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As much as i love me my blood angels, i'd have to say ditch space marines entirely. They seem to have done the most harm to the game (developers/company not withstanding).

The only army I feel really makes the game poorer are Imperial Knights. Everything else comes down to personal taste, but an all Knight army just isn't fun to play against. Either you build a normal list and most of your army is useless, or you build a hard counter list and have a long, boring fight, surrounding the Knights with high strength, melta, etc and smacking past their stupid shields to whittle the hull points away. Yeah, you can DO it, but who wants to? It's frustrating and unfun. I would greatly prefer it if Knights were folded into other armies and limited to one per non-Apoc game.

 iGuy91 wrote:
Knights....Its just pay to win. We all know it. The damn things are way too good for their points, and impossible to beat unless you have a list tailored to beat them.There is no reason to be bringing these obnoxious wraithknights and knights in non-apoc games.

Give the the axe

If knights are pay to win....why are they not winning?

At the last major tournament (LVO) there was no multiple knights list in top 8 and has Adamantine Lance ever won a big tournament?

LordBlades wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
Knights....Its just pay to win. We all know it. The damn things are way too good for their points, and impossible to beat unless you have a list tailored to beat them.There is no reason to be bringing these obnoxious wraithknights and knights in non-apoc games.

Give the the axe

If knights are pay to win....why are they not winning?

At the last major tournament (LVO) there was no multiple knights list in top 8 and has Adamantine Lance ever won a big tournament?

Given how relatively short a lifespan it's had thus far and how few major large events there have been, it's hard to judge the placement of Adamantine Lance.

It does however simply steamroll a very large number of armies who have no real effective response. Even if they're not top placing, it's likely because there's a handful of hardcounters that they'll come across once or twice and steamroll their other opponents.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Brennonjw wrote:I hate this idea, why is it a big deal if there are many codexes? I'd rather pay 50 for the codex I need than 100 for the 1/3 of the book that I would use.

People still don't understand that there are more Marine codex books because people buy them. Rolling them into one book wouldn't give more time/books to other factions. There would just be less books. Space Marines don't sell more because they have more books. They have more books because they sell more.

There's a lot of supposition there, and a chicken-egg problem. Are there lots of marine books because marines are popular, or are there lots of marine players because marines are the best supported, most varied, and usually cheapest army to buy/build/paint?

Not really. The Codex books didn't exist until 2nd Edition. By then it was probably quite obvious that the Space Marines were their top seller. It isn't like they were released in a vacuum and then Games Workshop made an arbitrary decision. And even then, they only had three Codex books. Space Wolves, Ultramarines, and Blangel/Dangels. But over time, we saw more and more Space Marine lists (Sallies and BT in C:Arm, for example)). And the only thing that would have influence that was that Games Workshop sold more and more Space Marines. Remember. There were 7 full ranges of Imperial Guard at one point (Cad/Cat/Tal/Mord/Val/Vos/StL/Pra). That shrunk to two. Which tells you that the Space Marines sold enough models for more models, but the Imperial Guard didn't sell enough. Even Priestley admitted recently that it was always about money, even if back in the day it was more about keeping the lights on than profit margins. The only thing that has fundamentally changed about the GW business model is that it shifted from a top-line business to a bottom-line business. Which makes the recent flurry of new releases somewhat curious because it's a change of behavior.

The same can be applied to sisters. Have they seen a lack of support because they're unpopular, or are they unpopular because their support has been abysmal and the cost to build an army of Sisters dwarfs that of even some Forgeworld IG armies?

We know the answer to this too. When the Sisters were released, every army was metal, and they didn't sell. When they were rereleased, most armies were still principally metal, and they didn't sell. Necrons have an identical product history to the Sisters. Released in a small range, all metal. And yet one army became a major with new kits and regular hardcopy updates, and the other did not. And it is almost impossible that this choice was arbitrary.

What the Sisters have been for the last ten years are a dog product kept around, but not expected to sell. In fact, the current price of Sisters models seems to be set intentionally to not sell them, because selling them means having to make more of them. The price they are set at now ensures a healthy margin to make keeping the metal casting for them profitable in the case somebody insists on buying them. In the meantime, because they are offered for sale, the IP protection issues are minimized. And releasing an Ebook-only Codex is low overhead because it doesn't have to be printed, shipped or stocked. It's an easy way for them to hold on to the product line while they decide if they ever want to do something with it.

There were quite a few plastic kits by the time 2E came around, at least for some armies. Sisters also only had their 2E codex for an extremely short time period in 1997 before 3E came out in 1998, where they didn't get an actual codex again until just before 4th edition in 2004.

As for Space Marines, yes, they had always been popular, but again, the core studio had lots of internal decision on what they wanted to make until the late 90's. The proliferation of SM books along the lines that occurred was because that's what the studio wanted to do, and in turned spurred further popularity.

I can't think of a better example of that principle than Dark Eldar. Practically dead by 2006, almost entirely unavailable just a short time later, they made a huge comeback in 2010 when they got a real, functioning, up to date codex and great looking models. The army went from one that many never saw in years in playing, to a regular appearance everywhere.

