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Spectral Ceramite wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Bharring wrote:
-Termies are weak. 2W doesn't mean enough because of all the D2 weapons out there.
-Primaris are weak. 2W... as above.
-Bikes are weak. 2W... as above.

Mayhaps the problem with the plethera of D2 weapons is the D2, not the 2W models?

This is something that's been getting me for a while, I'm starting to think jacking the cost of special weapons more or less across the board would benefit the game massively. Given the mass proliferation of them and the view of troops as a tax rather than a core of your combat capability perhaps we need to revalue the worth of having feet on the board and heavy armor against the gun that nukes those feet off the board each turn.

My opinion (take with a grain of salt). How does this help the system? Changing the cost of special weapons across the board, will change every army atm. Think of the difference between Deathwach (which majority tbh are troops) and Imperial Guard, or Necrons (no special) and Harlequins (no special, but if change special have to change pistols etc, cascading)... Talk about small things to change (that can be changed) and addressing these issues, 1 at a time will lead to a better 8th addition and a better future addition.

Example: 40k could do better to follow the AoS format of rend or -AP to the 2 or 3 being rare or well above average but it is to late for 40k, so they have to deal with what they have. Maybe next edition.

It "helps" the system by making high AP multi-damage weapons less prevalent, thereby making high-armour multi-wound models more viable. Not that they aren't viable, Custodes are a top army. Terminators are just slightly overpriced, 30% cost reduction and they become meta defining. 20% and they're perfectly fine. 20% cost reduction means 25% increased survivability and damage output. That's like giving them T5 and WS/BS 2+ at the same time, except it's super easy to implement and literally the only people who get hurt are the people who want their individual Elites to be better than my HQs and their Terminator characters to be better than my HQ with a warlord trait and a relic without taking either. Sorry buddy, not fair.

 vict0988 wrote:

Spectral Ceramite wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Bharring wrote:
-Termies are weak. 2W doesn't mean enough because of all the D2 weapons out there.
-Primaris are weak. 2W... as above.
-Bikes are weak. 2W... as above.

Mayhaps the problem with the plethera of D2 weapons is the D2, not the 2W models?

This is something that's been getting me for a while, I'm starting to think jacking the cost of special weapons more or less across the board would benefit the game massively. Given the mass proliferation of them and the view of troops as a tax rather than a core of your combat capability perhaps we need to revalue the worth of having feet on the board and heavy armor against the gun that nukes those feet off the board each turn.

My opinion (take with a grain of salt). How does this help the system? Changing the cost of special weapons across the board, will change every army atm. Think of the difference between Deathwach (which majority tbh are troops) and Imperial Guard, or Necrons (no special) and Harlequins (no special, but if change special have to change pistols etc, cascading)... Talk about small things to change (that can be changed) and addressing these issues, 1 at a time will lead to a better 8th addition and a better future addition.

Example: 40k could do better to follow the AoS format of rend or -AP to the 2 or 3 being rare or well above average but it is to late for 40k, so they have to deal with what they have. Maybe next edition.

It "helps" the system by making high AP multi-damage weapons less prevalent, thereby making high-armour multi-wound models more viable. Not that they aren't viable, Custodes are a top army. Terminators are just slightly overpriced, 30% cost reduction and they become meta defining. 20% and they're perfectly fine. 20% cost reduction means 25% increased survivability and damage output. That's like giving them T5 and WS/BS 2+ at the same time, except it's super easy to implement and literally the only people who get hurt are the people who want their individual Elites to be better than my HQs and their Terminator characters to be better than my HQ with a warlord trait and a relic without taking either. Sorry buddy, not fair.

Custodes arn't a top army for me (its swing or miss if play against pure Custodes, so if cant be average all the time, various objective games, is not top), Shield captains on Dawn eagles are good additions to armies. Maybe you quoted wrong person. I said not to reduce cost by 10pts. I agree the AP value etc is to prevalent.

