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Martel732 wrote:
I've got BA; they are all weak.

against Taudar cheese lists, yes.
play against a casual SM, Ork, Nid, or CSM army and you will find out BA are very strong.

you know, somebody already mentioned it, but.... not want to sound offensive, but that person was right, you do seem a bit... overly negative?

I'm very much with Martel on this one. Marine CC units suck for one of 3 reasons: being outright bad at CC (Assault Marines), being too costly (tooled-out VV and Bike CS) or having no good delivery mechanism (HG and assault termies). Space Marines are a shooty army, and building your list with that in mind will yield far better results than trying to make our substandard CC units work.

That said, if you want to field them for "Rule of Cool"-type reasons, by all means go ahead.

All the people saying that "Oh this unit/army/synergy is great if you ignore anything that can reliably destroy it" really confuse me.

It's like saying "Tiger Woods is a great player to have on your football team, as long as you ignore the existence of all professional and college football players." Sure, it's technically true, and maybe even useful in your casual, local meta - but at some point, you're lowering the bar so much that any 'advice' you get becomes essentially meaningless - anything will work.

If you're asking about the usefulness of a unit, you are implicitly asking about it's performance across a broad spectrum of applications. If the unit cannot be used reliably at the competitive end, you can't just cover your ears and call everyone unreasonable 'haters' if you don't get the answer you want.

EDIT: And on the subject of VV, they are extremely boring. Last edition, they had a neat rule that made them unique - it could even shake up the game a bit (I used them with BA for a short stint, which was pretty fun). Now they're nothing more than overpriced, glorified assault marines. I'd rather have those if I had to choose - or better yet, sternguard, bikes, a buffmander/dev-star, etc...

 FistusMaximus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I've got BA; they are all weak.

against Taudar cheese lists, yes.
play against a casual SM, Ork, Nid, or CSM army and you will find out BA are very strong.

you know, somebody already mentioned it, but.... not want to sound offensive, but that person was right, you do seem a bit... overly negative?

Very strong? Really? I guess I never got that memo. I'm negative because I have an army that was only functional in 5th because of gimmicks and now all those gimmicks are gone. The BA are awful and frustrating. I have a "counts as" list together, but it's not really that much fun and I'm just running grav bikers like every other marine goober. The marines are generalists in a game where specialization rules.


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Deschenus Maximus wrote:
I'm very much with Martel on this one. Marine CC units suck for one of 3 reasons: being outright bad at CC (Assault Marines), being too costly (tooled-out VV and Bike CS) or having no good delivery mechanism (HG and assault termies). Space Marines are a shooty army, and building your list with that in mind will yield far better results than trying to make our substandard CC units work.

That said, if you want to field them for "Rule of Cool"-type reasons, by all means go ahead.

Marines are a shooting army who pay for CC utility, putting them behind the 8-ball against every real shooting list.

Martel732 wrote:

Very strong? Really? I guess I never got that memo. I'm negative because I have an army that was only functional in 5th because of gimmicks and now all those gimmicks are gone. The BA are awful and frustrating. I have a "counts as" list together, but it's not really that much fun and I'm just running grav bikers like every other marine goober. The marines are generalists in a game where specialization rules.

sir, allow me to ask a question before we start arguing here forever for no reason: what type of player are you? competitive or casual? do you play tournaments regularly? or more games with friends?

I'm casual/competitive. I myself don't go to many competitions because of time and BA being a dumpster fire. However, I play in a group with people who do go to tournaments. Hence, I am a test dummy for list effectiveness. This often results in my tabling, despite my best efforts.

I know I'm a pretty good player, because I've won all my mirror matches in 6th edition and I have squeaked out about 50% against C:SM, which is a vastly superior book to BA. (But still middling)

What's the common denominator? Meqs in general don't have the firepower to make me not get to play at all. When I get to play, I'm not bad.

Martel732 wrote:

Deschenus Maximus wrote:
I'm very much with Martel on this one. Marine CC units suck for one of 3 reasons: being outright bad at CC (Assault Marines), being too costly (tooled-out VV and Bike CS) or having no good delivery mechanism (HG and assault termies). Space Marines are a shooty army, and building your list with that in mind will yield far better results than trying to make our substandard CC units work.

That said, if you want to field them for "Rule of Cool"-type reasons, by all means go ahead.

