Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

You know maybe lets see some actual playtests to help decide what sucks and what doesn't?

http://imperatorguides.blogspot.ca/2015/10/stormsurge-pre-codex-field-testing.html

The internet is a bit of an echo chamber, and whoever screams the loudest sometime gets more attention than they should.

Martel732 wrote:
"Equally as unlikely, if not WAY more unlikely than Eldar ever being nerfed."

Eldar have never been nerfed, but there have been codices in the past that were as good or almost as good as Eldar. Your point is refuted.

It's absolutely not refuted at all. I said the entire game, not one codex. I also wasn't referring to Eldars past dexes, where it was never this far ahead of the entire game as it is right now, I'm referring to its current level of how far ahead it is and what it would take to bring the other dexes to that point - an absolute freaking rewrite for the MAJORITY of armies in this game. It's absurd, and FAR more unlikely than any number of things happening to Phil Kelly, including him getting hit by a bus, going into retirement or getting replaced, and the new writer for the Eldar Dex actually caring about more armies than just Eldar.

Ps not that I wish Kelly gets hit by a bus. Just clarifying that the number of possibilities that could result in the Eldar Dex being released from its current iron grip and being rebalanced seem far more likely than the alternative, from where I stand, which stands almost zero chance of happening.

Either way, BOTH are super unlikely, you have to agree. So it's a good thing in my opinion that they didn't decide to add 1 or 2 extra armies to"beyond ridiculous" tier, because I think we all know that the entire rest of the game ain't getting put there as well, and if they didn't, which they wouldn't, then Tau being buffed would only serve to unbalance the game further.

So I'm glad Tau didn't get buffed (from what I'm hearing, I'll reserve my personal judgement on the Dex until I've seen a bit more than week 1 theorycrafting).

The debate over balance seems silly to me. You pick an accessible point in the power scale and choose that as your balancing point. It doesn't matter where that point is. What matters, though is accessibility. Since Codex Eldar can't be balanced around Sisters, the only choice I see is to go up.

Wouldn't the most accessible point be closest to where the majority already sit and would only require tweaks to achieve, rather than the massively insane outlier in the upwards direction that would require entire rewrites for 90% of the game?

Shuppet,
1) the post you referenced isn't me. You do realize that, right?
So that makes everything you posted in regards to myself, false. But if you get mixed up that's understandable. Still, suggesting someone else's argument is mine is....not a strawman I guess?

2) your original claim that the opposition to your idea of eldar being nerfed is a strawman. Nobody is claiming balance is being thrown out the window, you are claiming the other side said that. If you can quote where everyone is saying balance needs to be thrown out the window and everything must be op, and if you can quote me saying that, I'll gladly retract it.

3) you were arguing that eldar being nerfed is more realistic than every other army being buffed. Hence your argument was not that buffing weaker codexes would be bad or anything, but that it's unlikely to happen. 3 links to point 4.

4) I'll explain it to you. You have it backwards, which is probably leading to your confusion.
Tau are a relatively new codex and received very minor changes. Mainly new units and formations.
Eldar necrons and marines are even newer dexes. They are unlikely to receive major changes if the tau, an older dex, did not.
Even older codexes might receive a change, or at the very least new units that will buff them or formations worth taking that might up them in strength.

5) I must admit, you lost me there.

All I'm saying is that when the new codex released for eldar, many people thought that they would get nerfed. The most recent dexes were, mostly, much weaker and it was believed gw was going to swing that way. They did not, and the overall codex got s huge boost in power.

So, your original claim that eldar getting brought in line being the realistic belief is absurd. We had a moment where they were the best faction in the game, many newer dexes were becoming weaker, and they still received a buff. To think they will be nerfed now, when most of the newer dexes are stronger than previously, seems to me to be unrealistic.

Da, a traditionally terrible codex, is now great. That inspires hope that maybe the other bad dexes will get fixed. But I have no hope at all that marines necrons or eldar will get nerfed. Especially eldar.

