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 adamsouza wrote:
A 6 man stealth team with 2 drones in cover, has 14 wounds, a 2+ save, and is -1 to hit.

Lasguns have a 1.8% chance to wound them.
Motars have a 2.8%
Battle Cannons have 14%
Las Cannons have 18%

I've had an entire 1500 point Guard army concentrate their fire into a single stealth team on turn 1 and fail to remove it.

A valid suggestion, thanks.

It's funny reading through all the comments here. They match exactly what we've been seeing in our small work gaming group. Stealth suits and ghostkeels rule the roost. Ghostkeels especially, not really for the firepower but just the pure threat of the thing. To me it's the new distraction carnifex. In a 1500 point game with me playing chaos it took an entire turn of my army shooting it to destroy it, for guard that should even out to be two turns.

 boundless08 wrote:
It's funny reading through all the comments here. They match exactly what we've been seeing in our small work gaming group. Stealth suits and ghostkeels rule the roost. Ghostkeels especially, not really for the firepower but just the pure threat of the thing. To me it's the new distraction carnifex. In a 1500 point game with me playing chaos it took an entire turn of my army shooting it to destroy it, for guard that should even out to be two turns.

It's funny that you say that, because the more I play it the more I'm seeing the flaws in the Ghostkeel. Don't get my wrong, I love the thing, awesome model and it is decent on the board, but it does have its issues. First and foremost is that because it hit that magical 10W, it has a degrading statline. Once you get it down to 5 wounds or less, its hitting on 5+ instead of 4+. That's a massive hit to a model with (depending on the loadout) relatively few shots. Second is that while the Keel can be quite beefy at range with that -2 to hit T6 3+, the Stealth Drones are decidedly not. It is not hard at all to kill 2 -1 to hit T4 1W 4+ Drones. And once you do that, the Keel loses that permanent -1 to hit, and only has the -1 from beyond 12" to rely on. For an approximately 200 point model, it does have some glaring flaws that can be easily exploited if your opponent knows what they're up against.

That said, yeah the Ghostkeel is an awesome Distraction Carnifex. Even with the degrading statline and relatively vulnerable drones, it is quite tanky, to the point that many opponents won't even bother shooting at the thing. But they can't leave it alone because it does carry some decent firepower. I take a couple every game, and they do some work. I do believe that Stealth Suits are generally the better unit, but Ghostkeels are nothing to sneeze at. They won't win you any tournaments, and against a good competitive Guard list they won't do you much good, but they are a solid unit and have a place in the Tau arsenal, so long as you remember the weaknesses I mentioned above and learn to mitigate them.

Agree with everything you said man! When I play against the ghostkeel now I ignore it unless it gets worryingly close to things. Another big flaw is it's hitting on 5s when moving if you haven't got marker lights or that support system

Yeah stealth suits in cover with drone controllers are great. The one great thing I can confirm is I had a single squad last an entire turn of IG shooting lol. Unfortunately it was a doubles game and I simply didn't have enough of them. Definitely want to pick some more up and I hope they remain unchanged in our new dex except perhaps a small cost decrease to keep them relevant. They are great for being the wall for deepstrikes. Still not good enough to be a game winning unit. Not with our dex at least.

All we can do is hope for Tau dex buffs.

^^ This is what I'm talking about. Not giving up board control.

Guard have no ready access to jump packs or skimmers. We can only engage along a front, except for Scions and very few other choices. If you can create a front with these Stealth teams, you can effectively pen Guard into a corner, where they can't score objectives, and they can't efficiently engage valuable targets.

At which point, selectively kill infantry to create drop zones for targeted assassinations, and you've got a strategy with potential.

I dunno. Quick napkin math says that three Hammerheads (no Longstrike) with full ML support should do about 8 wounds a turn to a baneblade (or Leman Russ). That's not nothing. With two seekers on each, that goes up to almost 14.

Broadsides actually do more damage, though.(3 will do 9 wounds with the rail rifles)..

It's pretty hard to take a Stormsurge down in one turn. How did that happen?

 Gamgee wrote:
Yeah stealth suits in cover with drone controllers are great. The one great thing I can confirm is I had a single squad last an entire turn of IG shooting lol. Unfortunately it was a doubles game and I simply didn't have enough of them. Definitely want to pick some more up and I hope they remain unchanged in our new dex except perhaps a small cost decrease to keep them relevant. They are great for being the wall for deepstrikes. Still not good enough to be a game winning unit. Not with our dex at least.