 Vaktathi wrote:

LordBlades wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
Knights....Its just pay to win. We all know it. The damn things are way too good for their points, and impossible to beat unless you have a list tailored to beat them.There is no reason to be bringing these obnoxious wraithknights and knights in non-apoc games.

Give the the axe

If knights are pay to win....why are they not winning?

At the last major tournament (LVO) there was no multiple knights list in top 8 and has Adamantine Lance ever won a big tournament?

Given how relatively short a lifespan it's had thus far and how few major large events there have been, it's hard to judge the placement of Adamantine Lance.

It does however simply steamroll a very large number of armies who have no real effective response. Even if they're not top placing, it's likely because there's a handful of hardcounters that they'll come across once or twice and steamroll their other opponents.

Hive Fleet Leviathan detachment has been out for less time and seems to be much more prevalent among good performing tournament armies.

IMO it's mainly because spending 1200-ish points on 3 units that need to stand next to each other is a relative poor approach in the tournament mission format vs. MSU armies that seem tio be very popular at this point.

I don't disagree with the fact that knights are good (but many other armies are good), nor with the fact that they are unfun to play against (but that's a purely subjective issue, I for example don't mind playing knights, but I don't enjoy playing against psyker heavy or horde armies).

What I disagree with is knights being pay-to-win.

In the strictest sense, it's nonsensical to talk about pay to win in 49k, because nothing is free.

In the wider sense sense, which I would interpret as 'extremely expensive but very powerful unit, which therefore chreates creates an advantage to those who can afford it', I don't think a knight is out of line with the rest of 40k (it's a bit on thevcheap side as far as price-to-points ratios go IMO). A knight is 85£ for 370-375 points. A Riptide is 50£ for 200 points. A Dreadnought is 28£ for 125 points etc. For simething that might resembke pay to win, look at Broadsides. 30£ for a very good 65 points unit.

Tau. They simply don't make sense as a faction as they're just so utterly insignificant compared to every other faction. It's like Iran being included in as a nation in a WWIII game featuring America, Russia, the EU, and China. The only reason why the Tau survive is because they're effectively babied as a faction, receiving watered down Tyranid Fleets that still pose a massive threat to them due to being tiny.

Either Tau need to be increased in size as a faction so they make sense for even having a Codex, or they should just be removed entirely. Because given how pathetically small their Empire is, there's no excuse as to why we can't have Codex Rak'Gol, Codex Hrud, etc.

IMO Tau need to be turned into Space Persia, holding a very substantial empire in the Galactic East near the edge of the Astrnomicon so they actually deserve to be represented on the TT in the first place.

They could just progressively move the storyline of their Sphere expansions forward since the Tau are supposed to be expanding exponentially. Instead of retconning the fluff, they could have them expand and assimilate much more aggressively (both in Imperial space and elsewhere) so that they become a proper threat. Basically expand by one sphere or more each new codex.

I agree that the Tau are too small on their faction to make sense. Although, if the expanded them along the outer rims of the galaxy and made their empire bigger as a fringe state that might not be awful.

That would work quite well. And, you have to remember that the area of space they are situated in is supposed to be particularly dense, and the tau have perfected terraforming, so that help them as well.

The Knights look superfluous to me.
No style and fluff.
They should be declared as pure superheavies.

 Vaktathi wrote:
4-5 guardsmen trade even casualties with a Space Marine, it only looks like they're "kicking his ass" because the Space Marine only has one wound to lose, but the killing power of both groups is roughly equal (assuming neither side charges), while that group of guardsmen costs 43-80% more than that single space marine (depending on if it's 4 or 5 guardsmen).

Points cost is an abstract game mechanic that has no relevance to my immersion.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If they're all attacking him at once, as a unit, I don't see anything wrong with that. That's called a force multiplier, and the Space Marine can only have hands, blades, and eyes in so many places. If they're attacking together, that's not terribly unrealistic, if he were simply going room to room and punching one guy to death at a time, or if he caught them by surprise (not something tabletop 40k has mechanics for), he could do that all day and kill huge numbers of them without any problems. When there's a grip of them attacking as an organized, disciplined group acting with purpose (something rarely portrayed by most fluff, trope link below) that's not at all inconceivable.

It is inconcievable, because it is like five chihauhas attacking an elephant. They are five, sure, but it doesn't matter. They could be fifteen and it still would not matter. They can gang up as much as it like and it wouldn't help them anything. The size difference is not as large, but the Marine has armour and speed that more than makes up for it.

 Vaktathi wrote:
There was a video posted in a thread elsewhere, showing a world class fencer taking on 50 guys at a time, and IIRC taking out 15 or 16 before losing and lasted several minutes. Well, that worked because they could only attack in one particular manner and only strike one small spot in the most defensible part of his body and could only be engaged one at a time, and had those restrictions not been there he'd have been done in just a couple of seconds against such numbers. A Space Marine would have more vulnerable areas than just that (power-backpack, groin, neck, underarms, back of the knee, insides of the elbows, torso joint, potentially head, hands, etc) and face the same issue. A coordinated group of trained soldiers in a general melee combat against a *single* Space Marine trading casualties on an even basis isn't so outrageous under such circumstances.

