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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

theninjabadger wrote:
I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

Lets see.

Eldar (4th edition skimmerspam)
Space Wolves

vs

Necrons
Grey knights (5th edition paladins/purifiers)

About equal really.

It sounds to me that Phil Kelly and Matt Ward haven't written bad codexes as such from the example above, it is just that they allow the player to build army lists that some or most other armies simply cannot cope with.

For example the 4th edition eldar skimmer spam was horrible at the time, but now it is barely competitive.

The more recent codexes such as necrons allow some horrible builds such as the so called flying bakery of doom but no one is forcing the player to use it. The necron codex has a lot of decent, competitive units and only a few naff ones (*cough flayedones cough*) so the fliers are not essential to do well (especially not spamming them).

In short, it is the player who decides to abuse the rules, not the codex.

Although I have to admit giving bloodcrushers a 6+ save does seem pretty pointless in the current context. Only time will tell on that one.

I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

 Giganthrax wrote:
I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

And as an actual Daemon player, I feel the exact opposite - Kelly has finally given me an actual codex to play with, not some borked random piece of crap 'dex that outright screwed me over 33% of the time AND never let me deploy more than half my army.

People say Bloodcrushers suck monkeyballs now? I guess people keep forgetting they're now Cavalry and will easily be in your opponent's face on turn 2. Or that for a disgustingly cheap cost, you can get an initiative-swinging ap2 CCW that's either master-crafted OR causes Instant Death! on a to-wound roll of a 6.
Power fist sergeants? Don't make me laugh, they'll never, ever swing against these guys!

And you can also spam 'Crushers alongside multi-wound Hounds and still take 'oodles of basic grunts. And all of it can deploy normally!

People are too used to fighting half an army gimped by horrible mechanics when they see Daemons. Enjoy the new codex which gives full control over to the actual Daemon player now. It's no pushover and I'm sure we'll soon be seeing the numerous whine threads about how this new book is OP/broken once opponents start getting thumped senseless by the new combos and synergies the army now boasts.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Giganthrax wrote:
I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

And as an actual Daemon player, I feel the exact opposite - Kelly has finally given me an actual codex to play with, not some borked random piece of crap 'dex that outright screwed me over 33% of the time AND never let me deploy more than half my army.

I'm not kidding or being ironic when I say I'm glad you enjoy the new book. But removing one giant old blunder of a rule does not necessarily make for good game design by default. It's like Machiavelli's goat parable: make people keep a smelly goat in their homes for long enough, and when you let them kick it out they'll think you're the greatest ever. "No more smelly goat! Sephyr sure is a great guy!".

It still doesn't address the lack of grenades (REMOVAL of existing grenades, in many cases) in an army that is 3/4s melee. Yes, your Herald with that fancy AP2 blade -will- eat Power Fist blows if he charged through a lonely inch of terrain. So will your greased-lightning-fast Keeper of secrets, for that matter. Or the doubling down on design-by-random-chart. Or the mind-boggling waste of points that is the sword on the Soulgrinder. And the gimped interaction with their only battle brothers.

It's entirely possible none of the issues above bother you. Maybe you wanted to do shooty Tzeentch daemons from the start or like horde armies. But they are still valid concerns for many other players. And this has nothing to do with power levels. CD could be replacing IG and Necrons stomping tournaments for all I know. GK in 5th was a horrendously powerful book and also a very poorly designed one in many ways.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Giganthrax wrote:
I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

And as an actual Daemon player, I feel the exact opposite - Kelly has finally given me an actual codex to play with, not some borked random piece of crap 'dex that outright screwed me over 33% of the time AND never let me deploy more than half my army.

Oh, it's definitely better than the old book + slowed WD update combo, I think we can all agree on that.

It's just that I really hate all the randomness and bookkeeping + I feel the unit design is really uninspired.

Almost every unit in the game either has a predetermined role, with no customization possible, or has a predetermined role and generic/boring customizations such as icons and instruments. Even their HQs are pretty underwhelming when it comes to wargear and some expensive upgrades are obvious must-takes. For example, everyone is going to take armor and wings on a daemon prince, sending it into the 220+ pts range, at which point buying any more stuff for them makes them stupidly expensive.