GW just has the bite the bullwt and let termies be fielded in 3 models, let sergeant take all normal termie equipment plus sergeant equipment, and reduce it a few points. Termies have a niche role and 192 pts base is too big a premium.

To compensate, they can add fixed price stratagem that scales better with larger units.

If termies get brought to 22 ppm, that's 100 pt squad (2x PF/SB, 1x PS/SB). Allow up to 3 special weapons per every three. Oh, and that chain fist thing needs to go down in points by MILES.

I'd roll my squad with 1x AC/PF, 1x SB/CF, 1x Sarge w/ TH/SS as deepstriking side line harassment unit

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Bharring wrote:
-Termies are weak. 2W doesn't mean enough because of all the D2 weapons out there.
-Primaris are weak. 2W... as above.
-Bikes are weak. 2W... as above.

Mayhaps the problem with the plethera of D2 weapons is the D2, not the 2W models?

This is something that's been getting me for a while, I'm starting to think jacking the cost of special weapons more or less across the board would benefit the game massively. Given the mass proliferation of them and the view of troops as a tax rather than a core of your combat capability perhaps we need to revalue the worth of having feet on the board and heavy armor against the gun that nukes those feet off the board each turn.

Troops aren't viewed as a tax until they're as useless as a tax. You need to fix the core troops. You think bumping Special and Heavy Weapons would help Tactical Marines?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Bharring wrote:
-Termies are weak. 2W doesn't mean enough because of all the D2 weapons out there.
-Primaris are weak. 2W... as above.
-Bikes are weak. 2W... as above.

Mayhaps the problem with the plethera of D2 weapons is the D2, not the 2W models?

This is something that's been getting me for a while, I'm starting to think jacking the cost of special weapons more or less across the board would benefit the game massively. Given the mass proliferation of them and the view of troops as a tax rather than a core of your combat capability perhaps we need to revalue the worth of having feet on the board and heavy armor against the gun that nukes those feet off the board each turn.

Troops aren't viewed as a tax until they're as useless as a tax. You need to fix the core troops. You think bumping Special and Heavy Weapons would help Tactical Marines?

Could always make it so that each space marine unit has its own special rules unique to it if you take a veteran sarge that gives all sarges +1 wound and +1 attack. Thus increasing their viability.

Maybe each could be similar to the Aspect Warriors of eldar?

It would go a long way in giving each unit in the space marine roster a much-needed niche or job to do.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skchsan wrote:
GW just has the bite the bullwt and let termies be fielded in 3 models, let sergeant take all normal termie equipment plus sergeant equipment, and reduce it a few points. Termies have a niche role and 192 pts base is too big a premium.

To compensate, they can add fixed price stratagem that scales better with larger units.

If termies get brought to 22 ppm, that's 100 pt squad (2x PF/SB, 1x PS/SB). Allow up to 3 special weapons per every three. Oh, and that chain fist thing needs to go down in points by MILES.

I'd roll my squad with 1x AC/PF, 1x SB/CF, 1x Sarge w/ TH/SS as deepstriking side line harassment unit

Agreed. Terminators are too expensive, I remember posting a thread about how ineffective they are as an army.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Bharring wrote:
-Termies are weak. 2W doesn't mean enough because of all the D2 weapons out there.
-Primaris are weak. 2W... as above.
-Bikes are weak. 2W... as above.

Mayhaps the problem with the plethera of D2 weapons is the D2, not the 2W models?

This is something that's been getting me for a while, I'm starting to think jacking the cost of special weapons more or less across the board would benefit the game massively. Given the mass proliferation of them and the view of troops as a tax rather than a core of your combat capability perhaps we need to revalue the worth of having feet on the board and heavy armor against the gun that nukes those feet off the board each turn.

Troops aren't viewed as a tax until they're as useless as a tax. You need to fix the core troops. You think bumping Special and Heavy Weapons would help Tactical Marines?

I think de-emphasizing heavy/special weapons spam would make a more interesting less blast units off the table game. And yes, more or less by definition cranking up the cost of extra powerful stuff would help out under powered things. A lascannon shouldn't be standard equipment, plasma shouldn't be standard equipment, they should be specialized units intended for a specific purpose rather than a generic 'remove that side of the board' unit.

