Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Not here to create a storm, but dakka likes it that way

I'm a Nid player and feel MCs get an unjustified bad name on here. We have 17 MCs not including FW and GCs. That's (at a guess) more than the rest of 40k factions put together, possibly or damn close cause Daemons have a good few.

Nids are slow, few attacks and can't stand up to Dreds whatsoever. It's only really the flying ones who can be a difficult to kill, which are essentially mostly Daemon ones or the Flyrant, and Daemon ones are really only a large pain when abusing psychic powers.

So what's the score?
One bad apple?

Because they're just plain better than vehicles most of the time now that vehicles have HP too. Better durability, much better melee ability (even for Tau MCs!), and they don't lose anything as they take damage.

 Peregrine wrote:
Because they're just plain better than vehicles most of the time now that vehicles have HP too. Better durability, much better melee ability (even for Tau MCs!), and they don't lose anything as they take damage.

What he said.

MCs should have at least a similar table.

 Vector Strike wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Because they're just plain better than vehicles most of the time now that vehicles have HP too. Better durability, much better melee ability (even for Tau MCs!), and they don't lose anything as they take damage.

What he said.

MCs should have at least a similar table.

No not this, you break Nids even more.

The problem is that the Tau and Eldar have "walkers" (IE wraithknight and Tau suits) that are walkers for all intents and purposes, except they have the rules of MCs, making them OP.

It's anything but the ground bound tyranid mcs, really, that is th problem.

Here's hoping for an Age of Sigmar style table, but they would either have to make a generic one that overly hurts some more than others, or go back and release a FAQ/errata with a table for each.

 Rippy wrote:

 Vector Strike wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Because they're just plain better than vehicles most of the time now that vehicles have HP too. Better durability, much better melee ability (even for Tau MCs!), and they don't lose anything as they take damage.

What he said.

MCs should have at least a similar table.

No not this, you break Nids even more.

The problem is that the Tau and Eldar have "walkers" (IE wraithknight and Tau suits) that are walkers for all intents and purposes, except they have the rules of MCs, making them OP.

Same rules as tyranid MCs. The thing is that their units are bad, but the problem still remains that all MCs are more powerful than vehicles. Daemons, Tau, Eldar, the necron MCs... feth, even the imperium ones! (Looking at you Cawl, mister NOT!MC)

It isn't nid monsters who are to blame, its the TAU, Grey knights and Eldar ones. Who should not only vehicles but are all also faster than regular nids monsters and suffer none of the walker disadvantages.

I'm a Nid player, so I'm not sure, but locally, I think it's when I DO get into combat, it hits HARD.

People can be good at remembering the times the carnifexes rolled up the line, not remembering the times they never got to the line in the same way.

stroller wrote:
I'm a Nid player, so I'm not sure, but locally, I think it's when I DO get into combat, it hits HARD.

People can be good at remembering the times the carnifexes rolled up the line, not remembering the times they never got to the line in the same way.

People don't complain about carnifexii. People complain about wraithknights, riptides, dreadknights, daemon princes and greater daemons. ANY MC that has rules above mediocre.


To OP, yes there's a bad apple. And it's called Codex: tyranids. The rest is cheddar.

Lord Kragan wrote:

stroller wrote:
I'm a Nid player, so I'm not sure, but locally, I think it's when I DO get into combat, it hits HARD.

People can be good at remembering the times the carnifexes rolled up the line, not remembering the times they never got to the line in the same way.

People don't complain about carnifexii. People complain about wraithknights, riptides, dreadknights, daemon princes and greater daemons. ANY MC that has rules above mediocre.


To OP, yes there's a bad apple. And it's called Codex: tyranids. The rest is cheddar.

Nids deserve MC as there creatures.
and overcosted too! i don't thing anyone has issue with those.

a mechancial machine like a riptide, wraith and dreadkight... its a machine,,,, a deadnought is a machine and its a walker.

I don't think that MCs are bad, but FMCs can be, and a couple of specific MCs happen to be OP.

In short, being an MC is actually a drawback - No joining squads, no transports, and all you get back is a few USRs, firing two weapons, and AP2. Not bad, but not great either.

FMCs, though? They get all the benefits of being a flier, with none of the drawbacks. Hard to hit and Skyfire, but they can also be on the board turn one, and often can get a very good save on top of that, making them nigh impossible to kill for many armies, completely impossible to assault, and - If they have good Psychics or good shooting - Impossible to ignore, too. With Jink saves also being available, that's icing on the OP cake.


