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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Then he needs to buy faqs

Man, when GW paywalled WC and their download section? I totally missed that

What's Chapter Approved?

CA is actually quite well designed in that regard.

It is totally optional since it never changed any power level.

Yes because Power Level is such a great system...

It does what it is supposed to do.
Allow you to play your first games with minimal material available and not caring particularly how you equip your first squads.

If you want to use it for competitive play then it's obviously not going to work, but that would be like using a fork to eat soup. The spoon right next to it is obviously the better choice.

Right tools for the right jobs.

Spoletta wrote:
It does what it is supposed to do.
Allow you to play your first games with minimal material available and not caring particularly how you equip your first squads.

If you want to use it for competitive play then it's obviously not going to work, but that would be like using a fork to eat soup. The spoon right next to it is obviously the better choice.

Right tools for the right jobs.

That's a crap excuse if I've ever seen one.

It doesn't matter if you don't care how you load up squads. The problem is Power Level not taking anything into account, like if someone decided their Deathwatch was 4 Frag Cannons and all Storm Shields and Storm Bolters.

No one needs another “why I hate PL” detour, lads.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
It does what it is supposed to do.
Allow you to play your first games with minimal material available and not caring particularly how you equip your first squads.

If you want to use it for competitive play then it's obviously not going to work, but that would be like using a fork to eat soup. The spoon right next to it is obviously the better choice.

Right tools for the right jobs.

That's a crap excuse if I've ever seen one.

It doesn't matter if you don't care how you load up squads. The problem is Power Level not taking anything into account, like if someone decided their Deathwatch was 4 Frag Cannons and all Storm Shields and Storm Bolters.

Power level is good enough for kids learning the game and its incredibly unlikely theyd wind up choosing 4 frag cannons., because they're going to build the pieces from the kit they like

Were you people never kids?

Power Levels are also not the topic here. Move on.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:
No, 2 wounds would not fix them as their points would probably go up, also D2 weapons super popular weapons in many armies anymore.

Rubrics are pretty tough, they will be pretty good with 2 wounds.
I hope they don`t forget to give 2 wounds to the immortals.

 vipoid wrote:
Going back to the original topic, one issue I see is that giving an extra wound to Cult Marines - and only Cult Marines - would seem very arbitrary.

I could maybe see an argument for Plague Marines having an extra wound (given that bloated, hard-to-kill monstrosities are Nurgle's thing), but Berzerkers or Noise Marines having twice as many wounds as CSMs seems like something of a head-scratcher.

I think cult marines all have the mark of their god. The interpretation should be that there’s a difference between devotees and people who have actually earned the mark bestowed by their god. They can have two wounds the way that any character has extra wounds, they don’t need extra organs or a special chaos power up.


Chaos warbands don’t have a flat hierarchy like loyalists who have the same profile for every squad. The 3+ 3+ 4 4 etc profile should be much less common for chaos marines. Not only should cult marines be better than standard loyalists, but troop choice chaos marines should be weaker than standard loyalists.

 Irbis wrote:

Uh, what?

It used to average 1-2 units if enemy knew what he was doing, spreading his 4 pts models to maximum coherency and forming single file and other convoluted formations which took frakking forever. Today, you not only don't have to worry about this nonsense, you also don't get big fat ZERO hits (because you couldn't place template without clipping 0.01 mm of your other model base), if you had a chance to fire your flamer at all because being shortest range weapon in the squad, it was also first to go due to front casualties first rule. Nostalgia glasses much?

Are you playing on boards with no terrain and no vehicles? And you aren't blocking someone in? Not setting up to flame deep strikes and disembarks? What're your saying can certainly happen, but if this was the norm for you, then you're doing it wrong.

 Irbis wrote:

Funny you mention armor saves, too, because that was often very off-putting thing to face. I still remember how well IG player I was teaching how to play 40K took the news my deep struck heavy flamer not only wounds his command squad on 2+, instead of 3+ he was expecting, but AP4 meant his lovingly converted grenadiers (upgraded to carapace to have save from SM weapons) get no save at all despite standing in cover - just stared at me for a bit hearing the whole squad was vaporized without any interaction. In 8th edition, I'd at least not felt like I just kicked a puppy.

What are you even trying to say here? Anti horde weapons can't be good because it made a friend of yours sad one time?

