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Redbeard wrote:So, when you take the two squads and configure them as closely as possible,

Which is generally the concept of balance. If I have two of the same thing, they should cost the same amount, and perform comparably. The more similar the things, the more similarly they should perform.

There's a reason that I don't think I've ever seen anyone use raptors since the new codex came out. Assault marines get a lot of play.

There's no icons or extra Ld to blame this on, just crappy game balance.

The underlying fallacy is that the armies should be the same, when GW clearly intends for them to be different, so you shouldn't ever be configuring the squads the same. And, depending on the army, you shouldn't even be taking certain units. For example, in DA, you should be taking RW, not AM.

The concept you're really thinking about is sameness, not balance. If I have two of the same thing, in the same list, then yes, the should be the same. But a CSM list has Daemon Princes, Daemons, and Defilers, along with B&BP&CCW infantry. So there is a much reduced need for AM overall. Indeed, in many ways, you should compare a non-Scoring SM AM with a basic CSM CSM who has flexible squad size from 5-20, comes with a "free" Bolter, can take Icon, and is Scoring.

SM are a different Codex. BA, DA, BT, and CSM can all do different things, some far better. CSM can field far more HtH units, while BA have loads more AM JP options. And so on. Why anyone things the that lists should homogenize to a SM standard is beyond me.

The man speaks the truth. We play different armies because we want to play different armies. There will always be one army that is better than all the rest, that's just the madness that is spar- er I mean GW, but I'm not convinced that SM are it.

A better question to ask is this

Why do I play my army?

Has the space marine codex interfered with my preferred style of gameplay?

If so, can I still play in a way that is reasonably close to the way I want to play?


If you can honestly answer no to the last two, then please feel free to complain, because you will have a right to. However, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the people who lost the most from their armies were the chapter trait junkies of the 4th ed codex

I do wonder what the point is of Raptors. I don't think I've ever seen them used effectively where another unit couldn't do the same job but moreso.

In regards to DA. I personally feel that there is no real uniqueness any more. ya we have rw and dw but we dont get the 3++ storm shields, we can't use scout bikes, we can't have the new toys. Oh and our scouts are eliets...wtf...eliete scouts, they compete with our dreads and terminators. The only unique thing is a combined RW DW army but even then we still have our vanilla feel (with sinister sprinkles).

DA have cooler looking bikes and vets but besides that were still marienes.

I just wish they would have released some updated pdf dex for DA, BA, SW and BT - telling us what we are allowed to use from the new rules until our dex's eventually came out (outside of SW who need it i really dont see them releasing them soon).

Are vanilla marienes over powered? No, I concur other codex's like DE, Tau, IG, and others need to be brought up to the lvl of Orks, and SM.

Yes, Space Marines are invincible, just look at the results of all four of this year's Grand Tournaments which were easily won by, oh, Orks......Never mind...

Thank you Mr. Guth lol

Where's the choice that it kicks sand in the face of my DA codex?

Homer

IMHO, for what it's worth, it's not the codex, nor the army featured in the codex, that wins battles. It's the closet psycho holding the dice and, sometimes, it's not even him, it the dice themselves.

In every release of the game since it's 2nd incarnation there have always been some who moan about this or that codex being better than the others. It's not always true, sometimes it's just that it would be bad marketing strategy to release ALL of the codices at the same time. One has to be first, and it is usually the Space Marine Codex because the Legions Astartes were the "stars of the show" when RT was released, and releasing the Space Marines Codex first maintains the sequence of publications.

Stop moaning and whining about what GW have chosen to release, and when. Learn to fight against those armies you see as being given too much, that way, when YOUR army gets it's new codex, you'll have killer tactics to go with your new army lists.

I wasn't always an exclusively SM player, I used to have an Eldar force too, and it was precisely this approach that enabled me to kick ass even before the Eldar Codex was released.

I know many of you will find my opinion unpopular, so I'm gonna post and run, but on a parting note, I would like to add that I like 5th ed ( and yes, I HAVE been around since Rogue Trader ). The SM codex works well, IMO, and if it's a portent of things to come then the others should too, when they are finally released. Until then, LEARN. The best motto of all the armed forces of the world is IMPROVISE, ADAPT, OVERCOME and it's good advice, whatever your army.

BYE !

Homer S wrote:Where's the choice that it kicks sand in the face of my DA codex?

Homer

Well... like I said... do you still have fun playing your army?

If not... or you don't see the point in playing an army that is no longer as viable as the new codex... you can either stop playing warhammer, play a different army, or wait until you get some new toys for your army.

