Tau to add good options? Maybe a solid melee allied army to allow me to act in all phases of the game, with some psyker support!

Oh dang, the same game system that set up unequal numbers of options also set up massively unequal numbers of available allied factions! Well ding dang darn it! Maybe we should just stop acting like this is a thing that players have to take the onus on themselves to correct, and accept that the system is set up unequally.

Tau could only be thought of as having limited options only when compared to Space Marines. Otherwise Tau are far from limited in unit options.

Comparing any other faction to Space Marines will make them seem limited and no faction will ever get as much attention so I recommend that Space Marines be left out of the equation.

 oni wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 oni wrote:
Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

Yeah, you know, you're right. I will sacrifice my army-wide rules and take allied faction detachments - lets say I know my opponent is playing Space Marines, who have a number of bolt weapon options equivalent to the number of ranged weapon options in the Tau codex, and I'm playing Tau.

Now: Which allies would you recommend I bring with my Tau to add good options? Maybe a solid melee allied army to allow me to act in all phases of the game, with some psyker support!

Oh dang, the same game system that set up unequal numbers of options also set up massively unequal numbers of available allied factions! Well ding dang darn it! Maybe we should just stop acting like this is a thing that players have to take the onus on themselves to correct, and accept that the system is set up unequally.

Tau could only be thought of as having limited options only when compared to Space Marines. Otherwise Tau are far from limited in unit options.

Comparing any other faction to Space Marines will make them seem limited and no faction will ever get as much attention so I recommend that Space Marines be left out of the equation.

....Why? Are space marines not a faction?

Are space marines not...half the factions? That exist?

My Tau in this example lack ANY access to melee units outside of 1 chaff melee unit and 2 named characters and ANY access to psykers. I would argue that they are more limited in terms of unit typology than most factions in the game. My GSC have access to far, far more options, and they have far fewer unit entries than Codex: Tau.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Consider if you will a pick up game. If I’m facing a lower unit count Codex (say, Genestealer Cults) I can start considering what tricks my opponent is likely to field before he begins to deploy. But if the answer is simply “Space Marines”, I’ll have little clue as to exactly what I might face. Will it be all first born? All Primaris? If it’s all Primaris, am I needing to think about countering Heavy Intercessors, Vanguard or what?

Well that's good reason to never tell your army in advance unless you know your opponent doesn't list tailor.

I'm not really convinced its a problem partly because GW provides a lot of width and not much depth. I'm not convinced for instance knowing my opponent was going deep into Assault Intercessors, or regular Intercessors, or the two brands of stealth Intercessor, or Heavy Intercessor or mini Marines would materially alter how I'd build any army I can imagine. If Harlequin Troupes are just *good* I'm not clear they are at a disadvantage - even if I know they are the only thing Harlequin players can take. Because good things tend to just be efficient for their points versus everything.

In fact I just don't think modern 40k really works on list tailoring. Generally speaking you want to grab all the S-Tier options in your codex (which are S-Tier because they are too cheap in their points versus the other units) and that's that. Individual games may go that way I guess - but generally individual games are in the lap of the dice, so its hard to draw lessons from them.

I guess in some ways its a battle between skew and the relationship of S-Tier/average. Because in say 8th edition, we did regularly see things like Green Tide win - and occasionally (in Europe anyway) we'd also see lists with say 12 Chimera's and basic infantry squads inside win by playing the objectives. I'd argue both were endurance skews - if you don't have the right guns, you can't table them in 5 turns. Plaguebeares+Thousand Sons was another one that got relatvely quickly nerfed out of existence. Today it feels the S-Tier factions would just chew such lists up barring bad dice. You can try to ride your luck with say DG/DA Terminators - but probably not reliably enough to consistently win majors.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 oni wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 oni wrote:
Players of these factions with few unit options should try to move past the mental hurdle of sacrificing army wide rules and take allied faction detachments to allay army deficiencies.

Yeah, you know, you're right. I will sacrifice my army-wide rules and take allied faction detachments - lets say I know my opponent is playing Space Marines, who have a number of bolt weapon options equivalent to the number of ranged weapon options in the Tau codex, and I'm playing Tau.

