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I'm just thankful Connect 4 and Checkers don't have turn 1 charges... yet... really not looking forward to those games getting faq'd.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Can we all just agree that 40k is an awful mess of a game with zeron attention or care given to balance and functionality and that all sorts of stuff is horrifcally broken?

No.

Well then you're wrong. 40k is indisputably a broken mess of a game with zero attention given to balance or functionality.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Can we all just agree that 40k is an awful mess of a game with zeron attention or care given to balance and functionality and that all sorts of stuff is horrifcally broken?

No.

Well then you're wrong. 40k is indisputably a broken mess of a game with zero attention given to balance or functionality.

Is that a joke?

 Insectum7 wrote:
Is that a joke?

Why would it be? Are you honestly going to suggest that 40k isn't broken and unbalanced?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Is that a joke?

Why would it be? Are you honestly going to suggest that 40k isn't broken and unbalanced?

Not long ago, we had a thread that was titles "Am I the only one who thinks 40K is fine?", and lo and behold, the OP was not the only one. So saying things like "Can't we all just agree everything is horrible" and "indesputably a broken mess" is only done by people who only can't conceive of an opinion different than their own. Which is a poor way to have a conversation.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Not long ago, we had a thread that was titles "Am I the only one who thinks 40K is fine?", and lo and behold, the OP was not the only one. So saying things like "Can't we all just agree everything is horrible" and "indesputably a broken mess" is only done by people who only can't conceive of an opinion different than their own. Which is a poor way to have a conversation.

I can conceive of an opinion different from my own, but that opinion is still wrong. 40k's balance problems are indisputable, no reasonable person can argue that wraithknights and scatter laser jetbikes are balanced with orks. Functionality is also pretty indisputable, as demonstrated by the YMDC forum and how many arguments there are over how the rules are supposed to work. And GW's own statements confirm that they don't care about balance or rule clarity, if the current state of the game wasn't already enough proof. Anyone who can look at 40k and say "this is fine" is either playing their own heavily house-ruled version of 40k that fixes the standard version's problems or so completely lacking in experience with other games that don't share 40k's flaws that they're unable to imagine a better way of doing things.

Its hard for me to take seriously armies like Tau and Eldar complaining about CC on the first turn. They have the tools in their dex, the mobility, and firepower to deal with it. People just dont want to stop spamming riptides, scatpacks, wraithknights, warpspiders and so on.

I can understand Orks or Dark Eldar armies being upset but come on there isn't a useless unit in the Eldar dex. You just dont want to take it.

 thekerrick wrote:
They have the tools in their dex, the mobility, and firepower to deal with it.

Mobility and firepower don't help at all. The first-turn charges happen before you get a turn and the opportunity to move away. Your only desperate hope is that you somehow do enough damage with overwatch fire to avoid losing the game at the start of turn 1.

 Peregrine wrote:

 thekerrick wrote:
They have the tools in their dex, the mobility, and firepower to deal with it.

Mobility and firepower don't help at all. The first-turn charges happen before you get a turn and the opportunity to move away. Your only desperate hope is that you somehow do enough damage with overwatch fire to avoid losing the game at the start of turn 1.

Gasp! Do Eldar have to take units besides scatpacks!? I use my ruststalkers in War Convocation, which are often considered a bad unit and a tax, to bubble my grav units. They do quite well vs most of the stuff that can first turn charge me. Most dedicated CC units can deal with GSC. Eldar have them and can use them.

The game is only ok when you play armies within the same tiers and a higher tier army that doesn't absolutely counter another army.

Play dark eldar vs tau and you'll see just how imbalanced the game can be. I face a guy that it's even a miracle if i make it past turn 4 against. Double stormsurge, 1 riptide, 6 stealth suits (2 units of 3), shadowsun and 2 ghostkeels with drones attached. It is the absolute dumbest thing to face. Most of the stealth and ghostkeel units have a 2+ cover save added onto whatever save they already get. Ghostkeel are MC's so they have ap 2 attacks in close combat as well as multiple attacks (as if that's even needed) and the rest has the various BS shenanigans tau can usually pull (skyfire, stim injectors, 3+ inv riptide due to using their generator, ignores cover weapons, smarts missile systems that ignore cover and LoS). It's just total garbage. It's the same few 'I Win' units in the tau army that are spammed to death with formations. Course some people say this guy cheats so take his win rate with a grain of salt. Also though he's so smug when he plays and teases opponents are cowards Grey Knights scare him due to psychic phase, close combat and dreadknights.