Akiasura wrote:
Shuppet,
1) the post you referenced isn't me. You do realize that, right?
So that makes everything you posted in regards to myself, false. But if you get mixed up that's understandable. Still, suggesting someone else's argument is mine is....not a strawman I guess?

Where? Can you please quote me where I referenced the post that wasn't yours, I just went and double checked my post and while you may be right, it was a big post and it's possible I thought you said something someone else said, it's a big thread, you have similar names, and I have avatars turned off but I'm pretty sure I responded to you each time, can you show me the bit where I didn't?

Da, a traditionally terrible codex, is now great. That inspires hope that maybe the other bad dexes will get fixed. But I have no hope at all that marines necrons or eldar will get nerfed. Especially eldar.

Look I don't want to keep arguing with you because I actually agree with everything you've said, for some reason you quoted me as though I disagree with it all which I really don't understand. I share your perspectives dude, I think everyone should be buffed to the more capable level dexes. I just don't think that we should be disappointed when Tau isnt buffed to Eldars level, a level that makes even good dexes look pitiful, a level that doesn't even let the weaker ones play. I have no idea why you said I said all this stuff disagreeing with low tier dexes getting buffed which I never even insinuated, and that's why I found your incorrect and overusage of the word strawman hilarious ironic... You basically invented an entire argument for me in a debate I hadn't entered, one that if I was to enter, I would SHARE ALL YOUR POINTS AND AGREE WITH YOU! When discussing dexes below Tau and the like we have a common perspective... I don't know if you just completely misunderstood what I was saying and this was just a misunderstanding on how you thought I felt about the issue, but you literally HAD to invent a perspective for me here to make that post even close to working for you, and regardless of what you respond to this with its something you and I both know, and something you can take away and think about how it may come across when you do this and then on top of it spam the word strawman...

Per a Codex update has never nerfed CWE, therefore the odds are lower that they will be nerfed than every single other book in the game will be brought up to their level.

If I roll a d6 5 times, and never get a 6, the *frequency* of rolling a 6 is 0, but the *probability* is 1/6.

There have been, what, 5 or so Eldar books? That means it was tested 4 times? If it were random, that's a 25% chance of happening. If you have 4 or more factions, you're likely to have at least one that fits that pattern, even if the choices were random.

4 binary events all going the same way is suggestive, but not very strongly.

Add to that that most updated dexes for most factions tend to be stronger than the previous one (5e dexes in 6e tended to lose to 6e dexes), and he predictive power is even worse.

With Eldar being so OP, its kind of a one-of-a-kind dex. So what are the odds of every single other (20-ish factions) book gets buffed to CWE levels? If it were even odds, we'd be looking at 2^20th, which is less than 1 in a million (literally). But its not likely even odds. If going by frequency, the CWE book is what, 5% of current books? That probability is truly tiny.

You're seeing 4 or so events that seem to line up, and ignore the event occurring in any other line, and taking the implication of that as a hard, irrefutable fact. And so you see any theory that requires the 5th event to buck the trend as impossible.

Akiasura wrote:


So, your original claim that eldar getting brought in line being the realistic belief is absurd.

Never once said it was likely. I said it's NEVER going to happen. Quote me saying that I think it could happen. I think it SHOULD happen. I know it won't however.

You know what else is just as absurd however, thinking every other Dex will be buffed to Eldars level while Eldar remains unchanged, or that if by some miracle (a miracle even GREATER than Eldar being nerfed), all the dexes DO get buffed to Eldars level - why in the hell do you think the person behind the recent Eldar dexes would let that happen to his powr level advantage, and not just buff the next Eldar Dex even further as well? Which would put us right back to square one.


And you know what, knowing that that is 100 to 1 odds at least against either these things happening, it's irrelevant which side you sit on, and which one is more likely to happen, neither of them are, so it's a good thing Tau was released as it is, and we didn't throw a random codex or two in with Eldar, leaving the entire rest of the game even worse off, we balance around the majority, not the outlier. Easy.

