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 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If only there was some way to prevent smite from hitting elite models that depend heavily on toughness and saves...


... oh well. Better nerf it.

I feel like forcing everyone to run armies loaded with cheap, expendable troops is one of the biggest problems with 8th. If I wanted to do that I would have picked Guard as my army.

You know, this strikes me as a weird complaint.

"I want to build my army to how I want to build it, and it should be viable!" is something I fundamentally disagree with. An army of 2000 points of Cultists should not be as effective as a force built to TAC.

Similarly, an army of 2000 points of Custodes or 2000 points of Baneblades should not be as effective as a force built with combined arms.

Armies should have the ability to skew towards a playstyle, but should not be able to overlook the relevance of other unit types without weakening themselves.

I don't think any army list regardless of composition should have an equal chance of winning to any other list, regardless of composition. Listbuilding should remain, to some degree, important, and deliberately leaving out crucial components of a competitive list (as I do, leaving screens out of my Baneblade companies) should see those lists fail.

I wish there were actually 2 different "Smites" like The normal "Smite" which you chose to take, or is skewed for higher points costs. Then a "Lesser Smite" that everyone knows or something. And that can have closer to LAS cannon stats so INV and such could work. I actually really like SMITE as is, because sometimes, Mephiston, Typhus, or [special HQ] hates THAT GUY over there, getting too close. BOOM. But coming from Mephiston, it should matter, and not be the same as from some dumpy Warlock or Primaris Psyker with no name. Just some rambling.

The problem, Unit11126PLL, is that "chaff" isn't a term for TAC.

Chaff/Horde is like Elite. It describes a type of army, the quality of their models and the number of them.

When you build a TAC army, you need anti infantry, anti tank, movile units (Even Nurgle for example has some of those with Drones), some kind of morale or psychic defense, etc...

Saying that you need "Chaff" to have a TAC army is like saying that a IG/Ork army should need "Elite" units to be complete.

Theres armies that literally have no "Elite" or "Chaff" options because it isn't in their design. But they have all the rest of the tools to build a TAC list. So saying that "Chaff" is the same as "Anti-tank" is not correct. They aren't in the same category.

I like Smite.

 Galas wrote:
The problem, Unit11126PLL, is that "chaff" isn't a term for TAC.

Chaff/Horde is like Elite. It describes a type of army, the quality of their models and the number of them.

When you build a TAC army, you need anti infantry, anti tank, movile units (Even Nurgle for example has some of those with Drones), some kind of morale or psychic defense, etc...

Saying that you need "Chaff" to have a TAC army is like saying that a IG/Ork army should need "Elite" units to be complete.

Theres armies that literally have no "Elite" or "Chaff" options because it isn't in their design. But they have all the rest of the tools to build a TAC list. So saying that "Chaff" is the same as "Anti-tank" is not correct. They aren't in the same category.

I can't think of any Faction with no access whatsoever to Chaff.

How can you tell it's not a deliberate design decision to force people to take large amounts of chaff? And I think IG do have to take "elite" units to compete - Leman Russes, Basilisks, Baneblades. I think perhaps part of the problem with Orks is that their list is only chaff, and it suffers as badly from that as Elite armies do from having no chaff at all!

 Galas wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 argonak wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Change Smite to Normal Wounds...

And totally feth every Psyker Army in the game.

No thanks.

Just trying to think of things that aren’t total nerfs but address the smite spam people are worried GW is goi to hit with the nerf hammer.

I think the rumored adjustment of limiting Smite to 3 times in a turn will work pretty well, and is very simple.

Those "non-scalable" solutions aren't solutions. They are the worst kind of solutions. 3 smites a turn is fine un 1k games. Not in 2k games.

Really? What's the beef? I can sort of see the point I'm just wondering why it's 'the worst kind of solution'.

For context I recently had a game where I had a Broodlord and 6 Neurothropes all Smiting all the time basically. Felt a little cheap. Killed the big G nice and quick though.

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:I like the proposal that smite deal d3 wounds of S=casting roll, ignores armor and invulnerable saves. It allows for there to be a counter to invulnerable saves without countering all defensive attributes. Terminators need a pt reduction anyways.

Currently Smite does an average of 1.6 wounds.
D3 wounds of S = 2D6 gives, depending of toughness:
T 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
W 1.67 1.63 1.54 1.38 1.23 1.08 0.97 0.84 0.76 0.66

So it would mostly help models with T6+. Usually these models have many wounds, and don't care so much about smite. I think smite is mostly an issue for expensive 1W or 2W models, with T3-T5 and a good invul.
Unless I messed up my calculations

Unit1126PLL wrote:I can't think of any Faction with no access whatsoever to Chaff.

Please, tell me where to find chaff Harlequin units.

fresus wrote:

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:I like the proposal that smite deal d3 wounds of S=casting roll, ignores armor and invulnerable saves. It allows for there to be a counter to invulnerable saves without countering all defensive attributes. Terminators need a pt reduction anyways.