All we can do is hope for Tau dex buffs.

Curious, have you tried them without running DCs on them? In my experience, DCs are not worth it on Stealth Suits since the Suits are generally starting further up the board than the Drones, and the Drones generally want to be doing other things than chasing the Stealth Suits around and vice versa. My preferred loadouts are this. Both loadouts assume a 6 man Stealth unit with a Shas'Vre, 2 FBs, and 4 BCs.

1. All BCs have ATS, FBs have MTs. Gives the BCs some much needed added bite (16 S5 AP-1 shots coming from a unit starting in the middle of the board is nothing to sneeze at) while the MTs give FBs more reliability and less reliance on MLs. Overall makes a more self-sustaining unit that can function as harassers and skirmishers on their own without needing to dedicate additional support to them. This is my default loadout and it has served me very well in 8th.

2. All SGs, all day. Yes, please, come shoot at my -1 to hit, T4 2W, 2+ (cause you know they're deploying in cover), 4++ unit. This unit will not go away. Barring some bad rolls on your part, they will be sticking around all game. Quite fun, quite infuriating to deal with.

It's pretty hard to take a Stormsurge down in one turn. How did that happen?

Not really. A Stormsurge is T7, 20W, 3+. Its arguably less survivable than a Land Raider (more wounds, but worse T and save). It also doesn't have the BATTLESUIT keyword so you can't use Savior Protocols to tank wounds off onto Drones. Even with the almost mandatory SG upgrade, and possibly a Stim upgrade and/or an Ethereal nearby, a Stormsurge really isn't as hard as you would think to kill in a single turn, assuming you have the firepower in your list (which Guard will).

I have no idea. My armies consist mostly of IG and I have never lost to Tau. I have to note that I use different tactics than your opposition. I have way more infantry. And non-IG-dudes.

Sometimes, I do wonder if the current ruleset was designed by an IG-player...

Math Hammer has always favored large volumes of fire. 8th edition introduced everything being wounded on a 6+ and everything failing it's save at least 16%.

Astra Militarum is just fortunate to have the ability to field cheap easily killable guys, who happen to have competent range weapons.

Orks and Tyranids have cheap numbers, but are hampered by poor BS and less effective ranged weaponry.

Power Armored armies too elite oriented to field in horde sized numbers.

Not really. A Stormsurge is T7, 20W, 3+. Its arguably less survivable than a Land Raider (more wounds, but worse T and save). It also doesn't have the BATTLESUIT keyword so you can't use Savior Protocols to tank wounds off onto Drones. Even with the almost mandatory SG upgrade, and possibly a Stim upgrade and/or an Ethereal nearby, a Stormsurge really isn't as hard as you would think to kill in a single turn, assuming you have the firepower in your list (which Guard will).

Can confirm. Throw enough lascannons/other multiwound guns at it, and it will be bracketed or killed in one or two turns. Many games I've had to bite my nails wondering if they'll survive turn one. T7 really is pathetic- you'd think our biggest suit would have more than that.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

Not really. A Stormsurge is T7, 20W, 3+. Its arguably less survivable than a Land Raider (more wounds, but worse T and save). It also doesn't have the BATTLESUIT keyword so you can't use Savior Protocols to tank wounds off onto Drones. Even with the almost mandatory SG upgrade, and possibly a Stim upgrade and/or an Ethereal nearby, a Stormsurge really isn't as hard as you would think to kill in a single turn, assuming you have the firepower in your list (which Guard will).

Can confirm. Throw enough lascannons/other multiwound guns at it, and it will be bracketed or killed in one or two turns. Many games I've had to bite my nails wondering if they'll survive turn one. T7 really is pathetic- you'd think our biggest suit would have more than that.

Hopefully the Surge will get the Baneblade treatment in the codex; get buffed across the board while seeing a points drop. Only this time doing so will take a mediocre unit and make it good instead of taking a good unit and making it amazing.

Storm surge isn't terrible. Gotta bring marker lights though to make it work. One game I took out a russ with one with just the destroyer missiles but that was a pretty lucky shot. I'd say the biggest problem I have with it is that it suffers big time for moving.

