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I saw cheapo nob bikers made out of plastic cold ones and orks. I'd expect to see a lot of that, and that'll get you an army for under 150 quid easily.

Lash is baffling to me, I just don't understand the thought process of pricing it at 20 points. But I'm not sure what sort of points cost that sort of power should have.

"How to improve Imperial Guard? Make the men cheaper, put their tanks in squadrons but tack on nothing else to improve them, give storm troopers shotguns and oh, triple the cost of things like say, the power weapons and extra armour again. Let's go home and watch Blue Peter."

Ten to one we'll get some nice things but nothing earth shattering. Biggest changes will be that certain choices are removed and put into platoons this time round (AF squads and Veterans), platoons can deny the enemy a cover save when shooting through their own ranks, we'll get a fast skimmer and some other things, new *exciting* special characters. Maybe we'll get old ones back, but that's stretching things.

JohnHwangDD wrote:@Shep: Have you ever see GW field a "competitive list"?

The only one I've ever seen documented was a WFB "Battle of the Beard" to show what true WAAC armies would be like.

So based on years of watching what kinds of armies GW fields in their batreps, one has to conclude that varied armies are the norm for GW.

Don't confuse battle reports in a white dwarf with in house game testing. Batreps are commercials designed to sell plastic kits.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Also, what about those of us with 3 or more armies? Are we "spike"?

haha , I was careful not to use MTG archetype names... although tommy is awfully close to timmy. What owning 3+ armies makes you, is more resilient to the winds of change. unless somehow you managed to buy 3 armies that are neighbors in the development cycle, you'll always have an army that is new enough and modern enough to compete on a tourney level, should you choose to do so.

I'm really screwed... because I own a massive IG army, a massive necron army, and a mid sized eldar army. Eldar is underpowered, and not able to effectively answer orks, and not likely to see a new book until the end of the development cycle. and IG and necrons are just unusable if your aim is a high battle score. Fortunately for me, I painted an ork army for a friend, took it to Vegas and did well, and now I'm painting a space marine army for my roommate which I play most of my games with. If I get two new army books this year... which is looking likely, I will be flooded. I'll be too focused on guard to really enjoy anything new with necrons.


@da boss... that sounds like Jervis. And is an unfortunate utterance if it is true. And "battleforce armies" is an old Stelek term, it just means 'a little of this, a little of that'. Which is basically what we are all talking about.

You and captain K are dead on with the challenges ahead of GW for IG though.

They either win, and we have a fresh new metagame with the inclusion of shooting being an actual way to win a game. Or they fail and solidify the assault phase as the only consistent way to remove enemy units from the table. If that fail happens... 40k will not regain any of its dimension. I might not be all that interested until they can right the course.

May is just too far away!

I'm so pessimistic about GW actually doing the Guard right that I'm going to sit down with the codex and read it cover to cover. Three times. And then think about it.

If it's good, my Guard will come off the shelf, displacing my Dwarves and video games, and all will be good.

Probably, though, my Guard are going to stay in the closet for several more years as i become even more jaded and apathetic towards 40k.

All 40k player are jaded and angry husks. It's part of the hobby as much as modeling and playing.

Janthkin wrote:Some things should cost more (Lash). Some things probably just shouldn't exist (multiple Nob biker squads as Troops). "Extreme" builds exist in the space between "this tool is more effective than its points" and "this tool is so effective that the points don't matter." If you can catch the outliers during design phase, you have a more balanced game. Perfect balance is unobtainable, but so long as there is a little rock-paper-scissors action between various armies, less imbalances are handled by the metagame.

Isn't MORE Rock-Paper-Scissors what you want in the game? RPS is a PERFECT balanced game. Like Chess, each player comes to the game with PRECISELY equal fighting elements, except for their brain and luck. So I'd think that was a good thing, no?

What I would think you'd want to avoid is one person having a knife at a gunfight. Particularly if that guy is you.

Rock paper scissors works at a metagame level but it doesn't make a particularly fun game to play if people just run with their scissors all the way and hope not to see a lot of rocks (as happens in all games that use the system of balancing). Rock paper scissors should happen at level of granularity considerably smaller than the overall metagame (shooty vs assault vs whatever the middle is), which is what he is referring too.

Shooting should beat Assualt, Assault should beat mixed, and mixed should beat Shooting.

Mixed sounds like a balanced SM list personally.

Assault is self explanatory, as is shooting.