Plus, wasn't their 4th (or was it 5th) codex that not OP at all?

For over half of 6th, they were bad. When I started, CW Eldar was one of the armies that really appealed to me, but people kept warning me away from them. They had some shenanigans and some good options, but as a whole, they were bad (I'm glad I started as SM first, but for other reasons).

7th ed also hurt CWE, but not enough to bring the 6e book down to reasonable levels.

Bharring wrote:
Per a Codex update has never nerfed CWE, therefore the odds are lower that they will be nerfed than every single other book in the game will be brought up to their level.

If I roll a d6 5 times, and never get a 6, the *frequency* of rolling a 6 is 0, but the *probability* is 1/6.

There have been, what, 5 or so Eldar books? That means it was tested 4 times? If it were random, that's a 25% chance of happening. If you have 4 or more factions, you're likely to have at least one that fits that pattern, even if the choices were random.

4 binary events all going the same way is suggestive, but not very strongly.

Add to that that most updated dexes for most factions tend to be stronger than the previous one (5e dexes in 6e tended to lose to 6e dexes), and he predictive power is even worse.

With Eldar being so OP, its kind of a one-of-a-kind dex. So what are the odds of every single other (20-ish factions) book gets buffed to CWE levels? If it were even odds, we'd be looking at 2^20th, which is less than 1 in a million (literally). But its not likely even odds. If going by frequency, the CWE book is what, 5% of current books? That probability is truly tiny.

You're seeing 4 or so events that seem to line up, and ignore the event occurring in any other line, and taking the implication of that as a hard, irrefutable fact. And so you see any theory that requires the 5th event to buck the trend as impossible.

Well said, add to this, the fact that even if they are right, and Eldar is never nerfed again - it doesn't change the fact that every other Dex being put on that level isn't going to happen either (hell logic has it as exponentially less likely to happen), and throwing 1 or two other random dexes into the mix so that we have another year of TauDar master race, is NOT a good change. I'd rather GW just ruined every other army's matches against Eldar, instead of ruining every army's matches Eldar AND Tau

Shuppet,
The main point in contention seems to be that it's much more likely that weaker dexes will be buffed than eldar receiving a nerf.
Both are relatively unlikely, but eldar getting nerfed seems to me to be the more unlikely of the two. That's all I was debating.

And again, I'm not saying buffed to eldar levels. I'm saying buffed to tau levels. Maybe Martel said that, but I did not. Our names don't even start with the same letter, and neither of us have avatars.

Bharring,
Your example falls flat because a die roll is random, codex design is not (though it may seem that way). If eldar have never once been nerfed, than we can say it's extremely unlikely to happen. If chaos has only been buffed one time, then we can say while it's unlikely to happen, it's probably more likely to happen than eldar getting nerfed.

Co'tar,
The eldar dex was weaker, briefly, due to an edition change that made their army weaker (skimmers weren't great and cheap transports were king).
At no point in 40k has a codex release saw eldar drop in power. Even then, they were never bottom of the barrel bad.

The only problem with buffing to Tau levels is that Eldar is still an outlier. If everyone is at Eldar level, there are no outliers.

Once the bar is set, the bar is set. The Eldar have set the bar, no matter how much people want to deny it.

Martel732 wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Or you could pick a level and make everything go to that level. So buff bad armies like CSM and nerf OP armies.

We can't make Eldar go down. Eldar have never gone down and there's no reason to think they are getting a new codex anytime soon. In theory I agree with you, but I'm factoring in practicality here as well.

If we factor in practicality remember that GW does not do any customer research, has incomprehensible and secret release schedule, and barely playtests their rules. They could announce next month that there will be a new eldar codex for all we know. The next eldar codex could remain the same, become the new low, or be buffed to the point that they make scatterbikes look slow and weak.

