NurglesR0T wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:


Or forcing people to have a dice roll to see if they can exit combat... Not this automatic retreat. The opponent should have an opportunity to deal with your opponent trying to exit combat.

It is really bizarre that in order to assault you need to roll the dice to see whether you succeed and then the enemy gets to shoot you, but you can leave from the close combat automatically and with no risk at all. At minimum there should a CC equivalent of overwatch where the enemy gets to hit you but hits only on sixes.

I think leaving combat should come with two conditions:

You must roll equal to or lower than your highest leadership in the unit.

If you roll under your LD you get away, no problem.
If you roll equal to your LD, you get away, but the unit suffers D3 mortal wounds.
If you roll above your LD, you are locked in combat for this turn.

It's simple, easy to use and doesn't complicate the game in any fashion.

How would this factor in with a vast majority of units being LD 7 and higher? I like the idea behind it, I definitely think there should be some sort of draw back or chance of failure to trying to retreat

 Ishagu wrote:
Marines suffer for two reasons:

-Generalist design philosophy
-Shared across multiple factions and Codecies

Generalist units simply don't function outside of small scale or skirmish games. Marine units fail to specialise in any purpose and thus fail to excel in anything. The army can have a balanced, general approach but that doesn't mean each unit has to - thankfully Primaris have started a clean slate and have rectified this. Intercessors are designed to engage light infantry and hold objectives. Hellblasters are designed purely for putting out damage against elite units in the shooting phase. Inceptors are designed to arrive from reserve and instantly put the hurt out, etc

Finally we have some effective units, and the future expansion of the range will plug the holes in the Primaris capability.

Going back to my second point: it has become very difficult to balance or rebalance the range. Are Las Cannon Devastators a bit rubbish? Perhaps they are. Too bad you can't change their statline because it means you'd need to change every other unit in the book. Same with the weapons - it's hard to balance a Las Cannon in a situation where making it stronger would lead to spam across multiple units. Look at Primaris - each unit has a unique weapon and a unique armour in most cases! It means you can change the weapon if it's too strong or too weak without affecting anything else in the book.

Now we hit another problem. If you make Marines better in terms of stats this has a huge impact across multiple factions. Take a Plague Marine - this is literally a Space Marine who's empowered further by the power of Chaos. If you make a regular Marine T5 with 2 wounds that means a Plague Marine must now be T6 with 2 wounds? Suddenly it becomes a mess that needs to address a minimum of 8 books.

Thank the Lord for the clean slate that is Primaris. Some haters will complain, but a few years from now we'll all be glad.

 Ishagu wrote:
Because that's not the design philosophy of how the classic Astartes operate.

And it's clear for all to see that there is a connection between Astartes and their +1 Chaotic counterparts.

As for Guard I will concede that GW has failed to price cheaper horde units appropriately and has created a value imbalance between the disposable and the elite. This needs to be addressed more than most things.

 Elbows wrote:
A couple of things on the Scorpions which can make them very slightly "okay", but still sub-par when it comes to tournaments perhaps.

1) The Exarchs claw does not suffer a -1 to hit (so he can get exploding attacks)
2) The biting blade is now cheaper, where before it was so close to the claw, but worse...it was illogical
3) The Striking Scorpions gain +1 to hit vs. enemies in cover, and it doesn't state shooting or melee...so you'd have 2+ to shoot and fight vs. models in cover (re-rolling 1's on the Shuriken Pistol if you have Biel-Tan craftworld)
4) The mortal wound mask occurs each fighting phase, not just yours. While '6's are rough...occasionally you're going to luck out and roll those 3-4 sixes and kill dead something decent.
5) They're now better priced (almost cheap)

A squad of 10 is around 115 points or so, which is reasonable, but they're just not a "power" unit. If anything, I think they're now one of the most accurately statted and costed units - meaning, of course, they fall under all of the over-effective units.

EDIT: I will agree that another squad of Scorpions is definitely better than Karandras, one of the less well equipped Phoenix Lords (though he's still cool and I look forward to fielding him again sometime). Even with reductions, Phoenix Lords are still in a bad spot.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
A couple of things on the Scorpions which can make them very slightly "okay", but still sub-par when it comes to tournaments perhaps.

1) The Exarchs claw does not suffer a -1 to hit (so he can get exploding attacks)
2) The biting blade is now cheaper, where before it was so close to the claw, but worse...it was illogical
3) The Striking Scorpions gain +1 to hit vs. enemies in cover, and it doesn't state shooting or melee...so you'd have 2+ to shoot and fight vs. models in cover (re-rolling 1's on the Shuriken Pistol if you have Biel-Tan craftworld)
4) The mortal wound mask occurs each fighting phase, not just yours. While '6's are rough...occasionally you're going to luck out and roll those 3-4 sixes and kill dead something decent.
5) They're now better priced (almost cheap)

A squad of 10 is around 115 points or so, which is reasonable, but they're just not a "power" unit. If anything, I think they're now one of the most accurately statted and costed units - meaning, of course, they fall under all of the over-effective units.

