MagicJuggler wrote:
There's just a lot of toxicity and mudflinging whenever members of the community have opposing views.

When the Indexes were first leaked, there was the below picture which someone made about Conscripts defining 8th edition. Back then, people dismissed it because "nobody would by so many models." Only, they did.

The fact that this unit became so divisive and so "autotake/better than all other equivalents" before 8th even was released, shows there is something that was seriously off with the army rebalancing.

 Purifier wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
Having looked at the Guard Codex, I don't think its half as overpowered as people are saying. I've watched a fair few battle reports now where (Codex) Guard win and in every case what I notice is that they're trying to beat Guard at their own design by taking them head on but not exploiting their weaknesses. If we take two miniwargaming batrep examples I saw recently ;

One game where a Chaos player fielded 90 Cultists, A Godhammer LR, a pair of Baleflamer Helldrakes, and other than the LR his only other anti-tank at range was two squads of Oblits. At 2000 points. Not enough anti-tank, too reliant on weak, slow moving infantry, and even then he gets an oppurtunity or two to try turn things around by using his Helldrakes to tie up important units but he openly says he doesn't think that its important. D'oh!

Another one, on youtube this time has a Deathguard player throw loads of Plague Marines at an IG gunline and rely on a fire support base of a few ranged-orientated Hellbrutes and Plague Drones. Again, its 2k points, and again there isn't enough anti-tank, and even though the Chaos player has mobility to exploit this time with Rhinos, he quite literally just uses them as a taxi to put them in the middle of the board. Why?

I've played quite a lot of matches with Index Guard and I see this a lot. The people who lost against my mixed mech/conscript/artillery list in the last two local tournaments I went to, both of which I went 2W/1L at, were the people who sent infantry running down the midfield and didn't have enough anti-tank to deal with a heavy-vehicle list. In one of these 1850 matches, the only ranged AT a Grey Knight player brought was two Storm Ravens. That wasn't enough. He then ruined his other potential advantage, mobility, by being too cautious with the guys inside the Storm Ravens when they should have used that alpha-strike capability they have to tie up my artillery blob asap. Something none of my opponents really realised is that even old-Conscripts without the order nerf and the 50 man blob weren't that good in shooting or assault. I got near enough the maximum number of FRFSRF shots a 50 man blob can manage on said Grey Knight player's Terminators in that game but scored only one wound.

So what about the two games where I lost? Against Slaanesh orientated Chaos, I had terrible luck trying to kill his vehicles with my artillery, but the bigger problem was that my opponent tried hard and managed to rack up kill points because it was the objective when I tried to play the same way I had played the last two games, opting to try kill his firepower first, using my Scions aggressively, using my Mechvets reactively, and all of it backfired because I didn't think how I was exploiting each unit's advantages through.

In the other game, I played against an Ork player who understood what mobility was to the point that anti-tank units were barely a concern. He had a Ghaz + Weirdboy +Stormboys set up that allowed him to rush across the board and reach me in melee as early as turn one, even after I noticed in deployment at the last minute that his Stormboys had the threat range to do a first turn charge - because his Weirdboy still put a mob of 30 Boys in combat using 'Da Jump who killed my two Chimeras and a bunch of Vets off the bat.

The Ork player got in knife-fighting range, slaughtered my Conscripts without breaking a sweat between melee and dakka-jet strafing runs, and broke my ability to play the objective game by turn 2, in a Relic game. I should point out this guy won both tournaments I mention.

Now Conscripts as a combat unit are garbage - they're pure, unadulterated bubblewrap now. If a Guard player wants an effective defensive blob, they need to invest CP's to build a combined squad.

IG are the flavour of the month. There isn't even anything in the Codex that is virtually impossible to kill for a normal list like some previous notorious Codexes/supplements in past editions have introduced to the game *cough* Tau, *cough* Eldar, *cough* Necrons. What makes IG so good is the fact they have a load of firepower, once people figure out how to counter that the ranting will die down.

Your argument of "I won a lot with Index guard, so the super powered codex is fine" is sort of weird, though.