The Riptide on the other hand is just flat out too expensive. It should probably go down 40% in cost.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Storm surge isn't terrible. Gotta bring marker lights though to make it work. One game I took out a russ with one with just the destroyer missiles but that was a pretty lucky shot. I'd say the biggest problem I have with it is that it suffers big time for moving.

The Riptide on the other hand is just flat out too expensive. It should probably go down 40% in cost.

I mean, you literally have to have perfect dice with Destroyer Missiles in order for them to kill a Russ by themselves, not exactly a great way to sell the viability of a unit. "If you roll perfectly, it works well!" Also, a Russ (depending on the loadout) is what, a third the price of a Stormsurge? I would hope that a Stormsurge would be able to kill a single model that's a third of its points cost in a single turn of shooting, seeing as shooting is all it can do.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Storm surge isn't terrible. Gotta bring marker lights though to make it work. One game I took out a russ with one with just the destroyer missiles but that was a pretty lucky shot. I'd say the biggest problem I have with it is that it suffers big time for moving.

The Riptide on the other hand is just flat out too expensive. It should probably go down 40% in cost.

Sure, it's not bad. It's worth its points... but not much more than that. It needs a buff IMHO- I'd like it if we got the ability to fire one gun of our choice twice after anchors were deployed, for example.

Riptides need a 75-100 pts drop to be attractive choices IMHO. They're flat out useless right now, possibly worst unit available to us for cost.

They have to pay for that durabilty. It's not free. See: land raider. Riptides didn't pay for their durability in 6/7th. Maybe they have too much durability to be conceptually effective.

Martel732 wrote:
They have to pay for that durabilty. It's not free. See: land raider. Riptides didn't pay for their durability in 6/7th. Maybe they have too much durability to be conceptually effective.

Well, right now they're 100% useless and nobody even remotely competitive takes them. They're not really that durable- a couple lascannon wounds and it's bracketed, a few more and it's dead- and they're 300+ pts for mediocre BS and firepower. Seriously, 200-220 pts is what I'd consider fair pricing.

I'll have no problems with Riptides being 300 points if they where good enough for that cost.
Normally for "big" models I prefer high points but high power.

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They have to pay for that durabilty. It's not free. See: land raider. Riptides didn't pay for their durability in 6/7th. Maybe they have too much durability to be conceptually effective.

Well, right now they're 100% useless and nobody even remotely competitive takes them. They're not really that durable- a couple lascannon wounds and it's bracketed, a few more and it's dead- and they're 300+ pts for mediocre BS and firepower. Seriously, 200-220 pts is what I'd consider fair pricing.

But the the 2+ save pushes a lot of weapons into the realm of uselessness. I've finished off a few stormravens with boltguns. I wouldn't consider trying against a land raider or riptide. If riptides were much cheaper, it would be trivial for a tau opponent to overload an opponent's ability to bring lances/lascannons.

People are complaining about marines for edition lag, but this is what riptides should have costed all along. Because immortality in 6/7th.

 Galas wrote:
I'll have no problems with Riptides being 300 points if they where good enough for that cost.
Normally for "big" models I prefer high points but high power.

I agree. If they actually had a whole bunch of shots and nice bonuses to justify the points, I'd be fine with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

But the the 2+ save pushes a lot of weapons into the realm of uselessness. I've finished off a few stormravens with boltguns. I wouldn't consider trying against a land raider or riptide. If riptides were much cheaper, it would be trivial for a tau opponent to overload an opponent's ability to bring lances/lascannons.

People are complaining about marines for edition lag, but this is what riptides should have costed all along. Because immortality in 6/7th.

Only weapons that aren't meant to be effective against it in the first place. Plasma (of all kinds), lascannons, autocannons, all forms of anti-SMEQ/anti-tank guns are highly effective against it. This is a pretty odd counterpoint to make. Right now, most factions have the ability to spam lascannons (or their equivalents) en masse if they so like. It would not be difficult to build a list accordingly. If they cost something in the realm of 200 and I brought three... I still would expect to lose most or all of them to any competitively built list.

It's also a weird argument to make that the riptide is fairly-priced now because that's how much it "should have been" in a previous edition, which is no longer relevant and doesn't work the way the current edition does.

