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Space Marines are always doing well, model, lore and rules wise. They're not and I can't see them ever being a poor army. Eldar also always seem to do well among a couple others. Guard have a habit of flip flopping between great, mediocre and usable and could certainly do with some new models. As for bad i'd agree with others that Orks seem to always be rather low on rules effectiveness and don't get much in new lore and models in general.

Vanilla Marines issues is that they are usually quickly overshadowed by some other marines +1 codex in most editions.
Eldar tend to swing wildly as GW changes the combos but still can't balance them properly so eldar tend to end up with auto loose or autowin units.
Orks occasionally get some good rules but I don't think anyone at GW has had love for orks for a few editions now. Produce enough rules and something viable will probably sneak out.
Tau tend to vary heavily depending on who's involved as they need to dominate the shooting phase as they don't have a psychic phase or assualt phase. But this gives them a very narrow area to be "balanced" in.

SemperMortis wrote:
but again, 4+ Cover +5FnP isn't "Game Changing"

Aside from having 4+ rather than 3+ a biker nob was effectively a 4e marine biker captain with a better invulnerable (1/army halos aside), more strength, a cover and FNP save, objective secured, and wound shenanigans, for about half the cost, as a troops choice.

There was a lot of better stuff as 5e rolled on, but they were one of the orks better tournament options.

Can someone tell me where this miraculous 4+ FNP was coming from?

SemperMortis wrote:
Can someone tell me where this miraculous 4+ FNP was coming from?

On the old 4e codex nob bikers?
4+ was the standard FNP save at that time, the bikers would get it from the painboy in the unit.

Though a lot of stuff ignored fnp back then. All ap1-2 and power weapons. Also, id weapons and since bikes were t4(5) instead of flat t5, s8 weapons caused instant death. Imo, the change to fnp and toughness made nob bikers tougher dispite the fnp dropping from 4+ to 5+. Simply because they got it much more often.

I literally cannot remember a point in time where eldar was not the best army in the game by far, and I've been playing since 2nd. I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.

Necrons has always been decent. I don't think there was any point in time where they've been considered bad.

I don't think orks has been good...ever... I remember nob biker doom squad at some edition, think it was 5th or 6th that was merely ok.

DA has been bad since forever too. I don't even think they had any doom squad or cheesy unit to spam. Their death/raven-wings are also infamously bad.

Tyranids has been terrible since 5th thanks to cruddace. 4th was their peak with their malleable carnifexes and other mutations. Even in 8th, they're a pale shadow of their former selves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Skaorn wrote:

Eldar are also a specialist army and can be really strong in the hands of someone good, who knows how to use them.

This myth has been floating around since 3rd. Pray tell, how much expertise and generalship does it take to spam starcannons, lead around a seer council of doom, do Taudar, spam scatbikes and wraithknights?

There is nothing specialist about eldar, they're all relatively hardy, have spammable weapons that can deal with any type of unit regardless, and are the fastest army out there. Literally no weakness.

Back in 3rd, we had a guy who was claiming the exact same thing you were claiming, and we started a challenge for each of us to take his army and try to lose with it. If someone lost, we paid that person and him half of the prize pool each, if no one lost in a year, he had to double what we put into the prize pool. He stopped coming in after 11 months

kburn wrote:
I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.

It was a powerful 4e book with a lot of the steam taken out of it by the 5e rules changes.

Eldrad/farseers, three HS supports of scatter laser walkers and wraithknights, 3-4 units of dire avengers/rangers/minimum jetbikes, and perhaps a couple of squads of fire dragons in transports - easily 1500pts and anything over that fillout out the weapons, troops, and perhaps another support unit like harlies.


A capable enough army but liable to get wrecked by all kinds of nasty 5e lists.

SemperMortis wrote:
Can someone tell me where this miraculous 4+ FNP was coming from?

In 5th Ed FNP was always 4+ As per the universal special rule in the brb. It changed to 5+ in 6th ed. It was ignored by instant death and AP 1,2. Power weapons etc. But a T5 model was getting a 4+ re-rollable against most things. At the time that was near the top as far as durability. It got eclipsed by Paladins later in the edition, and was nothing compared to 6th/7th unit’s. Against small arms though you were looking at a 5 or 6 to wound followed by a 4+ re-rollable. Close combat against high strength power weapons was their weak point. But they were better than many units at close combat.

kburn wrote:
I literally cannot remember a point in time where eldar was not the best army in the game by far, and I've been playing since 2nd. I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.

