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 JNAProductions wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So why do we hold the Vanguard Veterans to the level of bad CC units rather than making them able to compete with CC units that are actually good?

Do you want every CC unit to be on the level of Berserkers?

Because I think most of use can agree, they're TOO good.

Berserker Marines fit the trope of Glass Cannon super well. They aren't "too good" at all.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Why is it OK that Khorne Berzerkers can absolutely defecate all over their Loyalist counterparts but completely broken and OP when the Vanguard Veterans can actually fight back?

Because if Zerkers get a charge on Vanguard Veterans, you absolutely screwed up. And I did say that VV would decimate a 5 man Zerker squad, and I think they should. 5 LC VV's with Helbrecht would destroy a 10 man Zerker squad. A 5 man Thunder Hammer squad goes from 9 wounds to a tank to 13 with just 1 extra attack per model. Frankly I think Vanguard Vets and Assault Marines should get +1 attack on the charge base to their profile, but as a Chapter Tactic for Black Templars I think that's a decent enough trade.

"How is it fair that Berzerkers outmelee Vanguard Veterans?"

1. Berzerkers outmelee anything
2. They come with a transport tax or a "get wrecked, idiot" lesson if you decide to footslog them. Once they're out of a transport, they can't move well from unit to unit with only 6" move.
3. They can't take power weapons or storm shields.

I know this isn't a thread about Berzerkers, but if the only reason you want every single unit in your army to be Berzerkers is because Berzerkers are allowed to shine, I'd say they're a core part of your problem.

What part of "Berzerkers are still going to be more powerful than Vanguard Veterans" was unclear? Berzerkers don't get their power from their fighting twice alone, the innate S5 is another part of the equation that would be lacking, as would the AP of the Chainaxe. They can also be Troops to fill out detachments if taken as World Eaters, which also boosts their melee power further.

Berzerkers can infiltrate. There's your mobility balance. Melee units in Codex: Space Marines would have to choose between being able to infiltrate (Raven Guard) or doing damage (Templars), Khorne Berzerkers can do both through Alpha Legion.

Why do we care if a Thunder Hammer-squad goes from 9 to 13 wound on a tank wit +1 attack when they'd still be prohibitively expensive? You're paying 30 points for a Vanguard Veteran with a hammer and he falls over just as hard as a 13-point Tactical Marine, and you'd better believe the 30-point guy with the hammer is getting shot first. Even with double attacks 30-point Vanguard Veterans would be a really bad loadout, because they won't live to reach the enemy lines. You're putting way too many eggs in one basket. The double chainsword version is decent because it doesn't cost like a Terminator for a much less survivable body.

I don't want my entire army to be Berzerkers, I want my army to be able to actually compete with Genestealers, Bloodletters, Khorne Berzerkers, Sanguinary Guard, Shining Spears and the like in close combat. One extra attack doesn't do that, even by a longshot.

The reason why I keep comparing to Berzerkers is because they're the gold standard for melee MEQ units, and because trying to compare to Death Company or Sanguinary Guard, the two other outstanding MEQ melee units right now, is really hard because their power comes from reliable Deep Strike assaults, something BT can't emulate.

BT are not as good in melee as Berzerkers are, and it has to be so, because it is the fluff.
Pretending that a BT melee unit would be par to Berzerkers or Death Company is not considering the lore of 40k. Zerkers are the pinnacle of hth combat, after all they are the favorites of Khorne.

Maybe you could improve the chance of BT to get in combat, but respecting their lore, with a rule like this: when a BT unit charges and suffer at least one casualtie from enemy overwatch, add 3' to the charge roll.

What part of "they still wouldn't match Berzerkers in damage output" is it that I am not explaining clearly enough? I don't mind being worse in close combat than Berzerkers, but if I'm going to be then they'd damn well better pay for their better stats. That's the entire point of having a points system in the first place.

Besides, if we're going to go by the fluff Sigismund>Khârn, so clearly the pinnacle of Black Templars can match or overcome the pinnacle of Khorne Berzerkers.

The fanboy is strong in this one. I seem to recall a certain armless failure running Sigmund through.