Now imagine if that fencer was huge, fast enough to cause a whole new type of psychological trauma in people who witness him fight, was strong enough to lift a car AND wore armour that a simple knife really isn't going to do anything against. You have to remember that the Guardsmen not giving him any space to dodge is irrelevant for him - he can do so anyway, and if they try to stop him they will be crushed. In fact, they'll even get in each other's way!

 Vaktathi wrote:
Say five go in, the Space Marine puts one guy down before anyone else can connect, say he blocks or parries two very swiftly, one guy lands a blow but is completely offset by the armor, while the last guy gets a sword-bayonet into the torso-joint and unloads a dozen Lasgun bolts into the wound and puts the Space Marine down. That suddenly doesn't sound so far fetched.

More like this: Fifteen go in, the Marine downs three with a right hook before anyone else can react, downing another three with a left hook (one of them blocks it but is nowhere near strong enough to actually prevent it from landing or even affecting its trajectory). The rest attack, some meaninglessly hitting armour plates, one getting a stroke of luck and hitting the soft armour with his bayonet. It is unlikely to go all the way through (even 'soft' armour is not very soft) and even if it does, the wound is going to clot pretty much instantly and heal decently quickly as well. Say that fate gives him another clap on the shoulder and he gets to fire as well, his shot hitting the soft armour and melting a bit of it, dealing damage that is, ultimately, mostly superficial. Within ten seconds, he and the rest are dead too.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Additionally, you're taking the to-wound mechanics far too literally. A Guardsmen is not simply shrugging off a direct hit to the chest 1/3rd of the time. That whole system is abstracted. The Space Marine isn't simply firing 1 bolt out to 24" or 2 shots at 12" and under, that's an abstraction. The shooter is often likely firing a burst or rapid repeated shots, the entire sequence of which is abstracted in that "BS4-66% hit rate". And, again, what a "hit" constitutes isn't necessarily a direct center-mass hit, but rather "the burst of fire lands in an area where it's possible to harm the target". A hit may be a headshot or a near miss that explodes two feet away. The combined abstract average of the potential of harm of both of those (and everything in between) is what is represented by that "33% of the time they're shrugging off the hit" you're talking about. Yeah, a headshot will kill a Guardsmen dead, often will kill a Space Marine dead too, but a shot that explodes two feet away probably won't do much to either but has a very small chance of potentially hurting, and it's that entire spectrum that's being abstracted in the whole process here.

So a Space Marine has not only a 66% chance to hit, but a 66% chance to hit somewhat close to what he was firing at, with one shot from a burst? That is ridiculous.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Also, when we're talking about Bolters, these are weapons that realistically probably couldn't hit the broad side of a barn (such weapons have been tried, even produced commercially, there's a reason they don't exist anymore). They simply do not have sufficient muzzle velocity to properly stabilize, and often have a minimum effective range, and if a booster charge is used then there's no reason for them to not simply function as more traditional firearms and you're losing a huge amount of potential space that could go to a larger penetrator or warhead to an internal rocket that could be dispensed with. They also have extremely short barrels, particularly relative to the projectile size (and *especially* storm bolters) and would only further reinforce the accuracy problem.

Science marches on. In the 1500's, a round Earth was inconcievable for many cultures. They may very well have found a way to make that weapon type work - in fact, evidently they have, since it does.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's a weapon that's been described as far too powerful for normal humans to wield, yet they clearly can and have had fluff, models and rules available to do so from Rogue Trader up to the current edition.

This one is easily explainable - they wield differently sized weapons. Obvious really, why design huge strong supersoldiers if you're not going to give them more firepower than what any guy could use?

 Vaktathi wrote:
We have depictions of them effortlessly cutting through Space Marine power armor, and being nigh-useless against it, and everything in between.

Plot armour.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If you're only paying attention to the most powerful and outlandish aspects of fluff, sure, then Guardsmen might seem overpowered. If you take everything as a whole, acknowledge that there are contradictions, stunningly gigantic variances in described power & capability, and functionality issues with it, the in-game representations are absolutely fine.

No, your select pieces of fluff might reconcile well with it, but the majority of the background won't. Love BL or not, it's the source of the majority of our fluff and it is canon, and outside of obvious plot armour cases it is a different setting entirely to what the game portrays. The same goes for the codices, actually. Telion and a few scout squads put down a planetary rebellion in a matter of days. Let that sink in.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Given the wildly varying portrayals and huge variations in power, methinks not. In some books, immensely experienced and capable Chaos Space Marines die to simple IG Mortars. In others, a single squad Space Marines slays literally thousands of Dark Eldar in close quarters combat without a casualty. How do you reconcile these? Do we assume that a DE Warriors should simply die in immense droves against an SM in tabletop gameplay?

Those Space Marines have plot armour - and arguably, as did the mortar shells.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Lets be honest, the overwhelmingly vast majority of descriptions of fluff fights suffer heavily from both the "Conservation of Ninjutsu" syndrome, as well as being "Mooks". and associated "Mook Chivalry".

