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"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Bharring wrote:
I think that's because many people dismiss codex-only comparisons as limited, academic, and inherently misleading. Being the worst of the top 3 or so isn't nearly as meaningful as being the worst in the game.

So, by default, most people included them in the conversation. Omitting most armies wasn't my default.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If the game were balanced, the top army and the bottom army would be in the same class. Tournies have shown SM lists reliably hit the top 3. But in any case, being worse than the best, or even the best 2 or 3, isn't a huge surprise when there are so many factions in the game.

I do believe codex is included in the title. Index and codex are different things.

People often internally correct when they believe a minor change to what they hear or read would make more sense, or be more likely to be a worthwhile discussion. For instance, if I talked about th Space Marine book, you're going to assume I mean *the* Space Marine *codex*. Honest misunderstanding.

Considering the relative usefulness of the possible discussions ("all armies" vs "The 5 GW Favs that already got Codexes"), I think it was the more likely or appropriate read of the OP than the Codex-only "technically correct" version.

Like how 6e MCs had someting like 'Smash' and 'Monsterous' instead of 'Monsterous Smash' - some rule that didn't exist (I dont' recall which 2 rules were involved with the missing comma). Technically incorrect, but nobody was going to read it that way. Or how, in some editions, if the leading rolloff tied twice, the game couldn't move forward. Most people just roll a third time. Technically incorrect only for pedants.

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

If only we had some sort of data, data like competitive players playing against competitive players in a competitive setting, something like say a tournament. If only we had such data, data that would show GKs are performing significantly worse than marines. If only the same dataset also showed that AdMech were equally suffering with GK and distinctly worse off than Marines. If only we had data of tournament winning Marine lists without G-man.

Man, if only. The discussions we could put to rest if we had access to such information.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

All of their heavies can move and shoot as well as a Leman Russ does.

Land Raiders, Falchions, Fellblades, and the other Lords of War all move and shoot better than a Leman Russ does.

Their assault phase is also better than AM's by a large margin.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too.

This is hyperbole, you can't put everything off board. You can arrange things in such a manner as to put a majority of your points and heavy hitters off board, but you certainly can't give your enemy "nothing to shoot".

Forewarned is a fairly broken stratagem, but not in any way as broken as the Raven Guard Strike From the Shadows win-button.

Both stratagems will get fixed in due time. Meanwhile enjoy your undercosted buff-machine and assault-cannons

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

All of their heavies can move and shoot as well as a Leman Russ does.

Land Raiders, Falchions, Fellblades, and the other Lords of War all move and shoot better than a Leman Russ does.

Their assault phase is also better than AM's by a large margin.

Really? Absorbing assault with trash and then blowing the assault unit up is a pretty damn good assault phase if you ask me. Marines can't do that. They don't have trash. They also don't have good assault units ether. Unless you think terminators are good units or something.

I wonder how everthing would stack up if you dropped CPs from the game.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too.

This is hyperbole, you can't put everything off board. You can arrange things in such a manner as to put a majority of your points and heavy hitters off board, but you certainly can't give your enemy "nothing to shoot".

Am I the only one that has figured out you can hide your entire army turn 1 if they are 5 man troop squads?

 Xenomancers wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too.

This is hyperbole, you can't put everything off board. You can arrange things in such a manner as to put a majority of your points and heavy hitters off board, but you certainly can't give your enemy "nothing to shoot".

Am I the only one that has figured out you can hide your entire army turn 1 if they are 5 man troop squads?

You can hide your entire 200 model Ork horde given sufficient terrain.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

I don't know what rules you're using but the 0 pts on the table tactic is gone. Alsoby deep striking you have to maintain at least a 9" distance from the enemy how are you delivering your army into the enemy?

Bharring wrote:
I wonder how everthing would stack up if you dropped CPs from the game.

The game would be worse without CP's

How can you hide everything you set up in your deployment zone T1 as the opponent deploys, but you can't hide a single DS unit anywhere on the board outside 9" of an enemy from a single short infantry squad that moves 7" a turn?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

All of their heavies can move and shoot as well as a Leman Russ does.

Land Raiders, Falchions, Fellblades, and the other Lords of War all move and shoot better than a Leman Russ does.

Their assault phase is also better than AM's by a large margin.

uhhh...you do know that russes have an HQ called tank commander...and there is little reason not to take a tank commander for every russ....unless you really fancy they annihilator that can't do that. They have bs3+ and reroll ones automatically with and order for another tank commander. The russ actually shoots better on the move than the preditor shoots standing still.

