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My Tactical marines have done surprisingly good in combat at times. I wouldn't discount them so easily.

I have also seen Avatars die to Gretchin overwatch.

 War Kitten wrote:
My Tactical marines have done surprisingly good in combat at times. I wouldn't discount them so easily.

Statistically, they are inferior to guardsmen if all guardsmen could get into combat.

I'm aware of that fact Martel. I'm just stating that I've had several instances where my Tactical Marines have won combats that they really shouldn't have. Just because they are the baseline unit for comparisons in many cases doesn't mean they should be discounted

This is why the Fire Emblem community has a phrase: PEMN. It stands for "Personal Experience Means Nothing". It is required when people go into a thread (or create a new one) defending bad characters

That's nice.

Regardless, experience matters a lot if you intend to win anything other than an argument on a web forum.

Ok then. I'll go away now. Sorry then

 War Kitten wrote:
Ok then. I'll go away now. Sorry then

Please don't.

Real-life experiences not conforming exactly to theoretical models is more common than not.

If your Tacs do fine in combat, it might be relevant to your own use and your meta. Which means we get to learn something.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 War Kitten wrote:
Ok then. I'll go away now. Sorry then

Please don't.

Real-life experiences not conforming exactly to theoretical models is more common than not.

If your Tacs do fine in combat, it might be relevant to your own use and your meta. Which means we get to learn something.

Not in science, though I can easily see it being true in any type of social model (politics, economics...).
Regardless, personal experience only matters if it's
1) Relevant
2) Repeatable
because that usually indicates that something is not being accounted for in the "theoretical model", although I would strongly advise against calling mathhammer a model of any kind. It doesn't do anything but the simplest of probabilities. There is no standard deviation, which would give us a lot of information and explain why some people have great personal experiences with models and others perform poorly.

If your Tacs do well in combat, even without the personal story, it already tells us a few things that are most likely true about your meta
1) Your meta includes a lot of units that are shooty but awful at combat. Jetbikes, Dire Avengers, Tau everything, Guardsmen. There are units that break even or lose to Tacs in combat, they just aren't common or tacs are too slow and usually better off rapid firing due to plasma.
2) Your meta lacks things that are good at CC if they routinely do well. Wraiths, TWC, things of that nature are most likely absent.
3) Your Tac build could include a more CC loadout. Flamers/melta over plasma, CTs that help with assault, and possibly a good weapon on the sarge
4) You roll above average.
5) Your enemy rolls below average (like the time a WK whiffed a mutilator).

I'm not saying all of these are true, but from math hammer we can deduce that it's quite possible that a few of these are true and are getting glossed over. In this game, it's very rare that math hammer ends up being completely wrong, since the game is relatively straight forward and simple in terms of strategy. You never see something like "Okay, you activate and push this guy. Now you activate and use enrage. Now you activate and cast leash and feat. Now you activate and cast paralytic aura. Now you activate and cast rush. Now my really slow unit has +7 speed, +3 to hit and +2 to damage! " It's more "Okay, you get a re-roll" or "You re-roll 1's". Some armies do more, like Tau or formations, and those are quickly becoming abused and hard to account for (do we include them in the math? How often?).

There is a reason why every game discussion revolves around leaving personal experiences out of it. It's not unique to 40k. Personal experiences might cause us to re-look at numbers to see what was missed, but they aren't the key point in a discussion unless numbers are absent for some reason.


I'm not sure what I'm supposed to learn if a Gretchin overwatch kills an Avatar (was it on full wounds?) because the odds of that occurring are low enough where I'm likely never going to see it again personally. To Ashirya, how many times has gretchin overwatch killed an Avatar? I'll be surprised if it's more than 2 unless she's a very frequent player.

@Aki: Give me the dice. I will break your feeble science facts with my family's curse and my inability to roll 1's & 2's almost exclusively when playing Marines!
(I once got booted out of my Finite class for single-handedly skewing the entire classes results in a dice rolling experiment. )

I also tend to roll very poorly. My long fangs in 5th were known for having the worst aim and being forever drunk. I was lucky if I hit 1/3rd of the time with them.

That doesn't mean they were a bad unit however. It just means I didn't use them. I would still have recommended them to everyone playing SW in that edition.

@ Experiment : have you been building dice towers to render proper tribute to Tzeentch?

Only on my opponents turn

As it turns out, guardsmen AREN'T better in CC because you very rarely can get them all into CC. That's why the blob with axes works because you only need to get the axes in CC.