Now: Which allies would you recommend I bring with my Tau to add good options? Maybe a solid melee allied army to allow me to act in all phases of the game, with some psyker support!

Oh dang, the same game system that set up unequal numbers of options also set up massively unequal numbers of available allied factions! Well ding dang darn it! Maybe we should just stop acting like this is a thing that players have to take the onus on themselves to correct, and accept that the system is set up unequally.

Tau could only be thought of as having limited options only when compared to Space Marines. Otherwise Tau are far from limited in unit options.

Comparing any other faction to Space Marines will make them seem limited and no faction will ever get as much attention so I recommend that Space Marines be left out of the equation.

....Why? Are space marines not a faction?

Are space marines not...half the factions? That exist?

My Tau in this example lack ANY access to melee units outside of 1 chaff melee unit and 2 named characters and ANY access to psykers. I would argue that they are more limited in terms of unit typology than most factions in the game. My GSC have access to far, far more options, and they have far fewer unit entries than Codex: Tau.

Assuming you've read the lore for Tau... Tau are not melee combatants and they have zero psycher's in their race. The game play to some degree needs to adhere to the faction lore. So, I'm not sure what to tell you.

To me it's obvious that GW is not going to invest heavily in fledgling factions like Harlequins, Yannari and similar. The return on investment isn't there.

Tau are not "melee combatants" but they don't exactly avoid training in close quarters stuff. It's why I keep suggesting that Carbines be given the Pistol classification.

They have a whole race of psykers in their Empire too. It just means we need more auxiliary races to show up on the tabletop.

Ynnari, unfortunately, seem to have been stalled by a lack of confidence in their likely plans. Goodwin had talked about wanting to meld the "old" with the "new" for the Ynnari. The Visarch, supposedly, was a proof of concept for what a redone range would look like.

Absolutely yes.
Its a weird problem because GW don't understand or care about faction identity unless they're forced into like they are with T'au. Though I'm sure we'll see melee T'au battlesuits eventually. But they approach the game from a marketing perspective so if there's a hole in an army, like Sisters not having heavy infantry, they make a unit to fill that gap, rather than try to make something that does something thematic and interesting. A good example of this is how Tyranids went from a melee focussed horde army to a gunline army. GW just kept going "what do nids not have? Release something to fill that gap". They diluted the faction identity and 8/9th became so lethal that horde melee became useless so the fallback is to play in a style that is completely the opposite of what the army is supposed to be.

Moreover when one faction dominates the release schedule like Space Marines and they end up with multiple units fulfilling the same role you're inevitably left with units that are simply better at that role than other things making units redundant and making internal balance almost impossible.

Its honestly a stupid and weird problem that only GW could have.

 oni wrote:


Assuming you've read the lore for Tau... Tau are not melee combatants and they have zero psycher's in their race. The game play to some degree needs to adhere to the faction lore. So, I'm not sure what to tell you.

To me it's obvious that GW is not going to invest heavily in fledgling factions like Harlequins, Yannari and similar. The return on investment isn't there.

Categorically not true. GW INVENTS lore to justify things continuously. Space marines have quintupled in unit options, weapon options and so on over the last 10 years - all through 'lore' justifications.

Lore as an argument for army options is meaningless these days - 10 years ago each army had unique skills an deficits. Now GW have absolutely stripped other armies of their uniqueness and invented lore units for space marines to effectively allow you to make a marine army equivalent of most other armies.

craftworlds have been especially heavily hit by this, but Tau have also been hit by marines getting centurions, new dreadnoughts and walkers and a whole range of gun options that make pulse rifles pretty poor.

Lore is not a limiting factor if GW is willing to just invent lore at will to grant marines any option they can think of.


The problem is that GW simply doesn't treat the factions equally - they hold factions to different restrictions and limitations. If they were as free with the lore development in every other faction as they are with marines, then you'd not see the problems we have.

Yeah - lore is a terrible reason for saying a faction shouldn't get X, because you can invent/change the lore in about three sentences.

