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Straken is more expensive than a CC by more than the cost of a squad.

Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player. Imagine you had a re-roll bot that costed 200pts or more.

It costs almost as much as a squad.

You mean that undercosted IG squads that could easily cost 1-2 pts more and people would still be running them? To me it seems like you are getting them for free with how efficient everything else in the IG codex is.

In any case: HQs aren't free, even if they're mandatory. You still have to pay points for them, and everything is supposed to pull its weight for the points. If Marine HQs are a straight tax, then that's something that needs to be addressed as well.

When they are costed like the IG ones, then they may as well be free. Even the high cost one like the tank commander are just an super upgraded Lemman Russ. An HQ has a real cost, when taking it stops you from taking important stuff in your army. For IG taking their HQs means they just don't take the extra squads of dudes, they get thanks to being undercosted.

Karol wrote:
Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player.

Karol wrote:
undercosted IG squads

Karol wrote:
When they are costed like the IG ones

I wonder how many times I'll need to say 'Guardsmen and Straken are both undercosted' for people to actually read the point I'm making before leaping straight to 'BUT THEY'RE TOO CHEAP'.

Karol wrote:

Straken is more expensive than a CC by more than the cost of a squad.

Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player. Imagine you had a re-roll bot that costed 200pts or more.

It costs almost as much as a squad.

You mean that undercosted IG squads that could easily cost 1-2 pts more and people would still be running them? To me it seems like you are getting them for free with how efficient everything else in the IG codex is.

In any case: HQs aren't free, even if they're mandatory. You still have to pay points for them, and everything is supposed to pull its weight for the points. If Marine HQs are a straight tax, then that's something that needs to be addressed as well.

When they are costed like the IG ones, then they may as well be free. Even the high cost one like the tank commander are just an super upgraded Lemman Russ. An HQ has a real cost, when taking it stops you from taking important stuff in your army. For IG taking their HQs means they just don't take the extra squads of dudes, they get thanks to being undercosted.

Go back to the last site and reread it's content, that or just stop.
Also they are not free, so don't even spew that.

They are free if your squads are undercosted. If the cost of your support units can be covered by the difference between the cost of what your units cost and what they should really cost, then you are getting them for free. IG the way they are costed right now are playing with more points then other armies, and that it is before we add stuff like hordes being much better then elite units.

Karol wrote:

Straken is more expensive than a CC by more than the cost of a squad.

Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player. Imagine you had a re-roll bot that costed 200pts or more.

Straken is not a reroll bot, he's a Company Commander that gives +1 attack to nearby Catachan Guardsmen and comes with a CC weapon. Comparing Straken to the 200pt reroll bots out there, they generally will outfight Straken in CC something like 5 or 8 or 10 wounds to 1 (looking at Primaris Calgar for instance) head to head, and their reroll abilities affect everything within 6" not just specific kinds of infantry units. Very different things with different roles and different utility.

When they are costed like the IG ones, then they may as well be free. Even the high cost one like the tank commander are just an super upgraded Lemman Russ. An HQ has a real cost, when taking it stops you from taking important stuff in your army. For IG taking their HQs means they just don't take the extra squads of dudes, they get thanks to being undercosted.

While Tank Commanders absolutely should not have been reduced to 142pts base, the Company Commanders generally are about the same price they have always been over the preceding 3 editions editions and a decade's worth of time now, the only difference is that they're just not tied to command squads that also have to be purchased and subsequently qiven a quartet of plasma guns. In 5E a Company Commander was effectively 26pts, 36pts in 6E/7E, and now they're right in the middle at 30pts.

"They are free if your squads are undercosted."
By that logic, GK are fine because they can be in armies with Guardsmen, which are undercosted.

It's a bad form of logic and won't get us anywhere productive.

Motion to rename the thread "The 4pt Guardsman Problem" to better reflect the discussion's actual content.

the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

"The great edition-long marine wallow" would be a title that would accurately describe the thread content.

