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 Flashman wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

a) You will NEVER have a book that makes CSM players happy unless it's a 900 odd page tome that gives every whiny girl their 100 or so special snowflake rules... 3.5 was an unmitigated disaster of OP silliness

Really? How was it OP?

Even I could agree it had issues, but it wasn't the worst. We still had 4th edition skimmerspam, late SW and GK armies mucking things up, 2nd edition Eldar and Space Wolves..

However, because it was OP, people apparently believe chaos doesn't deserve a good codex with a large number of decent options apparently, and so it had to be gutted till it's 4th edition incarnation was born, and its semi-gutted state in 6th.

 punkow wrote:
Guys... I know, maybe this is an hyperbole, but reading the New DA dex I was truly amazed.
The number of options available is incredible, I'm still unable to make a list because I am overwhelmed by the different builds available. The internal balance is striking, there are no clearly OP or clearly bad units (maybe the flyers looks a little meh on the paper but I'm not sure).
All of this without being an OP cheesefest like Newcrons or GK.
Chapeau Mr. Vetock!
What do you guys think?

I have a few disappointment's. The 180 pt nephilim fighter is just shy of being worth its points as an anti air unit. I think the storm Talon still fits that niche better. Razorbacks being a lot more expensive for no real reason is an odd balance. No attack bike squads is personally a sad thing. The Chapter master not unlocking bike or terminator troops is annoying but they did make great characters to fill those roles. Just have to mold your own character models for them. I personally dislike the Deathwing Knights. Their descriptions and their actual abilities don't really gel well. If they allowed you to upgrade them to full thunder hammers that would be fine. Raven Wing command squads being restricted to 3 models is just useless as an apothecary to protect 2 other guys isn't very useful. The deathwing command squad apothecary also seems a bit low on the usage side since it can't carry a close combat weapon.

Overall I think much of the codex is well done but some blaring issues with some of the units makes them pointless. The landspeeder Vengeance just seems like a horrible idea with Gets hot affecting its gun. Just put in a no gets hot rule for that gun and its worth its points a bit more. 140 points for a vehicle that can be killed by bolter fire in one turn or its own gun in one turn is something that would keep me from spending money to buy the model.

I think the strength in this codex isn't in the all one wing armies but the Azrael all troops army with bike squads and terminators all scoring and supporting cheap tac squads with some heavy support from their devastators.

spamthulhu wrote:
Razorbacks being a lot more expensive for no real reason is an odd balance.

Only the TLHB razorback is more expensive. The TLHF razorback is actually cheaper, and the TLLC, TLAC, TLPG+LC razorbacks cost the same points.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 punkow wrote:

 Spartan089 wrote:

 Arthas367 wrote:
As a Angel player since 4th I gotta say I am inlove with all the Detail and quirks of the units, Vetock wisely avoided the mistakes of Wolves, 5th ed knights, and Necrons, and gave great unit by unit flavor so they feel unique without leaving the opponent sorry he played you.

Though I can't help but feel sorry for basic Csm marines, compared to our Rites of battle ld10, stubborn, atsknf marines

Chaos got shafted, Dark Angels isnt the best codex ever written but it certainly is leagues better than the pike of gak called CSM.

And what are the best codices ever written in your opinion (limiting ourselves to 3rd and susequent editions). Maybe it's a little early to say that but I don't remember another dex with the options of the Dark Angels AND a good balance.

a) You will NEVER have a book that makes CSM players happy unless it's a 900 odd page tome that gives every whiny girl their 100 or so special snowflake rules... 3.5 was an unmitigated disaster of OP silliness and 4th was bland as all hell.
The current one tries to do a bit of both and overall lets you theme to any legion or renegade chapter you can imagine, but obviously it can't do what individual legion-specific codicies could do.

b) The best Codex from 3rd edition to present is easily the 4.5 Ork codex. The background is awsome and solidly orky, the army list is still competitive despite 2 edition changes and even the couple of so-called 'dud units' aren't nearly as laughable as other codices terd units.
And most of all, it's a fun book to use AND play against. Nothing super cheesey, even during the wound-allocation-games of 5th Nob Bikers still weren't anything as horribad as what other similar units could pull... (looking at you true T5 Bloodcrushers and you horrible Paladins that needed 11 wounds before a single dude died!!!)

Dark Eldar were also pretty damn solid, the edition change simply gimped them badly.

5th ed Vanilla Marines are also still a great book, despite the initial moans about 3++ storm shields.

Orks still beat them out though!

