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I was thinking about this a lot. And even though I'm a pure marine player, I think the time as come. Some of the heavy weapons in the game that are currently AP 4 need to promoted to AP 3. This includes autocannons, heavy bolters, the frag thing the hammerhead shoots, and probably some weapons I can't think of right now. The game now needs ranged AP 3 weapons with good ROF because of scat bikes.

Marines have already been dealing with IA Riptides and a plethora of other stuff that penetrates 3+ armor. Put some bite back into heavy weapons that just aren't getting it done vs Necrons/Eldar anymore. This also makes 2+ armor models a bit more desirable.

Marines are already dying in droves, so why limit this phenomenon to the favored few builds?

No, the solution is not more ap3. How about make the bikes 4+ save instead? Besides they can still jink

Buffing weapons that will impact every target they aim at for the sole purpose of countering Eldar Bikes is the exact kind of bandaid that adds even more imbalance. Please don't.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
No, the solution is not more ap3. How about make the bikes 4+ save instead? Besides they can still jink

Because that book has already been printed. They are not 4+ save they are 3+. Therefore, heavy weapons must be able to engage 3+ armor at a range, since the new engagement range is 36" Although it really always was for Eldar. Because the scatterlaser was always broken.

Let them jink. You could bring enough AP 3 heavy bolters to force most of their squads to snap shoot, which is what is now required. Why the opposition to the AP 3? Marines mostly die from wound spam now, not quality of wounds. Throw some of these weaker heavy weapons a bone.


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 ProwlerPC wrote:
Buffing weapons that will impact every target they aim at for the sole purpose of countering Eldar Bikes is the exact kind of bandaid that adds even more imbalance. Please don't.

These are heavy weapons that need a boost anyway. The jetbikes just push the need over the top; there were already reasons to buff these weapons. Namely, to pretend to compete with scatter lasers. Remember that this would also let the IoM put the hurt of aspect warrior with their heavy weapons. I mean they ARE heavy weapons, right? Right?

Being a hvy weapon doesn't mean it's automatically meant for taking out hvy infantry let alone vehicles. Hvy weapons encompass the whole variety of anti infantry, anti hvy, anti vehicle. They are hvy weapons because they require setup. Changing the AP by 1 in all Hvy weapons will have a drastically huge impact on the game.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Being a hvy weapon doesn't mean it's automatically meant for taking out hvy infantry let alone vehicles. Hvy weapons encompass the whole variety of anti infantry, anti hvy, anti vehicle. They are hvy weapons because they require setup. Changing the AP by 1 in all Hvy weapons will have a drastically huge impact on the game.

So? And scatbikes don't? Impacts need to be made at this point. Also, given the prevalence of 3+ armor in the 40K universe, it's entirely likely that the autocannon and heavy bolter would be redesigned to penetrate that armor type. Heavy infantry should be cut to pieces by heavy weapons anyway, just as they would be in real life.

And I didn't say all. Just a few that have really fallen behind and/or out of favor, or are filling a new needed role.

Martel732 wrote:
Because that book has already been printed.

And thus you just invalidated the idea of this whole subforum. Heavy bolters have been printed as being AP4 too. Why should their rules be any more subject to change than recently printed ones?

This solution of buffing AP4 weapons to AP3 is only designed for your knee-jerk reaction to the Eldar bikes, not caring for the survivability of other armies that rely on their 3+ save. Now, say goodbye to entire MEQ armies as AM HWTs tear them a new behind from which to expel their newly liquified innards.

This is not a healthy fix. Instead, changing the bikes to be 4+ would result in less collateral damage.

Pssst, make the Manticore AP 3, too

It's slippery slope logic. I don't fall into that trap. Eldar stuff is broken, breaking other stuff isn't a solution, fixing the broken stuff is. When you drastically change another unit in another army on the sole basis of a broken unit in another army you are also now nerfing everything else that new weapon is firing on. It's senseless logic or there is other motives at play that aren't revealed. There is no doubt a plethora of units across the 40k universe could use some tweaking but it should be approached with the mindset of balancing the big picture not solely on one broken unit. Specifically when changing AP it should be compared to absolutely every single target it would be used against in the 40k universe. This is a d6 game, 1 point has huge repercussions, one model can affect the entire universe by just one point as you point out with the bikes. If those bikes are broken and by that one point are impacting the whole universe it's far more efficient to tweak the bikes to a 4+ save then it is to start hopscotching from army to army making tweaks not only because of eldar bikes but because other weapons got buffed. Not everyone has your auto cannon and hvy bolter.

