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The Newman wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
So both the marines and the guard are on the table edge and the guard have nothing but autocannons? Because marines deploying on the line with 30" guns can reach the other table edge with one move.

We play on somewhat larger boards so that maneuvering actually matters. However on a standard 4×6 at 1000 points it's not that hard for a Guard player to castle in the corners with a silly number of ACs and just wreck a Primaris force that can't afford to ignore one corner while clearing out the other.

1k is on a 4x4, that is standard..... did you not look at the chart?

For reference we started playing small point values on larger boards because when we played at the recommended size and terrain density the game didn't last long enough to be worth deploying. We almost never made it to turn three. We had a lot of games not even make it to turn two. We had games that were legitimately over before player two even got to make an attack, where over half their army was dead before on the top of one. Heck, we had a couple of games where player two was tabled before their first turn.

Those weird table and game sizes that some people are saying make our evaluation of balance meaningless are the result of how imbalanced we think the game is to start with.

Then change your terrain... wtf. Just add more terrain, how is this even a problem for you?

You must have missed the part where I said we now put several times more terrain on the board. We're averaging 15+ tall hills and ruins over 6" square on a 4x4 right now.

Are your trees and ruins properly blocking a significant amount of line of sight though?

LoS blocking terrain is crucial imo.

The Newman wrote:


You must have missed the part where I said we now put several times more terrain on the board. We're averaging 15+ tall hills and ruins over 6" square on a 4x4 right now.

Quality is just as important as quantity here. Does this terrain block LoS? The big problem with 40k's terrain rules is they are basically non-existent so things like forests and hills that used to block LoS simply don't any more. It's that blocking LoS that is crucial given how lethal 40k is nowadays.

If 40K is too lethal to be played on „White Dwarf Battle Report“-Style Terrain, the lethality needs to be dialed down.

Weird LOS-blocking things or ITC-style house rules for ruins might work as a quick fix for events in the absence of a fix, but it cannot really be the benchmark for whether the game is balanced as it comes out of the box/book.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I wonder if it would make people happy if they nerfed everything from every army that is good or useful and brought everything down to a nice pleasant level together. That would be tranquil, and some armies could stay relatively untouched then. I don't even know what I'd want out of the big FAQ I guess I'd just want no knee jerk reactions cutting the legs off each others books.

Though if I was honest I really dislike allies these days, I miss mono codex armies and honestly at the highest level soup lists breed the most boring lists where no one really has feel and ends up like the amazing oatmeal of excellence, mostly. Now that isn't to say some don't find that fun, I'm sure they do. To me however they look like fluff nightmares and 40k without the feel and ambiance is an awful lot like reading a book from the first sentence of every page, what is the point ?

That's an overly rational and uncontroversial opinion, unfortunately GW seams to be influenced too much by the soup is the correct way to balance crowd, so mono armies are going to be the ones that keep talking the biggest hits while soup just moves along again and finds the new think to make look broken.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
If 40K is too lethal to be played on „White Dwarf Battle Report“-Style Terrain, the lethality needs to be dialed down.

Weird LOS-blocking things or ITC-style house rules for ruins might work as a quick fix for events in the absence of a fix, but it cannot really be the benchmark for whether the game is balanced as it comes out of the box/book.

Or just play Cities of Death. There is a game mode basically called "40k too lethal? Play this!"

Ice_can wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I wonder if it would make people happy if they nerfed everything from every army that is good or useful and brought everything down to a nice pleasant level together. That would be tranquil, and some armies could stay relatively untouched then. I don't even know what I'd want out of the big FAQ I guess I'd just want no knee jerk reactions cutting the legs off each others books.

Though if I was honest I really dislike allies these days, I miss mono codex armies and honestly at the highest level soup lists breed the most boring lists where no one really has feel and ends up like the amazing oatmeal of excellence, mostly. Now that isn't to say some don't find that fun, I'm sure they do. To me however they look like fluff nightmares and 40k without the feel and ambiance is an awful lot like reading a book from the first sentence of every page, what is the point ?