If that functioned as you state it then blood angels could never win a game against tau. IG could never win a game against eldar. And eldar could never win a game against orks. The outcome shouldn't be known until the game is over, not when people trade lists. Rock paper scissors is a horrible way to balance a game that consists of two people.

Its the reason why rock paper scissors is a crappy and unenjoyable game.

Shep wrote:The concept of balanced game design is core to creating and manufacturing games (of any variety). Broken games are not something that is a goal for ANY company.

I don't agree. I read a statement by the president of Palladium decrying the concept of "balanced games." I've read plenty of statements from the likes of Jervis and Rick in favor of unbalance scenarios. Balance != fun.

No one at games workshop is intentionally trying to make an unbalanced game,

Again, I don't agree. I read an article (I think it was in Citadel Journal) by one of the designers. The Halfling team in Blood Bowl was deliberately designed to be weaker than the other teams. It was intended to be a challenge to play, for more experienced players. This was not an accident.

Again, I don't agree. I read an article (I think it was in Citadel Journal) by one of the designers. The Halfling team in Blood Bowl was deliberately designed to be weaker than the other teams. It was intended to be a challenge to play, for more experienced players. This was not an accident.

That was bloodbowl. A dead game with a different development team that died a looong time ago. Games workshop did wacky crap back when bloodbowl was a viable game you saw on every stores shelves.

BrookM wrote:"How to improve Imperial Guard? Make the men cheaper, put their tanks in squadrons but tack on nothing else to improve them, give storm troopers shotguns and oh, triple the cost of things like say, the power weapons and extra armour again. Let's go home and watch Blue Peter."

That's actually not so terrible, you know. If basic Guardsmen dropped by 20 pts per squad, that would save 60+, 80+ pts per Platoon. Cut the Chimera and AF, and you can probably buy another tank or reshuffle in a couple Squadrons. But one likes to imagine GW can do better than that.
____

Shep wrote:Don't confuse battle reports in a white dwarf with in house game testing. Batreps are commercials designed to sell plastic kits.

Sure, but if you've never seen GW do anything with an "extreme build" then probably it's not a priority for them.

Shep wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:Also, what about those of us with 3 or more armies? Are we "spike"?

haha ,

What owning 3+ armies makes you, is more resilient to the winds of change. unless somehow you managed to buy 3 armies that are neighbors in the development cycle, you'll always have an army that is new enough and modern enough to compete on a tourney level, should you choose to do so.

I'm really screwed... because I own a massive IG army, a massive necron army, and a mid sized eldar army.

Eldar is underpowered, and not able to effectively answer orks, and not likely to see a new book until the end of the development cycle.

If I get two new army books this year... which is looking likely, I will be flooded. I'll be too focused on guard to really enjoy anything new with necrons.

Yup. With sufficient breadth of armies, I can pretty much always have something interesting to play. And I find that 3 armies seems to be the magic number for true variety of play.

IMO, having Eldar and Guard, you're in pretty good shape. Necrons are were you got yourself in trouble - if those were CSM, you'd have been golden.

I haven't played my Eldar in 5E yet, but I plan to. I like to think they'll get their next book in 2010, as they're a major race.

As I've posted, Guard are going to be my project for 2009. I'm finally going to finish mine once the Codex comes out. That's my 2009 Gaming Resolution.

I would appreciate, as somebody said before, some Plastics of the Current Forge World Models. For example, Salamander, new Griffon etc.

It would add flavor to Tank Batallions that will quickly become: RUSS RUSS RUSS RUSS RUSS RUSS RUSS RUSS RUSS DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO BASSY BASSY.

~sA

Shep wrote:After the misstep that was dark angels, every book since has been successful in terms of competitiveness. Although a great many vocal players were too myopic to see the power in CSM and demons until someone else had to show it to them on the circuit.

To be fair, a lot of the complaining was about the CSM codex being Chaos Skittles, and not about its power level.

Reecius wrote:why would anyone not want to use the modeling bases for heavy weapons teams? well lets see,

-Two seperate models dont get hosed by blast and template weapons
-Easier to place models in cover
-Easier to store and trasport the models
-People like me have lots of old school heavy weapons teams, which are all two man teams on seperate bases.

I like the bases too for aesthetic reasons, but they arent that great gaming wise.

and why would they get rid of them? they have plastic molds built for them, it doesnt make any sense to make new plastic heavy weapon teams.

However, I am stoked about the griffon! That is a cool model IMO, plus very useful.

Also, they did not say that sentinal would be heavy support, just that more heavily equiped sentinals would be unable to scout. They could be taken in HQ or Fast as now, or who knows, maybe even as troops if they make a Enginseer special character llike the big mek with orcs.

