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kburn wrote:

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.

First off, reread the line you originally quoted from me:

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

At what point do I state that "Eldar only play well in the hands of expert hands" there? As I have stated repeatedly, Eldar are a powerful army but not a good one. I think you misunderstand what a specialist army is supposed to be, an army that uses units designed to handle a specific task effectively and efficiently. Outside that task, they aren't particularly great. This is how GW has always described Eldar and their reliance on Aspect Warriors. This is how GW tries to handle the design of the Eldar, but they aren't good at it. They always manage to make units that are good to excellent and units that are not worth taking. As has been stated numerous times already, when there is an edition change, everything gets shaken up and the power units get a change up. Many times this is because the current rules happen to favor certain types of units and because you have many units that are supposed to be really good at certain things, those select units become really good. It can also be made worse when they don't have a codex that gets made for the new edition.

While you present all these spammable units though, you are taking them from a range of editions. Right now suggesting someone spam wraithknights would probably get you laughed at from just what I've seen from the thread on Xenos knights. Also, DE are a glass cannon army as they hit hard and fast, but fold under heavy fire. That's pretty much the definition of glass cannons.

Maybe Eldar players have a big chip on their shoulders because they have to deal with the a lot usually just implied "you're just a cheap power gamer" when discussing Eldar. This is something I've had my own experiences with the Chaos 3.5 codex, which is where IW baslisk came in with 4 HS slots to fill but 1 FA (I most often played as BL, NL, or AL and had no basilisks). I started Chaos 3.0 which wasn't considered all that great but was much better than Tau and nobody played them. Then GW put out probably the most broken codex they've come up with in 3.5. Despite repeatedly stating it was OP had to regularly deal with people implying or straight up telling me I was a power gamer because I used my codex and not even the most notable combos like IW or the Slaanesh whip it good combo. When CSM 4 came out many of us were upset because GW gutted Daemons from our army. I was flat out told a couple of times that we deserved it for Chaos 3.5. So, yeah, I'm kind of sympathetic to the Eldar players that I've met and generally talk about the poor codex balance and would like to be able to use any unit in their book and not have it be a serious handicap for not taking the current power units. If you want to blame anyone for poorly balanced codexes, blame the design team and not the player. Also don't assume that the entire codex is good because people are throwing out only a couple of super units from a codex. That's probably a sign that the internal balance isn't good.

So, if power is the major metric for determining what is "good" then were does internal an external balance come in? If Eldar are a no brainer, easy win, and super forgiving army, then why don't they give SM a run for their money in popularity?

Note: I put the line from kburn that is being misquoted as mine in this thread in bold to point it out.

Skaorn wrote:
Eldar are also a specialist army

6e really killed that aspect of the eldar.

Fragile units got more armour, unskilled units got stat boosts, units weak against vehicles got anti-vehicle weapons (compare reaper launchers and death spinners pre 6th for instance), support units became devastating attack units (wave serpents for instance, invisible councils), their centrepiece from being the slow melee avatar to the all singing all dancing wraithlord, and even small stuff like shuriken weapons went from light infantry attrition to massed rending attacks.

A.T. wrote:

Skaorn wrote:
Eldar are also a specialist army

6e really killed that aspect of the eldar.

Fragile units got more armour, unskilled units got stat boosts, units weak against vehicles got anti-vehicle weapons (compare reaper launchers and death spinners pre 6th for instance), support units became devastating attack units (wave serpents for instance, invisible councils), their centrepiece from being the slow melee avatar to the all singing all dancing wraithlord, and even small stuff like shuriken weapons went from light infantry attrition to massed rending attacks.

I think this is a very astute point (not that you are the first to say it).

By contrast Dark Eldar are currently very strong but their inherent strengths and weaknesses remain consistent.

I would argue Tau are the ultimate Easy Mode army. Not that they are always strong and OP or Auto-win, but that to be competitive doesn't take that much skill. Case and point, Smart Missile systems, does positioning matter? not much, does target priority matter? a bit, but its good vs most stuff. Or the ever fun and completely not cheesy, Tau Onion of Death, 30-60 Tau Firewarriors wrapped up together in a big ball of fun, can't assault them and they out range almost all standard infantry weapons.

Hell look at 7th edition, what should I bring? Ohh I know, 3 Riptides and a Stormsurge, whats my tactics? Kill everything by turn 4.

With that said though, Eldar are still the clear winners here of the OP, they have been the most competitive over the 8 editions of WH40k, the only army close would be Space Marines and even then I still give it to the Eldar.