(I'm not saying that all FMCs are completely unstoppable, just that their core rules make them.head-and-shoulders stronger than their grounded counterparts, usually for very little downside. There's a reason why wings are an autotake on DPs and Hive Tyrants.)

Lord Kragan wrote:

stroller wrote:
I'm a Nid player, so I'm not sure, but locally, I think it's when I DO get into combat, it hits HARD.

People can be good at remembering the times the carnifexes rolled up the line, not remembering the times they never got to the line in the same way.

People don't complain about carnifexii. People complain about wraithknights, riptides, dreadknights, daemon princes and greater daemons. ANY MC that has rules above mediocre.


To OP, yes there's a bad apple. And it's called Codex: tyranids. The rest is cheddar.

This is the first time I've ever heard daemon princes were above mediocre The word you're looking for is "Flying" daemon princes and greater daemons. Because one that has to walk is dead meat. Same as Nid Tyrant. Squiggoths aren't very good either (althoguth to fair to it, being FW means not many people have experience with it) and despite the anger towards Eldar when's the last time you've seen wraith lords or an avatar of khaine? (oh yeah, and insert joke here about "Dark Eldar have MCs?")

The problem child is rather specificly the wraith knight, dread knights, and the tau "walkers", while the rest are laughable.

And considering the situation with MC and vehicles was flipped in 5th edition, there needed to be some sort of balance and I think the treadheads are just annoyed they're no longer godkings of the battlefield

Ugh squiggoths, jup those are awful. they make tyrand monsters look good.

Tau, Eldar, and Grey Knight are at varying degrees of being too good compared to actual vehicles. Generally can't be instant killed by anything other than force/ID weapons (which are relatively rare) and don't have reduced shooting from being damaged. Personally I think these models where given this rule set because of how bad the alternative is.....

Then we have Walkers which is what these units should be but Walkers get the worse end of both being a Vehicle while having the movement of a foot slogging infantry model. AP2 or better has the potential to instantly destroy them while they generally lack saves, have hull points, and penetrating hits negatively impacts their shooting, movement, or both. Being these rather large waddling things they tend to run into terrain which slows them down to rolling 2D6 take the highest movement so its not hard to end up with your melee focused walker going something like 3 inches a turn. Grav being the dumb mechanic that it is can turn them into lawn ornaments if it doesn't outright destroy them.

Oh boy... well, for starters I would...

Chop all of them down to 3 wounds, get rid of their armour saves entirely, give them a damage table that offered a chance to one hit kill them, give them a 1 in 6 chance to immobilize themselves and lose a wound when they go into difficult terrain, take away the ability for the flying ones to start on the table instead of reserves, take away their ability to fire more than one weapon normally after moving, give their weapons defined firing arcs instead of 360 shooting, take away the AP 2 at initiative, and allow for them to be shot while they're engaged in close combat.

That's why I hate MCs.

Here's the real deal with Monstrous Creatures.



They're fine. Most of them. The ones that aren't are the reason people complain. There's only a very few that people complain about:

#1 - Flyrant. No one complains about a walking Tyrant, just about the one flying up in the air. This is because it puts out a ton of very mobile dakka.

#2 - Riptide and variants. They have a ton of guns that are also very mobile.

#3 - Dreadknight. They have some very powerful flamers and some good close combat ability, and are very mobile.



See the pattern? The real problem people have are things that have a lot of power that are very mobile. People are more okay with vehicles being like this because you can one-shot a vehicle, and the vehicles often don't get a save. However, for a long time, people really complained about Wave Serpents. Take a guess why.

(hint: it could move very quickly, had a lot of firepower, and could jink for a save)

The only reason people complain about the flyrant is due to the twin linked brainleech devourers that you'd equip it with. The CC variant is much more balanced.

Even with flying demon princes, of chaos marine or demon variety most people don't have too much issue outside of psychic shenanigans. The only reason they don't complain about the tyrants psychic shenanigans is their psychic powers are complete gak.

The main problems is the dreadnight, tau MC's & GMC's, Wraithknights etc. They just get ridiculously OP using MC rules.

Then look at the poor sods who are stuck using Walker rules.... it gets massively unbalanced.

