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 LunarSol wrote:
I'd just define it differently. Just define them as "Tactics". That way if you want to take a detachment of bikers for your Iron Hands but need to take the "White Scar" Tactics to make them work, cool do so. Make a list of tactics that facilitates the job of incentivizing a variety of detachment builds that combine to form an army and just don't assign it to a specific coat of paint. Then in the Chapter fluff sections, you can have at the top "Preferred Tactics" to give players an idea how they can build fluffy. That even gives you the option of listing multiple preferred tactics so that yes, you can do things like defining White Scars as a core of Tac marines that also include a detachment of Bikers or something like that.

That's a solid idea.

I guess my point is there are already previously designed tools that marines have, which could be improved really without totally redefining the army. I don't think the answer is 9 point tacticals, for example.

 Marmatag wrote:


Also, ATSKNF should be flat morale immunity. It's insane to me that Marines are barely more disciplined than imperial guard.

What? ATSKNF is already crazy reliable. I literally haven't lost a single marine to the morale in this edition.

 Crimson wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


Also, ATSKNF should be flat morale immunity. It's insane to me that Marines are barely more disciplined than imperial guard.

What? ATSKNF is already crazy reliable. I literally haven't lost a single marine to the morale in this edition.

To that end, I'd prefer ATSKNF to flat out ignore morale, not because they are "barely more disciplined than guard" but because it's "crazy reliable".
99% of the time we are just wasted time rolling the dice that we know will succeed.
Unnecessary rolls are unnecessary

-

 Crimson wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


Also, ATSKNF should be flat morale immunity. It's insane to me that Marines are barely more disciplined than imperial guard.

What? ATSKNF is already crazy reliable. I literally haven't lost a single marine to the morale in this edition.

Because you build around a mechanic rather than allowing it to negatively impact your play. Saying you have a workaround to a problem, therefore it isn't a problem, is silly.

A 10 man death company unit has leadership 7.

If you lose 6 and roll a 3, you're losing 2. Do you re-roll that 3?

 Marmatag wrote:
A 10 man death company unit has leadership 7.

If you lose 6 and roll a 3, you're losing 2. Do you re-roll that 3?

You either spend 2 CPs to ignore entirely, or hop in a time machine and go back before your game started and split them into two 5-man units so you don't have to worry about loosing 6 models affected the other 4

But you don't split them if you're going to use stratagems on them.

 Galef wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


Also, ATSKNF should be flat morale immunity. It's insane to me that Marines are barely more disciplined than imperial guard.

What? ATSKNF is already crazy reliable. I literally haven't lost a single marine to the morale in this edition.

To that end, I'd prefer ATSKNF to flat out ignore morale, not because they are "barely more disciplined than guard" but because it's "crazy reliable".
99% of the time we are just wasted time rolling the dice that we know will succeed.
Unnecessary rolls are unnecessary

Yeah, fair. That's a good argument for making it auto success.

And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

 Galef wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
A 10 man death company unit has leadership 7.

If you lose 6 and roll a 3, you're losing 2. Do you re-roll that 3?

You either spend 2 CPs to ignore entirely, or hop in a time machine and go back before your game started and split them into two 5-man units so you don't have to worry about loosing 6 models affected the other 4

This seems like a flippant reply.

Stratagems like Descent encourage usage of 10 man units, or you're not getting your bang for your buck. And paying 2 CP to pass a morale test? Not everyone is imperial guard, with 17+ CP throughout the course of the game.

Saying marines never lose guys to morale is false. Deathwatch also suffer, because Kill Teams are generally better constructed as 10 mans for the ablative wounds.

 Galef wrote:
And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

The problem with this is - when you really dig down into it - what units should actually have fear?

Really it's just like...imperial gaurd and tau. Everyone else is ether a robot or a brainwashed zelot or at the very least - a veteran of 1000 battles.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Galef wrote:
And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

The problem with this is - when you really dig down into it - what units should actually have fear?

Really it's just like...imperial gaurd and tau. Everyone else is ether a robot or a brainwashed zelot or at the very least - a veteran of 1000 battles.