So for example - Tau and Dark Eldar don't have psykers for "reasons".
But... even if you wanted to stick with this, both could find "Psyker Aliens" to turn up with *armies* rather than galavanting their respective home territories in a heartbeat. Whether that's paid up devotes of the greater good, or some sort of psyker (idk, Craftworlders are right there) stuck in a permanent torture pod is up the miniature designer.

There's no obvious mechanical reason for both races not to get psykers beyond GW going "I dun wanna make these models - and we have enough problems coming up with vaguely interesting psychic disciplines as it is."

Tyel wrote:
Yeah - lore is a terrible reason for saying a faction shouldn't get X, because you can invent/change the lore in about three sentences.

So for example - Tau and Dark Eldar don't have psykers for "reasons".
But... even if you wanted to stick with this, both could find "Psyker Aliens" to turn up with *armies* rather than galavanting their respective home territories in a heartbeat. Whether that's paid up devotes of the greater good, or some sort of psyker (idk, Craftworlders are right there) stuck in a permanent torture pod is up the miniature designer.

There's no obvious mechanical reason for both races not to get psykers beyond GW going "I dun wanna make these models - and we have enough problems coming up with vaguely interesting psychic disciplines as it is."

The frustrating thing, is that you don't necessarily even need to break the 'no psykers' rule to give DE some new abilities along those lines.

We already have Necrons, who get C'tan powers, which are mechanically very similar to psychic powers whilst still representing something quite different.

Dark Eldar could easily have something like that on a Mandrake HQ (maybe even on regular Mandrake squads). I mean, Mandrakes have been shown to have all manner of strange powers - opening portals, emerging from the shadows of other creatures, draining life and temperature from the air around them, channelling those same stolen energies to manifest baleblasts, etc. You could easily turn these into pseudo-psychic powers to give DE some support abilities without breaking their lore.

There's also the possibility of just having weird technology for these functions. Again, taking some inspiration from Necrons, which have Crypteks that use technology to create some abilities very like psychic powers. Dark Eldar are supposed to have technology "so advanced it resembles magic", so surely Archons and/or Haemonculi could have access to some powerful, technology-based support abilities? Again, this would give DE access to abilities not dissimilar to psychic powers without breaking that particular rule.

But, as usual, GW just can't be arsed doing any of that.

Inequal options should be totally fine, balance-wise. The way GW does it makes it not work out though. Stratagems, character related buffs/auras and subfaction rules make it harder to balance, and as everyone is saying, GWs love of Marines has really beaten the pulp out of it.


But back in the day I played Necrons using the 3rd edition book. That book had very few options, and yet functioned pretty nicely as an army. I'd say that having so few options was part of the design philosophy of the army as well as faction identity. Imo it was cool. This codex was also doing great at the same time the famous Chaos 3.5 book was out, a codex with an incredible array of options. Both codexes played in the same 40K paradigm, and both worked.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Absolutely yes.
Its a weird problem because GW don't understand or care about faction identity unless they're forced into like they are with T'au. Though I'm sure we'll see melee T'au battlesuits eventually. But they approach the game from a marketing perspective so if there's a hole in an army, like Sisters not having heavy infantry, they make a unit to fill that gap, rather than try to make something that does something thematic and interesting. A good example of this is how Tyranids went from a melee focussed horde army to a gunline army. GW just kept going "what do nids not have? Release something to fill that gap". They diluted the faction identity and 8/9th became so lethal that horde melee became useless so the fallback is to play in a style that is completely the opposite of what the army is supposed to be.

You know, given how the Hivemind is said to constantly adapt & evolve.... That sounds like fluff being demonstrated through the editions.

ccs wrote:
You know, given how the Hivemind is said to constantly adapt & evolve.... That sounds like fluff being demonstrated through the editions.

Lord Inquisitor Hanlon, sometimes known as 'The Razor' to his enemies, would beg to differ.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

ccs wrote:
You know, given how the Hivemind is said to constantly adapt & evolve.... That sounds like fluff being demonstrated through the editions.

Lord Inquisitor Hanlon, sometimes known as 'The Razor' to his enemies, would beg to differ.

