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You know what happens when you shoot a grav star in a place other than the chapter master side? Even my BA can tell you this one: it doesn't like it.

Without the unit durability of the seer council or screamerstar, the grav star is a second rate star, imo.

Martel732 wrote:
You know what happens when you shoot a grav star in a place other than the chapter master side? Even my BA can tell you this one: it doesn't like it.

Without the unit durability of the seer council or screamerstar, the grav star is a second rate star, imo.

Well it's the rock to the Seer Council's paper, that's for sure. It kills Seer Councils pretty quick.

It is vulnerable to directional fire, no doubt about that. But good luck getting directional shots. A lot of version of it have dual Chapter Masters for that very reason anyway.

How is it killing the Seer Council quickly? The baron has 2++ rerollable and the generic warlock guys have 4++ rerollable.

Martel732 wrote:
How is it killing the Seer Council quickly? The baron has 2++ rerollable and the generic warlock guys have 4++ rerollable.

Seer Councils don't tank on the Baron. If he dies the unit is done. But even if the Seer Council player is tanking on the Baron, with GOI the Gravstar generally gets to pick its angle of fire and shoot through Warlocks. A 4++ rerollable is nice (trust me, I know, I just won a GT with a Beaststar), the Gravstar still averages 2-4 dead Warlocks per shooting phase. 25 Twinlinked shots at BS4 is what 20 hits, wounding on 2s or 3s (depending on Protect), rerolling again is another 15-20 wounds. Takes 4 AP2 Ignores Cover Wounds to kill a Warlock.

Do that twice and the Seer Council is neutered.

I'm not just making this up, Gravstar just won the TOF Invitational, and it was brought because of how hard it owns Seer Council. It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper (it also annihilates Ovesastar)

Are these tournaments playing with grav ignoring vehicle cover?


How does the gravstar avoid DS mishap?

Martel732 wrote:
Are these tournaments playing with grav ignoring vehicle cover?


How does the gravstar avoid DS mishap?

It ignores cover because it either has a Tau Commander or a Perfect Timing Psychic in it. (it's either taken with Tau allies, or stacked with Divination Psychers). Avoiding mishaps is either done with servo skulls, scouts with homers, pods with homers, or Farsight; depending on build. (there are actually a lot of different versions of it)

Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

The only really useless unit in the SM codex is probably scout bikers. And assault marines. And a whirlwind if youre playing a seasoned veteran who always spaces all his infantry evenly out. Everything else is sturdy

 anonymou5 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

So someone really, really good did well with a list?

That's not really an indicator of a list unless that averages out well.

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
From when players turned to page 113 and saw that the allies matrix made almost no sense.

The allies matrix made my eyes bleed

This^ and the nonsense of flyers/AA and how clumsily GW handled it so everything was unbalanced. 6th was unbalanced from the get-go and has gone downhill from there. If the 6.5/7th edition rumours are true I have to hope things are brought back in line but that is wishlisting as this is GW we are talking about.

Kilkrazy wrote:What is the differential now?

More, I feel.

It seems like the codices that are in the middle are even closer to the middle, while the codices on the fringes got pushed further to the fringes.

Anyways, yeah, 6th took a turn for the wonk just by coming out, but people's nerdrage apocoterror of fliers was unjustified. Vendettas and helldrakes weren't game-breakers. The only real problem with them was that necron could take an army of nothing but them.

Things took a step in a new direction with tau. The codex came by and just sort of threw all of the rules out of the window, and made it so that you could force everyone who wasn't playing a gunline to play a gunline of some sort. When eldar came out, that only solidified the change. Then, of course, GW is taking another step with the introduction of mass ally-with-self and superheavies in regular 40k. Naturally the balance on these new things is going to be pretty off.

The strange thing is, though, in the background of all this craziness, as mentioned, the average is getting closer. If you chop off tau and eldar from one end, and SoB and orks from the other, the balance between the remaining armies is pretty strong. I mean, compare BA to DA to CSM to SM to IG to DE to GK, and it all seems rather close, army book to army book, at least.

