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Martel732 wrote:

In general, by the time you can engage the Riptide, you are just adding to its kill count by tarpitting your own unit. The Riptide has already easily paid for itself by the time you can assault it. Another reason it is hopelessly broken.

Given a choice, would you rather have it continue killing whatever it wants fast, or force it to kill something specific slow?

The answers pretty self evident, imo. Even in the worst case scenario, keeping it from shooting is the way to go.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

In general, by the time you can engage the Riptide, you are just adding to its kill count by tarpitting your own unit. The Riptide has already easily paid for itself by the time you can assault it. Another reason it is hopelessly broken.

Given a choice, would you rather have it continue killing whatever it wants fast, or force it to kill something specific slow?

The answers pretty self evident, imo. Even in the worst case scenario, keeping it from shooting is the way to go.

I agree, but that solution is so far from perfect as to not be a "weakness". It's just slaughtering my list less fast.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I think people are conflating the argument "not all in game units need be balanced," with "the Wraithknight is balanced and fine."

Another way to look at it is that the WK itself might be imbalanced, but it's extreme stats don't make it so just by themselves. If it was 100% the same, but cost 200 points more and was harder to get into an army by way of Formations, we'd have a completely different situation.

I don't disagree.

GW would be well served by a free errata sheet made available on their website to affect balance in between editions.

"Yes, your codex says the Wraithknight is only 295 points (or w/e) but the published errata says it actually costs you 350."

Really only needed to affect tournament play, where this is the issue. I mean, if you're playing with your friends, it's a much easier conversation anyway. "Hey i have no answer to the Wraithknight, can you not use it?"

It's not just WK. Compare scatterbike to any other biker (even black knights, imo). Compare Riptide to any other MC.

As an MC it's not that great in CC, I 2, WS 2 or 3 (I forget), not Fearless. How many attacks? 3 or 4? Ld 8?

Being able to Sweep it is a major Achilles heel.

I think it has a fairly non trivial chance of failing a Fear test at that. Some place where Fear is actually helpful.

You can't sweep it if you can't beat it in CC. Which is almost impossible for most units.

I think the last time I swept one (with my non-CC oriented army) I charged it and another unit. Might have been Pathfinders. Killed the Pathfinders and won the Combat, then Swept the Riptide without doing a single wound to it in CC.

So, technically you don't have to be able to wound it in the first place

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think the last time I swept one (with my non-CC oriented army) I charged it and another unit. Might have been Pathfinders. Killed the Pathfinders and won the Combat, then Swept the Riptide without doing a single wound to it in CC.

Don't stand your weak ass pathfinders next to the indestructible killbot. I swear half the Tau stories I hear are Tau players shooting themselves in the foot.

At the end of the day there's only so much board. Once an army starts getting close things get squeezed.

I'm looking forward to getting some Khorne Marines up in the mix with the Legions book.

Martel732 wrote:
Oh please enlighten me.

Martel, I sincerely suggest you draw up a tailored BA force as a thought experiment.

List a common Tau army composition which gives you trouble, and let's start from there. I'm sure many people would be happy to help, including tournament Tau players.

Nobody's telling you to bring a tailored list to your meta. But you're closing yourself off to solutions when you simply say "I won't even consider what's necessary".

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
I have a consideration for those saying that making the game balanced would remove all strategy, etc. from the game (which is complete bull gak):

Consider the current alternative. How much strategy is involved when many games are determined simply by the lists that are being opposed to each other?

Many games can be resolved by the following procedure:

I write a list.
You write a list.
We trade lists.
We then decide a victor without even bothering to play, since one list obviously cannot beat the other list in the vast majority of circumstances.

Because that's totally a desirable state for the game.

I'm making the (strange, I know) suggestion that in-game decisions actually should matter. They should be the most important factor in deciding who wins, in fact.

Because your option doesn't add strategy, it just means you can literally throw things down and have a 50/50 chance to win?

I write a list
You write a list
We trade lists
Then we flip a coin, congratulations play again?

Because what sort of game can guarantee a 50/50 chance regardless of 20+ options within a book?

I think the idea is that if both armies are roughly equal in power level, then strategy is what will decide the game, not who brought better rules. In a game with all units balanced then if one player plays badly and the other plays well the player who played well will win. (barring an extreme streak of bad rolls, of course.)

by all means make riptides 300+ points. You will see them mysteriously disappear and be replaced by tau GMCs.