That's an overly rational and uncontroversial opinion, unfortunately GW seams to be influenced too much by the soup is the correct way to balance crowd, so mono armies are going to be the ones that keep talking the biggest hits while soup just moves along again and finds the new think to make look broken.

Your making it much to complicated. The simple answer is often the right one.
Soup means more armies being bought and GW is still a business looking to make money.

Nothing to do with which opinion on the internet GW is influenced by.

the_scotsman wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
If 40K is too lethal to be played on „White Dwarf Battle Report“-Style Terrain, the lethality needs to be dialed down.

Weird LOS-blocking things or ITC-style house rules for ruins might work as a quick fix for events in the absence of a fix, but it cannot really be the benchmark for whether the game is balanced as it comes out of the box/book.

Or just play Cities of Death. There is a game mode basically called "40k too lethal? Play this!"

Seconded. I'd even argue that GW themselves most likely use Cities or death when they play on a city board...

the_scotsman wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
If 40K is too lethal to be played on „White Dwarf Battle Report“-Style Terrain, the lethality needs to be dialed down.

Weird LOS-blocking things or ITC-style house rules for ruins might work as a quick fix for events in the absence of a fix, but it cannot really be the benchmark for whether the game is balanced as it comes out of the box/book.

Or just play Cities of Death. There is a game mode basically called "40k too lethal? Play this!"

Maybe. Maybe not.

I don't mind the lethality of 40K. Makes games quick.

Either way, giant LOS-blockers all around aren't what the "vanilla" game is designed for and it asymmetrically disadvantages/advantages armies in ways that inevitably skews the balance.

Use GW ruins and GW rules for ruins, if you wanna play "competitive".

If you wanna Cities of Death or ITC "ruins-block-line-of-sight" for your beer & pretzels, so the pretty models stay around longer, that's perfectly fine. It just isn't the format the game is balanced around.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
If 40K is too lethal to be played on „White Dwarf Battle Report“-Style Terrain, the lethality needs to be dialed down.

Weird LOS-blocking things or ITC-style house rules for ruins might work as a quick fix for events in the absence of a fix, but it cannot really be the benchmark for whether the game is balanced as it comes out of the box/book.

Or just play Cities of Death. There is a game mode basically called "40k too lethal? Play this!"

Maybe. Maybe not.

I don't mind the lethality of 40K. Makes games quick.

Either way, giant LOS-blockers all around aren't what the "vanilla" game is designed for and it asymmetrically disadvantages/advantages armies in ways that inevitably skews the balance.

Use GW ruins and GW rules for ruins, if you wanna play "competitive".

If you wanna Cities of Death or ITC "ruins-block-line-of-sight" for your beer & pretzels, so the pretty models stay around longer, that's perfectly fine. It just isn't the format the game is balanced around.

Implying that things like optimized jump pack smash captains one-rounding 400-point superheavies by spending 9cp from an allied 500-point guard brigade IS how GW actually playtests and considers "the normal way to play the game."

I wonder if we could evaluate how likely that is by looking at the standard game length vs the time it takes to table someone using optimized netlists against each other.

Hmmm.

5-7 turns vs 2-3 turns.

 Ordana wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I wonder if it would make people happy if they nerfed everything from every army that is good or useful and brought everything down to a nice pleasant level together. That would be tranquil, and some armies could stay relatively untouched then. I don't even know what I'd want out of the big FAQ I guess I'd just want no knee jerk reactions cutting the legs off each others books.

Though if I was honest I really dislike allies these days, I miss mono codex armies and honestly at the highest level soup lists breed the most boring lists where no one really has feel and ends up like the amazing oatmeal of excellence, mostly. Now that isn't to say some don't find that fun, I'm sure they do. To me however they look like fluff nightmares and 40k without the feel and ambiance is an awful lot like reading a book from the first sentence of every page, what is the point ?

That's an overly rational and uncontroversial opinion, unfortunately GW seams to be influenced too much by the soup is the correct way to balance crowd, so mono armies are going to be the ones that keep talking the biggest hits while soup just moves along again and finds the new think to make look broken.

Your making it much to complicated. The simple answer is often the right one.
Soup means more armies being bought and GW is still a business looking to make money.

Nothing to do with which opinion on the internet GW is influenced by.

