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 auticus wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I agree... you need poiints for structure for pick up games. Thats why I don't mind Power Level, and thats why I wrote Azyr Comp for AOS when it first came out.

Now for our 40k campaign coming up that uses Power Level you are restricted to a certain number of upgrades period. So you can't just take everything.

So again it requires agreed to restrictions, to work properly. The reason PL works for most pick up games is that if you play WYSIWYG most people have built things for points, so armies are not using every upgrade, if PL became the common means of balance, unless accompanied by restrictions, people would start to build their units with max upgrades.

But people build their models right now with max efficiency upgrades, so I'm not seeing a giant difference overall.

Because in theory those upgrades are pointed out to some semblance of balance, it is clear PL does not take them into account beyond, average cost, of all available upgrades. In theory it is just a shift in meta, but I'm not sure it is a good one.

 auticus wrote:
Its especially true if both players are min/maxing power level because they both have a min/max list, same as points. You'll get roughly the same quality of game.

Then why use power levels? If the quality of the game is similar then you're conceding that power levels have no advantage to make up for their disadvantages. Is this just another case of people wanting to use a less-balanced system for virtue signalling about how "casual" they are?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
For me, very causal player, this is one of the thing I love of listbuilding. I don't want to exploit the system but I like to make a plan and choose units and options, and equip my units for the mission. I restared with 8th and I love my Plague Marines because, at least theoretically, you can equip the squads in many way, carry them in many vehicles to accomplish the mission. They are cool, with all different teams! Melee, ranged, anti-horde, anti heavy infantry...

You can do all of this with points. Using the less-accurate point system of power levels adds nothing here.

I am all for point, fanatically, because I like to thinker the list in the details.
Sorry for being unclear. I quoted you but I meant more to answer to Auticus. As someone else said, people that want to exploit the system will find a way.
At this point, is better to write a solid and nuanced system for those that can appreciate.

Right. That goes back to the pretense of balance, but there isn't really balance there. Its the illusion of balance.

I've been using PL for a while and like I said, the quality of games is nearly identical to points.

I'll just stop there. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just saying that points = balance is a fallacy to me. Points = structure, not balance.

Two guys min/maxing PL is going to result in the same game as two guys min/maxing points.

But I think it's somewhat silly to try and compare something like a wyvern to a taurox prime. They're completely different units that serve completely different roles with completely different weapons. You can't just look at "wounds/point" in a vacuum.

What is the difference between a marine with a bolter and a marine with a lascannon? They serve different roles, but have the same "body".

One will be in back probably behind cover. One will be up front taking fire.

You don't point models on whether they are in cover or not.

One is BS4. One is BS3.

This is covered by the cost of the weapons. See the BS3 Melta and BS4 Melta.

One can transport.

And you have to buy a unit to put in it.

One has double the range of the other. LOS ignoring.

Convered by the cost of the weapon.

Rerolls.

At no point should rerolls be costed into the receiving unit. Nor are they currently. RG and devastators anyone? I don't see anyone calling for Devastators to get increased.

Regiment benefits.

These are a player choice. They are responsible for what their list turns into. I take a Defiler with the express purpose of using it alongside Blasphemous Machines and Daemonforge. If I didn't take it then I wouldn't use those CP. But at no point should I ever pay for CP I may or may not use.

There are too many differences.

Not really.

And it's especially silly to determine that "rerolling wounds = weapon should cost double" for a guard artillery piece based on a marine melee weapon.

Are you sure about that? It gives us insight into their logic and VERY specifically tells us what rerolls to wounds means on a weapon where there are otherwise NO differences.

 BoomWolf wrote:
The obvious power cards are often detected before the set even out, and so does the bad, to the point of "strictly better" IS actually a thing there (two cards who are completely indentical except one is cheaper, or identical except one has a strict numerical advantage like doing 1 more point of damage)
Other than an odd metabreaker (like lictorshame), the meta soldifies within a week or two from a new release, bad cards never see play outside casual because they are instantly identified as such, etc.

A week or two is still far, far more than it takes to figure out most of the GW meta. And you're ignoring the fact that much of that "strictly better" issue involves things like limited formats, where MTG is really multiple games in one package and vast parts of each set are intended only for limited. Limited depends on having that power curve in place, and when you exclude cards that are deliberately weak to make limited work things get a lot more even in power level.