The only really interesting, customizable unit I see in the new dex is the Soul Grinder. It, at least, has a variety of options that allow you to kit it out for whatever battle field role you need, or even to make it into a generalist. And even it is spoiled by being the only skyfire in the whole book, effectively taking 2-3 of those a must take for every all-comers daemons list.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The Daemon book doesn't mean much to many CSM players, as that mistake will take yet another edition to rectify.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

Then you obviously never actually read what people's issues actually were, or were very selective in what you paid attention to

Or just disagreed with those points.

I like the CSM codex in general. I like the Daemons codex too - in fact I see it as a situation where I now have two great tastes that taste great together!

 Giganthrax wrote:

Oh, it's definitely better than the old book + slowed WD update combo, I think we can all agree on that.

It's just that I really hate all the randomness and bookkeeping + I feel the unit design is really uninspired.

Except judging by the comments and mass hate-on for the Warpstorm table, Daemon players get the feeling people will refuse them games due to all the 'randomness'... Hell, one person even suggested TO's should disallow the Warpstorm table at events!

And honestly, the bookkeeping is minimal if you use a little commen sense when typing up your army list.
Just leave a blank space by your various rewards and a line to write down your psychic powers. Took me all of about 3-4 minutes the first time to jot down everything in a 1500pts list.

 Giganthrax wrote:
Almost every unit in the game either has a predetermined role, with no customization possible, or has a predetermined role and generic/boring customizations such as icons and instruments. Even their HQs are pretty underwhelming when it comes to wargear and some expensive upgrades are obvious must-takes. For example, everyone is going to take armor and wings on a daemon prince, sending it into the 220+ pts range, at which point buying any more stuff for them makes them stupidly expensive.

The only really interesting, customizable unit I see in the new dex is the Soul Grinder. It, at least, has a variety of options that allow you to kit it out for whatever battle field role you need, or even to make it into a generalist. And even it is spoiled by being the only skyfire in the whole book, effectively taking 2-3 of those a must take for every all-comers daemons list.

Erm, Daemons have always had pre-determined roles... Not sure what you're getting at here.
Khorne is higher strength killy and eats MEQ's. Slaanesh is speedy and kills hordes/TEQ's. Tzeentch is dead shooty and somewhat more survivable. Nurgle is resiliant as hell and scares high toughness units. The new codex hasn't changed at all in that regard, nor should it. If people want awsomesauce multi-tasking where every single character is a special snowflake with a mountain of options, then they can go play Marines since that's their specialty.

And our HQ's are honestly no more underwhelming than they were in the previous 'dex, or any codex since... Under the previous codex, barely half the possible upgrades were used, and you only ever saw a fraction of the possible HQ's even taking to field itself! Before that, Daemons didn't have the option to take anything! Now, they're less customisable upfront, but far more flexible in each game since you can tailor your rewards to your opponents.
And to say Princes need to have wings to be effective is simply ignorant. Wingless Princes are perfectly viable, (especially Slaaneshii ones), since we can now chain-Deep Strike across the board and bring in tag-teams thanks to how the new Icons & Instruments work. (ie: It's actually possible to summon a GUO into your opponent's deployment zone on turn 2 btw!)

And Soul Grinders are most assuredly NOT out only viable anti-flyer units. They're good at it yes, but so are LoC's, vector striking 'Thirsters and Pink Horrors w/Locus of Conjuration + Prescience when needed. Plus we now have BS3 + Shrouded Plaguebearers to man those AA emplacements of an Aegis Line. We've actually more than doubled our viable anti-flyer options compared to our last fail'dex!
Daemons will handle flyers fine unless someone decides to spam 5-6+ of the things, at which point, every single army except other flyer spam lists suffer! (so that's not actually a Codex Daemons problem, but more that certain other codices can spam undercosted av12 flyers...)