Currently Smite does an average of 1.6 wounds.
D3 wounds of S = 2D6 gives, depending of toughness:
T 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
W 1.67 1.63 1.54 1.38 1.23 1.08 0.97 0.84 0.76 0.66

So it would mostly help models with T6+. Usually these models have many wounds, and don't care so much about smite. I think smite is mostly an issue for expensive 1W or 2W models, with T3-T5 and a good invul.
Unless I messed up my calculations

Unit1126PLL wrote:I can't think of any Faction with no access whatsoever to Chaff.

Please, tell me where to find chaff Harlequin units.

I am fairly certain that Harlequin armies can get 8ppm Guardians in their army without breaking any Matched Play rules at all.

Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

I think the solution is simple; limit Smite like every other power in Matched play. Don't apply this restriction to "special" versions of Smite (which really apply to psyker special armies). Destroyer, for instance w/ Eldar Warlocks is a 9", 1 Mortal wound version. If you want to keep that available for them - fine, whatever.

Beyond that, limit Smite to one casting per turn like every other power and be done with it. It'll force a couple of armies to change their composition, so be it. Almost every army with a Codex has an additional mortal wound generating spell, meaning you'd still have two dangerous spells to cast per turn.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

Wait so are you saying you don't have access to chaff or that you won't take it for reasons unrelated to army composition rules?

My claim was "chaff is available, if you don't take it, you're not taking a crucial part of modern 40k, like not taking anti-tank units." If your claim is "Chaff isn't available" then that's a real counter to my argument. But if your claim is "I don't want to take it!" then I say "Sure, don't, but that's like deliberately not taking anti-tank units, so don't expect to do well."

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

fresus wrote:

Unit1126PLL wrote:I can't think of any Faction with no access whatsoever to Chaff.

Please, tell me where to find chaff Harlequin units.

I am fairly certain that Harlequin armies can get 8ppm Guardians in their army without breaking any Matched Play rules at all.

And I'm fairly certain it's not the same faction.
But I suppose you therefore consider that guardsmen are good chaff for any faction under the imperium keyword. And same thing with cultists and chaos.
Remember you could actually do that in 7th edition too. It's as if you told a 7th ed. IG player "it's your fault if you suck at melee, you could take thunderwolves, but you're just artificially limiting your options"…

There's a difference between limiting yourself by refusing to take some of you codex' options, and not wanting to play a soup army. Harlequins with a bunch of guardians, or Grey Knights with an infantry platoon are soup armies at their worse; that's when you take a single option from another codex just to be more competitive.

No, there's not a difference. I can link you a thread where it's hashed out, but the general agreement is every faction has access to chaff of some kind.

To think that a "faction" is the second keyword on a unit's datasheet is mistaken, because there's really nothing that indicates that. The Inquisition, for example, could be a standalone army with Faction: Inquisition, but limiting them to the second keyword on their sheet (after Imperium) is obviously pointless, just as an example. Faction: Adeptus Custodes doesn't even have an HQ (yet) and neither does Faction: Officio Assassinorum. All of these are evidence that a unit's second faction keyword is not intended to be the only way to build an army.

Aeldari are a faction keyword of both Harlequins and Guardians, so yes, they are the same faction.

We can argue all day long about what a faction really is, or should be.
I consider that any faction keyword that grants benefits when every unit in the same detachment shares that keyword is a faction in its own right. So basically any faction that has a codex or similar detachment-based rules from CA. Which includes Harlequins and Grey Knights.
You're basically arguing that Imperial Guard or Space marines are not faction on their own, and we shouldn't consider such restrictions when looking at what an army can bring, but just put them both in the Imperium bracket. I think lower level faction keywords matter.

fresus wrote:
We can argue all day long about what a faction really is, or should be.
I consider that any faction keyword that grants benefits when every unit in the same detachment shares that keyword is a faction in its own right. So basically any faction that has a codex or similar detachment-based rules from CA. Which includes Harlequins and Grey Knights.
You're basically arguing that Imperial Guard or Space marines are not faction on their own, and we shouldn't consider such restrictions when looking at what an army can bring, but just put them both in the Imperium bracket. I think lower level faction keywords matter.

You can define it that way all you want, but that doesn't mean a given army doesn't have access to chaff. I mean heck, Grey Knights as a faction don't even have access to anti-tank weapons, so it's patently silly that they're considered a faction by themselves.

Incidentally, the smallest keyword that gives you bonuses for having an entire detachment of them tends to be <Regiment>, <Chapter>, <Craftworld> with a few exceptions, and a ton of units don't even have those keywords.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

Wait so are you saying you don't have access to chaff or that you won't take it for reasons unrelated to army composition rules?