The meta "evolved" so far that most decks there can with a good draw kill you before they even get a turn, and with a lousy draw, kill by turn 2. (if they are lucky enough that the enemy also draws badly enough to have them live that long)
Without the rotation, MTG is outright unplayable given just how poorly the balance in that game is.

Actually, that situation exists primarily because of WOTC's early mistakes with the game. Most of the cards that have to be banned/restricted in those formats are cards from older sets (with most of the rest being combo pieces that had some obscure and unforeseen interaction with a card from 20 years earlier), before WOTC had a good understanding of the game they had created and how to balance it. The similar format that only allows cards from the past ~10-15 years is much less degenerate and much more interesting. It's like if there was a "everything legal" 40k format where people brought instant-win lists built on exploiting 2nd edition insanity like virus grenades.

 BoomWolf wrote:

The obvious power cards are often detected before the set even out, and so does the bad, to the point of "strictly better" IS actually a thing there (two cards who are completely indentical except one is cheaper, or identical except one has a strict numerical advantage like doing 1 more point of damage)
Other than an odd metabreaker (like lictorshame), the meta soldifies within a week or two from a new release, bad cards never see play outside casual because they are instantly identified as such, etc.

A lot of those bad cards are there for draft and never intended for constructed play. Booster draft and cube draft are some of the most popular ways to play MtG. While cube draft is casual, booster drafts have major tournament presence.

I'm not sure what the GW equivalent of that would be, but requiring players to think on their feet and adapt rather than netdecking the best combos adds a lot to the MtG competitive scene.

 auticus wrote:
Right. That goes back to the pretense of balance, but there isn't really balance there. Its the illusion of balance.

I've been using PL for a while and like I said, the quality of games is nearly identical to points.

I'll just stop there. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just saying that points = balance is a fallacy to me. Points = structure, not balance.

Two guys min/maxing PL is going to result in the same game as two guys min/maxing points.

To some extent, but with much less room for GW to tweak balance, the number of units that are 4, 5, 6 PL make if very hard to make changes without giant balance issues. So while true that min-maxing will happen in either case, there is little recourse for PL. This is already a problem with points on the low end, just look at conscripts they change 1 point they go from good to trash (yes other changes occurred as well), but when you are down to single digits it is really hard to represent differences between units.

 auticus wrote:
Two guys min/maxing PL is going to result in the same game as two guys min/maxing points.

It really won't. The game with points has a greater potential diversity of choices, because more units have point costs that accurately reflect their value on the table and are in the "viable in a min/max list" pool. With power levels fewer units have accurate point costs, so the subset of viable options is likely to be much smaller. Extend the scenario to a group of 10 people playing dozens of games each over a full year and you'll see that diversity pay off.

Depends on what they play.

I've played Power Points in games with newer players. They've modeled what they have. They're fielding what they have.

If you just want a quick WYSIWYG game without much list building, it can be useful. My Harlequins only have 2 weapons and 2 pistols in their 5-man. But that's how they're modeled, and how I field them. In PP, they cost a lot of points for what they do. But then, typically if PP were chosen just to quickly put the collections on the table, the opponent has the same kinds of inefficiencies.

If you field it and just say "This unit has all the upgrades, because points don't matter", I feel like a points game is going to be better. And if you want more nuance than "I'm bringing a Tac squad!" in list building, PP doesn't help you. But, in either of those cases, I don't think you're the person PP are for.

I much prefer points overall, but PP have a place.

 Asmodai wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

The obvious power cards are often detected before the set even out, and so does the bad, to the point of "strictly better" IS actually a thing there (two cards who are completely indentical except one is cheaper, or identical except one has a strict numerical advantage like doing 1 more point of damage)
Other than an odd metabreaker (like lictorshame), the meta soldifies within a week or two from a new release, bad cards never see play outside casual because they are instantly identified as such, etc.

A lot of those bad cards are there for draft and never intended for constructed play. Booster draft and cube draft are some of the most popular ways to play MtG. While cube draft is casual, booster drafts have major tournament presence.

