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The object of the game is not always to be the most points, effective killer. Sometimes it pays to be cheap and have objective secured.

Guardsmen, Cultists, Ripper Swarms, Brimstones, etc.. no one is taking them for their killing power.

Indeed, it does pay to be cheap and have Objective Secured.

If only Tactical Marines were cheap...

kombatwombat wrote:
Indeed, it does pay to be cheap and have Objective Secured.

If only Tactical Marines were cheap...

If they were cheap they should have been T3 S3 and 4+ save.

 adamsouza wrote:
The object of the game is not always to be the most points, effective killer. Sometimes it pays to be cheap and have objective secured.

Guardsmen, Cultists, Ripper Swarms, Brimstones, etc.. no one is taking them for their killing power.

True. But it is partly a problem with ITC style gaming, which also removes many of the downsides for playing them.

- Stop merging EW/Maelstrom missions and board control becomes less important, at least in some EW missions. (The possiblity of) Relic or No Mercy played straight from the book becomes a strategic consideration (promoting more diversity in tournament army builds).
- Stop using the CA-version of who gets first turn for the BRB missions where it's not supposed to go, and low-drop armies become more relevant again. Transports also become stratgegically more important, perhaps justifying their price a bit more.
- Stop using First Strike instead of First Blood, and cheap, easily killed filler in a high-drop army becomes a slightly greater liability.
- Etc...

Most tournament formats removed the downsides for these kinda units without nerfing the upsides (board control, high drops, more CP through more unit-intensive detachments, etc..).

Smite is brutal at times. I had a match vs dark eldar and before they shoot in round one, my land raider raider was down by 9 wounds from smite alone. Now dark eldar are not even meant to have smite, but they can ally in some cheap farseers that ignores perils on 2+.
Smite is powerfull vs marines and other elites because all those points invested in toughness and armour means nothing. But then again the same complaints can be made about any source of mortal wounds.

It's lame with something that has an equal 100% chance to damage everything from grots to land raiders. And for those in defense saying mortal wounds saves time, why not design all attacks in the game with mortal wounds then, and make the only defense layer wounds. Why even bother with toughness, armour and ap from the start?

100 points per Farseer (or 130 per Farseer Skrunner) is hardly cheap for a model that can't share any of the transports, and is wasting the other powers they can know and cast.

That's at least 300 points.

They also don't ignore Perils on a 2+, but rather they can ignore each MW they'd suffer from Perils on a 2+, just in case your opponent was cheating you.

 Blackie wrote:


If they were cheap they should have been T3 S3 and 4+ save.

So could we can then conclude that Tactical Marines are by their very nature not very good? They pay for stats they can’t or don’t often use, so they fail at being efficient killers, and they’re not cheap since they’ve got T4/3+ so they’re not good at being cheap and Objective Secured either?

kombatwombat wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:


If the two units contribute the same to the battle while one has a bunch of things that make it "better" but that don't actually help it to contribute and it costs more because of that then which one delivers more for the points?

I mean, if you could choose between a Russ and a more expensive Russ that gets more attacks in CC which one are you going to take?

This is the fundamental weakness of Tactical Marines and, by extension, every Space Marine infantry unit.

Exactly. They pay for an all-round solid statline but can't get the equipment to utilize it fully so some of that statline is always being wasted.

kombatwombat wrote:

 Blackie wrote:


If they were cheap they should have been T3 S3 and 4+ save.

So could we can then conclude that Tactical Marines are by their very nature not very good? They pay for stats they can’t or don’t often use, so they fail at being efficient killers, and they’re not cheap since they’ve got T4/3+ so they’re not good at being cheap and Objective Secured either?

IMHO they're a decent-average troop in a good army, but that's completely out of topic and it's a matter that was discussed for countless pages before.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:
The object of the game is not always to be the most points, effective killer. Sometimes it pays to be cheap and have objective secured.

Guardsmen, Cultists, Ripper Swarms, Brimstones, etc.. no one is taking them for their killing power.

True. But it is partly a problem with ITC style gaming, which also removes many of the downsides for playing them.

- Stop merging EW/Maelstrom missions and board control becomes less important, at least in some EW missions. (The possiblity of) Relic or No Mercy played straight from the book becomes a strategic consideration (promoting more diversity in tournament army builds).
- Stop using the CA-version of who gets first turn for the BRB missions where it's not supposed to go, and low-drop armies become more relevant again. Transports also become stratgegically more important, perhaps justifying their price a bit more.
- Stop using First Strike instead of First Blood, and cheap, easily killed filler in a high-drop army becomes a slightly greater liability.
- Etc...