Ahhh HBMC, you twisted evil genius. Now I absolutely must convert a pair of Inquisitors, Occam and Hanlon.

The overall number of options available to a faction is not important. It is the number of quality options that matters. If every codex has 8 quality options, then it does not matter if Codex A has 15 options while Codex B has 150 options.

 alextroy wrote:
The overall number of options available to a faction is not important. It is the number of quality options that matters. If every codex has 8 quality options, then it does not matter if Codex A has 15 options while Codex B has 150 options.

Except that quality is in the eye of the beholder.

Especially for the folks who are more interested in stories that competition or balance.

There was an awesome story hook in some of the Charadon Flashpoints about an abhuman prison break. It was one of the coolest things I've read in a longtime. You don't think I want to set up a spacehulk board prison for the ratlings and ogryns to break out of so they can fight the chaos invaders?

You think it matters to me that those units don't perform well in 40k?

PenitentJake wrote:
Ahhh HBMC, you twisted evil genius. Now I absolutely must convert a pair of Inquisitors, Occam and Hanlon.

And they have a rivalry over who gets to have 'The Razor' as their title.

 alextroy wrote:
If every codex has 8 quality options, then it does not matter if Codex A has 15 options while Codex B has 150 options.

I think it would matter quite a bit if a Codex had 150 options and only 8 of them were worthwhile.

The word significant in the title is really going to be the source of disagreement in a thread like this. Unequal options, especially to the extent they exist in 40K, will always produce a game balance problem even assuming that the options are generally well balanced, just because it is difficult for a new player to process all the options and they may make forces that lack synergy or misunderstand the role of certain units.

However, that is not the paradigm of GW games. GW games always have "trash" units and "good" units, and this makes the problem worse for a new player as they may accidentally take some of the badly designed trash options and handicap themselves in game.

And then there's the other side of it where people can tailor their lists for certain opponents if they have a wide variety of options in a variety of unit roles. To an extent, this has always been what Space Marines were able to do, at the cost of being relatively few in number. But it's pretty hard to balance, often actually against the favour of the space marine player because to try and balance that sort of design space marines often have to be undergunned if not designed for synergy and tailoring.

It's a pretty difficult game design problem made worse by the proliferation (for decades now) of very slightly different flavours of marines and the extension of marines into various unit styles and niches that used to be the faction identity of other forces (eg. Eldar used to be the go to for units entirely specialised with one type of weapon, now Marines do it better. Tau used to have heavy grav tanks, now Marines do it better.) This doesn't mean that Marines are "OP" per se, but just that other factions feel second string.

But I mean, they are. Space Marines are the protagonists of the 40K game. The rest of the factions are there to provide interesting stuff for them to beat up.

Well, part of the question is, do you want GW defining how you use your army by narrowing options to what THEY feel is appropriate and you have to play "the way the faction is intended" or do you want wider options that work so the army can be "Your dudes" and you can try to make the army work according to your own vision.

Personally, I think GW should do more work to narrow the options around an army theme ("Space Marines are fast, elite troops, among some of the heaviest armored and best trained troops with great mobility options - great at taking objective but poor at holding them for long"), and further define some options for allowing combining certain factions - remove the Imperial keyword and build a system more like Brood Brothers that allows GSC + IG or GSC + Nid's. An obvious example would be a mix that allows IG to take SM as elite or fast attack options, or a Tau force to ally with Eldar psykers or wraith constructs. Ork Nid (Orks with Nid troops) herders would a fun combo to see, and I'm sure with a bit of thought and maybe a little bit of retcon we could see interesting team-ups - but with a bit more control on what's allowed for game balance's sake.

Very good question, I look forward to watching the thread develop. I also want to say that The Scotsman comments on assault intercessors should be framed and hung up somewhere in GW HQ.

Anyway, I'll play devils' advocate and say that while Space Marines has the largest set of toys to play with, the vast majority of them have similar defensive profiles. Oh, I'm facing a SM army? Then I guess I better make sure I can handle a small to medium sized force with;
- lots of T4 3+ infantry
- maybe some T7 3+ vehicles
- some elite T4 2+ 4++ squads
So this somewhat takes the sting out of them.