If you fight berserkers with just T4 3+ models, you are going to have a bad time. That's their entire point. They kill medium and light infantry. Either shoot them or bring in something sturdy to tie them up. It is not a balance problem if you constantly fight on battlefields that don't favor you. This also scales horribly with characters and power weapons. 20 powerfists or thunderhammer attacks is a little obscene from 5 terminators. Your average captain is now throwing out 8 attacks as well. I guess you just don't kill black templar characters at all.

Also any plans to help flayed ones, warp talons, or banshees? There's a ton of melee units not as good at mulching light and medium infantry as berserkers. Do we need to buff them as well?

Flayed Ones only need help to get into combat. They're actually competent math-wise, only ever improving with Novokh (rerolling ALL attacks and wounds? Yes please). All Banshees and Warp Talons need are a decrease in cost and we are good to go.

On that I agree with you. Let's look at points costs of all these units rather than double a unit stat across one codex for free.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
On that I agree with you. Let's look at points costs of all these units rather than double a unit stat across one codex for free.

Some units need point adjustments. Some need more rules. Some need stat changes. Some need a combination of everything.

As Marine units built for melee aren't very good at it, I made a thread regarding how Vanguard and Terminators could do with being WS2+. With that said, the Templar Tactic needs something additional, hence why I think an extra attack in the first combat phase is sufficient.

With that also said, the World Eaters need something else too. As only getting an additional attack on them completing a charge is too specific, it needs to be a good effect.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
The fanboy is strong in this one. I seem to recall a certain armless failure running Sigmund through.

So someone claiming that Berzerkers are "the pinnacle of hand-to-hand combat" because they are "the favourites of Khorne" is a completely factual and fair statement, but when I point out that Sigismund demolished Khârn (and everyone else he came across for that matter) I'm a fanboy? Do you think you could leave your personal attacks outside this thread?

Abaddon isn't a Berzerker, Khârn is. Abaddon has no relevance to the relative power of Black Templars vs. Khorne Berzerkers in the flull. Regardless, I seem to recall Abaddon going up against an aged and wizened Sigismund and losing a heart in the process while empowered by all four Chaos Gods. You made my point stronger with your statement.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:


If you fight berserkers with just T4 3+ models, you are going to have a bad time. That's their entire point. They kill medium and light infantry. Either shoot them or bring in something sturdy to tie them up. It is not a balance problem if you constantly fight on battlefields that don't favor you.

Let's take a look at that statement, shall we?

Using my proposed Chapter Tactics, 5 Vanguard Veterans with Power Swords and chainswords (110 points, assuming Jump Packs) vs. Terminator equivalents (2+ armour, 5+ invulnerable):


So your "anti-light and medium infantry melee unit" would outperform a dedicated anti-Terminator unit at killing Terminators even with my proposed buff. In other words, your assertment that Khorne Berzerkers "kill medium and light infantry", while technically true, fails to mention that they kill heavy infantry better than any other melee unit in the game.

In fact, let's be completely absurd and use 5 TH/SS Terminators that fight twice and their equivalent points in Berzerkers to see what that ends up like against TEQ, shall we? We're both in agreement that TH/SS Terminators should be much better at killing other Terminators than Berzerkers, yes? Mind you, this is Berzerkers without any Legion Tactic as well.



Let this sink into your head. Your opposition to TH/SS Terminators having 4 attacks each as "obscene" is kinda silly when they only put out slightly less than 3 wounds more than Berzerkers against one of their optimal targets (multi-wound high-armour save models).

Against T7 3+ targets:



This is the perfect target for TH/SS Terminators: One model where there's as little loss of their 3 damage per hit as possible and where their high S gives them a marked advantage over the Khorne Berzerkers. And sure enough, the TH/SS Terminators would perform much better than the Khorne Berzerkers, because as you yourself pointed out (kinda, sort of) the Khorne Berzerkers are anti-infantry melee units. You don't want me to run a comparison of TH/SS Terminators against Guardsmen or Ork Boyz, trust me.

Isn't this where we'd ideally want melee units to be balanced though? A unit like TH/SS Terminators would be better for the points at dragging down high-wound, high-toughness models whereas Khorne Berzerkers would be better at killing lower-T Infantry. Even then we're ignoring the fact that the Berzerkers are more durable against pretty much everything with an AP than the Terminators (not to mention things with 2 or more damage).

