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Martel732 wrote:
" It doesn't make them bad in comparison to the rest of the game as a whole, including the options that aren't taken in competitive contexts. "

But they're not even good then. Well-played BA and CSM can over run you pretty easily. You're paying a lot of points for marginal killing power. No one cares about AV 14 anymore.

What BA? What CSM?

Are 10 man chaos space marines squads trampling over those leeman russes?

Blood Angels devastator marines with lascannons?

 Traditio wrote:
Are 10 man chaos space marines squads trampling over those leeman russes?

You don't need to trample over them, you just ignore the LRBT. A LRBT might kill 1-2 MEQs per turn with average dice, assuming it never takes a penetrating hit and loses the ability to shoot for a turn (remember, the main gun can't fire snap shots), which means it's going to take the whole game to have a decent chance of killing the whole CSM squad. Camp on an objective and laugh at the LRBT. Or get in close and kill it in melee, where AV 10 is a fatal problem.

 Traditio wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" It doesn't make them bad in comparison to the rest of the game as a whole, including the options that aren't taken in competitive contexts. "

But they're not even good then. Well-played BA and CSM can over run you pretty easily. You're paying a lot of points for marginal killing power. No one cares about AV 14 anymore.

What BA? What CSM?

Are 10 man chaos space marines squads trampling over those leeman russes?

Blood Angels devastator marines with lascannons?

I don't think unit vs unit. I think list vs list. Both BA and CSM have access to cheap transports and deep striking melta. Imperial heavy weapons are sufficiently inefficient than when placed on an even more inefficient hull like the Russ then taking out the Rhinos becomes an issue. I don't use BA devs or ASM with jump packs, so I would never consider those units.

You know how something is bad?

Even if Thunderfire Cannons didn't exist, I still won't take 85 point Whirlwinds.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You know how something is bad?

Even if Thunderfire Cannons didn't exist, I still won't take 85 point Whirlwinds.

I fail to see how the fact that you personally would not take an 85 point whirlwind makes an 85 whirlwind bad.

 Traditio wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You know how something is bad?

Even if Thunderfire Cannons didn't exist, I still won't take 85 point Whirlwinds.

I fail to see how the fact that you personally would not take an 85 point whirlwind makes an 85 whirlwind bad.

Because they don't kill many Guardsmen or Marines for 85 points and you have to be reliant on a non-bad scatter?

How can you be this dense?

 Traditio wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You know how something is bad?

Even if Thunderfire Cannons didn't exist, I still won't take 85 point Whirlwinds.

I fail to see how the fact that you personally would not take an 85 point whirlwind makes an 85 whirlwind bad.

It means to him the Whirlwind is bad because it is overpriced.

And frankly I agree. Compared to other anti-infantry options it is severly undergunned. All it's really good at is forcing Guardsman out in the open to fall back if they are isolated.

A number of things:

What their faction is

Their spot in the FoC

Anything else in the same slot (for example, the very crowded Elites section in the Tyranids codex)

Anything else in a different slot in the FoC that performs a similar role to them. (Helbrute VS The Dinobots)

I generally dislike people saying something along the lines of "But that army can take something like this too for much cheaper!" and ignoring that, in the context of that army, it's filling a necessary niche while in this army it's also being buffed into the stratosphere. The only exception is if the unit is just good at everything (Wraithknights and Scatbikes are the biggest offenders).

Lol how did you guys all got baited into discussing why SM suff are not OP but actually bad. We all knew this was going to happen the moment Traditio opened this thread.

 oldzoggy wrote:
Lol how did you guys all got baited into discussing why SM suff are not OP but actually bad. We all knew this was going to happen the moment Traditio opened this thread.

Ah crap, I should have looked at the poster. This is what happens when I'm bored at 3am with insomnia.

That was pretty obvious when one of the choices was tactical marines.... I'm surprised it didn't specify tactical marines without grav.

Anyway, the poll is a total failure as the correct answer is:
You compare them firsts to other units within the army that they compete with and second to units that fulfill the same role in other armies.


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 Traditio wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You know how something is bad?

Even if Thunderfire Cannons didn't exist, I still won't take 85 point Whirlwinds.

I fail to see how the fact that you personally would not take an 85 point whirlwind makes an 85 whirlwind bad.