They would of course be increased as well to a fair price.

gnome_idea_what wrote:I think the idea is that if both armies are roughly equal in power level, then strategy is what will decide the game, not who brought better rules. In a game with all units balanced then if one player plays badly and the other plays well the player who played well will win. (barring an extreme streak of bad rolls, of course.)

Precisely.

Roughly half of respondents are against this, of course. Because apparently, making in-game strategy the most important factor in winning or losing the game would somehow remove strategy from the game.

Go figure.

But it's just a ruse. I know it. You know it. They know it.

What they really mean and think is:

"What? Use strategy? I paid top dollar to get the most broken stuff in the game. Why should I have to use strategy?"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:The state of balance in 40K is certainly deplorable. However, that doesn't mean the rules have to protect incompetent list builders from the consequences of their incompetence. For instance, if you take a list where your only anti-armor weapons are missile launchers, and I take a list with 3 Dreadnoughts, you're probably going to have a bad game - especially if your battle plan is to pod non-upgraded Sternguard on my deployment zone.

1. Dreadnoughts are AV 12. Missile launchers should be able to take down dreadnoughts. As a boltgun is to a T4, 3 wound, AP - infantry, so too is a missile launcher to a standard dreadnought.

2. If you think that I should have no reasonable chance of winning, then why should I even play you in those circumstances? Why shouldn't we trade lists, compare what we've brought, shake hands and say "good game; rousing bout of fun that was!" without even unpacking our minis?

I will say this, though:

I do agree that not all models should be equally effective against all models. The standard "rock, paper, scissors" of certain medieval war games comes to mind: Infantry vs. archers vs. cavalry.

But then balance should happen at the level of the FOC slots. If I bring a reasonable blend of troops, elite, fast attack and heavy support units, I should have roughly a 50/50 chance against anyone else who has done the same.

And probably more than a 50% chance against someone who hasn't.

That said, that's nowhere near the level of balance that 40k is at.

gnome_idea_what wrote:I think the idea is that if both armies are roughly equal in power level, then strategy is what will decide the game, not who brought better rules. In a game with all units balanced then if one player plays badly and the other plays well the player who played well will win. (barring an extreme streak of bad rolls, of course.)

Fundamentally I agree with this.

 Traditio wrote:

gnome_idea_what wrote:I think the idea is that if both armies are roughly equal in power level, then strategy is what will decide the game, not who brought better rules. In a game with all units balanced then if one player plays badly and the other plays well the player who played well will win. (barring an extreme streak of bad rolls, of course.)

Precisely.

Roughly half of respondents are against this, of course. Because apparently, making in-game strategy the most important factor in winning or losing the game would somehow remove strategy from the game.

Go figure.

But it's just a ruse. I know it. You know it. They know it.

What they really mean and think is:

"What? Use strategy? I paid top dollar to get the most broken stuff in the game. Why should I have to use strategy?"

I think this is at least a mildly unfair assessment.

I also think that part of the strategy should be List Building. Even if we assume that any two armies of equal points is completely balanced against each other is possible, you would effectively remove the List Building element of strategy. Are there Detachments and Formations that are auto-picks and/or over-powered? Of course, but leave list building as part of the strategy. There needs to be some middle ground between "Making every list of equal points equal in balance" and "Let's leave List Building as part of the Strategic Planning of any given player).

IllumiNini wrote:I think this is at least a mildly unfair assessment.

I also think that part of the strategy should be List Building.

I'm fine with some of the strategy being list building. The problem with 40k is that list building is too much of the strategy. List building is potentially so much of the strategy that, depending on the lists, there's no good reason actually to play in the first place, depending upon the lists that have been brought.

If I brought a CAD with devastators, tactical marines and assault marines, but no grav, why should I even bother unpacking my models to play a game with someone who brought wraithknights and scatter bikes?

 Traditio wrote:

IllumiNini wrote:I think this is at least a mildly unfair assessment.

I also think that part of the strategy should be List Building.

I'm fine with some of the strategy being list building. The problem with 40k is that list building is too much of the strategy. List building is potentially so much of the strategy that, depending on the lists, there's no good reason actually to play in the first place, depending upon the lists that have been brought.

If I brought a CAD with devastators, tactical marines and assault marines, but no grav, why should I even bother unpacking my models to play a game with someone who brought wraithknights and scatter bikes?

That's a fair point to make, but at the same time you have to remember that - because of the insane variety of models as well as the poorly optimised rules that form the 7th Edition Rule Book - not all list matchups are going to be worth playing. That's just the nature of 40K. I'm not necessarily saying it's acceptable or ideal, but hey - you just gotta find the games that are worth playing.