Explain it how you wish, it's canon!

 Vaktathi wrote:
Again, FFG's RPG's, like most RPG's, often exaggerate elements of the setting for the sake of cool factor. The Space Marines of Black Crusade and Deathwatch are also insanely more capable than the original Space Marines released for use in Dark Heresy in 2007/2008.

You don't understand what I mean. What I said was that Black Crusade Astartes are way weaker than Deathwatch Astartes, and why is quite obvious - to not make them so much more powerful than humans so they are nobrainer choices even in largely non-combat situations, simply because there may be combat.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Under FFG's rules, many common weapons in the 40k universe, often those that have consistently been portrayed as being capable of hurting a Space Marine, literally cannot do so unless massed in abstracted "Horde" units that artifically vastly increase their power. These are cinematic aspects and game mechanics, meant to portray a "special" and "heroic" band, with many associated tropes and belief suspensions, as opposed to an accurate reflection of the capabilities of various weapons and foes.

Nothing wrong with Horde units. In fact, plot armour seems just as rampant among Guard fluff as anywhere else, it's just less pointed out because there is less of it and they are underdogs anyway (which is their job).

 Vaktathi wrote:
Why are Ripper Swarms fine but Guardsmen are not? How much would you have to nerf Orks before they fit the narrative you seek? How much more pathetic can you make a Fire Warrior given their already terrible statline? Why are Eldar and Dark Eldar fine despite having similar depictions of them being slaughtered en-masse by Space Marines?

The game abstractions can't properly represent Fire Warriors, Rippers, Orks and Space Marines without sacrificing too much, unless you remove larger units, buff MEQ to be in the S/T 6-7 area (and nobz, and so on). Limitations of the system. I'd rather change the system, but when provided with a choice of faction to remove, removing Guard seems like the best band-aid choice.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If you're only looking at the absolute most exaggerated aspects of said lore.

It's not exaggerated. The supersonic Marines of ADB (yes, I meant supersonic, not subsonic), that is exaggerated. The Brothers of the Snake, that is exaggerated. Death of Antagonis is not. Horus Rising is not.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Sure. But why is it unthinkable for the reverse to occur as part of the same token of the grimdark? The 6 heroes/anti-heroes charge the faceless mob and are obliterated by overwhelming firepower before they can do anything and are soon forgotten as the bureaucracy and faceless ranks roll forward over everything. That's the aspect that's being forgotten here.

Because the setting is a human one. Grimdark is always from a perspective. Consider this; how grimdark is the setting to a Slaaneshi daemon? To an Ork? To a human on a safe pleasure world? Not very much. They are very content with their lives. Grimdark is not about making it gak for just everyone, it's about making it gak for the subject/s. Any grimdark setting could include vast majorities of repressed workers and a few ridiculously rich nobles living pleasant lives, who the workers simply can't overthrow.

The setting being so hilariously lethal and gakky for your average person (as well as the incoming, inevitable doom of the Imperium as a whole that comes sooner or later) is what makes it grimdark. Its technological regression and extreme dictatorship, its religious fanatism and xenophobia, that is what makes it grimdark.

No army book - no problem. ©Stalin

 wuestenfux wrote:
The Knights look superfluous to me.
No style and fluff.
They should be declared as pure superheavies.

err they ARE pure super heavies.

BrianDavion wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
The Knights look superfluous to me.
No style and fluff.
They should be declared as pure superheavies.

err they ARE pure super heavies.

wuestenfux means there shouldn't be a codex for them - just as a LoW option for 40k

Grey knights. Didn't make the list, but just the concept of a pure Grey Knights army seems absurd (from a gaming standpoint, I love the models).

 Kajaki War Pig wrote:
Grey knights. Didn't make the list, but just the concept of a pure Grey Knights army seems absurd (from a gaming standpoint, I love the models).

Agreed. I think they'd be better as a hint and a whisper in the background. Members of the Inquisition suggesting that such a force might exist. They shouldn't be running around an open battlefield with tanks and such. Maybe as a special campaign army but not a full-fledged force.

Sisters of Battle. Just squat em already, GW (you're 3/4 of the way there anyway). We don't need them.

I voted none. I actually quite like the idea behind Imperial Knights because they're an entire army of fething giant robots. I will agree that GeeDubs didn't bring that concept to life too well, simply because IK are so polarizing. You have to tailor your list to them to some degree, otherwise they're impossible to deal with if you're bringing an average list.

I have to wonder if this can be fixed by changing their statline. What if we reduced their AV to 10-11 against shooting attacks, but in close combat they always counted as AV13?

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Imperial Guard for sure.

Please don't remove the imperial guard!!!!!

I voted Imperial Knights. I feel they should be set for apoc battles, not normal battles. This resentment stems from a guy that was at local store when I was painting my salamanders achilles raider. He walks up to me and says, "don't bother painting that, I will flatten it with my knights." I looked up at him and told him to %$#@ off.

I mean if it wasn't for that, they would be cool; but they belong in apoc only.