The vehicle rules in 40K are bad. Plain and simple. They are dis-congruent from any other rules in 40K. They have variable movement rules that are totally different from non-vehicle models (Stationary, Combat, Cruise, All Out). Terrain affects them in a different way- roll a d6, if you roll a 1, you are immobilized. For some bizarre reason, this applies to skimmers and flyers as well. How far you move affects what your vehicle can do- shoot at full BS, snap shot, or no shot at all. Moving all out gives some vehicles a cover save. Shooting is different as well. Sure, they have a Ballistic Skill, but how fast they move affects the shot. Each weapon on the vehicle as it's own arc of fire and line of sight, and even if the vehicle has multiple weapons and multiple crew/spirit stones/technomages/advanced technology or whatever, it may only be able to shoot one, some, or none, again, based on how far it moved. Vehicles can't charge. In close combat, they can't fight- unless they have some wargear that does auto hits or something. They can't even Overwatch- despite some having the weapons or crew that could. They have a Weapon Skill of 1, but can't make attacks. You check to "wound" a vehicle not by rolling to wound based on your strength and the target's toughness, but your strength vs. the side armor value of the vehicle- this is totally different from the way close combat works for every other model/unit in the game. Vehicles have Hull Points, kinda like wounds, but if you take a Hull Point of damage, something has happened to your vehicle to reduce it's effectiveness- can't shoot next turn, can't move next turn, can't move or shoot next turn, lost a weapon, or even blow up. Which brings me to the vehicle damage table- WTF. So I roll to hit against a vehicle, I roll to wound against the side armor value, causing a possible Hull Point, and on top of that I roll on a table that could outright blow up the vehicle. If the vehicle survives the close combat, close combat ends. There is no leadership test, no morale, no "winner" or "loser", no consolidation- the vehicle can just... move away next turn if it can. And if it can't- it violates the "no enemy models within 1" unless you are engaged" rule.

To complicate things even further, we add in a sub-class of vehicles known as Walkers, and to really muddy things up, Chariots (don't get me started on Chariots).

Monstrous Creatures are basically giant infantry models with better rules- far, far better rules then any vehicle. The biggest advantages- movement doesn't effect the MC. How they move, where they move, difficult terrain, whatever. It has no effect on their movement, shooting or charging in close combat. Here is the one single advantage most (not all!) vehicles have: They can move pretty far, some as much as 18"+. But it comes with all kinds of restrictions. MC's always shoot at full effectiveness, and can Overwatch. Close Combat is where they really shine. They are just so much better then vehicles.

Just changing a couple unit types from MC to Vehicle will not fix the overall problem of vehicles in 40K.

The Vehicle rules need to be completely gutted and reworked to flow into the mainstream rules better.

I'm personally fine with the way the two rule-sets work. I just think the higher-end monstrus creatures need a points rebalance or nerf (either would work).

Namely riptides, ghostkeels, wraithknights, stormsurges, dreadknights, flyrants, winged daemon princes (and I've probably forgotten some)

They're all taken regularly because they're just very good for what the points allow. They also ALL have additional mobility that puts them further above regular monstrous creatures or walkers.

The problem isn't with Nid or Daemon MCs. It's with Riptides, Stormsurges, Dreadknights and Wraithknights. Basically WALKERS masquerading as MCs.

Although yes, I do agree MCs should get degrading rules (with more HPs) similar to AoS.

Even the lowly carnifex doesn't immobilize itself on a fething shrub. Vehicles are absurdly crippled in 7th ed.
Of course, if your vehicles are free, who cares how crappy they are. But for those of us who have to try to play with purchased vehicles, it gets tedious quickly.
Carnifex absolutely has fewer liabilities than a predator.

As others have said over and over, It is the Not-MC MCs that are problematic as well as the flying folk. Flying MCs should revert to Jump MC rules and the Vehicle-MCs should get walker rules and Jump-Walker rules. How hard could it be?

.... I want Jump Walkers that I can model as Mechwarriors, that'd be tight. I want Mechwarriors, plain and simple.

It makes sense that MCs, Nidz/Deamons, don't get crippled by things that could cripple a vehicle in difficult terrain because they aren't mechanical and run on algorithms and servos. They are extremely flexible. I do not know off the top of my head if MCs get hurt by dangerous terrain, but they should if they don't and that would be perfectly sensible.

Vehicles used to be kinda absurd, which I appreciated even as a Green Tide player. Melta-Vetmeras was also super dominant in the previous edition right (Mobile Dakka)?

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Oh boy... well, for starters I would...