I somewhat agree about the Chaos 3.5 dex. It was incredibly full of silly OP stuff that encouraged improbable combinations ( Eg:Thousand sons riding possessed Nurgle rhinos), but OTOH it was also full of options, which is IMO a good thing. The problem is that the other incarnations brutally addressed the OP problems simply and unreasonably restricting choices. I am both a DA player and a chaos player so I can understand the whining of my fellow chaotic players.

I agree also about the orks. That's a good codex but still I think that the new DA looks better because it lacks no-brainer choices (which are signs of poor internal balance), which are instead pretty abundant in the ork dex (Lootas, KFF, Shoota Boys over Slugga boys).
The same is true for Vanilla Marines. The internal balance is incredibly lacking: The elite choices are cramped, FA and HS sucks except a few good units.
I have little experience with DE so I can't judge.

Orks can run a variety of lists and still perform to quite a high lvl, dakkajets.....o dakkajets, boyz in general are bargain basement priced, shootas just accentuate that fact further, lootas are always good but both the gentlemen I played in yesterday's tourney (2 shooty ork players in one tourney!! against old school DA) didn't even run 20 lootas, and both took home prizes, one ran a parkinglot of deffrolla wagons 4 or 5 (filled with various things), a unit of slogging shootas, 2 medium loota units, 2 dakkajets it was sick nasty, the other was a huge assortment of things with 2 jets and ghazzy, (120+ models), at this point and time I think orks is highly competitve with lots of different builds


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Backfire wrote:

 Arthas367 wrote:
As a Angel player since 4th I gotta say I am inlove with all the Detail and quirks of the units, Vetock wisely avoided the mistakes of Wolves, 5th ed knights, and Necrons, and gave great unit by unit flavor so they feel unique without leaving the opponent sorry he played you.

Though I can't help but feel sorry for basic Csm marines, compared to our Rites of battle ld10, stubborn, atsknf marines

Azrael's the only one with Rites of Battle though. I assume we're going to see now more of him, as he's quite bit better now.

At 215 pts and completely better in every regard you'd be kidding yourself that him and Ezekiel won't be popping up everywhere

I had a chance to play and watch a couple of games today with them being in it.
The game I played I won't talk much about due to turn 2 tabling due to extreme luck on my half.
The games I watched they seem fairly balanced. The tac squads seem pretty good, able to take a HW at 5 men. The bikers and termis also seem pretty cool, but haven't seen the plasma spam yet.

Going to have to look through the codex when I can to see if I can add some termies to my IG.

 Arthas367 wrote:

Backfire wrote:

Azrael's the only one with Rites of Battle though. I assume we're going to see now more of him, as he's quite bit better now.

At 215 pts and completely better in every regard you'd be kidding yourself that him and Ezekiel won't be popping up everywhere

Yeah, maybe. In fact Belial seems somewhat redundant now - unless you want no-scatter Deep strike, why take him instead of Azrael who's just 25 points more expensive? But OTOH given how he was such a no-brainer choice in the last book, maybe this is not a bad thing.

This books lacks a big CC monster like Mephiston etc, but again that is not a bad thing.

Backfire wrote:

 Arthas367 wrote:

Backfire wrote:

Azrael's the only one with Rites of Battle though. I assume we're going to see now more of him, as he's quite bit better now.

At 215 pts and completely better in every regard you'd be kidding yourself that him and Ezekiel won't be popping up everywhere

Yeah, maybe. In fact Belial seems somewhat redundant now - unless you want no-scatter Deep strike, why take him instead of Azrael who's just 25 points more expensive? But OTOH given how he was such a no-brainer choice in the last book, maybe this is not a bad thing.

This books lacks a big CC monster like Mephiston etc, but again that is not a bad thing.

Yes, Belial is good only if you want your unit of termies not scattering... One possible use is to put it in a large unit of shooty termies, with 2 CML or AssCan and a combiflamer on the sarge. Deepstrike next to a unit: flame/bolter it to death while the TL heavies take down a dangerous vehicle. Profit!

Dr. What wrote:
70 pt 5 man tacticals make my CSM very sad (75 pts for 5 men, and we don't get the loyalist rules).

I think It'll be a strong army and it makes me curious as to what Vanilla SM will get, as everything becomes cheaper. Moreso, following this trend, what will Tau/Eldar (really cheap psykers?)/Orks (cheaper everything?) look like?

I think the DA Tacs are definitely in a good place pointswise....maybe a little generous, especially compared to Vanilla SM.