Also, just change the game type. The lore is filled with heroic last stands and all out assaults. Whenever I find a serious imbalance between my and my opponents' armies I will always set the mission up in their favor (old battle missions book or the new planetary assault have some really nice options for this)

Had a game against the exact type of list you're talking about with the marines forming a foot slogging missile launcher and lascannon list against my corsairs. I saw I had a serious maneuverability advantage on him, so we played the battle mission where marines hold the center with the only objective in the middle of a ruined cathedral and my HQ/ heavy support units start off the table. He hadn't playedd in a while, and I did end up winning on turn 6, but the game was still fun and tense all the way to the end!

The game itself allows for non optimised lists to do well, but nobody seems willing to not play an uneven matchup to even things out. (Like the chaos battle mission where every piece of terrain blocks line of sight and is dangerous due to burning, solves a lot of problems with them right there since it allows them to move down field with less casualties and weaker armor saves won't want to hide in the terrain to negate it)

 Traditio wrote:

Once you start deploying, moving your units around, selecting targets to shoot and assault, rolling dice, etc., your chances should start changing.

If every unit is equally effective against every other unit (which it must be for any combination of units and upgrades to be effective) then what difference does target selection, etc. make? Every unit might as well be interchangeable.

I think you completely fail to understand what it means to make every combination of choices viable - it effectively eliminates choice.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Traditio wrote:

If I brought a CAD with devastators, tactical marines and assault marines, but no grav, why should I even bother unpacking my models to play a game with someone who brought wraithknights and scatter bikes?

If you choose to select units and upgrades whilst knowing full we'll that you're unable to deal with a whole bunch of common units then what do you expect to happen? It's not just wraith knights that you can't handle, anyone with lots of flyers, 2+ infantry, av14, light vehicle spam or strong mc's is basically immune to your army because you insist on relying on missile launchers and flamers despite having multiple superior options.

Either list building is part of the game or it isn't. If it is then you need to actually participate in that part of the game rather than sticking your head in the sand and taking an army that you know has serious weaknesses.

Or stop playing pickup games against strangers and pre-arange your games. I suspect this will be a problem for you due to your attitude of "everyone else must adapt to my army".

 Traditio wrote:
I'm fine with some of the strategy being list building. The problem with 40k is that list building is too much of the strategy. List building is potentially so much of the strategy that, depending on the lists, there's no good reason actually to play in the first place, depending upon the lists that have been brought.

You can't be fine with that, because it directly contradicts your statements on balance. You can't have both strategy in list building and a game where even very poorly designed lists (like the cultist horde with zero anti-tank weapons matched against a tank army) have a 50% chance of winning. If all lists have to be capable of that 50/50 win rate then there's no incentive to improve your list building strategy. No matter how much work you put into figuring out the perfect strategy and combination of units to execute it you won't win more frequently than someone who throws down a random collection of units and upgrades without any coherent plan. If you want to have that strategic element in list building then you have to allow bad lists to lose.

If I brought a CAD with devastators, tactical marines and assault marines, but no grav, why should I even bother unpacking my models to play a game with someone who brought wraithknights and scatter bikes?

Obviously this is a problem, but you keep using the extreme outliers of balance problems to justify your general theories on balance. The problem with wraithknights and jetbikes has nothing to do with broad concepts of balance between armies, how to compare units in different armies, successful TAC lists vs. bad list building, etc. Those two specific units are broken because they have blatantly wrong point costs and/or rules. And the solution to those units involves changing their individual rules, not any kind of changes to the core structure of the game. So when you use those specific units to argue about the core structure of the game you're pulling a bait and switch, and claiming support for something people aren't declaring their support for.

If you make everything an equally valid choice there is no point in ever changing a list. Your list will be as good as it ever will, you'll ha e everything you ever need. A similar thing happened in Fantasy, people had their army and it worked,nobody was buying anything so they had to do a massive shake up.

If all it ever comes down to is player skill, we should write lists then roll a dice and add our amount of years played. Whoever gets higher wins. Rewards those with more experience while still having an element of luck. We can even use a D10/D12 if that would help balance it more.

I feel Traditio has a view on balance like someone but him a house. Except in the house some of the curtains are too short for the tall windows and there are curtains to long for short windows. He stamps his feet and demands that you tearthe windows out and make them all the same despite you doing it because you have a lovely beach view out the big one and the small one faces a wall. But he says the curtains don't work on the windows And despite being able just to swap the curtains around, he insits the fundamental features of the house are broken and usesless just because he won't buy new curtains.

