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Lord Kragan wrote:
Of course, you're the one that is taking all the models out while he just removes his dead pieces.

Like honestly... I'm... I'm all out of feths to be honest. This thread is a lost cause, isn't it?

Not sure what you're trying to say exactly, but I guess you consider it okay to have people shot off the table on turn one, but for some reason having them melee'd off the table on turn one is somehow worse? Or?

Lord Kragan wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
It'd be nice if every codex had some sort of ID weapon.

You have to understand that if marines have the answer for X, X is fine.

Is the design team stance, after all.

Of course, think of the kiddies (or old whales who shell a boatload of monnis), we can't have their uber-badass chapter master of the Raging Snowflake's chapter be sniped somewhere along the game, can't we?

He's much easier do deal with than 100 S6 shots from 36" away. I can let loose the Wraiths and he has to fight them for many, many turns for example. The Eldar choose what dies every turn.

 Runic wrote:
There's enough Ignores Cover or just plain volume of fire on the top tier lists that normal amounts of terrain hardly make a difference.

Ignoring cover doesn't help if you can't draw LOS to a target.

Ofcourse in a perfect world one can fill their terrain to look like a scenic shot out of a movie, but in reality tournaments don't usually have this luxury as there are quite a bit of tables to set up.

I deal in the reality, not the utopia.

Then those tournaments need to limit the number of people who can sign up until they can obtain sufficient terrain to do it right. The game is intended to have enough terrain, including LOS-blocking terrain, to significantly reduce the effectiveness of gunlines and shooting alpha strikes. Complaining about how powerful shooting is when you fail to bring sufficient terrain makes about as much sense as complaining about how overpowered assault armies are when you change the rules to have armies start 1" apart on a 2'x1' table.

LOS is hard to block with true LOS rules.

Martel732 wrote:
Since when do scatterlasers give a feth about terrain?


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Lord Kragan wrote:

 Runic wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
There's a difference between "nasty matchup" and "non-interactive tabling". First turn charge lists are bad for the game, period, no matter what tournament win/loss records are.

Nah, no periods, just your subjective view. They aren't any worse than first turn tabling by shooting asfar as I'm concerned.

Not that first turn tabling, of any kind, is "good for the game" on a general level, but in practice shooting of the kind already existed, and I consider melee having the same option a good thing in this context.

Of course, you're the one that is taking all the models out while he just removes his dead pieces.

Like honestly... I'm... I'm all out of feths to be honest. This thread is a lost cause, isn't it?

Oh, like Eldar haven't been doing this for two editions now. From across the board. They don't even have to get their hands dirty.

Like I did... oh no I didn't. Not everyone is a vindictive jackwad that will make the game as unpleasant as possible to the others. And in competitive play I find it hard to believe that an eldar list wipes out a competitive, well built, list in a single turn. Something that superfriends and their ilk are capable of.

Suuuure,from across the board. My arse.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Its common content, one of those is an entire faction unto itself that them has formations to give it even more freebies, and that was a very tiny subset of things just to give examples. I could go on for pages. Decurion bonuses that give basic 13pt Warriors resiliency roughly on par with 40pt Terminators across most weapons types, Necron wraiths, TWC's and wound allocation shennanigans, Invisibility, FNP that has to be FAQ'd to "only" work on a 2+. Skimmer transports that can jink and still allow passngers to fire at full effect. The clear gap in capability and resiliency between skimmers and non skimmers. MC vs Vehicle balance. Allies abuse and formation/detachment synergy. Gravcents, Scatterbikes, BS5 Aspect Warriors that pay nothing for the stat boost, Wraithknights, Etc ad nauseum. Then we can go to the opposite end of the spectrum. Why are Defilers 200pts? Tempestus Scions with neutered range AP3 popguns for twice the price of a basic IG Veteran. Maleceptors, Mutilators, Vespids, etc . This sort of balance mismatch is ubiquitous, not rare exceptions.

But again we'll have to differ, because I see a lot of those examples as instances of asymmetry rather than imbalance. Necrons are tough until you sweeping advance them, MCs are weirdly tough until you have Grav in your meta or ID weapons, etc. I see a lot of those examples as part of a healthy churn.

