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Bharring wrote:
This is going to sound odd, but one of the things I'd most want to see in an FAQ is for Rangers to lose <Craftworld>, for the Timmy reasons the_scotsman just pointed out.

And the funny part is that it really is more of a "Timmy" thing for Guard as well.

Scions, Ratlings, Ogryn of all flavors, Primaris Psykers, Wyrdvanes, Commissars of all flavors, the Ministorum and Mechanicus stuff? All of them don't get <Regiment> traits. That's why it was a Big Deal when GSC simply added the "Brood Brothers" keyword to anything that didn't already have <Regiment> to get it replaced.

On the other hand, Drukhari really fall under what he's calling "Johnny" because they literally did everything they could to encourage you to make some weird builds utilizing the whole Patrol Detachment benefits.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Bharring wrote:
This is going to sound odd, but one of the things I'd most want to see in an FAQ is for Rangers to lose <Craftworld>, for the Timmy reasons the_scotsman just pointed out.

And the funny part is that it really is more of a "Timmy" thing for Guard as well.

Scions, Ratlings, Ogryn of all flavors, Primaris Psykers, Wyrdvanes, Commissars of all flavors, the Ministorum and Mechanicus stuff? All of them don't get <Regiment> traits. That's why it was a Big Deal when GSC simply added the "Brood Brothers" keyword to anything that didn't already have <Regiment> to get it replaced.

On the other hand, Drukhari really fall under what he's calling "Johnny" because they literally did everything they could to encourage you to make some weird builds utilizing the whole Patrol Detachment benefits.

yeah, I'd bet a shiny nickel the reason Ogryns didn't get regimental traits is simply because it's a way to get them to avoid having access to Orders - you know, so you don't have to balance your Fight Twice order both around 10 S3 AP- attacks and 47 S7 Ap-1 D2 attacks.

But that's the thing - you can point to most of those exclusions for gameplay reasons, and they DONT necessarily make perfect sense from a fluff perspective. It looks to me like whoever was designing the Astra militarum codex had to include all these wacky units that would break the systems he wanted to add in, and he was also worried about stuff like Militarum Tempestus becoming the default troop choice over guardsmen. <regiment> is used as a balancing tool first, and fluff justified later.

Same situation with Orks. How do you differentiate Killa Kanz and Deff Dreads, two units where historically the latter has always been overshadowed by the former? Well, one of them is an ork, the other is a gretchin, let's make the Ork get a clan bonus.

GSC codex vs Guard codex is a pretty perfect example of starting from fluff vs starting from gameplay. What actually happened when the carefully constructed "Who is <regiment>" got simply replaced with Brood brothers? You got Triple Action In One Turn crusader squads, and Fix Bayonets/Move Move Move bullgryns with the squad crammed into a Taurox prime because it has no rules for transporting Ogryn models.

I just assumed Spike, Timmy, and Johnny were conceptual extremes, and the implementation of each book fell somewhere on the triangle; so a book might be closest to one, but have aspects of the other two, too.

 Xenomancers wrote:
There a lot more examples of traits that are too good compared to others.

Lets just get into the real bizarre though. DE flayed skull.
If you are in a transport or have fly keyword....
you get - ignore cover - reroll 1's (even if you moved) and +3 movement (any one of those is good enough to be it's own trait) So basically 3 army traits.
Plus you also have power from pain. Which grants -
6+ FNP
Reroll charges
hit on 2's in CC
Fearless

That is basically 4 more army traits...And you wonder why DE do so well. Certainly they must pay more points for all these abilities right? Nope - undercosted almost across the board.

You're being disingenuous here.

1. You get reroll 1's with rapid fire weapons. There isn't a rapid fire weapon in the DE arsenal that isn't Splinter, which generally means S3-4, AP0, D1. Your average MSU infantry squad kills .6 more guardsmen a turn, woo.
2. Vehicles with fly either refers to...a T6 10 Wound tank with no RF weapons, or one of two T5 transports. We're not talking Wave Serpent levels of durability here. Once their ride has popped, what's inside is on their own. And I can say from experience, four Kabs (Cause one dies disembarking) all alone with no buffs and no trait aren't going to do much. It should also be mentioned that Dark Eldar have the two slowest skimmers out of all of the Eldar.
3. Flayed Skull has no support, period. There's a difference between a Catachan infantry squad that can get S4, +2 Attacks and the ability to perform double actions and a Kabalite squad that only gets buffs while they're isolated from even the possibility of support. Since the Archon has no mobility, it's not like he's going to be able to powerwalk the 17" minimum to give them buffs for at least a turn.

Yeah, Flayed Skull probably gets too much, but it's a trait that's limited to a small selection of units (Units/Transports with Fly), in an already small part of the Codex (Kabal).

Second. You've conveniently forgotten to mention that Power From Pain does not, in fact, give a 6++, reroll to Advance/Charge, +1 hit in combat, Leadership immunity, and -1Ld for enemy units first turn. It gives one of those buffs per turn as the game goes on! If we're talking Flayed Skull here, its pretty dang useless, actually.
FnP: You're in a transport, you're not taking damage. And if the transport pops, you get it, sure, but your traits are gone. That's not 4 traits at once, that's trading one for the other when gak hits the fan.
Re-roll charges: Kabalites aren't good melee combatants. Transports are what they rely on for mobility, and if they're charging you, you've probably already lost anyway.
+1 to hit: See above.
Morale Immunity: Wow, you mean that I pass morale tests automatically on Turn 4?? It's a nice buff, but its a turn too late as most of your force is probably already dead, or have taken their big morale test for the game.
Ld debuff: Meh.

