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Yeah, that looks brutal.

There are two things a rewrite such as mine has to struggle with. Firstly, the blatant imbalance of the original Codexes. Secondly, the often hard to predict effects that core rule changes have on each army.

For example, Tau are one of the top dogs of 6E-7E, but Potica's emphasis on high Initiative and more reliable assaults should, in theory at least, curtail them a bit.

On the other hand, the same changes just add more power to the Eldar, and they started out at least on par with the Tau in the first place.

Well... you also actively gimped jet infantry. And tau are all about the only army that get jet in volume.

Also... codex tau drones are I4, but I noticed what I thought must be a typo in your tau codex. Making them I2 literally makes the army unplayable. They were already riding the edge, but not having an option to get initative basically closes them out of the reaction game... which is the new action econamy. Drones were already nearly manditory just to be able to get overwatch off more then one time out of 6.


Honestly... why not make reactions a Leadership check? Currently, only assault focused units and space marines can actually use the reaction system without failing consistently.

Whoah whoah whoah. Who says that removing casualties from the front is nonsense? As if shooting the guys closest to you makes no sense? Is it really so bad that you can't pull shenanigans of wound sharing between Grey Knight terminators, but have to handle model positioning as a tactical decision?

I made drones I2 specifically so you couldn't just double your effective Initiative by taking 1 drone. There are support systems that give auto-pass on Overwatch or auto-pass on Retreat, though! With the latter, I would say Tau Jets might be coming out ahead in Potica compared to 7E - the distance is shorter, but they get to do it after the enemy's Movement Phase.

As for making it a Ld test - that was my first idea, but it made it too reliable for almost everyone (and again with the same armies coming out on top). Having observed a fair few games of Infinity, I decided early on that I didn't actually want reactions going on all over the place all the time. I want reactions to be perceived as something you want to plan for in case the enemy pulls it off, not a crutch that allows you to be sloppy with your own maneuvering.

It just makes marines so much better... to the point it kinda hurts. I4 nearly across the board means you are generally getting a free round of shooting per turn...

Also, yes you can auto pass with items... that takes hard points, or drone slots. I guess accelerator and sensor drones on a fireblade in a 12 man FW squad... but honestly the issue is that the Tau special rule is great, mostly at rendering squads worthless for a round. BS2 firewarriors can only do so much... but with that marker light, as long as they keep shooting... hmm... that might actually be boarderline broken.

Whoah whoah whoah. Who says that removing casualties from the front is nonsense? As if shooting the guys closest to you makes no sense? Is it really so bad that you can't pull shenanigans of wound sharing between Grey Knight terminators, but have to handle model positioning as a tactical decision?

After playing a few rounds... it is actually so much easier. It saves a ton of time, and is one of the reasons shooting is not as utterly dominant.

Edit: Umm... you mean in addition to costing a suppression token, and require being charged? Jetpacks are solid in normal 40k because JSJ is far better then it should be. Then again, just being able to bounce around at increased speed gives them increased speed. Honestly just making it a +2d6 movement speed would make it work.

Also, were you planning writing up the SM, necrons, IG, Grey Knights, or CD?

Ha ha. Well, like I said, it's hard to see some of this stuff. That's why it's really good to hear from someone with a fresh set of eyes.

You think SM are bad? Try Eldar Jetbikes. They can do 2 reactions and still not suck next turn pretty easily!

I'd like to do DE and Crons next (look solid to me, so just cosmetic fixes), and CD eventually (this is gonna be another big project).

SM I keep looking at, but can't really think of anything much to fix, apart from some of the more naff Chapter Tactics maybe. It's just such a nice book.

The rest I don't know enough about. The last time I used or faced IG was in 4th edition, and I have zero experince with GK.

Every time this thread title pops up, it reads as '40k erotica Edition' for some reason... then I blink and it changes back.

Also... no tankshocking through rough terain seems weird. Honestly, why not make the reinforced ram/deffrolla/dozer blade/siege shield let you tank shock through terrain. That is the actual point of sticking a dozer blade on a tank, like in WWII France were they were used to punch through high hedges.

The issue is that assault tanks want to be a thing, but as long as the enemy plays "open ground is lava" they can't do gak.

That's actually a really nice idea.

I love what you did with Warp Spiders!

Out of curiosity, why does the Jetbike give +1 save instead of a 4+? Same effect for GJB, but doesn't the +1 give Shining Spears and Autarchs a 2+?

Thanks! I think I fixed the jetbike thing. It should be same as always.

Had another game... turns out that Russes are far better then they have any right to be. They were durable before they had a 3+ armor save, now killing them is an adventure in frustration.
Also, any melee unit without fleet is godawful. Really, it is basically required to get into close combat before you die.
Otherwise your charge range is 12"... So your getting to range T3. maybe. After 2-3 rounds of shooting.