Pretty sure 40k would be infinitely more balanced if they took gargantuans and super heavies out again. Riptides and some eldar cheese would still be there but it'd be a bit more balanced.

-------

Also have a hard time believing people are complaining about close combat getting a boost in an edition of 40k where shooting is considered king.

 Peregrine wrote:

 thekerrick wrote:
They have the tools in their dex, the mobility, and firepower to deal with it.

Mobility and firepower don't help at all. The first-turn charges happen before you get a turn and the opportunity to move away. Your only desperate hope is that you somehow do enough damage with overwatch fire to avoid losing the game at the start of turn 1.

Mobility and firepower let you attempt attacks on units your opponent doesn't want attacked, possibly forcing them to divert their charge in a direction other than forwards.
Won't work so well on a Deathstar but it works great on the Drop Pods and Wulfen.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Mobility and firepower let you attempt attacks on units your opponent doesn't want attacked, possibly forcing them to divert their charge in a direction other than forwards.
Won't work so well on a Deathstar but it works great on the Drop Pods and Wulfen.

How exactly do you divert their charge when half your army is dead (or locked in combat and about to die) before you get a turn, and the other half is boxed into your deployment zone by a wall of angry melee units? The whole point of the first-turn charge is that you take the initiative entirely and annihilate your opponent's army before they get a chance to react.


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 thekerrick wrote:
Most dedicated CC units can deal with GSC.

If only my IG or Tau army had dedicated melee units...

You play guard right? Take vehicles and units embarked in them as they can't be locked in combat.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Also have a hard time believing people are complaining about close combat getting a boost in an edition of 40k where shooting is considered king.

The issue is not close combat in general, it's two specific things: first-turn charges that end the game before you get a turn, and absurd buff-stacking death stars that make the game a one-dimensional question of whether it is mathematically possible for you to put enough shots into the death star to have a chance of winning.


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 flamingkillamajig wrote:
You play guard right? Take vehicles and units embarked in them as they can't be locked in combat.

So, your solution to first-turn charges is to invest a bunch of points into expensive vehicles that get auto-killed if charged?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Mobility and firepower let you attempt attacks on units your opponent doesn't want attacked, possibly forcing them to divert their charge in a direction other than forwards.
Won't work so well on a Deathstar but it works great on the Drop Pods and Wulfen.

How exactly do you divert their charge when half your army is dead (or locked in combat and about to die) before you get a turn, and the other half is boxed into your deployment zone by a wall of angry melee units? The whole point of the first-turn charge is that you take the initiative entirely and annihilate your opponent's army before they get a chance to react.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 thekerrick wrote:
Most dedicated CC units can deal with GSC.

If only my IG or Tau army had dedicated melee units...

First, guard along with DE, Orks and a few others have issues well beyond the scope of this argument. Guard are hurting in a lot of areas. As far as Tau go. Take two firewarrior squads, bubble your entire army in a corner, feed him your trash and then dump on him in overwatch and your next shooting phase after he wipes the warriors. After that you can jetpack away!

 Peregrine wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Also have a hard time believing people are complaining about close combat getting a boost in an edition of 40k where shooting is considered king.

The issue is not close combat in general, it's two specific things: first-turn charges that end the game before you get a turn, and absurd buff-stacking death stars that make the game a one-dimensional question of whether it is mathematically possible for you to put enough shots into the death star to have a chance of winning.

Depends on the army i guess. I'll admit i haven't played as much as some (took a break for Fantasy till it died) but depending on the power level of the melee unit and what it can do it would dictate how broken it is. Oddly i have more faith with the new head of GW and he seems to be making decent decisions as opposed to Kirby and friends which tried to screw over as many people as possible esp. in Fantasy.

