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Bharring wrote:
While out of scope, I believe a gutting of Chapter Tactics (across all factions) would be the single biggest step in the right direction balance-wise. Currently, an UltraMarine LandSpeeder isn't the same points as an Iron Hands or Salamander LandSpeeder, for instance. You can't fix that with changing the LandSpeeder points value; it's either too high for UM or too low for IH.

Honestly, I don't have a huge problem with chapter tactics and stratagems influencing which models in an army are more immediately useful for a sub faction in terms of balance, but there definitely should be more of an eye toward combo rules really breaking things and keeping the tactics balanced overall. But the community doesn't really help matters when every new combo is world ending and must be nerfed before it ever even hits a table.

Though I'm personally a bit salty about how hard the GSC was 'balanced' and thusly largely neutered while space marines are handed a way to ambush turn one when they don't really need that very much. That said, I can understand the deepstrike rule implemented(and could readily live without the exception granted marines) and I feel like there should be a similar approach taken to stacking effects. I'd quite honestly say(even to the further detriment of GSC) that at any phase a unit should have to select a single aura(or perhaps model projecting auras) that it is influenced by and have a max of one stratagem and/or artifact effecting it.

But people will probably shoot that down as extra book keeping like CP being aligned to faction that generated it which is still one of my favorite fixes for this edition that hasn't happened.

I dont think chapter tactics is that bad. None of the actual SM chapter tactics makes or break anything. Its the doctrines, traits, relics, powers and 50 stratagems available to each chapter that breaks it.

There is like 35 common SM strats and 15 for each suppliment. And having access to 12 warlord traits that you can stack and twice the relics of any other factions with 3 different psychic trees you have way too many options that can stack. And this is if mono chapter. If playing 3 different SM detachments you have 3-10 chapter tactics, 80ish stratagems, 24 warlord traits, 40ish relics and 30 psychic powers to choose from to tailor your perfect SM army and all you lose is the super doctrine since you still have the normal ones. And units/characters from 3 different chapters. Like you could take Shrike to go with some vanguard and then ferros with some tanks and Guilliman taking a flank.

If you removed the super doctrines and removed 10 or so common SM strats. Then you could have each supplement give 1-2 warlord traits, 2-3 relics, 2 psychic powers and maybe 5 stratagems to differentiate them a bit. That the supplements ADD so many extra abilities to the core codex is insane since it already is more fleshed out than any other book. Its the stacking upon stacking that is the problem.

Just think about playing against a list like that at a tournament if you yourself isnt super faminilar with Marines. You cant spend 60min before the game reading through all their special special special rules since before you actually deploy the opponent still havent chosen what traits/relics and powers to use. And remembering what out of 80 strats the opponent have avaiblable to which SM unit them at any time isnt gonna be easy. Way too much special rules in these new books

Klickor wrote:
I dont think chapter tactics is that bad. None of the actual SM chapter tactics makes or break anything. Its the doctrines, traits, relics, powers and 50 stratagems available to each chapter that breaks it.

There is like 35 common SM strats and 15 for each suppliment. And having access to 12 warlord traits that you can stack and twice the relics of any other factions with 3 different psychic trees you have way too many options that can stack. And this is if mono chapter. If playing 3 different SM detachments you have 3-10 chapter tactics, 80ish stratagems, 24 warlord traits, 40ish relics and 30 psychic powers to choose from to tailor your perfect SM army and all you lose is the super doctrine since you still have the normal ones. And units/characters from 3 different chapters. Like you could take Shrike to go with some vanguard and then ferros with some tanks and Guilliman taking a flank.

If you removed the super doctrines and removed 10 or so common SM strats. Then you could have each supplement give 1-2 warlord traits, 2-3 relics, 2 psychic powers and maybe 5 stratagems to differentiate them a bit. That the supplements ADD so many extra abilities to the core codex is insane since it already is more fleshed out than any other book. Its the stacking upon stacking that is the problem.

But how do you balance fairly by points cost when Chapter Tactics means the same model, for the same points, can have two different values?

Bharring wrote:

But how do you balance fairly by points cost when Chapter Tactics means the same model, for the same points, can have two different values?