EDIT: I will agree that another squad of Scorpions is definitely better than Karandras, one of the less well equipped Phoenix Lords (though he's still cool and I look forward to fielding him again sometime). Even with reductions, Phoenix Lords are still in a bad spot.

Even with those additions, I'd go a step further and give them their damn regular Infiltration back.

 Asherian Command wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
A couple of things on the Scorpions which can make them very slightly "okay", but still sub-par when it comes to tournaments perhaps.

1) The Exarchs claw does not suffer a -1 to hit (so he can get exploding attacks)
2) The biting blade is now cheaper, where before it was so close to the claw, but worse...it was illogical
3) The Striking Scorpions gain +1 to hit vs. enemies in cover, and it doesn't state shooting or melee...so you'd have 2+ to shoot and fight vs. models in cover (re-rolling 1's on the Shuriken Pistol if you have Biel-Tan craftworld)
4) The mortal wound mask occurs each fighting phase, not just yours. While '6's are rough...occasionally you're going to luck out and roll those 3-4 sixes and kill dead something decent.
5) They're now better priced (almost cheap)

A squad of 10 is around 115 points or so, which is reasonable, but they're just not a "power" unit. If anything, I think they're now one of the most accurately statted and costed units - meaning, of course, they fall under all of the over-effective units.

EDIT: I will agree that another squad of Scorpions is definitely better than Karandras, one of the less well equipped Phoenix Lords (though he's still cool and I look forward to fielding him again sometime). Even with reductions, Phoenix Lords are still in a bad spot.

Even with those additions, I'd go a step further and give them their damn regular Infiltration back.

They already do. They can set up 9inches away from enemy units.

Generalist units simply don't function outside of small scale or skirmish games. Marine units fail to specialise in any purpose and thus fail to excel in anything.

 Ishagu wrote:
Marines suffer for two reasons:

-Generalist design philosophy
-Shared across multiple factions and Codecies

Generalist units simply don't function outside of small scale or skirmish games. Marine units fail to specialise in any purpose and thus fail to excel in anything. The army can have a balanced, general approach but that doesn't mean each unit has to - thankfully Primaris have started a clean slate and have rectified this. Intercessors are designed to engage light infantry and hold objectives. Hellblasters are designed purely for putting out damage against elite units in the shooting phase. Inceptors are designed to arrive from reserve and instantly put the hurt out, etc

Finally we have some effective units, and the future expansion of the range will plug the holes in the Primaris capability.

Going back to my second point: it has become very difficult to balance or rebalance the range. Are Las Cannon Devastators a bit rubbish? Perhaps they are. Too bad you can't change their statline because it means you'd need to change every other unit in the book. Same with the weapons - it's hard to balance a Las Cannon in a situation where making it stronger would lead to spam across multiple units. Look at Primaris - each unit has a unique weapon and a unique armour in most cases! It means you can change the weapon if it's too strong or too weak without affecting anything else in the book.

Now we hit another problem. If you make Marines better in terms of stats this has a huge impact across multiple factions. Take a Plague Marine - this is literally a Space Marine who's empowered further by the power of Chaos. If you make a regular Marine T5 with 2 wounds that means a Plague Marine must now be T6 with 2 wounds? Suddenly it becomes a mess that needs to address a minimum of 8 books.

Thank the Lord for the clean slate that is Primaris. Some haters will complain, but a few years from now we'll all be glad.

 admironheart wrote:
from 2nd edition on I always thought that Heavy weapons were meant to take down big targets....no infantry.

What would happen if battlecannons, Frak Missiles, Lascanons, etc ....things meant to take down dreadnoughts, vehicles, etc. ALL got a minus to hit when targeting small mobile infantry?

-2 to hit a tac marine with a lascanon, -1 to hit a terminator, normal modifiers to hit a massive land raider.

Seems Marines would then be subject to smaller arms weapons and the 3+ saves would go further.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
...With something like that in place...heavy bolters would be a serious consideration. Do I take 10 lascannons or 10 heavy bolters...or should I just take 5 of each?

pelicaniforce wrote:
40k ports lots of its stats and dice rules from WHFB. Problem is the actual gameplay of fantasy was about block units doing wheel moves and flank charges, and they didn’t replace that with a shooting version which probably would have been pinning. As a result it’s just dice rolling and that’s why specialist units work better.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I really hate the -1 to hit mechanic especially if it could be abused as it is currently with almost every faction that has it.

If anything it should give a +1 to save.

 vipoid wrote:
The issue with 40k is that there's rarely any value in even having infantry. What exactly does infantry do that makes them worth taking?