DE are good, but you're not doing yourself any favors by leaving out key information like that.

 Argive wrote:
T8 is meaningless if its only backed up by a 3+... Case in point wraithlord. Back in the day when old AP was in place and you couldint hurt a T8 with a low str weapon that made sense.

Its not just the wraithlord. So many weapons have at least -1 ap its problem...

Just to throw it out there...Titanic units should be BS4/5 unles they are shooting at other titanic units imo.

T8 is big. St 7 wounds you on 5's and str 8 on 4's - that is going to be the majority of the the firepower in your opponents army. str 9-10 are more rare and are typically single shot weapons which are their own worst enemies really. Really +1 T trait would be fantastic in basically every army. It just goes to show you how bias people become in this game (not saying you are) - I'd take a +1T trait on my space marines in a flipping instant - but it's hard to get off that 4++ save crack.

Is that why Land Raiders have been so amazing all edition?

Or are things more nuanced than that?

Bharring wrote:
Is that why Land Raiders have been so amazing all edition?

Or are things more nuanced than that?

Knights continue the most broken thing in the game by a significant margin. T8 is a big part of that. Making Knights T7 would be a first small step towards balance.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Is that why Land Raiders have been so amazing all edition?

Or are things more nuanced than that?

Knights continue the most broken thing in the game by a significant margin. T8 is a big part of that. Making Knights T7 would be a first small step towards balance.

No it wouldn't. There are plenty of str 9 and 10 high dmg weapons that are completely invalidated by the presence of a 3++. Fix that and Knights become a lot more tolerable. Also, dropping a Knight to T7 lets you do silly gak like wounding them on a 4+ with Deathwatch bolters.

RogueApiary wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Is that why Land Raiders have been so amazing all edition?

Or are things more nuanced than that?

Knights continue the most broken thing in the game by a significant margin. T8 is a big part of that. Making Knights T7 would be a first small step towards balance.

No it wouldn't. There are plenty of str 9 and 10 high dmg weapons that are completely invalidated by the presence of a 3++. Fix that and Knights become a lot more tolerable. Also, dropping a Knight to T7 lets you do silly gak like wounding them on a 4+ with Deathwatch bolters.

It also makes everything from a dreadnought to a knight T7, which, gameplay wise, is pretty derpy.

onlyroad wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
There a lot more examples of traits that are too good compared to others.

Lets just get into the real bizarre though. DE flayed skull.
If you are in a transport or have fly keyword....
you get - ignore cover - reroll 1's (even if you moved) and +3 movement (any one of those is good enough to be it's own trait) So basically 3 army traits.
Plus you also have power from pain. Which grants -
6+ FNP
Reroll charges
hit on 2's in CC
Fearless

That is basically 4 more army traits...And you wonder why DE do so well. Certainly they must pay more points for all these abilities right? Nope - undercosted almost across the board.

You're being disingenuous here.

1. You get reroll 1's with rapid fire weapons. There isn't a rapid fire weapon in the DE arsenal that isn't Splinter, which generally means S3-4, AP0, D1. Your average MSU infantry squad kills .6 more guardsmen a turn, woo.
2. Vehicles with fly either refers to...a T6 10 Wound tank with no RF weapons, or one of two T5 transports. We're not talking Wave Serpent levels of durability here. Once their ride has popped, what's inside is on their own. And I can say from experience, four Kabs (Cause one dies disembarking) all alone with no buffs and no trait aren't going to do much. It should also be mentioned that Dark Eldar have the two slowest skimmers out of all of the Eldar.
3. Flayed Skull has no support, period. There's a difference between a Catachan infantry squad that can get S4, +2 Attacks and the ability to perform double actions and a Kabalite squad that only gets buffs while they're isolated from even the possibility of support. Since the Archon has no mobility, it's not like he's going to be able to powerwalk the 17" minimum to give them buffs for at least a turn.

Yeah, Flayed Skull probably gets too much, but it's a trait that's limited to a small selection of units (Units/Transports with Fly), in an already small part of the Codex (Kabal).

Second. You've conveniently forgotten to mention that Power From Pain does not, in fact, give a 6++, reroll to Advance/Charge, +1 hit in combat, Leadership immunity, and -1Ld for enemy units first turn. It gives one of those buffs per turn as the game goes on! If we're talking Flayed Skull here, its pretty dang useless, actually.
FnP: You're in a transport, you're not taking damage. And if the transport pops, you get it, sure, but your traits are gone. That's not 4 traits at once, that's trading one for the other when gak hits the fan.
Re-roll charges: Kabalites aren't good melee combatants. Transports are what they rely on for mobility, and if they're charging you, you've probably already lost anyway.
+1 to hit: See above.
Morale Immunity: Wow, you mean that I pass morale tests automatically on Turn 4?? It's a nice buff, but its a turn too late as most of your force is probably already dead, or have taken their big morale test for the game.
Ld debuff: Meh.

DE are good, but you're not doing yourself any favors by leaving out key information like that.

The point here wasn't to wine about DE. The point is to expose the hypocrisy of balance. How are armies with only 1 bonus from their army trait (some version of it probably present in that huge list of bonuses) supposed to compete? They can't - it's readily apparent they can't.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

onlyroad wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
There a lot more examples of traits that are too good compared to others.