I'm not sure what the GW equivalent of that would be, but requiring players to think on their feet and adapt rather than netdecking the best combos adds a lot to the MtG competitive scene.

The GW equivalent would be the old "Apoc only" units that were way too good in standard games, but worked fine when each player had 10k points. GW moved away from having units designed for "separate" games because they found that many people did not buy those units because they only wanted to play standard 40k

Breng77 wrote:

 Asmodai wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

The obvious power cards are often detected before the set even out, and so does the bad, to the point of "strictly better" IS actually a thing there (two cards who are completely indentical except one is cheaper, or identical except one has a strict numerical advantage like doing 1 more point of damage)
Other than an odd metabreaker (like lictorshame), the meta soldifies within a week or two from a new release, bad cards never see play outside casual because they are instantly identified as such, etc.

A lot of those bad cards are there for draft and never intended for constructed play. Booster draft and cube draft are some of the most popular ways to play MtG. While cube draft is casual, booster drafts have major tournament presence.

I'm not sure what the GW equivalent of that would be, but requiring players to think on their feet and adapt rather than netdecking the best combos adds a lot to the MtG competitive scene.

The GW equivalent would be the old "Apoc only" units that were way too good in standard games, but worked fine when each player had 10k points. GW moved away from having units designed for "separate" games because they found that many people did not buy those units because they only wanted to play standard 40k

Although those units aren't actually dominating the meta atm, lol.

So, I'm an ork and I'm totally fine with the CA changes.

It's an odd feeling being satisfied with a rules release. This must be how it feels to play space marines.

I kind of wish they would have fixed kustom shootas, which should be 2 points, like storm bolters, not 4 points, for some unknown and unknowable reason. But I will happily take fixes to klaws and KMKs, the rest was just gravy. The relic + warlord trait on a warboss also seems awesome.

The stratagems aren't great, but eh. More are coming. The shooting stratagem is kind of cute, at the very least.

Stompas are vastly overpriced, but from what I can tell most titans got vastly more expensive, so maybe I should be glad stompas didn't get more useless.

Kill tanks took quite a points increase, but in fairness, they were pretty underpriced before.

I'm also very surprised gargantuan squiggoths didn't take a points hit. They're almost the same price as kill tanks now. They are VASTLY underpriced.

They didn't help out deff dreads, battlewagons, or trukks, which are all too expensive to be any good, but I'm still happy with what I got.

But for me this was a big

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 Asmodai wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

The obvious power cards are often detected before the set even out, and so does the bad, to the point of "strictly better" IS actually a thing there (two cards who are completely indentical except one is cheaper, or identical except one has a strict numerical advantage like doing 1 more point of damage)
Other than an odd metabreaker (like lictorshame), the meta soldifies within a week or two from a new release, bad cards never see play outside casual because they are instantly identified as such, etc.

A lot of those bad cards are there for draft and never intended for constructed play. Booster draft and cube draft are some of the most popular ways to play MtG. While cube draft is casual, booster drafts have major tournament presence.

I'm not sure what the GW equivalent of that would be, but requiring players to think on their feet and adapt rather than netdecking the best combos adds a lot to the MtG competitive scene.

The GW equivalent would be the old "Apoc only" units that were way too good in standard games, but worked fine when each player had 10k points. GW moved away from having units designed for "separate" games because they found that many people did not buy those units because they only wanted to play standard 40k

Although those units aren't actually dominating the meta atm, lol.

Not at this point no, they have had a lot of toning down since the APOC only days, when they had 10" D blasts, which basically auto-removed models from the table, had their own special rules, damage tables etc.

I don't think MTG are a good comparison. Many cards are made deliberately bad and "simple" for new players or just to make bigger the number of cards in a expansion.
At least Hearthstone does it this way And they have said it without qualms. I don't know if Magic does it too.

I think thats one of the problems of GW. As others have said, they should post a WarCom article when they release books like this, to explain why they have buffed/nerfed things.
In Hearthstone they do it everytime they nerf a card. (As it is a computer based MTG they can actually nerf cards instead of just bann them). You can disagree with it, of course (Many people do, you just need to see the forums), but in the long run, the vitriol is much less durable.