When most of what determines if a unit is good or not is based on the weapons it's allowed to spam, how does that not imply that perhaps those weapons need to be adjusted?

If we want to really make it viable to give specific weapons a point to cost more, make armor rolls for vehicles and possibly terminators 2d6, make those heavy weapons make grease stains out of anything not featuring heavy armor due to APs of -4 and up. And make them cost appropriately for what they're capable of doing. At that point it wouldn't be worth it to just point squads of weapons designed to take out tanks at infantry. Suddenly heavy armor is much more scary due to how much in small arms it really can shrug off, heavy weapons have an actual purpose in life rather than simply being better than their counterparts and more or less the entire game needs repointing. Don't really expect it to happen, but yeah, I think special weapons not being generically points efficient and actually having special purposes would boost standard troops considerably.

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

Bharring wrote:
-Termies are weak. 2W doesn't mean enough because of all the D2 weapons out there.
-Primaris are weak. 2W... as above.
-Bikes are weak. 2W... as above.

Mayhaps the problem with the plethera of D2 weapons is the D2, not the 2W models?

This is something that's been getting me for a while, I'm starting to think jacking the cost of special weapons more or less across the board would benefit the game massively. Given the mass proliferation of them and the view of troops as a tax rather than a core of your combat capability perhaps we need to revalue the worth of having feet on the board and heavy armor against the gun that nukes those feet off the board each turn.

Troops aren't viewed as a tax until they're as useless as a tax. You need to fix the core troops. You think bumping Special and Heavy Weapons would help Tactical Marines?

I think de-emphasizing heavy/special weapons spam would make a more interesting less blast units off the table game. And yes, more or less by definition cranking up the cost of extra powerful stuff would help out under powered things. A lascannon shouldn't be standard equipment, plasma shouldn't be standard equipment, they should be specialized units intended for a specific purpose rather than a generic 'remove that side of the board' unit.

When most of what determines if a unit is good or not is based on the weapons it's allowed to spam, how does that not imply that perhaps those weapons need to be adjusted?

If we want to really make it viable to give specific weapons a point to cost more, make armor rolls for vehicles and possibly terminators 2d6, make those heavy weapons make grease stains out of anything not featuring heavy armor due to APs of -4 and up. And make them cost appropriately for what they're capable of doing. At that point it wouldn't be worth it to just point squads of weapons designed to take out tanks at infantry. Suddenly heavy armor is much more scary due to how much in small arms it really can shrug off, heavy weapons have an actual purpose in life rather than simply being better than their counterparts and more or less the entire game needs repointing. Don't really expect it to happen, but yeah, I think special weapons not being generically points efficient and actually having special purposes would boost standard troops considerably.

You're just going back to 7th, GW wanted to move in a direction of everything being a little less rock/paper/scissors, which is IMO a good thing. There needs to be counters, but if the game just becomes a list check to see if you brough the right units to counter your opponent then that isn't much fun. Even if you balance this version of the game perfectly, you'll have a 50% win rate for every list, but a much larger percentage of games will be decided by lists rather than tactics and dice which is hugely unfun. No the current system is good, it's just not balanced and 7th wasn't balanced either so we'd see the same lack of balance most likely with your version of the game.

"You think bumping Special and Heavy Weapons would help Tactical Marines?"
If you consider "Special and Heavy weapons" to be the IoM options, then sure, it won't help Tactical Marines.

If you consider "special weapons more or less across the board" to be all those special weapons with better-than-0 AP, then yes, that would help Tacs.

But this thread is about Termies. Bumping the cost of multiwound good-AP weapons across the board certainly would help Termies.

But terminators also die to crap like sternguard, gauss and volley guns. Terminators lose half their protection against AP -1. That's all that's really needed; multi damage is just salt in the wound.