I don't mind Khorne Berzerkers being better at things than Vanguard Veterans or TH/SS Terminators. What I do mind is people crying "OP!" when the suggestion would at best move units up to the level of Khorne Berzerkers.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:


Also any plans to help flayed ones, warp talons, or banshees? There's a ton of melee units not as good at mulching light and medium infantry as berserkers. Do we need to buff them as well?

Yes, they need buffs too. I don't play Eldar or Necrons, so I don't have much of an opinion on Banshees or Flayed Ones other than recognizing that they suck (and Banshees have since as long as I can remember, they need help!), and I don't have any ideas about how to buff Warp Talons at the moment beyond the omni-present "drop their points" alternative.

What I want to know is why you're trying to deflect from the subject at hand, which is Black Templars.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Your average captain is now throwing out 8 attacks as well. I guess you just don't kill black templar characters at all.

Ahem.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Either shoot them or bring in something sturdy to tie them up. It is not a balance problem if you constantly fight on battlefields that don't favor you.

Besides, the point hasn't ever been that Khorne Berzerkers are impossible to kill in melee: you just charge them and kill them because they're still MEQ and if you go first you negate their power by killing them (the same would work against BT Characters BTW). The point is that Berzerkers can do the same to units that are more than twice their own points cost and come out on top.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:


As Marine units built for melee aren't very good at it, I made a thread regarding how Vanguard and Terminators could do with being WS2+. With that said, the Templar Tactic needs something additional, hence why I think an extra attack in the first combat phase is sufficient.

With that also said, the World Eaters need something else too. As only getting an additional attack on them completing a charge is too specific, it needs to be a good effect.

I don't follow. If "extra attack on charge" is too specific and not good for World Eaters, who have access to Khorne Berzerkers, how would "extra attack in the first combat phase" be good enough for Black Templars, whose best melee unit has less than half the output of Khorne Berzerkers?

Well, Vanguard Vets would compare to either Banshees or Scorps, depending on how you kit them. Two very different tools for very different jobs.

VV have a lot of customization. Sure, a chump with a chainsword isn't cheap, but is much cheaper than another TH/SS, and can chump the wound. If only durability mattered more, though.

VV can take Jetpacks. Move fast. *Fly*. So they can better pick their matchup, and get to where you need them better.

VV should be used as fast units. Zerkers, in theory, should be MEQ with the deployment options of a Tac squad. Alpha Legion kinda wrecks that, though.

Zerkers are tuned much higher than VV right now. Personally, I'd rather see them tuned down than VV tuned too far up (although I'd like to see some of both). But VV shouldn't be as good in CC as Zerkers.

I'd rather see BT more of a "Everybody fights" chapter. Ideally, even your Tacs/Crusaders with boltguns eventaully join the fray. Not sure how to do that fairly, though.

VV are upgraded ASMs, more attacks and more options. ASMs have always been a bully unit, not a CC unit. VV can be either. So they shouldn't be as good at CC as a straight CC threat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Reroll charge + Extra attack in CC - would that be a good CT for BT?

Bharring wrote:

Reroll charge + Extra attack in CC - would that be a good CT for BT?

No, it wouldn't. Do you ever see World Eater Chaos Space Marines (as in, the normal grunts) fielded? Raptors that aren't taken for their Plasma Guns? Possessed?

+1 attack in CC doesn't make the Vanilla Codex melee units capable.

I would note that the BT tactic shouldn't alone make Vanilla Marines good. The SM codex, baseline, could use some buffs. Ideally, the CT change for BT would be atop a rebaselining of the codex.

After all, there've been a lot of complaints about IH lately. And not a lot is heard from all those IF or WS players that suddenly came out of the woodwork an edition ago.

Bharring wrote:
I would note that the BT tactic shouldn't alone make Vanilla Marines good. The SM codex, baseline, could use some buffs. Ideally, the CT change for BT would be atop a rebaselining of the codex.

After all, there've been a lot of complaints about IH lately. And not a lot is heard from all those IF or WS players that suddenly came out of the woodwork an edition ago.