Of course, Blizzard gained 600 millons $ just with Hearthstone in 2015, when GW did 6 millions of pounds of benefit this past year, so their size is very different. But GW could do better.

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 Asmodai wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

The obvious power cards are often detected before the set even out, and so does the bad, to the point of "strictly better" IS actually a thing there (two cards who are completely indentical except one is cheaper, or identical except one has a strict numerical advantage like doing 1 more point of damage)
Other than an odd metabreaker (like lictorshame), the meta soldifies within a week or two from a new release, bad cards never see play outside casual because they are instantly identified as such, etc.

A lot of those bad cards are there for draft and never intended for constructed play. Booster draft and cube draft are some of the most popular ways to play MtG. While cube draft is casual, booster drafts have major tournament presence.

I'm not sure what the GW equivalent of that would be, but requiring players to think on their feet and adapt rather than netdecking the best combos adds a lot to the MtG competitive scene.

The GW equivalent would be the old "Apoc only" units that were way too good in standard games, but worked fine when each player had 10k points. GW moved away from having units designed for "separate" games because they found that many people did not buy those units because they only wanted to play standard 40k

Although those units aren't actually dominating the meta atm, lol.

Not at this point no, they have had a lot of toning down since the APOC only days, when they had 10" D blasts, which basically auto-removed models from the table, had their own special rules, damage tables etc.

Not sure they were dominating the meta then, either.

In 5th edition, tournament armies ran 0 superheavies (though to be fair they couldn't).
In 6th, you could take a superheavy, and for all the shrieking, I don't remember them being terribly OP.
In 7th, the Wraithknight and Imperial Knights dropped, and people shrieked at the top of their lungs, but I'm 99% sure the Wraithknight was the only superheavy that showed up in competitive lists - and it was never an Apoc Only unit; it was intended for regular 40k.
In 8th, Lords of War have been (like everything else) redesigned to fit into the game at its current scale, and seem to be fine on the whole.

Hrm, not sure I agree with drawing too much from this, we don't know the rationale behind them, I'd argue that in the Chimeras case it's painfully overcosted (and as a result you see very few on tables), and the Predator has a *notably* higher cost despite having only one addiitonal wound and fewer features (no transport ability, no self repair, no out-of-LoS weapons) than the other platforms there (before buying its weapons, only one of which is mandatory).

The predator also bring the heaviest load out of all of those vehicles. The Chimera base cost is fine. It's the mandatory weapons that sink it, but only by comparison.

I take a clean Rhino for 70 points.
You take a Chimera for a minimum of 93 when all you wanted was a transport.

So mentally you shake your head about how unbalanced that is when it isn't the points that are the problem, but your expectations for what you want and what you have available in your army.

This is not a problem with the system.

If the line of thinking is "X is bad, so lets nerf Y", there's a huge number of issues with that. There's zero context of where the two units actually perform, the reasons for taking them, what roles they fill and what places they take in the army? Just because Sentinels are bad and Tauroxes are better Autocannon sources doesn't mean that nerfing the Taurox is going to make people take Sentinels or that the Sentinel a good landmark for balance decisions.

It's not like Tauroxes were exactly Grade A competitive list units, aside from attempting to tie performance to units that are seen as decidedly uncompetitive, there's very little rationale for nerfing them, nobody thought they were an issue.

I'm not trying to promote that logic. These were highlighted, because this is what mix-maxers look for in units. The best ratio of weapons to points and wounds to points.

If you're going to balance the durability of units there is going to be some underlying logic for different saves, toughness, and so on. It's the same reason that a Forgefiend packing a 5++ and a heal is 39 points more than a predator.

From there you WILL have some variance to promote units that are a little weaker to make them better choices, but you WON'T have very many wide difference between these values.

This isn't the last Chapter Approver, either. Just because some things were not touched now does not mean they won't be in the future.

However, we have zero evidence that this is how GW costs units (who have themselves stated many times through many editions, including this one, that such formulae tend to be little more than passing fads around the studio and most costing is subjective), this costing paradigm ignores all context in which these units are used and employed, focused solely on wounds per point to the exclusion of all else.

