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With the release of the Eldar codex and some people considering Tau to be relatively powerful into the 7th ed, I began thinking to how the fluff plays out here as well. Eldar are a dying race but still light years ahead of the Imperium in technology and psycher capability. Would that not suggest that all in all, their codex should be more powerful than most? The same could be argued for the Tau. How could an upstart race be so successful in a short amount of time? Maybe because they have a pretty potent fighting force and thus their codex reflects that edge. I am not a proponent of crazy unbalanced codexes nor is this intended to be a bitching about balance discussion. This is more of floating the concept of whether some codexes might be intentionally made a little more powerful to reflect their place in the fluff. Does balance mean every army needs to perform at the same level across the board or is there room for a little color and fluffiness to armies? Should some armies have an edge? And by edge I would not be arguing what we saw in the Eldar Codex but thinking more along tiers. At the end of the day should the armies naturally fall into tiers of competitive or power play so Marine players know they will be near the top or leading the mid tier with Eldar always in the top tier and what are generally considered "weaker" armies at the bottom tiers? is this fair or even good for the hobby?

Tau is a powerhouse army? Not in 7th edition

tau still have some nasty tricks up their sleeves. They can easily become a powerhouse with all the Firepower they can put out.

Well if that were to be the case, the marines would be near the bottom of the lowest tier and that would make them have a hissyfit so GW would never ever allow that.

At the end of the day should the armies naturally fall into tiers of competitive or power play so Marine players know they will be near the top or leading the mid tier with Eldar always in the top tier and what are generally considered "weaker" armies at the bottom tiers? is this fair or even good for the hobby?

Bottom line no imo.
Fluff has never equalled game balance from GW most especially when different writers got involved.
I still shudder at Kellys 5th ed DE. The fluff made them out to be utterly unstoppable, all that kept them from curbstomping the Galaxy at will was some silly infighting
However in game they were glass cannons - good in some instances, woeful in others.
3rd ed Nids from what I recall had them fluff-wise again bordering on unstoppable - the old line about the Imperium needing to ramp military forcvds up by 500% just to put a dent in. Now they're reduced to Pentrants and mucolid spores floating about.
Orks if they ever united would take out everyone, however Greentide is now blown off the board by scatbikes and Gargants get chewed up by Knights.

GW when it writes its fluff writres most of it in absolute isolation from each codex, there are blatant examples in both the 5th ed Nid book and 6th ed Tau where they beat the living blank out of each other dependant on the perspective given, with no overall narrative adherred too.
Basically the fluff is written to grab readers attention, make whatever current codex is being released "da bomb" and then hack on rules to sell underselling kits or sell new ones faster.

Should that mean Eldar are a more powerful codex? No, because fluff does not equal game balance. And never has.

The two should be kept seperate.
GW should have an overall coherent theme for their fluff.
Game balance and ingame mechanics should be clearer and fairer.

No idea if that rant made sense.

Things like that can of course be reflected on the table. IG, Orcs and Tyranids might not be so hot in the fluff, and least not the small guys. Instead, they have a whole lot of them.

Things need to be adjusted with the help of point costs. If Eldar are powerful remnants of a dying race, they should have steep point costs to reflect this. Some armies straight up being better is just wrong. And does not even jive, the Dark Eldar are still ancient and ought to be powerful, yet they are nowhere near their brightly coloured cousins.

The issue is trying to reflect fluff that hard into codex design, the game becomes unrealistic to play. As an Ork player, if we are to reflect the sheer numbers Orks attack in...I would be painting models for 20 years before I even got a single game. Ghaz wouldn't be the chump he is today. And Orks in general would be too OP because of their ability to loot any tech and make it work. Fluff wise, after defeating an Eldar player, my Orks should be able to be equipped with looted D strength weapons and vehicles.

If armies went by fluff, every Eldar model would be worth a VP when killed, all marine units would have the old Bjorn Fell Handed rule where he became an objective after dying, and nobody but bill gates could afford an ork, Nid or Guard army.


It's like this every time some SM fanboy gets pissy about AP3 weapons or S4 AP5 bolt guns. Sorry bro, fluff /= the game. Space Marines can't kill orks in melee because space marines are medium shooting infantry, not death spewing killing machines of the god-whatever. What do you want for 15 ppm?

The Eldar are imbalanced because GW's rules team are less informed as to the state of game balance than the 14 year olds they market to. They don't seem to remember their own rules half the time-heck, they'd probably list poison weapons as a counter to the new WK and would be confused if you told them it's immune to them.