 Irbis wrote:

You mean 0% effective as tactical squad could only shoot their melta at the tank if all other bolter dudes stood and cheered him while ignoring infantry all around them, if you actually wanted to fire bolters the melta guy just stood there slack jawed suddenly forgetting what the trigger is

I'll be sure to call up my buddies and let them know that all those games I won from my CSM squads killing their vehicles with meltas were actually their win because that never happens. I'll let you handle informing all the tournament players from every past edition that they've been cheating or cheated against.

 Irbis wrote:

Throw away these trash nostalgia googles, you act like plasma didn't already did all that (and more) in past editions. Spoiler alert - it did. Funnily enough, in 8th armour does more against plasma it ever did, completely invalidating the above, vehicles are also more resilent because with AP2 and rapid fire it was much easier to fish for wrecked or explodes than to chew through pile of wounds vehicles have now...

Bruh, are you a parody account? In previous editions plasma COULD NOT EVEN DAMAGE AV14. How could armor possible do MORE than that now? Light vehicles could be killed by plasma, but even vs AV 11 or 12, it still took a fair amount of shots on average. If you were getting rear armor of 10 then it was quite effective, but that required a bunch of stuff to go right. And shooting your plasma that killed you 1/6th of the time with no re-roll at 4pt guardsmen was a terrible idea. They were not good to use vs hordes.

Do you even have an overall point you're trying to make here? Even if I am overestimating how effective flamer templates were in the past, or underestimating the effectiveness of plasma, am i wrong overall that the roles of units and the proportionate effectiveness of special weapons has changed, and this is effecting the statline incoherence we have in 8th?

In 7th, Plasma killed Marines 1/18th the time. You got armor saves against Gets Hot!

Otherwise good post.

well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

 JNAProductions wrote:
In 7th, Plasma killed Marines 1/18th the time. You got armor saves against Gets Hot!

Otherwise good post.

You're right, I mis-remembered. It wasn't quite as bad as I said, but still much worse than now.

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

The problem Khorne Berzerkers have is the problem of assault in 8th - although it was equally true in 7th.

Lots can go wrong for assaulting units.
You have to get over the table.
You have to eat overwatch.
You have to actually get a successful charge.
You have to not fluff your dice in the assault phase.
You have to consolidate such as to wrap up the opponent, or they can just walk off. If they can fly they can always just zip off (and shoot, because lol).

But then these days Khorne Berzerkers have what, effectively 8 attacks with a standard loadout on the charge? 6 At S6, AP-1 and 2 at S5 AP-? For 17 points a model that seems good. Its going to make a mess of anything it touches. So if you do shrug off all the issues above and make contact you probably win.

Which is the problem of assault - its too all or nothing, and this gets worse and worse with each buff shooting gets.

I mean people say they don't "work" - but they do in certain discrete games. Its just the odds of them failing on one of the above hurdles is high and so a lot of times they fail and you lose. But if they "worked" consistently you would always win, which would be a balance issue in the other direction.

This is the same issue with possessed mentioned previously. I mean a Primaris with a power axe and a 5++ doesn't sound like a bad unit and perhaps unsurprisingly as a result it isn't. But you still have all the problems mentioned above. You can play around buffing it up to the eyeballs - (over investment here is a mistake imo, but ymmv) - but its unlikely to ever be reliable enough to go 6-0 in a tournament, so isn't considered a meta issue.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

I do actually support the idea of 2W cult marines, and Ruberic and Plague will be monstrously tough to shift, I love it!

Ruberic Marines in cover for example get 3+ 5++, All is dust allows them to add +1 to saves (this includes invun) against D1 weapons and add cover for a 2+ sv save vs ap1 d1 weapons. God I would love to see the look on that IF's players face when my unflinching tide of dusty boys weathers his shooting and ap-2 bolters with bolter discipline is still awesome. One of the few bolters which operate as good as back in 7th, if not better since 4+ universal cover save isn't a thing.

Lots can go wrong for assaulting units.

Or you pay further taxes in the form of CP / Icon.

You have to get over the table.

Biggest issue for Khorne berzekers and other melee infantry, even bigger one if you have no movement shenanigans.

You have to eat overwatch.

For most factions it's negliable, however if you run into Tau, IH or scourged (who am i kidding, scourged won't see the table ever). then the tune changes from a minuscule adverse effect to suddendly getting another shooting phase against you. Fun.

You have to actually get a successful charge.

Which means you have to migitate bad rolls, costing CP, Pts, and other ressources by consequence.