Thats why I say that Morale in 40k was always anti fluffy and a bad mechanic. They are trying to make it work here because Fantasy had morale and it was very important. But morale in fantasy makes a ton of sense. Here it doesn't.

One example: Greenskins in Fantasy, they are very prone to run for their lives once they start losing or the warboss dies. In 40k? Orks are biological bio weapons that will fight to the death and practically never run.

As you said, only Imperial Guard (Unless they are Cadians or 80% of the other regiments that are the best of the best humanity has to offer and always hold the line) or Tau would be really affected by morale.

 Galef wrote:
And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

You have to read the rules as an abstraction. Them failing a leadership test doesn't necessarily mean they are fleeing in terror. It could be more like thinking the battle is lost and doing a more tactical retreat or dragging a brother to safety in the middle of a battle. SM "fall back" or do "fighting retreats" all the times in books. Having no fear and standing in the same spot getting cut down by fire are different things

ATSKNF should just be roll 2 dice and pick the lowest.

Asmodios wrote:

 Galef wrote:
And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

You have to read the rules as an abstraction. Them failing a leadership test doesn't necessarily mean they are fleeing in terror. It could be more like thinking the battle is lost and doing a more tactical retreat or dragging a brother to safety in the middle of a battle. SM "fall back" or do "fighting retreats" all the times in books. Having no fear and standing in the same spot getting cut down by fire are different things

This is what the rulebook does such a bad job of explaining, but was talked over a fair bit when 8e was just coming out and the new mechanics of ld where revealed. Those Necrons aren’t running away, they’re teleporting out of the battlefield for repairs like the oldcron phase rules. Eldar and SM grab their fallen brethren to regroup and retreat, preparing for the next battle. Orks start hemorrhaging boyz not because they got scared but because some wandered off or got bored, making them no longer a force leveraged by the warboss. Morale has to be abstracted somewhat, but every faction has reasons for their troops losing even more manpower after suffering squad losses.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd just define it differently. Just define them as "Tactics". That way if you want to take a detachment of bikers for your Iron Hands but need to take the "White Scar" Tactics to make them work, cool do so. Make a list of tactics that facilitates the job of incentivizing a variety of detachment builds that combine to form an army and just don't assign it to a specific coat of paint. Then in the Chapter fluff sections, you can have at the top "Preferred Tactics" to give players an idea how they can build fluffy. That even gives you the option of listing multiple preferred tactics so that yes, you can do things like defining White Scars as a core of Tac marines that also include a detachment of Bikers or something like that.

then why even bother with this? chapter tactics aren't supposed to be a way to super charge and army but are a way to diffrentiate the army to represent various subfactions. which IMHO is where chapter tactics problem lies, it originated as a nice way to diffrentiate the various space marine chapters, chaos needed them as well but it swiftly got out of hand with 8th edition when EVERYONE got fething CT

 Crimson wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd just define it differently. Just define them as "Tactics". That way if you want to take a detachment of bikers for your Iron Hands but need to take the "White Scar" Tactics to make them work, cool do so. Make a list of tactics that facilitates the job of incentivizing a variety of detachment builds that combine to form an army and just don't assign it to a specific coat of paint. Then in the Chapter fluff sections, you can have at the top "Preferred Tactics" to give players an idea how they can build fluffy. That even gives you the option of listing multiple preferred tactics so that yes, you can do things like defining White Scars as a core of Tac marines that also include a detachment of Bikers or something like that.

Or you know, just get rid of the whole thing. It is just needless rule clutter. If certain units work best with certain special rules, then just give those units those rules as a default!

This.

Or do it like daemons manged to do for their gods: "If this unit has the WHITE SCARS keyword, it can still charge in turn it fell back and adds 2" to its advance moves."