Lets just get into the real bizarre though. DE flayed skull.
If you are in a transport or have fly keyword....
you get - ignore cover - reroll 1's (even if you moved) and +3 movement (any one of those is good enough to be it's own trait) So basically 3 army traits.
Plus you also have power from pain. Which grants -
6+ FNP
Reroll charges
hit on 2's in CC
Fearless

That is basically 4 more army traits...And you wonder why DE do so well. Certainly they must pay more points for all these abilities right? Nope - undercosted almost across the board.

You're being disingenuous here.

1. You get reroll 1's with rapid fire weapons. There isn't a rapid fire weapon in the DE arsenal that isn't Splinter, which generally means S3-4, AP0, D1. Your average MSU infantry squad kills .6 more guardsmen a turn, woo.
2. Vehicles with fly either refers to...a T6 10 Wound tank with no RF weapons, or one of two T5 transports. We're not talking Wave Serpent levels of durability here. Once their ride has popped, what's inside is on their own. And I can say from experience, four Kabs (Cause one dies disembarking) all alone with no buffs and no trait aren't going to do much. It should also be mentioned that Dark Eldar have the two slowest skimmers out of all of the Eldar.
3. Flayed Skull has no support, period. There's a difference between a Catachan infantry squad that can get S4, +2 Attacks and the ability to perform double actions and a Kabalite squad that only gets buffs while they're isolated from even the possibility of support. Since the Archon has no mobility, it's not like he's going to be able to powerwalk the 17" minimum to give them buffs for at least a turn.

Yeah, Flayed Skull probably gets too much, but it's a trait that's limited to a small selection of units (Units/Transports with Fly), in an already small part of the Codex (Kabal).

Second. You've conveniently forgotten to mention that Power From Pain does not, in fact, give a 6++, reroll to Advance/Charge, +1 hit in combat, Leadership immunity, and -1Ld for enemy units first turn. It gives one of those buffs per turn as the game goes on! If we're talking Flayed Skull here, its pretty dang useless, actually.
FnP: You're in a transport, you're not taking damage. And if the transport pops, you get it, sure, but your traits are gone. That's not 4 traits at once, that's trading one for the other when gak hits the fan.
Re-roll charges: Kabalites aren't good melee combatants. Transports are what they rely on for mobility, and if they're charging you, you've probably already lost anyway.
+1 to hit: See above.
Morale Immunity: Wow, you mean that I pass morale tests automatically on Turn 4?? It's a nice buff, but its a turn too late as most of your force is probably already dead, or have taken their big morale test for the game.
Ld debuff: Meh.

DE are good, but you're not doing yourself any favors by leaving out key information like that.

The point here wasn't to wine about DE. The point is to expose the hypocrisy of balance.

Which would you rather have:

4ppm GEQ
-Army trait: -2 to be hit in all phases

8ppm GEQ
-Army trait: reroll hits of 1 in CC
-Army trait: +1 Ld
-Army trait: Reroll charges
-Army trait: 6+ FnP

I'd much rather the first.

"Number of traits" might be a suggestive metric, but it's certainly not proof of imbalance.

How are armies with only 1 bonus from their army trait (some version of it probably present in that huge list of bonuses) supposed to compete? They can't - it's readily apparent they can't.

That's why I'm hoping they buff CWE in the FAQ, because obviously armies that only get 1 bonus from their traits are bad. Except for Iyanden and Saim-Hainn, because those traits are dominating.

the_scotsman wrote:

yeah, I'd bet a shiny nickel the reason Ogryns didn't get regimental traits is simply because it's a way to get them to avoid having access to Orders - you know, so you don't have to balance your Fight Twice order both around 10 S3 AP- attacks and 47 S7 Ap-1 D2 attacks.

But that's the thing - you can point to most of those exclusions for gameplay reasons, and they DONT necessarily make perfect sense from a fluff perspective. It looks to me like whoever was designing the Astra militarum codex had to include all these wacky units that would break the systems he wanted to add in, and he was also worried about stuff like Militarum Tempestus becoming the default troop choice over guardsmen. <regiment> is used as a balancing tool first, and fluff justified later.

Fluffwise, the Ogryn and the like have always been auxiliary units. They're de facto part of the Regiment but not actually trained as part of it.

It's funny that you say this with regards to Scions though, given that last edition? The Guard book had the ability to field more Scions per slot than the actual Scions book did...and yet still it wasn't a problem.

Mostly it comes down to "Cruddace gonna Cruddace". He has some weird vision of Guard based upon the Redcoats era of warfare, where everyone is responsible for their own chain of command and interfighting is 100% all the time.

Same situation with Orks. How do you differentiate Killa Kanz and Deff Dreads, two units where historically the latter has always been overshadowed by the former? Well, one of them is an ork, the other is a gretchin, let's make the Ork get a clan bonus.

GSC codex vs Guard codex is a pretty perfect example of starting from fluff vs starting from gameplay. What actually happened when the carefully constructed "Who is <regiment>" got simply replaced with Brood brothers? You got Triple Action In One Turn crusader squads, and Fix Bayonets/Move Move Move bullgryns with the squad crammed into a Taurox prime because it has no rules for transporting Ogryn models.

Right, but most of the issue came not from the "Who is Regiment?"--it came from the "If the unit does not have the <Regiment> tag, simply add Brood Brothers to it".

Rather than let there be units that the GSC don't get access to, they wanted to make sure that you could get access to everything for whatever reason.

Bharring wrote:
Is that why Land Raiders have been so amazing all edition?

Or are things more nuanced than that?

