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Baldeagle91 wrote: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.

Sadly that is the only option available that is "worth" taking. The CC variant is no way much more balance. The way I take this statment, is, it's easier for THE OPPONENT to kill or not take on as much damage and makes the game easier for THE OPPONENT to play against.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

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.

Hogwash?
Lets see, 36 lasgun shots deals 1 wound to a T6 3+ save MC
18 lasgun shots kills a tactical marine. Two marines per MC wound, seems clear enough.

That carnifex costs 120 points. A tactical marine costs 14 points. So 8.57 marines for a carnifex.

154.26 lasgun shots to kill 120 points of tactical marines. 144 lasgun shots to kill 120 points of carnifex.

Point for point you're doing more damage shooting your lasguns at a carnifex than you are at tac marines.

Immune to small arms fire. Absolute hogwash

Functionally immune because its so hard to bring that many small arms to bear and its a waste of firepower. It takes 27 bs 4 bolter shots to inflict a single wound vs t6 3+. It's a losing play to go that route.

Lasguns have a special niche vs t6 making the above example cherrypicked data. S4 non rending weapons get bent over by t6 3+ and that's super powerful.

Arson Fire wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

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.

Hogwash?
Lets see, 36 lasgun shots deals 1 wound to a T6 3+ save MC
18 lasgun shots kills a tactical marine. Two marines per MC wound, seems clear enough.

That carnifex costs 120 points. A tactical marine costs 14 points. So 8.57 marines for a carnifex.

154.26 lasgun shots to kill 120 points of tactical marines. 144 lasgun shots to kill 120 points of carnifex.

Point for point you're doing more damage shooting your lasguns at a carnifex than you are at tac marines.

Immune to small arms fire. Absolute hogwash

Oh yeah, sure, if you're gonna read the point costs of the model as solely a representation of how resilient it is to kill and literally nothing else, then sure you can turn this around and try to make the tactical marine sound like it's more resilient than a Carnifex. That's an absolutely absurd way to look at this, but yeah you can do it. How often are you getting 36 las gun shots on a single MC though? And inside rapid fire range, you better pray you have those 154.26 las gun shots ready because you're only going to get that one last chance to kill that thing before it charges you and becomes totally immune to all of your shooting.

Martel732 wrote:
making the above example cherrypicked data

It's a bit much to claim it's cherrypicked data, when I'm just using the example from the post I'm responding to.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

Oh yeah, sure, if you're gonna read the point costs of the model as solely a representation of how resilient it is to kill and literally nothing else, then sure you can turn this around and try to make the tactical marine sound like it's more resilient than a Carnifex. That's an absolutely absurd way to look at this, but yeah you can do it. How often are you getting 36 las gun shots on a single MC though? And inside rapid fire range, you better pray you have those 154.26 las gun shots ready because you're only going to get that one last chance to kill that thing before it charges you and becomes totally immune to all of your shooting.

The point is not that someone is going to throw 154.26 lasgun shots at a carnifex and kill it. That's silly.
The point is that you're doing more damage with those shots against the carnifex, than against the infantry you would logically consider the appropriate target for small arms.

Forget cherrypicking, then. But it remains that lasguns have a special niche vs t6. You are paying far fewer points per shot than for s4 shooting and getting the exact same effect.

Arson Fire wrote:

The point is not that someone is going to throw 154.26 lasgun shots at a carnifex and kill it. That's silly.
The point is that you're doing more damage with those shots against the carnifex, than against the infantry you would logically consider the appropriate target for small arms.

Except that las guns don't do more damage against the Carnifex. You need a lot more of them, twice as many in fact, to get that single wound through.

Arson Fire wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
making the above example cherrypicked data

It's a bit much to claim it's cherrypicked data, when I'm just using the example from the post I'm responding to.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

Oh yeah, sure, if you're gonna read the point costs of the model as solely a representation of how resilient it is to kill and literally nothing else, then sure you can turn this around and try to make the tactical marine sound like it's more resilient than a Carnifex. That's an absolutely absurd way to look at this, but yeah you can do it. How often are you getting 36 las gun shots on a single MC though? And inside rapid fire range, you better pray you have those 154.26 las gun shots ready because you're only going to get that one last chance to kill that thing before it charges you and becomes totally immune to all of your shooting.