AP-1 is too good in this game, against most things. Termies have it worse than most things, but they aren't the only units impacted by it. The AP-1/AP-2 weapons really need a nerf/points increase.

It's a direct mathematical consequence of the system they have adopted. But yes, they are still priced like they are AP 4/3.

Also, context matters. Bolt rifle intercessors suck, for example.

Bharring wrote:
AP-1 is too good in this game, against most things. Termies have it worse than most things, but they aren't the only units impacted by it. The AP-1/AP-2 weapons really need a nerf/points increase.

They literally have the same durability to AP-1 weapons now outside VERY specific scenarios (Autocannon). Otherwise this is the edition where they've been the most durable. Do the math if you don't believe me.

They also went *up* in durability against Lasguns. But I thought it was typically agreed upon that Termies aren't good vs Lasguns.

AP4 in 6e/7e was AP-nobody-cares. It was common, but most people forgot about it. Many SM players would swear up and down not a single weapon in their list was AP4 (despite that never being true).

Now, AP-1 is gold. Increases your killiness across the board. So people stock up on it. So it's a lot more common.

And TEQ got a lot more vulnerable to AP3, which became AP-2.

Dark reapers say "hi!".

Bharring wrote:
They also went *up* in durability against Lasguns. But I thought it was typically agreed upon that Termies aren't good vs Lasguns.

AP4 in 6e/7e was AP-nobody-cares. It was common, but most people forgot about it. Many SM players would swear up and down not a single weapon in their list was AP4 (despite that never being true).

Now, AP-1 is gold. Increases your killiness across the board. So people stock up on it. So it's a lot more common.

And TEQ got a lot more vulnerable to AP3, which became AP-2.

I'm fine with the durability against lasguns. I'm not fine with their offensive output, which really is the main problem that needs to be fixed.
It used to be 18 total hits from a Lasgun to make it kill a Terminator. Now they doubled in that and it takes 36 total. They've got the durability against weapons they used to have so little against for the price. Now they need to kill for their price.

Why?

To put it another way, aren't 5 Powerhammer Termies already reasonably killy for a unit that's supposed to be tough to kill?

Not really.

Bharring wrote:
Why?

To put it another way, aren't 5 Powerhammer Termies already reasonably killy for a unit that's supposed to be tough to kill?

And how exactly are they going to get to kill anything? You can't footslog them, they'll die. You can't transport them, Land Raiders are too expensive and it'll die, then they will die. You can't deep strike them, because 50%+ failure rate, Bubblewrap and Consequence Free Fall Back, so they'll die.

Let me put this another way.

Lets say we gave PF Termies A4 S10 AP-5 D3.

They'd be really killy.

Isn't everything BCB just posted still true?

My point is that killiness isn't their problem.

10 TH swings for 200+ points still isn't that impressive.

Bharring wrote:
Why?

To put it another way, aren't 5 Powerhammer Termies already reasonably killy for a unit that's supposed to be tough to kill?

6-7 attacks landing with 4 wounds and then getting through the Invul your targets probably have or a FNP equivalent.

That ain't worth 45 points a model and you know that, just based on anything they hit. That's why I'm always for WS/BS2+ and an extra attack.

Shining Spears are super killy at 2 attacks each w/S6 and D2. PF Termies hit at S8, don't go down to S3 if they didn't charge, and have better damage, all for a -1-to-hit.

If Shining Spears are less killy than Termies, then how can Spears be killy in CC and Termies not?

(I do agree with +1A and am ok with WS/BS2+. I just don't think anything short of punching way above their weight changes anything.)

Spears are more killy because you get more for the same cost and they actually get to use their melee profile.
Termies may as well have S1, 1atk, and hit on 6. Because if you are never IN combat, your stats done matter.

Termies need to be cheaper, which we can all agree on, but unless they also get something to increase their chances of getting into melee, +1Atk or WS/BS2+ won't matter.
+1W and being cheaper could make this happen

-

Bharring wrote:
Shining Spears are super killy at 2 attacks each w/S6 and D2. PF Termies hit at S8, don't go down to S3 if they didn't charge, and have better damage, all for a -1-to-hit.