Necrons are easy to sweeping advance if you can get into combat and beat them (remember, aside from Init they fight like Marines but with better resiliency) and make them break on Ld10. This is not easy and is outright impossible for many armies. IG for instance is not going to be able to do that and can neither shoot them down fast enough nor outmaneuver them. (In fact I havent seen any IG army defeat a Necron army in 7E). Wraiths are even worse, being absurdly resilient against both quantity and quality of firepower, a 200something point unit of Wraiths will take more S10 firepower to kill than a Warhound titan will, and at the same time can be kitted to be resilient enough against small arms fire such that you'd need nearly 900 lasgun shots (far beyond what any IG army could ever hope to deliver) to put them down. Likewise, most things that work against MCs also work against tanks, massed grav will kill tanks through HP loss just fine, and they risk ID on any AP1/2 penetrating hit. Tanks dont get armor saves and have to deal with a damage table and have wounds to boot like MC's, and usually fewer wounds than MC's typically have, about the only thing they have is higher base "toughness".

Then we get stuff like formation bonuses and theres nothing really asymmetric about that, just freebie power bonuses. Same with allies synergies and the like.

Asymmetry does come into play, but theres so much that goes beyond simple asymmetry that is egregiously balanced.

I view tournaments as very particular events, and not any indication of normalcy at clubs/game circles. It's tempting to look at them as a source of statistics, but only because they are the only source of any statistics. But it'd be crazy to think that was how everybody played 40K.

In some respects sure, but theyre a pretty good reflection of general trends and relative rankings. They wont tell us anything too specific, but one can probably pretty safely conclude that Eldar are very powerful relative to say, Scions or Orks which would appear to be dramatically less so from looking at event trends when Eldar are usually routinely occupying many spots in the top ~15% of finishers while it is particularly noteworthy and rare for something like Scions or Orks to finish that high. Same way a winning season usually says a lot about the quality of a sports team even if it doesnt necessarily tell you how well individual players or specific games or strategies went.

High five!

 Peregrine wrote:
Their models are ugly, their fluff is boring and stupid, and the awful rules just add insult to injury.

You just described Chaos Space Marines, so let's get rid of them, too.

Lord Kragan wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Since when do scatterlasers give a feth about terrain?


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Lord Kragan wrote:

 Runic wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
There's a difference between "nasty matchup" and "non-interactive tabling". First turn charge lists are bad for the game, period, no matter what tournament win/loss records are.

Nah, no periods, just your subjective view. They aren't any worse than first turn tabling by shooting asfar as I'm concerned.

Not that first turn tabling, of any kind, is "good for the game" on a general level, but in practice shooting of the kind already existed, and I consider melee having the same option a good thing in this context.

Of course, you're the one that is taking all the models out while he just removes his dead pieces.

Like honestly... I'm... I'm all out of feths to be honest. This thread is a lost cause, isn't it?

Oh, like Eldar haven't been doing this for two editions now. From across the board. They don't even have to get their hands dirty.

Like I did... oh no I didn't. Not everyone is a vindictive jackwad that will make the game as unpleasant as possible to the others. And in competitive play I find it hard to believe that an eldar list wipes out a competitive, well built, list in a single turn. Something that superfriends and their ilk are capable of.

Suuuure,from across the board. My arse.

I"ll give you some BA and I'll take Eldar and show you.

" Not everyone is a vindictive jackwad that will make the game as unpleasant as possible to the others"

All it takes is the codex authors. So too late.

Martel732 wrote:
LOS is hard to block with true LOS rules.

No, it's very easy, you just need the right kind of terrain. Ruins with solid walls, intact buildings, etc. The problem is TLOS, it's that people put a single tree in the center of the table and then complain when shooting is effective.

 Runic wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
Of course, you're the one that is taking all the models out while he just removes his dead pieces.

Like honestly... I'm... I'm all out of feths to be honest. This thread is a lost cause, isn't it?