Necrons has always been decent. I don't think there was any point in time where they've been considered bad.

I don't think orks has been good...ever... I remember nob biker doom squad at some edition, think it was 5th or 6th that was merely ok.

Eldar were intensely mediocre all the way through 5th. They weren't really bad, but the power armies of that edition were Guard, Blood Angels, Space Wolves and Grey Knights. Their book was designed to run the 4th edition rules ragged, but a number of the things they relied on changed significantly in 5th and they ended up paying over the odds for abilities that just weren't that good any more.

Similarly Necrons were terrible all through 5th, being a decade out of date and with very limited options. Their codex at the end of the edition was strong again, but that was only the last few months of the edition and really came into its own in early 6th.

Orks with Nob Bikers and the 4 Battlewagon lists were the terrors of late 4th and particularly early 5th, but quickly ran out of steam when IG's 5th ed book dropped and could cheerfully blow the wagons off the table.

Grimlineman wrote:
I started the hobby at the beginning of 7th so don’t have a lot of history of army power through the editions beside what I have read on old forum posts. But I been thinking is there armies that have always been good every edition and also some that always seem to fair badly (talking about mono codex”s)?

From my point of view Eldar always seem to be in a good spot. I also thought spacemarines would always be upper tier being the face of the 40k and also the models that generate the most revenue. But they don’t seem to be in a good place this edition as a whole.

As far as who’s always bad. Not sure on this one it seems like all that have been around awhile have had their time to shine in one edition or another.

Thoughts?

Hard to answer, I've been playing since 2nd, Eldar have been best the most but armies have been bad or middle tier and gotten good by getting new units which people started to spam, like TWC made Space Wolves top tier, so its not as easy as saying which have been good or bad, because its complicated and you can have a 'bad' army that gets turned around by new rules or new units etc. formations in 7th was really crazy as well, you had armies going from middle tier to top or middle to bottom because they had gak formation etc.

kburn wrote:

Skaorn wrote:

Eldar are also a specialist army and can be really strong in the hands of someone good, who knows how to use them.

This myth has been floating around since 3rd. Pray tell, how much expertise and generalship does it take to spam starcannons, lead around a seer council of doom, do Taudar, spam scatbikes and wraithknights?

There is nothing specialist about eldar, they're all relatively hardy, have spammable weapons that can deal with any type of unit regardless, and are the fastest army out there. Literally no weakness.

Back in 3rd, we had a guy who was claiming the exact same thing you were claiming, and we started a challenge for each of us to take his army and try to lose with it. If someone lost, we paid that person and him half of the prize pool each, if no one lost in a year, he had to double what we put into the prize pool. He stopped coming in after 11 months

Well if we're going anecdotal then in 3rd and 4th, when I did most of my gaming, I beat Eldar more often than not with my Chaos 3.0 and up. Most of them used the good stuff though sometimes you'd get someone who really felt like using Swooping Hawks because they liked and worked hard on the unit even if it was crap. I once had a particularly brutal stomping of an Eldar player with my Tau, who probably had the worst codex in the game when they came out, because he ignored a 20 Kroot mob in woods 4 turns and kept putting rear arcs of vehicles in 12" of them. Some of the times I've lost was also because my dice luck can become catastrophically bad, to the point I've had opponents telling me to reroll all the 3+ armor saves I just failed because my dice were cocked.

The only Eldar player I've ever had a problem with not getting a victory in was one of my friends. Of course the same holds true with his DA too. Usually he uses his DA because they're more of a challenge but he breaks out the Eldar against players he thinks are good. I saw him once take on an Eldar player who people thought were cheating with his DA. My friend pointed out each rule the guy was breaking, let him do it anyways, calculated the few hundred points he had to be over by at a minimum, and tabled the guy in 3 turns. The guy was band from playing at the GW store shortly afterwards. My friend also picked up other armies like Nids when they were crap to play them for the challenge but sold them due to lack of space. To date I've never seen him lose. Then again his dad is even worse to play against in any strategic game and that was who my friend regularly played.