You have to consolidate such as to wrap up the opponent, or they can just walk off. If they can fly they can always just zip off (and shoot, because lol).

In essence you need to abuse the movement system, do something wierd, and can just flat out deny fallback. However you need too, because you allready can't allow to NOT do it due to the points above.

In general the all or nothing has to come from the fact that if the unit isn't all or nothing, then melee is just strictly worse period.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

Awesome. That just leaves 18 factions that are completely fethed when facing off against IF and the new Marines but who cares about them anyway, right?

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

Awesome. That just leaves 18 factions that are completely fethed when facing off against IF and the new Marines but who cares about them anyway, right?

It takes a dedicated person to get a positive post about a possible buff to Rubric Marines to be about how hard Orks have it, and yet you have succeeded.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

Awesome. That just leaves 18 factions that are completely fethed when facing off against IF and the new Marines but who cares about them anyway, right?

It takes a dedicated person to get a positive post about a possible buff to Rubric Marines to be about how hard Orks have it, and yet you have succeeded.

he talks about 18 other factions.
Which i guess i partially true, i mean otoh he could be happy that 3 factions get now their hallmark units on the table, maybee, unlike his own faction thanks to gw.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

Awesome. That just leaves 18 factions that are completely fethed when facing off against IF and the new Marines but who cares about them anyway, right?

It takes a dedicated person to get a positive post about a possible buff to Rubric Marines to be about how hard Orks have it, and yet you have succeeded.

he talks about 18 other factions.
Which i guess i partially true, i mean otoh he could be happy that 3 factions get now their hallmark units on the table, maybee, unlike his own faction thanks to gw.

yeah but we all know what he really means.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

Awesome. That just leaves 18 factions that are completely fethed when facing off against IF and the new Marines but who cares about them anyway, right?

Maybe wait for the changes before deciding what the other factions will do ?

How long should one wait? I started before the first CA, people kept telling I should wait. For CA, for FAQ, next CA, next FAQ. Now the cycle of book clearly finished, without my dudes being fixed, is it considered okey to after so long time to be kind of a unhappy about the whole wait thing, or not wanting to wait?
Or does the argument to wait reset with a bach of new books ?

Karol wrote:
How long should one wait? I started before the first CA, people kept telling I should wait. For CA, for FAQ, next CA, next FAQ. Now the cycle of book clearly finished, without my dudes being fixed, is it considered okey to after so long time to be kind of a unhappy about the whole wait thing, or not wanting to wait?
Or does the argument to wait reset with a bach of new books ?

Grey knights get screwed by poor design by the book and GW decision to nerf that rule.
Don`t forget they tried to help them with alot of pts decreases in CA 2018. I`m not sure if they can fix them without codex rework.
But since you tormented me in other topic, i`ll tell you GK got 66.67% WR in SoCal, so get good scrub - Joking ofcourse

Karol wrote:
How long should one wait? I started before the first CA, people kept telling I should wait. For CA, for FAQ, next CA, next FAQ. Now the cycle of book clearly finished, without my dudes being fixed, is it considered okey to after so long time to be kind of a unhappy about the whole wait thing, or not wanting to wait?
Or does the argument to wait reset with a bach of new books ?

In this case Karol the arguement is "wait toi judge an upcoming product until it's in our hands"

As for "how long is too long for my army to suck?" that's really entirely up to you. in 40k if your army sucks you have 3/4 choices. Choice 1: wait it out. Choice 2: quit the game. (and maybe return when you hear your army is in a better place) choice 3a: buy new units for your army to shore up weaknesses. 3b: start a brand new army.

The choice in that regard is yours and no one can make it for you. waiting a few years for a codex that gives you a good place might be doablre for some people, others might be happy to start a new army. others might be in a place where 2 tweks to their list and they go from suck to "OMG OP!" ultimately the choice is yours.

Frankly if grey knights where my ONLY army... I'd invest in a new one myself. I've got grey knights, love the minis, but there's no little varity in the kits I cou;dn't stand for them to be my ONLY army, but I love the modeling/painting aspect of 40k.

That does make more sense. I can't afford a new army though, I can't even sell GK here, and I can't leave the game without getting at least something out of it.