Peregrine wrote:You can't be fine with that, because it directly contradicts your statements on balance. You can't have both strategy in list building and a game where even very poorly designed lists (like the cultist horde with zero anti-tank weapons matched against a tank army) have a 50% chance of winning. If all lists have to be capable of that 50/50 win rate then there's no incentive to improve your list building strategy.

Fair enough.

But I'll ask you this question: Just how much should list building matter?

If I bring a cultist spam list and you bring an army of wyverns, what should my chances of winning be? I'll admit that that it should be less than 50 percent.

But if it's 0 or anywhere near 0, why should I even bother playing?

No matter how much work you put into figuring out the perfect strategy and combination of units to execute it you won't win more frequently than someone who throws down a random collection of units and upgrades without any coherent plan. If you want to have that strategic element in list building then you have to allow bad lists to lose.

Fair enough, but here, I'm going to question what "bad lists" mean. If you tell me that it's "not optimal according to the current meta," then I'm going to disagree all day long for obvious reasons.

But I want to go back to the medieval games example:

Infantry, archers and horsemen. Presumably, a list that spams only infantry or only archers or only horsemen is a bad last. If you only have horsemen and I have a large number of spearmen, then clearly, your chances of winning should suffer.

But if I have infantry, archers and horsemen, then my chances should be good in general.

But here, Peregrine, I find myself wondering:

Why don't you think that YOUR list should be a "bad list"? In medieval terms, in the way that you've described it, it's a list of only cavalry. Why should a cavalry only list be able to have a 50/50 chance or greater against a well-balanced list of infantry, archers and horsemen?

Obviously this is a problem, but you keep using the extreme outliers of balance problems to justify your general theories on balance. The problem with wraithknights and jetbikes has nothing to do with broad concepts of balance between armies, how to compare units in different armies, successful TAC lists vs. bad list building, etc. Those two specific units are broken because they have blatantly wrong point costs and/or rules. And the solution to those units involves changing their individual rules, not any kind of changes to the core structure of the game. So when you use those specific units to argue about the core structure of the game you're pulling a bait and switch, and claiming support for something people aren't declaring their support for.

As much as people make fun of me and ridicule my ideas, I only ever tend to complain, at least as of the last 6 months or so, about the outliers. Ridicule me if you want for decrying the death guard rules, but from what I understand, it isn't just my opinion that the death guard received the "more favorable" end of the treatment when it comes to the new rules in the traitor legions supplement.

You continue to point out the obvious in a way that is generally irritable and adds nothing of substance to the forums. That's why you get ridiculed.

 Traditio wrote:


Precisely.

Roughly half of respondents are against this, of course. Because apparently, making in-game strategy the most important factor in winning or losing the game would somehow remove strategy from the game.

Go figure.

But it's just a ruse. I know it. You know it. They know it.

What they really mean and think is:

"What? Use strategy? I paid top dollar to get the most broken stuff in the game. Why should I have to use strategy?"

Instead of accusing people who don't agree with you as being moronic or simply stirring the pot, why don't you try interpreting their response differently.

How about we appreciate the fact that 40k has almost no strategy outside of list building in it's current form, thanks to the ridiculous amount of chance rolls you have to make to do just about anything. Players have next to no control over the outcome of their shooting attacks, running, any type of save and even psychic powers. This is the real problem that should be discussed if you want to talk about improving the strategy element in 40k.

To be fair, list building has been the primary strategy in 40k since 40k first began. Every edition I've played in since the 3rd edition have had a small handful of builds you saw everywhere, and then there was everything else. That hasn't changed in any edition.

The problem with list building being the primary strategy is that actually playing the game can often largely be a waste of time since the conclusion of the game is often evident before the first die is cast.

This poll also illustrates a divide that is nearly always split in half whenever this poll is posted and that has not changed in the years that I've paid attention to this question asked and the responses.

grr. I hate when people mistake STRATEGY and TACTICS.
Strategy: 2 parts.
1. What you can bring to a fight.
2. What you decide to bring to a fight.

Tactics: what you do in the fight.

GW made the first part of strategy rather simple; anyone can bring anything
The second part? Is called list building.

Strategy, is what everyone seems to be bemoaning. But tactics is what is made irrelevant when you don't bother to play the game. Understand the difference.

Ever hear of a GOTH plan? It is GO To Hell, it means that you are woefully unprepared for what you are going to face, but you take the field anyway. And there is a certain glory in doing so. Dylan Thomas' poem is rather poignant on the subject.