BrianDavion wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd just define it differently. Just define them as "Tactics". That way if you want to take a detachment of bikers for your Iron Hands but need to take the "White Scar" Tactics to make them work, cool do so. Make a list of tactics that facilitates the job of incentivizing a variety of detachment builds that combine to form an army and just don't assign it to a specific coat of paint. Then in the Chapter fluff sections, you can have at the top "Preferred Tactics" to give players an idea how they can build fluffy. That even gives you the option of listing multiple preferred tactics so that yes, you can do things like defining White Scars as a core of Tac marines that also include a detachment of Bikers or something like that.

then why even bother with this? chapter tactics aren't supposed to be a way to super charge and army but are a way to diffrentiate the army to represent various subfactions. which IMHO is where chapter tactics problem lies, it originated as a nice way to diffrentiate the various space marine chapters, chaos needed them as well but it swiftly got out of hand with 8th edition when EVERYONE got fething CT

Why is that a bad thing? Between white scars and salamanders there are the same difference that there are between different craftworlds or different hive fleets.

Spoletta wrote:


Why is that a bad thing? Between white scars and salamanders there are the same difference that there are between different craftworlds or different hive fleets.

Those shouldn't have had the special rules either. It just doesn't work, one special rule set always end up being stronger than others and everyone will play that anyway or intentionally gimp themselves for fluff. I miss the time when marines were just marines and you could freely mix all the special characters (or your own versions of them, really) in one army.

 Crimson wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


Why is that a bad thing? Between white scars and salamanders there are the same difference that there are between different craftworlds or different hive fleets.

Those shouldn't have had the special rules either. It just doesn't work, one special rule set always end up being stronger than others and everyone will play that anyway or intentionally gimp themselves for fluff. I miss the time when marines were just marines and you could freely mix all the special characters (or your own versions of them, really) in one army.

Those days are gone, playing marines is going to become increasingly annoying I suspect as GW starts to push more fluff back into the game. Marines account for a significant proportion of the player base, the best way to sell more models is to force players to have multiple armies in different colours to meta chase.

Ice_can wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


Why is that a bad thing? Between white scars and salamanders there are the same difference that there are between different craftworlds or different hive fleets.

Those shouldn't have had the special rules either. It just doesn't work, one special rule set always end up being stronger than others and everyone will play that anyway or intentionally gimp themselves for fluff. I miss the time when marines were just marines and you could freely mix all the special characters (or your own versions of them, really) in one army.

Those days are gone, playing marines is going to become increasingly annoying I suspect as GW starts to push more fluff back into the game. Marines account for a significant proportion of the player base, the best way to sell more models is to force players to have multiple armies in different colours to meta chase.

I think it's simplier then that, in modern 40k parituclarly with the Horus Heresy etc, people are less "space marine fans" then "Imperial Fist" or "Ultramarines" etc fans. there's ALWAYS been an element of that but the various chap[ters and how they differ is seen as an important element of 40k. and people want that reflected in table top.

 Crimson wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


Why is that a bad thing? Between white scars and salamanders there are the same difference that there are between different craftworlds or different hive fleets.

Those shouldn't have had the special rules either. It just doesn't work, one special rule set always end up being stronger than others and everyone will play that anyway or intentionally gimp themselves for fluff. I miss the time when marines were just marines and you could freely mix all the special characters (or your own versions of them, really) in one army.

This is not necessarily true.

Nid fleets for example are quite balanced with each other, with Kraken being a bit better but with Leviathan, Kronos and Jormu seeing a lot of play.
Behemoth, hydra and Gorgon suffer a bit. This shows that it is possible to balance those traits, and when you do they shape a lot of the gameplay. Kraken lists play a lot differently than Jormu and Kronos.

Spoletta wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


Why is that a bad thing? Between white scars and salamanders there are the same difference that there are between different craftworlds or different hive fleets.

Those shouldn't have had the special rules either. It just doesn't work, one special rule set always end up being stronger than others and everyone will play that anyway or intentionally gimp themselves for fluff. I miss the time when marines were just marines and you could freely mix all the special characters (or your own versions of them, really) in one army.

This is not necessarily true.

Nid fleets for example are quite balanced with each other, with Kraken being a bit better but with Leviathan, Kronos and Jormu seeing a lot of play.
Behemoth, hydra and Gorgon suffer a bit. This shows that it is possible to balance those traits, and when you do they shape a lot of the gameplay. Kraken lists play a lot differently than Jormu and Kronos.

Behemoth is the Kraken of DSing melee, if multi-wound models were better on the table this would be the better choice.

IMO the Tyranids codex is one of the best balance codex (outside of a couple point costs MC's).

