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This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

 ross-128 wrote:

Their unit size affects their interaction with commissars, because it determines how many models the commissar has to blam to keep a given number of conscripts in line. Smaller units means the commissar is killing more models (or more accurately, saving fewer).

For example, a 10 man LD8 squad can only lose 4 models at most to morale in the first place, so a commissar can only ever save 3. And if he's somehow overseeing 5 of those squads (50 models) that's up to 5 blams. In a 50 man squad you can lose around 23 to morale if they really get hammered, and a commissar can save 22 of those with just one blam.

In the conscripts' case, they went from 50 to 30.
The raw maximum possible losses at ld4 were 26 before, 16 after. So a commissar went from saving up to 25 models at a time to saving up to 15. In practical terms this isn't really a full 40% reduction because most rolls won't be max rolls, but it is a reduction.

Your other points about unit size are valid, but I want to point out that this is looking at durability sort of backwards, in a way that ends up being misleading. This is probably easiest to see with an example: if a model that has a 5+ save gets nerfed to having a 6+ save, how should we think about the benefit here? One way to look at it is that this is a 50% reduction in the number of models that the save actually saves, which sounds like a huge deal. But nobody cares about this number. What matters is how many models aren't saved. What I care about is something like: "How many more bolter shots can this unit absorb before getting destroyed?" A unit is twice as durable if it can take twice as many hits, not if it can pass twice as many saves. This is why the jump from 6+ to 5+ is worth far less than the jump from 3+ to 2+, even though the jump from 3+ to 2+ is a much smaller proportional change in the number of models saved.

And so the effect of unit size on morale losses should probably be thought about not in terms of how many Conscripts a Commissar is saving, but instead in terms of how many Conscripts he's blamming. And I'm not sure that the effect is at all significant. The problem is that unit size is basically irrelevant until it gets down to ~10. More but smaller units of Conscripts will spend a little more time with sufficiently small units, but not much. For example, suppose the enemy is killing 10 Conscripts per turn per unit. That's enough that they're always going to fail morale. If I have 3 units of 50 Conscripts, then a typical unit's lifespan looks like 50->40->39->29->28->18->17->7->6->0. 4 out of the 50 Conscripts died of morale, or 12 across all 3 units. My opponent had to kill everything else the old-fashioned way. Now suppose that I have 5 units of 30 Conscripts. Now a unit's lifespan looks like 30->20->19->9->8->0. 2 out of 30 died of morale, or, again, 12 across all 5 units. Either way my opponent had to kill the same number of Conscripts and I lost the same number to morale.

You can fiddle with this to get things to work out a little better one way or the other -- I just picked nice round numbers -- but mostly it just doesn't matter. In general we should expect smaller units to have an advantage because they're more likely to get completely wiped out, avoiding a morale loss. Smaller units have another advantage in that there are more opportunities for your opponent to waste firepower overkilling them. But, again, these are probably just not relevant factors when we're talking about such large units.

It's true that there's a sense in which the Commissar is more valuable for the larger unit, which is what you were seeing. But this is not because the unit+Commissar gets better as the unit gets bigger. It's because the unit alone gets much worse as the unit gets bigger.

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

Balance is more than internally balanced codexes. FFS

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

Indeed! Like how Tau have mass commander suits and...uhhhh..Wait, bad example. It's like how CWE have...access to the Ynnari faction instead. I guess that counts as an option?

SilverAlien wrote:

 Howscat wrote:
Deathguard won a recent GT. Admech was on the weaker side of releases but there are some very potent combos in there. CSM with a sprinkling of daemons or renegades has dominated at every GT and Major tournament. Last edition I was playing pure Militarum Tempestus. They were hot garbage but i still enjoyed the game. So really you have to decide: Do you want to win tournaments, or have fun?

What I'd like is to not have to make the call between playing my CSM as CSM or army admech as admech and being able to field a decent army. 8e was the first to really present that opportunity as long as I've been playing. Shame GW couldn't even manage to keep that balance for 6 months. Until this garbage fire of a codex they'd mostly done okay. Even admech wasn't that bad.