Whenever we discuss what balance should be, it is all wishlisting. Balancing the game at too high of a power level presents the problem that the game does not scale well. The game does not have any way to increase the armour of models beyond a 2+ save, which works as it was intended to against small arms fire. The problem is that power creep has resulted in a plethora of AP 1 and 2 available at a cheap cost, rendering models like terminators useless. Even worse, once the game started pushing past strength 10 in normal games, there is no way to save against a D weapon. This results in games where models are removed quickly, which makes for quick games, but feels relatively unrewarding as your only tactic is "don't get hit". Balancing the entire game towards a lower power level means that tabling your opponent becomes more difficult, thus making strategy and objectives more important. Tabling should be something that is a rare occurrence, not the go to strategy.

If GW could follow a single design philosophy for an entire codex update cycle or update all codexes (does anyone know the proper plural of codex?) simultaneously, balancing them towards a single power level, that would be nice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
The only problem with buffing to Tau levels is that Eldar is still an outlier. If everyone is at Eldar level, there are no outliers.

Once the bar is set, the bar is set. The Eldar have set the bar, no matter how much people want to deny it.

Eldar could be nerfed to Tau levels. It could be done, despite your claims on the contrary.

 the Signless wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Or you could pick a level and make everything go to that level. So buff bad armies like CSM and nerf OP armies.

We can't make Eldar go down. Eldar have never gone down and there's no reason to think they are getting a new codex anytime soon. In theory I agree with you, but I'm factoring in practicality here as well.

If we factor in practicality remember that GW does not do any customer research, has incomprehensible and secret release schedule, and barely playtests their rules. They could announce next month that there will be a new eldar codex for all we know. The next eldar codex could remain the same, become the new low, or be buffed to the point that they make scatterbikes look slow and weak.

Whenever we discuss what balance should be, it is all wishlisting. Balancing the game at too high of a power level presents the problem that the game does not scale well. The game does not have any way to increase the armour of models beyond a 2+ save, which works as it was intended to against small arms fire. The problem is that power creep has resulted in a plethora of AP 1 and 2 available at a cheap cost, rendering models like terminators useless. Even worse, once the game started pushing past strength 10 in normal games, there is no way to save against a D weapon. This results in games where models are removed quickly, which makes for quick games, but feels relatively unrewarding as your only tactic is "don't get hit". Balancing the entire game towards a lower power level means that tabling your opponent becomes more difficult, thus making strategy and objectives more important. Tabling should be something that is a rare occurrence, not the go to strategy.

If GW could follow a single design philosophy for an entire codex update cycle or update all codexes (does anyone know the proper plural of codex?) simultaneously, balancing them towards a single power level, that would be nice.

Fair enough. Especially important since we are tethered to the D6 and therefore, there are only five levels of armor in the game. All of which are ignored on the cheap by many lists.

Akiasura wrote:
Shuppet,

And again, I'm not saying buffed to eldar levels. I'm saying buffed to tau levels. Maybe Martel said that, but I did not. Our names don't even start with the same letter, and neither of us have avatars.

Sure so then why did you start arguing with me about then about it? And by "it" I mean specifically you quoting me saying it shouldn't be buffed to Eldar levels and starting arguing with me about how all the lower tiers deserve to be buffed to Tau's current level while accusing me of a strawman fallacy? That's great, I agree with all hat gak about buffing the dexes below Tau, and never said otherwise, so don't try shift it on to Martel, I'm responding solely to the big arguments YOU put forth while accusing me of "strawman",

And my response is "I agree". So I'm asking, how exactly is my statement about Eldar that you quoted and specifically labelled as such, a strawman? How is you inventing this big narrative for me about not wanting low tiers buffed not one? And exactly where is the text that I addressed to you that was referring a Martel post and not one of yours?

Answering this with "I'm not saying they should be buffed to Eldars level" blah blah blah, isn't a valid response. I know you aren't saying this, I only mention it to defend and clarifying what my only statement was seeing as you accused me of much more.