Genestealer cults while annoying far as i know have a 1 in 6 chance to roll melee for their units coming in and they may roll up bad results. There was one dude i played against that was new but got a bunch of bad results so he tried going back into reserve and trying again (bad decision i'm sure). 1 in 6 chance isn't as insane as some make it out to be. I'll also admit the guy being new wasn't some vet that mastered them so i have no idea what they're like when mastered.

Except for maybe khorne i think most armies are much slower. I did have a guy in my last battle vs chaos marines move his chaos units 2/3 or more across the table practically within striking distance of my guys. I still curb stomped him as dark eldar.

I still say putting your guys in vehicles or behind cover would help tremendously. It's a game change that requires different tactics. Perhaps more shield walls to ruin enemy charges with vehicles. I'd actually be interested to see more vehicles and hit and run units start showing up again (due to not being locked in combat).

-----

Transports aren't that expensive and whether they die in combat or not they don't stay locked in combat. This allows you time to shoot at the enemies that are trying to get in close combat with you.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Genestealer cults while annoying far as i know have a 1 in 6 chance to roll melee for their units coming in and they may roll up bad results.

Perhaps you should start by reading the OP before posting about this? It's a 1/6 roll on the table, but there are various ways of improving the roll that make it much more consistent.

As for transports, yes, they help, but only at an extreme cost. Chimeras are 55 points each and require a commitment to a tank-heavy army to be effective. That's a lot of points to be spending on sacrificial units that leave the survivors of the squad inside trapped at point blank range next to a wall of threats that will eat them next turn if they don't completely table the assault army in a single shooting phase. And all those LRBTs that you have to take to make mech IG effective are 150+ point paperweights against first-turn charges.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Mobility and firepower let you attempt attacks on units your opponent doesn't want attacked, possibly forcing them to divert their charge in a direction other than forwards.
Won't work so well on a Deathstar but it works great on the Drop Pods and Wulfen.

How exactly do you divert their charge when half your army is dead (or locked in combat and about to die) before you get a turn, and the other half is boxed into your deployment zone by a wall of angry melee units? The whole point of the first-turn charge is that you take the initiative entirely and annihilate your opponent's army before they get a chance to react.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 thekerrick wrote:
Most dedicated CC units can deal with GSC.

If only my IG or Tau army had dedicated melee units...

You don't want dedicated CC units, real Close Combat armies should eat whatever a Shootie army can field for breakfast and CC units are a massive point sink, you want cheap, expendable units. Melee is only scary when it's tearing through your expensive stuff, the most powerful deathstar in the world can be balked for a turn by your cheapest unit because it can't just pass through a unit. Spend bigger on the cheap stuff to hold the first turn charges up, or if they're slinging Drop Pods use said cheap and expendables to prevent Pods landing where you don't want them.

Better question is how come 4 foot wide tables are "standard." Play on a 5 foot wide table and you will not only eliminate this problem for the most part, but you make the movement phase actually important besides MOVE FORWARD CLOSER SO I CAN KILL SOON, or GO GET OBJECTIVE. Now you cant have a devastator squad shooting safely in its corner for 6 turns, they may have to move a turn or two to get set up in a good position. Objective play is better as they aren't as easy to take. It takes skill and effort to get an assault instead of going straight up the guts cause you know you can survive one round of shooting. Now there's two or more.

Thats all Ive got. Or play 30k, because a lack of formations and detachments makes for a much more fun game instead of looking up which units and formations break or ignore core rules. Plus Primarchs!

Did I mention no god awful formations?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Is that a joke?

Why would it be? Are you honestly going to suggest that 40k isn't broken and unbalanced?

Not long ago, we had a thread that was titles "Am I the only one who thinks 40K is fine?", and lo and behold, the OP was not the only one.

40k being "fine" in a subjective sense for any individual is different than 40k being broken and unbalanced. Sometimes people are perfectly fine with, or even actively seek out and enjoy, broken and unbalanced things. Some people just don't have to face the really broken stuff or just don't care about rules functionality issues and won't have problems from their views. However, it doesn't mean that 40k isn't an extremely poorly functioning ruleset with insanely poor balance

Would you like to make the case that 40k is a balanced game, and has a finely tuned, well functioning, and easy to understand rules system?