Hummm - LR are a lot better now but still pretty crappy after their point drop. They went down like 40 points when they needed to go down 100 points. Units overcosted by 100 points typically suck. See Wraithknight. See lots of stuff. I know my command tanks enjoy being T8. My stalkers too. Plus they don't even have invulnerable saves. A talos does. It would be an excellent trait for a talos.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Mostly it comes down to "Cruddace gonna Cruddace". He has some weird vision of Guard based upon the Redcoats era of warfare, where everyone is responsible for their own chain of command and interfighting is 100% all the time.

That's hardly unique to the Redcoats.
Look at the bruhaha over the F35 replacing the Warthog.
Even in the ancient past - Alexander fought with the cavalry on the right flank - one of his inlaws actually commanded the cavalry on the left flank - and each had different jobs. (Don't know offhand who commanded the phalanx itself.)

Bharring wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

onlyroad wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
There a lot more examples of traits that are too good compared to others.

Lets just get into the real bizarre though. DE flayed skull.
If you are in a transport or have fly keyword....
you get - ignore cover - reroll 1's (even if you moved) and +3 movement (any one of those is good enough to be it's own trait) So basically 3 army traits.
Plus you also have power from pain. Which grants -
6+ FNP
Reroll charges
hit on 2's in CC
Fearless

That is basically 4 more army traits...And you wonder why DE do so well. Certainly they must pay more points for all these abilities right? Nope - undercosted almost across the board.

You're being disingenuous here.

1. You get reroll 1's with rapid fire weapons. There isn't a rapid fire weapon in the DE arsenal that isn't Splinter, which generally means S3-4, AP0, D1. Your average MSU infantry squad kills .6 more guardsmen a turn, woo.
2. Vehicles with fly either refers to...a T6 10 Wound tank with no RF weapons, or one of two T5 transports. We're not talking Wave Serpent levels of durability here. Once their ride has popped, what's inside is on their own. And I can say from experience, four Kabs (Cause one dies disembarking) all alone with no buffs and no trait aren't going to do much. It should also be mentioned that Dark Eldar have the two slowest skimmers out of all of the Eldar.
3. Flayed Skull has no support, period. There's a difference between a Catachan infantry squad that can get S4, +2 Attacks and the ability to perform double actions and a Kabalite squad that only gets buffs while they're isolated from even the possibility of support. Since the Archon has no mobility, it's not like he's going to be able to powerwalk the 17" minimum to give them buffs for at least a turn.

Yeah, Flayed Skull probably gets too much, but it's a trait that's limited to a small selection of units (Units/Transports with Fly), in an already small part of the Codex (Kabal).

Second. You've conveniently forgotten to mention that Power From Pain does not, in fact, give a 6++, reroll to Advance/Charge, +1 hit in combat, Leadership immunity, and -1Ld for enemy units first turn. It gives one of those buffs per turn as the game goes on! If we're talking Flayed Skull here, its pretty dang useless, actually.
FnP: You're in a transport, you're not taking damage. And if the transport pops, you get it, sure, but your traits are gone. That's not 4 traits at once, that's trading one for the other when gak hits the fan.
Re-roll charges: Kabalites aren't good melee combatants. Transports are what they rely on for mobility, and if they're charging you, you've probably already lost anyway.
+1 to hit: See above.
Morale Immunity: Wow, you mean that I pass morale tests automatically on Turn 4?? It's a nice buff, but its a turn too late as most of your force is probably already dead, or have taken their big morale test for the game.
Ld debuff: Meh.

DE are good, but you're not doing yourself any favors by leaving out key information like that.

The point here wasn't to wine about DE. The point is to expose the hypocrisy of balance.

Which would you rather have:

4ppm GEQ
-Army trait: -2 to be hit in all phases

8ppm GEQ
-Army trait: reroll hits of 1 in CC
-Army trait: +1 Ld
-Army trait: Reroll charges
-Army trait: 6+ FnP

I'd much rather the first.

"Number of traits" might be a suggestive metric, but it's certainly not proof of imbalance.

How are armies with only 1 bonus from their army trait (some version of it probably present in that huge list of bonuses) supposed to compete? They can't - it's readily apparent they can't.

That's why I'm hoping they buff CWE in the FAQ, because obviously armies that only get 1 bonus from their traits are bad. Except for Iyanden and Saim-Hainn, because those traits are dominating.

These are made up abilities. There is no trait that is -2 to be hit in all phases. There are lots of traits that are 6+ FNP and reroll charges though - DE get those as side perks to their army trait which also includes a few more army traits from other codex...Do you dispute this? Plus I am not disagreeing with you that -1 to hit trait is OP. It is. No one has complained about it as much as me on this board. I called it out since the beginning. Said it would ruin the game. It pretty much did. Plus I am not picking at CWE. CWE that isn't aloitoc is or ynnari is pretty garbage right now.
I'd like to Iyandeen get 6+ FNP and retain their leadership ability. Give Ulthwe +1 to cast powers and ignore smite penalty.

RogueApiary wrote:
Also, dropping a Knight to T7 lets you do silly gak like wounding them on a 4+ with Deathwatch bolters.

But Chaos or Tau wounding on 4s is totally fine tho, right?

Bharring wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Mostly it comes down to "Cruddace gonna Cruddace". He has some weird vision of Guard based upon the Redcoats era of warfare, where everyone is responsible for their own chain of command and interfighting is 100% all the time.