Chop all of them down to 3 wounds, get rid of their armour saves entirely, give them a damage table that offered a chance to one hit kill them, give them a 1 in 6 chance to immobilize themselves and lose a wound when they go into difficult terrain, take away the ability for the flying ones to start on the table instead of reserves, take away their ability to fire more than one weapon normally after moving, give their weapons defined firing arcs instead of 360 shooting, take away the AP 2 at initiative, and allow for them to be shot while they're engaged in close combat.

That's why I hate MCs.

Take the fact that every single weapon on the table can damage your run of the mill MC (average toughness of 6) and lets start talking about it again. A squad of guardsmen shooting at 12 inches to a carnifex can hope to remove one wound from it with a bit of luck and that's without an order to increase their firepower or their almost mandatory special and heavy weapons. Poison weapons and snipers are also very cheap and efficient ways to deal with most monstruous creatures. A dreadnough is a rather mediocre walker, but it's more survivable and powerful than a carnifex. Strength 7 and 8 weapons with low AP like krak missile or plasma shots are much more dangerous to MCs than to vehicule who have 12 or more of armor (which is most tank). Being possibly hurt by all weapons on the table is a significant drawback. It makes the use of special weapons within squads of normal soldiers a lot easier and allow the ennemy to simply finish off big monsters (their last wound or two) with much lighter weapons and not rely on their anti-tank weapons up until the very end.

Over half the monstruous creature of the game are in a single army and over half of them struggle to be as dangerous as a simple dreadnought. Did you ever feared a toxicrene, a haruspex, a trygon (even the prime version), tyrannofex or a maleceptor? I never really did. All those creature are not that hard to kill or not all that devastating. Even carnifex, walking hive tyrants, tervigon, mawlock, harpy and hive crones aren't that dangerous. They are pretty average in my opinion. Avatars of Khaine and wraithlords aren't that bad either. They certainly aren't weak, but neither are they OP. Cronos and Talos pain engins are not really big powerhouse even in a Haemonculus Coven force. This pretty much leaves us with Gigantic monstruous creatures like the wraithknight and the stromsurge or high firepower highly mobile monstruous creature like the riptide, a flying hive tyrant and the nemesis dreadknight. Some would place the Ghostkeel amongst that group, but outside of his special stealth formation I didn't found him that impressive, even if still very good. The big problem with MC's is that all the sucky ones are all design fore close combat and are moving at infantrie pace while all the powerful ones are faster than that (or fliying), armed with tank sized weapons, have 2+ saves and, frequently, an invulnerable saves. They combine the firepower of tanks with the resilience of wound models that cannot be killed outright. What really changed MCs was the addition of high firepower models at long range AKA mini-titans. If you were to make MCs more vulnerable to firepower, most of them, who are already subpar or pretty Most MCs would become unusable in any competitive play should MCs be nerf further. The only logical solution to me would be to make Tau battlesuits above the XV88 walkers (or jump walkers) and price more heavily the gargantuant monstruous creatures.

If you want to create a degrading table for MCs they need to be a lot more powerful (or cheaper) since most of them are design for close combat and will not intervene in the battle before turn three or so more than enough for them to take some heavy damage. It's a rare day where you will see a Screamer Killer Carnifex hit the ennemy line at full health or almost. Currently, you would be lucky to see a Screamer Killer carnifex on the tabletop at all. A tank can kill from turn one with very powerul weapons and ignore completly most weapons on the tabletop. It requires more careful ressource allocation to be dealt with than a normal MCs. The problem of MCs is due to the fact that the most dominant model in the games are from them, yet want makes them so dominant, like for all dominant models is their highfirepower and high resistence. Centurions, wraithguards, tomb blades, wraiths and thunderwolf cavalry all possess the same qualities of speed, resistence and firepower/close combat dominating strength.

MC's have Move Through Cover and automatically pass Dangerous Terrain tests.

Upping the points costs of MC's won't do anything to fix the problem of how much better an MC is over a vehicle. I'd take a Wraithknight over any single vehicle in the game, because a Wraithknight can destroy that vehicle with one attack, while there is literally no vehicle in the game that can one shot a Wraithknight. That's not a points problem, that's a rules problem.

 Tamwulf wrote:
MC's have Move Through Cover and automatically pass Dangerous Terrain tests.

Upping the points costs of MC's won't do anything to fix the problem of how much better an MC is over a vehicle. I'd take a Wraithknight over any single vehicle in the game, because a Wraithknight can destroy that vehicle with one attack, while there is literally no vehicle in the game that can one shot a Wraithknight. That's not a points problem, that's a rules problem.