Most tournament formats removed the downsides for these kinda units without nerfing the upsides (board control, high drops, more CP through more unit-intensive detachments, etc..).

Of course those changes would make scenarios less important, game even more of who alpha strikes enemy off the board(often on turn 2 latest) and wouldn't actually help marines or other elite units.

tneva82 wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:
The object of the game is not always to be the most points, effective killer. Sometimes it pays to be cheap and have objective secured.

Guardsmen, Cultists, Ripper Swarms, Brimstones, etc.. no one is taking them for their killing power.

True. But it is partly a problem with ITC style gaming, which also removes many of the downsides for playing them.

- Stop merging EW/Maelstrom missions and board control becomes less important, at least in some EW missions. (The possiblity of) Relic or No Mercy played straight from the book becomes a strategic consideration (promoting more diversity in tournament army builds).
- Stop using the CA-version of who gets first turn for the BRB missions where it's not supposed to go, and low-drop armies become more relevant again. Transports also become stratgegically more important, perhaps justifying their price a bit more.
- Stop using First Strike instead of First Blood, and cheap, easily killed filler in a high-drop army becomes a slightly greater liability.
- Etc...

Most tournament formats removed the downsides for these kinda units without nerfing the upsides (board control, high drops, more CP through more unit-intensive detachments, etc..).

Of course those changes would make scenarios less important, game even more of who alpha strikes enemy off the board(often on turn 2 latest) and wouldn't actually help marines or other elite units.

Yup I don't think using more Kill Point only and Relic missions would make lists more varied, they would just make alpha strike even more important because the easiest way for many people to win those missions is to table their opponent. I don't think removing any of the changes that people have made would make the game better just more about setting up your alpha strike to win by tabling. Personally I wish they would remove tabling as a win condition (you are still likely to win the game if your opponent is dead), but progressive missions + removal of auto win really encourages players to interact with each other and makes the game more enjoyable.

I think this is just a clumsy, knee-jerk solution to the problem that fails to provide any alternative to armies that rely on psychic firepower (GK and TS being the obvious ones, but Daemons will feel it to a lesser extent also).

There are a couple of ways this could have been better handled, one would have been to give psykers an option to swap out Smite for a different power, two would have been to make it so lesser psykers don't do MW with Smite, just let them do normal wounds. It's definitely not as impressive, but auto-hitting with 1d3/1d6 wounds is better than the current solution, which is to simply turn the Aspiring Sorcerer into a walking Force Weapon with a Deny.

Martel732 wrote:
Here's my take:

Psykers cheaper than say 60-70 ppm don't get full smite. They get baby smite. Brimstones get baby smite that allows invuln saves.
No casting after advancing.
Make snipers in more armies more affordable.

That would be better than this "fix", imo.

Brims just..shouldn't have psychic powers. There's a point where something as strong as a mortal wound shouldn't scale down.

TBH, I wouldn't even make Brims a "real unit" if I were designing them they'd be more of a flavor thing. a 3ppm model that is a body with a 4++ inv save is just unbalanceable, and there's not enough difference between blues and brims to work in gw's point scale granularity. I'd give them a rule like "at the end of your turn, roll a d6 for each unit that includes any Brimstone Horrors. That many go out, remove them from play." That way you actually want to take them with Split and use them as extra cheaper wounds but you're not just running 50 brimstones because they're a beyond-bonkers screen for an army that can be pretty much 100% characters.

But again this is a case of nerfing the one offender instead of a blanket nerf to everything.

If you think Brimstones knowing Smite is the problem... then you're wrong.

You forget that in order to cast Smite, you need to kill one of the Brimstones. So it's a trade, though admittedly still in the Brimstone's favour (otherwise there'd be no point in ever casting it). Also, as others have pointed out in other threads, that single MW Smite does as less damage against its supposed 'best targets' than 10 lasguns.

The problem with Brimstones isn't that they can cast Smite. You could remove their Psychic-ness entirely and they'd still be taken in droves because they're a 3pt model with a 4++. What they need is a points bump,and maybe (maybe!) a ++ save decrease on top of that. This would give a reason for Blue Horrors to be taken in Matched Play and fix main reason they are too good. Them knowing Smite is a red herring to throw Marine players off.


Also making it so they can only be seen via splitting would make it so they are never seen again. Split is just a bad rule.