That's hardly unique to the Redcoats.
Look at the bruhaha over the F35 replacing the Warthog.
Even in the ancient past - Alexander fought with the cavalry on the right flank - one of his inlaws actually commanded the cavalry on the left flank - and each had different jobs. (Don't know offhand who commanded the phalanx itself.)

By "Redcoats era of warfare", I'm referring to the idea of Sergeants/Commanders only shouting and waving swords/pistols for the most part.

 Kanluwen wrote:

By "Redcoats era of warfare", I'm referring to the idea of Sergeants/Commanders only shouting and waving swords/pistols for the most part.

If shouting and waving swords made solders run faster than most supersonic planes, covering more distance than than effective combat range of a sci-fi assault rifle in the period of time a genetically engineered super-soldier can do a double-tap, modern officers would do it too

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

By "Redcoats era of warfare", I'm referring to the idea of Sergeants/Commanders only shouting and waving swords/pistols for the most part.

If shouting and waving swords made solders run faster than most supersonic planes, covering more distance than than effective combat range of a sci-fi assault rifle in the period of time a genetically engineered super-soldier can do a double-tap, modern officers would do it too

Yeah....I love how the assault threat range is higher than most range weapons shoot right now.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

onlyroad wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
There a lot more examples of traits that are too good compared to others.

Lets just get into the real bizarre though. DE flayed skull.
If you are in a transport or have fly keyword....
you get - ignore cover - reroll 1's (even if you moved) and +3 movement (any one of those is good enough to be it's own trait) So basically 3 army traits.
Plus you also have power from pain. Which grants -
6+ FNP
Reroll charges
hit on 2's in CC
Fearless

That is basically 4 more army traits...And you wonder why DE do so well. Certainly they must pay more points for all these abilities right? Nope - undercosted almost across the board.

You're being disingenuous here.

1. You get reroll 1's with rapid fire weapons. There isn't a rapid fire weapon in the DE arsenal that isn't Splinter, which generally means S3-4, AP0, D1. Your average MSU infantry squad kills .6 more guardsmen a turn, woo.
2. Vehicles with fly either refers to...a T6 10 Wound tank with no RF weapons, or one of two T5 transports. We're not talking Wave Serpent levels of durability here. Once their ride has popped, what's inside is on their own. And I can say from experience, four Kabs (Cause one dies disembarking) all alone with no buffs and no trait aren't going to do much. It should also be mentioned that Dark Eldar have the two slowest skimmers out of all of the Eldar.
3. Flayed Skull has no support, period. There's a difference between a Catachan infantry squad that can get S4, +2 Attacks and the ability to perform double actions and a Kabalite squad that only gets buffs while they're isolated from even the possibility of support. Since the Archon has no mobility, it's not like he's going to be able to powerwalk the 17" minimum to give them buffs for at least a turn.

Yeah, Flayed Skull probably gets too much, but it's a trait that's limited to a small selection of units (Units/Transports with Fly), in an already small part of the Codex (Kabal).

Second. You've conveniently forgotten to mention that Power From Pain does not, in fact, give a 6++, reroll to Advance/Charge, +1 hit in combat, Leadership immunity, and -1Ld for enemy units first turn. It gives one of those buffs per turn as the game goes on! If we're talking Flayed Skull here, its pretty dang useless, actually.
FnP: You're in a transport, you're not taking damage. And if the transport pops, you get it, sure, but your traits are gone. That's not 4 traits at once, that's trading one for the other when gak hits the fan.
Re-roll charges: Kabalites aren't good melee combatants. Transports are what they rely on for mobility, and if they're charging you, you've probably already lost anyway.
+1 to hit: See above.
Morale Immunity: Wow, you mean that I pass morale tests automatically on Turn 4?? It's a nice buff, but its a turn too late as most of your force is probably already dead, or have taken their big morale test for the game.
Ld debuff: Meh.

DE are good, but you're not doing yourself any favors by leaving out key information like that.

The point here wasn't to wine about DE. The point is to expose the hypocrisy of balance.

Which would you rather have:

4ppm GEQ
-Army trait: -2 to be hit in all phases

8ppm GEQ
-Army trait: reroll hits of 1 in CC
-Army trait: +1 Ld
-Army trait: Reroll charges
-Army trait: 6+ FnP

I'd much rather the first.

"Number of traits" might be a suggestive metric, but it's certainly not proof of imbalance.

How are armies with only 1 bonus from their army trait (some version of it probably present in that huge list of bonuses) supposed to compete? They can't - it's readily apparent they can't.

That's why I'm hoping they buff CWE in the FAQ, because obviously armies that only get 1 bonus from their traits are bad. Except for Iyanden and Saim-Hainn, because those traits are dominating.

These are made up abilities. There is no trait that is -2 to be hit in all phases.

All abilities in this game are made up. But yes, that one isn't one that exists. However, replace it with Raven Guard's trait, and I'd still take the first option easily.

There are lots of traits that are 6+ FNP and reroll charges though - DE get those as side perks

Marine Sallies get:
-Reroll 1s to hit
-Reroll 1s to wound
-Reroll failed Ld tests
-+1Ld
But if I write it out that way, most people feel the need to point out "But only situationally!" or "With large caveats!"
It's technically true that Sallies get 4 Traits, too - but like the DE example, neither is practically true.

DE get those as side perks *later in the game*. And as was pointed out, they can't gain both the reroll-1s and 6+FnP at the same time, for instance.

[...] to their army trait which also includes a few more army traits from other codex...Do you dispute this?

Hell yes. What other army has "Can reroll charges, but only really late in the game" as their Faction and Subfaction trait? None.