 Mumblez wrote:
I voted none. I actually quite like the idea behind Imperial Knights because they're an entire army of fething giant robots. I will agree that GeeDubs didn't bring that concept to life too well, simply because IK are so polarizing. You have to tailor your list to them to some degree, otherwise they're impossible to deal with if you're bringing an average list.

I have to wonder if this can be fixed by changing their statline. What if we reduced their AV to 10-11 against shooting attacks, but in close combat they always counted as AV13?

Yea, having an entire army of only two units is silly, like the Militarum Tempestus book. They both just feel so half-baked and it wouldn't have taken much more work to make them interesting and diverse codices. I don't know that they need to be removed entirely, they just need to be fully fleshed out, and not be super heavies.

It's not hard to think up 40k-esque Brettonian equivalents. You could have regular walkers "Hedge Knights" that form the troops section. Then some infantry Men at Arms, half-way between guardsmen and marines, trained to fend off infantry attacking the heavy walkers. Throw in some of the heraldry with standard bearers and peasant rabble armed with autoguns and you'd have an interesting vision of Feudal sci-fi.

Likewise the Tempestus are missing out on a lot of interesting opportunities: Scion snipers, demolitions teams, Tempestus sentinels, cybernetically enhanced ogryns, etc. Both books feel like something they cooked up over the course of a weekend with 0 playtesting.

I voted None. While I don't want to see any armies removed (quite the opposite, I'd love to see more), I do think there are one or two that should be so completely overhauled that they play nothing like they currently do. For example, I'd love for Nids to actually play like their fluff suggests, but the rules simply don't support it, and so we are left with triple DakkaFexes and double Dakka Flyrants.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Points cost is an abstract game mechanic that has no relevance to my immersion.

Well, prepare to be disappointed then.

It is inconcievable, because it is like five chihauhas attacking an elephant. They are five, sure, but it doesn't matter. They could be fifteen and it still would not matter. They can gang up as much as it like and it wouldn't help them anything. The size difference is not as large, but the Marine has armour and speed that more than makes up for it.

There is no such insane size difference. Just as Guardsmen can survive close combat with Orks, they can survive combat with a Space Marine. The Space Marine is faster and has better armor than an Ork, but similar resiliency and strength. A Space Marine is not a Monstrous Creature.

Now imagine if that fencer was huge, fast enough to cause a whole new type of psychological trauma in people who witness him fight, was strong enough to lift a car AND wore armour that a simple knife really isn't going to do anything against. You have to remember that the Guardsmen not giving him any space to dodge is irrelevant for him - he can do so anyway, and if they try to stop him they will be crushed. In fact, they'll even get in each other's way!

There are people today who can lift cars, depending on how you're defining that. A Space Mariine is fast, but he's not freaking Eldar fast. Likewise, there's plenty of places for knives to slip in and harm a space marine, there's plenty of fluff on that. Space Marines kill other Space Marines with knives all the time, Gaunts do it with claws, Orks do it with primitive Choppas, etc. A Space Marine's armor has weak points.

Just assuming he can always dodge everything is basically hand-wavijng any opposing counter-argument away with plot magic. We've have Marines killed by creatures far less graceful and far more clumsy and slow than norman Humans, Orks being the best example that comes to mind.

More like this: Fifteen go in, the Marine downs three with a right hook before anyone else can react, downing another three with a left hook (one of them blocks it but is nowhere near strong enough to actually prevent it from landing or even affecting its trajectory)

He's hitting three guys with one punch? Really? This is where we're going?

Ok, no, stopping this here. have I not read any such thing in the fluff or Marines hitting three opponents with a single blow, much less following it with another just like it. This is goofy Adam West batman stuff, hell I can't even recall seeing something like this in a comic book.

. The rest attack, some meaninglessly hitting armour plates, one getting a stroke of luck and hitting the soft armour with his bayonet. It is unlikely to go all the way through (even 'soft' armour is not very soft)

Um....why? Gaunts, Orks, Scarabs, Ripper Swarms, etc all seem to be able to find such gaps penetrate these things. And we're assuming that many trained soldiers can't hit squat? Methinks We're being a bit overboard here.

and even if it does, the wound is going to clot pretty much instantly and heal decently quickly as well.

Even as he's getting a dozen las-bolts shot into him? Remember, close combat isn't just dudes throwing punches, it's just as abstracted as the shooting example, possible moreso.

So a Space Marine has not only a 66% chance to hit, but a 66% chance to hit somewhat close to what he was firing at, with one shot from a burst? That is ridiculous.

Not really. You're assuming every time they pull a trigger, that they have a clear target. This is about the rarest thing in warfare.

In modern warfare, huge numbers of rounds are expended for each combatant killed. In Vietnam it was ~70,000 bullets fired for every Vietcong/North Vietnamese killed. In Afghanistan, the US GAO estimates it was 250,000 bullets fired for each "insurgent" killed. Huge amounts of ammunition are expended, and effectively the chances of getting a hit are random. You're putting rounds downrange about where you think the enemy is, not lining up direct shots at clear targets.