 Blacksails wrote:


Man, if only. The discussions we could put to rest if we had access to such information.

You're never going to get that. For some people, it's their ultra-competitive meta and nothing else. "That tournament uses such and such house rules and doesn't compare to my situation at my store." "So what if SM went 50-2 against GK at the last two Mega-Cons! No one in my game store plays them!"

For others, they need an unreasonably large sample size to convince them of anything, thinking that they can apply a lean six sigma double-blind Design of Experiments on a game where you have a million options for each army, can port in 1-3 additional armies (depending on the tournament/game store), and have an uneven number of pairings between codecies. Make your own damn spreadsheets and minitab projects if that's what floats your boat.

Best and Worst are silly terms to apply to a codex. Less internal balance, fewer competitive units, inability to ally, etc are better discussion points, but still have subjective limitations.

I play what I want because I like the fluff, thinks it looks cool, or would be fun to paint. I don't purposely field weak gak, but I don't go out of my way to field face-pounding units/lists, either.

Getting into "This codex is 4.8% more efficient at killing T7 vehicles than that codex" isn't fun for me, but to each his/her own!

Bharring wrote:
How can you hide everything you set up in your deployment zone T1 as the opponent deploys, but you can't hide a single DS unit anywhere on the board outside 9" of an enemy from a single short infantry squad that moves 7" a turn?

Oh - I think the idea of deep striking is to actually do damage...not hide behind a wall...by all means do that if you think it's effective. I haven't figured out how to win games without killing things though. Can you teach me how?

Tourny placing is also an inprecise proxy for acumen at the game. Luck skews it a lot, but it's a safe bet that 2 of the top 3 at any sizable tournament knows the game better than any random forum poster. So if they think something is worthwile, and someone on the forums has some fancy post with some halfbaked math saying the opposite, it's certainly worth considering.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

I don't know what rules you're using but the 0 pts on the table tactic is gone. Alsoby deep striking you have to maintain at least a 9" distance from the enemy how are you delivering your army into the enemy?

give me 2 LOS blocking terrain peices in my deployment zone and I effectively have first turn every game I play GK. Unless you also have heavy deep strike in which case we are just trading units. I only deploy 105 point strike squads which are pretty great units for trading. They usually come out on top though.

As for how do I deliver assault units. First to the frey warlord trait on a GMDK. Reroll asssaults for all my units in a 6" bubble. If I am dropping 5-6 units (One of the strike squads uses gates of infinity to join the fight). 2 Usually make it in. It's really not as important as the shooting phase though which I basically can delete anything that isn't a t7 3+ save tank or better pretty easily. Probably not much left to assault after that anyways.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

All of their heavies can move and shoot as well as a Leman Russ does.

Land Raiders, Falchions, Fellblades, and the other Lords of War all move and shoot better than a Leman Russ does.

Their assault phase is also better than AM's by a large margin.

uhhh...you do know that russes have an HQ called tank commander...and there is little reason not to take a tank commander for every russ....unless you really fancy they annihilator that can't do that. They have bs3+ and reroll ones automatically with and order for another tank commander. The russ actually shoots better on the move than the preditor shoots standing still.

I'm pretty sure you said "heavies" and not HQ's.

I'm 100% sure all the Space Marine HQ's can move and fire without penalty as well as a Tank Commander.

Well, the trick in this case is, have LOS on what you're going to shoot at, but don't have LOS on what would kill you. Except that it's not much of a trick. It's positioning 101.

Granted, that's more complex than "Don't drop my Scorpions/Hawks/Spiders/Banshees within 12" of the Devs, the Sternies, the Vets, the special/combi Tacs, or the dreads, if they have LOS". But you need to wall off from *one* unit in *one* place on the board. Against SM, any unit with sufficient firepower (for some DS units, that's most units - even naked Tacs will put a dent in some).

Again, I still think the CWE one is better, but you'll have an easier time facing them if you at least consider the tradeoffs.

Also, I currently, pre-Stratagems even, would DS my scorpions out of LOS, often even needing to be out of 12" to not die in one round. Many DS units need anther turn before they can 'do their jobs'. Not all of them are dakka boats.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, is it odd that you think DS makes GK OP, but then complain about the items GW is adding to the game to give DS more counterplay for non-hordes armies?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

All of their heavies can move and shoot as well as a Leman Russ does.

Land Raiders, Falchions, Fellblades, and the other Lords of War all move and shoot better than a Leman Russ does.