Strategy and Tactics may as well be the same thing in 40k, as one of them is almost entirely missing any sort of manipulation by the player. You can't claim to be a good tactician when random chance that cannot be influenced does the majority of the work for you.

 Traditio wrote:

Peregrine wrote:You can't be fine with that, because it directly contradicts your statements on balance. You can't have both strategy in list building and a game where even very poorly designed lists (like the cultist horde with zero anti-tank weapons matched against a tank army) have a 50% chance of winning. If all lists have to be capable of that 50/50 win rate then there's no incentive to improve your list building strategy.

Fair enough.

But I'll ask you this question: Just how much should list building matter?

If I bring a cultist spam list and you bring an army of wyverns, what should my chances of winning be? I'll admit that that it should be less than 50 percent.

But if it's 0 or anywhere near 0, why should I even bother playing?

It sounds to me that you assume, even if there isn't a 50/50 chance of winning, that every list should have at least a reasonable chance against every other list. A flawed assumption at best. The main problem I see with list building in relation to chances of winning relate back to how you come to a game.

Let me explain:

Because I play mostly against my good friends who have regular codeces that that use (e.g. one of my friends always plays Dark Angels), it's very easy for me to tell my friends "I'm looking for < X > in a game." Where < X > could be as simple as a points limit or as complicated as a list of restrictions as long as my arm. In this way, we have a better chance of making our games more balanced. I get the feeling that a lot of the games played by the 40K players in the DakkaDakka community are such that this is not an option (e.g. pickup games at their FLGS, or tournaments). In my opinion, this is one of the biggest factors that contributes to the over-importance of list building. Funny how this has nothing to do with the actual rules, isn't it?

 Traditio wrote:

No matter how much work you put into figuring out the perfect strategy and combination of units to execute it you won't win more frequently than someone who throws down a random collection of units and upgrades without any coherent plan. If you want to have that strategic element in list building then you have to allow bad lists to lose.

Fair enough, but here, I'm going to question what "bad lists" mean. If you tell me that it's "not optimal according to the current meta," then I'm going to disagree all day long for obvious reasons.

The Meta is simply the most commonly used good units and lists as well as their counters. That doesn't mean that a good list that is not in the meta is bad. Don't believe me? Take a look at the parallel example of Champion Selections in MOBA Games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends, where the Meta Champions changes all the time. Just because a Champion is not in the meta doesn't make them a bad Champion. Same applies to army lists in 40K. So if I were you, I wouldn't put too much stock in arguing over lists in relation to the meta because it ultimately means nothing, especially if your intention is to balance the game.

Also, the Medieval example is an over-simplification.

 Traditio wrote:

If I bring a cultist spam list and you bring an army of wyverns, what should my chances of winning be? I'll admit that that it should be less than 50 percent.

Armies in 40K need to be able to effectively handle the majority of target types (elite infantry, mass weak infantry, high save units, high toughness units, mass light vehicles, heavy vehicles, flyers) , hold objectives and claim objectives.

A cultist spam army is incapable of even threatening a whole bunch of target types, is mediocre at holding objectives and is too slow&weak to be effective at claiming objectives.

If you deliberately select an army composition that has none of the required capabilities for victory why would expect to win games?

 Traditio wrote:

Fair enough, but here, I'm going to question what "bad lists" mean. If you tell me that it's "not optimal according to the current meta," then I'm going to disagree all day long for obvious reasons.

It means lists that lack many of the capabilities required in order to be successful.

You can take a horribly optimized list that is able to stand a chance (if only a limited one) against many other lists because despite it's poor optimization it has sufficient range of capability to at least try against a range of target types.

When you take a list that simply has no effective action against many common units then you are setting yourself up for failure.

Gunzhard wrote:
I'd like to stop you here and just point out, your idea of "most likely to field" is entirely opinion, not based in modern warfare, or fictional imaginary warfare that is 40k either; not to say it couldn't be and there are indeed examples of it in the fluff... but there are just as many if not more examples of the exception to that - despite the overall organization of the armies on paper. I completely disagree that "troops-based lists" are the most "thematically appropriate"... in a high-tech sci-fi battlefield it is more likely the least thematically appropriate. You are trying to push "theme" and fluff when it suites your point but ignore it everywhere else... like I said before - just IG and Orks baby; or Knights/Titans and tanks/flyers.