DCannon4Life wrote:

Niiru wrote:
Something I just thought of, and has stuck with me as it is very much the way some people in business/marketing think...

Someone at GW just needs to think "oh dear, I thought we did a good job at making a fun and strong IG codex this time, but look at all the outrage and complaints we are getting because of how good it is. Oh well, it's too late to do anything about it now. Eldar and Tyranids are next, lets make *DOUBLE* sure that we don't make this mistake again. Drop a bunch of those special rules we planned for them. Oh and add 1 point to every model. We don't want any more bad publicity!"

I have a horrible feeling that this is far too likely.

If the Eldar and Tyranid Codexes are releasing in the next month or so, you can bet they're already at the printers, or printed.

 Mr.Omega wrote:
I would not be surprised if handing out abilities that can kill hidden characters in each new Codex, is the new sort of "gratuitous AP2 spam for everyone" phase that happened in 7th to fix Riptide/Wraithknight syndrome.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know you're a liar because you said the opponent devastated part of your list with the Orbital Bombardment on your Conscripts.

SilverAlien wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:

SilverAlien wrote:
Yeah, I'm going to be honest it's actually amazing to watch people deflect every single argument or point about the poor balance of this codex with "well you are a space marine player so of course you think that".

It manages to be weirdly paranoid yet also absurdly childish all at once.

Given that the book isn't even out yet, I'd say the pot is calling the kettle black. I remember when Front Line Gaming (the actual playtesters) announced that Blood Angels were going to OP in 8th edition; and yet there they stand at the bottom of every competitive event. You may be right, but just wait and see.

Okay first, FLG might have been technically been correct if the stormraven hadn't been nerfed so hard. With stormraven as a central theme and the ability to deepstrike special weapons, like plasma, better than other marine factions, they probably would've been one of the better indices armies. With the stormraven less useful, marine players began trying to get a similar mix of durability+firepower by using RG to multiply the firepower of already tough vehicles, and using screens to keep enemies away from the non flying vehicles. Plus it seems the playtesters totally missed the fact scions were paying BS 4+ prices for plasma, screwing up one of the advantages blood angels had over other marines by making scions an even better alternative.

Also, we know literally everything about the codex barring some confirmation on the exact pricing for a few things. So it has been released by that metric.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
There's just a lot of toxicity and mudflinging whenever members of the community have opposing views.

When the Indexes were first leaked, there was the below picture which someone made about Conscripts defining 8th edition. Back then, people dismissed it because "nobody would by so many models." Only, they did.

The fact that this unit became so divisive and so "autotake/better than all other equivalents" before 8th even was released, shows there is something that was seriously off with the army rebalancing.

Pfft, remember when Eldar players said that nobody would buy that many Scatterbikes?

SilverAlien wrote:
I'm going to respond to two points:

How exactly are we supposed to load up both anti tank for dealing with enemy tanks and load up on anti infantry, when the infantry we need to kill is exceptionally tough, the tanks have firepower on par with every other army at least, and we need to build a list that isn't just tailored for killing guard?

Well, I'll tell you how most people do it: just run hordes/guard of your own. All hordes put out a lot of anti infantry shooting, so that's where you have to get a good portion of your anti infantry from. Of course, guard still has better options than most here, but we end up "taking them head on at their own design" because they are a circular counter. The way guard is designed, its best at being killed by another guard army or something similar.

Even the better assault builds rely on hordes, they just find ways to totally negate the guard's firepower either through characters like Magnus/Mortarion who are hard to kill with conventional weapons, or by hiding dangerous characters in amongst our hordes so the majority of firepower is going into brimstones or conscripts, and the anti tank weapons end up being useless. I actually spent time looking into the competitive scene and let me just say, snipers being absolute garbage for their cost is both great for guard in casual play but also the only reason they don't sweep tournaments with imperial soup.

As for why guard are good, it really is not their pure firepower. Even post codex my admech have more firepower than pure guard, guard seems to be closer to my death guard in sheer firepower. It's just that guard can make it really hard to land a hit on any unit that matters, with artillery that ignores LoS tucked into a corner bubble wrapped by hordes of conscripts.

