Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I somewhat agree that space marines are overcosted, but not by more than a point. they are on the low end of what is worth 13 points and high end of 12. 11 would be pushing it, 10 would make them probably the best deal in the game.

now I could get behind giving them an extra wound to show just how tough they are supposed to be, but that extra wound would need a cost to be balanced. obviously that should not double their cost and as I think the attacks, and rest of the stat block should stay the same a 2w tactical marine would IMHO be worth around 1 more point than now at 14-15 ppm would need to play it out to see how they are doing. I'd like to see them get +1 attack too which would probably bring them into solid 15 ppm territory but make them more the dangerous terrible warriors they are supposed to be. primaris then also get another wound and attack at the same points changes.

note I am comparing to a lot of other troops here and some of the considered great troops are a bit too good for the points. the necron warrior as an example should be a 14 point model that costs 12 points for some reason. a guardsman should cost 5 points per model but is only 4 because... reasons.

on the other side of the coin you have dire avengers that cost 12 points and return probably 10-11 points worth of performance. orks that are barely worth 6 points, but are there (would be worth it if the ignored wounds on a 6 instead of 6+ armor). strike teams are probably the most appropriately costed imo at 7 ppm.

We have the confounding problem that all other marine roles are based on the tac marine. Tac marines suck in CC, so assault marines do too. Devs get no special shooting abilities over a tac over than a signum and cherub. But the fundamental guy is the same. So the 13 ppm miscosting just gets propagated through the whole codex.

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Drukhari ignore cover in exactly the same way Chaos Marines and Space Marines ignore cover. i.e, it's available on the kabal trait that nobody's going to be taking because they're all going to be going black heart for agents of vect.

This is my problem with your arguments, Martel. You argue in a fundamentally dishonest way, slipping in gak like that little "oh, armies like drukhari just ignore cover" and shifting things from 'number of models removed' to 'number of points removed'. Even when I agree with you, it's hard to have a discussion when any data you bring up is either twisted or hyperbolic.

Flayed skull is superior to black heart. Smart DE players just run their warriors as flayed skull and their ravagers as blackheart though.

You can do that, but in my experience playing with and talking to players on the top level competitive circuit, they're much more likely to take their kabalites as Poison Tongue and Obsidian Rose and all their vehicles/transports as Black Heart so that their opponent can't alpha strike their whole BH detachment off the board and to get the vehicles a 6++.

FS is the Mordia/Imp Fist/Vostroya of Kabals. Decent, and you gain some benefits for using it, but it is suboptimal, if only slightly. Claiming that Drukhari ignore cover is exactly identical to claiming that Marines or Chaos Marines ignore cover, and leaving out that only imp fists/iron warriors get to do that - fundamentally dishonest.

I just assumed everyone was doing it because its so strong. The way the game plays now, I think ignore cover is stronger than 6+++. This set of players agrees, evidently.

Again, models removed is meaningless without a cost. If a marine cost the same a sister or a fire warrior, they'd be great! Not looking at points removed per shot is the twisted way to look at things.

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Flayed skull is superior to black heart. Smart DE players just run their warriors as flayed skull and their ravagers as blackheart though.

Because no one is allowed to play a theme for fun. It's mathhammer or GTFO.

If you care about winning ya. I don't really think if your running demi company style list you should expect to do well vs an optimized list.

the_scotsman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Drukhari ignore cover in exactly the same way Chaos Marines and Space Marines ignore cover. i.e, it's available on the kabal trait that nobody's going to be taking because they're all going to be going black heart for agents of vect.

Everyone in my group is using it, because they can put other obsessions in the boat and get double tactics. Ignoring cover makes splinter mow throw 3+ armor save models, and everyone in my play group knows it.

no, they can't get two tactics on a single unit, if they're doing that, they're cheating. The Flayed Skull tactic clearly says "MODELS WITH THIS OBSESSION get these benefits when on board a transport that can fly".

The transport does not magically grant ignores cover and reroll hit rolls of one to the units embarked inside it.

I've quit asking Xenos how they're doing what they're doing. I just assume GW allows it.