Their game balance is based partially on how fluffy armies did duking it out on the 'Eavy metal team's table and partially on the quarterly financials.

Oh look, Q4's coming up and all of a sudden the two top selling armies are getting updates back to back containing massive formations that require existing players to purchase a bunch of historically less popular models to gain game breaking advantages. WHAT A COINCIDENCE.

IMO there are a few factors in play that are causing imbalance.

1) Mistakes; these are things like the 6 result for Str D weapons and stomps, waveserpent shields from last edition, 360 degree baleflamer from last edition, rerollable 2+ invulnerable saves, invisibility, etc. These are just horrible rules choices where these units start ignoring entire sections of the rule book due to their own rules. This is a design mistake as then everything else in the game is no longer properly costed as their rules have been ignored by these. Str D and the Stomp table are by far and away the worst culprits in the game right now followed distantly by invisibility.

2) Perceived under or over costing; this is actually the most common problem. This is where one unit or army is obvious in it's use and execution while another is not obvious how to use. This is perfectly summed up in the "Tau are OP" while "SM are weak". If you actually look at the results of GTs and even RTTs you will quickly see that SM vastly outperform Tau. The reason people tend to think Tau are so strong is the synergy units and effects are clearly stated in their book and their use is obvious; create distance and shoot. SM are actually an extremely hard army to play well but their tactical flexibility pays dividends in tournament settings. These are what I refer to as casual stompers, lists such a Tau broadside spam, CWE scatbike spam, Chaos Daemons screamer star, etc. which will decimate an inexperienced or unprepared player but a player that has seen it before and comes prepared will usually win the game. This is the vast majority of people's experiences and the source of most of the calls of OP on forums and in game stores. It is also an unfortunate consequence to allowing so much freedom in list building choices.

3) Game Designers are not necessarily competitive players; as far as I can tell GW's rules writers do not attend GTs anymore at all. Why this is a problem is that they seem to just look at the damage a unit can inflict without considering whether it can get into range or get a charge off. This creates vastly overpriced units like possessed and berzerkers when compared to things like chaos bikers and khorne hounds. They also have a bad tendency to cost number of shots and stats as if having 1 model/unit do the same damage as 2 models/units should cost the same as 2 models/units...that is ridiculous as 1 model/unit is always worse than 2 models/units due to durability, scoring, and various weapon rules. They are finally starting to figure some of this out when you look at the skitarii and CWE codexes where the "sarges" are not costed like 2 models for +1 attack ??? and the melee/short range shooting units have various rules to help with mobility (scout, infiltrate, +3" to movement and charges, etc.). From a design standpoint there has actually been a lot of positives in the new codexes. Unfortunately there are a lot of legacy bad choices and some pricing mistakes.

I like how you perceive Tau as a powerhouse codex, yet no mention of Necrons in this debate.

 krodarklorr wrote:
I like how you perceive Tau as a powerhouse codex, yet no mention of Necrons in this debate.

It goes without saying.

 DaKKaLAnce wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:
I like how you perceive Tau as a powerhouse codex, yet no mention of Necrons in this debate.

It goes without saying.

True enough, I suppose.

The whole purpose of a points system is to make it so that both sides bring relatively even armies to fight each other. Sure you can have really strong units, but you should really pay a big cost for them. I honestly couldn't care less if space Marines suddenly had the worst stats in the game, and the eldar suddenly gained the ability to shoot D rays out of their eyes. All I care about is that the points cost reflect both of them fairly.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
the eldar suddenly gained the ability to shoot D rays out of their eyes.

I like this idea.

Is the fluff the reason a Ravenwing biker is the same points as a Scatbiker?

 krodarklorr wrote:
I like how you perceive Tau as a powerhouse codex, yet no mention of Necrons in this debate.

That's because 7e Necrons are so weak. They need serious buffage if they seriously expect to get rid of all the vermin that have infested the galaxy during their catnap.

Sleeping for untold millenia and then not being able to grab a cup of coffee when you finally do wake up? I would be off my game too.

If you want to represent an army that's way ahead of the others, make them powerful, but also make them way more expensive. So you'd be fighting fewer, tougher guys.
But that would mean selling less.
So instead we get hordes of scatter bikes and space marine cannon fodder.

Tau is an unbalanced army. They dominate the shooting phase to a degree that some armies or matchups get really hard countered. This leads to hurt feelings and the lingering sentiment that Tau are "overpowered" - even though in general they aren't.

the_scotsman wrote:


The Eldar are imbalanced because GW's rules team are less informed as to the state of game balance than the 14 year olds they market to. They don't seem to remember their own rules half the time-heck, they'd probably list poison weapons as a counter to the new WK and would be confused if you told them it's immune to them.