Not sure what you're trying to say exactly, but I guess you consider it okay to have people shot off the table on turn one, but for some reason having them melee'd off the table on turn one is somehow worse? Or?

What? NO. If you'd actually bother to read ANY of my comments you'd find that I'm against that kind of gak around. And I've stated multiple times that it's a bad idea for ANYONE.

It's not ideal, but while I can lose 1/3 to 1/2 of my list from across the table, first turn assaults should be a thing.

 Melissia wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Their models are ugly, their fluff is boring and stupid, and the awful rules just add insult to injury.

You just described Chaos Space Marines, so let's get rid of them, too.

CSM are at least the necessary mirror to loyalist marines. They should be consolidated into a single CSM codex (just like loyalist marines should be consolidated into a single C:SM book), but their existence is a key part of the setting. Tyranids are a later addition that is nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the "scifi bugs" cliche, replace them with orks in every piece of fluff they appear in and nothing changes.

 Peregrine wrote:
Then those tournaments need to limit the number of people who can sign up until they can obtain sufficient terrain to do it right. The game is intended to have enough terrain, including LOS-blocking terrain, to significantly reduce the effectiveness of gunlines and shooting alpha strikes. Complaining about how powerful shooting is when you fail to bring sufficient terrain makes about as much sense as complaining about how overpowered assault armies are when you change the rules to have armies start 1" apart on a 2'x1' table.

And I find it makes the least sense of all to talk about these perfect world scenarios, since they are afterall, nonexistent.

Sure, that could work. Doesn't go this way in practice 90% of the time though, the bigger the tournament, the more apparent the lack of proper terrain. Should've could've hardly changes how these things are on a practical level.

And, in the end, shot or melee'd on turn 1, doesn't make a difference to me. Both are equally nasty, and I'm happier in the context of how the game is that now both kinds of builds can do it instead of just the shooty ones. Allows people to win with melee builds atleast, something of a rarity before.

 Peregrine wrote:
their existence is a key part of the setting.

Nah. You can have a massively interesting and clearly identifiable 40k setting without having a single marine, loyalist or otherwise, in it.

Martel732 wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Since when do scatterlasers give a feth about terrain?


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Lord Kragan wrote:

 Runic wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
There's a difference between "nasty matchup" and "non-interactive tabling". First turn charge lists are bad for the game, period, no matter what tournament win/loss records are.

Nah, no periods, just your subjective view. They aren't any worse than first turn tabling by shooting asfar as I'm concerned.

Not that first turn tabling, of any kind, is "good for the game" on a general level, but in practice shooting of the kind already existed, and I consider melee having the same option a good thing in this context.

Of course, you're the one that is taking all the models out while he just removes his dead pieces.

Like honestly... I'm... I'm all out of feths to be honest. This thread is a lost cause, isn't it?

Oh, like Eldar haven't been doing this for two editions now. From across the board. They don't even have to get their hands dirty.

Like I did... oh no I didn't. Not everyone is a vindictive jackwad that will make the game as unpleasant as possible to the others. And in competitive play I find it hard to believe that an eldar list wipes out a competitive, well built, list in a single turn. Something that superfriends and their ilk are capable of.

Suuuure,from across the board. My arse.

I"ll give you some BA and I'll take Eldar and show you.

" Not everyone is a vindictive jackwad that will make the game as unpleasant as possible to the others"

All it takes is the codex authors. So too late.

Wonderful, hope you like shinning spears. I have plenty of those. I also hope you like wraithlords. Because, you know, every single choice in an army has been predeterminated by the writer and you can't compose a list without his consent.

Still better than BA units. That's what you don't get. The whole codex is. The Wraithlord is one more MC than I get in my whole codex.

 Runic wrote:
And I find it makes the least sense of all to talk about these perfect world scenarios, since they are afterall, nonexistent.

It's funny, but I don't have any problems getting sufficient terrain on the table. Perhaps games with sufficient terrain aren't so nonexistent after all?

Sure, that could work. Doesn't go this way in practice 90% of the time though, the bigger the tournament, the more apparent the lack of proper terrain. Should've could've hardly changes how these things are on a practical level.