Different points costs for units with different chapter tactics.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Bharring wrote:

But how do you balance fairly by points cost when Chapter Tactics means the same model, for the same points, can have two different values?

Different points costs for units with different chapter tactics.

That is an entirely possible way to do so. I want to stress, though, that without doing so - you can't actually balance different-value Chapter Tactics.

Cutting traits, relics and so would be huge mistake on the fun part which have always been highlighted as the most important.

Balance changes should only be made if they support in having fun and less relic choises do not. In my opinion more choices would but that would cross the principle of not inventing stuff but can still be done under "additional" content as one would simply just not use them and thus wont necessarily affect the gameplay.

Different point costs for different chapters should not still take away the charcteristics of said chapter as in iron hands, the vehicles should be more powerful than others for their points but, the others should have something nearly, as good or even better to suit their chapter. This will also result in more armies that share the chapters feel. If all chapters have as good vehicles per points there is really not anything going on iron hands in that regard.


I see lots of iron hands list have few cp so, if ironstone would be 3 cp they should have very few of them to use in game so no re-rolls, no strategems and so. Players would have to choose between maximising vehicles in the list building phase, strategems and relics. Is ironstone worth it or am i better with 3 other relics instead ?

Would result in different kind of lists but still focusing heavily on vehicles, maintaining all given mechanisms.

Bharring wrote:

But how do you balance fairly by points cost when Chapter Tactics means the same model, for the same points, can have two different values?

You dont have too. As long as the core game favors multiple kinds of unit and playstyles in a single list its ok if some units are a little bit better with 1 tactic than another. Lets say you have a SM army with some elite CC units, some mobile units, some troops and some tanks. In a well writen rule set you would want to have this kind of allround list for different things. Doesnt really matter then if IH makes the tanks better than if you were White Scars that only make the mobile element better. You would still have attack bikes/speeders/jump marines in an IH list and tanks in a WS list just that IH might take an extra tank and a WS list a few more bikes.

The game at the moment doesnt really penalize you for going almost all in on vehicles with a mono IH list that stacks a ton of other things beside the chapter tactic to make it completely different from a WS list. The problem isnt really the chapter tactic here. Even without chapter tactics you would still see IH lists built the same and be way better than any other SM vehicle heavy list.

If IH didnt get its insane doctrine but WS let you move without penalty then IH would have a bit sturdier vehicles, WS a bit more mobile vehicles, RG more accurate vehicles against characters, UM not caring about being touched in melee and so on. Small differences that all make a vehicle better. And perhaps Blood Angels would get extra charge distance/deny overwatch against a target damaged by a BA vehicle as its vehicle chapter tactic. Each vehicle would not be exactly the same in each chapter but when building an allround list it wouldnt matter too much, they would still be usable in a competetive setting.

In Warmachine I used to play very solo heavy and most of my models didnt hinge too much on certain synergies from my caster (closest to chapter tactics we got). No matter what caster I used I still had some units in my list that did very different things from just kill or take damage. Depending on matchup I could win games without killing a single enemy model by just using supporting and controlling elements in my list to win on scenarios. In other games I used the same abilities to set up kills and then wiped them out. I had some units in my list that changed depending on what caster I played but many stayed because they had unique uses that was more important than tiny caster synergies. 40k lacks many of those things. Here you really want to stack synergies to insane levels, especially in the new IH book and be so dominant in 1 aspect that nothing else really matters. If you kill the enemy in 1 turn they cant score or if you are unkillable they cant stop you from scoring. You cant really outmaneouver an IH list if you have a slight lack of terrain or a Knight/Tank commander list if they go first on the same bad table. You are just dead without any options.

TLR Dont focus on the details while the core rules are crap and break stuff. You cant really balance everything while you mainly only have 2 important aspects to each model. How killy is it and how sturdy is it. You dont need perfect balance between units/chapters/factions if different units have different usages.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Amai wrote:
Cutting traits, relics and so would be huge mistake on the fun part which have always been highlighted as the most important.