Martel732 wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I somewhat agree that space marines are overcosted, but not by more than a point. they are on the low end of what is worth 13 points and high end of 12. 11 would be pushing it, 10 would make them probably the best deal in the game.

now I could get behind giving them an extra wound to show just how tough they are supposed to be, but that extra wound would need a cost to be balanced. obviously that should not double their cost and as I think the attacks, and rest of the stat block should stay the same a 2w tactical marine would IMHO be worth around 1 more point than now at 14-15 ppm would need to play it out to see how they are doing. I'd like to see them get +1 attack too which would probably bring them into solid 15 ppm territory but make them more the dangerous terrible warriors they are supposed to be. primaris then also get another wound and attack at the same points changes.

note I am comparing to a lot of other troops here and some of the considered great troops are a bit too good for the points. the necron warrior as an example should be a 14 point model that costs 12 points for some reason. a guardsman should cost 5 points per model but is only 4 because... reasons.

on the other side of the coin you have dire avengers that cost 12 points and return probably 10-11 points worth of performance. orks that are barely worth 6 points, but are there (would be worth it if the ignored wounds on a 6 instead of 6+ armor). strike teams are probably the most appropriately costed imo at 7 ppm.

We have the confounding problem that all other marine roles are based on the tac marine. Tac marines suck in CC, so assault marines do too. Devs get no special shooting abilities over a tac over than a signum and cherub. But the fundamental guy is the same. So the 13 ppm miscosting just gets propagated through the whole codex.

I can agree there, many units in the book are just not worth their cost. and when their platform is around 1 point too high you are not starting at a great spot. honestly I think a lot of the marine profile is designed around ease of use rather than matching any fluff or making them a particularly interesting army to play. I would love to see some starter game stats that look like regular stats and then some special rules to add flavor. as an example a devastator well trained in marksmanship beyond even a normal astartes. add 6" to the range of all heavy weapons to reflect that. assault marines automatically reroll 1s to hit in melee when they charge. things that are not game breaking but make the units feel special and to reflect their special training in their field.

But they're all trained to be awesome at everything!

Martel732 wrote:
I just assumed everyone was doing it because its so strong. The way the game plays now, I think ignore cover is stronger than 6+++. This set of players agrees, evidently.

Again, models removed is meaningless without a cost. If a marine cost the same a sister or a fire warrior, they'd be great! Not looking at points removed per shot is the twisted way to look at things.

Sure, it's ridiculously strong if you decide to cheat. But if you don't, and you're trying to create a competitive drukhari list, you have much more of a choice, and that choice includes things like "rapid fire at 15" and "reroll 1s to wound with all poison weapons whether you're in or out of a transport." Even if they're relatively balanced against one another, which they probably are - that still only means 1/4 of Dark Eldar armies are going to be ignoring cover.

...Except when you're discussing how much things should cost. Current cost is completely irrelevant when we've already decided that one unit costs too much and the other about enough. The discussion then becomes "how much should a marine cost over a SoB", and comparing everything by points costs is fundamentally dishonest.

"Marines should be 10ppm instead of 13ppm, let me justify that by calculate how many points of marines are killed by various weapons at 13ppm".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Drukhari ignore cover in exactly the same way Chaos Marines and Space Marines ignore cover. i.e, it's available on the kabal trait that nobody's going to be taking because they're all going to be going black heart for agents of vect.

Everyone in my group is using it, because they can put other obsessions in the boat and get double tactics. Ignoring cover makes splinter mow throw 3+ armor save models, and everyone in my play group knows it.

no, they can't get two tactics on a single unit, if they're doing that, they're cheating. The Flayed Skull tactic clearly says "MODELS WITH THIS OBSESSION get these benefits when on board a transport that can fly".

The transport does not magically grant ignores cover and reroll hit rolls of one to the units embarked inside it.

I've quit asking Xenos how they're doing what they're doing. I just assume GW allows it.

So you're essentially saying that you believe things are OP because you allow your opponents to cheat?

Even without that little trick, I think Drukhari are pretty OP. The 12 disintegrators last game didn't care if I was in cover with or without that rule.

I think if you recalculate at 11 ppm, marines fare significantly better. I was using 13 ppm to show how screwed they are at current prices.

A percentage increase is casualties doesn't much without point values attached to them, theoretical or otherwise.

About 3 times the cost of an Ork. so between 15 to 18 points in old think.

Martel732 wrote:
Even without that little trick, I think Drukhari are pretty OP. The 12 disintegrators last game didn't care if I was in cover with or without that rule.

I think if you recalculate at 11 ppm, marines fare significantly better. I was using 13 ppm to show how screwed they are at current prices.