Marines are a shooting army who pay for CC utility, putting them behind the 8-ball against every real shooting list.

True. If I could spare myself a couple of points on each Marine by making him WS, S and Init 1, I totally would. And while we're at it, give up power armour too since it seems like I barely ever get to use it.

Martel732 wrote:
However, I play in a group with people who do go to tournaments. Hence, I am a test dummy for list effectiveness. This often results in my tabling, despite my best efforts.

that might be the problem, don't you agree?

i am a fluff player through and through, i admit that. i play very weak fluffy regular SM, and that means i get my ass kicked against even slightly competitive players. (except for the shining moments where my dice luck just makes the enemies' things die by the dozens lol).
in my gaming community though, we all play fluffy and more weak things, as well as not having a single eldar, tau, GK or SW player, so it balances out.
and i win a lot of times, with an average list.

if you fight an average army with an average list, some of the less powerful things become useful, actually. in no way powerful, but useful.


so, my point is: whenever a question about a unit's effectiveness is asked, the first reply should not be "ohmygod, the unit xxx sucks ass, because it cant kill riptides or drakes", but it should be: "in competitive games or casual?"

if the answer is "competitive", feel free to go nuts on how it sucks.
if the answer is "casual", think before you judge.

I have to agree with Martel here, the BA codex did not age well in 6th at all. The Space Wolf codex aged better than the BA one did and it was older. Let's look at some of the things that you could do with the BA codex that you can no longer do.

All JP, all DS: Viable in 5th against shooty armies in 5th. Worked well because if you were not on the board the could not shoot you. Only 1 turn of shooting before you were in CC with them ... Unable to do this in 6th as you autolose on turn 1.

FNP got a boost in 6th while it still got hit with a nerfbat for the BA. Sure you can still take it against PW wounds now but at a much lower chance of survival. Instead of a 50% chance of staying alive, you now fail 66% of the time. This was massive for those of us that use SP for sustainability to counteract the high price of our units.

Vehicles (fast or normal) go down faster than my sister on her first date and I am not talking about Prom night ... I do not take any at all except for Thunder Guppies, because they are so screwed. Razorback rush is toasted.

DS Land Raiders: The only thing ... well ... nevermind, I only ever tried it once and would never do it again. Bad Idea even in 5th.

Special Characters: Dante and Astorath were fun in 5th, in 6th ... not so much. When 6th came out I was one of the ones that was saying that RAW Dante would go at I1 but Astro-boy would go at his regular I because his axe had the unusual status due to the weapon doing damage at STR6 and victims must re-roll successful Invuln saves ... Nope hit him with the Nerf bat and send him to Initiative hell. I did not even use him much but that kinda ticked me off as he was the DEFINITION of an unusual power weapon.

These are just a few of the problems with the BA Codex.

The only VV that are any good anymore are the BA ones for right now, and that is because you can still assault after you DS with them ... for the time being. Or did they FAQ that as well while I was writing this?

 Verstaka wrote:
Alright so the main issue is that, after wargear, you are paying the cost of an assault terminator squad and then some

My general thought with the 5th edition book was once I took a model in a vanguard vet squad to 40 points with power weapons, jump packs or other war gear, I hit the point cost of a terminator.

Then the question became "Is this unit better than a 5-man terminator squad?"

The answer was always no to me.

 FistusMaximus wrote:

if the answer is "competitive", feel free to go nuts on how it sucks.
if the answer is "casual", think before you judge.

Except that in this context, "competitive" indicates a specific application - i.e. highly optimized shooting lists - so the answer is very clear: VV are ineffective against such lists. In the context of "casual" play however, there won't be a clear answer. You cannot simply say "Oh I play casually" and still get a meaningful answer about a unit's competitiveness, due to the enormous variety of casual metas. If 'casual' in your local scene means players bringing mono-kroot lists or SoB with no shooting, the answer you get will be very different compared to a meta dominated by 1ksons CSM and dakkafex Tyranids. There really isn't a great way to debate the point either, since everyone will have experiences linked to their local metas - so you'll almost always end up with the answer being "it depends." Ultimately, this isn't that helpful compared to what most normal, intelligent people can come up with on their own.