The game was Tank IG versus Tyranids. I lost with tyranids... got tabled turn 3.

IG


Tyranids


Rest of the battle report will be up later.

Well, in my defense, I think that matchup would have ended the same in any edition.

It's also been 10 years or so since the last time I played against IG. I didn't even know you can have HQ Russes now.

Devilfish... 40 points?

Commander - 85
2 Missile Pods - 115
Counterfire - 125
Puretide - 145
Sensor Drone - 165

3 Crisis Suits - 75
6 Missile pods - 165
1 Gun Drone just because - 175

10 Fire Warriors w/ Shasui - 100
Sensor Drone - 120
Dfish - 160
SMS - 170
x4 = 680

8 Pathfinders - 80
Devilfish - 120
SMS - 130
x3 = 390

Sniper Drone Team - 60
+2 Sniper Drones - 90

7 Devilfish pumping out 10 S5 AP5 shots a turn each (4 ignore cover), 25 Markerlights, 5 BS5 sniper drones with 48" range (pinning is worth a damn!), 40 fire warriors, and 8 missile pods on a fairly hard to charge firebase - everyone auto-passes overwatch and there are loads of "crossfires" to get people caught up in.

I was thinking of maybe putting carbines on instead but an extra wound here and there still isn't worth it - I'd rather effectively pin through 0 movement distance from crossfire.

That being said, I had 10 points at the end so I tossed a gun drone into the crisis crew.


>Things that stand out as a tau player:

Paying for overwatch feels alright considering they get BS2 to go along with it. ShasUi w/ Sensor Drone is a 100% necessary addition to fire warriors; Grav drone useless now though, even with universal ability. Still doing some math hammer with Pulse Accelerator - A Fireblade + Ethereal for 4 shouts out to 18 inches is nothing to scoff at.
- might end up just running pure crisis suit instead; Sensor Drone + Grav Wave Drone + 12 BS2 Plasma shots should let them hold up, and only costs marginally more.
- If you made burst cannons into pulse weapons, there could be some nasty burstcannon rofls with pulse accelerator

Weird double profile for the sunshark bomber bomb thing; one is one shot only, one isnt?

Riptide only has one profile listed for his weapon - what happens to his other weapon? Does it just lose the ability to rend altogether?

Lack of Fast Attack Riptide despite Heavy Support Riptide being there 0_o

Piranhas feel really awesome right now actually. 3+ Jink if they can react properly (or 2+ on flat out), drones can disembark after 12" move, and vehicle burst cannon; not to mention pulse carbines got slightly buffed due to pinning and suppression.

Lack of JSJ makes tau cry every time

I will eventually be testing a list with 12 missile drones being joined by 2 commanders carrying their own 10 missile drones. Why? Because it's awesome and how can I not?

Stealth suits don't have burst cannons built in anymore? :S How do they get weapons?

Russ HQs are several flavors of weird. They also get tank orders they can use on their squad... which are generally not actually good(Split fire, flat out desipte being heavy, & shoot+smoke launchers). What makes it silly is getting deadshot... actually, all the other warlord traits are fine with that. Well, +1 BS is kinda good, but not over the top.

imo the best WL trait is the Tau "all hits are precision hits". Absolutely nutters, that one.

You mean besides IW's "You now Have a flamer, melta, and plasma gun."?

Also, unless I missed something, and night attack is a lot worse then I think... Night fighting only happens if someone has a warlord trait forcing it? Because if that is true, the nightlords have a really bad trait in "Out of Darkness."

I don't mean to be a prude but could you redo the Tau codex without the swear words? I would like to share this with the kids.

Not the author, but feel like I can answer a couple of these in bold

 chrisrawr wrote:

Still doing some math hammer with Pulse Accelerator - A Fireblade + Ethereal for 4 shouts out to 18 inches is nothing to scoff at.

Just the fire blade/warriors makes a fairly solid unit, and dosn't require you to spam them or clump them. The pulse accelerator drone is really really good in that squad.


Weird double profile for the sunshark bomber bomb thing; one is one shot only, one isnt?

That is just the specials taking two rows. It is a bomb that gets replaced every round.

Riptide only has one profile listed for his weapon - what happens to his other weapon? Does it just lose the ability to rend altogether?

They got folded into the nova charge options, the accelerator gets +2 S and the burst cannon gets twice as many shots. Those shots don't rend, and don't Gets Hot.

Lack of Fast Attack Riptide despite Heavy Support Riptide being there 0_o

I agree.

Lack of JSJ makes tau cry every time
Yeah... now suits are really not that good. They are silly cheap troop choices, and maybe decent assault troops naked. Beyond that it is generally better to put the points into other units with better guns.

I will eventually be testing a list with 12 missile drones being joined by 2 commanders carrying their own 10 missile drones. Why? Because it's awesome and how can I not?