That's not really how game balance works. I'd hoped GW would have learned that lesson by now.

 Sidstyler wrote:
It's also a weird argument to make that the riptide is fairly-priced now because that's how much it "should have been" in a previous edition, which is no longer relevant and doesn't work the way the current edition does.

That's not really how game balance works. I'd hoped GW would have learned that lesson by now.

Its pretty clear that many units people 'loved to hate' in 7th were balanced very...cautiously in 8th in the index releases. They wanted to be very sure that in one of the first tournaments someone didn't show up with a half dozen riptides or a WK/Scatbike list and cause a "here comes the new boss, same as the old boss" moment.

It also helps to get buy-in from the folks like above who want to see "balance Karma" for units or factions that were oppressive in earlier editions. Don't play 7th where you have to deal with centurions, riptides, screamerstars, scatbikes, wraithknights, warp spiders, etc, they're all gone over here!

Here's hoping that the codex gives some help, and comes soon. I am really hoping for Tau after Daemons in january (and for my own selfish reasons, Dark Eldar after that, but we'll be more likely to see Necrons first as they were the other faction in CA who got diddly)

I think one problem with Guard is that they are so efficient across the board. I reckon the majority of people who play 40k do so semi casually. There are always WAAC players but they're in the minority of most play environments outside of tournaments. Guard are extremely strong in a competitive environment. The combos and synergies between units they can put forward are shockingly powerful.

I also believe they are exceptionally strong when a more casual list is taken and this is the reason for the complaints. Most players throwing a list together with their available models play a game against a Guard player doing the same thing and lose, probably quite badly. I have watched a few reviews and have gone through the Guard codex myself, there are very few 'bad' choices. Almost across the board their units are useful and have a place, sure some are better than others at various tasks but their weakest units are still comparatively strong. I don't think this is true to the same extent in any other codex where some choices are objectively worse than others. GW also made some of the most popular Guard models strong which probably doesn't help in a more casual environment.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I think one problem with Guard is that they are so efficient across the board. I reckon the majority of people who play 40k do so semi casually. There are always WAAC players but they're in the minority of most play environments outside of tournaments. Guard are extremely strong in a competitive environment. The combos and synergies between units they can put forward are shockingly powerful.

I also believe they are exceptionally strong when a more casual list is taken and this is the reason for the complaints. Most players throwing a list together with their available models play a game against a Guard player doing the same thing and lose, probably quite badly. I have watched a few reviews and have gone through the Guard codex myself, there are very few 'bad' choices. Almost across the board their units are useful and have a place, sure some are better than others at various tasks but their weakest units are still comparatively strong. I don't think this is true to the same extent in any other codex where some choices are objectively worse than others. GW also made some of the most popular Guard models strong which probably doesn't help in a more casual environment.

I don't know how much I buy that a purely casual guard list is *that* much stronger than any other given casual list. Infantry squads, for instance, are quite good but their upgrades very quickly make them not nearly as points efficient. A basic infantry squad is 40 points, but an infantry squad with a grenade launcher, vox caster, heavy bolter, and plasma pistol/power sword sarge is 67. I do definitely agree that it's far more likely that someone ends up with a powerful 8th ed guard list because "some infantry squads, some scions, company commanders, leman russes with few upgrades, basilisks, and mortar teams" is very powerful, wheras to accidentally get a competitive chaos army you'd have to have magnus, mortarion, and some khorne bezerkers just already in your list.

But the more competitive guard list from previous editions (Wyverns, chimeras+3 melta veterans, paskisher+cheap pal) is not nearly as potent in 8th. In general a fully mechanized guard list is loads easier to deal with than arty screened with completely naked infantry, because you actually introduce some of the probably intended weaknesses of how easy it is to permanently lock their vehicles and tanks into an overwatch-get charged-cant shoot loop.

they definitely are suffering from some of the 7th ed Tau Problem, where the super-cheesy competitive list uses a lot of the most beloved/common units in the army (scions, leman russ battlecannons, infantry squads and officers) leading to their perceived power being far and above all the other competitive factions when they're actually a lot closer to par with the other high tier stuff when you look at tournaments.

Martel732 wrote:

 SevenSeasOfRhye wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They have to pay for that durabilty. It's not free. See: land raider. Riptides didn't pay for their durability in 6/7th. Maybe they have too much durability to be conceptually effective.