The "problem" that GW is having is the same one they've always had - things trundling along, and then someone coming by and throwing a single turd or two in the punch bowl.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

So someone really, really good did well with a list?

That's not really an indicator of a list unless that averages out well.

I mean that's a fair point. Tournament results are always going to be tiny sample size. Also worth noting that Dan May won FOB Open with White Scars bikers. How about this, Space Marines have won more major GTs than Tau have since they came out. Still a small sample size, but I'd say it's telling.

I know that running my Beaststar I basically chalk Tau up to a free win, but there are several SM builds that give me trouble. (more anecdotal evidence, sure). But I'm also stating my opinion, SM is a top tier dex. I definitely rate it higher than Tau right now (at least at the top level of the game; Tau are better at ruining friendly games for people)

 Sir Arun wrote:
The only really useless unit in the SM codex is probably scout bikers. And assault marines. And a whirlwind if youre playing a seasoned veteran who always spaces all his infantry evenly out. Everything else is sturdy

In a competitive environment, I'd say the following is useless to me:

Chaplain
Librarian
Sicarius
Cassius
Helbrecht
Grimaldus
The EC
Shrike

Tactical Squads
Telion
Rhinos (eh, outside of some extremely experimental RG testing)
Razorbacks

Terminators
Assault Terminators without full TH/SS
Vanguards
Dreadnoughts
Assault Centurions

Assault Squads
Attack Bikes
Scout Bikes

Whirlwind
Vindicator
Land Raider Godhammer
Chronus

This is why I don't even bother playing Marines anymore. I could concede and grab Devastator Centurions (yuck) and Bikes (how bland) and make yet another Iron Hands or White Scars clone army, but what would be the fun in that.

For more casual players it's never been better. For someone like me that can't put Tacticals in a list without getting butterflies, it sucks.

I play IG, and my best list is one I have never seen as a netlist, one that did well at a tournament I took it to, with almost complete wins save for garbage luck. The same ain't true for Marines.

 anonymou5 wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Interesting. Too bad the rest of the codex isn't as spiffy.

Eric Hoerger just placed second at LVO (out of 200+) running White Scars bikers. It's a top tier book man; it's just as you so accurately tell people, Tactical Marines suck, and most people build around Tac Marines. (although I guarantee you're going to see a bunch of Raven Guard Marine Spam Armies on the top tables soon, because they're good against Deathstars)

So someone really, really good did well with a list?

That's not really an indicator of a list unless that averages out well.

I mean that's a fair point. Tournament results are always going to be tiny sample size. Also worth noting that Dan May won FOB Open with White Scars bikers. How about this, Space Marines have won more major GTs than Tau have since they came out. Still a small sample size, but I'd say it's telling.

I know that running my Beaststar I basically chalk Tau up to a free win, but there are several SM builds that give me trouble. (more anecdotal evidence, sure). But I'm also stating my opinion, SM is a top tier dex. I definitely rate it higher than Tau right now (at least at the top level of the game; Tau are better at ruining friendly games for people)

http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/stats/armies

In that FOB Open there was only 13 games with Tau, while the highest army amount was SM at 40 games.

There wasn't much Tau there at all.

To check, there was 1 loss, 1 draw, and 1 win against a tau (By a DA list mind you, not SM)

So there wasn't much representation by Tau to begin with, and with only three games it's hard to tell. Not to mention the loss to Eldar was 2 win, 5 losses, 1 draw

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


TRIMMED DOWN FOR READABILITY

True, Tau were strangely underrepresented at FOB Open. Doesn't really change my point though, no? That's still a major GT won by Space Marines. (The invite was won by Eldar). As far as I know, Space Marines have won more major GTs than Tau have since their release. Eldar are still vastly in the lead. But next up is Daemons and Space Marines. I can't think of Tau winning anything since Nova Open (and Eldar won the Invite there too, lol)

The armies themselves are only part of it though, the players themselves are another. Is it a case of players who win tournaments codex hopping, or is it a case of players who win tournaments not winning tournaments because they only played SM, and now have a better codex, or is it a case of players who play taudar happenstantially staying home for some recent tournaments?