I just wish the answer to how do I make X army better wasn't always well bring A, B and C from Y army. If I bloody wanted to play Y army I would have Y army. When you already have 4 armies why should you half to buy another 2 half armies to make those armies work.

TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

It's not really a copout, though. It's a compelling reason why GW might prefer to find an alternative option for balancing outside of banning so-called "soup".

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

I dont think it was intended as an apologetic, just as an explanation as to the reason why GW has done nothing to prevent its abuse.

WHich is almost certainly true.

Lemondish wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

It's not really a copout, though. It's a compelling reason why GW might prefer to find an alternative option for balancing outside of banning so-called "soup".

Most people aren't talking about outright banning soup though, just limiting the powergaming benefits such that you wouldn't see it dominating tournaments, but those who want to play fluffy and not care about the mechanical advantage would still be able to do it. Essentially by removing the min/maxing aspect (say reducing or eliminating the CP you get from allied detachments), you disincentivize competitive players from abusing it while not taking it off the table for the people who want to play it for fluff reasons rather than the min/max potential.

Wayniac wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

It's not really a copout, though. It's a compelling reason why GW might prefer to find an alternative option for balancing outside of banning so-called "soup".

Most people aren't talking about outright banning soup though, just limiting the powergaming benefits such that you wouldn't see it dominating tournaments, but those who want to play fluffy and not care about the mechanical advantage would still be able to do it. Essentially by removing the min/maxing aspect, you disincentivize competitive players from abusing it while not taking it off the table for the people who want to play it for fluff reasons rather than the min/max potential.

The dirty secret is that most people who claim to play for fluff reasons and also post a ton online are the most sensitive to small balance changes they can use to blame their losses on.

If you're already putting one self-imposed limitation on yourself to feel self-superior and insulate against blaming yourself for a loss (I play 'fluffy armies' unlike those dirty minmaxing power-gamers!!) then you are more likely to display other aspects of scrub behavior, like blaming dice rolls for losses or blaming small balance changes aimed at top level competitive play.

(this is not an opinion on the existence of actual casual players who just bring the same collections of models they've had for years and don't follow the competitive meta in any way shape or form, just noting that they are usually not on online forums discussing the general state of the game.)

Lemondish wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

It's not really a copout, though. It's a compelling reason why GW might prefer to find an alternative option for balancing outside of banning so-called "soup".

It's not a cop-out OR a reason.

People LITERALLY want soup. This isn't GW forcing it - this is the MOST restrictive ally system - remember when anyone could ally anyone last edition? Allies have been a thing through multiple editions. People like combined armies.

People need to stop rolling out these arguments like the players have no agency in this.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

It's not really a copout, though. It's a compelling reason why GW might prefer to find an alternative option for balancing outside of banning so-called "soup".

It's not a cop-out OR a reason.

People LITERALLY want soup. This isn't GW forcing it - this is the MOST restrictive ally system - remember when anyone could ally anyone last edition? Allies have been a thing through multiple editions. People like combined armies.

People need to stop rolling out these arguments like the players have no agency in this.

It's been around for ages and it's been problematic for competitive play for ages.

Personally I don't see any problem at all with them coming out and saying as a "competitive play suggestion" that allies aren't allowed, and then balancing based on that.

You don't want to use it in casual games, fine. Have fun! But souping is inherently at odds with proper competitive balance.

If allies make competitive balance go all cross-eyed and the real answer is just to delineate between casual and competitive then that's fine, if a bit of a shame. It's the attempts to "fix" (read: kill off) allies/resurrect the FOC that irritate me.

 Stux wrote:


It's been around for ages and it's been problematic for competitive play for ages.

Personally I don't see any problem at all with them coming out and saying as a "competitive play suggestion" that allies aren't allowed, and then balancing based on that.

You don't want to use it in casual games, fine. Have fun! But souping is inherently at odds with proper competitive balance.

On the contrary - it level sets armies and allows for minor factions to get codexes.

That a SMALL handful of units causes problems is not indicative of a problem with soup.

Wayniac wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

It's not really a copout, though. It's a compelling reason why GW might prefer to find an alternative option for balancing outside of banning so-called "soup".