Ive never liked them. It (Being the base) makes the HW team a large creature, if you look at the unit per base option. Leaving the guys on the 40MM template give you the reason to remove the casualty and fire the weapon because of the loss, without being mixed up in the hundred or so guys you have in the pile.
Why should every HW be a diorama, anyway? The HW kits are lacking in some of the basics, so to compensate, they gave them a bigger base?

Forget it, though. Its a matter of taste and opinion, and as long as the HW's can stay on the table for more then a few turns, it doesn't matter what sort of base they're on.

I actually kinda like the HW teams being on big bases. It just looks better that way. But I think it should be optional, if you want to model yours like that, great, if not single bases are just fine too. I wouldn't complain if I was playing against someone who had theirs on separate bases. It's just a matter of taste. I think it would have been better if they kept the heavy weapons separate kinda like the eldar HW platforms.

gorgon wrote:To be fair, a lot of the complaining was about the CSM codex being Chaos Skittles, and not about its power level.

And then it was more that people gained the *option* to field Chaos Skittles, not that there was a *requirement* to field Chaos Skittles...

But I think most of the complaining really was power level

+++ CENSORED +++
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1. Lets not go there
2. But since we did, much of the complaining was-
a. loss of flexibility. The Chaos dex was the most varied buy and build codex made. A glorious number of options. The fact it was abused in some builds could have been easily rectified without taking all those options away.
b. destruction of the artists formerly known as demons. Outside of wiping out whole lists I don't think I've seen a time where so many troop and other choices were just eliminated.
c. ELIMINATION OF LATD.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
In short, I think the real problem is that the new Chaos book killed the old broken builds while requiring new tactics.

You know, John, you've been improving your ability to post without pissing too many people off, so it's sad to see you deliberating flame bait like this. You know it's a contentious issue, and it will wreck the thread. Why post like this?

Frazzled wrote:Outside of wiping out whole lists I don't think I've seen a time where so many troop and other choices were just eliminated.
c. ELIMINATION OF LATD.

I'm guessing that you're not a WFB player.

If you were, you might recall Storm of Chaos. GW released something like a dozen corner-case lists for the global campaign, encouraging players to make these really narrow armies with very limited ability to play in normal games.

A year or two later, GW shuts those lists down hard.

Nerd rage!
___

Polonius wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:
In short, I think the real problem is that the new Chaos book killed the old broken builds while requiring new tactics.

You know, John, you've been improving your ability to post without pissing too many people off, so it's sad to see you deliberating flame bait like this. You know it's a contentious issue, and it will wreck the thread. Why post like this?

Um, old habits die hard?

But yeah, you're right that I have largely cut back on the sniping and most of the other stuff that was done specifically to piss people off. That was a deliberate choice that I made last year, and I'll be continuing in that vein this year. I'd be nice if some other posters would take a similar tack. Though I just confess that it always amuses me to watch Monkey Boy dance...

I guess I'll go self-censor now.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Outside of wiping out whole lists I don't think I've seen a time where so many troop and other choices were just eliminated.
c. ELIMINATION OF LATD.

I'm guessing that you're not a WFB player.

If you were, you might recall Storm of Chaos. GW released something like a dozen corner-case lists for the global campaign, encouraging players to make these really narrow armies with very limited ability to play in normal games.

A year or two later, GW shuts those lists down hard.

Nerd rage!

I believe we're discussing 40K, not WFB.
I'd posit however, your argument is not exactly supporting your cause here, just that GW slammed WFB some time in the past as well.

@Fraz: it wasn't that long ago, within the last few years, I recall.

I believe the Army Book only push in WFB coincided with the lockdown in 40k to published Codex lists only.

Ultimately, the new approach of Rulebook and Codex / Army Book is clearer and better, especially now that 40k has Apoc for the older, miscellaneous stuff.

Even the whole storm of chaos thing isn't quite analogous to the LATD situation. IIRC, the SoC army lists generally built on legal units, just in varying ratios: all slayers, tons of Knights errant, Clan eshin stuff, etc. LatD armies were build from the ground up around new units that have no legal use now. If I owned, say, a Black Orc horde, I could sell the excess black orcs, count them as big uns, or even just use them in gigantic battles. A player with 100 mutants can... well... play them in apocalypse with a watered down datasheet?