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Well tac marines suck at everything - so it's true - they suck even in the context of marines vs marines. Devs are top teir in the marine codex though and they are in power armor.

Their issues are obvious - they pay for protection and they are really very unprotected. They pay for stats they can't use. The only solution is to reduce their price drastically or give them actually good stats.

In a game where you have 9 point wracks running around with 4++ saves. Harlie bikers running around with 3 W and a 4++ save and DW vets can get a 3++ save for 2 points. I think it is very clear that marines at their current price should probably have 4++ saves at the very minimum.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Mostly because the IG players are having just as much of a lack of awareness as the Eldar players stereotypically are.

At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was.

To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Mostly because the IG players are having just as much of a lack of awareness as the Eldar players stereotypically are.

At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was.

7th eddtion was a joke. The more I think about 7th the more I realize this. Deathstars make 7th ed a complete skipped eddition for balance concepts. Do you know how useless a unit like the Castellan would be in 7th eddition if it were dummbed down to 7th eddition stat levels? What good would that do against invisible deathstars or D weapons? LOL. Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong compared to the stuff that came after it like...riptide wings/demonic incursion/or ynnari. Just forget about 7th. Easily the worst edition of this game. This eddition at least has promise. Just needs a few tweeks and rules writters to stop playing army favorites.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Mostly because the IG players are having just as much of a lack of awareness as the Eldar players stereotypically are.

At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was.

EDIT: Most everyone will acknowledge issues with the IG codex. That said, again, IG are not the cause of SM issues, yet that seems to be what the thread keeps focusing on.

IG could be removed from the game and the situation for Power Armor marines wouldn't change, they would still be seen as subpar units in need of assistance. Even if we stripped the game down to just Marine armies alone, most of the basic power armor infantry units arent going to impress people.

I don't think that is an inaccurate statement. There are larger issues with the game and power armor codex books that do this.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Just forget about 7th. Easily the worst edition of this game.

100% concur with this. 7E was a disaster for 40k and by far my worst experience with this hobby.

"At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was."
<Citation needed>

All the "Marines are trash" threads at the time?
"Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong"?

Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Ice_can wrote:
To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Firewarriors and ork boys are top tier dude. It's hard to even come up with a middle of the road infantry. It's probably something like a scion.

"IG could be removed from the game and the situation for Power Armor marines wouldn't change"
Mostly agree. But how do you specify what you compare them to?

For as long as I've been at DakkaDakka, Marines have been continuously decried as one of the worst troops in the game. This is the closest we've gotten. But how would you rank troops?

Here's a rough breakdown of where I'd put a handful of current troops, best to worst:

Guardsmen
AdMech Rangers
Kabs
Fire Warriors

Rangers
SM Scouts
Guardian Defenders
Dire Avengers
Tac Marines
Necron Warriors

Strike Squads
Storm Guardians

So, remove Guardsmen, and Marines are clearly still bottom-half. But about half the troops here are reasonably balanced against Tac Marines (or were pre-CA, at least). There are even a couple that make Tacs look good.

A takeway I've been seeing for a while is there are two main "tiers" of troops - with half of them balanced around the current Guardsmen's level, and the other half balanced around the Marine's level.

A big problem with this is that there's no one fix. Fix any one unit in comparision to any one other unit, and you've just either made it trash compared to half the units out there, or made it OP compared to the other half of the units out there.

I seem to require this disclaimer in every post: I'm not saying Marines are OP. I agree they're in a bad spot. Further, I'm not claiming Space Elves are not OP. Please stop reading everything I write as that.

The removal of the Loyal 32 would significantly shake the meta though.

What about adding some weapons that give you an increased armour save? Like, a Heavy 20 Frag Missile with +1AP (Marines save on 2+, Guardsmen on 4+ etc.)? Such a weapon would kill slightly less than 5 points of Marine per shot (assuming BS3+) but around 8 points of Guardsman (ibid.). It'd do the same amount of Wounds to a Knight or a Terminator as to a Marine, but that wouldn't matter too much since it'd be lousy at damaging any of them compared to a Krak missile anyway.