Also, if it's the list I'm thinking of, I'm gonna be a little annoyed you referred to it as a DG army.

Ok. Be annoyed and angry. I play this game to have fun and relax when I am not working. I did that in 7th and now in 8th. If you don't want to play against IG then don't play them.

I want a balanced game just as much as you do. I go to my FLGS every week and play fluffy games with my friends too. I get tired of playing against the same soup lists at the tournaments (My entire team is tired of it). I am tired of people hating on me for playing the same army i have always been running.

So GW made a OP codex (you do remember the old GW?). So, maybe when the Eldar codex comes out it blows everything out of the water. Who knows what will happen in the next 3-6 months of releases? You want to know how to fix ALL of 40k? GW hires 40 mathematicians to do all the number crunching on units and there interactions to assign a points value. Until then, Just try to have some fun.

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

Indeed! Like how Tau have mass commander suits and...uhhhh..Wait, bad example. It's like how CWE have...access to the Ynnari faction instead. I guess that counts as an option?

Did you notice that those two armies don't have codexes yet?

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

Honestly I think they just woefully underestimated how good lots of cheap infantry and tanks are this edition. Think about 7th, where guard had to bring stupid amounts of stuff just to survive into turn 3. It kind of feels like GW saw that, said "well, they clearly need their stuff to be cheaper because it dies so fast" and then forgot to realize that guardsmen get their save in the open 80% of the time now and without the damage table of old IG vehicles survive much longer.

Most of these new buffs wouldn't be near as crazy if the units weren't so cheap. Guardsmen at say 6pts a guy, tanks around 30pts more, baneblades not getting a discount or perhaps even an increase, etc. Without seeing the codex I can't do great math right now to figure out where stuff needs to be, because a lot of units got tweaks, but I think the best thing to balance the IG codex right now would probably be to just adjust all the points to represent the fact that IG has gotten much better as a whole. IG is no longer just hordes of chaff like it used to be, even just run of the mill guardsmen can do quite well now with the various buffs and honestly their points should reflect that. Think about skitarii, they're paying 8-9pts a guy that is basically just a guardsman with a +4 save, one better BS, and a slightly better weapon. It really doesn't make sense that IG should be paying half price for their line infantry when even our lasguns are excellent weapons in their own right thanks to FRFSRF and other orders. Not to mention we get access to a heavy, special, and a plasma pistol/ccw.

Honestly I'd welcome some point increases as strange as that sounds. My models keep getting cheaper and cheaper pointswise and I'm starting to feel like what was 1500pts in 7th is barely a 1000 in 8th. I've had to resort to bringing my other Imperial armies as allies just so that I'm not pushing around 2-300 infantry a game at 1500 and above. At least combined squads are back so I don't have to run the little boogers individually, so I can blob a bunch up turn one and save my opponent and myself some headaches.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

Balance is more than internally balanced codexes. FFS

Yeah, thats the point. This codex has good internal balance but bad external balance. They should fix the problems with the external balance without making it a travesty of a codex like the 95% of the ones we have had for all the living time of Warhammer, where only 2-3 options are viable (Or even one like Flyrants!) but the rest is hot garbage.
But you seem to be cool with Tau being only competitive because Commander-spam, because I'm handicaping myself if I chose to not play that list, so you have 0 regard for internal balance, if a Codex has a broken unit that allows them to compete, then they are fine, so probably I'm talking to a wall now.

OP alarmists here, there and everywhere!

 Insectum7 wrote:

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

Indeed! Like how Tau have mass commander suits and...uhhhh..Wait, bad example. It's like how CWE have...access to the Ynnari faction instead. I guess that counts as an option?

Did you notice that those two armies don't have codexes yet?

