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Earlier this month players cried really hard and prepared to throw all their toys out of
The crib at the sight of skyhammers incredibly cc mechanisms, and now the dark Angels have a very similar mechanic embedded into the darkshroud an already very solid vehicle.

And there isn't any debate about it shooting has gotten about as bad as it can get, shooting phases are where you earn your kills and make your points for most of the game. And you can pack some very nasty things in your shooting arsenal indeed that range from cheap and high volume to single shots of total devestation. It's very clear that shooting is powerful indeed and you don't need much in the way of game experience to see that.

My question is this: is a unit you can't stop from charging successfully, as well as overwatch, that can be taken in a reasonably small number (say three per army)is it at all overpowered? In a world where you can drop apocalypse blast plates of death, justice... death.. Would it really be bad? I view it as forcing players to take cc combat into consideration in army design as ignoring the guarantee that something will happen would be hard to do. Especially something that could be taken in conventional every day lists with relative ease. As stopping him with shooting alone while not impossible wouldn't be before he's probably destroyed lots of important things.

Your question doesn't exactly work in a vacuum. Is a unit of, say, gretchin being able to reach combat without being shot up first a problem? Maybe, but definitely less so than, say, TH+SS terminators.

I haven't really looked at the skyhammer yet, but it's basically a bunch of assault marines and devastators and the former get to assault the turn they deepstrike, right? I'm not super worried about it. Things like drop pod assaults are already nasty, beta striking/castling up are still probably the way to counter them, and assaulting after a deepstrike scatter is at least a little bit risky. But then, I also miss the days of assaulting out of outflank.

Shooting in general is definitely nastier than close combat though. If we saw a return to being able to assault out of non-moving transports and outflank and such, I suspect it would tone shooting down considerably as people would have more options for silencing guns a turn earlier.

Breaking something else doesn't fix something that's already broken.

I would rather ride a bike with one broken leg than with two!

 chrisrawr wrote:
Breaking something else doesn't fix something that's already broken.

I would rather ride a bike with one broken leg than with two!

Breaking everything makes it fair, though. The Eldar are a done deal. Any list that is not powered up to cope becomes a box of unless plastic.

Martel732 wrote:

 chrisrawr wrote:
Breaking something else doesn't fix something that's already broken.

I would rather ride a bike with one broken leg than with two!

Breaking everything makes it fair, though. The Eldar are a done deal. Any list that is not powered up to cope becomes a box of unless plastic.

It might make it "fair," (provided you work out the math to make sure that every army's most likely builds do essentially the same thing in the same situations regardless of whatever differentiations they have) but it doesn't necessarily make it fun or even interesting.

"My army is full of scatterbikes with skyhammer rules! Nothing is going to stand against me on the table!"

"Ha! You fool! My army has special rules that lets me take away most of your models in the deployment phase!"

"Is that so? I'll play you next game then. My new codex lets me declare victory as soon as my opponent presents his army list!"

"Oh yeah? Well I have a secret formation that specifically counters your new rule by letting me keep my list hidden!"

Trying to "balance" things through an arms race or by making everything equally ridiculous either turns into a game of "who gets first turn" or else leads to that imaginary combat thing from when you're a kid where your friend is immune to your imaginary gun because he has an imaginary force-field, so then you have to get an imaginary force-field nullifier, and so on.

The easiest solution to this problem is not to play against lists that are on a different power level than yours. Another option would be proposing rules *glances at the sign* to modify overpowered or underpowered rules to bring them into balance with one another.

Straight up if I want "its all broken so its fair" I'll play warmachine. And yes I do play warmachine.

What I want from warhammer is the ability to put an army of cool looking and fluffy gak on the table against a similar army and have a good game.

"Break it all so none of it is broken" does not lend itself well to that kind of game.

 Dakkamite wrote:
Straight up if I want "its all broken so its fair" I'll play warmachine. And yes I do play warmachine.

What I want from warhammer is the ability to put an army of cool looking and fluffy gak on the table against a similar army and have a good game.

"Break it all so none of it is broken" does not lend itself well to that kind of game.

You, my fine ork, just earned yourself an exalt.

I really think the leadership value in this game should be used more. If we had weapons that have modifiers for pinning then other shooting would be tamed down and used as a combined arms ideal, assault troops would have a better place in the game.

scitech wrote:
I really think the leadership value in this game should be used more. If we had weapons that have modifiers for pinning then other shooting would be tamed down and used as a combined arms ideal, assault troops would have a better place in the game.

and my poor orks would suck even more :(

The problem is this game is just Dakka = win. My best list i made for my orks is a list feature A LOT of dakka and very little assaulting. its boring to play and I hate it hence I don't use it anymore

The game is rapidly degenerating into one that comes down to who gets the first real shooting phase, i.e. your opponent's army is on the table and you get to shoot at them. It's balanced in the same way a coin toss is balanced, you either win or lose. Things simply aren't durable enough to survive the massive amounts of firepower that now exist in the game for more than a couple turns.

I usually win due to positioning and maelstorm. Some shooting is needed, generally, but it's not like "go shooty or go home". I've had good luck with all-out mellee CSM and IG too. It's funny but my ork lists are more shooty than IG lists

 Dakkamite wrote:
Straight up if I want "its all broken so its fair" I'll play warmachine. And yes I do play warmachine.

What I want from warhammer is the ability to put an army of cool looking and fluffy gak on the table against a similar army and have a good game.

"Break it all so none of it is broken" does not lend itself well to that kind of game.

GW disagrees with you. Even more so, they are only breaking select units for select armies. So what I propose is at least better than that.

Martel732 wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
Straight up if I want "its all broken so its fair" I'll play warmachine. And yes I do play warmachine.

What I want from warhammer is the ability to put an army of cool looking and fluffy gak on the table against a similar army and have a good game.

"Break it all so none of it is broken" does not lend itself well to that kind of game.

GW disagrees with you. Even more so, they are only breaking select units for select armies. So what I propose is at least better than that.

Or ban the select op-ness until GW releases stuff that makes it less op. Better solution already.

It's not all grim, we may be seeing a slight improvement on the situation.


7E is already a lot better than 6E (easier to get cover saves, can't overwatch when pinned, Move through cover applied on charges and stuff like that). With the latest releases we got:

- A formation that shuts down hard a gun line (skyhammer)
- A detachment whose only counter is a mobile assault with a bit of shooting to force jink, or an horde (Ravenwing)
- The immune to Overwatch rule has appeared in 2 different codices.
- The assault from deep strike rule is starting to appear here and there.
- A detachment whose main counter is heavy assault units (Decurion).

Sure there were also bad things:

- A detachment with full BS overwatch (Lion's blade)
- Weapons with inbuilt BS2 overwatch (Cognis weapons)
- A faction with absurdly mobile yet extremely shooty troops (Eldar)