Nids are not balanced if you are considering tournaments. They have a win percentage on par with Space Marines. Knights and Custodes have really shut them out.

Most people run Kronos or Jormungandr now as the best Nid lists are shooting lists. Kraken is great for genestealers but paying marine prices for a 5+ save is a recipe for getting tabled.

Asmodios wrote:

 Galef wrote:
And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

You have to read the rules as an abstraction. Them failing a leadership test doesn't necessarily mean they are fleeing in terror. It could be more like thinking the battle is lost and doing a more tactical retreat or dragging a brother to safety in the middle of a battle. SM "fall back" or do "fighting retreats" all the times in books. Having no fear and standing in the same spot getting cut down by fire are different things

GW is damned if they do, damned if they don't. 7th ed and complain was marines ignoring morale. Now complain is they don't ignore morale. GW makes ATSKNF ignore morale and it will be complained anyway. Quite likely by same crowd for added fun.

tneva82 wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

 Galef wrote:
And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

You have to read the rules as an abstraction. Them failing a leadership test doesn't necessarily mean they are fleeing in terror. It could be more like thinking the battle is lost and doing a more tactical retreat or dragging a brother to safety in the middle of a battle. SM "fall back" or do "fighting retreats" all the times in books. Having no fear and standing in the same spot getting cut down by fire are different things

GW is damned if they do, damned if they don't. 7th ed and complain was marines ignoring morale. Now complain is they don't ignore morale. GW makes ATSKNF ignore morale and it will be complained anyway. Quite likely by same crowd for added fun.

Very true words. Literally anything GW could do, there's someone here who'd start a thread complaining about it. And it would probably go to 30 pages

 Marmatag wrote:
Nids are not balanced if you are considering tournaments. They have a win percentage on par with Space Marines. Knights and Custodes have really shut them out.

Most people run Kronos or Jormungandr now as the best Nid lists are shooting lists. Kraken is great for genestealers but paying marine prices for a 5+ save is a recipe for getting tabled.

Well the problem is that Tournaments themselves are extremely biased, having limited time and almost never going full 5+ rounds and having no or very little long term objectives completely hurts many armies and army types, then you have scored like what ITC does where killing characters is worth a point, killing large units is worth a point, etc... making people want to build lists to ignore those extra VP's.

You can not and should not say an army is or isnt balanced based on tournament standings, you can calculated some fairness and see if some units are extremely unbalanced, but over all its impossible.

And you shoudnt look at win percent without some type of curve base on number of armies taken. The win/lost rate might be worst only b.c more players are moving away from tyranids and we dont have a real sample size, with less players 1 bad player will skew it heavily compare to 100 imperial players.


Why do i think Tyranids is the more balanced codex? B.c out of all the codex's Tyranids has the most playable Traits, you see players using Jorm, Behemoth, Leviathan, Kronos, Kraken, you see Horde lists, you see Nidzilia lists, you see Shooting and Melee ones, what other MONO Codex do you see with that much diversity?

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Nids are not balanced if you are considering tournaments. They have a win percentage on par with Space Marines. Knights and Custodes have really shut them out.

Most people run Kronos or Jormungandr now as the best Nid lists are shooting lists. Kraken is great for genestealers but paying marine prices for a 5+ save is a recipe for getting tabled.

Well the problem is that Tournaments themselves are extremely biased, having limited time and almost never going full 5+ rounds and having no or very little long term objectives completely hurts many armies and army types, then you have scored like what ITC does where killing characters is worth a point, killing large units is worth a point, etc... making people want to build lists to ignore those extra VP's.

You can not and should not say an army is or isnt balanced based on tournament standings, you can calculated some fairness and see if some units are extremely unbalanced, but over all its impossible.

And you shoudnt look at win percent without some type of curve base on number of armies taken. The win/lost rate might be worst only b.c more players are moving away from tyranids and we dont have a real sample size, with less players 1 bad player will skew it heavily compare to 100 imperial players.


Why do i think Tyranids is the more balanced codex? B.c out of all the codex's Tyranids has the most playable Traits, you see players using Jorm, Behemoth, Leviathan, Kronos, Kraken, you see Horde lists, you see Nidzilia lists, you see Shooting and Melee ones, what other MONO Codex do you see with that much diversity?