You can also get a pretty good handle on which armies are used to being strong by how much their playerbase loses their mind with whinging when they get given rules releases that aren't amazing.

You just have to look at the reactions of the Necron, Ork, and Nid playerbases to their rules so far in 8th and their reactions to new releases, nerfs and beta rules vs the reactions of Marine, Eldar and Tau players.

kburn wrote:

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?

That's a really big chip on your shoulder isn't it?

pm713 wrote:

kburn wrote:

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?

That's a really big chip on your shoulder isn't it?

Wraithknights? Seer councils of doom? Scatter lasers?

Are you raging about 7th edition eldar still? Death Company can't kill a SINGLE seer in a seer council? Those guys that are like 55ppm, T4 4++ and 2W?

what are you actually on about?

I'm not sure that you can chalk up reactions to nerfs to just historical power.

Players of the two biggest usually-strong armies - Marines and CWE - seem to complain very differently. Marines players always complain about how they've always been bad. CWE players are split between complaining that they're not OP anymore and that they are too OP.

I don't know why, but Marines seem to have an unreasonably high number of players who can't see the past for what it was. Sure, it's a minority of Marine players, but it seems to be a majority of the volume from Marine players.

the_scotsman wrote:

pm713 wrote:

kburn wrote:

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?

That's a really big chip on your shoulder isn't it?

Wraithknights? Seer councils of doom? Scatter lasers?

Are you raging about 7th edition eldar still? Death Company can't kill a SINGLE seer in a seer council? Those guys that are like 55ppm, T4 4++ and 2W?

what are you actually on about?

He seems to be taking the spectacularly stupid approach of conflating the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th ed books all into one and then pretending that Eldar have been able to do all of that at the same time for the last 20 years. Clearly a troll with an absolutely worthless opinion.

Bharring wrote:
I'm not sure that you can chalk up reactions to nerfs to just historical power.

Players of the two biggest usually-strong armies - Marines and CWE - seem to complain very differently. Marines players always complain about how they've always been bad. CWE players are split between complaining that they're not OP anymore and that they are too OP.

I don't know why, but Marines seem to have an unreasonably high number of players who can't see the past for what it was. Sure, it's a minority of Marine players, but it seems to be a majority of the volume from Marine players.

Marines have never been able to play the army they wanted to play. It's always been a gimick. Eldar have always had lots of good options most of which are better than marines by comparison playing the stuff you'd expect to see in an eldar army.

If I wanted to put 8 champions on the table and turn them into a mega deathstar...I'd play magic the gathering. You know what I mean?

the_scotsman wrote:
You can also get a pretty good handle on which armies are used to being strong by how much their playerbase loses their mind with whinging when they get given rules releases that aren't amazing.

You just have to look at the reactions of the Necron, Ork, and Nid playerbases to their rules so far in 8th and their reactions to new releases, nerfs and beta rules vs the reactions of Marine, Eldar and Tau players.

To be fair, Necrons and Nids aren’t spectacularly complaining because they got good Codexes - for which the measure is not ‘how does their #1 competitive build compare to the other #1 competitive builds’, but rather ‘how well can I reflect the fluff of my army, and how strong is an army build that reflects their fluff?’ Eldar went from #1 by a mile to #2 or so, so their complaining is a bit spoilt brat but understandable, with Tau seeing a similar drag backwards. Marines got smacked around by the nerf bat and the ugly stick, only kept off the bottom of the heap by Grey Knights’ current misery, and they dropped there from #2 in 7th so they have more right than most to complain.

That Ork players don’t complain is just testament to their being the best human beings in this community.

"Marines have never been able to play the army they wanted to play. It's always been a gimick. Eldar have always had lots of good options most of which are better than marines by comparison playing the stuff you'd expect to see in an eldar army. " - Xeno