I forgot to add that a powerful army does not make it good, as it still seems many people miss this distinction.

Skaorn wrote:

Well if we're going anecdotal then in 3rd and 4th, when I did most of my gaming, I beat Eldar more often than not with my Chaos 3.0 and up. Most of them used the good stuff though sometimes you'd get someone who really felt like using Swooping Hawks because they liked and worked hard on the unit even if it was crap. I once had a particularly brutal stomping of an Eldar player with my Tau, who probably had the worst codex in the game when they came out, because he ignored a 20 Kroot mob in woods 4 turns and kept putting rear arcs of vehicles in 12" of them. Some of the times I've lost was also because my dice luck can become catastrophically bad, to the point I've had opponents telling me to reroll all the 3+ armor saves I just failed because my dice were cocked.

The only Eldar player I've ever had a problem with not getting a victory in was one of my friends. Of course the same holds true with his DA too. Usually he uses his DA because they're more of a challenge but he breaks out the Eldar against players he thinks are good. I saw him once take on an Eldar player who people thought were cheating with his DA. My friend pointed out each rule the guy was breaking, let him do it anyways, calculated the few hundred points he had to be over by at a minimum, and tabled the guy in 3 turns. The guy was band from playing at the GW store shortly afterwards. My friend also picked up other armies like Nids when they were crap to play them for the challenge but sold them due to lack of space. To date I've never seen him lose. Then again his dad is even worse to play against in any strategic game and that was who my friend regularly played.

The myth that eldar only plays well in the hands of expert players is still completely wrong though. Like I said, they are relatively durable with the best speed and firepower in the game. Nothing specialist about spamming seer councils, starcannons, holo-fields, taudar, wraithknights, or scatbikes. A specialist army is something like DE, who have paper armour, short range and extreme speed. In fact, IIRC, in the holo-field edition, with jink saves and all that nonsense, their vehicles were more durable than monoliths, were the fastest in the game, and had more firepower than landraiders. Specialist indeed, specialists in being completely broken and brain-dead to use.

Most eldar players have this massive chip on their shoulders where they think its their expert generalship that lets their specialist wraithknights stomp all over the armies of lesser players, but the one in my shop back in 3rd was particularly obnoxious. Not sure if your chaos 3.0 was iron warriors basilisk spam, but this guy had minimum guardian squads, a super-seer council of doom, and filled in the rest of the points with starcannon platforms like wraithlords. In fact, one of the few times I used his army was against basilisk spam, where instead of charging in, I sat back and shot at basilisks, won completely easily, tabled him in 4 turns. Seen other people do stupid things like park the seer council of doom just outside BA death company charge range, get charged, wipe out the DC, consolidate into tacticals, wipe them out.

Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.

Marines have been unforgiving since 5th.

Skaorn wrote:
Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.

That goes to Marines without a doubt.

 Corrode wrote:

kburn wrote:
I literally cannot remember a point in time where eldar was not the best army in the game by far, and I've been playing since 2nd. I cannot even think of any army, at any point in time that even approached their level. There was a brief moment I think in 5th, where they were "not as good", but by a mile, still the very best.

Necrons has always been decent. I don't think there was any point in time where they've been considered bad.

I don't think orks has been good...ever... I remember nob biker doom squad at some edition, think it was 5th or 6th that was merely ok.

Eldar were intensely mediocre all the way through 5th. They weren't really bad, but the power armies of that edition were Guard, Blood Angels, Space Wolves and Grey Knights. Their book was designed to run the 4th edition rules ragged, but a number of the things they relied on changed significantly in 5th and they ended up paying over the odds for abilities that just weren't that good any more.

Pretty much this. I remember 5th being mostly Flying Farseers/Warlock death stars(which btw didn't have a model so not everyone was running these) and War Walker spams(boring as hell), and occasionally a Footdar army(which were at least somewhat fun albeit weird for such a highly mobile army). None of these were winning big but were doing okay. Everything else in the codex was just utter gak nobody wanted to play with. Then 6th edition came and we all know how that ended.