Do you have any experience with firearms? 40k's shooting system isn't a direct representation of single shots. Assault Cannons are excellent examples. They're not just firing 4 rounds, they're firing dozens or hundreds, the shot count is abstracted. I don't have any formal military training,, but you put a target a hundred meters downrange and I guarantee you I can hit that target at a rate better than BS10 even with a relatively mediocre accuracy rifle like an AK (I can put a Vindicare to shame with one of my AK's if we're assuming 40k accuracy is a perfectly accurate reflection of real hit rates). 40k's mechanics aren't representing that kind of direct translation.

Even with explosive rounds, there can be issues. German & Russian forces used explosive rounds in some situations in WW2. They were originally developed as ranging rounds for vehicle machineguns to give a visual range-check, but against people could be devastating, and were issued in limited quantities to snipers. Even these however may not necessarily put someone down. If you hit them somewhere like the hand or a grazing fleshwound to the leg, the bullet might not explode or wait until it's already exited their body (just because of the few nanoseconds it takes for the fuse to ignite the charge) to do so and they might still be able to fight (even if at a degraded level), whereas a shot to the hip is going to put them down quite spectacularly.

Science marches on. In the 1500's, a round Earth was inconcievable for many cultures. They may very well have found a way to make that weapon type work - in fact, evidently they have, since it does.

We've got pretty accurate descriptions of bolters, there's nothing about them that is particularly advanced. They're make-believe weapons that follow the rule of cool, rather than being exceedingly advanced technology.

This one is easily explainable - they wield differently sized weapons. Obvious really, why design huge strong supersoldiers if you're not going to give them more firepower than what any guy could use?

And while it's true they have different sized weapons, the gaps in their capabilities are not tremendous enough to show any difference in game. As for why? Who knows, it's 40k.

A real world analogy is probably good here. .38 special and .357 magnum. The latter is an upsized version of the former. The .357 is a much more powerful, hard hitting round with far more ferocious recoil. However, it's still largely a handgun round, packing significantly less punch than rifle rounds like 5.56, and thus it's not worth distinguishing in any sort of game terms, and even in real life the differences between the two on a human target are largely circumstantial.

No, your select pieces of fluff might reconcile well with it, but the majority of the background won't. Love BL or not, it's the source of the majority of our fluff and it is canon, and outside of obvious plot armour cases

Which would be 99% of Black Library.

it is a different setting entirely to what the game portrays. The same goes for the codices, actually. Telion and a few scout squads put down a planetary rebellion in a matter of days. Let that sink in.

And for every time that happens, a thousand times the rebellion goes through. Rebellions can be relatively easy things to crush if you cut off the charismatic head. These special characters are just that, special, they've done deeds that out of a million space marines, amongst uncountable trillions of Imperial soldiers, amongst hundreds of trillions of Imperial Citizens, merits note. In a galaxy that big, exemplary accomplishments are bound to happen. But ultimately they're not par for the course, they're exceptional deeds of legend.

Those Space Marines have plot armour

Right, and that needs to be recognized that plot armor is the standard state of things in most 40k stories, rather than accurate reflections of the capabilities of equipment and beings. Once you accept that, 40k's gameplay mechanics aren't so bad.

- and arguably, as did the mortar shells.

Why are we assuming the mortar shells are plot weapons? We're talking about a fist-sized explosive shell moving at hundreds of meters a second. If Bolters can skill Space Marines, certainly Mortars can. They certainly match up in game terms quite well, with similar S and AP.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Lets be honest, the overwhelmingly vast majority of descriptions of fluff fights suffer heavily from both the "Conservation of Ninjutsu" syndrome, as well as being "Mooks". and associated "Mook Chivalry".

Explain it how you wish, it's canon!

Just as a guardsmen killing a dreadnought with a lasgun powerpack and some plants is. If you can't accept that a lot of this isn't written as realistic combat but rule of cool, you're simply going to be disappointed by any game, no matter what. Sorry, but there's no way around that.

Nothing wrong with Horde units. In fact, plot armour seems just as rampant among Guard fluff as anywhere else, it's just less pointed out because there is less of it and they are underdogs anyway (which is their job).

Yes, plot armor is rampant everywhere, IG, Eldar, SM, anyone who's the protagonist. But that's besides the point, the game mechanics are such that it needs to introduce an artificial construct for certain things to be able to harm a Player Character at all, even when such shouldn't necessarily be true in the fluff because these characters are built to such a high level of power. What'll put down a Space Marine in a 40k game on a 2+ with no armor save might need four or five shots to do so in the RPG setting.

The game abstractions can't properly represent Fire Warriors, Rippers, Orks and Space Marines without sacrificing too much, unless you remove larger units, buff MEQ to be in the S/T 6-7 area (and nobz, and so on). Limitations of the system. I'd rather change the system, but when provided with a choice of faction to remove, removing Guard seems like the best band-aid choice.

O_o so rampaging Orks should only have the slightest chance of being able to wound a Space Marine? medium anti-tank guns like Autocannons should have a good chance of leaving a naked space marine unscathed? Marines should routinely walk of plasma gun hits?

What would you do to Bolters then? Would they too be useless against Marines or would you have to adjust them to powerlevels of weapons far larger than what they really have any business being?