Bharring wrote:
"At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was."
<Citation needed>

All the "Marines are trash" threads at the time?
"Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong"?

Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Gladius was OP for like a few months before the next busted rules in 7.5 came out. Get real dude. What is gladius compared to Ynnari? Why are you so butt hurt about gladius? Had you ever seen an invisible wraithknight backed up by huge squads of scatterbikes? Give me a break man. Marines were barely breaking even with Gladius.

"Why are you so butt hurt about gladius?"
My problem is how inaccurately things get remembered. Gladius was hardly the *only* OP gak Marines got. In 7th alone, they had:
-ObSec Spam at the start of the edition
-GravBikes
-CentStars
-SuperBestFriends
-Gladius
-Skyhammer

Yet Marines were still rabidly claimed to be "trash tier" that whole edition. How can we reasonably discuss how badly Marines are doing now, or discuss what would actually need to change, if people mouth off about how bad Marines have it even when they were on top?

None of this is to say Marines were the book that was the most OP the most often. That's clearly been CWE.

I'm not hurt over Gladius. I'm trying to fix the revisionist history that is so rampant with Marines in general.

The whole "Marines got how OP Gladius was" is funny, when the next post is a rabid "But it wasn't OP" post. And is totally at odds with the contemporary threads of the time.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Firewarriors and ork boys are top tier dude. It's hard to even come up with a middle of the road infantry. It's probably something like a scion.

I was trying to stick to actually used units, scions are a bit difficult to use as a balance point as they have native deepstrike, it's abit like rangers or scouts. The special rules as they are, are difficult to cost.

Bharring wrote:
"IG could be removed from the game and the situation for Power Armor marines wouldn't change"
Mostly agree. But how do you specify what you compare them to?

For as long as I've been at DakkaDakka, Marines have been continuously decried as one of the worst troops in the game. This is the closest we've gotten. But how would you rank troops?

Here's a rough breakdown of where I'd put a handful of current troops, best to worst:

Guardsmen
AdMech Rangers
Kabs
Fire Warriors

Rangers
SM Scouts
Guardian Defenders
Dire Avengers
Tac Marines
Necron Warriors

Strike Squads
Storm Guardians

So, remove Guardsmen, and Marines are clearly still bottom-half. But about half the troops here are reasonably balanced against Tac Marines (or were pre-CA, at least). There are even a couple that make Tacs look good.

A takeway I've been seeing for a while is there are two main "tiers" of troops - with half of them balanced around the current Guardsmen's level, and the other half balanced around the Marine's level.

A big problem with this is that there's no one fix. Fix any one unit in comparision to any one other unit, and you've just either made it trash compared to half the units out there, or made it OP compared to the other half of the units out there.

yeah, theres a lot of weirdness around costing. With the scale of the game increasingly stretching as character statlines bloat and stuff like Superheavies are increasingly integral, this runs into additional issues. What may be a balanced betwern various Troops units falls apart when the rest of the game collectively just doesn't care about their distinctions because the scale has bloated too much.

But yeah, there does seem to be at least a couple different pricing paradigms at work, though its hard to see any particular game design or marketing thread for it.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
"At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was."
<Citation needed>

All the "Marines are trash" threads at the time?
"Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong"?

Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Gladius was OP for like a few months before the next busted rules in 7.5 came out. Get real dude. What is gladius compared to Ynnari? Why are you so butt hurt about gladius? Had you ever seen an invisible wraithknight backed up by huge squads of scatterbikes? Give me a break man. Marines were barely breaking even with Gladius.

As an eldar / and tau player myself in 7th. Gladius marines were not that great in comparison to ether of those armies. It's like you are blind in a temporal sense. It's like you think marines are OP in 8th because they got the first codex. 7th edition as a whole. Marines were decidedly middle tier out of the codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Firewarriors and ork boys are top tier dude. It's hard to even come up with a middle of the road infantry. It's probably something like a scion.