Well, right now they're 100% useless and nobody even remotely competitive takes them. They're not really that durable- a couple lascannon wounds and it's bracketed, a few more and it's dead- and they're 300+ pts for mediocre BS and firepower. Seriously, 200-220 pts is what I'd consider fair pricing.

But the the 2+ save pushes a lot of weapons into the realm of uselessness. I've finished off a few stormravens with boltguns. I wouldn't consider trying against a land raider or riptide. If riptides were much cheaper, it would be trivial for a tau opponent to overload an opponent's ability to bring lances/lascannons.

People are complaining about marines for edition lag, but this is what riptides should have costed all along. Because immortality in 6/7th.

So we drop the riptide with IA in price to 190pts, its armor degrades to a 3+, we change the Ion Accelerator from heavy 3 s7 ap-3 72" to heavy 4 s9 ap-3, but only 48", we improve its bs to base 3+. The shield generator is gone, but it can buy a 4++ for 50 pts, and it can be repaired d3 per turn by a nearby fireblade. Balanced?

And we agreed previously (former thread) that 7th ed riptides were too effective (worse in 6th with tau-dar), but arguing that something with the same fireoutput as a squad of conscripts w/o orders is appropriately costed, but since ap affects everything now, ap-1 isn't negligible any more.

the_scotsman wrote:I do definitely agree that it's far more likely that someone ends up with a powerful 8th ed guard list because "some infantry squads, some scions, company commanders, leman russes with few upgrades, basilisks, and mortar teams" is very powerful, wheras to accidentally get a competitive chaos army you'd have to have magnus, mortarion, and some khorne bezerkers just already in your list.

Couldn't agree more with this. I guess it feels like a punishment to take fluffy units in most armies while as you've said it tends to work well for Guard (comparatively). I think a lot of players of other factions are jealous of the flexibly that Guard are afforded, I certainly am since it was supposed to be like this for all armies. This jealousy is probably part of the reason for all the hate around Guard at the moment.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I think one problem with Guard is that they are so efficient across the board. I reckon the majority of people who play 40k do so semi casually. There are always WAAC players but they're in the minority of most play environments outside of tournaments. Guard are extremely strong in a competitive environment. The combos and synergies between units they can put forward are shockingly powerful.

I also believe they are exceptionally strong when a more casual list is taken and this is the reason for the complaints. Most players throwing a list together with their available models play a game against a Guard player doing the same thing and lose, probably quite badly. I have watched a few reviews and have gone through the Guard codex myself, there are very few 'bad' choices. Almost across the board their units are useful and have a place, sure some are better than others at various tasks but their weakest units are still comparatively strong. I don't think this is true to the same extent in any other codex where some choices are objectively worse than others. GW also made some of the most popular Guard models strong which probably doesn't help in a more casual environment.

Hrm, whatever you want to say about the IG book's external viability, internally it's a pretty big mess. For every Pask or Manticore there's a Deathstrike or Tech Priest. Where we have the Battlecannon Russ we have the objectively worse Exterminator Russ. There's a lot of junk in there, and a classic 5E-7E style mechanized infantry IG army is in fact very difficult to make viable in 8E.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I think one problem with Guard is that they are so efficient across the board. I reckon the majority of people who play 40k do so semi casually. There are always WAAC players but they're in the minority of most play environments outside of tournaments. Guard are extremely strong in a competitive environment. The combos and synergies between units they can put forward are shockingly powerful.

I also believe they are exceptionally strong when a more casual list is taken and this is the reason for the complaints. Most players throwing a list together with their available models play a game against a Guard player doing the same thing and lose, probably quite badly. I have watched a few reviews and have gone through the Guard codex myself, there are very few 'bad' choices. Almost across the board their units are useful and have a place, sure some are better than others at various tasks but their weakest units are still comparatively strong. I don't think this is true to the same extent in any other codex where some choices are objectively worse than others. GW also made some of the most popular Guard models strong which probably doesn't help in a more casual environment.

Hrm, whatever you want to say about the IG book's external viability, internally it's a pretty big mess. For every Pask or Manticore there's a Deathstrike or Tech Priest. Where we have the Battlecannon Russ we have the objectively worse Exterminator Russ. There's a lot of junk in there, and a classic 5E-7E style mechanized infantry IG army is in fact very difficult to make viable in 8E.