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
You don't want dedicated CC units, real Close Combat armies should eat whatever a Shootie army can field for breakfast and CC units are a massive point sink, you want cheap, expendable units. Melee is only scary when it's tearing through your expensive stuff, the most powerful deathstar in the world can be balked for a turn by your cheapest unit because it can't just pass through a unit. Spend bigger on the cheap stuff to hold the first turn charges up, or if they're slinging Drop Pods use said cheap and expendables to prevent Pods landing where you don't want them.

And this is the problem: if you don't spend a bunch of points on units that will be removed from the table before they get to act you lose the game. Why should a shooting army have to waste points (and time and money to buy and paint the models) on meatshields that are immediately removed from the table at the start of the game when melee armies don't have to do the same? Or should we have a new rule that all melee armies must remove 1/3 of their points from the table at the start of the game in exchange for a 4+ cover save for the rest of their army for the first turn?


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 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Play on a 5 foot wide table and you will not only eliminate this problem for the most part

It doesn't, because the units in question use infiltrate/deep strike/etc to start the game within charge range no matter where you deploy.

Edit,

40k is bad. But the reasons I feel this way isn't mostly because of the core rules. Individual codex creeping is ruining the game. Rules that break rules, its almost as if the current meta builds their armies like a magic card deck. I only care about the fluff at this point. Should've thrown that in somewhere.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
You don't want dedicated CC units, real Close Combat armies should eat whatever a Shootie army can field for breakfast and CC units are a massive point sink, you want cheap, expendable units. Melee is only scary when it's tearing through your expensive stuff, the most powerful deathstar in the world can be balked for a turn by your cheapest unit because it can't just pass through a unit. Spend bigger on the cheap stuff to hold the first turn charges up, or if they're slinging Drop Pods use said cheap and expendables to prevent Pods landing where you don't want them.

And this is the problem: if you don't spend a bunch of points on units that will be removed from the table before they get to act you lose the game. Why should a shooting army have to waste points (and time and money to buy and paint the models) on meatshields that are immediately removed from the table at the start of the game when melee armies don't have to do the same? Or should we have a new rule that all melee armies must remove 1/3 of their points from the table at the start of the game in exchange for a 4+ cover save for the rest of their army for the first turn?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Play on a 5 foot wide table and you will not only eliminate this problem for the most part

It doesn't, because the units in question use infiltrate/deep strike/etc to start the game within charge range no matter where you deploy.

Ya because spending less than 200 points on a few min squad of troops will lose you the game? Please. Any of the upper tier armies will have no problem wiping gsc off the board even with a few hundred point deficit.

[quote=Peregrine 713053 9116455 6e2a7a65b40f1b79
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Play on a 5 foot wide table and you will not only eliminate this problem for the most part

It doesn't, because the units in question use infiltrate/deep strike/etc to start the game within charge range no matter where you deploy.

 thekerrick wrote:
Ya because spending less than 200 points on a few min squad of troops will lose you the game?

Spending less than 200 points on minimum size squads of troops isn't going to buy you much for meatshields. It makes it really easy for your opponent to clear your meatshields with shooting, and it forces you to deploy your entire army in a densely packed corner to have any chance of getting your meatshields to cover the whole perimeter. And of course the rest of the time, when you aren't facing a first turn charge list, those 200 points are contributing nothing to your army because naked minimum-cost infantry suck.

Please. Any of the upper tier armies will have no problem wiping gsc off the board even with a few hundred point deficit.

That isn't the point. I don't care if some top-tier tournament army can beat the gimmick list, it isn't fun to play against for everyone else.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
40k is bad. But the reasons I feel this way isn't mostly because of the core rules. Individual codex creeping is ruining the game. Rules that break rules, its almost as if the current meta builds their armies like a magic card deck

I don't know that "Codex creep" is an appropriate term, given that the most powerful Codexes are all pretty old by this point, but yeah - the lack of attention being given to Codexes is fething up the game pretty badly. The core rules are fine, it's the supplementary stuff that sucks.

 thekerrick wrote:
Ya because spending less than 200 points on a few min squad of troops will lose you the game? Please. Any of the upper tier armies will have no problem wiping gsc off the board even with a few hundred point deficit.