No they want to scream and rage. Some people here like to whine and argue more than they like to play the game. I need to stop visiting this forum, it makes the game les fun to see all this. It's all feeding itself on a loop,at this point.

Guys. Chapter Approved is a thing. Remember to breath.

Everybody seems stuck in the mindset that GW only gets one shot at balancing a codex every five or so years. Incremental nerfs to overperforming units, buffs to underperforming ones, and regular rules updates to tweak issues is supposed to be what we're encouraging.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

Honestly I think they just woefully underestimated how good lots of cheap infantry and tanks are this edition. Think about 7th, where guard had to bring stupid amounts of stuff just to survive into turn 3. It kind of feels like GW saw that, said "well, they clearly need their stuff to be cheaper because it dies so fast" and then forgot to realize that guardsmen get their save in the open 80% of the time now and without the damage table of old IG vehicles survive much longer.

Most of these new buffs wouldn't be near as crazy if the units weren't so cheap. Guardsmen at say 6pts a guy, tanks around 30pts more, baneblades not getting a discount or perhaps even an increase, etc. Without seeing the codex I can't do great math right now to figure out where stuff needs to be, because a lot of units got tweaks, but I think the best thing to balance the IG codex right now would probably be to just adjust all the points to represent the fact that IG has gotten much better as a whole.

This is an interesting point. I don't have the old IG codex easily available, but it sounds like they reduced the costs of IG vehicles, and 8th edition made them tougher because of how the new rules work.
Which is weirdly the opposite of what they did with Ork vehicles. They're pretty much twice the cost now, but with worse shooting options. Yeh, they're tougher (moderately), but they didnt gain more than IG vehicles which apparently were reduced in points?
Which is why Ork vehicles are now basically removed from the game, as they are unplayable in a competitive setting.

In before someone says "but orks don't have a codex yet so thats ok". It's not ok, when IG vehicles (which are already multiple times better) are getting buffed.

 Formerly Wu wrote:
Guys. Chapter Approved is a thing. Remember to breath.

Chapter Approved would have gone to the printers months ago.


...besides which, having to rely on additional purchases to fix balance issues is hardly a great sell, is it..?

 Formerly Wu wrote:
Guys. Chapter Approved is a thing. Remember to breath.

Everybody seems stuck in the mindset that GW only gets one shot at balancing a codex every five or so years. Incremental nerfs to overperforming units, buffs to underperforming ones, and regular rules updates to tweak issues is supposed to be what we're encouraging.

I'm not sure, but I feel like part of the problem is that this doesn't actually feel very fast to people. Probably lots of people here play pretty regularly, which makes it worse. Like, maybe if you play one game every other month, then "hopefully the yearly update will improve things" is pretty satisfying. You suffer for a handful of games -- or maybe not if you don't even play against the thing you're objecting to in most of your games -- and then maybe it'll be fixed. But if you're playing every weekend, you're looking at very long stretches without balance updates. Worse, there's much more of an expectation now that games get frequent and prompt balance passes. Video games are what's driving this, presumably. Updates for competitive multiplayer games often come out at least monthly, and they typically aim to balance the game (especially to tone down things that are too strong) pretty aggressively.

I still find it rather amusing that from 7th to 8th edition, Conscripts did not change, just the core rules, and FRFSRF got marginally better too, I guess, but that's not why they're good.

In 7th, they cost 3ppm, could be taken in units of 50, were hitting on 5s with lasguns, had 5+ armor, and a Commissar would kill one to make them autopass morale. In 8th index, they cost 3ppm, could be taken in units of 50, were hitting on 5s with lasguns, had 5+ armor, and a Commissar would kill one to make them autopass morale. It's not that Conscripts got better from 7th to 8th, it's just that the basic things that hurt them most (blasts, sweeping advance, literally everything except their own lasguns ignoring cover and being AP 5 or better) disappeared.