Their assault phase is also better than AM's by a large margin.

uhhh...you do know that russes have an HQ called tank commander...and there is little reason not to take a tank commander for every russ....unless you really fancy they annihilator that can't do that. They have bs3+ and reroll ones automatically with and order for another tank commander. The russ actually shoots better on the move than the preditor shoots standing still.

I'm pretty sure you said "heavies" and not HQ's.

I'm 100% sure all the Space Marine HQ's can move and fire without penalty as well as a Tank Commander.

Ultramarines can take a single Chronus. AM can tank multiple tank commanders - they can take a whole army of tank commanders. You know that. They fact that they are HQ is actually beneficial. It means you can spam mortars in heavy.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

All of their heavies can move and shoot as well as a Leman Russ does.

Land Raiders, Falchions, Fellblades, and the other Lords of War all move and shoot better than a Leman Russ does.

Their assault phase is also better than AM's by a large margin.

uhhh...you do know that russes have an HQ called tank commander...and there is little reason not to take a tank commander for every russ....unless you really fancy they annihilator that can't do that. They have bs3+ and reroll ones automatically with and order for another tank commander. The russ actually shoots better on the move than the preditor shoots standing still.

I'm pretty sure you said "heavies" and not HQ's.

I'm 100% sure all the Space Marine HQ's can move and fire without penalty as well as a Tank Commander.

Ultramarines can take a single Chronus. AM can tank multiple tank commanders - they can take a whole army of tank commanders. You know that. They fact that they are HQ is actually beneficial. It means you can spam mortars in heavy.

So what you're saying is that you're upset that your army has different options than AM?

Because I'm fairly sure that one of the hallmarks of 40k is that the factions are different and have different options and that's a good thing to keep them all from being the same.

If you're upset you don't have HQ tanks, then play an army that has HQ tanks. You gotta take the good with the bad when you select a faction. There are factions that have HQ tanks and there are some that don't. There are also factions that have monstrous-creature HQs and some that don't.

Bharring wrote:
Well, the trick in this case is, have LOS on what you're going to shoot at, but don't have LOS on what would kill you. Except that it's not much of a trick. It's positioning 101.

Granted, that's more complex than "Don't drop my Scorpions/Hawks/Spiders/Banshees within 12" of the Devs, the Sternies, the Vets, the special/combi Tacs, or the dreads, if they have LOS". But you need to wall off from *one* unit in *one* place on the board. Against SM, any unit with sufficient firepower (for some DS units, that's most units - even naked Tacs will put a dent in some).

Again, I still think the CWE one is better, but you'll have an easier time facing them if you at least consider the tradeoffs.

Also, I currently, pre-Stratagems even, would DS my scorpions out of LOS, often even needing to be out of 12" to not die in one round. Many DS units need anther turn before they can 'do their jobs'. Not all of them are dakka boats.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, is it odd that you think DS makes GK OP, but then complain about the items GW is adding to the game to give DS more counterplay for non-hordes armies?

GMDK or flying hive are going to have a hard time hiding behind anything that isn't a huge building. That might work for infantry. However - it's very easy for an opponent to deploy in such a way where you wont be able to deep strike out of line of site...maybe some rangers are placed there or maybe the dark reapers have some elevation so they can see over things. In any case - deep strikings purpose is to get as close as possible to the enemy - not to lay up close where you probably could have got with your movement phase anyways. Just the existence of this stratagem has a zoning effect that might win them the game for not even using the stratagem. The space marine version is quite literally a joke in comparison.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"GK's are better than space marines IMO. "

Gonna have to disagree. They give up too many points too quickly on the opponent's turn. Most good lists don't care about the GK alpha strike.

Deep strike mitigates the crap outta this. First turn I give you nothing to shoot at and then hit with 2k points at your weak point. In CC they absolutely dominate too. What does the space marine codex dominate in? They have weak mobility because none of their heavies can move and shoot minus a storm raven (which GK can take too). Their firepower is good but every army has good firepower, Their psychic phase is weak...most of their powers do nothing, and their assault phase is weak-sauce too. The space marine army offers nothing that AM doesn't offer better.

All of their heavies can move and shoot as well as a Leman Russ does.

Land Raiders, Falchions, Fellblades, and the other Lords of War all move and shoot better than a Leman Russ does.

Their assault phase is also better than AM's by a large margin.

uhhh...you do know that russes have an HQ called tank commander...and there is little reason not to take a tank commander for every russ....unless you really fancy they annihilator that can't do that. They have bs3+ and reroll ones automatically with and order for another tank commander. The russ actually shoots better on the move than the preditor shoots standing still.