Space Marine chapter strength:1000 marines. 4 Battle Companies with 100 Marines 60 of whom are Tactical Marines. Two Reserve Companies entirely comprised of Tactical Marines, 100 strong each. 10th Company Scout Company, strength depending on how recruitment is going, but probably 100ish. That makes the total strength of a Space Marine chapter 50+% Troops. And you would have us believe they spend most of their time twiddling their thumbs. No matter how you rationalize, you can not argue against the basic organizational structure of a chapter, which has been consistent forever. Nor can you fall back on Tac Marines being rear echelon or garrison troops, because that's not what Space Marines do. That's also been a consistent part of the fluff forever.

Plus, I'm not arguing that players shouldn't theme lists around rapid scouting forces, heavy breakthrough forces, close quarters assault forces, or anything else. I'm just saying they should do so within an expectation of a robust presence of Troops within each list. Your arguments to the contrary could be based on sincere belief in the sanctity of player choice over all else. Or, they could be rationalizations of a WAAC player who likes just fine being able to spam Wraithknights, or use invisible deathstars, or any of the other broken builds the current rules make possible. I have no way of knowing one way or the other. All I know is that you're spending a lot of time and energy defending broken lists that would suck to play against in a pickup game environment.

Except for Tau my group has all the same armies, we don't force any homebrew comp with troop heavy lists and our games are usually close too. There have been several editions where 'troops' gained some advantage, scoring, ob-sec etc... and I remember GW-GT's from at least as far back as 3rd have troop comps; I still keep my Army-Builder set to show the %-age.

Anyway my point is -- narratively it doesn't make sense to force people to field more troops, and balance wise is doesn't actually improve anything either.

You're just creating a new imbalance... shifting it to the right but not actually solving it.

You're incorrect, but even if you were, at least my imbalance would be more newbie friendly than the current imbalance. I'm pretty sure if someone new walked into your group and played a list that was built around one of the starter sets - Assault on Black Reach or Dark Vengeance - they'd get tabled in a couple turns and wind up having a terrible experience. The same player could walk into my group with the same army, and they probably wouldn't win, but they could at least make a game of it.

Traditio wrote:
1. Dreadnoughts are AV 12. Missile launchers should be able to take down dreadnoughts. As a boltgun is to a T4, 3 wound, AP - infantry, so too is a missile launcher to a standard dreadnought.

Based on the last list of yours I saw, if every single marine that could be equipped with a missile launcher was in fact equipped with one, you'd have a grand total of 14. Approximately a third of those will just plain miss, so we'll say you get 10 hits. 5 of those will simply bounce off and do no damage whatsoever. Of the 5 that you do successfully roll at least a glance on, if I can get a 4+ cover save (not hard with a model the size of a Dreadnought), it cuts your damage output out to less than 3 hp, which won't even destroy a single Dread. You can't even necessarily guarantee focusing all your ML fire on one Dread at a time - odds are the damage will be spread over at least two of them. So, the reasonable best to expect is you do a couple hull points of damage, then they wreck face among your Sternies.

That's also assuming normal Dreads. If I'm using Ironclads, or one of the BA variants with AV13 fronts, you're not even going to do that much damage. You'll be lucky to get more than 1 hp to stick.

Traditio wrote:
2. If you think that I should have no reasonable chance of winning, then why should I even play you in those circumstances? Why shouldn't we trade lists, compare what we've brought, shake hands and say "good game; rousing bout of fun that was!" without even unpacking our minis?

My point is, there is no reason that matchup should be horrible for you. The tools exist in your dex for you to effectively deal with my hypothetical Dreads. But you don't do it by stubbornly clinging to what used to be good. You do it by adapting to the current realities of the game. In this example, you do it by ditching missile launchers because they're not a good weapon anymore, and adding some combi-weapons to your Sternies so they're not helpless against my Dreads.

In a more general sense, instead of complaining about the balance of 40K because what used to work an edition or two ago aren't effective against what's currently in the game, it's much more productive to study your dex and see what tools it has do deal with the things you're having trouble with. Protesting about having to buy new things ring hollow if you're using an army that has anything that you couldn't take in 3rd edition. That would include drop pods and Sternguard by the way. If you played against someone who complained about your drop Sternies because they didn't exist in 3rd edition and wreck his 3rd-ed build army, you wouldn't take him seriously. However, you're expecting us to take you seriously because you refuse to budge off a 5th ed build in 7th ed. I'm not saying 40K is perfectly balanced, but you're not playing one of the armies that has a lack of tools to deal with the things currently in the game.