Aki,
Of course they are not truly random. But they are unknown events. Both being more powerful and not have probabilities. To claim 4/4 events resolving the same way means the probability of the other way is nearly 0 has very little backing. That was the whole point. We can't know the true mean, but 4/4 going the same way has a 25% chance of occurring even if the true mean is 50%. So it is very, very much not conclusive, after 4 events, that the true mean is past 50/50.

You're arguing that the true mean is lower than the odds of *every* book being released at the 7e CWE book. That has happened once. How many total army lists has 40K produced over the years? Let's go with 50 (I'm sure the real number is higher). So the CWE level has a frequency of 1/50. What are the odds, then, of all 20-ish books being released that way? It'd not hard. (1/50)^19. Mindbogglingly small.

The bulk of any reasonable confidence interval will put the event with 0 for 4 frequency far above the confidence interval around the (1/50)^19th thing. We have a lot of evidence that CWE level books are improbabpe, but a comparatively tiny amount of evidence showing that CWE will get nerfed.

Each are unlikely in the near future, but one requires one event not seen in a tiny sample, and the other requires 20 events seen only once in a large sample.

"Eldar could be nerfed to Tau levels. It could be done, despite your claims on the contrary."

Theoretically possible, but given the recent release of their book, and the past history of Eldar books, I have no reason to think that this would ever happen.

If we are rewriting everything, the d6 is out in my book anyway and then all bets are off.

Martel732 wrote:
"Eldar could be nerfed to Tau levels. It could be done, despite your claims on the contrary."

Theoretically possible, but given the recent release of their book, and the past history of Eldar books, I have no reason to think that this would ever happen.

If we are rewriting everything, the d6 is out in my book anyway and then all bets are off.

Just like given everything we know and the past history of the game, we know that it's THEORETICALLY possible they could give an in depth rewrite every single codex in the game to put them on Eldars level and we'd suddenly, but it's never been done, and I have even less reason to think this would happen, especially since it requires like 20 unlikely rewrites instead of just one,

So it's a good thing that Tau alone didn't get random stupid buffs to be on Eldar levels.

Don't forget it's more than just Eldar. DA, Necron, and vanilla marines are often almost as hard to deal with for the have-nots. If I wanted to balance around necrons instead would it suddenly be okay?

You have to reach 50% for balancing that way on one additional thing becomes productive.

Whether that 50% is by frequency on the table or options is certainly an option.

You certainly prefer the former. Its all about the winner at the top table to you (and many others).

I, and others, much prefer the other way. We want the game to be more than 'WK vs Skyhammer' rolloffs.

The former is best served by having a single unit be the absolute best. Halve the WK's points and double the stats, and you've entirely balanced the former in a bitterly competitive meta. But I don't want to play WKs.

The latter is harder, but makes the game a lot more fun.

(Also, what kind of vast experience is informing the Eldar-are-always-buffed theory? There exist only 4 or so. You're either claiming that is a lot, or your claim is incorrect.)

Bharring wrote:
If everyone is BA, or new Tau, then things aren't unbalanced.

Martel732 wrote:
If everyone is the Eldar, then things aren't complicated and not unbalanced.

Chess is unbalanced since it has a turn order, with the advantage always to the white player who plays first. Every game that is turned based is inherently unbalanced, perfectly symmetrical turn based games are possibly more unbalanced than asymmetrical turn based games.

Out of 762,565 games over 541 years of chess.
White wins 37.56%
Black wins 27.68%
Drawn 34.75%
http://www.chessgames.com/chessstats.html

 SHUPPET wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
Shuppet,

And again, I'm not saying buffed to eldar levels. I'm saying buffed to tau levels. Maybe Martel said that, but I did not. Our names don't even start with the same letter, and neither of us have avatars.

Sure so then why did you start arguing with me about then about it? And by "it" I mean specifically you quoting me saying it shouldn't be buffed to Eldar levels and starting arguing with me about how all the lower tiers deserve to be buffed to Tau's current level while accusing me of a strawman fallacy? That's great, I agree with all hat gak about buffing the dexes below Tau, and never said otherwise, so don't try shift it on to Martel, I'm responding solely to the big arguments YOU put forth while accusing me of "strawman",

And my response is "I agree". So I'm asking, how exactly is my statement about Eldar that you quoted and specifically labelled as such, a strawman? How is you inventing this big narrative for me about not wanting low tiers buffed not one? And exactly where is the text that I addressed to you that was referring a Martel post and not one of yours?