I mean, we can always fall back on the fact that tournaments don't sift out the best players, they sift out the luckiest ones, but perhaps there's more to it?

 Ailaros wrote:
The armies themselves are only part of it though, the players themselves are another. Is it a case of players who win tournaments codex hopping, or is it a case of players who win tournaments not winning tournaments because they only played SM, and now have a better codex, or is it a case of players who play taudar happenstantially staying home for some recent tournaments?

I mean, we can always fall back on the fact that tournaments don't sift out the best players, they sift out the luckiest ones, but perhaps there's more to it?

I'll grant you that there is a lot of codex hopping, and that's a solid point. But even if tournament winners aren't the "best players" the top tables at tournaments are generally made up of the same population. Whether they're lucky or good is sort of irrelevant, they certainly tend to craft the "best" lists. That population is migrating away from Tau. Tau just don't have the tools to compete in Deathstar 40k (with the exception of the Ovesastar, which is still somewhat defenseless against Gravstar, Beastpacks, and even a well played Bikerspam list)

I just won BFSR with a Beaststar, and my Tau games were easy wins (including a Triptide list and a Taudar list played by a GT winner)

 anonymou5 wrote:
It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper...

Er... paper beats rock. It's scissors which beat paper.

and Spock crushes scissors and vaporises rock.

I don't think it was ever balanced (although not much in 40k ever was), just it's more prominent now with Taudar, Knights, Escalation, etc.

The issue at the core is the fundamental disconnect over how the game is played by the Studio and by regular people; they play the game a certain way, focusing on narrative and the like, but this doesn't apply to everybody else and rather than make the rules balanced enough to appeal to everybody, they ignore a portion of their playerbase when it wouldn't be hard to fix it.

The narrative idea doesn't even translate well in the real world. For example, most (all?) 40k battles from White Dwarf and supplements are always Imperium vs. Other (HH and Badab War being the notable exceptions), but out in the real world Space Marines are the most popular army, and it is completely narrative-breaking to have Marine v. Marine or even Marine v. Other Imperial without resorting to contrived and lame reasons (e.g. it's a wargame simulation, or the always silly "Let's play Who's the Heretic" scenario), but this is ignored because the Studio armies and most staffers have various armies, so it's easy to pull out the Eldar if your opponent plays Marines. In fact, I can't remember a time there was Marine vs. Marine (Loyalist, not counting chaos) in a battle report, ever, and that's thinking back to 1996 - the only thing that may spring to mind is I recall a battle report with Inquisition vs. 13th Company Space Wolves that was technically speaking two loyalist armies (although 13th is borderline IMO). Speaking of 40k in particular since I know there was some in Inquisitor with rival bands.

I see a lot of parallels with Wizards of the Coast during 3rd edition D&D which I played and was an active member of their forums at that time. Most of the supplements were created without much internal balance (balancing only against the Core books and ignoring other supplements), but a lot of the underlying problems was that the designers and playtesters only played the game a certain way, so weren't even aware that several potentially game-breaking combinations existed because they would never in a million years do something like that, and couldn't fathom that anyone else would either, so a simple clarification or fix never happened because the very idea it was possible was an anathema.