We get it, you think Daemons are poop and their book is terribad. Fine, you're free to think that.
But Daemon players who are actually trying to work the new book to it's strengths have found it to be the exact opposite, and very few, if any of us are complaining about the randomness they way a vocal minority have been.

Kelly did a good job on this one. Daemons are chaotic without being 'lolzbroken' like the last codex, each unit has a reason to exist, (though the Burning Chariot needs FAQ'ing), we've got all areas of combat covered decently and there's plenty of character across the army.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Erm, Daemons have always had pre-determined roles... Not sure what you're getting at here.

I still think it's a boring, dumb design. A richness of options is what adds variety to a unit and allows players to develop a personal playstyle based on preference.

Look at vanilla tactical squads, for example. Between the variety of guns (all of which perform different roles), different combat tactics depending on which HQ you have, combat squad USR, and 3 vastly different dedicated transports, you get a unit that is extremely customizable and can be used in many different roles. Same could be said of regular CSMs, IG infantry, deathwing/ravenwing, boyz & nobz, even tyranid gaunts, etc.

Now compare this to daemon troops. Bloodletters/Daemonettes play exactly the same no matter what mission or opponent you pit them against. Plaguebearers literally have no purpose except to camp objectives, or turn into poor man's daemonettes/bloodletters in kill points missions. There are no wargear options aside from an instrument and an icon, and the only customizable model is the sergeant who's gonna get owned in challenge anyway. Every unit in the codex except HQs and soul grinder suffers from this lack of options.

IMHO, this cuts down on tactical & strategic choices, makes the army less challenging to play (half of these units work on autopilot, basically, because their design is so single-minded), and drastically cuts down on modelling options.

After the abyssal chaos marine dex I was worried. Having now read the daemons dex and had a a good, proper look at it and made some tasty lists I feel it is a very good book. Some things are skewed but quite honestly its rather very well done to the point the bits that are skewy don`t really make a bit of difference.

After all its only a game with little toy soldiers. No one really dies on a dice roll

Motograter wrote:
After the abyssal chaos marine dex I was worried. Having now read the daemons dex and had a a good, proper look at it and made some tasty lists I feel it is a very good book. Some things are skewed but quite honestly its rather very well done to the point the bits that are skewy don`t really make a bit of difference.

After all its only a game with little toy soldiers. No one really dies on a dice roll

We play for real-real, not for play-play. You die in the game, you die in real life.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was. Yes there are problems with the codex no doubt (basic CSMs should be at least 1 point cheaper, either that or get VotLW standard) but you also get the most powerful flyer in the game that seriously rivals the vendetta for its Its a good (not great) codex that has enough variance to overcome most of its flaws.

Chaos space marines CHEEPER! You can have toughness 5 CSMs for the same price as a normal space marine cos there stupidly cheep at 13pts and get nurgle for 3 pts each.

Jake Hartley wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was. Yes there are problems with the codex no doubt (basic CSMs should be at least 1 point cheaper, either that or get VotLW standard) but you also get the most powerful flyer in the game that seriously rivals the vendetta for its Its a good (not great) codex that has enough variance to overcome most of its flaws.

Chaos space marines CHEEPER! You can have toughness 5 CSMs for the same price as a normal space marine cos there stupidly cheep at 13pts and get nurgle for 3 pts each.

while lacking all the special rules of normal SM's (particularly ATSKNF) and still having to pay full price for upgrade weapons. If you add VotLW to approximate ATSKNF, a flamer, and a missile launcher, they're now 19pts each, or 3ppm (19%) more than basic SM's, hardly broken.

 Giganthrax wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
Erm, Daemons have always had pre-determined roles... Not sure what you're getting at here.

I still think it's a boring, dumb design. A richness of options is what adds variety to a unit and allows players to develop a personal playstyle based on preference.

Look at vanilla tactical squads, for example. Between the variety of guns (all of which perform different roles), different combat tactics depending on which HQ you have, combat squad USR, and 3 vastly different dedicated transports, you get a unit that is extremely customizable and can be used in many different roles. Same could be said of regular CSMs, IG infantry, deathwing/ravenwing, boyz & nobz, even tyranid gaunts, etc.