Methinks the problem isn't with the game mechanics here.

It's not exaggerated. The supersonic Marines of ADB (yes, I meant supersonic, not subsonic), that is exaggerated. The Brothers of the Snake, that is exaggerated. Death of Antagonis is not. Horus Rising is not.

] What examples from Horus rising are we referring to here? I ask mainly because I think I read that 8 or 9 years ago and don't remember most of it.

Holy crap that was a long time ago.

Because the setting is a human one. Grimdark is always from a perspective. Consider this; how grimdark is the setting to a Slaaneshi daemon? To an Ork? To a human on a safe pleasure world? Not very much. They are very content with their lives. Grimdark is not about making it gak for just everyone, it's about making it gak for the subject/s.

A lot of 40k lore would beg to differ. There's lots of 40k lore that just amounts to "life sucks and nothing good happened, the Bureaucracy rolled on". Dead Men Walking, The Inquisition War, The Siege of Vraks, etc.

The setting being so hilariously lethal and gakky for your average person (as well as the incoming, inevitable doom of the Imperium as a whole that comes sooner or later) is what makes it grimdark. Its technological regression and extreme dictatorship, its religious fanatism and xenophobia, that is what makes it grimdark.

And a big part of that in many cases is the heroes failing in depressing ways. It happens.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The game abstractions can't properly represent Fire Warriors, Rippers, Orks and Space Marines without sacrificing too much, unless you remove larger units, buff MEQ to be in the S/T 6-7 area (and nobz, and so on). Limitations of the system. I'd rather change the system, but when provided with a choice of faction to remove, removing Guard seems like the best band-aid choice.

So once you remove IG and make all the "awesome" space marines even more awesome then why exactly does anyone care how powerful they are? Without a "normal humans" army to compare space marines to they're just boring stat inflation. In fact you've just reduced the apparent power of space marines since they're now one "elite" army among a bunch of other "elites". The only way to make space marines look powerful would be to constantly talk about that old IG army with all 3s for a stat line that you removed.

*Like in an RPG where you have 1-2 damage with your sword at first level and 1-2 million damage with your sword at the end of the game, but it still takes the same number of hits to kill an enemy because everything has a HP increase to match your damage increase.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
More like this: Fifteen go in, the Marine downs three with a right hook before anyone else can react, downing another three with a left hook (one of them blocks it but is nowhere near strong enough to actually prevent it from landing or even affecting its trajectory). The rest attack, some meaninglessly hitting armour plates, one getting a stroke of luck and hitting the soft armour with his bayonet. It is unlikely to go all the way through (even 'soft' armour is not very soft) and even if it does, the wound is going to clot pretty much instantly and heal decently quickly as well. Say that fate gives him another clap on the shoulder and he gets to fire as well, his shot hitting the soft armour and melting a bit of it, dealing damage that is, ultimately, mostly superficial. Within ten seconds, he and the rest are dead too.

And then within another ten seconds the artillery barrage that the squad's radio operator was desperately calling in as the marine was slaughtering everyone arrives, and the space marine is a distant memory. Or a nearby plasma gunner vaporizes the space marine. Etc. The limits of the D6 system may over-estimate how good guardsmen are in melee against a space marine, but 40k also badly underestimates the firepower of the big guns.

So a Space Marine has not only a 66% chance to hit, but a 66% chance to hit somewhat close to what he was firing at, with one shot from a burst? That is ridiculous.

No, it's actually a sign of pretty impressive marksmanship, especially once you consider the inherent accuracy problems with a bolter.

In the 1500's, a round Earth was inconcievable for many cultures.

This is actually a myth. Everyone knew that the earth was round, the whole "all the skeptics thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the world" thing comes from a work of fiction that poorly-informed teachers keep presenting as fact.

They may very well have found a way to make that weapon type work - in fact, evidently they have, since it does.

Yes, it does. 66% of the time it will hit its target, and 66% of the time that hit will be immediately fatal. Sounds like that's a pretty successful weapon.

Obvious really, why design huge strong supersoldiers if you're not going to give them more firepower than what any guy could use?

Good question. Why do space marines carry mere bolters instead of giving every squad a full range of heavy weapons? It's really odd that GW decided to have their super soldiers use real-world infantry squad tactics for choosing their weapons instead of taking full advantage of their power armor (like the Starship Troopers soldiers GW ripped off).

Love BL or not, it's the source of the majority of our fluff and it is canon, and outside of obvious plot armour cases it is a different setting entirely to what the game portrays.

It is "canon", but only because GW's canon policy is "we don't have a canon policy that separates things into canon and non-canon". You might like BL fluff, but I could just as easily argue that the tabletop game takes priority

Telion and a few scout squads put down a planetary rebellion in a matter of days. Let that sink in.

So? What matters is how they put it down. Perhaps it was a typical rebellion where a few important and charismatic leaders decide to rebel, but the vast hordes following those leaders don't have much willpower or a redundant chain of command to continue fighting once the leaders are dead. So that's a few days of infiltration into a good shooting position, and a headshot or two that convinces the vast hordes that dying for some abstract ideology isn't really all that appealing.