Whirlwinds are bad because they are worse than other marine heavy support choices and worse than other marine anti-infantry choices and worse than similar units in other codexes.

I think I'm playing a totally different game to some of you lot.

I pick units that make sense for the army, and play with them... whatever floats your boat I guess.

My short answer to the OP question is: "That depends". And if you ask me "But depends on what exactly?" the answer is, again: "That depends". To elaborate:

First step when trying to make any kind of meaningfull comparison is to determine the context AND goal of such comparison. And some answers that I can see in this thread make some silent axiom asumptions about the context of the possible answer, which bias or obscure the answer itself...
First an (obviously not complete) list of basic factors you have to consider, when defining the basis of your comparison:
1. "the local meta": this may be the tournament scene in you country, your typical local FLGS army structure or your single oponent army and playstyle, etc..

2. Typical scenario or set of scenarios that will be played with compared units/armies.

3. (this one was completely ommited in this thread at the time I'm writing this) Your typical TERRAIN style on which those scenarios are played.

4. The timeframe of your context game.

5. ...

Some examples of consequences of those few factors:

- if your local meta does not include Eldar or Tau players, then for all intents and purposes of your comparisons Wraithknights and Riptides simply do not exist and comparing anything to them is pointless. Or if you never play against Tyranids or Orks, then large blast weapons are not as crucial to you. One great example of a unit which strong points "depend" are Swoopin Hawks - up until grenades FAQ, they were praised as tank killers due to Haywire Grenades. But those same grenades are completely useless against Tyranids - in which case, against swarm builds, the amassed S3AP5 shots and secondary large blast grenades are important. And Poisoned weapons will be useless against an IG armoured list while they make your game against Nidzilla/MC heavy armies...

- some units will perform drastically different in Eternal War scenarios and Maelstrom scenarios.

- two extreme examples of terrain influence: if you play mainly on featurless flat tables or with minimum terrain, then barrage and other non-LOS special rules are point wastes and there is only slight differences between cavalry, beast, jump and jetpack unit types, they are all basically just fast. And CC units depend on 1st-2nd turn assault delivery capabilities. If you however, would set up your terrain with a table-wide LOS blocking wall in the middle, then your basic ground units are severly crippled, if not entirely useless. Usually, terrain will be something in-between those two extremes, but oddly enough, there are a lot of players that treat a completely flat table as "normal" and complain that 7th ed is "shooty edition" while simultanously treat maze-like, terrain heavy tables as an "unfair advantage" for assault-centric armies...

- if you are bound by tournament time restrictions, you will generally favour vechicles or MCs over multi-model squads, even if entire squad's usefull firepower depends heavily on a few non-basic weapon upgrades, or less numbered squads deriving their survivability/firepower from toughness/armour than from sheer model number...

Now, after considering all that different context factors, you can finally ask a question about the goal of comparison:

- is it a choice you have to make when choosing a faction you will play/collect/use as a basis for next tournament

- is it a choice of a unit you will include in your army for a given game

- is it an analysis focused on establishing ways of balancing games in your local environment, either by buffing/nerfing stats/rules; creating varied enough scenarios or setting up terrain to accomodate for army imbalances

- is it aimed at general internet disputes on how bad rules are at the moment and what should GW change in their game to achieve balance/community acceptance/financial succes/personal praise, whatever the current "flavour of the week" of such discussion/poll is...

- any other viable reason you may have at the moment..

Only after considering all such factors and assumptions you can try to establish your "reasonable mid-tier" units/weapons and sort all other in an underpowered-reasonable-overpowered order. Depending on the goal, there will be some obvious offenders, some garbage units, some overpriced and some underpriced but otherwise reasonable units. Some units/builds across current codexes are universal enough to fall into "generally overperforming" category in large enough number of common enough cases to define the "current golden standard" in a given context. And because there are hundreds of players from around the world here on dakka alone, with everyone falling into some kind of "typical local meta", you will never be able to establish an absolute "zero point standard" for the entire community at once and meet everyone's expectations, so you will always be restricted only to "conclusions accepted by signifficant majority of players verbal enough to reach your ears". And because of 2nd-to-3rd and 5th-to-7th editions paradigm shifts in 40K focus, the community as a whole is far from being homogenous in expectations from/experience with 40K.

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
I think I'm playing a totally different game to some of you lot.