The point is not that someone is going to throw 154.26 lasgun shots at a carnifex and kill it. That's silly.
The point is that you're doing more damage with those shots against the carnifex, than against the infantry you would logically consider the appropriate target for small arms.

Eh, except that Space Marines are NOT the ideal target for small arms, not by a longshot. What game are you playing? Space Marines' whole shtick is that they wear armor that offers protection against small arms. Space Marines are, point for point, one of the worst things you can fire a Lasgun at.
You also assume that the Marine player took no special/heavy weapons, gear, or upgrades on their Sergeant, which is absurd - A stock Carnifex is plausible. Stock Marines are terrible.

Martel732 wrote:
Forget cherrypicking, then. But it remains that lasguns have a special niche vs t6. You are paying far fewer points per shot than for s4 shooting and getting the exact same effect.

Fair point.
In that fex example, the fex is almost exactly 40% tougher against bolters than tac marines.

27 bolter shots to wound it.
Would you say 19.28 bolter shots is still too much?

Waaaghpower wrote:

Eh, except that Space Marines are NOT the ideal target for small arms, not by a longshot. What game are you playing? Space Marines' whole shtick is that they wear armor that offers protection against small arms. Space Marines are, point for point, one of the worst things you can fire a Lasgun at.
You also assume that the Marine player took no special/heavy weapons, gear, or upgrades on their Sergeant, which is absurd - A stock Carnifex is plausible. Stock Marines are terrible.

I'm sorry, but that's just not true.

90 lasguns to kill 70 points of marines.
84 lasguns to kill 70 points of guardsmen.

The marines are just 7% tougher.


I consider a stock carnifex just as plausible as a squad of stock tac marines. I.E. not very.
Both are terrible.

I'm leaving most common gear out of it, because overall I don't think it's going to change things significantly. Plus then you have to start considering optimal loadouts vs various targets, different units roles and slots in each army, disagreement over what a most common loadout actually is, etc, etc.
Basically it's a headache I don't need at this time in the morning. Someone else can figure it out if they really want to drill that deeply into it.

 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.

Or just remove HPs entirely. They make the armour feel so spongy.

An easy fix for vehicle would just be to go back to the 5E damage table and Skimmer effects, add in 7E snapshots and passenger effects, and you'd fix the major problems with vehicles. Vehicles become hardier, cheap transports have some more downsides while gun tanks and combat walkers become a bit more capable and the viability gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers becomes dramatically lessened.

But that would be too easy

 Rippy wrote:
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.

This is demonstrating my point: "it's not that MCs are OP, it's just that Tau and Eldar have units that have the more powerful MC rules instead of the weaker vehicle/walker rules". If giving those units the MC rules makes them clearly better than if they were walkers the MC unit type is broken.

 Vaktathi wrote:
An easy fix for vehicle would just be to go back to the 5E damage table and Skimmer effects, add in 7E snapshots and passenger effects, and you'd fix the major problems with vehicles. Vehicles become hardier, cheap transports have some more downsides while gun tanks and combat walkers become a bit more capable and the viability gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers becomes dramatically lessened.

But that would be too easy

There are a few things that would make bringing back 5th's vehicle damage system a problem, chief amongst them being that vehicles can now score. Well, ALL models can score, but this would make those scoring vehicles even harder to remove, since there would be no eventuality you'll remove them, it's be based entirely on luck. Obsec drop pods are already a pain.

 Vaktathi wrote:
An easy fix for vehicle would just be to go back to the 5E damage table and Skimmer effects, add in 7E snapshots and passenger effects, and you'd fix the major problems with vehicles. Vehicles become hardier, cheap transports have some more downsides while gun tanks and combat walkers become a bit more capable and the viability gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers becomes dramatically lessened.

But that would be too easy

I agree! Apart from a few things such as wound allocation shenanigans, 5th edition was a very good rulebook.