We have pretty good evidence. Your statement to the contrary is "Old GW". If you could find a recent source of such statements that would be appreciated.

A power sword is 4 points. A power axe is 5 points.
They just adjusted the force sword to double a power sword and a force axe to double a power axe, because they statistically do 2 wounds on average.

Stats don't always scale linearly, FoC slot location, tabletop role, armament choices, transport ability, etc and more all factor into costs in ways every analysis of yours is failing to capture.

Strong inbuilt abilities are considered - look at the Wave Serpent. Basic things like smoke launchers, transport, etc are all a pretty minimal cost.

Armaments are costed into weapons and in cases like the Predator they pay more for the priveledge.

FoC slot is irrelevant given we have detatchments to fit all types. The cost there is not how many CP do you wish to gain instead of costing a unit by slot.

A tabletop role is also not a pointable offense. Should you pay more points for an anti-tank chassis when you take all heavy bolters? Why would you pay more for simply "being" anti-tank if your opponent might not have any tanks?

In theory? Potentially, sure. In practice? Not really, the Sentinel is taller than a Russ, the bulk of its mass is higher (with some things like fences or low walls or an Aegis line its actually quite possible to get an LRBT 50% obscured but not a Sentinel because its body is so high), and in a squadron of two or three they don't really have any smaller of a footprint.

Fair enough though i've found 2 or 3 separate sentinels with heeavy flamers to be quite a pain when you can't draw good weapons on them.

This is getting really reachy, we're really struggling to take a unit nobody rates and attempting to tie it as some sort of balance measure through the aspect of heavy anti-tank guns being overkill and less effective than against the heavy battle tanks they're intended for. The sentinels are much easier to hurt and destroy with small arms fire and mid-range weaponry like Plasma guns and Autocannons, and the big heavy anti-tank guns are still rather effective against the Sentinels, even if more circumstancial as to when you want to bring them to bear.

It's a consideration that should be had for any value judgement of units you're going to take. What is the role you need to fill and what pros and cons each bring to the table? Armored sentinels without a heavy flamer are indeed "anemic" on the move so it's left to decide whether or not they're offering what you need.

A unit of infantry is 40 points. But when faced down by a unit with 8 RF bolters and 2 RF plasma they'll lose 5 to bolters and 2 or so to plasma, which is basically a dead squad after morale. The sentinel is still ticking with 2 wounds left. Even outside of RF the infantry will lose half the squad and be in jeopardy. The sentinel is otherwise pretty healthy at 4 wounds.

So you'll get less shooting out of a sentinel for sure, but you're also getting a more durable disruptive unit that can find lots of safety in melee as well if they're not packing a fist.

This value judgement changes if your opponent is somehow packing nothing, but plasma yet that is not a reason to discount it, because people still run tanks when RG and las dev squads are out there.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 Asmodai wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

The obvious power cards are often detected before the set even out, and so does the bad, to the point of "strictly better" IS actually a thing there (two cards who are completely indentical except one is cheaper, or identical except one has a strict numerical advantage like doing 1 more point of damage)
Other than an odd metabreaker (like lictorshame), the meta soldifies within a week or two from a new release, bad cards never see play outside casual because they are instantly identified as such, etc.

A lot of those bad cards are there for draft and never intended for constructed play. Booster draft and cube draft are some of the most popular ways to play MtG. While cube draft is casual, booster drafts have major tournament presence.

I'm not sure what the GW equivalent of that would be, but requiring players to think on their feet and adapt rather than netdecking the best combos adds a lot to the MtG competitive scene.

The GW equivalent would be the old "Apoc only" units that were way too good in standard games, but worked fine when each player had 10k points. GW moved away from having units designed for "separate" games because they found that many people did not buy those units because they only wanted to play standard 40k

Although those units aren't actually dominating the meta atm, lol.

Not at this point no, they have had a lot of toning down since the APOC only days, when they had 10" D blasts, which basically auto-removed models from the table, had their own special rules, damage tables etc.

Not sure they were dominating the meta then, either.