Lets compare some of the stupidest stuff each book has had more directly:
-DAVU vs Gladius:
Super mechanized undercosted transports defining a list. Sure, there are some DAs/Battle Brothers, but the transports do all the work. The difference is the Gladius has more variety, and their non-transports do a lot of work too. Both gimicks, but the Gladius very much did represent a reasonable SM force from a fluff perspective, and fought similar to one. DAVU wasn't fluffy and didn't fight anything like any CWE fluff.
-SL Bikes vs White Scars Bikers
Sure, there are a number of Samm-Hain players who love windriders. But lots of others who hated windriders. Same can be said for White Scars vs non-White Scars Marine players.
-SuperBestFriends vs Seer Council
Both were stupid hero deathstars. Both required allies. One was the heros of the imperium gathering together and kicking ass. The other was support psykers becoming the whole army.
-WK vs Bobby G
A big centerpiece. Hard to kill. Blast things off the table. One requires playing UltraMarines. The other requires playing a spirit host (in effect, if not in rules). Because somehow, an unkillable super-tough robot is the epitome of what CWE players wanted to play?
-Podded DevCents vs WWP Scytheguard
Both are an OP unit that could be put anywhere. The DevCents had a little less placement predictability, but a lot more range. Also, while DevCents could benefit from allies, WWP Scytheguard could not be fielded without allies. DevCents podding in was a little odd. Honored Dead being entrusted to some deviant Archon with no affiliation to the Craftworld and no Craftworlder joining, and allowing the Archon do to just whatever with them them is a fluff abomination, just a step below Abbadon and Bobby G allying up for the lulz.
-Obsec Spam (pre-Gladius) vs Spider spam
The Spiders are more stupidly OP. And far less fluffy. The Obsec Spam was Tacs in Pods - the basic 'Steel Rain' strategy. It'd be fluffier with some ASM and Devs and other support mixed in, but it's not so bad. Spider spam is entierly an unfluffy gimick.


Both factions have had unfluffy OP gak. Both factions have had lots of options and been OP/top dog many times over the years. But the insistence that CWE got the army CWE players wanted, whereas Marines got gimicky stuff they didn't want jsut doesn't seem to hold up.

the_scotsman wrote:
You can also get a pretty good handle on which armies are used to being strong by how much their playerbase loses their mind with whinging when they get given rules releases that aren't amazing.

You just have to look at the reactions of the Necron, Ork, and Nid playerbases to their rules so far in 8th and their reactions to new releases, nerfs and beta rules vs the reactions of Marine, Eldar and Tau players.

To be honest, I haven't seen complaint from Tau players since Gamgee has been banned/erased from existence. I believe most of the Tau powergamers simply jump off to Eldar with 8th. Yeah, people complained with the Index because even if it was competitive with commander spam it was ultra boring and bland. The Codex does a good job at making other lists viables. It could have been better with Crisis, but aye.

Since then, have you really eard any complaint from Tau players? Since the codex I didn't (And I'm a tau player!)

The biggest complaints of 8th have been: Marines suck, Imperial Guard is OP, and Eldar are OP/Eldar Suck at the same time based in if the players play Eldar or doesn't.

What triggered him again? I don't remember now.

I don't know. Something about the teaser for Custodes being Custodes and not a new xenos race, I believe. Thats the last time I saw him exploding.

My oiled abs quiver with excitement!

Skaorn wrote:


So, if power is the major metric for determining what is "good" then were does internal an external balance come in? If Eldar are a no brainer, easy win, and super forgiving army, then why don't they give SM a run for their money in popularity?

They do among top level players. But they don't have near the fluff support, are harder to paint, and are alien. All 3 of those things work against them competing with Space Marines in overall popularity. A great majority of players (even "competitive" players) pick their army based on aesthetics and background because they get into the game knowing little about how it plays etc. Further most people don't meta chase/jump factions. So the argument that power isn't relevant to what makes a good codex, and using popularity as a metric is flawed. SM books have also always had bad internal balance.

Bharring wrote:
"Marines have never been able to play the army they wanted to play. It's always been a gimick. Eldar have always had lots of good options most of which are better than marines by comparison playing the stuff you'd expect to see in an eldar army. " - Xeno

Lets compare some of the stupidest stuff each book has had more directly:
-DAVU vs Gladius:
Super mechanized undercosted transports defining a list. Sure, there are some DAs/Battle Brothers, but the transports do all the work. The difference is the Gladius has more variety, and their non-transports do a lot of work too. Both gimicks, but the Gladius very much did represent a reasonable SM force from a fluff perspective, and fought similar to one. DAVU wasn't fluffy and didn't fight anything like any CWE fluff.
-SL Bikes vs White Scars Bikers
Sure, there are a number of Samm-Hain players who love windriders. But lots of others who hated windriders. Same can be said for White Scars vs non-White Scars Marine players.
-SuperBestFriends vs Seer Council
Both were stupid hero deathstars. Both required allies. One was the heros of the imperium gathering together and kicking ass. The other was support psykers becoming the whole army.
-WK vs Bobby G
A big centerpiece. Hard to kill. Blast things off the table. One requires playing UltraMarines. The other requires playing a spirit host (in effect, if not in rules). Because somehow, an unkillable super-tough robot is the epitome of what CWE players wanted to play?
-Podded DevCents vs WWP Scytheguard
Both are an OP unit that could be put anywhere. The DevCents had a little less placement predictability, but a lot more range. Also, while DevCents could benefit from allies, WWP Scytheguard could not be fielded without allies. DevCents podding in was a little odd. Honored Dead being entrusted to some deviant Archon with no affiliation to the Craftworld and no Craftworlder joining, and allowing the Archon do to just whatever with them them is a fluff abomination, just a step below Abbadon and Bobby G allying up for the lulz.
-Obsec Spam (pre-Gladius) vs Spider spam
The Spiders are more stupidly OP. And far less fluffy. The Obsec Spam was Tacs in Pods - the basic 'Steel Rain' strategy. It'd be fluffier with some ASM and Devs and other support mixed in, but it's not so bad. Spider spam is entierly an unfluffy gimick.