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An easy fix for vehicle would just be to go back to the 5E damage table and Skimmer effects, add in 7E snapshots and passenger effects, and you'd fix the major problems with vehicles. Vehicles become hardier, cheap transports have some more downsides while gun tanks and combat walkers become a bit more capable and the viability gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers becomes dramatically lessened.

But that would be too easy

I agree! Apart from a few things such as wound allocation shenanigans, 5th edition was a very good rulebook.

5e also existed before the modern age of S6-7-spam, so the mono-build Rhino-rush armies that dominated 5th would be easier to deal with these days.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Rippy wrote:
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.

This is demonstrating my point: "it's not that MCs are OP, it's just that Tau and Eldar have units that have the more powerful MC rules instead of the weaker vehicle/walker rules". If giving those units the MC rules makes them clearly better than if they were walkers the MC unit type is broken.

If you left them at the same points cost. Better rules cost more points.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Rippy wrote:
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.

This is demonstrating my point: "it's not that MCs are OP, it's just that Tau and Eldar have units that have the more powerful MC rules instead of the weaker vehicle/walker rules". If giving those units the MC rules makes them clearly better than if they were walkers the MC unit type is broken.

Broken is a strong word. "Worth more points" seems more accurate.

Edit: whoops, need to read the thread to the end before I post. See directly above.

Maybe what happened is that MCs were "never a problem" because until recently... MCs never were given noteworthy guns and forced to assault. Now that MCs have guns, people are seeing that Shooty MCs are pretty darn good. Not to mention Flying MCs that used to be jump infantry.

That is what Peregrine was sort of talking about.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Rippy wrote:
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.

This is demonstrating my point: "it's not that MCs are OP, it's just that Tau and Eldar have units that have the more powerful MC rules instead of the weaker vehicle/walker rules". If giving those units the MC rules makes them clearly better than if they were walkers the MC unit type is broken.

Well in that case the Bike, Jet, Jump, Beast, Cavalry etc. types are broken because there are units that would be broken if they were made that type rather than their current type.

All Nid MCs (not FMCs, those are a different type, and even then only one of them is considered powerful) are underpowered.
For Daemons, people only really claim about the D-Thirster and that an FMC. Skarbrand, Ku'gath, GUO, KoS and Walking Princes are all weak. Sure, grav doesn't instantly evaporate them like it does most MCs, but I've lost my KoS to boltguns more than I have to melta guns and tunderhammers.
For Chaos Space Marines, again walking princes are just so, so bad. You only ever see them Flying and up until the combos Traitor Legions gave they weren't even that good still. Even now unless you give them the Black Mace they aren't super-killy for their ~300pt cost.

The problem is 3 undercosted MCs: Riptides, Dreadknights and Ghostkeels. Even then Riptides are the main problem-causer out of the 3, simply because they are good at everything while the DK and GK are only really good at 2 things.

If 3 are broken and the rest are not, the type isn't the problem.
Unless of course you want to claim that jet infantry/bikes/jetbikes/etc. all need to get nerfed across the board because of Warpspiders/Smashfesther/Scatbikes/etc.

I would contest the claim that nid mcs are underpowered. Make gaunts beasts and see how that works out. Other parts of the nids suck, not the big bugs.

Martel732 wrote:
I would contest the claim that nid mcs are underpowered. Make gaunts beasts and see how that works out. Other parts of the nids suck, not the big bugs.

There can be varying degrees of "underpowered" in that being underpowered is not a binary condition. Carnifex can be more powerful than gaunts while still being under the appropriate power curve, in the same way you could be a better chess player than I am without either of us reaching the average level of chess playing acuity.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Well in that case the Bike, Jet, Jump, Beast, Cavalry etc. types are broken because there are units that would be broken if they were made that type rather than their current type.

Well yes, but those units have different roles compared to normal infantry. Walkers and MCs, on the other hand, are the exact same thing in concept, as demonstrated by the "walker or MC" game where you can look at a picture of one and have no idea which unit type it has. The only difference is that, rules-wise, MCs are just plain better than walkers. And there's no fluff or conceptual reason for them to have those advantages, it's just bad design.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
give them a damage table that offered a chance to one hit kill them

To be fair, that's entirely possible with D-Weapons or Instant Death.