Most people aren't talking about outright banning soup though, just limiting the powergaming benefits such that you wouldn't see it dominating tournaments, but those who want to play fluffy and not care about the mechanical advantage would still be able to do it. Essentially by removing the min/maxing aspect (say reducing or eliminating the CP you get from allied detachments), you disincentivize competitive players from abusing it while not taking it off the table for the people who want to play it for fluff reasons rather than the min/max potential.

Don't we want fluffy armies to be the winning armies though? Castellan + Guard strikes me as a pretty fluffy army (less so with smash captains, but they are on the wain). Ynarri 3 flavour bean eldar chilli (as long as you don't take covens) is a really fluffy list. Mixed Aeldari (including covens) without Ynarri is also fluffy, more so if Prophets of Flesh or Black Heart are involved (lot's of examples of this in the ficiton). Deathwatch and Guard. Fluffy!

For the first time in 40k we are actually seeing a lot of fluff compliant lists at the top tables, not all top lists are perfectly fluffy, but they are alot closer than what we have seen in the past. Anyone else remember Storm Talons and Flyrants? Or Vect and Coteaz?

Now I think we probably want to boost mono codexes a bit, but I don't really think they should be balanced with allied lists for top end play, unless they are obligate mono armies then they should be as strong as an allied list (and thus stronger than other mono dex armies).

Allies aren't disappearing from competitive play (and there are a couple of factions that it would outright kill if it did). I imagine that the biggest changes we can hope for are tweaks to the CP that allies generate.

 alextroy wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
How are you loosing 42 marines in one turn? You have a 2+ save in cover vs. imperial guard and theres no way his tanks should have had LOS to your entire army unless you deployed out in the open.

True LoS makes it almost impossible to completely block LoS to 8 squads of marines when there are 6 Russes spread over the other side of the table. He hit every single squad on the preliminary bombardment and then 12 battle cannon shots plus the HBs was enough to finish the job. And I couldn't roll a 4+ to save my life.

I didn't say it was a statistically likely result, just that it happened. And part of the result was that we started playing with six times as much terrain.

He hit eight squads with Preliminary Bombardment!?!?! That's a 1 in 1,679,616 chance.

It's funny how often these 1 in a million chances happen on a regular basis. It's almost like anything that can happen will happen or something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
TBH I think the whole horsegak answer of "Soup is fine because GW sells more" is just a copout to avoid addressing the real issue, and really doesn't do anything except try to silence legitimate concerns about how soup is ruining the game.

It's not really a copout, though. It's a compelling reason why GW might prefer to find an alternative option for balancing outside of banning so-called "soup".

It's not a cop-out OR a reason.

People LITERALLY want soup. This isn't GW forcing it - this is the MOST restrictive ally system - remember when anyone could ally anyone last edition? Allies have been a thing through multiple editions. People like combined armies.

People need to stop rolling out these arguments like the players have no agency in this.

It's been around for ages and it's been problematic for competitive play for ages.

Personally I don't see any problem at all with them coming out and saying as a "competitive play suggestion" that allies aren't allowed, and then balancing based on that.

You don't want to use it in casual games, fine. Have fun! But souping is inherently at odds with proper competitive balance.

It really is. This is why I prefer ETC.

Personally, I do not see anything wrong with using Allies. The problems come when the use of those allies gives you advantages over taking more of the same faction.

Armies are built with inherent weaknesses/deficiencies (usually) and taking an ally that covers that gap has a clear affect on balance.
Add in 8E's method of generating CPs and the issue is magnified.

Taking allies should be allowed because "people literally want them" and "GW makes more money that way", but taking said allies should NEVER give you more than advantage than taking a Mono-faction list. Because when it does, those perfectly valid Mono-faction lists are indirectly punished.
This is the main reason I advocate some kind of rule to reward taking detachments that share several of your WLs Faction keywords.

-

The issue with allies is that factions are built with a weakness. A hypothetical faction might have lots of cheap troops but they have low power weapons and no melee. If you can just take melee units from an army that has amazing melee units but each one costs as much as 5 regular guys, you've just negated both of the balancing weaknesses of those armies. That's the problem in a nutshell.