Well, 6E came and CWE got bad. Really bad. They had Eldrad + WarWalkers. Otherwise, they were paying lots of points for Guardsmen with shotguns. Or Storm Troopers with bad storm bolters for even more points.

In the second half of the edition, their book came out. Then DAVU started the hatetrain we have today.

Orks aint been good since da 2nd ed pulsa rokit.
The problem is when you make random tables gak, and dont give them the equivalent great bonus

pm713 wrote:

Skaorn wrote:
Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.

That goes to Marines without a doubt.

Well none of this is true - Eldar are actually a tactically adept army and they aren't at all forgiving. Fail to cast a crucial quicken and protect in a turn - you lose. Space marines are even less forgiving - go first or lose. A forgiving army is something like death-gaurd that has invo saves and FNP all over the place for free.

Someone told me that back in 4th or 5th ed eldar had tanks that could take on 1500pts of shoting, and not suffer any wounds. Is that true ?

 Xenomancers wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Skaorn wrote:
Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.

That goes to Marines without a doubt.

Well none of this is true - Eldar are actually a tactically adept army and they aren't at all forgiving. Fail to cast a crucial quicken and protect in a turn - you lose. Space marines are even less forgiving - go first or lose. A forgiving army is something like death-gaurd that has invo saves and FNP all over the place for free.

Marines share most of their stats, have incredibly simple models by comparison and have reasonable armour for casual play.

Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.

In my personal experience, I have never found playing Eldar to be particularly challenging to play, at least not more than any other army, and depending on the edition, absolutely could be called forgiving. They have great specialists in a game that rewards specialists over generalists, while not a horde army they're generally not super outnumbered either (at least any more than most classic marine lists are) , they have some of the best support characters and abilities in the game (that often are some of the hardest to remove in practical terms even if not on paper), they're faster than just about any other army, and are very resilient (as a total army) to boot in most editions (save 5th where they didnt get a codex update).

Not as much in 8th, but there have been editions where Eldar could really easily be built to "pointclickwin" status, especially against typical TAC/pickup lists.

pm713 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Skaorn wrote:
Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.

That goes to Marines without a doubt.

Well none of this is true - Eldar are actually a tactically adept army and they aren't at all forgiving. Fail to cast a crucial quicken and protect in a turn - you lose. Space marines are even less forgiving - go first or lose. A forgiving army is something like death-gaurd that has invo saves and FNP all over the place for free.

Marines share most of their stats, have incredibly simple models by comparison and have reasonable armour for casual play.

Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.

I assume when we are talking about how an army plays - we are talking about how it plays best. Not some summation of how the army would work if you had to pick your units out of the codex at random or something like that. True - marines and eldar are similar - most of their units are glass cannons but you can't call them forgiving. Make a mistake or have a bad turn with a glass cannon army - you will be destroyed very easily the next turn.

Karol wrote:
Someone told me that back in 4th or 5th ed eldar had tanks that could take on 1500pts of shoting, and not suffer any wounds. Is that true ?

Yes*

Skimmers downgraded penetrating hits to glancing hits and eldar vehicles could force you to roll twice for damage and take the worst result. Then they ignored most of those results - boxcars needed to knock one out of the sky. Plus the usual AV12, cover saves, and serpent shield as appropriate.

4e was also a high point for heavy weapon costs and typically you had very little outside of your three heavy support slots. A BS4 lascannon had a slightly less than 1% chance of blowing up a wave serpent before cover saves IIRC, and a minimum sized squad of devastators would set you back 215 points.


*A few things were notably more efficient against them, like sororitas exorcists.

Talking about how forgiving an army is to play is inherently not talking about how it plays best. How forgiving it is basically translates to the delta in power over the range of skill/correct tactical choices.

DAVU and Scatter Bikes were point & click, even moreso than Gladius or Obsec Spam. 8th E CWE might also be OP, but is less point & click to varying degrees. Less so than Bobby G and Assault Cannons were when they were the thing.

pm713 wrote:

Last I checked Eldar have weapons most people I know can't tell apart, different rules from squad to squad, are easier to kill and have much more complex psykers. They might be stronger but they aren't easiest at all. Unless you look at everything like you're in a tournament which just skews things.