Then, as I said, people should stop hosting tournaments with more players than they have the ability to accommodate. And players should stop financially supporting poor tournament hosts. If a TO can't provide sufficient terrain then their customers should stay home until they fix the problem.

And in any case tournaments are not the entire game. The failures of individual TOs do not say anything about the game as published by GW. Your "90% of the time" only applies to the minority of 40k games that are played in tournaments. If you are playing a single game, outside of a tournament, the terrain problem does not exist.


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 Melissia wrote:
Nah. You can have a massively interesting and clearly identifiable 40k setting without having a single marine, loyalist or otherwise, in it.

You really can't. Marines are one of the defining elements of 40k. You can have a dystopian future setting with no space marines, but it won't be 40k anymore.

Martel732 wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Why yes, I'd love for my Keeper of Secret to die just by getting looked at with no saves allowed.

Flying MCs get no pity at all from me. There should be at least a few non-Eldar weapons in the game they respect. Instead, between saves and hard to hit, they can laugh off entire armies worth of fire. Here I am again, having to use Eldar as a standard for competency.

Keeper of Secrets don't fly, they walk. 6" walk, d6+3" run with Fleet. The only thing stopping a bullet from damaging it unless I get lucky is T6 and a 5++.

If it wasn't for all the Marine players around here replacing their plasma and melta with Grav he'd die a lot more often. Give marines and ID gun anywhere close to the reliability of Grav and he'll become a liability.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Their models are ugly, their fluff is boring and stupid, and the awful rules just add insult to injury.

You just described Chaos Space Marines, so let's get rid of them, too.

CSM are at least the necessary mirror to loyalist marines. They should be consolidated into a single CSM codex (just like loyalist marines should be consolidated into a single C:SM book), but their existence is a key part of the setting. Tyranids are a later addition that is nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the "scifi bugs" cliche, replace them with orks in every piece of fluff they appear in and nothing changes.

Tyranids actually predate Chaos Space Marines and basically the Heresy entirely. They existed in the original RT book, rather differently than they do now, but not anymoreso than anything else from that era.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Runic wrote:
And I find it makes the least sense of all to talk about these perfect world scenarios, since they are afterall, nonexistent.

It's funny, but I don't have any problems getting sufficient terrain on the table. Perhaps games with sufficient terrain aren't so nonexistent after all?

Yeah, really weird. I can also get enough terrain on my table. So very odd tournament organizers can't do it in events that occasionally have over 100 participants.

There must be some differing factor somewhere between these two scenarios... have to investigate.

 Peregrine wrote:
Then, as I said, people should stop hosting tournaments with more players than they have the ability to accommodate. And players should stop financially supporting poor tournament hosts. If a TO can't provide sufficient terrain then their customers should stay home until they fix the problem.

Well, still these big tournaments happen and continue to happen and the meta is largely defined in them as the top players participate. And in the end, while cover might mitigate some first turn tabling from a steroid shooting list, in the same way Overwatch, alternative deployments and bubblewrapping can take the edge off a melee alpha strike. Basically making the whole "which is worse" -debate useless, since next to these there are a ton of other factors at play.

We'll just agree to disagree that you think turn 1 melee is worse, and I think they're both equally nasty/powerful/bad however one wants to put it.

 Peregrine wrote:
You really can't. Marines are one of the defining elements of 40k. You can have a dystopian future setting with no space marines, but it won't be 40k anymore.

Not to me. Something like, say, a massive battle of Imperial Guard vs Orks as the latter attack a blasted fortress world is, to me, the most clearly identifiable setup for 40k lore-- and without needing a single marine in place. Inquisitors and their acolytes investigating heretics in a hive city, rogue traders flitting about the galaxy wheeling, dealing, and stealing, the imperial navy blasting and being blasted by the rest of the galaxy, and so on and so forth, all clearly identify 40k to me as opposed to other settings.

I would be willing to accept the argument that without the Imperium there is no 40k, as the Imperium takes center stage, but if you cannot recognize the Imperium without Space Marines then you quite simply don't know 40k very well.