While Conscripts in particular with their 5+ armor have put them in a position where they are certainly excessively durable and should go back to their 5th ed cost of 4ppm, there are other units benefiting from the same core rule changes. Regular guardsmen, Ork Boyz, Nid 'gants, and even Gretchin with their virtually unnoticed armor save buff benefit from actually getting to roll (slightly worse) saves and immunity to morale/d3 morale casualties max.

To put it another way, if termagants or hormagants get their Sv stat buffed to 5+ and remain the same price, everybody would flip their gak, foaming at the mouth and fuming with the righteous fury because there's another unit Marines can't point, click, and delete anymore.

The edition change has shifted the focus from the biggest model you can buy and spamming the D to lots of basic troops, and I frankly prefer it that way. I absolutely accept that Conscripts need to be more points to be more balanced (also, soup is bad and it should feel bad), but I argue the leftover mindset of 7th (and consequent overemphasis on multiple damage, fewer shot weapons) that people don't want to break from is at least in part a cause of this anger towards Conscripts. It's partially justified, partially unjustified.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Chapter Approved would have gone to the printers months ago.

Too bad they're never doing another one, then. /s

...besides which, having to rely on additional purchases to fix balance issues is hardly a great sell, is it..?

They could always just go back to not bothering at all. Something tells me that might not be satisfactory.

So much dramatic vitriol in this thread...sheesh. Can people please stop with the hyperbole - SAME OLD GW, NO IMPROVEMENTS! Correct me if i'm wrong, but one of the biggest gripes people had with GW was that there was no community interaction. Yet, they did respond and attempt to fix conscripts. Just because your definition of fix didn't match theirs, doesn't negate the fact that they are responding (and quickly) to players' concerns.

More importantly, and I just can't stress this enough, 40k, Fantasy, Battlefleet Gothic, Bloodbowl, every single game that GW has ever produced, was not intended to be played competitively. How many times do they have to say it for people to get the message? It was never the spirit of the game. Just because some versions of the rule set were better applicable to the tournament scene, doesn't mean that they ever wanted the game play that way. Its clear from all of their videos, battle reports, etc. that their idea of "competitive" play is not the same as most "competitive" players' definition.

At this point, I can't understand what it is you are getting worked up about. 8th is better balanced than any version to date. If you aren't purposely creating min/max, hyper competitive lists, attempting to abuse loopholes, then there really shouldn't be a problem. If you are and you complain that it isn't balanced and doesn't work, well, it is like complaining that a basketball doesn't work well when you use it to play volley ball. It just wasn't designed for that purpose.

If horde armies in 40k finally don't suck, that's fine by me. The high cost and effort of getting a horde army onto the table easily justifies any in-game advantage they might have.

 Galas wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

Balance is more than internally balanced codexes. FFS

Yeah, thats the point. This codex has good internal balance but bad external balance. They should fix the problems with the external balance without making it a travesty of a codex like the 95% of the ones we have had for all the living time of Warhammer, where only 2-3 options are viable (Or even one like Flyrants!) but the rest is hot garbage.
But you seem to be cool with Tau being only competitive because Commander-spam, because I'm handicaping myself if I chose to not play that list, so you have 0 regard for internal balance, if a Codex has a broken unit that allows them to compete, then they are fine, so probably I'm talking to a wall now.

You routinely argue that Tau are bad. I contest that and use facts, while you counter with something that amounts to, "but that's not how I feel!" Armies that aren't balanced, can still be good. For instance, Imperial Guard. Not balanced, but bonkers insane awesome. Tau. Not balanced, but very good. Cheers. I dun learned ya

 KommissarKiln wrote:
I still find it rather amusing that from 7th to 8th edition, Conscripts did not change, just the core rules, and FRFSRF got marginally better too, I guess, but that's not why they're good.

In 7th, they cost 3ppm, could be taken in units of 50, were hitting on 5s with lasguns, had 5+ armor, and a Commissar would kill one to make them autopass morale. In 8th index, they cost 3ppm, could be taken in units of 50, were hitting on 5s with lasguns, had 5+ armor, and a Commissar would kill one to make them autopass morale. It's not that Conscripts got better from 7th to 8th, it's just that the basic things that hurt them most (blasts, sweeping advance, literally everything except their own lasguns ignoring cover and being AP 5 or better) disappeared.