Agreed, but it's much easier to simply apply a buff to Chapter Tactics as a stopgap measure until such a time that the Codex can be made less bad.

Which, knowing my luck, will be in 9th edition. It's a shame, because I'm having a lot of fun in 8th with Khorne CSM/Daemons, but it's the third edition in a row where BT have been shafted (almost as though folding them into C:SM was a bad idea all along...).

That really depends on your goals.

If your goal is specifically make BT viable, yea, it's easier to buff them.

If your goal is to make more options viable, it's better to buff the Codex, then rebalance the CTs.

I suppose I'm no more invested in BT than IH/WS/IF (I'm actually an UM successor player - so no Big G or other SCs. I see a little more value in our CT than yours, but think they're in the same range).

What I'm saying is you can do both. Buff Chapter Tactics as a short-term fix while the more extensive rework of the Codex as a whole is done.

To do that, we should be really careful.

I'd rather a tactic with a relatively stable per-model value over a factor of improvement. What I mean by that, is for BT, I'd rather see a higher marginal improvement on Crusader, Tac, and ASM models than VV, Termy, and Dread models.

BT has always been about the Crusade to me. A modern Legion of Power Armor, advancing upon the foe. So if the CT made the best way to play BT be to spam Elites, I don't think it'd be quite right. I'd rather Troops and FA be just as useful. Ideally, they'd even get some use out of HS.

To that end, if the CC buff did more on Tacs than VV, BT would be better off getting their Tacs up the table too, than minimizing Troops and just fighitng with VV/Termies/etc.

This is where I really like the "+1A" style buff (but as you say, it's not enough), over fight twice, which is a variant of "2xA". Fight Twice has the drawback of the rebuttle coming before your second round of attacks, but also gets the extra consiolidate/pile in, which is huge.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
What I'm saying is you can do both. Buff Chapter Tactics as a short-term fix while the more extensive rework of the Codex as a whole is done.

Nice idea but everyone knows that is not what would happen. All melle units would be balanced around being Templars and remain bad for any other chapter. If anything this chapter tactic would probably see them nerfed.

Marines far and wide are over costed for what they deliver, unit the two new codexs come out (I honestly expect the primaris and non primaris marines to be in seperate codex) GW is quite happy to leave them in their playable but unwinable situation.

Fight twice doesn't actually let your enemy fight back if you've charged that turn, since you're a charging unit both activations. It's yet another thing that Berzerkers have over things using the stratagem, which is explicitly "at the end of the Fight phase".

If you don't wipe the unit out with Fight Twice, they can fight back.

And there are a lot of units in the game not even 5 TH/SS BT Vets should be 1-rounding on the charge.

But that's just how combat works, not a weakness inherent in "fights twice".

I mean a compairison between "fights twice" and a flat "2xA". Fights Twice is a lot better, but felt I should acknowledge a way in which "fights twice" is worse.

If you kill half a squad each Fight baseline, getting 2xA would mean they get no rebuttle, whereas Fights Twice still gives them a rebuttle.

Sure, it's worse if you're not charging, but if you're charging you still get to swing both your rounds before they hit back.

[/spoiler]
That's a fair question.

It's a combination of rerolling charges (making them quicker) and then an extra attack (making them better), rather than JUST one aspect that World Eaters have (which we all know need a to be adjusted heavily).
If we fix some of the internal balance issues, I really do think Rwroll charges + 1 extra attack would be good enough without being over the top.

World Eaters get reroll charges for 10 points per unit from their Icons.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
World Eaters get reroll charges for 10 points per unit from their Icons.

Which is why the second part of their Legion Trait needs to be something else haha

What I mean is that the reroll charges doesn't actually make BT faster in practice. Making BT Chapter Tactics be "reroll charges and +1A first turn of combat" just turns them into something that performs like World Eaters do right now, minus the Berzerkers. This is strange when you're simultaneously arguing that World Eaters need to be made stronger because they're bad. Either they're good and don't need a buff or they're bad and need a buff. If it's the latter then we shouldn't buff BT up to their level and then be satisfied, because they'd still be bad.

If marines weren't so dysfunctional as a concept, reroll charges might be just fine.

But they are, so it isn't.

That's a marine problem, not a black templar problem, imo.