Martel732 wrote:
Still better than BA units. That's what you don't get. The whole codex is. The Wraithlord is one more MC than I get in my whole codex.

It's also a unit that would need to footslog through the entire board, and will be most likely get killed long before it can earn its points back as it won't diver too much firepower. in correlation with its cost. Meanwhile you can just drop pod the bloody dread and almost earn its points back as it fries half a 6-man bike squad and it fails its morale text. The moment they meet, the dreadnought has a more than solid chance to kill the wraithlord, which is more expensive, while he will need a rather lucky roll to kill the dreadnought.

Plus you have baal predators in squadrons, don't gak with me, those fast tanks can get in dangerous and wreck the bikes by turn two. Just park in two rhinos on the sides of them and the scatterlasers don't kill them.

EDIT weird double post

Lord Kragan wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Still better than BA units. That's what you don't get. The whole codex is. The Wraithlord is one more MC than I get in my whole codex.

It's also a unit that would need to footslog through the entire board, and will be most likely get killed long before it can earn its points back as it won't diver too much firepower. in correlation with its cost. Meanwhile you can just drop pod the bloody dread and almost earn its points back as it fries half a 6-man bike squad and it fails its morale text. The moment they meet, the dreadnought has a more than solid chance to kill the wraithlord, which is more expensive, while he will need a rather lucky roll to kill the dreadnought.

Plus you have baal predators in squadrons, don't gak with me, those fast tanks can get in dangerous and wreck the bikes by turn two. Just park in two rhinos on the sides of them and the scatterlasers don't kill them.

You're safe from ba shooting i assure you. Also, reserve fragile units until the pods commit and then win because units on foot are dead in 7th.

Martel732 wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Still better than BA units. That's what you don't get. The whole codex is. The Wraithlord is one more MC than I get in my whole codex.

It's also a unit that would need to footslog through the entire board, and will be most likely get killed long before it can earn its points back as it won't diver too much firepower. in correlation with its cost. Meanwhile you can just drop pod the bloody dread and almost earn its points back as it fries half a 6-man bike squad and it fails its morale text. The moment they meet, the dreadnought has a more than solid chance to kill the wraithlord, which is more expensive, while he will need a rather lucky roll to kill the dreadnought.

Plus you have baal predators in squadrons, don't gak with me, those fast tanks can get in dangerous and wreck the bikes by turn two. Just park in two rhinos on the sides of them and the scatterlasers don't kill them.

You're safe from ba shooting i assure you.

Yeah, because you seem unable to find ways to use it.

Because it doesn't exist compared to xeno shooting. Take all the shooting ba units you want. They are overcosted and underperform.

 Melissia wrote:
Not to me. Something like, say, a massive battle of Imperial Guard vs Orks as the latter attack a blasted fortress world is, to me, the most clearly identifiable setup for 40k lore-- and without needing a single marine in place. Inquisitors and their acolytes investigating heretics in a hive city, rogue traders flitting about the galaxy wheeling, dealing, and stealing, the imperial navy blasting and being blasted by the rest of the galaxy, and so on and so forth, all clearly identify 40k to me as opposed to other settings.

I would be willing to accept the argument that without the Imperium there is no 40k, as the Imperium takes center stage, but if you cannot recognize the Imperium without Space Marines then you quite simply don't know 40k very well.

That might be how it is for you, but you are not the majority here. Like it or not space marines are the face of the setting, the element that is most recognizable as "40k" outside of the dedicated fans.


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 Runic wrote:
Well, still these big tournaments happen and continue to happen and the meta is largely defined in them as the top players participate.

Who cares about the "meta" in that sense? The fact that someone in a tournament I'll never attend won with a list doesn't necessarily mean that every other game is going to go the same way. Nor does the fact that some big tournament fails to use sufficient terrain. Outside of a few badly-run tournaments the terrain issue should not be a problem, and that's the environment that makes up the majority of 40k games.

And in the end, while cover might mitigate some first turn tabling from a steroid shooting list, in the same way Overwatch, alternative deployments and bubblewrapping can take the edge off a melee alpha strike.