Answering this with "I'm not saying they should be buffed to Eldars level" blah blah blah, isn't a valid response. I know you aren't saying this, I only mention it to defend and clarifying what my only statement was seeing as you accused me of much more.

I really have no idea what you're talking about here.
Like...at all.
Are you asking why I accused you of a strawman? You attributed martels argument as mine and argued against it when speaking directly to me. You mentioned balance being thrown out the window when nobody mentioned that.
If you mix up arguments accidentally, that's fine, it happens. But you did reference another posters argument while responding to me directly.
Honestly I don't even know why it matters if you agree.

Again, we aren't arguing about what would be nice to happen, we are discussing which is more likely.

Bharring,
Again, probability assumes everything has an equal chance to happen and no intelligence is being thrown into the mix. It's why it's used for things like to hit rolls, genetics, but not used in things like predicting who will win in elections (well...it shouldn't be). You can't say there are 6 choices in the democratic primaries, so everyone has a 1/6 chance of winning.
The same is true here.
Eldar have, never once been nerfed. An independent has not won a recent presidential election in America. Could either event happen? Sure. Is it likely to? No.
Other codexes have been buffed and roughly equal in power at least once in their lifetime. I can't think of a dex that hasn't been good at least one time in its history. To me, 1 time, even if it's only one time out of many events, is greater than 0 times, even if the events are from a small pool (which p, to be fair, each codex looked at individually is).

It's like if marine players said, "our codex is probably going to be mid to upper mid tier with 1-2 builds that are op". I'd agree with that, since that is usually what happens to the marine codex. Sure, there have been what, roughly 5 codexes for marines? But it's usually what happens for the vanilla marines.

Edit, it's also how in you present the data.
I could say that 100% of eldar codexes have never contained nerfs. Or, over 15 years of gaming the eldar have never had a bad codex release. Those sound a lot better than 4.
But if 4 is all we have to go on, and the 4 supports they won't get nerfed (especially the 6th to 7th transition), then it's somewhat safe to assume they won't get nerfed again.

Perfect balance is practically impossible. But that doesn't mean we can't hope for better.

Kinda like a perfectly straight clothesline is not possible, but I wouldnt want to make it / leave it with so much slack the middle touches the ground.

Bharring wrote:
Perfect balance is practically impossible. But that doesn't mean we can't hope for better.

Kinda like a perfectly straight clothesline is not possible, but I wouldnt want to make it / leave it with so much slack the middle touches the ground.

No question the game should be balanced better, but arguing for a fully symmetrical game doesn't lead to a better game. I believe that asymmetrical games are better balanced for turned based games than symmetrical games.

Back on topic, I've been reading some games about the Stormsurge and it seems to be far more potent than we may have first thought. If the shield generator and early warning override remain support systems and the Stormsurge has access to them, it will be a major threat.

 Nilok wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Perfect balance is practically impossible. But that doesn't mean we can't hope for better.

Kinda like a perfectly straight clothesline is not possible, but I wouldnt want to make it / leave it with so much slack the middle touches the ground.

No question the game should be balanced better, but arguing for a fully symmetrical game doesn't lead to a better game. I believe that asymmetrical games are better balanced for turned based games than symmetrical games.

Back on topic, I've been reading some games about the Stormsurge and it seems to be far more potent than we may have first thought. If the shield generator and early warning override remain support systems and the Stormsurge has access to them, it will be a major threat.