Not even remotely true. Between Cult Ambush, cover shenanigans, the Insurrection reinforcement SR and Summons GSC are a lot tougher than their statline would suggest.

 Peregrine wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Genestealer cults while annoying far as i know have a 1 in 6 chance to roll melee for their units coming in and they may roll up bad results.

Perhaps you should start by reading the OP before posting about this? It's a 1/6 roll on the table, but there are various ways of improving the roll that make it much more consistent.

As for transports, yes, they help, but only at an extreme cost. Chimeras are 55 points each and require a commitment to a tank-heavy army to be effective. That's a lot of points to be spending on sacrificial units that leave the survivors of the squad inside trapped at point blank range next to a wall of threats that will eat them next turn if they don't completely table the assault army in a single shooting phase. And all those LRBTs that you have to take to make mech IG effective are 150+ point paperweights against first-turn charges.

That's funny, if any shootie armie benefits from first turn assault it's Astra Militarum.
Cheap bodies to block the assault? Absolute check.
Metal Boxes that lay down lots of fire then either blow up in the enemy's face or get wrecked to create roadblocks? Hell Yeah.
Fortifications that can make five models cover a foot of board space? Gotit!
Long Ranged blasts? Guard got that.
Benefits when all the other shootie armies downsize their artillery because first turn assaults got them scared? Hell yeah.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Better question is how come 4 foot wide tables are "standard." Play on a 5 foot wide table and you will not only eliminate this problem for the most part, but you make the movement phase actually important besides MOVE FORWARD CLOSER SO I CAN KILL SOON, or GO GET OBJECTIVE. Now you cant have a devastator squad shooting safely in its corner for 6 turns, they may have to move a turn or two to get set up in a good position. Objective play is better as they aren't as easy to take. It takes skill and effort to get an assault instead of going straight up the guts cause you know you can survive one round of shooting. Now there's two or more.

Thats all Ive got. Or play 30k, because a lack of formations and detachments makes for a much more fun game instead of looking up which units and formations break or ignore core rules. Plus Primarchs!

Did I mention no god awful formations?

Adding an extra 12" to the table just makes shooting armies like Tau or Eldar even more ridiculous. It makes non-first turn charge assault armies useless. And it would just eventually end up with units/spells/formations that move 36" and charge.

How did we end up with first turn charges? It was because of scatter bikes and broadsides and riptides etc making the 24" that we have too deadly to cross slowly. Any more than one turn spent in no-man's-land is death.

I definitely don't think that first turn charges are a good thing. But they are nearly necessary I'm the current environment. If you want to get back to 2nd or even 3rd turn charges, we also need to reduce ranged damage by half or more as well.

 thekerrick wrote:
Its hard for me to take seriously armies like Tau and Eldar complaining about CC on the first turn. They have the tools in their dex, the mobility, and firepower to deal with it. People just dont want to stop spamming riptides, scatpacks, wraithknights, warpspiders and so on.

I can understand Orks or Dark Eldar armies being upset but come on there isn't a useless unit in the Eldar dex. You just dont want to take it.

Storm guardians.

You know, not all eldar players like being douchebags that spam scatter bikes for all events like casual/friendly matches.

 thekerrick wrote:

First, guard along with DE, Orks and a few others have issues well beyond the scope of this argument. Guard are hurting in a lot of areas. As far as Tau go. Take two firewarrior squads, bubble your entire army in a corner, feed him your trash and then dump on him in overwatch and your next shooting phase after he wipes the warriors. After that you can jetpack away!

That sounds like a great way to get your entire Tau army annihilated in one assault phase, and just lose the game in general.

Most of these "counters" just don't work. Dumping 25% of your force in to transports that will die first turn. 15 % if your army in to bubble wrap. For what? It hardly works against the first turn charge armies, and it doesn't work at all vs all the other armies.