More importantly, the release of Eye of Terror, with the latD list came after, IIRC, the anouncment that GW wouldn't cancel any army with a codex and before they axed the SoC lists. While GW never promised that LatD would be legal forever, they certainly didn't say anything about them being "campaign only."

Given that the list proxies really nicely as an ork horde, and that few if any players had LatD as their only army, I'm not crying blood for them, but they did get rogered by GW.

IG need a massive fire power tune up (with points reductions), or GW needs to boost the "assault" units to be more effective at killing. Watching RR bounce off things, then die horribly is frustrating. RR were meant to attack tougher units because of the weapon they wield. However, send them after Blood Crushers, Nob units, etc. and watch them bounce. Ogryns need either T5 or Eternal Warrior to not be bitches to PF's. Stormtroopers should be close to the level of a marine from a performance stand point...i.e. loads of options, good leadership, etc. but still a human statline. I remember when Stormtroopers could take Heavy Weapons. I think Stormtroopers should be Ld9 at least...always able to regroup below half, or have a rule like combat tactics...I mean come on...some of these guys eventually become Commissars. Speaking of Commissars, I think Commissars should confer Stubborn to units they join. The wish list goes on, but until IG get some amped up abilities in some area of their book...they won't really affect the metagame of current 5th ed builds...which would be a tragedy.

Capt K

@Polonius: I think the situations are essentially similar. If I paint a Slayer army, and GW pulls the rug, then I'm screwed because Slayers move from Core (~Troops) to Special (~Elite), so I've got an excess of models that just aren't fieldable in normal games. SoC players were under similar notions that their SoC lists would be valid forever.

If you say that, oh, you can just sell / count as something else, then LatD follow the same argument. Mutants are Orks or Lesser Daemons or whatever.

A brave, but futile, attempt made by the Capt to get this thread back on topic for a moment there...

JohnHwangDD wrote:@Polonius: I think the situations are essentially similar. If I paint a Slayer army, and GW pulls the rug, then I'm screwed because Slayers move from Core (~Troops) to Special (~Elite), so I've got an excess of models that just aren't fieldable in normal games. SoC players were under similar notions that their SoC lists would be valid forever.

If you say that, oh, you can just sell / count as something else, then LatD follow the same argument. Mutants are Orks or Lesser Daemons or whatever.

Except they aren't Orks or lesser demons. Orks and Demons are Orks and Demons. A Slayer is a slayer, no matter for what purpose it was bought or how it was previously used. A metal slayer, stripped and repainted, is whatever the new owner wants it to be. A painted, converted plastic mutant is only of value to somebody that wants a similar painted, converted plastic mutant thing. You're a veteran trader, you can't possibly make a case that converted plastics hold value anywhere near what metals do.

I'm not saying that GW's plans were dissimilar, but I really don't think you can convincingly argue against the positions that LatD players 1) got screwed by GW, and 2) got screwed harder than a similar WFB player with say, a clan eshin army. I was always under the impression that the Storm of Chaos lists were always a little more "semi-legal" than the Eye of Terror lists. I could be wrong.

Again, I'm not arguing what GW did was wrong. I'm simply stating that LatD players have a pretty legitimate and unique beef, and that brushing it aside is, if not insulting, at least ungentlemanly.

Rumor threads always devolve into flame wars once people have absorbed the rumors. Its the Dakka way. We're a website of whiney casuals and powergamers who hate eachother and ourselves!


Non sensical rants and counter-rants about the chaos codex always follow good conversation.

Problem with guard will most likely be that some stuff will go down in price, while the upgrades, the useful and hurty stuff, will go up in price to "balance" the issue. I've got a feeling that the days of cheap power weapons and cheap vehicle upgrades are over soon. Extra armour has already been bumped to a fapping 15 pts for marines and camo netting is going to cost 20 pts if the IA 2 document is to be believed. At least on the bright side our vehicles will get smoke launchers and search lights as standard issue now. Oh and the heavy stubber will go down a whopping two points in price, hurrah!

Then again, it is useful that the basic Guardsman goes down in price, seeing as rumours hint towards the infantry platoon being the only Troops choice in the new codex, with the removal of the AF squad and Conscript platoon. Not a biggy for large games, but smaller games where you can only field platoons could be problematic.

ShumaGorath wrote:Rumor threads always devolve into flame wars once people have absorbed the rumors. Its the Dakka way. We're a website of whiney casuals and powergamers who hate eachother and ourselves!


Non sensical rants and counter-rants about the chaos codex always follow good conversation.

Luckily posters like you show up to contribute positive material and advance discussions without being insulting.