Really, horde durability needs to go down this edition as a whole. It leads to some really frustrating tactics and counter tactics, guard merely happens to be one of the factions most capable of abusing it "in house" without pulling from multiple army lists.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
Having looked at the Guard Codex, I don't think its half as overpowered as people are saying. I've watched a fair few battle reports now where (Codex) Guard win and in every case what I notice is that they're trying to beat Guard at their own design by taking them head on but not exploiting their weaknesses. If we take two miniwargaming batrep examples I saw recently ;

One game where a Chaos player fielded 90 Cultists, A Godhammer LR, a pair of Baleflamer Helldrakes, and other than the LR his only other anti-tank at range was two squads of Oblits. At 2000 points. Not enough anti-tank, too reliant on weak, slow moving infantry, and even then he gets an oppurtunity or two to try turn things around by using his Helldrakes to tie up important units but he openly says he doesn't think that its important. D'oh!

Another one, on youtube this time has a Deathguard player throw loads of Plague Marines at an IG gunline and rely on a fire support base of a few ranged-orientated Hellbrutes and Plague Drones. Again, its 2k points, and again there isn't enough anti-tank, and even though the Chaos player has mobility to exploit this time with Rhinos, he quite literally just uses them as a taxi to put them in the middle of the board. Why?

I've played quite a lot of matches with Index Guard and I see this a lot. The people who lost against my mixed mech/conscript/artillery list in the last two local tournaments I went to, both of which I went 2W/1L at, were the people who sent infantry running down the midfield and didn't have enough anti-tank to deal with a heavy-vehicle list. In one of these 1850 matches, the only ranged AT a Grey Knight player brought was two Storm Ravens. That wasn't enough. He then ruined his other potential advantage, mobility, by being too cautious with the guys inside the Storm Ravens when they should have used that alpha-strike capability they have to tie up my artillery blob asap. Something none of my opponents really realised is that even old-Conscripts without the order nerf and the 50 man blob weren't that good in shooting or assault. I got near enough the maximum number of FRFSRF shots a 50 man blob can manage on said Grey Knight player's Terminators in that game but scored only one wound.

So what about the two games where I lost? Against Slaanesh orientated Chaos, I had terrible luck trying to kill his vehicles with my artillery, but the bigger problem was that my opponent tried hard and managed to rack up kill points because it was the objective when I tried to play the same way I had played the last two games, opting to try kill his firepower first, using my Scions aggressively, using my Mechvets reactively, and all of it backfired because I didn't think how I was exploiting each unit's advantages through.

In the other game, I played against an Ork player who understood what mobility was to the point that anti-tank units were barely a concern. He had a Ghaz + Weirdboy +Stormboys set up that allowed him to rush across the board and reach me in melee as early as turn one, even after I noticed in deployment at the last minute that his Stormboys had the threat range to do a first turn charge - because his Weirdboy still put a mob of 30 Boys in combat using 'Da Jump who killed my two Chimeras and a bunch of Vets off the bat.

The Ork player got in knife-fighting range, slaughtered my Conscripts without breaking a sweat between melee and dakka-jet strafing runs, and broke my ability to play the objective game by turn 2, in a Relic game. I should point out this guy won both tournaments I mention.

Now Conscripts as a combat unit are garbage - they're pure, unadulterated bubblewrap now. If a Guard player wants an effective defensive blob, they need to invest CP's to build a combined squad.

IG are the flavour of the month. There isn't even anything in the Codex that is virtually impossible to kill for a normal list like some previous notorious Codexes/supplements in past editions have introduced to the game *cough* Tau, *cough* Eldar, *cough* Necrons. What makes IG so good is the fact they have a load of firepower, once people figure out how to counter that the ranting will die down.

Your argument of "I won a lot with Index guard, so the super powered codex is fine" is sort of weird, though.