Dark Angels are pretty unique as Space Marine armies go these days. They can have Terminators as Troops, as well as Bikes as Troops. That means Land Raiders as troop Transports... Those Terminators and Bikes are Fearless, which is unique these days. Likewise you can make most of your Dark Angel army Fearless by a combination of naturally Fearless units, items that confer Fearless, and characters that make units they join Fearless. Notice a theme?

Nurglitch wrote:Dark Angels are pretty unique as Space Marine armies go these days. They can have Terminators as Troops, as well as Bikes as Troops. That means Land Raiders as troop Transports... Those Terminators and Bikes are Fearless, which is unique these days. Likewise you can make most of your Dark Angel army Fearless by a combination of naturally Fearless units, items that confer Fearless, and characters that make units they join Fearless. Notice a theme?

vanilla marines can have bikes as troops now, and those troop bikes are cheaper. The bike captain can be given more (and cheaper!) options than Sammael, and can be accompanied by a command squad with more and better options than sammael's "command squad" can get. Whether FNP or 1 ignored wound within 12" is better really depends on playstyle, but remember the new apothecary works in CC while the DA one doesn't.

The ravenwing are more flexible in how they break up their squads, and the attack bike can be in a squad of its own. That's a plus for ravenwing. Ravenwing also have teleport homers and scout. However, we pay for these things with extra points.

Deathwing are the only real advantage of the DA now.

RW is designed to work with DW. That's the point.

Not to mention that Ravenwing are Fearless. Just gotta emphasize that. Space Marine bikes are cheaper, but they aren't Scouts, they aren't Fearless, they don't have integral Teleport Homers, and as JohnHwangDD noted, they can't bring down Fearless Terminators to hold objectives.

Also, the Terminators can mix and match Tactical and Assault Terminators, which can Deep Strike on the first turn, which stacks nicely with a Ravenwing Turbo-Boosted Scout move.

Ravenwing are not permitted to Turbo Boost during their Scout move. Says so in our Codex on pg. 27.

As to LR's being troop transports, we do not have LR or LRC as dedicated transports, so they use a Heavy FoC, whereas a unit of 10 tac marines in the new SM 'dex can have a LR/LRC as a dedicated transport.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that we still have some advantages, but we sure as **** are missing out on a lot of things too.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that we still have some advantages, but we sure as **** are missing out on a lot of things too.

So, there are some advantages, and some disadvantages. Hmmm... sounds like... balance...

To declare balance you'd have to weight the actual value of the advantages and disadvantages, but that's for another topic.

I think it's to early to say if SM are overpowered. There are probably some sick combos that have not been figured out yet.

G

Going second and getting some lucky Drop Pods to contest objectives on the last turn, yep clearly the best strategy in the codex.

There are a few tricks I use to get my record to 3:1 win ratio. Combat Squads is one of the most powerful abilities in the codex.

Combat squad rule is very helpful. I still like to run full squads though.

G

JohnHwangDD wrote:
The underlying fallacy is that the armies should be the same, when GW clearly intends for them to be different, so you shouldn't ever be configuring the squads the same.

First of all, no one claimed that armies should be the same. However, I believe that you are under the mistaken idea that armies should have to be different. The options that you are allowed to take are the options in the codex, not the options that you believe people should take. That means that a Chaos Marines army with a chaos lord, ten-man chaos marines squads and a unit of raptors IS a legal army, and it should be viable.

If they provide the ability to take these units, then they should price the units appropriately so that the army works within the greater scope of the game.

If generic, non-iconed Chaos Marines squads are not appropriate, we shouldn't be allowed to take them in the first place. They shouldn't be priced inappropriately in order to discourage their use, they should simply be disallowed. If Chaos Marines are suposed to have icons in order to differentiate themselves from loyalists, then they should be required to take an icon, not allowed to.

And, depending on the army, you shouldn't even be taking certain units. For example, in DA, you should be taking RW, not AM.

Likewise, if a Dark Angel player "should" be taking Ravenwing instead of Assault Marines, why are Assault Marines even an option for them? Oh yeah, because the Dark Angels DO use Assault Marines. There are Assault Marines as part of every Dark Angel Battle Company.

The concept you're really thinking about is sameness, not balance.

No, the concept I am advocating is game balance. Sameness is a part of balance, but not the whole of it. In a properly balanced game, I should be able to take any legal army from any codex and have it cost an appropriate amount of points compared with other armies from both the same codex (Internal balance) or any other codex (external balance). GW constantly fails at both. The new Space Marine codex represents the absolute worst violation of external balance possible; identical units from other codexes cost more points.

Whether you think Dark Angels should be allowed to have Assault Marines, Autocannon Predators, or Vindicators is irrelevant. The codex allows them, therefore, they should be balanced in comparison with the same unit from other codexes. They are not. New Space Marines are simply better by virtue of costing less. That's not a reflection on what units Dark Angels should take, it's a reflection on GW, yet again, changing design direction midstream.