I pick units that make sense for the army, and play with them... whatever floats your boat I guess.

The rule of cool is great and all, but it quickly becomes uncool getting one's face pounded in week in and week out. This becomes the great filter for units. "How do I not get my face pounded?". Step one for marines: get rid of terminators and land raiders.

Martel732 wrote:

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
I think I'm playing a totally different game to some of you lot.

I pick units that make sense for the army, and play with them... whatever floats your boat I guess.

The rule of cool is great and all, but it quickly becomes uncool getting one's face pounded in week in and week out. This becomes the great filter for units. "How do I not get my face pounded?". Step one for marines: get rid of terminators and land raiders.

Some of us live in places where that doesn't happen.

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
I think I'm playing a totally different game to some of you lot.

I pick units that make sense for the army, and play with them... whatever floats your boat I guess.

The rule of cool is great and all, but it quickly becomes uncool getting one's face pounded in week in and week out. This becomes the great filter for units. "How do I not get my face pounded?". Step one for marines: get rid of terminators and land raiders.

Some of us live in places where that doesn't happen.

If you can't discuss the the game as though it always happens, then there's little point for conversation, as everyone is then a special snowflake and you can make everything work and the heart of the cards etc.

I think it really depends on the situation. Obviously comparing a Thunderfire Cannon to a Whirlwind is more useful than comparing a Thunderfire Cannon to Scouts, but everything can (at least theoretically) can be compared, with said comparison provide at least some information.

That being said, I fully expect Traditio to argue vehemently and this thread to get derailed. How many pages before we get into the "Validity of the Poll" argument? haha

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You know how something is bad?

Even if Thunderfire Cannons didn't exist, I still won't take 85 point Whirlwinds.

I fail to see how the fact that you personally would not take an 85 point whirlwind makes an 85 whirlwind bad.

Because they don't kill many Guardsmen or Marines for 85 points and you have to be reliant on a non-bad scatter?

How can you be this dense?

To break even, you'd need to kill 17 naked guardsmen. If you kill 6 naked marines, you've practically broken even (14 X 6 = 84).

How many guardsmen or marines can you realistically expect to kill with a whirlwind in the course of 5-7 turns?

Note, of course, that this assumes no upgrades to those guardsmen or marines.

And it also doesn't take into account the fact that your opponent will have to change the way that he deploys and moves because you are firing large blasts which don't need line of sight to fire.

"Huddle up in this 3 story ruins? Er...maybe not."

I wouldn't have to change anything in my deployment with my marines because I know 3+ is perfectly fine against a weapon that's likely to scatter.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I wouldn't have to change anything in my deployment with my marines because I know 3+ is perfectly fine against a weapon that's likely to scatter.

You didn't answer my question. How many guardsmen or marines can you reasonably expect to kill in the course of 5-7 turns with a whirlwind?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TheCustomLime wrote:It means to him the Whirlwind is bad because it is overpriced.

Correction:

What he means is that he thinks that the whirlwind is bad because he thinks that it's overpriced.

The fact that you or he thinks that something is true doesn't actually make that thing true.

And frankly I agree. Compared to other anti-infantry options it is severly undergunned. All it's really good at is forcing Guardsman out in the open to fall back if they are isolated.

That doesn't prove that 85 point whirlwinds are bad. It only shows that they are inferior to those other options. To show that 85 point whirlwinds are bad, you'd have to show that the other options are well-balanced and appropriately costed in terms of points, and the whirlwind is STILL inferior for its points.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Scott-S6 wrote:You compare them firsts to other units within the army that they compete with

What if those units are underpowered? What they're overpowered?

If you look at the eldar codex, a jetbike with shuriken cannons is going to look underpowered/bad compared to the scatterbike.

Does that make a shuriken cannon jetbike bad?

and second to units that fulfill the same role in other armies.

Which armies?

I'm still waiting for an answer with respect to Leeman Russ battle tanks. Peregrine basically admitted to thinking that LRBTs are inferior to predators for their points cost, but I'm not sure how common this opinion is.

Whirlwinds are bad because they are worse than other marine heavy support choices and worse than other marine anti-infantry choices and worse than similar units in other codexes.

Which heavy support choices? Which anti-infantry choices?

Would you prefer a devastator squad with heavy bolters to a whirlwind?