I found missilsides with missile drones and a commander with missile drones and the buff relics was solid. This sounds a bit silly.

Stealth suits don't have burst cannons built in anymore? :S How do they get weapons?

Suspect it is a typo, given the refrance to trading them out later in the options.

Thanks for the assist there, LordDavenport.

I took a few minutes today to address some of the recent topics.

1) Added Move Through Cover to Dozer Blades and all their ilk. This allows Flat Out and Tank Shock moves through terrain, but still requiring a dangerous terrain test.

2) Tau codex issues - I was very surprised to read these, considering my recent work on the Tau, and then realized that I had completely forgotten to upload the updated file! The online version was more than 6 months old! My mistake. The new one features:

2.1) Removed profanities
2.2) Fast Attack Riptide
2.3) Devilfish points fixed (40 points was a copy/paste error from the Piranha entry)
2.4) Layout brought in line with the other books, duplicate weapon profiles fixed, etc.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Thanks for the assist there, LordDavenport.

I took a few minutes today to address some of the recent topics.

1) Added Move Through Cover to Dozer Blades and all their ilk. This allows Flat Out and Tank Shock moves through terrain, but still requiring a dangerous terrain test.

2) Tau codex issues - I was very surprised to read these, considering my recent work on the Tau, and then realized that I had completely forgotten to upload the updated file! The online version was more than 6 months old! My mistake. The new one features:

2.1) Removed profanities
2.2) Fast Attack Riptide
2.3) Devilfish points fixed (40 points was a copy/paste error from the Piranha entry)
2.4) Layout brought in line with the other books, duplicate weapon profiles fixed, etc.

Tau updates are my favourite updates.

Question...
Given that the update is already bringing down the differences between walkers and monstrous creatures...
Why not make the Tau Riptides+Variants into walkers? They make no sense at all as MCs, never have. It just used to be that Vehicles really, really sucked as big targets. Now they are actually durable... it is down to tradition.

What they would lose is Smash(Less able to step on tanks... which is fine), Move Through Cover(They have jet anyways), and stimulant injectors(which honestly make no sense(So the pilot is on drugs, so the mech can shrug off a lasannon blast)).

They would gain more fluffy options(see the vehicle upgrade list), and would not have to deal with poison randomly being super effective against a Gundam.

Is anyone up for whirling out a game on vassal with this sometime?

Vassal isn't my thing, but let me know how it goes if anyone takes you up on that

@LordDavenport: Honestly, if I were to do really big changes, I would probably go the other way and change all vehicles to use Toughness. But that would mean changing all the anti-tank stuff, and I'm not ready for that yet. As for the Riptide, so far I gave it "immune to poison, vulnerable to haywire" and I changed Melta to also have a bonus vs MC (well, it comes into play at T7 and above...) so there is some parity. Yes, this is a band-aid solution on top of 25 years of band-aid solutions, I'm sure Lanrak would have a word to say about that sort of thing. I am unsure if I want to do the same for Wraithknights, they are kinda living models and kinda not.

Recently I've done a fair bit of polishing various sections including the Ultimate Codexes. I also added some get-you-by errata for Dark Eldar and the new Codex: Space Marines.

Also check out the FOC, scoring and allies stuff in the Basic Concepts section.

So you can grab from other codexes without taking an HQ?
Yes the price increase looks concerning... but 10% isn't a ton, as long as you don't take much...
My issue with the allies, is it doesn't encourage taking anything that resembles actual allies.
Because the point increase hurts more the more points worth of things you take, but it doesn't hurt almost at all if you take on big thing.
Just take a squad of broadsides in an ork army to cover long range anti-armor. Or take 4 heralds in one HQ slot for stupidly cheap psyker coverage.

It just seems like it will push toward cherry picking units better a things then they should be.

Why the larger number of required troops? Yes there are some armies that need to double force org chart, like orks. On the other hand, chaos is now going to have to take cultists.

Random thing I noticed:
Why do forge fiends gain furious charge with the mark of khorn? It does nothing for them(fists do sx2 and 10 is the cap... you do not swing at 14), I mean I guess it boosts HoW... but that is kinda silly and not very relevant. Just seems to bloat the text for no good reason...

Also, I am generally up for playing games on VASSAL.

Why not put a new point cost on everything? Start fresh. F GW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Use current rules but all USRs all stats all armor values all everything has a point value. Viola. Balance. Sky Hammer is appropriately point valued.... no more LoW wraithknight costing less than a stompa.

 doktor_g wrote:
Why not put a new point cost on everything? Start fresh. F GW.

Use current rules but all USRs all stats all armor values all everything has a point value. Viola. Balance. Sky Hammer is appropriately point valued.... no more LoW wraithknight costing less than a stompa.