Plus I am not disagreeing with you that -1 to hit trait is OP. It is. No one has complained about it as much as me on this board. I called it out since the beginning. Said it would ruin the game. It pretty much did. Plus I am not picking at CWE. CWE that isn't aloitoc is or ynnari is pretty garbage right now.

We're going to have to disagree on that. Uthwe, and possibly Biel-Tan are at the very least decent. They're only "garbage" if the majority of the game is "garbage". And, relevant to the post: Alaitoc only gives *one* trait, whereas the worst two - Iyanden and Saim-Hann - give two.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

onlyroad wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
There a lot more examples of traits that are too good compared to others.

Lets just get into the real bizarre though. DE flayed skull.
If you are in a transport or have fly keyword....
you get - ignore cover - reroll 1's (even if you moved) and +3 movement (any one of those is good enough to be it's own trait) So basically 3 army traits.
Plus you also have power from pain. Which grants -
6+ FNP
Reroll charges
hit on 2's in CC
Fearless

That is basically 4 more army traits...And you wonder why DE do so well. Certainly they must pay more points for all these abilities right? Nope - undercosted almost across the board.

You're being disingenuous here.

1. You get reroll 1's with rapid fire weapons. There isn't a rapid fire weapon in the DE arsenal that isn't Splinter, which generally means S3-4, AP0, D1. Your average MSU infantry squad kills .6 more guardsmen a turn, woo.
2. Vehicles with fly either refers to...a T6 10 Wound tank with no RF weapons, or one of two T5 transports. We're not talking Wave Serpent levels of durability here. Once their ride has popped, what's inside is on their own. And I can say from experience, four Kabs (Cause one dies disembarking) all alone with no buffs and no trait aren't going to do much. It should also be mentioned that Dark Eldar have the two slowest skimmers out of all of the Eldar.
3. Flayed Skull has no support, period. There's a difference between a Catachan infantry squad that can get S4, +2 Attacks and the ability to perform double actions and a Kabalite squad that only gets buffs while they're isolated from even the possibility of support. Since the Archon has no mobility, it's not like he's going to be able to powerwalk the 17" minimum to give them buffs for at least a turn.

Yeah, Flayed Skull probably gets too much, but it's a trait that's limited to a small selection of units (Units/Transports with Fly), in an already small part of the Codex (Kabal).

Second. You've conveniently forgotten to mention that Power From Pain does not, in fact, give a 6++, reroll to Advance/Charge, +1 hit in combat, Leadership immunity, and -1Ld for enemy units first turn. It gives one of those buffs per turn as the game goes on! If we're talking Flayed Skull here, its pretty dang useless, actually.
FnP: You're in a transport, you're not taking damage. And if the transport pops, you get it, sure, but your traits are gone. That's not 4 traits at once, that's trading one for the other when gak hits the fan.
Re-roll charges: Kabalites aren't good melee combatants. Transports are what they rely on for mobility, and if they're charging you, you've probably already lost anyway.
+1 to hit: See above.
Morale Immunity: Wow, you mean that I pass morale tests automatically on Turn 4?? It's a nice buff, but its a turn too late as most of your force is probably already dead, or have taken their big morale test for the game.
Ld debuff: Meh.

DE are good, but you're not doing yourself any favors by leaving out key information like that.

The point here wasn't to wine about DE. The point is to expose the hypocrisy of balance.

Which would you rather have:

4ppm GEQ
-Army trait: -2 to be hit in all phases

8ppm GEQ
-Army trait: reroll hits of 1 in CC
-Army trait: +1 Ld
-Army trait: Reroll charges
-Army trait: 6+ FnP

I'd much rather the first.

"Number of traits" might be a suggestive metric, but it's certainly not proof of imbalance.

How are armies with only 1 bonus from their army trait (some version of it probably present in that huge list of bonuses) supposed to compete? They can't - it's readily apparent they can't.

That's why I'm hoping they buff CWE in the FAQ, because obviously armies that only get 1 bonus from their traits are bad. Except for Iyanden and Saim-Hainn, because those traits are dominating.

These are made up abilities. There is no trait that is -2 to be hit in all phases. There are lots of traits that are 6+ FNP and reroll charges though - DE get those as side perks to their army trait which also includes a few more army traits from other codex...Do you dispute this? Plus I am not disagreeing with you that -1 to hit trait is OP. It is. No one has complained about it as much as me on this board. I called it out since the beginning. Said it would ruin the game. It pretty much did. Plus I am not picking at CWE. CWE that isn't aloitoc is or ynnari is pretty garbage right now.
I'd like to Iyandeen get 6+ FNP and retain their leadership ability. Give Ulthwe +1 to cast powers and ignore smite penalty.

By your logic, how is a Deffskullz ork army not the single most broken thing in the entire universe?

6++

Reroll 1 dice to hit, and wound, and to deal damage, every unit, twice per turn.

Reroll 1 or both dice to charge.

Obsec on all infantry.

Mob rule for morale.

FIVE things that in another army could be conceived as as an army trait! FIVE! And you get your pick of 95% of the units in the codex to get that, compared to Flayed Skull kabalites, which have...let's see.... a grand total of seven, I think, different units that can possibly get their trait?

Hmmm...strange, though, they don't seem like they're the most OP army in the game. They seem like we've seen one single list using that trait. And, weird, but the flayed skull trait also seems like a pretty rare thing to see in competitive lists, it's not unheard of but it's certainly not the go-to for eldar soup.