You can't balance the game when half of the armies (of which there are already way too many IMHO and it's just bloated) can ignore their built-in weakness by taking a unit from a different, allied army. Why have a drawback at all when you can simply negate it? If Tau, for example, could ally in units that excelled at melee, would this be balanced when the Tau army's weakness is that they suck in melee and excel at shooting? You would just remove their weakness.

RE: Fluff, it depends. Loyal 32, 3 smash captains and a Castellan are not fluffy unless you do some serious stretching to explain it. An army like the one that won LVO, which was an actual Guard army with a Castellan, was arguably fluffy in that it actually had guard and tanks, it wasn't just the minimal possible to get +5 CP and a CP regen relic. This is a subjective thing because it has to be; something can be fluffy in one case and just min/maxing in another, similar case.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
How are you loosing 42 marines in one turn? You have a 2+ save in cover vs. imperial guard and theres no way his tanks should have had LOS to your entire army unless you deployed out in the open.

True LoS makes it almost impossible to completely block LoS to 8 squads of marines when there are 6 Russes spread over the other side of the table. He hit every single squad on the preliminary bombardment and then 12 battle cannon shots plus the HBs was enough to finish the job. And I couldn't roll a 4+ to save my life.

I didn't say it was a statistically likely result, just that it happened. And part of the result was that we started playing with six times as much terrain.

He hit eight squads with Preliminary Bombardment!?!?! That's a 1 in 1,679,616 chance.

It's funny how often these 1 in a million chances happen on a regular basis. It's almost like anything that can happen will happen or something.

It's funny how, when abstracted across a large number of events, just how closely to once a million times something with the odds of one in a million happen.

It's also funny how even-handed the distribution of "lucky" and "unlucky" rolls are, once you get into large numbers.

But you still don't expect a 5-man Tac squad to one-round a fully-buffed Shining Spears squad. It's certainly possible (with Grav), but you don't expect it. Similarly, it's certainly possible for 5 Guardsmen to kill 10 Marines in one round of shooting without buffs - but it's not going to happen.

The math is actually very easy.

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with allies is that factions are built with a weakness. A hypothetical faction might have lots of cheap troops but they have low power weapons and no melee. If you can just take melee units from an army that has amazing melee units but each one costs as much as 5 regular guys, you've just negated both of the balancing weaknesses of those armies. That's the problem in a nutshell.

You can't balance the game when half of the armies (of which there are already way too many IMHO and it's just bloated) can ignore their built-in weakness by taking a unit from a different, allied army. Why have a drawback at all when you can simply negate it? If Tau, for example, could ally in units that excelled at melee, would this be balanced when the Tau army's weakness is that they suck in melee and excel at shooting? You would just remove their weakness.

RE: Fluff, it depends. Loyal 32, 3 smash captains and a Castellan are not fluffy unless you do some serious stretching to explain it. An army like the one that won LVO, which was an actual Guard army with a Castellan, was arguably fluffy in that it actually had guard and tanks, it wasn't just the minimal possible to get +5 CP and a CP regen relic. This is a subjective thing because it has to be; something can be fluffy in one case and just min/maxing in another, similar case.

This is a poor narrative. What if an army who has a built in weakness has absolutely no tools to deal with an army that can exploit that weakness?

I don't pick armies for their innate weakness. I pick them, because I enjoy their strengths.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with allies is that factions are built with a weakness. A hypothetical faction might have lots of cheap troops but they have low power weapons and no melee. If you can just take melee units from an army that has amazing melee units but each one costs as much as 5 regular guys, you've just negated both of the balancing weaknesses of those armies. That's the problem in a nutshell.

You can't balance the game when half of the armies (of which there are already way too many IMHO and it's just bloated) can ignore their built-in weakness by taking a unit from a different, allied army. Why have a drawback at all when you can simply negate it? If Tau, for example, could ally in units that excelled at melee, would this be balanced when the Tau army's weakness is that they suck in melee and excel at shooting? You would just remove their weakness.