Because after 7 editions, it is shown GW can kinda balance the game. Most of the outliers are obvious and nerfable.

As to you second post: Go read how I broke the custom vehicle deign rules over my knee... repeatedly. Now imagine that with entire codexes.
It would be like some of the worst freeform rp games... "well my 2++ rerollable eldar only have T1, S1, WS 1, and Ld2(they have fearless), so are balanced at 10 points per model. 15 points per model after I give them shreding rending S1 torrent flamers. They have an alt fire of a lance S 10 lascannon, though AP- so Totally Fine."

Codexes are really useful, and keep the game sane.

The ONLY way point value allocation can be accurate enough to be the sole source of game ballance is if special rules are;-

A)Kept to a minimum.(appx a dozen, most games do not need more that two dozen maximum!)

B)And Special rules are swapped out for an agreed stat line drop, or balanced with a similar level of limitation to the bonus they grant.
(EG chemical weapons ignore cover but have reduced range. etc.)

The current codex book have such poor balance internally and externally when compared to other games.
There is little benefit in keeping them other than to save time assigning better rules and point values to everything in the game.

If you just want a better proof read and edited version of the current 40k game , with more time and effort spent on game balance 40k Potica Edition is the way to go IMO.

However, if you want to have an elegant intuitive rule set written for the intended game play of 40k, suitable for RPUG and tournaments.With the quality of rules and game play of the other games available ATM.
You need to completely re write the rules for 40k to achieve this.
ALL the rules for the game would be covered in less than 50 pages, and uses a maximum of a couple of dozen special rules .

This would take a lot more work than reviewing and editing the current rules, so many people are not interested in this...

LordDavenport wrote:
So you can grab from other codexes without taking an HQ?
Yes the price increase looks concerning... but 10% isn't a ton, as long as you don't take much...
My issue with the allies, is it doesn't encourage taking anything that resembles actual allies.
Because the point increase hurts more the more points worth of things you take, but it doesn't hurt almost at all if you take on big thing.
Just take a squad of broadsides in an ork army to cover long range anti-armor. Or take 4 heralds in one HQ slot for stupidly cheap psyker coverage.

It just seems like it will push toward cherry picking units better a things then they should be.

I suppose part of the solution would be to balance units across Codexes, although of course armies should have some weak areas, which Allies might exploit still. It's a WIP. I do appreciate that you can spot min/max opportunities so fast, I've been out of the tourney scene for too long.

Why the larger number of required troops? Yes there are some armies that need to double force org chart, like orks. On the other hand, chaos is now going to have to take cultists.

My reasoning was that the FOC is, what, 17 years old? And in that time the price of almost everything has gone down significantly. To keep the game at the same model count / play time as 3rd and 4th (which is the play experience I'm going for) I think the standard game size should be moved to 1200 pts, where it's still the old 2-6 Troops. Then, once you start unlocking extra support slots, I think there should still be some pressure to have a good proportion of Troops, especially since they don't get special superscoring powers. Which irritated me to no end because I don't see how one grot could have priority over 10 Terminators when standing on an objective.

Random thing I noticed:
Why do forge fiends gain furious charge with the mark of khorn? It does nothing for them(fists do sx2 and 10 is the cap... you do not swing at 14), I mean I guess it boosts HoW... but that is kinda silly and not very relevant. Just seems to bloat the text for no good reason...

For the sake of consistency. I think it's just easier to remember that every walker with MoK gets the same set of abilities. I did try to adjust the price of the upgrades depending on their use to the model, tho (like the MoK is cheaper on the shooty fiend than it is on the assaulty Fiend)

ok, chaos terminators still really bug me. They need to be min squad 3, or they are not worth fielding.
Especially if you are looking at 1200 points, they are going to be 1/4-1/3 of your points.

If you could field them in 3s, I could see doing termicide with a bunch of combi meltas on a three man black legion squad.

Also, why does the thousand sons upgrade cost 15 points on the terminators? 4++ is nice... but it is really not 15 points nice. If you could give them storm shields, I could see points being made about the 2++... but you can't, and even a storm shield comes in at around 15 points. and gives you a 3++ which is significantly better then a 4++. On top of this you need to spend more points to make them actually have any good combat options... because they suffer from the normal problems of terminators, over focus on their defensive abilities while being slightly better marines otherwise.

Another also: I understand why you split chosen and terminators... but terminators as troops is actually interesting, were chosen as troops continues to be terrible. All the troop replacement options are interesting and relevant because they let you trade out the troop tax for a more flavorful option... but chosen are not. They end up paying terminator prices for units far below terminators in quality. Hell, Iron Warriors produce a better version of this by letting you bring havok troops. Who can also bring massed special weapons, but don't pay 6 points for +1 A. Also, chosen benefit almost negligibly from the Black Legion heritage. +1 Ld, as they can't do any cute reserve things anyways...