A percentage increase is casualties doesn't much without point values attached to them, theoretical or otherwise.

DE are definitely great, and will (if you don't count them as having done so already) change the meta significantly to favor lower-strength anti tank weaponry that doesn't care for invuln saves. Wych cults are also going to significantly prey on the gunline meta armies, which is not a bad thing.

From what we've seen so far, they've impacted the tournament scene about as hard as nids did, and it'll be interesting to see how things pan out after people start building to counter them. Don't see a lot of Hydras in competitive IG lists, but they're great vs drukhari. Similarly their vehicles lose their - to hits and their invulns when they're in close combat, so vs kabal at least fast assault does good work against them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Even without that little trick, I think Drukhari are pretty OP. The 12 disintegrators last game didn't care if I was in cover with or without that rule.

I think if you recalculate at 11 ppm, marines fare significantly better. I was using 13 ppm to show how screwed they are at current prices.

A percentage increase is casualties doesn't much without point values attached to them, theoretical or otherwise.

It does when you have one point value that you think is relatively balanced - it's pretty easy to correlate that increase in durability (almost entirely the substantive diffeerence between the two units) to a desired increase in points.

Tau and Necrons also favor that weaponry. I've considered getting a second stalker, but it's $50, and I'm not sure how much it's really going to help... marines.


" kabal at least fast assault does good work against them. "

You would think that, but I run out of marines every time. Also, you can't shoot the passengers if you have to melee the vehicle. Drukhari would be more fair if we could declare charges on the passengers of open topped vehicles. They are too OP atm.

Martel732 wrote:
Tau and Necrons also favor that weaponry. I've considered getting a second stalker, but it's $50, and I'm not sure how much it's really going to help... marines.

Looks about equivalent to a hydra vs dark eldar at least. If your meta is heavy on the flying vehicles, definitely looks like something you'd want to consider. But given that your meta seems to hard-shift at lightspeed to whatever is stomping your poor, helpless blood angels on this particular week or month, it may not be worth buying something just to get the rules. It is worth noting that disintegrators have pretty poor returns against T7 3+, and if your opponents are spamming I'm assuming 3 Ravagers and 3 Raiders to make 12 disintegrators, i.e. 700 points right there, then a significant amount of armor would do pretty well against that.

Maybe. If I'm going armor, that means primaris is basically out.

Stalkers do pretty well against all kinds of Xeno crap actually ,but I'm not sure they can make up for the marineness of marines.

GW's ultimate goal I realize is to make me soup, but I'm not sure I'm willing to commit the cash.

And no one is gaming vs BA at this point. BA are a joke again. BA were fearsome-ish for a few months, and then got passed by. The Drukhari surge is because of fething Nids. The same Nids who got my deep strikes nerfed.

Martel732 wrote:
Tau and Necrons also favor that weaponry. I've considered getting a second stalker, but it's $50, and I'm not sure how much it's really going to help... marines.


" kabal at least fast assault does good work against them. "

You would think that, but I run out of marines every time. Also, you can't shoot the passengers if you have to melee the vehicle. Drukhari would be more fair if we could declare charges on the passengers of open topped vehicles. They are too OP atm.

If you're fighting Venoms at least, you only need to surround the base in order to one-shot the passengers inside along with the vehicle. You don't have to charge one or the other if you can instantly pop the passengers with the transport. Units in raiders definitely take more killing, but Raiders are significantly easier to shoot with no -1 to hit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. If I'm going armor, that means primaris is basically out.

Stalkers do pretty well against all kinds of Xeno crap actually ,but I'm not sure they can make up for the marineness of marines.

GW's ultimate goal I realize is to make me soup, but I'm not sure I'm willing to commit the cash.

And no one is gaming vs BA at this point. BA are a joke again. BA were fearsome-ish for a few months, and then got passed by. The Drukhari surge is because of fething Nids. The same Nids who got my deep strikes nerfed.

But martel, think of how sad you'd be if you couldn't do your blood angels eeyore impression on every thread that even mentions marines in passing day after day - what would you do?

It still takes a crazy amount of marine shooting to down a raider with lascannon/missile launchers. It's really cost-prohibitive given what raiders cost.

They can always pop the -1 to hit stratagem, too. And turn off my stratagems. I'm already sick of them and they just came out.

"But martel, think of how sad you'd be if you couldn't do your blood angels eeyore impression on every thread that even mentions marines in passing day after day - what would you do? "

Actually, I'd much rather have an OP codex again for once. It's been a long time. Arguably 5th, but really 3rd.