I get the impression that GW works the same way. Their Eldar players don't field Serpent Spam, but only field them where it fits; their Chaos players don't field 3x Heldrakes and Typhus' Walking Dead army because they play Alpha Legion or some other CSM force and that's not fluffy; the SM players don't do drop pod spam outside of a planetary assault narrative; I recall looking at the Crusade of Fire campaign and every army shown (I believe it was: Howling Griffons, Imperial Fists, Flesh Tearers, Space Wolves, Dark Eldar, Red Corsairs, Word Bearers and Alpha Legion) were all fairly fluffy and relatively casual lists, nothing was really on the competitive side of things as far as comparing to the plethora of netlists and the like that are out there, and IMO showcase part of the disconnect (don't get me wrong the armies looked good and typical representations, but weren't built for competition). They don't see the problems with the game because they play in a bubble where they'd never do such a thing, and sadly can't fathom that other people don't play the same way they do, and the more I think about it the more that's the crux of the issue regarding 40k and anything about balance - it's balanced when you play a fairly regular group known to you, where everybody plays fluffy armies that could tell an interesting story but sometimes like to try fringe things in specific scenarios. It's not balanced in the least when you have players of different types playing together - the competitive vs. the casual, because one builds his lists for effectiveness and the other builds his list for a story/theme, and when the two meet it's no longer balanced.

I don't think it's balanced even if everyone plays fluffy lists. You try pitting some fluffy Eldar lists against fluffy Dark Angels, I guarantee you the Eldar player will have a huge advantage.

 Perfect Organism wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:
It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper...

Er... paper beats rock. It's scissors which beat paper.

I was tired! haha.

I see a lot of parallels with Wizards of the Coast during 3rd edition D&D which I played and was an active member of their forums at that time. Most of the supplements were created without much internal balance (balancing only against the Core books and ignoring other supplements), but a lot of the underlying problems was that the designers and playtesters only played the game a certain way, so weren't even aware that several potentially game-breaking combinations existed because they would never in a million years do something like that, and couldn't fathom that anyone else would either, so a simple clarification or fix never happened because the very idea it was possible was an anathema.

Actually one of the designers mentioned even in core that he designed magic users to be far better then the 'simpler' classes because he wanted people to use his favored stuff, not to mention even without supplements the core for 3.0 and 3.5 was broken outright by casters.

 Perfect Organism wrote:

 anonymou5 wrote:
It's maybe less effective against "normal" builds than Seer Council is, but it is the rock to the Seer Council paper...

Er... paper beats rock. It's scissors which beat paper.

Not if it's very sharp rock

It all went downhill when the design team lost their integrity and dignity, and let the sales people take the reins.

Steelmage99 wrote:
It all went downhill when the design team lost their integrity and dignity, and let the sales people take the reins.

That happened at the end of 2nd Ed.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
It was cheesy from the start.

Say hello to Mr. Vendetta.

Yeah I'd agree it started going bad with the Vendetta

Actually when the Vendetta was a fast skimmer, things werent bad. IG dont have Holofields and Spiritstones.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

I see a lot of parallels with Wizards of the Coast during 3rd edition D&D which I played and was an active member of their forums at that time. Most of the supplements were created without much internal balance (balancing only against the Core books and ignoring other supplements), but a lot of the underlying problems was that the designers and playtesters only played the game a certain way, so weren't even aware that several potentially game-breaking combinations existed because they would never in a million years do something like that, and couldn't fathom that anyone else would either, so a simple clarification or fix never happened because the very idea it was possible was an anathema.

Actually one of the designers mentioned even in core that he designed magic users to be far better then the 'simpler' classes because he wanted people to use his favored stuff, not to mention even without supplements the core for 3.0 and 3.5 was broken outright by casters.

Sure was...

... but the 3.0/3.5 supplements did not fix this at all. They made it far, far worse. Gods, the characters I and my friends built using those extra books were disgusting. A Barbarian with the Frenzied Berzerker elite class... cannot die due to HP loss while Raging. At -400+ HP and still swinging... just before Rage ends? The party cleric, who maintains a Status on him at all times, casts Cure Minor Wounds, restoring him to 0 HP, and then Heal, restoring him to full. An elven fighter/rogue with a pair of vorpal swords, and "Improved Critical" bought multiple times for the type of sword the vorpals were. Any "to hit" roll of a natural 15+ killed anything that could be decapitated, and with a Tumble of 35+, could tumble past any foe, denying them their Dex bonus, and then unleash 5 attacks with added Backstab damage... with vorpal weapons.

The balance in 40K might be broken, but GW is hardly the only company with this design problem.