The difference is that things like bubble wrap essentially come down to "you still lose a bunch of stuff on turn 1 and there's nothing you can do about it, but at least you get to choose which half of your army you lose". The mitigating factors against shooting alpha strikes, on the other hand, allow you minimize or even eliminate losses entirely.

 Peregrine wrote:
You could do those things, but you still have a WHFB army on round bases, not anything that belongs in 40k. Demons are supposed to be summoned allies for the mortal Chaos armies, not a complete army of their own. For fluff reasons they should never have been given an independent codex, the rule problems merely offer another reason to get rid of them.

The fact they've performed better than the "mortal" Chaos armies for the last 2/3 editions seems to suggest its the other way around. Chaos emo-teen Spess Mehrens are nothing more than support for Daemons and should be pruned back into the supplement that they are. Codex: Chaos Agents should let you take 1 Chaos Warlord and a unit of Smelly, Angry, Shouty or Magic Marines alongside your Daemons army. That way we cut down on the number of Marines in the game, and nothing of value is lost.

 Peregrine wrote:
Ignoring cover doesn't help if you can't draw LOS to a target.

Filling the table with LoS-blocking terrain has been mooted for years. It was a bad idea when fail Ork players were demanding it back in 5th to keep their gakky army "competitive" against the grain of the game, and it's an even worse idea now that I can drop 120 Metamorphs and Acolytes on my opponent on turn 1. Genestealer Cults are already difficult to kill, making it harder just makes them more powerful.

 Peregrine wrote:

If you read my post you'd see that it clearly says "certain MCs", not "all MCs".

Fair enough, my apologies. But that doesn't mean those "certain MCs" aren't a small percentage of actual MC's. Nor does their resilience automatically make them unbalanced rather than asymmetrical. I'm looking forward to charging Riptides with my CSMs.

Being able to lose to a non-interactive gimmick list that shouldn't exist is not a balancing factor.

First turn charges have as much right to exist as Drop Pods. And since you can put units in reserve, start them in vehicles, or bubble wrap your units, you're automatically capable interacting with them as a strategy.

They do, but those time limits shouldn't be a major factor. And time limits often help horde armies, since the ability to play slowly and end the game before your opponent has enough time to win is a very powerful one.

Slow play in tournaments is rarely awarded with high-standings, and "points" tend to be better scored with immediate kills, rather than an attrition grind. Horde strategies tend to work best in the long game, and tournaments actively discourage long games.


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 Peregrine wrote:

That might be how it is for you, but you are not the majority here.

And I'm sure you are the voice of majority when you say Tyranids have no place. . .

 Peregrine wrote:
Who cares about the "meta" in that sense? The fact that someone in a tournament I'll never attend won with a list doesn't necessarily mean that every other game is going to go the same way.

Quite a lot of people actually, and what the top players in tournaments devise in their lists more often than not finds it's place in games outside tournaments aswell. Aside from fluffy soft matches, and in those first turn tabling isn't an issue and are therefore irrelevant.

 Peregrine wrote:
The difference is that things like bubble wrap essentially come down to "you still lose a bunch of stuff on turn 1 and there's nothing you can do about it, but at least you get to choose which half of your army you lose". The mitigating factors against shooting alpha strikes, on the other hand, allow you minimize or even eliminate losses entirely.

You still lose a bunch of stuff on turn 1 against steroid shooting lists. Aka no difference.

Losses entirely mitigated against a list capable of tabling an army on turn 1 with shooting is a fantasy unless you're null deployed. And, as you pointed out, against shooting you don't even get to choose what part of your army you lose. Except by going into reserves. Something that also works against melee.

Also, if a player can't interact against a GSC list then they're just lacking in the know-how department. All of the ways to do so have already been listed in this thread, just above for example. Ignoring these strategies doesn't make them non-existent.

There is more interaction that one can do against a melee alpha strike than there is against a shooting one. Especially if they have accounted being melee'd in their list building.

If not, what can one say. There are now multiple armies that pose a serious threat in melee. To ignore this fact in ones list design is a choice.