If the wraithknight was 2000 points would it still be a problem?

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
MC's have Move Through Cover and automatically pass Dangerous Terrain tests.

Upping the points costs of MC's won't do anything to fix the problem of how much better an MC is over a vehicle. I'd take a Wraithknight over any single vehicle in the game, because a Wraithknight can destroy that vehicle with one attack, while there is literally no vehicle in the game that can one shot a Wraithknight. That's not a points problem, that's a rules problem.

If the wraithknight was 2000 points would it still be a problem?

It makes the Wraithknight less of a problem, but it doesn't make the Dreadnaught's lack of durability less of a problem. It fixes part of the problem, not the whole problem.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
MC's have Move Through Cover and automatically pass Dangerous Terrain tests.

Upping the points costs of MC's won't do anything to fix the problem of how much better an MC is over a vehicle. I'd take a Wraithknight over any single vehicle in the game, because a Wraithknight can destroy that vehicle with one attack, while there is literally no vehicle in the game that can one shot a Wraithknight. That's not a points problem, that's a rules problem.

If the wraithknight was 2000 points would it still be a problem?

It makes the Wraithknight less of a problem, but it doesn't make the Dreadnaught's lack of durability less of a problem. It fixes part of the problem, not the whole problem.

If the dreadnaught cost 10 point would it be overpowered?

 CrownAxe wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
MC's have Move Through Cover and automatically pass Dangerous Terrain tests.

Upping the points costs of MC's won't do anything to fix the problem of how much better an MC is over a vehicle. I'd take a Wraithknight over any single vehicle in the game, because a Wraithknight can destroy that vehicle with one attack, while there is literally no vehicle in the game that can one shot a Wraithknight. That's not a points problem, that's a rules problem.

If the wraithknight was 2000 points would it still be a problem?

It makes the Wraithknight less of a problem, but it doesn't make the Dreadnaught's lack of durability less of a problem. It fixes part of the problem, not the whole problem.

If the dreadnaught cost 10 point would it be overpowered?

Normally I try to keep in mind that game balance isn't the only consideration with points and army composition rules; you also don't want to force one army to have to buy a lot more models than another, and you want to make sure there's some rational sense to how you're constructing your army rather than plonking a random assortment of dudes on the table.

If a Dreadnaught cost 10pts it'd be better. If a Wraithknight cost 2,000pts it'd be worse. But then the Space Marine player (in an imaginary and grossly oversimplified version of events where those are the only two things around) is spending $8,000 to put 2,000pts of models on the table and the Eldar player is spending $120.

In the ideal situation you pick out a chunk of units that you expect to be roughly comparable in game role/army composition spot (say, a Dreadnaught, a Carnifex, and a Wraithlord) and you try to keep them within some relatively narrow band of each other in cost, so you're not creating a massive imbalance in the quantity of stuff you need to play one army over another.

 Tamwulf wrote:
MC's have Move Through Cover and automatically pass Dangerous Terrain tests.

Upping the points costs of MC's won't do anything to fix the problem of how much better an MC is over a vehicle. I'd take a Wraithknight over any single vehicle in the game, because a Wraithknight can destroy that vehicle with one attack, while there is literally no vehicle in the game that can one shot a Wraithknight. That's not a points problem, that's a rules problem.

Anything with a D weapon can one-shot a Wraithknight.

epronovost wrote:


Take the fact that every single weapon on the table can damage your run of the mill MC (average toughness of 6) and lets start talking about it again. A squad of guardsmen shooting at 12 inches to a carnifex can hope to remove one wound from it with a bit of luck and that's without an order to increase their firepower or their almost mandatory special and heavy weapons. Poison weapons and snipers are also very cheap and efficient ways to deal with most monstruous creatures. A dreadnough is a rather mediocre walker, but it's more survivable and powerful than a carnifex. Strength 7 and 8 weapons with low AP like krak missile or plasma shots are much more dangerous to MCs than to vehicule who have 12 or more of armor (which is most tank). Being possibly hurt by all weapons on the table is a significant drawback. It makes the use of special weapons within squads of normal soldiers a lot easier and allow the ennemy to simply finish off big monsters (their last wound or two) with much lighter weapons and not rely on their anti-tank weapons up until the very end.