Balance changes should only be made if they support in having fun and less relic choises do not. In my opinion more choices would but that would cross the principle of not inventing stuff but can still be done under "additional" content as sone would simply just not use them and thus wont necessarily affect the gameplay.

Different point costs for different chapters should not still take away the charcteristics of said chapter as in iron hands, the vehicles should be more powerful than others for their points but, the others should have something nearly, as good or even better to suit their chapter. This will also result in more armies that share the chapters feel. If all chapters have as good vehicles per points there is really not anything going on iron hands in that regard.

Traits, relics and other such stuff didnt exist before and we could still have fun. Sure if they were all toned down to the level of the worst of them it wouldnt really make a problem but all the options in the SM book is insane. Its almost impossible to make them balanced if each trait/relic/power/strat actually does something good. You have 100+ datasheets with 100 different weapons and hundreds of special rules to tailor that. Either most become very slight and tiny upgrades or you remove most of them and let those that remain actually do something. Cant really have both ways while still not putting much effort into balance. More choice at some point just leads to less actual choice in practice. Out of all the rules stacking we have now in marines some units are improved a ton while others just suck even more since they didnt get anything special for them to make them better compared to those that werent forgotten. Take terminators in RG for example. Why would you ever want them when you can infiltrate/deepstrike aggressors or centurions that are way better since they got new tools while the terminators didnt. More options for RG made the terminators even more irrelevant.

Nah the amount is not a problem in my opinion, most of the units are similar enough that they fill the same role. Most of the traits, psychic powers and relics are too.

Problem in my opinion is if something is seen as clearly superior to others. Having ironstone being in the same pick category than other relics is just wrong.

Psychic powers have different casting values to represent this, relics should have too (different cp values if neccessary)

Warlord traits should be free in my opinion and as far as i know they are quite evenly matched between eachother. Some are maybe a bit stronger than others in a given setting but not as much as in ironstone vs other relics for example.


Maybe the raven guards are so in to it in the present that they dont use them anymore and see them as outdated as some other chapter could relish their oly armors. If this would be the case with every chapter there would surely be a problem in pts balance between those units.

Could it still be viable for raven guard to use terminators together with infiltrating suits and pre moving assault unit to form a strong motion ?

The chapter special only allows the move of one unit so, maybe the terminators are still viable as a support ?

Amai wrote:
Nah the amount is not a problem in my opinion, most of the units are similar enough that they fill the same role. Most of the traits, psychic powers and relics are too.

Problem in my opinion is if something is seen as clearly superior to others. Having ironstone being in the same pick category than other relics is just wrong.

Psychic powers have different casting values to represent this, relics should have too (different cp values if neccessary)

Warlord traits should be free in my opinion and as far as i know they are quite evenly matched between eachother. Some are maybe a bit stronger than others in a given setting but not as much as in ironstone vs other relics for example.


Maybe the raven guards are so in to it in the present that they dont use them anymore and see them as outdated as some other chapter could relish their oly armors. If this would be the case with every chapter there would surely be a problem in pts balance between those units.

Could it still be viable for raven guard still use terminators together with infiltrating suits and pre moving assault unit to form a strong motion ?

The chapter special only allows the move of one unit so, maybe the terminators are still viable as a support ?

But weak relics/traits isnt much different from normal wargear options. And lots of tiny weak options doesnt really matter in the game if they are that weak/balanced. Like the difference in buying 25 powerswords or 20 power axes in an army is barely noticeable over a few games. And that is taking 20-25 of a weak option instead of just 1 that is slightly stronger. We already have too many worthless options/rules that could be baked into units as it is.

Trait only allows 1 unit to infiltrate but you can use strats to move or deepstrike a unit for 1cp per unit. Usable as many times as you have units/cp. Making terminators really really bad in comparison. Not that they are any good with the other chapters, just that they are even worse in RG.

No believe this a masterpiece all is though carefully well and only the greed for money is tainting it.