The problem is a lot of factions lack access, wheras Meltaguns are more or less universal.

Yoyoyo wrote:
To be fair, that's entirely possible with D-Weapons or Instant Death.

The problem is a lot of factions lack access, wheras Meltaguns are more or less universal.

And that the "dead in one shot" effect of D-weapons is also a one-shot kill on vehicles, so it isn't a vulnerability for MCs.

As others have touched upon, Monstrous Creatures are typically harder to deal with than Vehicles.

With the right weapon, and a bit of luck, any non-Superheavy can be taken out with a single shot - and even if you don't, they can lose weapons, be immobilised or simply stunned and shaken out of the game. MC's don't have those drawbacks, and keep fighting at full efficiency until they're dead, and unless you're packing D (titter) you can't really one shot them off the board.

I too am an advocate for vehicles and MC's being given the AoS treatment. In that game as big stuff takes wounds, it loses efficiency. It can of course still be deadly until it's properly dead, but can quickly be prevented from simply wading through units with impunity.

I've attached a pic to show an AoS Warscroll for a big gribbly so you can see what it's about.

The wound table shows how it's profile changes as it's wounds go up and down (because healing is possible!) Don't worry about the rest of the scroll - this is just to show what I mean

So this beasty gets slower as it's wounded, gets less punchy, and it's ranged attack is weakened as it takes wounds. It's still quite thoroughly nasty for the most part, but the variable stats give its opponent a choice of wiping it out, or trying to weaken it. A choice missing from MC in 40k

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An easy fix for vehicle would just be to go back to the 5E damage table and Skimmer effects, add in 7E snapshots and passenger effects, and you'd fix the major problems with vehicles. Vehicles become hardier, cheap transports have some more downsides while gun tanks and combat walkers become a bit more capable and the viability gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers becomes dramatically lessened.

But that would be too easy

There are a few things that would make bringing back 5th's vehicle damage system a problem, chief amongst them being that vehicles can now score. Well, ALL models can score, but this would make those scoring vehicles even harder to remove, since there would be no eventuality you'll remove them, it's be based entirely on luck. Obsec drop pods are already a pain.

Well, drop pods are another issue entirely, an empty pod shouldn't count for squat except as terrain, but otherwise vehicles wouldn't be too much of an issue, particularly with the firepower available now, and the fact that stun-locking would be an option again.

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An easy fix for vehicle would just be to go back to the 5E damage table and Skimmer effects, add in 7E snapshots and passenger effects, and you'd fix the major problems with vehicles. Vehicles become hardier, cheap transports have some more downsides while gun tanks and combat walkers become a bit more capable and the viability gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers becomes dramatically lessened.

But that would be too easy

I agree! Apart from a few things such as wound allocation shenanigans, 5th edition was a very good rulebook.

5E had it's issues, wound allocation and KP's in particular, but man was it so much easier to play than 7E.

Arson Fire wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Forget cherrypicking, then. But it remains that lasguns have a special niche vs t6. You are paying far fewer points per shot than for s4 shooting and getting the exact same effect.

Fair point.
In that fex example, the fex is almost exactly 40% tougher against bolters than tac marines.

27 bolter shots to wound it.
Would you say 19.28 bolter shots is still too much?

Waaaghpower wrote:

Eh, except that Space Marines are NOT the ideal target for small arms, not by a longshot. What game are you playing? Space Marines' whole shtick is that they wear armor that offers protection against small arms. Space Marines are, point for point, one of the worst things you can fire a Lasgun at.
You also assume that the Marine player took no special/heavy weapons, gear, or upgrades on their Sergeant, which is absurd - A stock Carnifex is plausible. Stock Marines are terrible.

I'm sorry, but that's just not true.

90 lasguns to kill 70 points of marines.
84 lasguns to kill 70 points of guardsmen.

The marines are just 7% tougher.