 Xca|iber wrote:

Except that in this context, "competitive" indicates a specific application - i.e. highly optimized shooting lists - so the answer is very clear: VV are ineffective against such lists. In the context of "casual" play however, there won't be a clear answer. You cannot simply say "Oh I play casually" and still get a meaningful answer about a unit's competitiveness, due to the enormous variety of casual metas. If 'casual' in your local scene means players bringing mono-kroot lists or SoB with no shooting, the answer you get will be very different compared to a meta dominated by 1ksons CSM and dakkafex Tyranids. There really isn't a great way to debate the point either, since everyone will have experiences linked to their local metas - so you'll almost always end up with the answer being "it depends." Ultimately, this isn't that helpful compared to what most normal, intelligent people can come up with on their own.

yes, you are right, and i do not argue with that. if the question is for "casual" its hard to come up with an answer at all, because it depends a lot on the opponent.
(in this case, it just means there need to be more questions to the person who asked, like "who do you play against mostly?" and "do you have certain armies you face in mind for this question?")

but you did also get the essence of my point, that there is a substantial difference between if the question was "how powerful is that thing in competitive play" or "is this useful in more casual games?".
and this, my friend, is all i want to express.


EDIT: btw, just in case you think that: i am NOT defending VV, i do agree that they suck ass in competitive play, and even in casual games its very often hard to get them working. which does not mean they are useless, because sometimes they are a bit useful.

Ya know, The way some people talk, you'd think Tau can take riptides as troops

BrianDavion wrote:
Ya know, The way some people talk, you'd think Tau can take riptides as troops

well, they don't take riptides AS troops, but INSTEAD OF troops. close enough, sadly.
(what i mean is they spend 70% of the armies points on 5 riptides, and then just use two small filler units in the troops, instead of taking two riptides and an actual army to go around them)

Ya that is the most boring game too, ugh.

Might be remembering the FW release wrong. But wouldn't VV's using the Fire Hawks traits be ablr to each get a handflamer for 5 points? And be scoring...

 dracpanzer wrote:
Might be remembering the FW release wrong. But wouldn't VV's using the Fire Hawks traits be ablr to each get a handflamer for 5 points? And be scoring...

You'd still be better off in getting ASM instead - They suck more but are at least reasonably cheap.

But they don't have all the bling

well, if the OP still reads all of our rambles, here is my opinion on the initial question lol

as others said, if you play competitive games, forget the vanguard. like, really.
if you play more casual games, it depends a bit which armies you face and how you would intend to use them. the problem is (as said before) that their upgrades are really expensive.

i personally have 3 units of them, two are for apoc only, because they are fully fitted guys, and only in apoc where points dont matter can do something.
but i did actually use the other 5 man squad of vanguard in regular 40k games, fitted with nothing besides their basic gears, jumppacks, plus meltabombs for everyone. against people without tanks, they suck. but against IG, SM or or tank heavy xenos, very often they paid off, provided they landed close enough to their target to attack. they were somewhat 150 points, and just killing a single tank made them pay off their points.
and, you know, no tank i can think of can survive 5 meltabombs.
and deepstriking them right next to an immobilised vehicle is gold, as it blocks LOS to the unit completely, and you can get so close to it that it cant shoot you (IG Leman Russ for example).

problem is, that this trick does not work in 6th anymore, as they can no longer assault the same turn they arrive.
it might still work, provided you get a good position, but it is highly unlikely.

sternguard in a drop pod is a better option, whether with only bolters for using the special ammunition against infantry targets, or meltas and combimeltas for killing tanks.
they work a lot better in pretty much any circumstances, because they get to do their work the turn they arrive.

 wowsmash wrote:
But they don't have all the bling

Just don’t paint the helmets white and trim the shoulder pads with a company color. Use the non-crux shoulder pads. And have an awesome looking assault squad.

I really wish Jump units in general were more worth it, but with the deep discount across the board to everything, anything in jump packs is just a gimped biker. All the same downsides, none of the upsides, barely any cheaper, significantly worse shooting and upgrade options.

If Assault Squads and Vanguard Vets could use melta guns, they'd at least have a worthwhile option for upgrading weapons, making them a cheap anti-armor unit. Raptors can still do it, and they're moderately useful as a result. Still not as useful as Nurgle bikers, but they aren't something you can simply yawn and ignore.