There is a thread for suggesting more balanced pts costs is here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/778872.page

The problem with a fan patch is that you'll miss things, you might end up nerfing all the good stuff my faction has without properly nerfing all the good stuff my opponents get, that might not be fun. Better The Devil You Know Than The Devil You Don't, even if GW is imperfect, putting your faith in some rando on the internet might not sound equally good to everyone, one guy not jumping on the band-wagon might tip the cart. In larger or less cohesive communities it's very hard to use fan patches, especially if several fan patches circulate. That being said Frontline Gaming with their ITC rules were successful in making popular house rules for 7th and 8th that have been used both in competitive and casual settings. The BCP app might give you better ideas, I'm not a paying subscriber so I don't have all the data, you'd want that if you wanted to balance the game most likely, 40kstats is a free website with lots of good information, but no information on individual unit performances. I'm not going to use any pts updates but GW or ITC create, even those I create myself I won't use because I don't want to bother finding people that want to use my pts.

In addition, how am I supposed to balance the pts for Craftworlds when Space Marines suddenly set a new bar for what is good and what is bad? How about when FAQs or new missions are added? Changing rules is anathema to balance, a lake won't be still while you're throwing rocks in, it needs time to settle. The game lacks a pts anchor, that's the first thing I did when I started writing fan codexes for 7th edition, but I am very sure 8th doesn't have that so it's all sort of a sea of things changing on the whims of the developers. You are going to be meeting difficulties if you want to create pts that are not just a balanced system when used against people that use the system, but also balanced against people that are using regular pts. When Cultists are 5 pts and Imperial Guardsmen are 4, where is the balance? Where do you set the bar for what is fair? Is it at the unkillable Dreadnought, or the kind of bad Cultist, the 13 pt CSM or the 12 pt SM?

The following threads might give you an idea about which rules are OP and need to be nerfed or buffed:

Space Marines Chapter, Stratagem, WL Trait, Psychic Powers and Relic Balance: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/781101.page

For Tau: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/776740.page

For Orks: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/779167.page

For Necrons: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/776532.page

For Craftworlds: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/776718.page

Amai wrote:
Side question, are there still gaming groups that play other editions?

I've come across at least one person that claims 7th edition was the holy grail and that seems to be what he plays with his gaming group, several people claim that 7th was good except for the broken codexes. 5th edition is looked back on as a mostly fine core ruleset, I'm sure there one or two dozen in the world that play that as well. Compared to the explosive success that is 8th edition, nothing comes close.

Bharring wrote:

Klickor wrote:
I dont think chapter tactics is that bad. None of the actual SM chapter tactics makes or break anything. Its the doctrines, traits, relics, powers and 50 stratagems available to each chapter that breaks it.

There is like 35 common SM strats and 15 for each suppliment. And having access to 12 warlord traits that you can stack and twice the relics of any other factions with 3 different psychic trees you have way too many options that can stack. And this is if mono chapter. If playing 3 different SM detachments you have 3-10 chapter tactics, 80ish stratagems, 24 warlord traits, 40ish relics and 30 psychic powers to choose from to tailor your perfect SM army and all you lose is the super doctrine since you still have the normal ones. And units/characters from 3 different chapters. Like you could take Shrike to go with some vanguard and then ferros with some tanks and Guilliman taking a flank.

If you removed the super doctrines and removed 10 or so common SM strats. Then you could have each supplement give 1-2 warlord traits, 2-3 relics, 2 psychic powers and maybe 5 stratagems to differentiate them a bit. That the supplements ADD so many extra abilities to the core codex is insane since it already is more fleshed out than any other book. Its the stacking upon stacking that is the problem.

But how do you balance fairly by points cost when Chapter Tactics means the same model, for the same points, can have two different values?

By having all of them have roughly the same value.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Whaaaiiil....

Amongst many other things, the game suffers from trying to fit too broad of a variety of units into too small of a random number generator.

When there are weapons that kill Marines as quickly as Guardsmen, then how do you balance Marines (statistically better) against Guardsmen?

You can’t, really. You have to create rock-paper-scissors balance. Guardsmen beat Knights, Knights beat Marines, and Marines beat Guardsmen.

Sooo...

The best you can do is aim for codex vs codex balance, looking at a few (3, say) thematic builds from each, and how those themes balance against each other and then externally.