"Would you prefer a devastator squad with heavy bolters to a whirlwind?"

Only in a gladius.

@Tradito

The wyvern does the Whirlwind's job better and for less points. It also has +1 AV on the front and a heavy bolter.

I think the OP made a very valid point, though a very mathematical one.

Saying something is bad or good requires a reference point, otherwise there would be no way to tell if it is actually bad or good.

Personally, what I read in this thread leads me to believe that what actually happens is that people pick a reference point that proves whatever they're trying to say about that model or unit. So if someone wants to say something is bad, they'll compare it to something better. If they want to say something is good, they'll compare it to something that's worse.

It's kinda impossible to be wrong about your comparison when there is only one thing in the game that would not actually have a better option, and one other thing in the game that would not actually have a worse option. Because a large part of having a range of fixed values is that one is highest and one is lowest and the vast majority fall somewhere in between.

what are you comparing it to when your poll title calls riptides and stormsurges "op bs" ? How do you know they are not perfectly balanced?


You already know the answer to this question. I was going to give a serious response to this thread but reading it more I get the impression you are just trying to push a very tired narrative

ShredderShards wrote:
what are you comparing it to when your poll title calls riptides and stormsurges "op bs" ? How do you know they are not perfectly balanced?


You already know the answer to this question. I was going to give a serious response to this thread but reading it more I get the impression you are just trying to push a very tired narrative

They actually would be perfectly balanced if power creep continues and even more ridiculously OP bullgak becomes common.

Because power levels are relative.

ShredderShards wrote:
what are you comparing it to when your poll title calls riptides and stormsurges "op bs" ? How do you know they are not perfectly balanced?

Traditio doesn't because they seem to have a misguided idea that there has to be a single (or a very small sub-set of) unit(s) that any given unit should be compared to in order to be balanced, while it should be noted that it would be more prudent to consider as many comparisons as would provide useful information.

Notice that Traditio asked the question: "What is your standard of comparison?"

Now, if I answered Tactical Marines, then that all well and good if I'm considering balancing MEQ's, but what if I'm looking at flyers? Tactical Marines are not a good standard when you're considering flyers (yes, you can make the comparison, but a more prudent initial comparison is another flyer).

 Pouncey wrote:

Spoiler:

Saying something is bad or good requires a reference point, otherwise there would be no way to tell if it is actually bad or good.

Personally, what I read in this thread leads me to believe that what actually happens is that people pick a reference point that proves whatever they're trying to say about that model or unit. So if someone wants to say something is bad, they'll compare it to something better. If they want to say something is good, they'll compare it to something that's worse.

This is why I think a single baseline from which you make comparisons (especially in the generic sense that the poll implies) is a bad approach. For example: If we have units W, X, Y, and Z (increasing in power from left to right), we need to compare all of them to understand whether or not something needs to be balanced. In this example, we could compare X to W and conclude that it's too powerful, or compare X to Z and conclude that it's under-powered, or do the correct thing and compare X to W, Y and Z and find that it's just right.

ShredderShards wrote:
I was going to give a serious response to this thread but reading it more I get the impression you are just trying to push a very tired narrative

That's what he always does haha

 TheCustomLime wrote:
@Tradito

The wyvern does the Whirlwind's job better and for less points. It also has +1 AV on the front and a heavy bolter.

So what?

Again, this doesn't prove that a whirlwind is bad, even at 85 points. It only shows that the wyvern is better.

In order to show that the whirlwind is bad, you'd have to show that the wyvern is well balanced, not op, fairly costed, etc.

Look, it's a very complex problem that I answer in my brain after 20 years of wargaming. I imagine all possible priority targets, and then consider how good unit X is against subsets of those targets, then consider how much damage it can tank for me and how much damage it's going to deal out.

For example, whirlwinds can't barrage snipe like a wyvern, so it's not as good vs sergeants and units like venomthropes.

 IllumiNini wrote:
That's what he always does haha

The OP isn't wrong though.

 Pouncey wrote:

 IllumiNini wrote:
That's what he always does haha

The OP isn't wrong though.

Traditio isn't wrong in the sense that comparisons need to be made when trying to properly balance things, but it's a fallacy to say that Tactical Marines (or anything else on the list of poll options) could ever be a standard baseline for comparisons for everything in the tabletop game.