I was trying to stick to actually used units, scions are a bit difficult to use as a balance point as they have native deepstrike, it's abit like rangers or scouts. The special rules as they are, are difficult to cost.

Pretty much all the IG infantry are better than marine infantry. What would you rather have? A scion for 9 or a scout for 11?

"It's like you think marines are OP in 8th because they got the first codex."
It's like that in no way whatsoever. What would make someone think I'd subscribe to such a theory?

"7th edition as a whole. Marines were decidedly middle tier out of the codex."
Middle of the top 5, maybe. But only middle tier if you ignore *most* of the armies in the game.

Eldar were above them. T'au had their ups and downs comparatively. Demons weren't that much worse off than Marines.

Necrons were only questionably above them for a couple months, otherwise they were certainly below them.

DE were much worse off than Marines.

AdMech - both variants - had nothing on Marines.

IG was crap compared to Marines.

SOB were worse.

GK were worse.

CSM were mostly worse off, but had a few Demon tricks.

IK were worse off.

Orks were trash, as always.

Nids had a few tricks, but couldn't compete.

BA/SW/DA can be ignored because they're basically Marines, but they were worse off.
We probably shouldn't count Harlies/Inqisition/LotD/etc either.

Off the top of my head, that's ~3 in the same tier as marines, at least 10 in worse tiers, and ~6 not counting.

And that's what passes for "Mid tier" for Marine players. That's the problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Marine/Eldar/T'au player, myself.)

"It's like you think marines are OP in 8th because they got the first codex."
It's like that in no way whatsoever. What would make someone think I'd subscribe to such a theory?

^^^
Saying gladius was OP in 7th - is about equivalent to saying the same thing about marines in 8th for their period they were the only codex released. Gladius got worse as worse as the eddition went on until it wasn't even in the picture anymore.

You do realize that:
1. Space Marines were *not* the first 7th ed - or even "7.5 Ed" - codex to be released, right?

2. Space Marines did very well both before and after the release of "7.5 Ed"

3. My post didn't claim that Marines were top dog at the very end of 7th. Only that they were one of the best armies across 7th.

4. Most armies didn't get a codex in "7.5 Ed".

How you read "Gladius was OP in 7th" as being the same thing as, very specifically, "Marines were OP in 8th when they were the only book released" is entirely nonsensical. Like, how does that even appear to follow?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The removal of the Loyal 32 would significantly shake the meta though.

What about adding some weapons that give you an increased armour save? Like, a Heavy 20 Frag Missile with +1AP (Marines save on 2+, Guardsmen on 4+ etc.)? Such a weapon would kill slightly less than 5 points of Marine per shot (assuming BS3+) but around 8 points of Guardsman (ibid.). It'd do the same amount of Wounds to a Knight or a Terminator as to a Marine, but that wouldn't matter too much since it'd be lousy at damaging any of them compared to a Krak missile anyway.

Fragmentation rocket battery?
Could be fitted on a Rhino?
For 100ppm? Chaos and imperial?
Wouldn't be bad tbh

Actually no make it as a artillery piece with a crew.
For Chaos you could add a upgrade greater havoc launcher for it, Imperials could get a whirlwind battery without paying for the chassis.

I'm not paying 100 points for a weapon that kills a little more than two guardsmen per turn. I was thinking just turning all Frag weapons into something with that profile (Grenade instead of Heavy for grenades etc.).

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'm not paying 100 points for a weapon that kills a little more than two guardsmen per turn. I was thinking just turning all Frag weapons into something with that profile (Grenade instead of Heavy for grenades etc.).

Well that would be 12 hits at least, that would wound on 3+ so 8 so 4 dead guardsmen.
Better grenades or scalling grenades with units size would be something nice, however guardsmen are just 10 dudes so scalling itself would not really work.