And that’s pretty hard even for a more limited game than 40k. If we hope for even 2 thematic builds per 20 factions, that’s 40 x 40 balance points. 1600 combinations to try to balance. Three themes each is 3600 combinations with multitudes of variation between.

Which leads to “people” being unable to see overall balance solutions. In a busy club, a person might encounter 40 themes, maybe? Yeah, big tournaments show what people looking to exploit the system can pull together.

The game’s balance can most efficiently be corrected with minor point tweaks at a time. Units that consistently see tournament play get a 5% bump for 6 months. Units that consistently do NOT see tournament play get a 5% decrease.

Over time, the balance should sort out.

I understand that GW’s business model works by “encouraging” people to buy the hot new thing by making them more powerful in-game. That is their choice, perhaps.

Nope, the problem lies in GW changing design ideas every year and forcefully making the last armies much stronger than early ones. You could say that they are improving in terms of codex design but it doesn't warrant leaving armies in the dust of unplayability for several years while they could just speed up the release cycle and get there in relatively short time.

 Ordana wrote:

Bharring wrote:

Klickor wrote:
I dont think chapter tactics is that bad. None of the actual SM chapter tactics makes or break anything. Its the doctrines, traits, relics, powers and 50 stratagems available to each chapter that breaks it.

There is like 35 common SM strats and 15 for each suppliment. And having access to 12 warlord traits that you can stack and twice the relics of any other factions with 3 different psychic trees you have way too many options that can stack. And this is if mono chapter. If playing 3 different SM detachments you have 3-10 chapter tactics, 80ish stratagems, 24 warlord traits, 40ish relics and 30 psychic powers to choose from to tailor your perfect SM army and all you lose is the super doctrine since you still have the normal ones. And units/characters from 3 different chapters. Like you could take Shrike to go with some vanguard and then ferros with some tanks and Guilliman taking a flank.

If you removed the super doctrines and removed 10 or so common SM strats. Then you could have each supplement give 1-2 warlord traits, 2-3 relics, 2 psychic powers and maybe 5 stratagems to differentiate them a bit. That the supplements ADD so many extra abilities to the core codex is insane since it already is more fleshed out than any other book. Its the stacking upon stacking that is the problem.

But how do you balance fairly by points cost when Chapter Tactics means the same model, for the same points, can have two different values?

By having all of them have roughly the same value.

It's impossible to have roughly the same value with the same rule for two different units. Adding 3" to weapons is more valuable to a 9" range weapon than a 48" range weapon, similarly re-rolling hit rolls of 1s for bolt weapons is more valuable for units that are armed with bolt weapons. The only option with chapter tactics is to create one or two competitive lists for each chapter, but making every unit an option in every chapter is impossible.

Lets just see here.

An Iron Hands speeder costs the same as an Ultras speeder

Turn1 - The ironhands can move and shoot with no pentaly, rerolls 1's with all its weapons, and can even fall back and shoot without pentalty, and has a 6+ FNP and overwatches on 5's.

Ultras speeder on turn 2 move and and shoot without penalty but suffers penalty for falling back and shooting. All of this at -1 AP due to doctrines changing over to tactical.

This is balanced? No...these kinds of unbalance shouldn't even make it past the brainstorming stage but they managed to make it past probably 5 more more serious steps of balancing before sending to print. Unblanace such as this is a clear indicator of balance not even being a goal for the game designers. They literally DO NOT CARE at all about balance. You want a balanced game. Start coming together to make better rules we can all agree on.

It seems there are not much to rebalance after all. Maybe this is done quite easily. Maximum of couple sentences for each codex and for some codexes none whatsoever.


Units need not to be balanced between the chapters as long as there is something else in another chapters favour and i think there are.


Those links are of little use in this as they follow different perspective. Those could be a source of something else with a lot of more changes.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Amai wrote:
Ok i will ask this:

Can anyone give examples of single units that are overcosted ?

The stompa
...
agreed, because armchair balancing is a lot harder than it seems. But still, i think bringing up the fact that "free" stuff needs to have points cost (relics for example, but i don't think paying for warlord traits and even chapter tactics would be bad fo the balance of the game)

exalted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Lets just see here.