Now compare this to daemon troops. Bloodletters/Daemonettes play exactly the same no matter what mission or opponent you pit them against. Plaguebearers literally have no purpose except to camp objectives, or turn into poor man's daemonettes/bloodletters in kill points missions. There are no wargear options aside from an instrument and an icon, and the only customizable model is the sergeant who's gonna get owned in challenge anyway. Every unit in the codex except HQs and soul grinder suffers from this lack of options.

IMHO, this cuts down on tactical & strategic choices, makes the army less challenging to play (half of these units work on autopilot, basically, because their design is so single-minded), and drastically cuts down on modelling options.

Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role? There's nothing wrong with specialization, hell, that's the entire point behind Eldar. I think this actually makes it MORE tactically challenging, as in a TOC or themed list, you're not necessarily always going to have the tool to point-and-click at every threat. You need to be able to use the tools you have to deal with the threats in front of you. If every unit is good at everything, then where's the fun or challenge in that? Specialization means you have to position your models in the most advantageous way to do what they're best at, it doesn't mean that when I put down Daemonettes you pick up your Terminators. It encourages you to add more variety in terms of the units you bring, instead of the upgrades to those units.

nah he's a cool guy i'm sure as long as he does the tau codex i'm happy

 Giganthrax wrote:

I still think it's a boring, dumb design. A richness of options is what adds variety to a unit and allows players to develop a personal playstyle based on preference.

Look at vanilla tactical squads, for example. Between the variety of guns (all of which perform different roles), different combat tactics depending on which HQ you have, combat squad USR, and 3 vastly different dedicated transports, you get a unit that is extremely customizable and can be used in many different roles. Same could be said of regular CSMs, IG infantry, deathwing/ravenwing, boyz & nobz, even tyranid gaunts, etc.

Now compare this to daemon troops. Bloodletters/Daemonettes play exactly the same no matter what mission or opponent you pit them against. Plaguebearers literally have no purpose except to camp objectives, or turn into poor man's daemonettes/bloodletters in kill points missions. There are no wargear options aside from an instrument and an icon, and the only customizable model is the sergeant who's gonna get owned in challenge anyway. Every unit in the codex except HQs and soul grinder suffers from this lack of options.

IMHO, this cuts down on tactical & strategic choices, makes the army less challenging to play (half of these units work on autopilot, basically, because their design is so single-minded), and drastically cuts down on modelling options.

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

Again, you're only proving your ignorance of what Daemons are if you think 'Letters & 'Nettes are exactly the same. A Daemon player understands that they are two entirely different units with two vastly different roles;
a) Bloodletters = MEQ killers. WS5/S4 + Furious Charge and ap3 weapons make them one of the best, (if not the outright best), marine beatstick unit in the game. They hit on 3's and kill on 3's on the charge.
However, they're overpriced against GEQ's, and next to worthless against TEQ's as they tend to simply bounce off them.

b) Daemonettes = GEQ & TEQ killers. They have more attacks than Bloodletters and can gain re-rolls to-hit alongside sky high initiative to make sure they get their hits in first. They're Rending ability is also what makes them deadly to 2+ save units - espeically those who also sport high invulns like Hammernators.
However, 'Nettes are horrible vs Marines of all flavours since they only hit on 4's and are just S3 with only their 6's removing the marine's save. They'll eventually get beaten down or crippled by most 10 man marine squads. (whereas those Bloodletters will easily finish off marines within 1-2 rounds and lose far fewer models in return.)

And the same deal goes for our other Troops options...
Plaguebearers are not 'simply objective campers'. They are also hard-counters to Ork-equivalents, (ie: low strength/T4 models with bad saves), due to being T4 and having S4 poisoned attacks. They will take down those Orks better than 'Letters (who are overkill and lack the wieght of attacks), or 'Nettes, (who will struggle to wound and get raped in return).
'Bearers are also solid tarpit units since they take punishment like no other Troops option, plus their poisoned attacks are a serious threat to T5/6 MC's. Hardly a "useless objective camper"



Our champions are not slouches, and they're cheap because they help protect the more valuable Heralds who in turn buff the entire unit. (and a Bloodreaper or Alluress will roflstomp any Marine Sergeant outside of a Hammernator Serg!)
Show me where Marines can get an inititive order striking ap2 Master-crafted CCW for 10pts please.