I was playing against people with a high degree of variation in skill level, some people who have just started playing and some who've been playing for years. That's why I can see why some people could have won particular matches but don't because they haven't thought things through in army-selection and game tactics. I often have a discussion with players I win against at tournaments to suggest what they could have done differently. I've played the Grey Knight player since and he improved on his tactics and army selection a lot, managing to basically overwhelm me in terms of sheer killing in a rematch - the only reason I managed to win again was because I pulled a trick with grav-dropping Scions in a Vendetta and took his only objective on the last turn from him while his terminators were still too slow to walk over and grab my objective, which was wide open. Mobility wins games.

Which conveniently brings in another point- by the time of that rematch, he had the Grey Knight Codex rather than the Index on hand, and managed to devastate my infantry + arty blob castle in that game between Vortex of Doom and Orbital Bombardment, both of which are Codex additions. Coming out of that match, I didn't feel GK were too underpowered to beat AM, and I don't think the reasons why have changed - in particular, Vortex of Doom and Orbital Bombardment were key in him managing to kill my attending Commissar and Platoon Officer for my Conscript blob, virtually off the bat. I would not be surprised if handing out abilities that can kill hidden characters in each new Codex, is the new sort of "gratuitous AP2 spam for everyone" phase that happened in 7th to fix Riptide/Wraithknight syndrome.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know you're a liar because you said the opponent devastated part of your list with the Orbital Bombardment on your Conscripts.

I think I made it quite clear that orbital bombardment killed both my platoon officer and my Commissar, which effectively neuters conscript damage potential to a fraction of what it is otherwise and makes them haemorrhage models every turn to morale. So maybe work on those reading comprehension skills?

 Mr.Omega wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know you're a liar because you said the opponent devastated part of your list with the Orbital Bombardment on your Conscripts.

I think I made it quite clear that orbital bombardment killed both my platoon officer and my Commissar, which effectively neuters conscript damage potential to a fraction of what it is otherwise and makes them haemorrhage models every turn to morale. So maybe work on those reading comprehension skills?

 Xenomancers wrote:

Orbital bombardment hits characters on a 5+....A 5+.

the_scotsman wrote:

SilverAlien wrote:
I'm going to respond to two points:

How exactly are we supposed to load up both anti tank for dealing with enemy tanks and load up on anti infantry, when the infantry we need to kill is exceptionally tough, the tanks have firepower on par with every other army at least, and we need to build a list that isn't just tailored for killing guard?

Well, I'll tell you how most people do it: just run hordes/guard of your own. All hordes put out a lot of anti infantry shooting, so that's where you have to get a good portion of your anti infantry from. Of course, guard still has better options than most here, but we end up "taking them head on at their own design" because they are a circular counter. The way guard is designed, its best at being killed by another guard army or something similar.

Even the better assault builds rely on hordes, they just find ways to totally negate the guard's firepower either through characters like Magnus/Mortarion who are hard to kill with conventional weapons, or by hiding dangerous characters in amongst our hordes so the majority of firepower is going into brimstones or conscripts, and the anti tank weapons end up being useless. I actually spent time looking into the competitive scene and let me just say, snipers being absolute garbage for their cost is both great for guard in casual play but also the only reason they don't sweep tournaments with imperial soup.

As for why guard are good, it really is not their pure firepower. Even post codex my admech have more firepower than pure guard, guard seems to be closer to my death guard in sheer firepower. It's just that guard can make it really hard to land a hit on any unit that matters, with artillery that ignores LoS tucked into a corner bubble wrapped by hordes of conscripts.

Really, horde durability needs to go down this edition as a whole. It leads to some really frustrating tactics and counter tactics, guard merely happens to be one of the factions most capable of abusing it "in house" without pulling from multiple army lists.

I agree. I think the conversion between old blasts and templates to new blasts and templates paired with the change to AP (where Guard nid and ork armor for the longest time basically costed nothing because it didnt really exist) made Hordes the new hotness.

but FWIW, while taking guns to clear out the actual chaff is an arduous amount of anti-infantry, it's a lot easier to take enough to kill the light elements of the artillery (mortar teams and the like). A single whirlwind can reliably whack about a HWS a turn from downtown, leaving you points to spare to deal with tanks. The problem is, the general Space Marine list of Stormravens and Assbacks with 24" range are incredibly inefficient at dealing with a guard army with a horde setup. Trying to grind through the horde with shooting really is a losing proposition.