Maybe the DA designers were looking at the DW/RW stuff and had an expectation that nobody would be using vanilla Tacs unless they were very low budget. I've gotta say with 30 Bolter Marines laying around I'm thinking about just making a well rounded list instead of a DW/RW.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flashman wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

a) You will NEVER have a book that makes CSM players happy unless it's a 900 odd page tome that gives every whiny girl their 100 or so special snowflake rules... 3.5 was an unmitigated disaster of OP silliness

Really? How was it OP?

Yea, outside of Siren prince Daemonette spam shennenigens it was pretty good, but not OP much.
Most of the silly stuff could have been fixed by one FAQ and it would have been better than the next book.

I just got my hands on the codex and I am really excited with what I have seen so far. I really wanted to run greenwing and it looks like it's going to be a legitimate option. So far I have a really favorable opinion of this codex, but I'll need a couple games under my belt before I can say with certainty if it's a good book or not. There are some devastating combos and each wing ( death-, raven- and green-) all look to be competitive and that's the best I could have hoped for.

 Spartan089 wrote:

Skilled Rider + Stealth + Turbo Boost = 2+ cover for the Black Knights.
Flat Out + Shrouding = 2+ cover for the Darkshroud.

-not balanced

I'm missing something, where is the stealth for the BK coming from?

The Darkshroud. It gives itself Shroud and Stealth within 6". Since stealth grants to entire unit, you only need 1 Black Knight within 6" of the Shroud to get the +1 cover save for the Black Knight squad

Another niche loyalist chapter with dozens of special rules and a price reduction on standard marines...

Can't wait to see what they come up with for 6E BA or SW lol

 punkow wrote:

xxvaderxx wrote:
I have not read it in detail YET. But from the bits i have, it strikes me as a very very bad codex (as in some units are plain better than their direct competitors in the same book, which also happen to be the new models) and some units are plain broken.

Examples:

-Divination psychic on marine stats for 65 points.
-Death wing terminators vs Death wing knights, knights are plain better all around, cheaper, same slot.

I don't understand... How the Librarian is broken? Yes it is undercosted if we confront it with previous codices incarnations but actually I rather think that the previous incarnation were overcosted (and DA libbies do not have acess to horrible things like Jotww )
Also DW knights are not cheaper and lacks the new DW goodness: Vengeful strike (TL on the turn they deepstrike) and split fire which make Shooty Termies much more interesting now.

Plus with Belia/Azrael the DW are Troops. Knights are very good but in the 2 games ive played so far with them, they have attracted a lot of fire right from the off.

Nivek5150 wrote:
The Darkshroud. It gives itself Shroud and Stealth within 6". Since stealth grants to entire unit, you only need 1 Black Knight within 6" of the Shroud to get the +1 cover save for the Black Knight squad

Got it, thanks... didn't know about 6" rule.

It does not give stealth to itself, however - unfortunately this codexx has a lot of bad editing so the print codex has "stealth" listed instead of "shrouded" in the unit entry

 Jackster wrote:

 Spartan089 wrote:

Skilled Rider + Stealth + Turbo Boost = 2+ cover for the Black Knights.
Flat Out + Shrouding = 2+ cover for the Darkshroud.

-not balanced

On a squad of bikes that cost like termies and an AV10 vehicle with 2 hull points.

And have to be in a 6" cluster of the Landspeeder. Given the cost of the units it is not that broken.

I like the codex and think it gives a little more love to those who waited for it than the CSM codex did (and I'm a fan of the CSM codex).

CSM players that look at the DA codex and gripe aren't looking at the codices from the right perspective. No need to go into it because the CSM has been beaten to death on this forum and minds aren't going to change at this point.

 kcwm wrote:
I like the codex and think it gives a little more love to those who waited for it than the CSM codex did (and I'm a fan of the CSM codex).

Doh. The whole point of the CSM codex hate is that it gave no love to noone other than Nurgle players and those who like the Heldrake. What is a sad thing, but true, especially in spite of the DA codex (and I kinda' liked the CSM codex too!). lets be honest: the DA codex is pretty much a huge middle finger for the CSM players ...

spamthulhu wrote:
The 180 pt nephilim fighter is just shy of being worth its points as an anti air unit. I think the storm Talon still fits that niche better.

On the plus side, the flyers being garbage is going to save me $150 ( I would have probably picked up 2 if they were good)

spamthulhu wrote:
Razorbacks being a lot more expensive for no real reason is an odd balance. No attack bike squads is personally a sad thing.

Razorbacks went up 5 points and gained several new weapon options - not a bad tradeoff. We didn't have attack bike squads before, so no big loss there.

spamthulhu wrote:
The Chapter master not unlocking bike or terminator troops is annoying but they did make great characters to fill those roles. Just have to mold your own character models for them.