It's almost like judging how OP something is by the NUMBER of different special rules that apply to their army is...kind of a silly thing to base an assumption of balance on.

Drukhari get two of those special rules on turn 4 and turn 5. What competitive game of 40k has actually gone to that turn in 8th edition? Also, morale immunity on an MSU faction, and reroll charges - we were just talking about how kickass reroll charges is on space marines.

pretty much every army gets some kind of special rule that applies at the army level or most of the army level that's printed at the beginning of the book. Trying to figure out who's OP using that metric is like trying to determine who's op using your own local meta rather than basing that opinion on actual data oh wait...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh my god I just realized harlequins from the soaring spite have

advance and fire assault weapons with no penalty

advance and charge

fall back and charge

fall back and shoot

army-wide Fly (or Fly equivalent)

models that Fly treat their pistols as assault weapons

Models embarked on models that Fly treat their pistols as assault weapons

Oh my gooooooooood look at all those rules Harlequins must be winning all the tournaments, nobody can compete!

Sterling191 wrote:

RogueApiary wrote:
Also, dropping a Knight to T7 lets you do silly gak like wounding them on a 4+ with Deathwatch bolters.

But Chaos or Tau wounding on 4s is totally fine tho, right?

Tau weapons are S5. One of the key benefits of S5 is wounding T8 on a 5+ starting, so yes? Also, the Tau basic guns aren't AP-1/-2 like the DW ones are. Chaos bolters still wound on 5's even with VotLW, so not sure where you were going with that unless you mean Havocs,

Also, I play DW so I'm actually arguing against something that would buff the hell out of my most played army.

Point is, making Knights vulnerable to small arms to 'fix' them is stupid from a game design point of view and a lore one. The 3++ currently completely shuts out all high str, high AP, high dmg guns in the game, and lowering the Knight's toughness does nothing to address that because they'll still all wound on 3's. Meanwhile, basic infantry guns already have tons of viable targets (just about any screening unit in the game), so it's not like they need to add Knights to their target list. It's far better to allow the AT weapons to actually do their job against Knights than give the anti infantry weapons more targets to shoot at. Lorewise, I don't think it's necessary to explain why lowering the toughness of a Knight makes no sense.

IKs are the worst offender, but the game has way too many invulns. AP past -2 is basically crap, and expensive at that.

Martel732 wrote:
IKs are the worst offender, but the game has way too many invulns. AP past -2 is basically crap, and expensive at that.

how does this jive with Every Gun is a Plasma Gun, Multiple Wounds Don't Matter, Power Armor Is Made of Paper?

the_scotsman wrote:


By your logic, how is a Deffskullz ork army not the single most broken thing in the entire universe?

6++

Reroll 1 dice to hit, and wound, and to deal damage, every unit, twice per turn.

Reroll 1 or both dice to charge.

Obsec on all infantry.

Mob rule for morale.

FIVE things that in another army could be conceived as as an army trait! FIVE! And you get your pick of 95% of the units in the codex to get that, compared to Flayed Skull kabalites, which have...let's see.... a grand total of seven, I think, different units that can possibly get their trait?

Hmmm...strange, though, they don't seem like they're the most OP army in the game. They seem like we've seen one single list using that trait. And, weird, but the flayed skull trait also seems like a pretty rare thing to see in competitive lists, it's not unheard of but it's certainly not the go-to for eldar soup.

It's almost like judging how OP something is by the NUMBER of different special rules that apply to their army is...kind of a silly thing to base an assumption of balance on.

Drukhari get two of those special rules on turn 4 and turn 5. What competitive game of 40k has actually gone to that turn in 8th edition? Also, morale immunity on an MSU faction, and reroll charges - we were just talking about how kickass reroll charges is on space marines.

pretty much every army gets some kind of special rule that applies at the army level or most of the army level that's printed at the beginning of the book. Trying to figure out who's OP using that metric is like trying to determine who's op using your own local meta rather than basing that opinion on actual data oh wait...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh my god I just realized harlequins from the soaring spite have

advance and fire assault weapons with no penalty

advance and charge

fall back and charge

fall back and shoot

army-wide Fly (or Fly equivalent)

models that Fly treat their pistols as assault weapons

Models embarked on models that Fly treat their pistols as assault weapons

Oh my gooooooooood look at all those rules Harlequins must be winning all the tournaments, nobody can compete!

I'm not quite following the arguments for this, but I feel like something needs pointing out.

Deffskullz trait is really, really good. Any army would kill to have it. Marines would be broken good with it.

The reason it isn't broken with Orks is because 5s to hit happens half as often and melee is harder to do than ranged.

Harlequins aren't flipping around with pistols, because knights are more threatening right now and carrying haywire is way easier to get in range and make an impact with doom than those pistols will be (not to mention the fly nerf).

the_scotsman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
IKs are the worst offender, but the game has way too many invulns. AP past -2 is basically crap, and expensive at that.

how does this jive with Every Gun is a Plasma Gun, Multiple Wounds Don't Matter, Power Armor Is Made of Paper?

You don't need plasma guns to embarrass marines. A simple -1 with a bucket of dice will do. That's how it jives. You need plasma guns to overkill marines, which isn't necessary, and arguably a poor choice given threats like Alaitoc flyers.

Power armor is paper because of the cost to put it on the field. Dealing with sisters is way more soulcrushing than marines, generally speaking.

As for multiple wounds, most lists get around them pretty easily. Lootas, dissy cannons, the utter nonsense that goes on plague bearers. Even marines are pretty damn good at killing 2w marines.