In 5th edition, tournament armies ran 0 superheavies (though to be fair they couldn't).
In 6th, you could take a superheavy, and for all the shrieking, I don't remember them being terribly OP.
In 7th, the Wraithknight and Imperial Knights dropped, and people shrieked at the top of their lungs, but I'm 99% sure the Wraithknight was the only superheavy that showed up in competitive lists - and it was never an Apoc Only unit; it was intended for regular 40k.
In 8th, Lords of War have been (like everything else) redesigned to fit into the game at its current scale, and seem to be fine on the whole.

In 5th you could not take them
in 6th for most of the edition you could not take them (most tournament did not allow escalation), until the tail end when knights dropped, and they were highly compeititve early on with their formation (adamantium will or something that gave a better invul save)
in 7th they changed the D rules which toned down superheavies quite a bit.

Also to be fair they were never allowed in tournaments when they were APOC only units, as that was done away with in 6th with escalation, though with that book you still got bonuses for playing against superheavies.

So again....when they were APOC only they were broken and not meant for normal size games....they have never been both APOC only and allowed in standard games at the same time. The fact that those units have the same name, but different rules is irrelevant to the time period when they were APOC only. Though to be fair some of the points recosting of titans in CA seems to lend credence to the fact that some units are meant not to be used in smaller games.

I'm still not sure the Apoc-only stuff was that OP.

In 2nd, superheavies were not Apoc (or Epic) only as there were rules for them in 28mm 40k.
In 3rd, superheavies were not Apoc only as Apoc didn't exist.
In 4th, superheavies could be used in both.
In 5th, superheavies were in fact Apoc-only.

So there was a minor aberration in 5th where they couldn't be used in normal games, and that's not even true - in fact, 5th is when I built my first Baneblade company because the Battle Missions book allowed for a 1500 point game between 3 Baneblades and a 1500 point army. That convinced my playgroup that a Baneblade company was fine, and I often played 3 Baneblades vs 1500 points of badguy, and probably went 20/80, since they couldn't score on objectives or anything, and were unlikely to table most armies.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I'm still not sure the Apoc-only stuff was that OP.

In 2nd, superheavies were not Apoc (or Epic) only as there were rules for them in 28mm 40k.
In 3rd, superheavies were not Apoc only as Apoc didn't exist.
In 4th, superheavies could be used in both.
In 5th, superheavies were in fact Apoc-only.

So there was a minor aberration in 5th where they couldn't be used in normal games, and that's not even true - in fact, 5th is when I built my first Baneblade company because the Battle Missions book allowed for a 1500 point game between 3 Baneblades and a 1500 point army. That convinced my playgroup that a Baneblade company was fine, and I often played 3 Baneblades vs 1500 points of badguy, and probably went 20/80, since they couldn't score on objectives or anything, and were unlikely to table most armies.

APOC dropped in 4th ed with books indicating APOC only units. The Baneblade was one of the least crazy versions of superheavy available as it had no D strength weapons to my recollection.

In 2nd it was considered extremely poor form to bring anything from armorcast without your opponents permission. Especially if you were bringing one of their epic models that were made for 28 mm. It was the equivalent to turning up to a casual game with a hyper competitive tournament list and would often get you labeled TFG.

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I'm still not sure the Apoc-only stuff was that OP.

In 2nd, superheavies were not Apoc (or Epic) only as there were rules for them in 28mm 40k.
In 3rd, superheavies were not Apoc only as Apoc didn't exist.
In 4th, superheavies could be used in both.
In 5th, superheavies were in fact Apoc-only.

So there was a minor aberration in 5th where they couldn't be used in normal games, and that's not even true - in fact, 5th is when I built my first Baneblade company because the Battle Missions book allowed for a 1500 point game between 3 Baneblades and a 1500 point army. That convinced my playgroup that a Baneblade company was fine, and I often played 3 Baneblades vs 1500 points of badguy, and probably went 20/80, since they couldn't score on objectives or anything, and were unlikely to table most armies.

APOC dropped in 4th ed with books indicating APOC only units. The Baneblade was one of the least crazy versions of superheavy available as it had no D strength weapons to my recollection.

Yes, that's true, but not all of the units were apoc only. In fact, most of the ones in the Apoc book also had normal variants from Forge World that edition, though they tended to be downplayed (e.g. the Strength 9, 2 shot Turbolaser Destructor, whose only advantage over a 2-shot lascannon was Small Blast, versus the Strength D ones that the GW rules writers put out).