The chapter master does unlock both terminators and bikes as troops, not sure what you are getting at here...

spamthulhu wrote:
I personally dislike the Deathwing Knights. Their descriptions and their actual abilities don't really gel well. If they allowed you to upgrade them to full thunder hammers that would be fine.

I think the maces are awesome. If you go against a harder target, you activate smite. S6 AP4 on most of the unit and S6 AP3 on the leader, all with a 2+/3++ seems pretty badass to me.

spamthulhu wrote:
Raven Wing command squads being restricted to 3 models is just useless as an apothecary to protect 2 other guys isn't very useful. The deathwing command squad apothecary also seems a bit low on the usage side since it can't carry a close combat weapon.

I could not agree more. I doubt you will ever see DW/RW apothecaries in tourny lists - 30 points and you lose your PF, no thanks.

spamthulhu wrote:
The landspeeder Vengeance just seems like a horrible idea with Gets hot affecting its gun. Just put in a no gets hot rule for that gun and its worth its points a bit more. 140 points for a vehicle that can be killed by bolter fire in one turn or its own gun in one turn is something that would keep me from spending money to buy the model.

Yep.

 nolzur wrote:

spamthulhu wrote:
The Chapter master not unlocking bike or terminator troops is annoying but they did make great characters to fill those roles. Just have to mold your own character models for them.

The chapter master does unlock both terminators and bikes as troops, not sure what you are getting at here...

I think spamthulhu meant Company Masters, not chapter master. Yes Azrael the Chapter Master Unlocks both, but alot of people were hoping Company Masters would as well like how Captains do it in C:SM

Also Razorbacks are 15 more points than the C:SM version. They are only 5 points more than BA's Fast version. I would take fast over simple. They did balance out the other weapon options but it looks like the free HB's are a thing of the past. The old Razorback was very economical.

I did mean Company Master. Azrael is amazing. The only issue is getting him into battle. I think a command squad with a banner and a rhino or drop pod will be a minimum for his squad to hide in.

Looking at the book I think the combined arms all troops concept will be strong for DA. Having Az and a cheap libby with termies/bikes/tac squads all scoring will be a powerful combo.

Me and Nycus we talking about the Razorback price increase, it might actually be a fluff reason. Razorbacks are sort of a new Technology relatively speaking and Dark Angels are supposed to use buckets of old Technology.
By making Razorbacks more expensive, you will see less of them without needing special rules for them.
This might also explain why some Codex’s have some units over cost and some under cost, a subtle way to get people to play “Fluffy Armies”

Sounds good! Fingers crossed more writers will move across from fantasy and bring there balancing scales with them.

 Anpu42 wrote:
Me and Nycus we talking about the Razorback price increase, it might actually be a fluff reason. Razorbacks are sort of a new Technology relatively speaking and Dark Angels are supposed to use buckets of old Technology.
By making Razorbacks more expensive, you will see less of them without needing special rules for them.
This might also explain why some Codex’s have some units over cost and some under cost, a subtle way to get people to play “Fluffy Armies”

It could also be a prelude to making all marines pay for the Heavy bolters

I always thought Razorbacks being 40 points was cheap. It didn't matter as much when they made you take full ten mans to get a heavy and a special weapon in the same squad. I used to run 6 man squads in the old days with Razors because it was very strong.

I do like your theory though.

I just wish they had allowed combat squad-ding terminators so you could end up with half and half squads with assault on one side and 2 heavy weapons on the other.

spamthulhu wrote:
Also Razorbacks are 15 more points than the C:SM version. They are only 5 points more than BA's Fast version.

They are also (as I said earlier) only 5 points more than they were in the previous DA book with a lot more options than before.

Almost everything else in the codex got both cheaper and better, so griping that razorbacks went up 5 points is a bit silly IMHO.

Not really. Its just an overall criticism of the finer points of the book. Making one marine army pay 40% more for the same exact item with no rules benefit makes it seem odd. I just assume that will end up translating to the marine codex.

I do hope C:SM doesn't get the price increase for Razorback. As it is I often rather dump a combat squad with the tac squad's special weapons inside a Rhino to shoot with, while keeping troops inside a Razorback for cover is pointless in the long run because of no fire points and thus the firepower of the firepower of the tacticals is wasted.

Are the TLAC, TLLC and other variants priced similarly to C:SM though?

tvih wrote:

Are the TLAC, TLLC and other variants priced similarly to C:SM though?

They are the same. The TLHF is cheaper though.