While Conscripts in particular with their 5+ armor have put them in a position where they are certainly excessively durable and should go back to their 5th ed cost of 4ppm, there are other units benefiting from the same core rule changes. Regular guardsmen, Ork Boyz, Nid 'gants, and even Gretchin with their virtually unnoticed armor save buff benefit from actually getting to roll (slightly worse) saves and immunity to morale/d3 morale casualties max.

To put it another way, if termagants or hormagants get their Sv stat buffed to 5+ and remain the same price, everybody would flip their gak, foaming at the mouth and fuming with the righteous fury because there's another unit Marines can't point, click, and delete that troop unit anymore.

The edition change has shifted the focus from the biggest model you can buy and spamming the D to lots of basic troops, and I frankly prefer it that way. I absolutely accept that Conscripts need to be more points to be more balanced (also, soup is bad and it should feel bad), but I argue the leftover mindset of 7th (and consequent overemphasis on multiple damage, fewer shot weapons) that people don't want to break from is at least in part a cause of this anger towards Conscripts. It's partially justified, partially unjustified.

All good points, I do need to partially object to the last part though, specifically about how people need to stop bringing big game weapons and bring stuff to kill hordes.

Or in other words, what efficiently removes hordes aside from other hordes? Like say I'm playing against a space marine player, how does he stop my 200 guardsman list? Because almost every weapon in the game that can kill conscripts (and by extension, less powerful horde units) is mathematically better at killing marines. Even lasguns, which I would argue is probably one of the most brutally efficient anti horde weapons out there, can kill more points in space marines than guardsmen in most scenarios.

For example, I had a game against a primaris player the other day, his whole army aside from a stormtalon was primaris. I killed his aggressors turn 1, what is he supposed to do to take out the 100 or so guardsmen in my list at 75PL? Intercessors? Hellblasters? Even the Inceptors have a hard time.

This is essentially an issue that came up with the loss of templates, which were formally the horde counter (arguably way too efficient, but I digress) Used to be a space marine with a 5pt flamer could wipe half a guard squad in a single turn as it ignored our saves, auto hit, and wounded on 3's. Take multiple flamers and large blasts like vindicators and a space marine player had a reasonable option to keep hordes in check. It got out of hand when everything started getting ignore cover/shred/was a wyvern, but the basic premise worked. Now, these traditional anti horde weapons are laughable in roles they used to excel, so that now a flamer at best kills maybe 1 or 2 guardsmen, who got CHEAPER. Now, I'm glad templates are gone personally, they slowed the game down massively and invited lots of arguments, but I still feel template weapons should get some sort of bonus for targeting larger units. Many people proposed the "additional d6 per 10 models in the target unit" fix, which would be a fair middle ground in most scenarios, but at this rate it looks like it's not going to happen.

As you said, the units in themselves haven't changed much, it's just the core rules have drastically changed how they interact with the game. It's similar to monstrous creatures in 7th being able to stick a toe in cover or vehicles being nigh invincible in 5th, yet the actual units getting fairly minor changes for the most part. Without figuring out a way to get the core rules to better interact with hordes, or giving armies tools that work with the new ruleset, conscripts, and in addition most infantry hordes, will continue to be an issue for most lists.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
This codex was GW's opportunity to show us they understood the balance of the game.

Turns out the "new GW" is the same as the "old GW," just with different priorities in regards to "which army should win easily."

You mean "give every army lots of viable options"?