The real crime of tac marines is being way too generalist to the point of not being able to do anything well. Without a niche ability like bladestorm or Gauss, you are left trying to play the special weapon guessing game AND coughing up more points.

If tac marines could retroactively change their gear once the battle started, they'd be a lot more useful.

Tac marines deserve to have their combat knives recognised as part of their wargear.

So silly that it exists in fluff and models but not rules.

Akiasura wrote:
'm not sure what I'm supposed to learn if a Gretchin overwatch kills an Avatar (was it on full wounds?) because the odds of that occurring are low enough where I'm likely never going to see it again personally. To Ashirya, how many times has gretchin overwatch killed an Avatar? I'll be surprised if it's more than 2 unless she's a very frequent player.

It was on full wounds, and it only happened once, but it pretty much won the Ork player the game.

And nobody liked it beyond the initial laughs. We found it incredibly stupid that complete unpredictable randomess can so thoroughly screw someone over no matter how good they are.

That is yet another reason I find myself doing more computer gaming these days.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
'm not sure what I'm supposed to learn if a Gretchin overwatch kills an Avatar (was it on full wounds?) because the odds of that occurring are low enough where I'm likely never going to see it again personally. To Ashirya, how many times has gretchin overwatch killed an Avatar? I'll be surprised if it's more than 2 unless she's a very frequent player.

It was on full wounds, and it only happened once, but it pretty much won the Ork player the game.

And nobody liked it beyond the initial laughs. We found it incredibly stupid that complete unpredictable randomess can so thoroughly screw someone over no matter how good they are.

That is yet another reason I find myself doing more computer gaming these days.

I agree that it can be really annoying, especially since there isn't a whole lot you can do to mitigate that kind of fluke. Nothing reasonable anyway.

I really wish that 40k would move to a 2d6 system although it would become a long process to roll buckets of dice (80*2d6 for a big mob of boyz reaching CC? No thanks!). The bell curve that you get in games like WMH makes the luck factor a lot less, though it still comes up. It also gets you a target number to shoot for (usually you want a 6+ for whatever you are attempting, with 9+ being considered risky without boosting). In 40k it's a 3+, but you really want re-rolls or just buckets of numbers to force something to be closer to a statistical mean.

Very annoying. Then again, I get annoyed with games like X-Com and their RNG

nareik wrote:
Tac marines deserve to have their combat knives recognised as part of their wargear.

So silly that it exists in fluff and models but not rules.

No. no they don't.
If Loyalists get ccw's as part of their basic gear, then we may as well just go ahead an retcon Chaos Marines entirely, and re-release them instead as Chapter Tactics: Misunderstood Problem Marines.

Pistol/ccw option is literally the one and only thing Chaos Marines have left to them that can make them different, and potentially equal to those thieving Loyalist scum!

Yoyoyo wrote:
@ Experiment : have you been building dice towers to render proper tribute to Tzeentch?

I use blue & gold dice for my Tzeentch Daemons.

Oddly enough, whenever I play Daemons of any flavour, (except Nurgle 'cause screw Nurgle!), my dice are typically on fire - especially when rolling those basic 5++ saves. Yet whenever I play Marines of any flavour, suddenly my dice are cursed to never pass more than 30% of my armour saves. (and that's on a good day!)

It's obviously a part of Tzeentch's great plan, somehow...

I've also never once passed Cypher's old 4++ on 3D6 save. After failing it with a re-roll, my local store banned me from using the model again, as it was deemed too dangerous due to how everyone kept laughing until their sides hurt.

nareik wrote:
Tac marines deserve to have their combat knives recognised as part of their wargear.

So silly that it exists in fluff and models but not rules.

I'd oppose this since your now stepping on the tows of both chaos marines and space wolves.


Loyalist do have this option using the space shark chapter tactic from the IA books but at a heavy trade off.

Only stepping on the toes of space wolves and CSMs in regards to the fact that these factions marines actually remember how to use their combat knives after they graduate from scout school/wherever CSMs come from.

As I said, it is a fluff and modelling issue (not a game mechanic issue).

I think it really speaks of the problems that CSM have as a codex that one of the few perks they have over loyallists is that some remember how to use their combat knives (for a price).

CSMs deserve to be treated better than that and have a real perk, just as tactical marine basic equipment should match the fluff.

If tac marines were to get combat knives on their profile, I guess we could consider upgrading chainswords to AP5 (amongst other things).