Martel732 wrote:
We have even gotten to marines' terrible offense.

It takes 23-24 boltgun shots to cause 7 casualties to guardsmen, which is about where you can expect them to break due to battle shock.

That's 300 pts of marines outside double tap range to remove 40 pts. But tell me again how the boltgun is good against light infantry.

Even if we made them 11ppm, that's still 250 pts of marines to remove 40 pts of guardsmen.

Well that isn't quite complete -

If you want to take out 7 guardsmen to get a squad of 10 (40 points) it takes indeed 23-24 bolter shots, so 12-24 marines or 156-312 points.

To take out 40 points of Marines (roughly 3 guys) you need 55 lasgun shots, so 28-55 guys or 112-220 points. Nerfing guard to 5 points makes that 140-275 points. Of course that isn't quite true, guard always have officers and orders so just looking at rapid fire range and doubling the lasgun shot, it now casts roughly 6 points per guardsman for 4 lasgun shots so now 14 guys or 84 points...

Buffing all astartes bolters to be -1AP changes things a bit - it now takes 19 bolter shots or 10 (130 points) to 19 (247) marines and makes them far more comparable to guard before orders and buffs.

I didn't post the reverse because it was so depressing and people are sick of talking about guardsmen I bet.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Drukhari ignore cover in exactly the same way Chaos Marines and Space Marines ignore cover. i.e, it's available on the kabal trait that nobody's going to be taking because they're all going to be going black heart for agents of vect.

This is my problem with your arguments, Martel. You argue in a fundamentally dishonest way, slipping in gak like that little "oh, armies like drukhari just ignore cover" and shifting things from 'number of models removed' to 'number of points removed'. Even when I agree with you, it's hard to have a discussion when any data you bring up is either twisted or hyperbolic.

Flayed skull is superior to black heart. Smart DE players just run their warriors as flayed skull and their ravagers as blackheart though.

You can do that, but in my experience playing with and talking to players on the top level competitive circuit, they're much more likely to take their kabalites as Poison Tongue and Obsidian Rose and all their vehicles/transports as Black Heart so that their opponent can't alpha strike their whole BH detachment off the board and to get the vehicles a 6++.

FS is the Mordia/Imp Fist/Vostroya of Kabals. Decent, and you gain some benefits for using it, but it is suboptimal, if only slightly. Claiming that Drukhari ignore cover is exactly identical to claiming that Marines or Chaos Marines ignore cover, and leaving out that only imp fists/iron warriors get to do that - fundamentally dishonest.

Its's not fundamentally dishonest because it's also reroll 1's from inside the transport. It's just flat out better than all the other traits. Ignore cover is essentially +1 AP - it only sucks for IF because space marines suck at everything.

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Drukhari ignore cover in exactly the same way Chaos Marines and Space Marines ignore cover. i.e, it's available on the kabal trait that nobody's going to be taking because they're all going to be going black heart for agents of vect.

This is my problem with your arguments, Martel. You argue in a fundamentally dishonest way, slipping in gak like that little "oh, armies like drukhari just ignore cover" and shifting things from 'number of models removed' to 'number of points removed'. Even when I agree with you, it's hard to have a discussion when any data you bring up is either twisted or hyperbolic.

Flayed skull is superior to black heart. Smart DE players just run their warriors as flayed skull and their ravagers as blackheart though.

You can do that, but in my experience playing with and talking to players on the top level competitive circuit, they're much more likely to take their kabalites as Poison Tongue and Obsidian Rose and all their vehicles/transports as Black Heart so that their opponent can't alpha strike their whole BH detachment off the board and to get the vehicles a 6++.

FS is the Mordia/Imp Fist/Vostroya of Kabals. Decent, and you gain some benefits for using it, but it is suboptimal, if only slightly. Claiming that Drukhari ignore cover is exactly identical to claiming that Marines or Chaos Marines ignore cover, and leaving out that only imp fists/iron warriors get to do that - fundamentally dishonest.

Its's not fundamentally dishonest because it's also reroll 1's from inside the transport. It's just flat out better than all the other traits. Ignore cover is essentially +1 AP - it only sucks for IF because space marines suck at everything.

it isn't. Flayed Skull is by no means bad, but it isn't the be-all-end-all people think it is the first time they look at drukhari.