^ This. Outside of conscript and Manticore spam the IG codex is extremely weak, with many units heavily overpriced.

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I think one problem with Guard is that they are so efficient across the board. I reckon the majority of people who play 40k do so semi casually. There are always WAAC players but they're in the minority of most play environments outside of tournaments. Guard are extremely strong in a competitive environment. The combos and synergies between units they can put forward are shockingly powerful.

I also believe they are exceptionally strong when a more casual list is taken and this is the reason for the complaints. Most players throwing a list together with their available models play a game against a Guard player doing the same thing and lose, probably quite badly. I have watched a few reviews and have gone through the Guard codex myself, there are very few 'bad' choices. Almost across the board their units are useful and have a place, sure some are better than others at various tasks but their weakest units are still comparatively strong. I don't think this is true to the same extent in any other codex where some choices are objectively worse than others. GW also made some of the most popular Guard models strong which probably doesn't help in a more casual environment.

Hrm, whatever you want to say about the IG book's external viability, internally it's a pretty big mess. For every Pask or Manticore there's a Deathstrike or Tech Priest. Where we have the Battlecannon Russ we have the objectively worse Exterminator Russ. There's a lot of junk in there, and a classic 5E-7E style mechanized infantry IG army is in fact very difficult to make viable in 8E.

^ This. Outside of conscript and Manticore spam the IG codex is extremely weak, with many units heavily overpriced.

Well, conscripts, maticores, scions, basilisks, orders, cheap psykers, morters, hellhounds.. more than just 2 units, and weak isn't a fair measure of more than a handful of units like... rough riders? death-strike for sure b/c it probably will never fire

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I think one problem with Guard is that they are so efficient across the board. I reckon the majority of people who play 40k do so semi casually. There are always WAAC players but they're in the minority of most play environments outside of tournaments. Guard are extremely strong in a competitive environment. The combos and synergies between units they can put forward are shockingly powerful.

I also believe they are exceptionally strong when a more casual list is taken and this is the reason for the complaints. Most players throwing a list together with their available models play a game against a Guard player doing the same thing and lose, probably quite badly. I have watched a few reviews and have gone through the Guard codex myself, there are very few 'bad' choices. Almost across the board their units are useful and have a place, sure some are better than others at various tasks but their weakest units are still comparatively strong. I don't think this is true to the same extent in any other codex where some choices are objectively worse than others. GW also made some of the most popular Guard models strong which probably doesn't help in a more casual environment.

Hrm, whatever you want to say about the IG book's external viability, internally it's a pretty big mess. For every Pask or Manticore there's a Deathstrike or Tech Priest. Where we have the Battlecannon Russ we have the objectively worse Exterminator Russ. There's a lot of junk in there, and a classic 5E-7E style mechanized infantry IG army is in fact very difficult to make viable in 8E.

^ This. Outside of conscript and Manticore spam the IG codex is extremely weak, with many units heavily overpriced.

This is just false, unless your definition of "many" is less than a quarter of the codex.

Most units in the guard codex are average to good if you structure your army around them.

Rough Riders, Deathstrikes, Vanquisher, Chimera, Veterans, regular Ogryns, Bane Wolves, and maybe Kell are the only units I'd actually classify as "bad" out of the guard codex, in the sense that they're just a waste of points or that there's another option right there in the codex that just does their job 100% better 100% of the time (see Ogryns, Bane Wolves). That's not "many". That's a few, and they're all pretty non-central besides the Chimera.

What else would you be pointing to as overpriced? All their artillery is pretty solid, Hydras are actually half-decent at their job, all their named characters have a reason to exist for the first time in forever, flyers are good since the codex, heck even their melee units actually do their job now. There are a couple winners and losers on the regiment doctrine front, but not many, and mostly just because they're outshone by others (See Mordians by Cadians). A Vostroyan list took first place at a recent tournament in november, and they're like the one everyone points to as crap.

Mechanized lists with vets I can definitely say are not comparatively very good, mostly on how bad the chimera is and how much the vets have gotten the indirect shaft from GW trying to nerf scions. I have seen some really killer airborne mech lists played though, and elite guard is extremely viable through scion lists.