All of my games end in a tabling /concession or go to turn 6. This is the norm for players at this point, as people have adapted to chess clocks.

The sample size is all ITC games in tournaments for the past 3 months. It's a huge sample size.

And honestly Nids aren't a late game army due to lack in durability. If games ended on turn 4 then Nids would be god mode. Ending early helps them, should you end early.

I agree Tyranids are in a decent place. You don't see quite as much of them at the top level because they aren't broken, which if anything is a sign of balance!

Even the rarely seen poorer units aren't generally that bad when compared to the worst of other armies. Take Lictors, they're a bit underwhelming. Then you remember they're the same cost as a Terminator and I start weeping for my Deathwing :-(

tneva82 wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

 Galef wrote:
And the rule is "And they shall know NO fear" not "And they shall know fear only some of the time, but not usually"

You have to read the rules as an abstraction. Them failing a leadership test doesn't necessarily mean they are fleeing in terror. It could be more like thinking the battle is lost and doing a more tactical retreat or dragging a brother to safety in the middle of a battle. SM "fall back" or do "fighting retreats" all the times in books. Having no fear and standing in the same spot getting cut down by fire are different things

GW is damned if they do, damned if they don't. 7th ed and complain was marines ignoring morale. Now complain is they don't ignore morale. GW makes ATSKNF ignore morale and it will be complained anyway. Quite likely by same crowd for added fun.

I imagine if marines weren't so easy to kill, losing some from morale (however it is abstracted) wouldn't be a concern.

As it stands, marines die easy. Being immune to morale serves to reduce the natural attrition marine units face when they get shot at, but it honestly shouldn't be THE solution. Marines should just be far more durable than they are now.

Hopefully Primaris is the answer, eventually. Probably need a 40k version of the Transhuman Physiology rule in Kill Team before that realistically starts to happen, though.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Nids are not balanced if you are considering tournaments. They have a win percentage on par with Space Marines. Knights and Custodes have really shut them out.

Most people run Kronos or Jormungandr now as the best Nid lists are shooting lists. Kraken is great for genestealers but paying marine prices for a 5+ save is a recipe for getting tabled.

Well the problem is that Tournaments themselves are extremely biased, having limited time and almost never going full 5+ rounds and having no or very little long term objectives completely hurts many armies and army types, then you have scored like what ITC does where killing characters is worth a point, killing large units is worth a point, etc... making people want to build lists to ignore those extra VP's.

You can not and should not say an army is or isnt balanced based on tournament standings, you can calculated some fairness and see if some units are extremely unbalanced, but over all its impossible.

And you shoudnt look at win percent without some type of curve base on number of armies taken. The win/lost rate might be worst only b.c more players are moving away from tyranids and we dont have a real sample size, with less players 1 bad player will skew it heavily compare to 100 imperial players.


Why do i think Tyranids is the more balanced codex? B.c out of all the codex's Tyranids has the most playable Traits, you see players using Jorm, Behemoth, Leviathan, Kronos, Kraken, you see Horde lists, you see Nidzilia lists, you see Shooting and Melee ones, what other MONO Codex do you see with that much diversity?

All of my games end in a tabling /concession or go to turn 6. This is the norm for players at this point, as people have adapted to chess clocks.

The sample size is all ITC games in tournaments for the past 3 months. It's a huge sample size.

And honestly Nids aren't a late game army due to lack in durability. If games ended on turn 4 then Nids would be god mode. Ending early helps them, should you end early.

I never said Nids are a late game army, i said other armies are not meta due to there is no late game.

And you didnt answer me, what other armies has the diversity as nids? You dont see 10 different SM list, or IG ones, its all the same 3-4 lists with 1-2 units that are different.

Balance also doesnt mean OP and win every game, if every army was actually balanced then all armies has the same win ratio, clearly you dont know what balance means since you are looking at tournaments where luck is the biggest factor in a GT... "Did you take Meta A list? Did your 1st opponent take Anti-Meta A list? No? Good you win, yes? Oh look you lost" Or "Did you and your opponent both take the same list? Oh he went first? GG you lost"