Balance is more than internally balanced codexes. FFS

Yeah, thats the point. This codex has good internal balance but bad external balance. They should fix the problems with the external balance without making it a travesty of a codex like the 95% of the ones we have had for all the living time of Warhammer, where only 2-3 options are viable (Or even one like Flyrants!) but the rest is hot garbage.
But you seem to be cool with Tau being only competitive because Commander-spam, because I'm handicaping myself if I chose to not play that list, so you have 0 regard for internal balance, if a Codex has a broken unit that allows them to compete, then they are fine, so probably I'm talking to a wall now.

You routinely argue that Tau are bad. I contest that and use facts, while you counter with something that amounts to, "but that's not how I feel!" Armies that aren't balanced, can still be good. For instance, Imperial Guard. Not balanced, but bonkers insane awesome. Tau. Not balanced, but very good. Cheers. I dun learned ya

Again, you only seem to care about external balance and have 0 regards about internal balance, when bot are equally important. A game without external balance is bad, yes. But a game with 0 internal balance is even worse.
And I have never said that Tau are bad. Commander and Dron spamm is pretty damm good, like Flyrants where in 7th. But they have an abhorrent internal balance. But of course, as you don't have a problem with that, because as long as an army has one single viable competitive build even if is literally spamming ONE unit all the time,, you will just diminish it as my "feels". You and your alternative facts.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Or in other words, what efficiently removes hordes aside from other hordes?

...

As you said, the units in themselves haven't changed much, it's just the core rules have drastically changed how they interact with the game. It's similar to monstrous creatures in 7th being able to stick a toe in cover or vehicles being nigh invincible in 5th, yet the actual units getting fairly minor changes for the most part. Without figuring out a way to get the core rules to better interact with hordes, or giving armies tools that work with the new ruleset, conscripts, and in addition most infantry hordes, will continue to be an issue for most lists.

Well, from a core rules perspective, the answer would be "morale." Morale is devastating to hordes that don't have Leadership backstops. For conscripts, though, commissars exist as very efficient answers to morale.

You could attack that by making characters easier to single out (risky for unintended knock-on effects), by changing the efficiency of that interaction (by increasing the casualties taken even with a commissar present- doable but clunky), or by making conscripts themselves less valuable on the table (removing their Objective Secured bonus- my personal fix, as it's elegant, fluff-appropriate, and enhances the role of basic infantry squads).

You could also just kick them up a point in cost, but that creates too many downstream internal balance issues to be worth it in my opinion.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
what efficiently removes hordes aside from other hordes?

Speaking as someone who plays space marines, if your running a primaris army and need anti horde take Aggressors. even without captain/lieutenant support, a squad of six will wipe out a conscript squad with average rolls.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
what efficiently removes hordes aside from other hordes?

Conscripts, the poster boys of "hordes" suck at taking anything out. They're not offensive. They're not efficiently taking anything out.

But to answer your question, punishers. Punishers efficiently remove conscripts with 40 shots. I honestly think the new guard codex will fix itself. Guard will be hesitant to use conscripts because they know there are many guard players out there who will be fielding lots of russes which can mow down conscripts.

ItsPug wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
what efficiently removes hordes aside from other hordes?

Speaking as someone who plays space marines, if your running a primaris army and need anti horde take Aggressors. even without captain/lieutenant support, a squad of six will wipe out a conscript squad with average rolls.

I think the 7th edition of "Bring the D" has permeated a lot of what we think nowadays about how weapons should be tuned, we forget about how some of those old "crappy" weapons like lasguns, or heavy bolters, or heck even Stubbers, can really do a lot to thin out these numbers. I personally like hordes and tanks, or both preferably. There should be no such thing as a 1 size fits all weapon/unit, which is what everyone wants. You honestly can't expect to load up on lascannons and hope that it will wipe out a conscript squad. When I first saw Agressors I thought they were garbage, then I got to see them play and I am honestly surprised by how well they can work. Same thing with dakka repulsors, HB devastators, and sternguard.