I consider a stock carnifex just as plausible as a squad of stock tac marines. I.E. not very.
Both are terrible.

I'm leaving most common gear out of it, because overall I don't think it's going to change things significantly. Plus then you have to start considering optimal loadouts vs various targets, different units roles and slots in each army, disagreement over what a most common loadout actually is, etc, etc.
Basically it's a headache I don't need at this time in the morning. Someone else can figure it out if they really want to drill that deeply into it.

I'm surprised no one else pointed out that the MCs in your various examples will still be at 100% strength all the way until the final wound is removed, whereas the various marine squads will be ebbing away as the wounds get stripped off. That renders MCs strictly better, in the bizarre scenario constructed here.

In reality, there are advantages unique to either unit, and I don't think you're wrong in the overall point you're making: there is nothing inherently superior to MCs; just some notably poor implementations.

And specifically, there: the combination of awkwardly high toughnesses, special rule mobility elements, and standard infantry-style armor/cover saves make a unit particularly resilient to the standard rule system for wounding results.

Vehicle rules have provided an alternative rock/paper/scissors system that allows interaction between otherwise difficult to wound models (due to high AV) and the rest of the game's units. Even here, however, re-introduction of infantry-style cover/invulnerability saves has frequently proven problematic, e.g., jinking wave serpents.

Interestingly, for both types, the introduction of flying has proven even more troublesome. This forks, however, into even greater issues with FMCs, with relevance depending on model utility.

Generally, and this is true game-wide, saves are becoming increasingly more effective--which has inured to the benefit of models that are entitled to them. Meanwhile, changes to vehicle damage have made their destruction more accessible to more types of fire. The bifurcation of vectors on these has likely lead to a perception of "MCs versus Vehicles (and sometimes Walkers specifically" however I don't think this is a useful axis for consideration.

Here's food for thought: what if getting a 2+ cover/armor/invulnerable save wasn't possible?

I am surprised nobody mentioned fire arcs. The fact that vehicles have them means that when they get stunned or immobilized the enemy can sit right next to them and be immune to them since they can't shoot them. This is not the case with a MC. If you are behind it it can still shoot you. So when you introduce flight the MCs really take the lead since they can overshoot their targets and still be good whereas with flyers if you aren't the right distance away then the 45 degree arc saves the enemy and that's before taking into account the whole elevation arcs that most people ignore because they are tedious.

For the love of god don't bring back 5e vehicle damage. That was randomness at it's worse (Last i remember people hated the random factor of this game)

Instant death is still a problem for MC, sure there isn't much around but it's still a thing

MC used to be mostly CC oriented, but with the changes in 7th edition MC basically became only viable via one option

The OP isn't because that MC shooting is soo good, but CC MC are just soo crap.

5e was incredibly stale in terms of a meta, most armies were just the same army with very few if not at all modifications

5e was the equivalent of a dead professional series of chess, nothing new, all the same crap

MC rules represent something that is bigger and scarier than most things on the battlefield, and 7th edition made vehicles both harder to kill through luck and easier to kill through tactics

a person who knows their opponents army better than their opponent has a distinct advantage in any setting, because of the power of knowledge

Most CC MC never see the gun line unless your opponent is rolling a really bad game, tactically speaking your MC are more of a distraction than a viable threat

Remember, the MC or FMC is there either cause of utility or because of shock factor, and that is the role it fits into perfectly.

MC arent the problem, salty people who dont read up on these things are the problem

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
There are a few things that would make bringing back 5th's vehicle damage system a problem, chief amongst them being that vehicles can now score. Well, ALL models can score, but this would make those scoring vehicles even harder to remove, since there would be no eventuality you'll remove them, it's be based entirely on luck. Obsec drop pods are already a pain.

Well, drop pods are another issue entirely, an empty pod shouldn't count for squat except as terrain, but otherwise vehicles wouldn't be too much of an issue, particularly with the firepower available now, and the fact that stun-locking would be an option again.

My point is that because they can score, the stun locking becomes less useful. Because it increases the importance of destroying the vehicles, not mearly stopping them