A squad of Guardsmen, assuming they're within 12" of the Carnifex, is getting 1.52 wounds against that Carnifex. 1.52. A squad of Marines does slightly better on account of the BS4 and the fact that the sergeant has a bolter instead of just a pistol, they're getting through 2.11 wounds. With a 3+ save, a Carnifex needs, on average, 3 wounds for something to get past the armour save. The argument that MCs are vulnerable to small arms is total hogwash, the amount of them you need to actually do something to MCs is astronomical and even if you bring enough, getting them all in range to do their thing is pretty damn hard too.

In what universe is a Dreadnought more survivable than a Carnifex? The Carnifex has a 3+ save to get through and, unlike the Dreadnought, can easily get FNP if one of your synapse creatures rolls that result on the psyker table. The Dreadnought has no defensive countermeasure at all. Plasma weapons and krak missiles are not more dangerous to MCs than to vehicles, neither of those do anything to diminish the effectiveness of the MC but they sure as hell can cost the vehicle a whole turn if they roll on the damage chart (in the case of the plasma weapon they could even die to ONE shot, which MCs never have to worry about).

Over half the monstruous creature of the game are in a single army and over half of them struggle to be as dangerous as a simple dreadnought. Did you ever feared a toxicrene, a haruspex, a trygon (even the prime version), tyrannofex or a maleceptor? I never really did. All those creature are not that hard to kill or not all that devastating. Even carnifex, walking hive tyrants, tervigon, mawlock, harpy and hive crones aren't that dangerous. They are pretty average in my opinion. Avatars of Khaine and wraithlords aren't that bad either. They certainly aren't weak, but neither are they OP. Cronos and Talos pain engins are not really big powerhouse even in a Haemonculus Coven force. This pretty much leaves us with Gigantic monstruous creatures like the wraithknight and the stromsurge or high firepower highly mobile monstruous creature like the riptide, a flying hive tyrant and the nemesis dreadknight. Some would place the Ghostkeel amongst that group, but outside of his special stealth formation I didn't found him that impressive, even if still very good. The big problem with MC's is that all the sucky ones are all design fore close combat and are moving at infantrie pace while all the powerful ones are faster than that (or fliying), armed with tank sized weapons, have 2+ saves and, frequently, an invulnerable saves. They combine the firepower of tanks with the resilience of wound models that cannot be killed outright. What really changed MCs was the addition of high firepower models at long range AKA mini-titans. If you were to make MCs more vulnerable to firepower, most of them, who are already subpar or pretty Most MCs would become unusable in any competitive play should MCs be nerf further. The only logical solution to me would be to make Tau battlesuits above the XV88 walkers (or jump walkers) and price more heavily the gargantuant monstruous creatures.

I fear EVERY MC because for every edition I've played they've been the most lavishly rewarded unit type in the rulebook. They have SO many perks for seemingly no reason, and the gap in efficacy between them and vehicles has only gotten wider as the game has evolved. I won't argue that some MCs are better than others, this has been true for years, but that's not what i'm getting at. The unit type as a whole is incredibly obnoxious when their mechanized equivalent, vehicles, are so much weaker and less resilient.

If you want to create a degrading table for MCs they need to be a lot more powerful (or cheaper) since most of them are design for close combat and will not intervene in the battle before turn three or so more than enough for them to take some heavy damage. It's a rare day where you will see a Screamer Killer Carnifex hit the ennemy line at full health or almost. Currently, you would be lucky to see a Screamer Killer carnifex on the tabletop at all. A tank can kill from turn one with very powerul weapons and ignore completly most weapons on the tabletop. It requires more careful ressource allocation to be dealt with than a normal MCs. The problem of MCs is due to the fact that the most dominant model in the games are from them, yet want makes them so dominant, like for all dominant models is their highfirepower and high resistence. Centurions, wraithguards, tomb blades, wraiths and thunderwolf cavalry all possess the same qualities of speed, resistence and firepower/close combat dominating strength.

Turn 3 or 4 offers them plenty of time to get their damage done. There's 2 assault phases every game turn, which means you're looking at 6 to 10 player turns (depending on game length) of them vaporizing whatever it is they're in combat with. Tanks most certainly cannot ignore most weapons on the tabletop, they don't have an armour save to protect them and, unlike MCs, it's very rare to see one that has more than 3 wounds. I also totally disagree with the assertion that MCs need to be made more powerful if they degrade, they're plenty powerful as it is and the players who have been using them are just used to having all these awesome perks for that unit type.