RE: Fluff, it depends. Loyal 32, 3 smash captains and a Castellan are not fluffy unless you do some serious stretching to explain it. An army like the one that won LVO, which was an actual Guard army with a Castellan, was arguably fluffy in that it actually had guard and tanks, it wasn't just the minimal possible to get +5 CP and a CP regen relic. This is a subjective thing because it has to be; something can be fluffy in one case and just min/maxing in another, similar case.

This is a poor narrative. What if an army who has a built in weakness has absolutely no tools to deal with an army that can exploit that weakness?

I don't pick armies for their innate weakness. I pick them, because I enjoy their strengths.

Except it isn't a poor narrative, it's how a balanced system with multiple factions should be.
If Faction A is all strengths with no weakness, why bother playing Factions B or C?

We are not saying that the weakness needs to be glaring and debilitating, but it needs to be there for a good opponent to leverage their unique strengths against.
Guard, for example should be Quantity of shooting over quality and fold in melee most of the time
T'au should be Quality of shooting and even worse at melee
Marines are Jack of all trades, masters on none (which is apparently more weakness than strength)
And Orks are Quantity of bodies, good in melee and rely on weight of dice for shooting rather than quality.

Those are just a few examples (that might not even be accurate anymore). If Guard can take an Allie with decent Melee, or shooting to make melee all but impossible to achieve, then their weakness disappears.
While there isn't anything too terrible about this, armies like T'au, Necrons and Orks do not have the option AT ALL. Disagreeing that this is a problem, even a small one, is part of the problem.

Armies that can take allies should be able to do so, but armies that cannot should be compensated equally (or sliiiiightly penalize the use of allies by doing something like limit how many CP they generate by half).
Personally, though I'd rather not penalize anyone, but rather reward Monofaction lists more. Double CPs for their detachments is ALL detachments share 2+ Factions keywords with the WL.

-

Bharring wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
How are you loosing 42 marines in one turn? You have a 2+ save in cover vs. imperial guard and theres no way his tanks should have had LOS to your entire army unless you deployed out in the open.

True LoS makes it almost impossible to completely block LoS to 8 squads of marines when there are 6 Russes spread over the other side of the table. He hit every single squad on the preliminary bombardment and then 12 battle cannon shots plus the HBs was enough to finish the job. And I couldn't roll a 4+ to save my life.

I didn't say it was a statistically likely result, just that it happened. And part of the result was that we started playing with six times as much terrain.

He hit eight squads with Preliminary Bombardment!?!?! That's a 1 in 1,679,616 chance.

It's funny how often these 1 in a million chances happen on a regular basis. It's almost like anything that can happen will happen or something.

It's funny how, when abstracted across a large number of events, just how closely to once a million times something with the odds of one in a million happen.

It's also funny how even-handed the distribution of "lucky" and "unlucky" rolls are, once you get into large numbers.

But you still don't expect a 5-man Tac squad to one-round a fully-buffed Shining Spears squad. It's certainly possible (with Grav), but you don't expect it. Similarly, it's certainly possible for 5 Guardsmen to kill 10 Marines in one round of shooting without buffs - but it's not going to happen.

The math is actually very easy.

I wouldn't expect a Preliminary Bombardment and six Battle Cannons with double-tap to wipe out 42 Marines either, and yet here we are.

But it cuts both ways; I've seen a small Sternguard squad ace a full-HP Asurman through a 2+ rerollable in 6th *on overwatch*.

These things happen. But they happen roughly just as frequently in your favor as in your opponent's.

I've had a game in 8th where a WaveSerpent did 15 damage to a LR in the shooting phase, then had a Farseer finish it off with a pistol.

The next game after that, I fired every single long-range weapon in my army at a Dread and did 4 HP total - in a 2k points game.

Bharring wrote:
But it cuts both ways; I've seen a small Sternguard squad ace a full-HP Asurman through a 2+ rerollable in 6th *on overwatch*.

These things happen. But they happen roughly just as frequently in your favor as in your opponent's.

I've had a game in 8th where a WaveSerpent did 15 damage to a LR in the shooting phase, then had a Farseer finish it off with a pistol.

The next game after that, I fired every single long-range weapon in my army at a Dread and did 4 HP total - in a 2k points game.

And confirmation bias is a thing.