BA ASM can get meltaguns. It doesn't help. 6th edition is not about anti-armor, except wave serpents, which two meltaguns have a poor chance of downing anyway.

Martel732 wrote:
6th edition is not about anti-armor, except wave serpents

.....in competitive games. do we want to start over again?

 FistusMaximus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
6th edition is not about anti-armor, except wave serpents

.....in competitive games. do we want to start over again?

I would submit that in games where competition is not a factor, it doesn't matter what you put in your list. So of course those people won't understand the VV hate. Because they don't care or don't need to care because their opponents effectively pull punches by not caring about what they bring.

But seriously, why use melta in 6th when you can just glance armor to death and hull point them out? Or grav them to death. What vehicles do people actually care about other than Wave Serpents?

 FistusMaximus wrote:

umm... i do think you may have missed that outside of mega-über-competitive "ineedtotableyoubeforeturnthreeorilosemyselfconfidenceOMG"-gameplay, in the casual games people enjoy, that is actually EXACTLY the reasons for ANY unit being on the board.

Riptides look awesome. I want to field five.

 GreyHamster wrote:

 FistusMaximus wrote:

umm... i do think you may have missed that outside of mega-über-competitive "ineedtotableyoubeforeturnthreeorilosemyselfconfidenceOMG"-gameplay, in the casual games people enjoy, that is actually EXACTLY the reasons for ANY unit being on the board.

Riptides look awesome. I want to field five.

LOL

Just because people aren't playing to win a tournament against super-optimised list, it doesn't mean tactics suddenly become a non-issue. It's not like we randomly move the units around or just throw dice for everything. If anything, casual games are more about player skill that list-building, as people avoid the obviously OP units, so everything is on-the-whole more balanced, regardless, that is a tangent, the point is that tactics do still matter at that level, so just saying 'there's no point' is irrelevant. The most effective way to use unit X is no different whether you're playing at a top-end GT or a local beer-and-pretzels club night.

On topic, I've thought about it some more, and how to get the most of out the VV's ability to charge multiple units. I'm thinking that it might be a neat (if a little expensive) idea to bring a squad of 10, no upgrades apart from JP, and spread them behind youtr lines. That way, you can move them forward just before enemy assault units hit your line and charge 2-3 units. This is only really going to work against armies that specialise in multiple close assaults, like horde nids, orks and CC Dark Eldar, but might be a good way to use them, robbing multiple units of charge bonuses. Even if you don't win, you've at the least bought the rest of your army a turn to fall back away from the assaulters. It's not the best use of points, but it might be a way to make Vanguard useful.

 Paradigm wrote:

On topic, I've thought about it some more, and how to get the most of out the VV's ability to charge multiple units. I'm thinking that it might be a neat (if a little expensive) idea to bring a squad of 10, no upgrades apart from JP, and spread them behind youtr lines. That way, you can move them forward just before enemy assault units hit your line and charge 2-3 units. This is only really going to work against armies that specialise in multiple close assaults, like horde nids, orks and CC Dark Eldar, but might be a good way to use them, robbing multiple units of charge bonuses. Even if you don't win, you've at the least bought the rest of your army a turn to fall back away from the assaulters. It's not the best use of points, but it might be a way to make Vanguard useful.

Another idea to take advantage of the multi charge is to make sure one or two guys have melta bombs (Or if you are feeling frisky and spendy, thunderhammers or powerfists) If someone is tucked up next to a building or vehicle, you send one or two guys to blow it up, and the rest of the squad plows into the infantry.

 GreyHamster wrote:

 FistusMaximus wrote:

umm... i do think you may have missed that outside of mega-über-competitive "ineedtotableyoubeforeturnthreeorilosemyselfconfidenceOMG"-gameplay, in the casual games people enjoy, that is actually EXACTLY the reasons for ANY unit being on the board.

Riptides look awesome. I want to field five.

okay, that was funny, i admit it

but realistically speaking, if a tau player comes up to me and says he wants to field a (means one) riptide because he likes the model, i'd have no problem with that. i agree, i kinda like the model.
but if he says "i want to field five, but believe me, ONLY because i like the looks", i'd only walk away. i would not even waste my time by laughing at him or saying anything. just walk away and find someone else to play against.

Maybe use them in concert with other units to offer to many targets. Sure they can shoot em but that means they have to ignore something else...