Outside of a few exceptions, infantry are basically just tanks - except slower and with significantly worse armour and firepower. There's basically nothing they can do that can't be done just as well (and usually much better) by vehicles or monsters. And please don't give me any crap about Objective Secured. Objective Secured is utterly worthless when your troops are smeared across the battlefield because you were stupid enough to bring infantry to a Mechwarrior fight.

What's more, infantry are almost always hampered by having to take garbage weapons on most members - which are useless against everything but infantry, and still pretty poor even then.

It's compounded even more by the fact that GW adamantly refuses to give most large models weaknesses. In virtually every case, they're vastly more durable than infantry and have vastly more firepower, but then they compound that by also being drastically more mobile. You have Imperial Knights that move at the same speed as Dark Eldar Raiders. Again, what is even the point of infantry? If Knights and such were at least slow, then they might need infantry to support them and go forward to capture objectives and such. But when Knights travel at the speed of Anime-Mechas, why would anyone bother?

Even IG Infantry Squads - probably the best infantry in the game at present - still only get used as a cheap way to generate CP, in order to fuel the Knights and such to actually do the legwork. Anything the infantry do on the battlefield after that is basically just a bonus.

If you want Space Marines to be worthwhile, then the first thing that needs to change is for Infantry to stop being treated as nothing more than target-practise for Knights. They need a meaningful role. Either go back to 5th and make it that only troops can capture objectives, or else give troops a way to punch above their weight class (at least under certain circumstances).

 Charistoph wrote:
the
amount of WHFB is considerably less in 40K today than it was a couple years ago in 7th Edition. It's been rather needed, and I think that it has progressed in a good direction. Now, if they could just be better focused on making the game balanced and work without more pages in the errata than rules, we'll be starting to cook with something more than cow pies.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 admironheart wrote:
from 2nd edition on I always thought that Heavy weapons were meant to take down big targets....no infantry.

What would happen if battlecannons, Frak Missiles, Lascanons, etc ....things meant to take down dreadnoughts, vehicles, etc. ALL got a minus to hit when targeting small mobile infantry?

-2 to hit a tac marine with a lascanon, -1 to hit a terminator, normal modifiers to hit a massive land raider.

Seems Marines would then be subject to smaller arms weapons and the 3+ saves would go further.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
...With something like that in place...heavy bolters would be a serious consideration. Do I take 10 lascannons or 10 heavy bolters...or should I just take 5 of each?

On top of further restructuring, ideally "going to ground" should induce a -1 to hit with infantry but take up their action for that turn, being in cover should be a -1 to hit, and trying to shoot infantry with a dedicated anti-tank heavy weapon like a lascannon or bright lance should also incur a -1 to hit.

pelicaniforce wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
the amount of WHFB is considerably less in 40K today than it was a couple years ago in 7th Edition. It's been rather needed, and I think that it has progressed in a good direction. Now, if they could just be better focused on making the game balanced and work without more pages in the errata than rules, we'll be starting to cook with something more than cow pies.

The game in WHFB was getting people out of position via the march moves and facing rules. 40k doesn’t have any analogue, where’s the analoguentonthat?

pelicaniforce wrote:
40k ports lots of its stats and dice rules from WHFB. Problem is the actual gameplay of fantasy was about block units doing wheel moves and flank charges, and they didn’t replace that with a shooting version which probably would have been pinning. As a result it’s just dice rolling and that’s why specialist units work better.

pelicaniforce wrote:
You’re exactly right Charistoph, what’s not being discussed is that while 40k has had a variety of changes in the way it rolls dice, it has always lacked mechanisms for maneuver and board control that similar games do have. Space marines are great at maneuver warfare, so where is the maneuver mechanic 40k, and isn’t it terrible that the discussion is so distracted by more talk about dice rolling?

 Togusa wrote:
I think leaving combat should come with two conditions:

You must roll equal to or lower than your highest leadership in the unit.

If you roll under your LD you get away, no problem.
If you roll equal to your LD, you get away, but the unit suffers D3 mortal wounds.
If you roll above your LD, you are locked in combat for this turn.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
I really hate the -1 to hit mechanic especially if it could be abused as it is currently with almost every faction that has it.

If anything it should give a +1 to save.

No, the save mechanic is dumb and doesn't make a lick of sense. Cover doesn't increase your armor because cover makes you harder to hit, not increasing your durability. And using cover should simply be countered with auto-hitting/minimal scatter template weapons, grenades, or just suppressing the crap out of the respective unit to effectively neutralize via pinning. The issue is that you're still looking at things with a 40k lense, and not looking at how to fix 40k by abandoning its fairly crappy conditions. Because let's face it, 40k under the traditional mechanics is never improving. The game is never going to improve from endless cycles of terrible-ness and imbalance because the game devs don't give a gak about the game. These past editions it's marines that have been anemic and weak, and next edition it will be somebody else. And so-on and so-forth. If you want to really improve things, that means abandoning GW madness such as sub-faction traits.