Wayniac wrote:In 2nd it was considered extremely poor form to bring anything from armorcast without your opponents permission. Especially if you were bringing one of their epic models that were made for 28 mm. It was the equivalent to turning up to a casual game with a hyper competitive tournament list and would often get you labeled TFG.

This is true. You did, in fact, have to be a kind, thoughtful person when you played 2nd edition, or else the whole thing came crashing down. Superheavies were not the only culprit, as I'm sure others can attest, but were one of many things that you had to warn your opponent about before hand if the game was going to be enjoyable.

Super heavies in 3rd and 4th (pre Apoc) could only be used in games of 2000pts or more.
The pre Apoc rules for the Baneblade and Shadowsword were actually pretty mild, with the Baneblade battle cannon being a simple S9 AP2 Ordnance1 weapon. For 650~ish points, it was certainly not OP, especially not in a 2k game.
The Apoc rules slashed their cost, made them more resilient (no longer possible to blow them up in a single shot by getting chain reaction results on the damage table) and gave the baneblade that silly huge 10" template.

Panzergraf wrote:
Super heavies in 3rd and 4th (pre Apoc) could only be used in games of 2000pts or more.
The pre Apoc rules for the Baneblade and Shadowsword were actually pretty mild, with the Baneblade battle cannon being a simple S9 AP2 Ordnance1 weapon. For 650~ish points, it was certainly not OP, especially not in a 2k game.
The Apoc rules slashed their cost, made them more resilient (no longer possible to blow them up in a single shot by getting chain reaction results on the damage table) and gave the baneblade that silly huge 10" template.

You could chain-reaction tanks to death until the arrival of Hull Points in 6th. All Apoc did was add the 4+ save to the Primary Weapon in 5th when weapon destroyed results were no longer random.

The 10" template was silly, but not actually very good. They never dominated tournaments.

Really, people seem to have an irrational fear of superheavies; I can't recall a single tournament that was won by an army with a Baneblade (there may be like, 1, because I am human and fallible).

So no change to skyrays? I swear they could be 50 points and I’d still have a hard time justifying bringing them.

 Jaxler wrote:
So no change to skyrays? I swear they could be 50 points and I’d still have a hard time justifying bringing them.

There were not any Tau changes as far as been shown. There are not Necron changes either, leading to speculation that these will be after Chaos Daemons.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Jaxler wrote:
So no change to skyrays? I swear they could be 50 points and I’d still have a hard time justifying bringing them.

There were not any Tau changes as far as been shown. There are not Necron changes either, leading to speculation that these will be after Chaos Daemons.

Taunar doubled in points and they nerfed the manta.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

You could chain-reaction tanks to death until the arrival of Hull Points in 6th. All Apoc did was add the 4+ save to the Primary Weapon in 5th when weapon destroyed results were no longer random.

Oh, I guess I remember it wrong, then. But yeah, they were never really that powerful. And the Baneblade still isn't. In many cases it falls short of 3 regular Russes (more or less same cost), as it can't take orders or double its firepower when moving half or less.

Panzergraf wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

You could chain-reaction tanks to death until the arrival of Hull Points in 6th. All Apoc did was add the 4+ save to the Primary Weapon in 5th when weapon destroyed results were no longer random.

Oh, I guess I remember it wrong, then. But yeah, they were never really that powerful. And the Baneblade still isn't. In many cases it falls short of 3 regular Russes (more or less same cost), as it can't take orders or double its firepower when moving half or less.

Yeah. Which is why banning low is still. Because it bans Baneblades.

Panzergraf wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

You could chain-reaction tanks to death until the arrival of Hull Points in 6th. All Apoc did was add the 4+ save to the Primary Weapon in 5th when weapon destroyed results were no longer random.

Oh, I guess I remember it wrong, then. But yeah, they were never really that powerful. And the Baneblade still isn't. In many cases it falls short of 3 regular Russes (more or less same cost), as it can't take orders or double its firepower when moving half or less.

Yeah but it can shoot while it's locked in combat, that's not to be underestimated. It also suffers no penalties for moving and shooting.