Both factions have had unfluffy OP gak. Both factions have had lots of options and been OP/top dog many times over the years. But the insistence that CWE got the army CWE players wanted, whereas Marines got gimicky stuff they didn't want jsut doesn't seem to hold up.

Cents were literally only good with greyknight soup. Drop them with tigarius in a pod - they blow something up - then they get charged and tarpitted or your choice to risk GOI with tigarius and perils to death. Cents without GOI are not good - and quite honestly not good without white-scar relic ether. So at a minimum of 3 factions to make it actually good - and it still can't hurt things that only have invo saves (AKA lots of powerful things).
RG is not a valid comparison for a WK - RG was not even a competitive choice - he had 0 delivery methods and moved 9 inches and could be bogged down by any tar-pit.
Seer councils are not only fluffy but also don't require soup. Super-friends is the definition of soup and is hugely unfluffy.
Gladius is your only valid example here. Honestly - it's not nearly as good people complain about. If you gave eldar 400 free points they would auto win every game - give space marines 400 free points and they barely scrap by with an objective win. There is a big difference.

Another problem with saying marines were or weren't powerful for a given edition is that it depends alot on what you define as marines.
Does marines mean marines from the generic "Codex Space Marines" or are you including Dark Angles, blood Angles and Space furries under the term Marine?

As if you are then yes one of those books would have been viable in an edition, if your not combining codex into some super combo then marines have walked this path of OMG OP filth as they get an early codex and get left behind and replaced later by a Marine +1 or Space Furries new hotness which to non marine players is still just another OP marine list. While your codex chapter is left in the kiddy pool of competative lists.

There has almost always been a competitive power armor list. Not necessarily marines.

Martel732 wrote:
There has almost always been a competitive power armor list. Not necessarily marines.

I thought it was understood that when we are talking about Marines we are talking about "CODEX SPACE MARINES/ ADEPT ASTARTES". You know?

Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Greyknights, Space Wolves....they are all serpate armies with unique units. Plus yeah - at least one of these armies was probably competitive. SPACE WOLVES ARE ALWAYS COMPETITIVE.

Marines generally suffer from being the first meta definition. They determine what is or isn't good for every other faction. Once everyone else adapts to Marines, they fall behind by virtue of not posing an extreme skew in any one aspect of the game.

Xeno,
Podded DevCents were a hell of a lot more effective sans allies than WWP Scytheguard. Seeing as WWP Scytheguard sans allies didn't exist. Not as in weren't taken, but as in no legal entry could do it. DevCents might have not been great vs things with only an invuln, but of the threats of the day, how many were there? Every big bad I'm thinking of in that edition had a 3+ or 2+. And with rerolls to wound, it only got "not-uber" vs 6+ saves and worse. Even 5+ saves died quickly. Sure, they were better with Tiggy and GK, but they were just fine with just Tiggy - so you only needed one faction, but could do better with 2. As for range, yes, you then have to hoof around if you want to get within 24", which sucks compared to some things, but not compared to hoofing it at the same speed with 9" range.

RG had a great delivery method. Deployment. He didn't need to be in CC to do his thing. His thing is different from WK, sure. Perhaps they're not as comparable. Afterall, RG is the "uber commander" that makes your marines "more marines", where as WK is the model that says "ignore everything you know and love|hate about CWE. I just walk up the table and punch them". I don't see how the WK is more what CWE players wanted than RG is what SM players wanted?

Seer Council, I was thinking the truly obnoxious 2++ rerollable. And 2++s were not in the CWE book. But fair point that there were plenty of vialble Seer Councils that didn't need DE. However, while a Seer Council is a fluffy thing, the point is that the Seer Council should be supporting/leading the army. It shouldn't be the army. SuperFriends was more representitive of soup, but I think the fluff has far more instances of heros-of-the-hour band together in one unit and destroy armies than nameless-seers-go-super-ninja-and-kill-everyone. I don't like it, but it's more compatible with the fluff.