Also, note that 40k does not portray that kind of battle. Even IG represent the elite of the elite taken from a whole planet's military forces and armed with weapons and equipment that most non-IG human soldiers could only dream of. Crushing a few civilians with autoguns and knives doesn't really say much about battlefield performance against a proper army.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
The game abstractions can't properly represent Fire Warriors, Rippers, Orks and Space Marines without sacrificing too much, unless you remove larger units, buff MEQ to be in the S/T 6-7 area (and nobz, and so on). Limitations of the system. I'd rather change the system, but when provided with a choice of faction to remove, removing Guard seems like the best band-aid choice.

So once you remove IG and make all the "awesome" space marines even more awesome then why exactly does anyone care how powerful they are? Without a "normal humans" army to compare space marines to they're just boring stat inflation. In fact you've just reduced the apparent power of space marines since they're now one "elite" army among a bunch of other "elites". The only way to make space marines look powerful would be to constantly talk about that old IG army with all 3s for a stat line that you removed.

*Like in an RPG where you have 1-2 damage with your sword at first level and 1-2 million damage with your sword at the end of the game, but it still takes the same number of hits to kill an enemy because everything has a HP increase to match your damage increase.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
More like this: Fifteen go in, the Marine downs three with a right hook before anyone else can react, downing another three with a left hook (one of them blocks it but is nowhere near strong enough to actually prevent it from landing or even affecting its trajectory). The rest attack, some meaninglessly hitting armour plates, one getting a stroke of luck and hitting the soft armour with his bayonet. It is unlikely to go all the way through (even 'soft' armour is not very soft) and even if it does, the wound is going to clot pretty much instantly and heal decently quickly as well. Say that fate gives him another clap on the shoulder and he gets to fire as well, his shot hitting the soft armour and melting a bit of it, dealing damage that is, ultimately, mostly superficial. Within ten seconds, he and the rest are dead too.

And then within another ten seconds the artillery barrage that the squad's radio operator was desperately calling in as the marine was slaughtering everyone arrives, and the space marine is a distant memory. Or a nearby plasma gunner vaporizes the space marine. Etc. The limits of the D6 system may over-estimate how good guardsmen are in melee against a space marine, but 40k also badly underestimates the firepower of the big guns.

So a Space Marine has not only a 66% chance to hit, but a 66% chance to hit somewhat close to what he was firing at, with one shot from a burst? That is ridiculous.

No, it's actually a sign of pretty impressive marksmanship, especially once you consider the inherent accuracy problems with a bolter.

In the 1500's, a round Earth was inconcievable for many cultures.

This is actually a myth. Everyone knew that the earth was round, the whole "all the skeptics thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the world" thing comes from a work of fiction that poorly-informed teachers keep presenting as fact.

They may very well have found a way to make that weapon type work - in fact, evidently they have, since it does.

Yes, it does. 66% of the time it will hit its target, and 66% of the time that hit will be immediately fatal. Sounds like that's a pretty successful weapon.

Obvious really, why design huge strong supersoldiers if you're not going to give them more firepower than what any guy could use?

Good question. Why do space marines carry mere bolters instead of giving every squad a full range of heavy weapons? It's really odd that GW decided to have their super soldiers use real-world infantry squad tactics for choosing their weapons instead of taking full advantage of their power armor (like the Starship Troopers soldiers GW ripped off).

Love BL or not, it's the source of the majority of our fluff and it is canon, and outside of obvious plot armour cases it is a different setting entirely to what the game portrays.

It is "canon", but only because GW's canon policy is "we don't have a canon policy that separates things into canon and non-canon". You might like BL fluff, but I could just as easily argue that the tabletop game takes priority

Telion and a few scout squads put down a planetary rebellion in a matter of days. Let that sink in.

So? What matters is how they put it down. Perhaps it was a typical rebellion where a few important and charismatic leaders decide to rebel, but the vast hordes following those leaders don't have much willpower or a redundant chain of command to continue fighting once the leaders are dead. So that's a few days of infiltration into a good shooting position, and a headshot or two that convinces the vast hordes that dying for some abstract ideology isn't really all that appealing.

Also, note that 40k does not portray that kind of battle. Even IG represent the elite of the elite taken from a whole planet's military forces and armed with weapons and equipment that most non-IG human soldiers could only dream of. Crushing a few civilians with autoguns and knives doesn't really say much about battlefield performance against a proper army.

I guess marines being 8 times more powerful in shooting than guardsmen is just not enough for some folks.

grey knights

 Pelas Mir'san wrote:
I voted Imperial Knights. I feel they should be set for apoc battles, not normal battles. This resentment stems from a guy that was at local store when I was painting my salamanders achilles raider. He walks up to me and says, "don't bother painting that, I will flatten it with my knights." I looked up at him and told him to %$#@ off.

I mean if it wasn't for that, they would be cool; but they belong in apoc only.

Wow what a douche nozzle

First, Knights as a codex and formation. Make them a LOW for IoM codicies.

Second, disable the ability of people on Dakkadakka to quote a giant wall of text for their own minor quip of nothingness at the end.