And if you think our Icons are write-offs or somehow lackluster upgrades, again, you don't know what you're talking about!
- Bloodletters can ensure that their first charge will almost certainly reach their target, even despite Overwatch casulties since they're assured of a 7" - 12" charge.
- Horrors can ensure that a charge won't reach them with any steam by saving up their Blasted Standard. Heralds & Iridescent Horrors get more mileage out of Lesser Rewards and thus maximise their chances at getting 1-2 S5 template weapons for Wall of Death and then follow it up with 2D6/S4 auto-hits! You therefore can't send in an understrength squad to try and tie-up the Horrors - they laugh and then shoot you again before you can get to grips!
- Plaguebearers can gain a single round of 2+ poisoned when they need bailing out.
- Daemonettes get to drop the enemy's WS by -D3. This means even deathstars need to fear this lowly Troops unit since the 'Nettes have a good shot at hitting on 3's while only being hit on 4's in return!

And those are upgrades on top of the basic Icons which can prevent or reduce scatter when Deep Striking in.
And those Instruments? Not only do give the Daemon player more control of "God 'X' stamps about the table" results on the Warpstorm table, but they also allow for chaining in other reserves!

Sure those upgrades aren't flamers or plasma guns or lascanons or missile launchers or whatever. But for how they help bring everything in a Daemon army together, they're awsome for their low costs!


Daemons like Eldar, are a case where the whole is far greater than the sum of it's parts.
It's pretty much the exact opposite of what Marines are, hence why it's silly to compare the two and decry one as crap compared to the other.

Yeah, it wasn't balanced. That's why it sucked to play against. People in my group ran in horror against the 3.5 dex. I refused to play against it after a while because there was no point.

You KNEW they were going to win. You KNEW you were going to lose. People have short memories. That book was horrible to face against.

And what someone said about GK, that they're fun to play. That's probably true, but that's not the mark of a good codex. The mark of a good codex is one that can win, one that's fun to play and maybe most importantly, one that's fun to play AGAINST.

GK suffered the same problem as the Chaos 3.5 dex. Almost auto-win, fun to play, miserable to play against to the point of personal hatred against the person who had the gall to play something so overpowered.

It was like watching superman beat up a child. How DARE he use that power like that.

I think Kelly is probably their best writer. DE was great in the edition it came out. I STILL like the Orks. Necrons are fun, has a bit internal balance problems with special character pricing.

Yeah, space wolves was where he fell down a bit. Honestly, nothing in that codex as it works is bad. The main problem comes with PRICING of those units. If points were tweaked up in a couple of places it would've been a great, balanced dex instead of what it became.

Chaos Marines is a good, balanced dex with a solid chance of winning, it's just a bit bland and characterless. Which is a shame considering his usual flare for multi-builds.

So, If I'm ranking good codexes the only bad one recently is SW.

Ward wrote Necrons, not Mr. Kelly

Kelly isnt very good at marine codexes. See Chaos and SW. He either makes them too strong or too weak. However, let him design a xeno army and he nails it every time.

5th DE have most of the codex being usable or good which is very rare these days.

Orks have survived 2 editions and have come out as one of the to-beat armies. You always have to account for nob bikers, lootas, kannon teams, and battlewagon spam.

Eldar have weathered the editions changes far worse, but as it has been noted he had the rug pulled out from under him on a lot of decisions there. However, i was content playing Eldar and winning tourneys all the way the end of 5th before i got my hands on codex Corsairs.

New demon codex looks to be damn good. Lots of new combinations, mono-god armies being viable, lots of mobility and focus on quantity over quality. Balanced some broken units, re-worked some others, but overall a lot of the units are playable and competitive. Bloodcrushers actually got quite a bit better with being cav now. The ability to actually assault with them before being shot to death makes them playable in almost any list. Weather they are better than hounds or the other cav in the army remains to be seen. Warpstorm table actually is a boon to Demon players, especially Tzenich, so im not sure what all the bitching about. Chaos is chaotic, oh no!