This^. I don't know why people are so down on it. (with Stabilizing anchors) 2 Str 10/AP2 Large blasts shooting at a deep striking deathstar with Early Warning Override is going to do some serious damage. Add in 8D6 Str5/Ap5 shots (average of 24), 4 Str 8/AP1 missies (single use), and potentially 2 str 4/AP5 Large blast, barrage, ignore cover shots (with airburst fragmentation projector). This is a crazy amount of damage to put out every single turn. All at different targets!

notredameguy10 wrote:


This^. I don't know why people are so down on it. (with Stabilizing anchors) 2 Str 10/AP2 Large blasts shooting at a deep striking deathstar with Early Warning Override is going to do some serious damage. Add in 8D6 Str5/Ap5 shots (average of 24), 4 Str 8/AP1 missies (single use), and potentially 2 str 4/AP5 Large blast, barrage, ignore cover shots (with airburst fragmentation projector). This is a crazy amount of damage to put out every single turn. All at different targets!

Correction: Early Warning Override provides Interceptor, which is used in the enemy's movement phase. The Stabilization anchors benefit is limited to the tau player's shooting phase. Thus, you're getting 1 10/2 Large Blast at the deepstrikeing deathstar BEFORE they get a chance to shoot or 2 of 'em AFTER they get a chance to shoot.

I generally agree with your sentiment, though - Stormsurges have a lot of firepower, most of that firepower has sufficient range to be effective across almost the entirety of the board, and specialized firepower isn't wasted on inappropriate targets (Sure, Hammerhead, fire those SMS at the Landraider. That'll help. ).

They aren't terribly reliable Anti-Knight, though, and utilizing an EWO is a greater tradeoff for the Stormsurge than the "Do I fire now, or fire later with ML support" decision made by most Tau units.

 Unusual Suspect wrote:

notredameguy10 wrote:


This^. I don't know why people are so down on it. (with Stabilizing anchors) 2 Str 10/AP2 Large blasts shooting at a deep striking deathstar with Early Warning Override is going to do some serious damage. Add in 8D6 Str5/Ap5 shots (average of 24), 4 Str 8/AP1 missies (single use), and potentially 2 str 4/AP5 Large blast, barrage, ignore cover shots (with airburst fragmentation projector). This is a crazy amount of damage to put out every single turn. All at different targets!

Correction: Early Warning Override provides Interceptor, which is used in the enemy's movement phase. The Stabilization anchors benefit is limited to the tau player's shooting phase. Thus, you're getting 1 10/2 Large Blast at the deepstrikeing deathstar BEFORE they get a chance to shoot or 2 of 'em AFTER they get a chance to shoot.

I generally agree with your sentiment, though - Stormsurges have a lot of firepower, most of that firepower has sufficient range to be effective across almost the entirety of the board, and specialized firepower isn't wasted on inappropriate targets (Sure, Hammerhead, fire those SMS at the Landraider. That'll help. ).

They aren't terribly reliable Anti-Knight, though, and utilizing an EWO is a greater tradeoff for the Stormsurge than the "Do I fire now, or fire later with ML support" decision made by most Tau units.

Read the rules on the Stormsurge.
It states that in your Shooting Phase and each subsequent Shooting Phases while the Stormsurge has its Stabilizers deployed can fire twice.

I saw the Storm Surge model painted up in GW shop window today.

What a fething joke! It's open topped and has two little Tau sitting there on top, and has two robot heads. What's that about?

It looks like the designer blew a standard Crisis Suit up by four times and stuck some random bits of equipment off other Tau models on the hull to complete the model.

£90!?!?! WTF????!!1!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I saw the Storm Surge model painted up in GW shop window today.

What a fething joke! It's open topped and has two little Tau sitting there on top, and has two robot heads. What's that about?

It's a Ballistic Suit, not a Crisis Suit.

It's best to not think of it as a frontline piece but instead a walking artillery platform.

Whatever, it's a load of crap. To be fair, it's not as embarrassing as the Tau flyer models.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Whatever, it's a load of crap. To be fair, it's not as embarrassing as the Tau flyer models.

What is? The fact that it's open-topped?

The Basilisk, Hydra, and Wyvern would all like a word with you then.