My claim was "chaff is available, if you don't take it, you're not taking a crucial part of modern 40k, like not taking anti-tank units." If your claim is "Chaff isn't available" then that's a real counter to my argument. But if your claim is "I don't want to take it!" then I say "Sure, don't, but that's like deliberately not taking anti-tank units, so don't expect to do well."

Considering the fact that my original argument was that "chaff shouldn't be required because not everyone wants to be playing Guard", telling people that they should ally in Guard to fulfill their chaff requirements is an incredibly ridiculous assertion.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

Wait so are you saying you don't have access to chaff or that you won't take it for reasons unrelated to army composition rules?

My claim was "chaff is available, if you don't take it, you're not taking a crucial part of modern 40k, like not taking anti-tank units." If your claim is "Chaff isn't available" then that's a real counter to my argument. But if your claim is "I don't want to take it!" then I say "Sure, don't, but that's like deliberately not taking anti-tank units, so don't expect to do well."

Considering the fact that my original argument was that "chaff shouldn't be required because not everyone wants to be playing Guard", telling people that they should ally in Guard to fulfill their chaff requirements is an incredibly ridiculous assertion.

Whats ridiculous is complaining about what you "need" to take. You don't need to take anything. You can play a list built entirely out of lows if you wanted to. What is viable is based on a lot of things and the fact that melee actually works for the first time in several editions means you should protect yourself from it. Just like tanks existing means you should have some anti tank. Saying you shouldn't need to build your list with tools to defend against the enemy is like saying you shouldn't need to build your list with wargear capable of stopping them.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

Wait so are you saying you don't have access to chaff or that you won't take it for reasons unrelated to army composition rules?

I was going for the second initially, but on second thought, show me where the faction with the key word Black Templars has access to chaff. Go ahead, I'll wait.

I don’t understand why haven’t GW game designers extrapolated AoS magic system to 40k: there every mage has 1 spell bound to his Warscroll (dataslate) in addition to possible codex magic school for certain factions and smite (magic missile) is also limited to one per turn.
Extra spell on datasheet helps to solve two things: decreasing utility from spamming (you can take two Lord of Change, but only one will cast very powerful warscroll spell), and giving mages extra stuff to do if everything from codex and universal spells were already cast, also slightly promoting TAC rosters.

In current situation crippling smite will make many magic heavy factions unworthly nerfed.

And the main problem of smite is that it counters low model count elite melee armies. And counters them hard.

May be limiting damage output like they did on Horrors will help. Smite dealing mortal wound and d3 wounds on 11+ is much more in line with other damaging spells.

Really awkward spot. I just hope smite won’t follow the fate of the conscripts, who were nerfed 4 times.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

Wait so are you saying you don't have access to chaff or that you won't take it for reasons unrelated to army composition rules?

I was going for the second initially, but on second thought, show me where the faction with the key word Black Templars has access to chaff. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Every model with Black Templars also has a variety of other Faction keywords (thankfully!) allowing them access to innumerable chaff ranging from the somewhat overcosted Inquisitorial Acolyte all the way to the meta-crushing (apparently) Imperial Guard.

If you can show me a model that has the Black Templars keyword and nothing else, I'll finally admit that at least one model exists that does not have access to chaff.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

Wait so are you saying you don't have access to chaff or that you won't take it for reasons unrelated to army composition rules?

I was going for the second initially, but on second thought, show me where the faction with the key word Black Templars has access to chaff. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Every model with Black Templars also has a variety of other Faction keywords (thankfully!) allowing them access to innumerable chaff ranging from the somewhat overcosted Inquisitorial Acolyte all the way to the meta-crushing (apparently) Imperial Guard.

If you can show me a model that has the Black Templars keyword and nothing else, I'll finally admit that at least one model exists that does not have access to chaff.

If I'm going to be playing my army using Imperium as my keyword though, why would I ever include Black Templars?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Find me a chaff unit for Black Templars that gives me any sort of competetive reason for playing Black Templars rather than replacing every BT unit in my army with better IG ones.

Wait so are you saying you don't have access to chaff or that you won't take it for reasons unrelated to army composition rules?

I was going for the second initially, but on second thought, show me where the faction with the key word Black Templars has access to chaff. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Every model with Black Templars also has a variety of other Faction keywords (thankfully!) allowing them access to innumerable chaff ranging from the somewhat overcosted Inquisitorial Acolyte all the way to the meta-crushing (apparently) Imperial Guard.

If you can show me a model that has the Black Templars keyword and nothing else, I'll finally admit that at least one model exists that does not have access to chaff.

If I'm going to be playing my army using Imperium as my keyword though, why would I ever include Black Templars?

For the same reason you play them now. You want to.

This is a dumb ass line of questioning.

Not everything is the min max best thing in the codex. Not every army has the best option in every role. Most of imperiums factions have glaring flaws. But they all also have imperium keyword to help round them out with second or 3rd detachments. Welcome to humanity. You get like.... A dozen factions to pull units from. Now go look at necrons.