The real question you have to ask yourself, is the game unbalanced or is your concept of list building to blame? Im the type of guy who used to run codex compliant lists before Gladius were a thing, and I felt just a tad dirty afterwards (but not too much, my opponents were running unkillable tetrad lists and other 7th edition nonsense). Additionally Infantry is the back bone of the guard and you should be taking plenty of them to run around and grab objectives, shoot stuff, etc and not just loading up on one type of unit and hoping that it works in all situations.

Is this book overpowered? probably yes. are we overreacting to all this? definitely

 Howscat wrote:
So GW made a OP codex (you do remember the old GW?). So, maybe when the Eldar codex comes out it blows everything out of the water. Who knows what will happen in the next 3-6 months of releases? You want to know how to fix ALL of 40k? GW hires 40 mathematicians to do all the number crunching on units and there interactions to assign a points value. Until then, Just try to have some fun.

/sigh, I guess that's fair. I just thought GW was finally getting it, was finally starting to make some progress and figure out how to balance things. I thought they could keep getting better at least. No such luck it seems. Seeing them backslide this badly has left a bad taste in my mouth.

SilverAlien wrote:

 Howscat wrote:
So GW made a OP codex (you do remember the old GW?). So, maybe when the Eldar codex comes out it blows everything out of the water. Who knows what will happen in the next 3-6 months of releases? You want to know how to fix ALL of 40k? GW hires 40 mathematicians to do all the number crunching on units and there interactions to assign a points value. Until then, Just try to have some fun.

/sigh, I guess that's fair. I just thought GW was finally getting it, was finally starting to make some progress and figure out how to balance things. I thought they could keep getting better at least. No such luck it seems. Seeing them backslide this badly has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Kind of the same here.

ThePorcupine wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
what efficiently removes hordes aside from other hordes?

Conscripts, the poster boys of "hordes" suck at taking anything out. They're not offensive. They're not efficiently taking anything out.

But to answer your question, punishers. Punishers efficiently remove conscripts with 40 shots. I honestly think the new guard codex will fix itself. Guard will be hesitant to use conscripts because they know there are many guard players out there who will be fielding lots of russes which can mow down conscripts.

This isn't really true.

First, Conscripts shoot decently. They're not quite as good as Guardsmen but they're certainly better than most other basic infantry. They're as efficient against T4 as a standard Battle Sister (who is far more efficient than a Marine). Likewise they're respectable in CC, and of course they're easy to buff in a variety of ways, and still can be ordered, if unreliably. I am not sure that there is anything at all in the Space Marine codex that kills GEQs more efficiently than Conscripts do. Aggressors that didn't move do better than rapid-firing Conscripts, though not better than FRFSRF Conscripts, and obviously it is pretty hard to actually pull this off with them. The codex even gives Conscripts some great tools for being used aggressively, since two of the doctrines improve their range or at least rapid-fire range, one makes them a lot scarier in CC, and at least one of the stratagems can be used to significantly boost their output (and they already had an option through FW for improving their BS). I expect that the range doctrines are particularly significant since it used to be hard to use Conscripts as a screen while also shooting with lots of them.

Second, Punishers don't efficiently remove Conscripts. A maximally-efficient Punisher is going to cost you I think 152 points, and it kills about 20% of its cost in Conscripts if it gets to fire a storm bolter, heavy bolter, and punisher cannon while stationary. This is pathetic by normal standards -- usually a dedicated counter-unit does a lot better than this against its preferred target, especially when it has the kinds of limitations the Punisher has (in particular its 24" range). For comparison, that same Punisher kills 44% of its cost in Tactical Marines in a turn. Also note that this is still less efficient than Conscripts for killing Conscripts. It's true that in a nothing-but-Punishers world you probably prefer Bullgryns with slab shields, but it's actually pretty close -- it's mostly the need to pay for Commissars that would make the Conscripts less desirable than the Bullgryns as meat shields.

Dionysodorus wrote:
I am not sure that there is anything at all in the Space Marine codex that kills GEQs more efficiently than Conscripts do.

That's a pretty specific metric you got there. For example, Devourer Gaunts outpace them against GEQ.