An Iron Hands speeder costs the same as an Ultras speeder

Turn1 - The ironhands can move and shoot with no pentaly, rerolls 1's with all its weapons, and can even fall back and shoot without pentalty, and has a 6+ FNP and overwatches on 5's.

Ultras speeder on turn 2 move and and shoot without penalty but suffers penalty for falling back and shooting. All of this at -1 AP due to doctrines changing over to tactical.

This is balanced? No...these kinds of unbalance shouldn't even make it past the brainstorming stage but they managed to make it past probably 5 more more serious steps of balancing before sending to print. Unblanace such as this is a clear indicator of balance not even being a goal for the game designers. They literally DO NOT CARE at all about balance. You want a balanced game. Start coming together to make better rules we can all agree on.

The consensus may depend on USRs and variations specific to chapters/factions/units that end up with minor but important changes to context dependent abilities.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Lets just see here.

An Iron Hands speeder costs the same as an Ultras speeder

Turn1 - The ironhands can move and shoot with no pentaly, rerolls 1's with all its weapons, and can even fall back and shoot without pentalty, and has a 6+ FNP and overwatches on 5's.

Ultras speeder on turn 2 move and and shoot without penalty but suffers penalty for falling back and shooting. All of this at -1 AP due to doctrines changing over to tactical.

Unless Land Speeders lost Fly, where's the penalty to hit coming from?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Amai wrote:
It seems there are not much to rebalance after all. Maybe this is done quite easily. Maximum of couple sentences for each codex and for some codexes none whatsoever.


Units need not to be balanced between the chapters as long as there is something else in another chapters favour and i think there are.


Those links are of little use in this as they follow different perspective. Those could be a source of something else with a lot of more changes.

What points values should you give to Iyanden's CT versus Uthwe's CT? And how would you leverage them? Uthwe's CT outperforms Iyanden's very directly, for instance.

Those links are attempts to rebalance. They often didn't follow your requirement of "Must be points changes, or doesn't matter". Which should be unsurprising because they didn't come about as a result of your request.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Lets just see here.

An Iron Hands speeder costs the same as an Ultras speeder

Turn1 - The ironhands can move and shoot with no pentaly, rerolls 1's with all its weapons, and can even fall back and shoot without pentalty, and has a 6+ FNP and overwatches on 5's.

Ultras speeder on turn 2 move and and shoot without penalty but suffers penalty for falling back and shooting. All of this at -1 AP due to doctrines changing over to tactical.

This is balanced? No...these kinds of unbalance shouldn't even make it past the brainstorming stage but they managed to make it past probably 5 more more serious steps of balancing before sending to print. Unblanace such as this is a clear indicator of balance not even being a goal for the game designers. They literally DO NOT CARE at all about balance. You want a balanced game. Start coming together to make better rules we can all agree on.

That's not balance, that's forcing equivalence. Toss the same amount of points worth the things that Ultras have best support for on the table for an entire game instead and compare from there. The nice thing about these strategies is that they influence factions that are otherwise just pallet swaps of each other to actually embrace a play style particular to the supposed faction. You cannot demand direct equivalence between datasheets and achieve that.

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Lets just see here.

An Iron Hands speeder costs the same as an Ultras speeder

Turn1 - The ironhands can move and shoot with no pentaly, rerolls 1's with all its weapons, and can even fall back and shoot without pentalty, and has a 6+ FNP and overwatches on 5's.

Ultras speeder on turn 2 move and and shoot without penalty but suffers penalty for falling back and shooting. All of this at -1 AP due to doctrines changing over to tactical.

This is balanced? No...these kinds of unbalance shouldn't even make it past the brainstorming stage but they managed to make it past probably 5 more more serious steps of balancing before sending to print. Unblanace such as this is a clear indicator of balance not even being a goal for the game designers. They literally DO NOT CARE at all about balance. You want a balanced game. Start coming together to make better rules we can all agree on.