The proper solution to power creep, is not to creep the power.

Why not just nerf Eldar instead of breaking everything else?
Would you set fire to a house to kill a fly?

[youtube] https://youtu.be/btVJhbuV8PA[/youtube]

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because that book has already been printed.

And thus you just invalidated the idea of this whole subforum. Heavy bolters have been printed as being AP4 too. Why should their rules be any more subject to change than recently printed ones?

This guy wins!

I do agree that it isn't a good idea.

I don't get why people are more scared of Scatterlaser Bike spam than Shuriken Cannon bike spam.

On topic, regular rate of fire that would normally kill marines in droves also kills the bikers in droves. They are still only T4 SV3+. Killing them is not the problem. It's not being killed by them that's the problem.

Scatterbikes have 50% more range, and 33% more RoF apiece, all for the same price.

Shuriken Cannon bikes are manageable because they have to be at 24" in order to be effective, and they lack the same RoF that makes Scatterbikes so amazing. To put it in perspective, Shuribikes will put ~16.67 wounds onto T4 infantry.

Of these 16.67 wounds, ~3.34 will be AP2. So 3.34 shots deny armor; assuming the Marines aren't standing out in the open like gormless idiots and get 5+ cover, then this is reduced to ~2.23 unsaved wounds.

The remaining 13.33 wounds kills ~4.44 Marines, for a total of ~6.67 Marines dead. In contrast, Scatterbikes kill ~7.4 T4/3+ infantry per turn.

Shuribikes aren't a big deal compared to Scatterbikes, when Scatterbikes are mathematically better at slaughtering infantry, and from 50% more distance. Shuribikes give some impression that they can actually be handled, given that they must close to 24".

As another example, Scatterbikes can remove ~3 wounds from GravCents- over the course of two turns, you'll kill ~3 GravCents. And they can do this from out of the range of the GravCents. Shuribikes can, admittedly, remove ~2 GravCents per turn... but they'll be dangerously close to taking return fire.

EJBs Jink for what, a 4+? If they GravCents manage to return fire, with at least 3 members, they'll remove 4-5 Shuribikes. This is more than likely going to cripple said bike unit. Even if EJBs Jink for 3+, the GravCents can remove ~3 of them per 3 GravCents.

Scatterbikes may not be as killy in terms of raw firepower against GravCents... but they get to operate out of range of the retaliation of so many things that it's almost ridiculous.

At this point the only practical way to fight Scatterbike heavy lists is to use an army composition that's able to nullify most of the S6 firepower the Scatterbikes can spit out. Quite frankly, I think that only Decurion Crons and the 30K-era Taghmata list can really pull that off... and the Taghmata suffers from being designed to function best at around 2000-2500 points, rather than the more common 1500-1850 that seems to be popular in tournaments and general play these days (I believe; I may be wrong about preferred point levels).

As I said, it's not just Eldar. Even at AP 3, the heavy bolter would be a hard sell for many lists.


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 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because that book has already been printed.

And thus you just invalidated the idea of this whole subforum. Heavy bolters have been printed as being AP4 too. Why should their rules be any more subject to change than recently printed ones?

This solution of buffing AP4 weapons to AP3 is only designed for your knee-jerk reaction to the Eldar bikes, not caring for the survivability of other armies that rely on their 3+ save. Now, say goodbye to entire MEQ armies as AM HWTs tear them a new behind from which to expel their newly liquified innards.

This is not a healthy fix. Instead, changing the bikes to be 4+ would result in less collateral damage.

I play marines. I'm willing to take the risk at this point Power armor is already largely invalidated at this point.

I think the bigger issue here is for GW to stop making broken rules to drive up sales. Eldar have had 2 codex's printed in the recent past and both have had SERIOUSLY broken units in them. So what needs to happen is GW needs to fire whomever they keep hiring to write Eldar codex's.

But Eldar wouldn't be as bad if there were more quality heavy weapons available to the other armies.

yes they would martel, you don't fix the game by making every army have a broken unit or two, you just fix the broken units. The Eldar had the Wave serpeant shield spam last codex and this one has WK being OP as hell, Bikers being OP as hell and a formation of flyers that gets a rerollable 4+ Jink save and apparently they don't have to jink. (hearsay from an eldar player) So the problem isnt other armies not having access to enough heavy weapons but instead it is that to many units are becoming OP.