Experiment 626 wrote:


Except judging by the comments and mass hate-on for the Warpstorm table, Daemon players get the feeling people will refuse them games due to all the 'randomness'... Hell, one person even suggested TO's should disallow the Warpstorm table at events!

I wouldn't worry about it. We heard the same stuff with the GK codex and the Space Wolves codex shortly after their releases. Next month when something else changes - the focus will be on how terrible that is and we will all have the same discussions again.

 MandalorynOranj wrote:
Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role?

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

It's not a bad design idea per se, it's just executed in a one dimensional, boring way.

For example, Sternguard Veterans also have a predetermined role (they're a shooty unit), but there's a ton of different guns and combiguns to choose from, including heavy weapons, so they can be kitted out to hunt a specific type of unit, or even be a passive firebase squad, depending on preference and their role in the army, or they can even be made into generalists. In addition there are the different dedicated transports + Pedro who can make them scoring, completely changing their role in the army. Compare that to the one-dimensional 100% specialized daemon units.

This is even more jarring fluffwise. It's chaos, for christ's sake! You'd expect they'd have a massive, seemingly random varieties in their units. At the very least, you'd expect those bloodletters to go to battle carrying all sorts of weapons, from swords to axes to flails to whips to dual wielding sabres to just huge claws etc., with a few of them sporting strange shooty powers/mutations, with some entire squads having access to vastly mutated carapaces (better armor save/toughness) or the like. But no, instead the CHAOS gods prefer an army of streamlined clones? What the hell? Even the frickin tyranids get more variety than that, and their squads all need to have the same wargear!

GW is probably aware of how stupid and unfluffy this is, so they try to cram forced mechanics such as the warp storm chart and random herald wargear to create an illusion that your army is chaotic, but IMHO it's bad design. Chaos Marines are an example of this philosophy done far better.

 Giganthrax wrote:

 MandalorynOranj wrote:
Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role?

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

It's not a bad design idea per se, it's just executed in a one dimensional, boring way.

For example, Sternguard Veterans also have a predetermined role (they're a shooty unit), but there's a ton of different guns and combiguns to choose from, including heavy weapons, so they can be kitted out to hunt a specific type of unit, or even be a passive firebase squad, depending on preference and their role in the army, or they can even be made into generalists. In addition there are the different dedicated transports + Pedro who can make them scoring, completely changing their role in the army. Compare that to the one-dimensional 100% specialized daemon units.

This is even more jarring fluffwise. It's chaos, for christ's sake! You'd expect they'd have a massive, seemingly random varieties in their units. At the very least, you'd expect those bloodletters to go to battle carrying all sorts of weapons, from swords to axes to flails to whips to dual wielding sabres to just huge claws etc., with a few of them sporting strange shooty powers/mutations, with some entire squads having access to vastly mutated carapaces (better armor save/toughness) or the like. But no, instead the CHAOS gods prefer an army of streamlined clones? What the hell? Even the frickin tyranids get more variety than that, and their squads all need to have the same wargear!

GW is probably aware of how stupid and unfluffy this is, so they try to cram forced mechanics such as the warp storm chart and random herald wargear to create an illusion that your army is chaotic, but IMHO it's bad design. Chaos Marines are an example of this philosophy done far better.

I'm not sure you understand the point of a specialist army. It forces you NOT to always rely on the same units to do everything for you. It's all about using the right tool for the right job, and that's something a lot of marine players stumble over for a while (note: I am not accusing you of only being a marine player, I have no idea what you play, I'm just stating that I've observed this). If every squad could be kitted out to do everything, then why even have different unit types? You don't use the back end of a screwdriver to hammer in nails, you pick up a hammer. So I guess while marines are a multitool, Daemons, Eldar, and other specialist armies are a whole toolbox.