IDK, I guess wraith knights, seer councils of doom, holofield vehicles that can take 6 turns of shooting from a 1500pt army and not die, bikes with their ++++ jink saves, 3+ saves everywhere are just pure glass cannons, and die to a gentle breeze right? I mean, look at their T3! You might as well throw your wraithknights and holofield vehicles against the wall, they're so fragile that a single lasgun can destroy the entire army in a turn of shooting!

Also, there comes the extremely complex choice of do you shoot your scat-lasers/starcannons at marines, guards, vehicles, or all the above? Do I charge in my seer council of doom, or do I tactfully bait the death company, since they can't kill a single seer anyway? Its so tactically confusing and challenging, not even the very best strategists in the world would sob in their hands. Only in the hands of superior eldar players, can these confounding questions be solved.

So its official then, eldar is the hardest army of all to play, and eldar players the most intelligent!

Bust seriously, beyond not shooting your fire dragons at guard, what complex decisions do you have to make?

The thing to keep in mind is that no actual army is ever consistently, wholly potent. Certain factions can retain a fairly steady grip on power, but the paradigms of power shift so awkwardly and heavily with each major publication that the individual units within will vary wildly.

This reason, combined with GW's poor ability to consider balance and create rules, means that the most consistently powerful factions must have these features built into their fundamental core:

1) A high degree of competent and stackable specialization. 40k has always rewarded heavy redundancy, and specialist units tend to be best optimized for this, rarely wasting perceived point value on unused stats (see: the main problem with tac Marines).

2) A wide variety of the above units to fill a variety of functions. Specialization will reward certain armies in specific editions, but a wide variety of options means that shifting metas won't leave a faction without viable options when the old trick becomes outdated. The better fleshed out your faction is, the better capable it is to handle wild change.

3) Mobility. The value of movement may wax and wane over time, but it always matters. Table control wins games, and movement is the most universal mechanism in gaining it.

So, to that end, Eldar.

 Fafnir wrote:
The thing to keep in mind is that no actual army is ever consistently, wholly potent. Certain factions can retain a fairly steady grip on power, but the paradigms of power shift so awkwardly and heavily with each major publication that the individual units within will vary wildly.

This reason, combined with GW's poor ability to consider balance and create rules, means that the most consistently powerful factions must have these features built into their fundamental core:

1) A high degree of competent and stackable specialization. 40 has always rewarded heavy redundancy, and specialist units tend to be best optimized for this, rarely wasting perceived point value on wasted stats (see: the main problem with tac Marines).

2) A wide variety of the above units to fill a variety of functions. Specialization will reward certain armies in specific editions, but a wide variety of options means that shifting metals won't leave a faction without viable options when the old trick becomes outdated. The better fleshed out your faction is, the better capable it is to handle wild change.

3) Mobility. The value of movement may wax and wane over time, but it always matters. Table control wins games, and movement is the most universal mechanism in gaining it.

So, to that end, Eldar.

Indeed, they're pretty well built around these pillars. It also hasn't hurt that seemingly most every codex release they tweak a handful of things up to 11 to boot (particularly the 6E/7E books), and got an army wide boost in BS with the 6E book

Bharring wrote:
Well, 6E came and CWE got bad. Really bad. They had Eldrad + WarWalkers. Otherwise, they were paying lots of points for Guardsmen with shotguns. Or Storm Troopers with bad storm bolters for even more points.

In the second half of the edition, their book came out. Then DAVU started the hatetrain we have today.

They were actually pretty good in early 6th ed. Seer councils did well at a few GTs with fortune + invis. They were just boring to play. It was essentially go second, survive all game, break the council apart to control contest all the objectives. I will say they were more finess at that point. But they were stronger in early 6th than late 5th.

pm713 wrote:

Skaorn wrote:
Eldar is probably the easiest and most forgiving army to play. You actually have to try to lose to stand a chance of losing.

That goes to Marines without a doubt.

For the record, the original line of text being quoted here is not mine but kburn's. You must have deleted the wrong portion of the quote code by accident. I do not believe it as I've beaten Eldar a decent amount before. I mean, if they were the easiest and most forgiving army to play, would it matter what units you put into your list from their codex?