 Blackie wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
I really hate the -1 to hit mechanic especially if it could be abused as it is currently with almost every faction that has it.

If anything it should give a +1 to save.

No, the save mechanic is dumb and doesn't make a lick of sense. Cover doesn't increase your armor because cover makes you harder to hit, not increasing your durability. And using cover should simply be countered with auto-hitting/minimal scatter template weapons, grenades, or just suppressing the crap out of the respective unit to effectively neutralize via pinning. The issue is that you're still looking at things with a 40k lense, and not looking at how to fix 40k by abandoning its fairly crappy conditions. Because let's face it, 40k under the traditional mechanics is never improving. The game is never going to improve from endless cycles of terrible-ness and imbalance because the game devs don't give a gak about the game. These past editions it's marines that have been anemic and weak, and next edition it will be somebody else. And so-on and so-forth. If you want to really improve things, that means abandoning GW madness such as sub-faction traits.

The -1 to hit as a free chapter trait is broken, something that should never existed. Orks Blood Axes, which are supposed to be sneaky and invisible, get +1 to their save if they're shot from distance. Not a -1 to hit for free. A -1 to hit granted by psychic power or stratagem, or because the specific unit is supposed to be super fast or able to dodge bullets, makes more sense.

 Wyzilla wrote:


Like I said, sub-faction traits are dumb and shouldn't exist either. They increase complexity needlessly while adding more to balance and will always have a "best" option. Remove the -1 to hit traits and another chapter/culture/craftworld/etc becomes the best option. Best to just throw it all out and return to choosing units that fit the fluff of your army if you want to go that route, and viciously curbing the ability to make optimized lists resulting in units being relegated as "non-viable".

 Wyzilla wrote:
The issue is just that at its core the 40k game is completely and utterly fethed. The balance between infantry/vehicles is basically nonexistent, there's a ton of mechanics that just don't make a lick of sense, and a lot of the new rules neither reduce the playtime or make the game simpler as was advertised. Blast templates were easy, and all they needed to fix them was to simply reduce or remove scattering altogether- instead we now have d6 hit mechanics that take even more time. Marine infantry wasn't stupendous in prior editions as mentioned, but at least there was transport and sweeping advance rules to give them an edge over your basic guardsmen squad. That's all gone now, and instead we have a terrible edition of poorly implemented mechanics that weren't thought out well - coupled with bizarre religious adherence to statlines even though the limits to strength and toughness have been removed. And keeping the asinine turn system that encourages "shot off the board syndrome", where you either have enough cover to protect your army or expect to lose a significant chunk on the first shooting phase.

If you want to improve marines, you need to improve 40k so there's actual tactics for heavy and elite infantry compared to the standard gameplay of just pushing up the table with blobs of units trying to screen as much fire as possible for your deathstar(s), a concept that also needs to be taken outside and shot once and for all. I wouldn't opt for just stat increases, but completely and utterly changing the wargame to add deep mechanics for both infantry and vehicles while also speeding things up for gameplay's sake (such as minimal/no scatter templates). Add suppression mechanics to infantry, make dedicated AT weapons suffer minuses to hit against infantry targets, bring back things like sweeping advances to quickly resolve melee combat, mandate heavy use of terrain in the rules themselves, and use alternating unit turns to prevent one person just activating all of their units and blowing units clean off the table. All elite infantry such as Space Marines, Custodes, and Aspect squads should be a pain in the ass to kill without using the proper tools for the job, and inferior infantry units such as guardsmen shouldn't be able to outshoot them on a per-points basis.

Cause it's not just Marines. Aspect Warriors, Custodes, warriors, etc are all gak units with no place on the table in a game that caters mostly to superheavies and blobs of infantry where "tactics" consist of merely spamming shots and managing auras. GW keeps creeping the scale forward and shoving more Epic units in without giving a single damn as to how it'll effect the meta, and doesn't seem to care about game design either really. It's just about getting people to field expensive blobs of infantry and superheavies now to be pushed on and off the table with a broom as people dump bucketloads of dice that take forever to count hits. At this point the community either needs to make its own rules or just switch to kill team, because there's probably no improving 40k for there to even be a place for elite armies at this point.

 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
WTF? If guard can't outshoot SM, and they certainly should not out-fight them, what's the point of even having them. Of course Guard should always out-shoot SM! That's what they do!

Guard =/= basic infantry squad. Basic infantry should be cannon fodder whose primary role is to set up camp somewhere (preferably on an objective) and die so that something more important doesn't. The IG units that should be out-shooting marines are the veterans, tanks, etc.