As to the fluff argument, and I'm purely speculating here, but I think part of that comes from these representing the "commonly seen" daemons in the materium. And there really is that kind of variety- just as different unit types. Think Tzeentch for a second: in an incursion, there wouldn't be any squads or units, everything would be mixed in together. So you would have Horrors running around with Flamers scattered about, as well as stuff like spawn and completely random stuff that can't even be represented in-game, all mixed together, but for playability GW separates them into different units. I also believe that if they did what you were suggesting, you'd get obnoxiously long wargear lists for every single unit, which would just be a pain to wade through.

 Giganthrax wrote:

 MandalorynOranj wrote:
Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role?

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

GW is probably aware of how stupid and unfluffy this is, so they try to cram forced mechanics such as the warp storm chart and random herald wargear to create an illusion that your army is chaotic, but IMHO it's bad design. Chaos Marines are an example of this philosophy done far better.

Or maybe, you simply don't get Daemons at all?

There's nothing 'lazy' about our unit designs. Notice that no actual Daemon players are whining about Kelly's supposedly lazy & crappy designs - just non-Daemon players who've never played with the army and don't understand how it really works.

"Unfluffly" would be to give 'oodles of options to every unit actually!

I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Or maybe, you simply don't get Daemons at all?

There's nothing 'lazy' about our unit designs. Notice that no actual Daemon players are whining about Kelly's supposedly lazy & crappy designs - just non-Daemon players who've never played with the army and don't understand how it really works.

"Unfluffly" would be to give 'oodles of options to every unit actually!

This Daemons player hates the Warp Storm chart. It's a lazy mechanic of forced randomness that takes control of the game away from players. I hated forced Deep Strikes too. If I wanted to play against the dice instead of other players, I'd pick up Yahtzee.

I'm not sure you understand the point of a specialist army.

Oh I do understand it. That doesn't mean unit design needs to have them limited to a couple passive upgrades. I just find that extremely boring.

There's plenty of specialization in marine dexes + other options that drastically change how a unit plays. However, there's still variety and space for customization. There's none of that with Daemons.

Fluffwise, it makes perfect sense to me that all necron warriors in a given squad are the same (they're basically mass produced robots), or that all hormagaunts in the same brood have same biomorphs (they're literally mass-spawned from the same mother organism to fill a single purpose), etc... But that daemons of a CHAOS god in any given group would be perfect clones of each other and every other daemon of the same type from every other squad, all armed with same wargear, with no variation whatsoever? Nah, just doesn't fit my idea of what chaotic should mean.

Or maybe, you simply don't get Daemons at all?

There's nothing 'lazy' about our unit designs. Notice that no actual Daemon players are whining about Kelly's supposedly lazy & crappy designs - just non-Daemon players who've never played with the army and don't understand how it really works.

Check out other threads. Plenty of daemon players are complaining.

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

 Vaktathi wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

I think you have a different issue going on here. Necrons were written for 6th Edition, but for a power level comparable to the top power level of 5th Edition before 6th Ed rules were finalized. Then, later they changed the power level of the newer books to tone down the game a little. As a result, Necrons are incredibly powerful in 6th Edition compared to every other army. Matt Wards gimmiks like MSS, Everliving, flying dedicated transports that protect cargo from damage and Quantum Shielding,do not help bringing the codex down to par with the newer codexes written for the new edition. Grey Knights have the same issue.

Mad at Kelly? Not at all. But I think he's a little overrated. For example his ork codex is considered a success for the most part, but I remember an interview with him where he admitted he deliberately under-costed the cost of the basic ork boy in order to shake up the vehicle-dominated meta game he perceived. Some would say that's just great. I say it's weak and irresponsible, and a reflection of GW's lousy codex writing system. Instead of having one person oversee each codex with a team cooperating to make things interact properly, it seems they pit different writers against each other and create divergent, incompatible game mechanics that run roughshod over each other. Granted, this is more GW's philosophy than any individual writer's responsibility. I find it funny how people become fan-boys of writer X and despise writer Y when in fact both the good and the bad belong completely on GW's doorstep.