That's not balance, that's forcing equivalence. Toss the same amount of points worth the things that Ultras have best support for on the table for an entire game instead and compare from there. The nice thing about these strategies is that they influence factions that are otherwise just pallet swaps of each other to actually embrace a play style particular to the supposed faction. You cannot demand direct equivalence between datasheets and achieve that.

Toss the same points of Iyanden on the table as Iyanden vs same list as Uthwe, and Uthwe wins.
Toss the same points of Uthwe on the table as Uthwe vs same list as Iyanden, and Uthwe wins.

Sometimes, CTs are tradeoffs where different factions are better for different builds. Other times, you have some CTs that feel downright inferior to other CTs in the same book. The common complaint in the SM book seems to be "UM < IH", but there are more obvious examples.

Heavy weapons suffer penalty for moving and shooting. Ultramarines Super doctrine specifically states it does not take effect if you fall back from combat. So you count as moving if you fall back from combat as ultramarines. Ironhand's super doctrine does not state this.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Heavy weapons suffer penalty for moving and shooting. Ultramarines Super doctrine specifically states it does not take effect if you fall back from combat. So you count as moving if you fall back from combat as ultramarines. Ironhand's super doctrine does not state this.

Provided you're not running a heavy flamer

Its probably called super doctrine for a reason.


I also suggest to form a fan based edition with rule changes such as those in the links. Would be a lot harder take than this but the results might be satisfying and offer some players better gaming environment. People also seem to like tinkering their own rules and being authorities in that regrard.

In fact, this is something GW have encouraged the customers from the beginning.

Amai wrote:
Its probably called super doctrine for a reason.


I also suggest to form a fan based edition with rule changes such as those in the links. Would be a lot harder take than this but the results might be satisfying and offer some players better gaming environment. People also seem to like tinkering their own rules and being authorities in that regrard.

In fact, this is something GW have encouraged the customers from the beginning.

I couldn't agree more - GW is certainly encouraging me to play my ultramarines with Ironhands rules.

On "super doctrines" it's basically the name we have all given the special benefit you get from each chapter for being in their "preferred" doctrine. One is clearly more super than the other.

But shouldnt ultrmarines be like the, ultimate chapter ?

Maybe you should reforge their super doctrine as an ultimate doctrine.

The idea that you can balance the game with points cost alone is flawed from the start. As long as
1.) There are things that are point free that change the value of units.
2.) Units change value from sub-faction to subfaction
3.) Unit synergies exist

You cannot balance using points alone at least not internal to a specific book.
The best you can do is balance builds from one codex to another based on the strongest possible choices for every unit being made.

Amai wrote:
But shouldnt ultrmarines be like the, ultimate chapter ?

Maybe you should reforge their super doctrine as an ultimate doctrine.

Ultra is a misnomer and everything weve read about the Ultramarines being the pinnacle of what a space marine chapter should be is a lie. Ironhands are the Ultra chapter. For Gorgon!

No they are not! For ultima!

Flesh is weak duty is eternal.

Xeno has your complaint transitioned from "Ultramarines are weak, but still the strongest Chapter only because of a crutch Girlyman" to "IH are so absolutely bonkers strong that now I'm sad because my Ultras aren't as strong anymore"?

Which is kinda ridiculous isn't it? Ultras were strong pre codex 2.0 and are only stronger now. You should be happy that your precious Ultras are even more competitive, not lamenting the fact that another Chapter might be slightly more efficient.

Breng77 wrote:
The idea that you can balance the game with points cost alone is flawed from the start. As long as
1.) There are things that are point free that change the value of units.
2.) Units change value from sub-faction to subfaction
3.) Unit synergies exist

You cannot balance using points alone at least not internal to a specific book.
The best you can do is balance builds from one codex to another based on the strongest possible choices for every unit being made.

No one is suggesting a "points alone" balance. Synergy should be limited from a rules design stand point.
If faction A can only deal x damage on turn 1 with the most obvious combo then faction B should be limited to roughly the same amount of damage. Same can be said for defensive combos in the amount they can reduce damage. It is very simple really. Comparable units should do comparable things. Subfactions should not affect unit stats in any major way ie. Should not increase damage or defensive characteristics in a reliable way. Maybe just give them a special ability.