I'm pretty sure you said "heavies" and not HQ's.

I'm 100% sure all the Space Marine HQ's can move and fire without penalty as well as a Tank Commander.

Ultramarines can take a single Chronus. AM can tank multiple tank commanders - they can take a whole army of tank commanders. You know that. They fact that they are HQ is actually beneficial. It means you can spam mortars in heavy.

So what you're saying is that you're upset that your army has different options than AM?

Because I'm fairly sure that one of the hallmarks of 40k is that the factions are different and have different options and that's a good thing to keep them all from being the same.

If you're upset you don't have HQ tanks, then play an army that has HQ tanks. You gotta take the good with the bad when you select a faction. There are factions that have HQ tanks and there are some that don't. There are also factions that have monstrous-creature HQs and some that don't.

More options? better options? I'd call that being worse. That is what I am trying to say.

 Xenomancers wrote:

More options? better options? I'd call that being worse. That is what I am trying to say.

It's only worse if you're actually losing games. The data does not pan out as Blacksails and others have mentioned more than once to you.

Your own petulant whining that you lack the options that other armies have (while having some other options that other armies don't, as it should be) is childish at best, and deliberately trolling at worse.

A tank commander is 45pts more than a HS Russ. That's no small increase, their inclusion must be considered. 3 HQ tanks equals roughly 4 HS tanks in terms of cost. In general, the 3 HQ tanks will be slightly killier, about 16% more between BS3+ and reroll 1 orders to each other, but bring 33% less resiliency and table manuever elements. The HQ tank is not an auto include by any means (though Pask can be close...).

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

More options? better options? I'd call that being worse. That is what I am trying to say.

It's only worse if you're actually losing games. The data does not pan out as Blacksails and others have mentioned more than once to you.

Your own petulant whining that you lack the options that other armies have (while having some other options that other armies don't, as it should be) is childish at best, and deliberately trolling at worse.

Guilliman making some placing with ultra marines does not make the codex good - plus all the of tournament wins with stormraven spam are 100% invalid now. Then you have to consider how many armies show up to tournaments with guilliman and razorbacks...armies that people have because gladius was a razorback army and that was easily the most popular army at the end of 7th. it's really not surprising to see some guilliman victories. The rest of the codex is trash though.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

More options? better options? I'd call that being worse. That is what I am trying to say.

It's only worse if you're actually losing games. The data does not pan out as Blacksails and others have mentioned more than once to you.

Your own petulant whining that you lack the options that other armies have (while having some other options that other armies don't, as it should be) is childish at best, and deliberately trolling at worse.

Guilliman making some placing with ultra marines does not make the codex good - plus all the of tournament wins with stormraven spam are 100% invalid now. Then you have to consider how many armies show up to tournaments with guilliman and razorbacks...armies that people have because gladius was a razorback army and that was easily the most popular army at the end of 7th. it's really not surprising to see some guilliman victories. The rest of the codex is trash though.

"If you take away the GOOD options the codex is bad!"

Well, yes, I suppose that's tautologically true - and I think it's true of every codex. It's a tautology and useless to say.

Versus SM, you need to either be out of LOS or out of 12" range of anyting.

Versus CWE, you only need to be out of LOS of one deathstar unit, not the entire army.

If the Rangers can see you, no problem, they can't shoot (they aren't next to the Farseer). If they did somehow clump (and yet still have no blindspot? Terrible board) or took multiple Farseers, then you're taking 5 Sniper shots. No buffs, because even if they got first turn and got everything off, it's on the Reapers not the Rangers. So you're losing a wound or three. And they're paying for that 500-600pt deathstar, plus another 200 for the second mini deathstar-without-the-death.

DS is to get there faster, but counterplay is to keep that from being auto-win. The Scorpion example - without it, there's no way they can charge a backfielder by end of T2. Most things can't cross that much table in 1 turn. Most things don't even have cheapish boxes like Rhinos to help position. DS is about getting into position.

Closer is usually better for what you deep strike, but being within 10" then getting shot off the table is worse than being with 12", but not getting to fire until next turn, when you can shoot and charge. And, for many things that DS, waiting a turn to shoot and charge is better than spending 3 or 4 turns hoofing it up the table on your opponent's terms.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And what about the SM armies that didn't use Gilly, Ravens, or Razors?

The exceptions list is already longer than many factions' Troops choices.