Mohoc wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

I think you have a different issue going on here. Necrons were written for 6th Edition, but for a power level comparable to the top power level of 5th Edition before 6th Ed rules were finalized. Then, later they changed the power level of the newer books to tone down the game a little. As a result, Necrons are incredibly powerful in 6th Edition compared to every other army. Matt Wards gimmiks like MSS, Everliving, flying dedicated transports that protect cargo from damage and Quantum Shielding,do not help bringing the codex down to par with the newer codexes written for the new edition. Grey Knights have the same issue.

It's exactly those things that make it so well adapted to 6th. Flyer transports with rules that sidestep everything bad about being a flyer transport, AV13 shields mitigate much of the harshness of Hull Points because you remove almost all multishot weapons from harming or especially penetrating it (not to mention their basic transport gets an extra HP over all other tanks in the game but Land Raiders...just for gaks and giggles), MSS makes Challenges a joke, while NightFight plays more prominently than ever and no other army can manipulate and take advantage of that like Necrons, while Tesla Weapons hugely mitigate Snapshots turning basic Tesla Weapons into merely BS3 when Snapshotting on average and TL Tesla weapons generate an average hit rate comparable to a BS8 weapon when snapshotting, and Gauss weapons obviously are rather potent when joined with Hull Points.

Additionally, the assault units Necrons do have are actually some of those that got *better* with 6E (like Scarabs and the Beast unit type), particularly Scarabs and Wraiths, and were largely unaffected by the things that really killed other armies assault units like transport changes and assaulting from reserves.

It's not the raw power of the individual units, it's the way the entire book was seemingly written either to ignore what 6E was toning down for everyone (vehicles/hull points) else or take maximum advantage of other changes (snapshots, nightfight, flyers) on a fundamental level.

 amanita wrote:
Mad at Kelly? Not at all. But I think he's a little overrated. For example his ork codex is considered a success for the most part, but I remember an interview with him where he admitted he deliberately under-costed the cost of the basic ork boy in order to shake up the vehicle-dominated meta game he perceived. Some would say that's just great. I say it's weak and irresponsible, and a reflection of GW's lousy codex writing system. Instead of having one person oversee each codex with a team cooperating to make things interact properly, it seems they pit different writers against each other and create divergent, incompatible game mechanics that run roughshod over each other. Granted, this is more GW's philosophy than any individual writer's responsibility. I find it funny how people become fan-boys of writer X and despise writer Y when in fact both the good and the bad belong completely on GW's doorstep.

Very good points. I think that I really miss Andy Chambers, the old Overfiend, who was basically charged with making the Codexes play nice against each other. Andy wasn't perfect, of course, but I liked the philosophy of someone looking over the whole line of codices to see how stuff worked. I see several problems that make me sad.

Niche protection. If some army is the 'Close Combat' army, you need to make sure THAT army, and not some other army, is actually the best in close combat. The same goes for particular units. If a particular unit is supposed to be heinous in melee, it needs to not be outclassed by other units which aren't supposed to be among the best.

Rules support theme. If something is supposed to function a particular way in the fluff/background, make sure it actually works that way in the game. Do orks normally go to battle loaded up in deth-rolla battlewagons loaded with looters and shoota boys, and nothing else? If not, maybe that shouldn't be in the rules (not an actual argument of mine, just an example).

Balance things with points costs, not rules. These games have rules, which should be written so that they are fun, cinematic, and fit into the background. They also have points costs (and force org slots) which should be the thing that allows you to balance them. I think GW would have a lot less FAQS to issue if they made sure the rules reflected how the unit/equipment was supposed to work on the battlefield, and then just tweaked the points cost if units turned out to be too good. Imagine a FAQ with almost no rules 'updates', but just a little chart with updated points costs. If 'whatever' unit is supposed to be hellaciously tough and unbelievably deadly (say, maybe, a Bloodthirster), then just make the darn thing as deadly as needed. THEN, work out a points cost.

I almost think one guy should do the rules, making sure they fit the army's fluff perfectly, and then, give the points costing to some other dude.