Black Heart gets AOV. That makes it the very first kabal you *have* to take if you're looking from purely competitive terms. The trait could be literally anything and you'd have to take your first detachment - so it's a good thing that the trait is arguably the best for Ravagers, Raiders and Flyers. You can argue over ignores cover if you're not factoring in AoV, but as soon as you do (and you should) BH becomes mandatory.

So, you look at the other three if you're looking to run a second kabal detachment. Most competitive lists we are seeing at recent GTs aren't - because as soon as you take a second kabal, you have to give up either a wych detachment or a coven detachment in a 3-detachment limit.

PT gives you rerolls of wounds on all the same weapons that FS gives you rerolls of hits on. Given that you can get rerolls of hits from archon auras (at the point where you're at a second kabal, you have 3 mandatory archons, so you're going to have those auras) most people have been rating PT as slightly better for damage. Then you have Obrose, which gives you +6" range on evvvvvvvverything. 20-man blocks of warriors that drop into rapid fire range and fire and fade so they're 22" away from enemy models are pretty good. 24" range blasters are pretty good. For an army that loses half its shooting for the turn if anything charges their transport, rapid firing at 15" instead of 12" is huge - it means most enemies are making 9" charges instead of 6" charges if they walk at you.

Didn't you just get finished lambasting a dude in another thread for making a judgement on the Grey Knights codex without having experience playing them?

Flayed skull is fine - it provides a large number of benefits, and any given unit is probably going to make use out of one if not all of them. But taken as a whole package, it's totally outclassed by BH and slightly outclassed by PT and obrose with common meta army builds. If you somehow built a DE army where you didn't have 3-4 mandatory archons running around you had to figure out what to do with, sure, FS would probably be autoinclude, but you can't really do that.

13 is fine, they could be 12. They should not have two wounds even at a points increase. That would skew their relationship to too many other staple units, like Aspect Warriors, Genestealers, etc. If you wan't uber marines, play primaris. That's what they're for.

Case in point: In the recent 300 page london GT list dump, players took 25 Black Heart detachments, 5 Obsidian Rose detachments, 1 Poison Tongue detachment and zero Flayed Skull detachments in their drukhari lists.

Okay, so they're not even using the most brutal thing they can. Doesn't make me feel a lot better.

Martel732 wrote:
Okay, so they're not even using the most brutal thing they can. Doesn't make me feel a lot better.

So if I told you, completely unsupported, that the reason there were zero Black Templars detachments taken in the tournament because all the marine players were just choosing not to bring "the most brutal thing they can" - how hard would you laugh at me?

I mean in my play group.

At anything more than ten points I’m going to scoff. Compare them to scions and ask why space marines cost so much.

T 4 means nothing most of the time.
Saves are over priced the higher they get.
Bolters are literally worthless.

A space marine as a 10 point speed bump might be okay, and even then I’m sure people could argue that they’re overpriced for doing nothing but being ablative.

Tac marines are trash. Lower their price to 10, or even 9 points.

Vets need a price drop and bs2

Combi weapons should only be +1 in price compared to normal guns

CC weapons need to cost less

Terminators are 30 point models

Librarians should be 65-70 points base.

the_scotsman wrote:
Case in point: In the recent 300 page london GT list dump, players took 25 Black Heart detachments, 5 Obsidian Rose detachments, 1 Poison Tongue detachment and zero Flayed Skull detachments in their drukhari lists.

Wow...No one took the reoll 1's from inside the transports with ignore cover in an army that practically every unit rides in a transport...seem brilliant actually. It even gives you +3 movement with fly units. It is 3 traits for the price of 1 lol.

Trusting the top list at a tourny to have picked the right things isn't a guarentee, but trusting that at least one list out of the 300 pages Scotsman went through would have seen just how obviously OP that one trait is seems... not 100%, but extremely suggestive.

Like why take Tacs beyond the min when you can take Devs instead - perhaps there's more to the DE we haven't realized?

 Jaxler wrote:

T 4 means nothing most of the time.

If you ignore the fact that the vast majority of basic weapons are eithe S3 or S4.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Jaxler wrote:

T 4 means nothing most of the time.

If you ignore the fact that the vast majority of basic weapons are eithe S3 or S4.

Yes, so your T4 means your being wounded on 5s by lasguns and 3s by pulse rifles.

Congratulations, most heavy rate of fire/weight of numbers weapons are scary to you.