RogueApiary wrote:


Tau weapons are S5. One of the key benefits of S5 is wounding T8 on a 5+ starting, so yes? Also, the Tau basic guns aren't AP-1/-2 like the DW ones are. Chaos bolters still wound on 5's even with VotLW, so not sure where you were going with that unless you mean Havocs,

Not against a T7 target.

If you're gonna crap on Deathwatch getting a +1 to wound against a theoretical T7 superheavy, evaluate the similar things other armies get in the same context, not what they presently do against T8.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

RogueApiary wrote:
[Lorewise, I don't think it's necessary to explain why lowering the toughness of a Knight makes no sense.

Fluff is a gak balancing tool.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


By your logic, how is a Deffskullz ork army not the single most broken thing in the entire universe?

6++

Reroll 1 dice to hit, and wound, and to deal damage, every unit, twice per turn.

Reroll 1 or both dice to charge.

Obsec on all infantry.

Mob rule for morale.

FIVE things that in another army could be conceived as as an army trait! FIVE! And you get your pick of 95% of the units in the codex to get that, compared to Flayed Skull kabalites, which have...let's see.... a grand total of seven, I think, different units that can possibly get their trait?

Hmmm...strange, though, they don't seem like they're the most OP army in the game. They seem like we've seen one single list using that trait. And, weird, but the flayed skull trait also seems like a pretty rare thing to see in competitive lists, it's not unheard of but it's certainly not the go-to for eldar soup.

It's almost like judging how OP something is by the NUMBER of different special rules that apply to their army is...kind of a silly thing to base an assumption of balance on.

Drukhari get two of those special rules on turn 4 and turn 5. What competitive game of 40k has actually gone to that turn in 8th edition? Also, morale immunity on an MSU faction, and reroll charges - we were just talking about how kickass reroll charges is on space marines.

pretty much every army gets some kind of special rule that applies at the army level or most of the army level that's printed at the beginning of the book. Trying to figure out who's OP using that metric is like trying to determine who's op using your own local meta rather than basing that opinion on actual data oh wait...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh my god I just realized harlequins from the soaring spite have

advance and fire assault weapons with no penalty

advance and charge

fall back and charge

fall back and shoot

army-wide Fly (or Fly equivalent)

models that Fly treat their pistols as assault weapons

Models embarked on models that Fly treat their pistols as assault weapons

Oh my gooooooooood look at all those rules Harlequins must be winning all the tournaments, nobody can compete!

I'm not quite following the arguments for this, but I feel like something needs pointing out.

Deffskullz trait is really, really good. Any army would kill to have it. Marines would be broken good with it.

The reason it isn't broken with Orks is because 5s to hit happens half as often and melee is harder to do than ranged.

Harlequins aren't flipping around with pistols, because knights are more threatening right now and carrying haywire is way easier to get in range and make an impact with doom than those pistols will be (not to mention the fly nerf).

I'm gonna press X to doubt on that one ghost rider.

Marines almost have the Deffskullz trait, at least the most impactful part of it, in the Salamanders trait. They lack the 6++, the reroll to damage, and the army wide obsec...but that wouldn't make marines OP.

The logic of this was, it's freakin' dumb to judge which armies are OP based on the "number of special rules they get" especially when you ignore the details of Power From Pain - the fact that the buffs only turn on from a certain turn. results 4 and 5 on the table are both not really impactful at all...and rarely actually happen in game because you have to get to turn 4. Even if we take as a given that Drukhari get reroll failed charges and 6++ FNP, and then turn 3 get +1WS, they're competing with:

Marines: Army wide reroll failed morale, basic guns work out to full range if you didn't move or are certain unit types, squads can split into two when you deploy them.

Tau: Everyone within 6" gets to overwatch when a charge is declared against you, rolls of 6 for morale (the worst result) auto-pass, a ubiquitous unit type can take wounds for your models on a 2+, and a stacking set of special rules many of which are army subfaction rules (markerlights)

Orks: Reroll 1 or both charge dice, starting from turn 1. Optionally treat your unit size as your LD value, or the unit size of any unit within 6" of you.

Admech: 6 different army-wide buffs you get to choose every turn

Necrons: Res protocols and quantum shielding

Honestly the three armies with the worst army-wide special rules are Guard, CWE and Imperial Knights...so what does this say about how good "army wide special rules" is at determining how OP a faction is?

It's about pricing and synergy with other rules available to the army. Looking at it in a vacuum is not very informative.

Martel732 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
IKs are the worst offender, but the game has way too many invulns. AP past -2 is basically crap, and expensive at that.

how does this jive with Every Gun is a Plasma Gun, Multiple Wounds Don't Matter, Power Armor Is Made of Paper?

You don't need plasma guns to embarrass marines. A simple -1 with a bucket of dice will do. That's how it jives. You need plasma guns to overkill marines, which isn't necessary, and arguably a poor choice given threats like Alaitoc flyers.

Power armor is paper because of the cost to put it on the field. Dealing with sisters is way more soulcrushing than marines, generally speaking.

And to add onto this, the REAL reason Plasma is so prevalent is the Damage 2 and 2 shots in RF range, not the AP-3 (although that helps).
Unlike so many weapons that are DESIGNED to kill big targets, Plasma is an all-around reliable choice over, say, a Meltagun that has only 1 shot, AP-4 that is wasted on models with 5++ or 4++, and a woefully unreliable d6 Damage. All for several points MORE than a Plasma gun for....reasons

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