I agree with you, in that I don't think different armies should look the same. But, as long as it is legal to take an option, I believe that option should be priced appropriately so that when you play the game, each side has an equal force - that is the very essence of using points in wargames. The game doesn't care what chapter symbol is on the side of my assault marines. All it cares about is how effective they are, and Dark Angel Assault Marines are not more effective than Space Marine Assault Marines. They shouldn't cost more.

Redbeard:

I think the point that JohnHwangDD is trying to make isn't that Dark Angels should be different from Space Marines, so that they are priced differently, but that they could be different and so they are priced differently.

That is to say, units in armies are priced as much according to what they could do in any army as much as what they should do in a particular army.

No doubt there's a healthy dose of noting player reactions to Codex: Dark Angels and acting accordingly, but I think it's important to consider that GW considers them to be separate armies. If you take a Dark Angels army that can also be used as a Space Marine army, you're going to have to expect the Dark Angels army to be sub-optimal since the optimality of its configuration changes according to the scale (or codex) used to measure it.

A Dark Angel's Assault Squad, for example, can be Fearless without the addition of a Dark Angels Chaplain, for example. Space Marines can't do this, and forgoing this advantage because you want similar troops from different army lists to cost the same without regard to their context is pointless if you want balanced armies.

As for myself, I used to have an army of Space Marines I'd configured so it could be used for Blood Angels and Chaos Space Marines. I still do, to a degree, but it has since expanded to be a dedicated Chaos Space Marine army and a Loyalist Space Marine army. It expanded that way because I enjoyed being able to play my army in two different ways (even with the same miniatures) and decided that I wanted to branch out and try other ways of playing with Space Marines, and that required doing things like buying new models that really had no comparable use in another army despite the option of taking them.

I just wish other armies had the same diversity of army lists.

Redbeard wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:The underlying fallacy is that the armies should be the same, when GW clearly intends for them to be different, so you shouldn't ever be configuring the squads the same.

First of all, no one claimed that armies should be the same. However, I believe that you are under the mistaken idea that armies should have to be different.

If I'm mistaken, why has GW deliberately made things different?

Redbeard wrote:The options that you are allowed to take are the options in the codex, not the options that you believe people should take. That means that a Chaos Marines army with a chaos lord, ten-man chaos marines squads and a unit of raptors IS a legal army, and it should be viable.

If they provide the ability to take these units, then they should price the units appropriately so that the army works within the greater scope of the game.

GW prices individual units and options so that the *army* works, but not necessarily the individual units. That is why SM Tacticals aren't the same as unmarked basic CSM. While notionally similar, they perform different roles within a different context, so are necessarily priced and strutctured diffently.

The army in question is legal and viable, but not necessarily competitive. So what? Why should every build be competitive?

I say that less-thematic builds should be less competitive, and non-thematic builds should be uncompetitive. GW agrees, which is why they are forcing differentiation upon players, like it or not. It works in WFB, and it'll work in 40k.

Redbeard wrote:If generic, non-ico ned Chaos Marines squads are not appropriate, we shouldn't be allowed to take them in the first place. They shouldn't be priced inappropriately in order to discourage their use, they should simply be disallowed. If Chaos Marines are suposed to have icons in order to differentiate themselves from loyalists, then they should be required to take an icon, not allowed to.

And you think Jervis and GW gets heat now...

What you are describing is the equivalent of a "Johnny" card in Magic, something that is in the set as "filler" for sake of completeness or style, but not something that should ever be used in efficient constructed play.

This allows GW to have larger, Fluffy lists, with more options that differentiate armies based on what they do well, what they do badly, and what they don't do at all. In the case of SM, they do 10-man Bolters well, JPs badly, and MCs not at all. However, CSM do Fearless BP&CCW well, 10-man Bolters badly, and completely fail at Fast Skimmers. So if the biases are so different, why should the 10-man Bolters be the same in each case, when the armies are themed completely differently?

Redbeard wrote:

And, depending on the army, you shouldn't even be taking certain units. For example, in DA, you should be taking RW, not AM.

Likewise, if a Dark Angel player "should" be taking Ravenwing instead of Assault Marines, why are Assault Marines even an option for them? Oh yeah, because the Dark Angels DO use Assault Marines. There are Assault Marines as part of every Dark Angel Battle Company.

DA might use them, but that doesn't mean they're any good at them. At least, not compared to CSM Raptors or especially Blood Angels.

Redbeard wrote:

The concept you're really thinking about is sameness, not balance.