To be clear, because I know this is again going to get pulled out and rationalized into something I'm not saying: I AGREE that horde strength in general is a big issue. I disagree that the new guard codex significantly moves the needle on how much of a problem it actually is. I don't think a new codex competitive pure guard army is going to be significantly stronger than an old index imperial soup army with some guard. I AGREE that it should be fixed. I disagree that the game is ruined forever and there's nothing anyone can do to counter the current meta.

And I also do think this is something that will naturally become a bit less of a problem as people internalize certain tactics. Besides a few tournament games, I have not yet seen anyone else perform the default "can I use my consolidate to encircle a model?" post assault step that for me now has become as ubiquitous as putting the special weapons in the back was for 7th.

Azuza001 wrote:
It occurs to me that maybe the issue here isn't "AM is op" but "Playing against AM requires me to play my army in a way I don't want to."

All the battle Reps I have watched so far with the new codex has the AM force sitting in their deployment zone and their opponent coming at them. If I am a Space Marine player and I know I am going against Guard I would have a drastically different army.

Scout snipers for troops with a ml or heavy bolter for range. I don't want to be inside that conscript/guard 12" line, or even near their 24" line if possible.

Whirlwinds with castellien launchers. Take 3 of these and camp in the back field using them to wipe away enemy conscripts from a distance.

Dev squads with missile launchers and Las cannons. A squad of each will be useful vs tanks or infantry depending on what's going on.

Rhinos with dual storm bolters - cheap anti infantry weapons with speed and able to take a hit and not really worry about getting hurt back.

Take a few small 5 man tactical squads with a missile launcher just in case the enemy drops scions in with plasma guns. You may lose something to them but then the marines can clean up the scions.

Keep something small but effective in reserve that can hit or take objectives after. Something cheap like a base assault squad. Don't drop it in first turn 10" away from the enemy line, wait until your main force can weaken their front line then drop them in.

The point above is the force I am describing is not a typical marine force that I see or I even play. It is a force that isn't worried too much about enemy alpha charges. It is designed to outrange the enemy and make them have to come to you. If everything you take has at least one option for shooting 36" away then suddenly your able to use your force but the enemy is only using half theirs. If they start moving their gunlines forward from their deployment then you've already been half way successful, when they start moving they can get themselves out of position and make a mistake you can capitalize on. But just taking the "I go first I charge and everything will be turned to red mist" list vs guard isn't going to work.

I also have a feeling dark eldar are going to have a fun time with guard. It will become "how many dark lances do I need vs how many splinter cannons"....

Just my 2 cents.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know you're a liar because you said the opponent devastated part of your list with the Orbital Bombardment on your Conscripts.

I think I made it quite clear that orbital bombardment killed both my platoon officer and my Commissar, which effectively neuters conscript damage potential to a fraction of what it is otherwise and makes them haemorrhage models every turn to morale. So maybe work on those reading comprehension skills?

Orbital bombardment hits characters on a 5+....A 5+.

 Gunzhard wrote:
Not to go off on another tangent but I kinda think you don't know what you're talking about. Any SM chapter can deepstrike special weapons and spam Stormravens... the Blood Angels only got crappy hand flamers (and heavy flamers in tacticals) otherwise. The Stormraven spam was immediately perceived as a "Blood Angel thing" just because that one guy that won some tournament called his list "Blood Angels" with no actual BA units... but whatever, that is besides the point.

The point is, you can't always know just by looking at the rules. FLG, who actually playtested the codex, called it wrong from the start on several occasions now... and you're calling people paranoid and childish when the fact is, you don't know either. Heck you may end being right, but we'll see... I think the IG codex looks amazing and fun - on paper.

the_scotsman wrote:
To be clear, because I know this is again going to get pulled out and rationalized into something I'm not saying: I AGREE that horde strength in general is a big issue. I disagree that the new guard codex significantly moves the needle on how much of a problem it actually is. I don't think a new codex competitive pure guard army is going to be significantly stronger than an old index imperial soup army with some guard. I AGREE that it should be fixed. I disagree that the game is ruined forever and there's nothing anyone can do to counter the current meta..