If Shining Spears are less killy than Termies, then how can Spears be killy in CC and Termies not?

(I do agree with +1A and am ok with WS/BS2+. I just don't think anything short of punching way above their weight changes anything.)

Because you're paying more? Genestealers are killy because they punch nicely for their weight class, TH SS Termies don't.

Bharring wrote:
Shining Spears are super killy at 2 attacks each w/S6 and D2. PF Termies hit at S8, don't go down to S3 if they didn't charge, and have better damage, all for a -1-to-hit.

If Shining Spears are less killy than Termies, then how can Spears be killy in CC and Termies not?

(I do agree with +1A and am ok with WS/BS2+. I just don't think anything short of punching way above their weight changes anything.)

If you only look at the individual model you have a point. Pray tell what the cost of a Shining Spear is. Not to mention they shoot as well but that's a whole different discussion as to why the Tactical and Assault Terminators need to stop being separated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:
Spears are more killy because you get more for the same cost and they actually get to use their melee profile.
Termies may as well have S1, 1atk, and hit on 6. Because if you are never IN combat, your stats done matter.

Termies need to be cheaper, which we can all agree on, but unless they also get something to increase their chances of getting into melee, +1Atk or WS/BS2+ won't matter.
+1W and being cheaper could make this happen

-

There are theoretically ways to do that. However, Land Raiders and basically other transports are garbage, and you only have a 28% chance to land a charge from Deep Strike without any rerolls courtesy of different sources (reroll a dice stratatgem, Black Templars, Asterion, Khorne banner). There's a good amount of shooting Stratagems already courtesy of Dark and Blood Angels (who really shouldn't get those exclusively. That's just silly). If you want them in combat, it isn't impossible without Transports but you ended up putting a bunch of support into these models that don't really hit hard after that fact.

Spears are more killy primarily because they can get in. They cost two thirds the price, and hit at about two thirds the killiness per model. They're less durable but a heck of a lot faster. And have decent shooting too.

What analogues of Termies aren't bad? Wraithlords play a similar role - and are similarly bad. Wraithnouns play a similar role, and are in about the same place (although there was one tournament they were in a top list). Custodes on foot are in a similar role, and are considered bad (or at least not good). Mutilators? Assault Cents?

Bharring wrote:
What analogues of Termies aren't bad? Wraithlords play a similar role - and are similarly bad. Wraithnouns play a similar role, and are in about the same place (although there was one tournament they were in a top list). Custodes on foot are in a similar role, and are considered bad (or at least not good). Mutilators? Assault Cents?

Indeed. GW needs to knock down the cost of most heavy infantry. Just because it has +1W and a better Armour save doesn't mean it is instantly 2-3x as effective and thus 2-3x the cost. But GW seems to think they are.

-

Or they need to make heavy infantry *feel* heavier. Such as by bumping up the costs of all the Ap-1/-2 weapons, and all the multiwound weapons.

I think we're seeing the same problem, but hoping for different solutions.

Bharring wrote:
Spears are more killy primarily because they can get in. They cost two thirds the price, and hit at about two thirds the killiness per model. They're less durable but a heck of a lot faster. And have decent shooting too.

What analogues of Termies aren't bad? Wraithlords play a similar role - and are similarly bad. Wraithnouns play a similar role, and are in about the same place (although there was one tournament they were in a top list). Custodes on foot are in a similar role, and are considered bad (or at least not good). Mutilators? Assault Cents?

The only nearly mediocre Terminator variants are Blightlords, regular Chaos Terminators, and Paladins. They're all still bad but they do slightly better.

Custodes are decent but not really Terminators.

Mutilators got the proper price cut, but need to get rerolls for their weapons if near a Warpsmith or something. I'd ask for the same thing on Obliterators too but mostly because the Warpsmith doesn't do a terrible amount of anything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Centurions suffer from being priced like an actual wall but aren't. THEY are the unit that needs an extra wound.