Their game balance is based partially on how fluffy armies did duking it out on the 'Eavy metal team's table and partially on the quarterly financials.

Oh look, Q4's coming up and all of a sudden the two top selling armies are getting updates back to back containing massive formations that require existing players to purchase a bunch of historically less popular models to gain game breaking advantages. WHAT A COINCIDENCE.

This deserves to be repeated.

This reasoning would only work if the number of players would be as rare as the race in the setting - in a meta of 20 players, only 1 should be playing Eldar, but it's more realistic to see 5-6 or even more of them. So, that wouldn't work.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
The whole purpose of a points system is to make it so that both sides bring relatively even armies to fight each other. Sure you can have really strong units, but you should really pay a big cost for them. I honestly couldn't care less if space Marines suddenly had the worst stats in the game, and the eldar suddenly gained the ability to shoot D rays out of their eyes. All I care about is that the points cost reflect both of them fairly.

I agree with this. Eldar/Necrons should be the most technological advanced armies and pay premium for that - curiously, they don't.

 Vector Strike wrote:
This reasoning would only work if the number of players would be as rare as the race in the setting - in a meta of 20 players, only 1 should be playing Eldar, but it's more realistic to see 5-6 or even more of them. So, that wouldn't work.

Less, really. In a meta of 20 players 19 of them should be playing IG/Orks/Tyranids/chaos cultists, and one gets Necrons or Tau. One person in each city gets to play their choice of non-GK marine codex (loyalist or traitor) or SoB. One person in each country gets to to play their choice of Eldar/DE. One person in the world gets to play GK.

rollawaythestone wrote:
Tau is an unbalanced army. They dominate the shooting phase to a degree that some armies or matchups get really hard countered. This leads to hurt feelings and the lingering sentiment that Tau are "overpowered" - even though in general they aren't.

yeah it would be better for tau players to be a shoty army like IG. Tau were good because of 2 things. Attaching a buffmander to a riptide and eldar ally as battle brothers. Which says more about eldar then it say about tau.

One person in the world gets to play GK.

I am sure there is more then one thousand marine players. There could be 2, or maybe even 3 GK players around the world.

Stravo wrote:
Eldar are a dying race but still light years ahead of the Imperium in technology and psycher capability. Would that not suggest that all in all, their codex should be more powerful than most?

Yes, it does suggest that. The Eldar codex should be the second most brokenly powerful army in the setting on a per-model basis.

They should also have very, very high points costs per model to limit the number of models on the table to what would be, fluffily, reasonable. Which in real/fluff terms means no Guardian units.

By fluff, the only Craftworld Eldar anyone not on a Craftworld should ever see are Aspect Warriors, Seers and vehicle crews (Ulthwe, Alaitoc and Iyanden notwithstanding).

A 1:1 fluff/game accuracy ratio would be impossible, and frankly not even desirable. People already complain about armies like Adamantine Lance and Draigo-star; a game where a single Marine squad or handful of aspect warriors can hold their own against 1000 points of Orks or Guard would be fluffy but maddening. As an abstraction, the mechanics of having a fun match for both players should take precedence over fluff.

Points costs are definitely out of whack though. Space Marines can functionally be taken as a horde army these days, and they aren't very elite.

I'm the only GK player in a group of about 30 players. Sounds about right!

 Xenomancers wrote:
I'm the only GK player in a group of about 30 players. Sounds about right!

That's weird. It seems like half the people in my group have some kind of GK army. Some are allied forces, some are 4-5k point apoc armies but everyone seems to have something. Their best unit is too ridiculous and ugly for me to play them. Stand a baby carrier next to a wraithknight, there's really no comparison.

 Talys wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:
I like how you perceive Tau as a powerhouse codex, yet no mention of Necrons in this debate.

That's because 7e Necrons are so weak. They need serious buffage if they seriously expect to get rid of all the vermin that have infested the galaxy during their catnap.

Yeah, Gauss totally needs to be D in their next codex. Would seem fair.

There is no answer to this question because fluff does not fit in the tabletop game. Fluff-wise, the Space Marines have to fight against Orks on a 1:100 basis, which is clearly impossible in a tabletop game.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I'm the only GK player in a group of about 30 players. Sounds about right!

No, that's orders of magnitude too common. If you want to follow the fluff then GK should, at most, be played by one or two people in the entire world. Most players should never even know that the codex exists, and the few who do should know little more than rumors about how someone knows a guy who heard about a player with some silver space marines that had really powerful rules.