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know you're a liar because you said the opponent devastated part of your list with the Orbital Bombardment on your Conscripts.

I think I made it quite clear that orbital bombardment killed both my platoon officer and my Commissar, which effectively neuters conscript damage potential to a fraction of what it is otherwise and makes them haemorrhage models every turn to morale. So maybe work on those reading comprehension skills?

Orbital bombardment hits characters on a 5+....A 5+.

Yeah, it's pretty terrible for the purpose. Dunno what Vortex does, but I would never try to use an orbital bombard to try and take down a commissar except as an act of desperation. I do know that several other psychic powers I have used to good effect to target characters, as Smite is the only one that falls under the restrictions of needing to get the closest character. The new "Spawnify" power that was released in the CSM codex for instance is awesome for deleting eldar and guard characters.

the_scotsman wrote:
As for list tailoring... That's kind of what the meta game is, isn't it? If something becomes what a majority of armies are using, making changes to your TAC list to respond to those things just seems like smart strategy. I know if I were playing Marines, Scout Snipers would 100% be my go-to troops with the way the current meta features often low-equipment buffing characters to power multiply huge chunks of armies. even if they're generally useless at killing someone like Cawl or Guilliman, just their general durability for points compared to the rest of the marine troop options and deployment flexibility would earn them a spot in my list.

the_scotsman wrote:
Well, I guess that's where I disagree. I think currently there's a (slight) divide between any Codex army and any Index army, and then an additional divide between optimised allied soup vs any Codex army OR index army.

So, specifically your concern is that Guard (when taken alone, without allies) Seems better in the current game than Space Marines, Admech, Grey Knights, Death Guard, or Chaos Space Marines, when taken alone, without allies.

Maybe. I can definitely see it, given how good hordes are vs Elites right now, and all the existing codexes are elite while Guard is the first horde dex to come out.

I think two things though:

1) the gap is probably not as wide as you think right now, and most of your data is based on the tournament scene, which we've already established you're judging mostly based on the performance of abnormal Soup lists you won't see in the local scenes you're concerned about.

2) The inequalities are likely to be better fixed by systemic changes through rules shifts like Chapter Approved rather than by individual nerfs to guard units, because I would bet that given the similarities in their mechanics (big hordes backed up by buffer characters with morale-ignoring abilities) factions like Orks and Nids would most likely be in a similar spot to Guard, post-codex, if nothing were done to balance out the system.

the_scotsman wrote:
1) the gap is probably not as wide as you think right now, and most of your data is based on the tournament scene, which we've already established you're judging mostly based on the performance of abnormal Soup lists you won't see in the local scenes you're concerned about.

2) The inequalities are likely to be better fixed by systemic changes through rules shifts like Chapter Approved rather than by individual nerfs to guard units, because I would bet that given the similarities in their mechanics (big hordes backed up by buffer characters with morale-ignoring abilities) factions like Orks and Nids would most likely be in a similar spot to Guard, post-codex, if nothing were done to balance out the system.

 ross-128 wrote:
The infographic does remind me of something about snipers though. Snipers in general do kind of need to be buffed across the board with the way 8th is structured. Because they just don't do their job, not only against commissars but also with the really powerful 7-9 wound characters with stuff like 3+/4++/6+++ and d3 regen per turn, who really aren't going to blink an eye at a single mortal wound on a roll of 6.

Though in the specific case of commissars and conscripts, maybe we should attribute the ensuing morale casualties to the sniper as well since they wouldn't have happened without it.

Also shooty armies who lack snipers (though I can't think of any in particular) could stand to receive some variation on the Mordian order, so they can situationally target characters with normal weapons. For assault armies without snipers (a more common situation), lictor-like units that can ignore the 9" restriction on deep strike would make good melee assassins.

Such things are also more interesting and interactive than "just jack the points up until I never see them on my table again, so I can forget about them."

Niiru wrote:
...the grots of the imperial guard...