No, the concept I am advocating is game balance. Sameness is a part of balance, but not the whole of it. In a properly balanced game, I should be able to take any legal army from any codex and have it cost an appropriate amount of points compared with other armies from both the same codex (Internal balance) or any other codex (external balance). GW constantly fails at both. The new Space Marine codex represents the absolute worst violation of external balance possible; identical units from other codexes cost more points.

What GW succeeds at understanding that "balance" is not a reasonable nor desirable goal in a game system that features a variety of asymmetrical forces. What GW is striving for is something akin to Magic, in which Fluff-bunnies can field legal, well-themed armies, WAAC players can take the strongest elements from each army, while still giving options to field other stuff that is theme-related, theme-completing, or WAAC-supporting.

What you're failing to understand is that imbalance isn't a bad thing. For example, are you even aware that, in WFB6, High Elves paid a few points less for every generic Magic Item? Did that make the High Elves broken? No. They were a mediocre army, due to relatively overpriced Core (Troops) Infantry.

The other thing that you fail to understand is that minor differences will always create imbalance. The very fact that SM Termies have Sv3++ SS while non-SM Termies have Sv4++ SS means that it will NOT be possible to balance the two perfectly against each other. GW can get close enough within a variety of situations, but points wise, it can't be perfect.

That is why GW games should be looked at as suitable for competitive play, nor should one be trying to balance them the way that you suggest. The fact that people want to play competitively, and GW supports this to a limited extent doesn't really matter from a design standpoint. Really, it should be seen more as GW humoring their crazy aunt at a family gathering.

Redbeard wrote:Whether you think Dark Angels should be allowed to have Assault Marines, Autocannon Predators, or Vindicators is irrelevant. The codex allows them, therefore, they should be balanced in comparison with the same unit from other codexes.

No, they shouldn't. GW has stated clearly that they balance at the army level, not at the unit level. Therefore, it only matters that one can make an appropriately-competitive DA army. In the DA case, that is a DW/RW-based army that uses none of the things you list above.

Redbeard wrote:I agree with you, in that I don't think different armies should look the same. But, as long as it is legal to take an option, I believe that option should be priced appropriately so that when you play the game, each side has an equal force - that is the very essence of using points in wargames.

Sure. Just be aware that "priced appropriately" doesn't exclude "priced far in excess of its in-game utility due to thematic differentiation relative to similar, but different armies".

For GW, the point is that different armies are actually different. And having some piss-poor units in an army is a pretty good way to drive the point home like a 2x4 between the player's eyes. It forces players to compare the unit and understand what an army is good at, and what it isn't, and then choose between armies and units for specific reasons.

Redbeard wrote:The game doesn't care what chapter symbol is on the side of my assault marines.

Actually, the game cares very strongly whether that Chapter symbol is BA, BT, SW, SM, or CSM. That is a fact, because that is how GW intends it to be.

So if you buy SM or DA AM, you can do so, but if you intend that to be a major strategy, you deserve to fail for not taking Raptors or BA instead.

It's kind of like if you buy a $40,000+ SUV because you move a couch every 5 years, but you spend most of your time driving back and forth to work, 50+ miles round-trip daily. You can do it, but you would have been far more efficient in a high-mileage, low-cost, lightweight subcompact.

I'm going to refer to a MTG article, by one of their head designers:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr11b

This is directly applicable to 40k, but the 40k player base is far less sophisticated at understanding what GW is doing.

If you translate the concepts to 40k terms, you get something like this:
"Timmy" = Big, flashy units (e.g. Termies, Dreadnoughts, Land Raiders, Carnifexes, C'Tan)
"Johnny" = Fluffy, but flawed units (e.g. SM/DA AM, CSM Possessed & Spawn)
"Spike" = Efficient units for the points (e.g. SM Tacticals, Rhinos, Razorbacks, & Pods)

Nurglitch wrote:A Dark Angel's Assault Squad, for example, can be Fearless with the addition of a Dark Angels Chaplain, for example. Space Marines can't do this,

Huh? SM Chaplains are, and confer Fearless.

I'd have used RW as a DA unit that SM can't match.

JohnHwangDD:

It was a typo. I've fixed it so that it is "without".

The codex is much better than the former ones.
Needs some skill to play SM, still.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:A Dark Angel's Assault Squad, for example, can be Fearless with the addition of a Dark Angels Chaplain, for example. Space Marines can't do this,

Huh? SM Chaplains are, and confer Fearless.

I'd have used RW as a DA unit that SM can't match.

I'll take the 5-man bike/attack-bike/landspeeder squadrons (the latter using actual Ravenwing armaments, not this neutered crap) over the Attack Squadron any day.

Nurglitch wrote:JohnHwangDD:

It was a typo. I've fixed it so that it is "without".

Oh, thanks!