Any army with 400pts free would probably be OP. How is that different from saying any army, given a free S7 ignores cover range-who cares lots-of-shots weapon on each transport would win the game?

Of 6 examples, you debate 3, dismiss one, then claim there's only one example?

Ice_can,
i think most of these posts are considering Marines to be Vanilla Marines, in this discussion. DA/BA/SW have done well at different times, but vanilla seems to be in a solidly better league.

No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.

Martel732 wrote:
No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.

Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.

 Blacksails wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, only recently. Vanilla was not good in 5th or 3rd. 4th was iffy.

Vanilla marines were a middle of the road army in 5th. They were not in any way shape or form a bad army in 5th. This is the same revisionist nonsense I see from certain marine players who are hellbent on decrying how terribly they've been treated by GW. Marines have been no worse than 'good' or 'acceptable' from 5th on, and since I haven't played before then I can't comment on prior editions.

A lot of people assume that if your faction didn't win the last big event they're bottom tier.

Their record was so poor in my area, it's hard to believe they were truly middle of the road in 5th. Eldar had builds far more fearsome than what vanilla could pump out. Playing against vanilla in 5th was largely a cakewalk.

Bharring wrote:
Xeno,
Podded DevCents were a hell of a lot more effective sans allies than WWP Scytheguard. Seeing as WWP Scytheguard sans allies didn't exist. Not as in weren't taken, but as in no legal entry could do it. DevCents might have not been great vs things with only an invuln, but of the threats of the day, how many were there? Every big bad I'm thinking of in that edition had a 3+ or 2+. And with rerolls to wound, it only got "not-uber" vs 6+ saves and worse. Even 5+ saves died quickly. Sure, they were better with Tiggy and GK, but they were just fine with just Tiggy - so you only needed one faction, but could do better with 2. As for range, yes, you then have to hoof around if you want to get within 24", which sucks compared to some things, but not compared to hoofing it at the same speed with 9" range.

RG had a great delivery method. Deployment. He didn't need to be in CC to do his thing. His thing is different from WK, sure. Perhaps they're not as comparable. Afterall, RG is the "uber commander" that makes your marines "more marines", where as WK is the model that says "ignore everything you know and love|hate about CWE. I just walk up the table and punch them". I don't see how the WK is more what CWE players wanted than RG is what SM players wanted?

Seer Council, I was thinking the truly obnoxious 2++ rerollable. And 2++s were not in the CWE book. But fair point that there were plenty of vialble Seer Councils that didn't need DE. However, while a Seer Council is a fluffy thing, the point is that the Seer Council should be supporting/leading the army. It shouldn't be the army. SuperFriends was more representitive of soup, but I think the fluff has far more instances of heros-of-the-hour band together in one unit and destroy armies than nameless-seers-go-super-ninja-and-kill-everyone. I don't like it, but it's more compatible with the fluff.

Any army with 400pts free would probably be OP. How is that different from saying any army, given a free S7 ignores cover range-who cares lots-of-shots weapon on each transport would win the game?

Of 6 examples, you debate 3, dismiss one, then claim there's only one example?

Ice_can,
i think most of these posts are considering Marines to be Vanilla Marines, in this discussion. DA/BA/SW have done well at different times, but vanilla seems to be in a solidly better league.

Sorry I missed the last 2. Objective secured - don't care - practically everything was running around with it.
Warp spiders - nothing forces you to spam them in 7th. You could take 3 of any aspect of your choice in an aspect host. You could be as fluffy or unfluffy with it as you wanted. OFC though - you were getting the 2+ to hit. Me personally - I hate the spider models so I have never owned any. They had such stupidly busted rules that anyone that was actually playing with them was TFG. My Siamhan friend would bring 1 unit of them and I basically had to ignore them because they were impossible to kill - or t the very least would be able to hop into cover.

Martel732 wrote:
Their record was so poor in my area, it's hard to believe they were truly middle of the road in 5th. Eldar had builds far more fearsome than what vanilla could pump out. Playing against vanilla in 5th was largely a cakewalk.

Your problem is consistently assuming your little, bizarre microcosm is a reflection of the bigger picture. For someone so keen on 'mathematical' analysis of the game, it'd be pretty easy to figure out that 5th Marines had a few strong units, lots of decent units, and could make effective builds in the edition's meta. They placed well at events from my recollection, and were only really overshadowed by other marines.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because you weren't top tier, you must obviously be bottom tier.

Guard have always seemed to be in the good->great range. Orks, aside from their 4th edition codex have been pretty bad.
Generic Marines have been in the "good" range