Don`t forget they tried to help them with alot of pts decreases in CA 2018

that is actualy not true. They droped points on draigo and the NDK GM for what ever reason, and the dreads, because marine dreads were going down in points too. But the real marine point drops missed marines. We don't have primaris, we have one model with a storm shield in the entire army. They cut the cost of techmarine in half to cost more like the marine one, but forgot to add the option of taking the canon. The write up pre CA had stuff about how purfires and paladins becoming an option to play with, and they had zero point changes. In fact there were more then a few armies that had more impactful drops, that were better then GK.

But since you tormented me in other topic, i`ll tell you GK got 66.67% WR in SoCal, so get good scrub - Joking ofcourse

how did the list look like? most GK armies I have seen that win anything, have either non of the models I own, or have a lot of ally in them. Plus a 66% win ratio over few armies doesn't point at much. If you play 6 games and lose first two, drop in the lower brackets then with luck you can get 66%. specially if you end up with a mirror, buy or someone droping out giving you free points.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
well there is a slight problem with anti horde weapons, when they suddenly get extra AP and d2. Then they suddenly go from anti horde to anti everything. Not saying it is a specific chaos case though.

The more I think on this change the more I like it. It really puts a foot in the ass of IF.

Go ahead. Shoot heavy bolters at my W2 rubrics.

Awesome. That just leaves 18 factions that are completely fethed when facing off against IF and the new Marines but who cares about them anyway, right?

Players have to consider the meta when making a list. If Rubric marines are a strong presence then IF will naturally have to account for it. So, gamble at not encountering a heavy skew list or make the appropriate adjustments. Other cult marines could make them think twice as well.

Anyway, time will tell.

Most new players are not going to expect to gap between armies to be so big in a game that costs that much though.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Yeah, the Chaos Marine profile has no place in the codex which is why it should be tossed out in favor of making Chosen the base Troops.

I'm not wrong. The entry is really only there for Renegades, which would be better represented through the Loyalist codex via switching of keywords.

I've been over this multiple times.

Yes I would concur. I have only every seen Chaos/regular marine split handled well in Epic, where they had the same profile (at Epic scale lots of things have the same profile…) but handled very differently. The Loyalists had ATSKNF which is amazing in Epic, basically halving the effect of suppression, while the traitors had numbers (operating in the old Legion style) and always had a leader (8 units, one containing a Lord/Sorcerer for 315 points vs 6 units and 3 rhinos/drop pods for 300 points). So the traitors would hit harder but not have the same staying power, though their champion could rally them, while the loyalists could weather the storm and still hit back hard if they co-ordinated with other units. The loyalists would hang in there for each other while the traitors would far more easily slink off if the going got rough.

For 40k you have the old Legion veterans who have the experience but lack the regular training facilities and have a somewhat every man for himself attitude, the renegades who tend to have the better facilities as things haven’t deteriorated as much logistically but aren’t as experienced, and the loyalists which have constant training and hypnoinduction to fight as a cohesive whole. Should you see distinctive different between 10 marines with bolters from each group on the tabletop beyond their chapter traits? Or should it be an army wide feeling?

I have always been of the mindset that what Chaos needs to feel different than loyalist Marines is in what they get. Now I'm not sure if 2 wounds are the answer although I feel they buff up Cult troops who are mostly weak, all things considered (Zerkers and Rubrics get some use but the rest are meh).

First and foremost as I have said in the past, Chaos really should be 3-4 separate Codexes:

1) Traitor Legions
2) Chaos Daemons
3) Chaos Renegades (e.g. Red Corsairs, newer renegades)
4) Lost & the Damned (e.g. Traitor Guard, mutants)

The idea here is that you want to separate the idea of your actual traitors who have been in the Eye since the Heresy (yes, there's fluctuation there with replenishment and not ALL of them would have been around during the Heresy) with your more recently turned renegades who are closer to realspace. Without going too much into ideas for this (it would basically involve the renegades being able to take a lot more stuff from the regular SM armory, they WOULD essentially be "space marines with spikes") let me expand by Traitor thoughts as I feel GW keeps missing the opportunity or if they try to do something with it, generally make it weak.

Chaos in general and the Traitor Legions specifically should divest itself from the "use common weapons from the Heresy" dogma since 2nd edition (it worked back then, and hasn't really since). Instead, they should fully embrace the warp and the daemonic entities that live there. Unlike your Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-priests who refuse to experiment (for the most part) due to not understanding and only able to replicate STCs, your Chaos Hereteks and Warpsmiths have no such compunction. So embrace that. Chaos shouldn't use Flamers, they should use Baleflamers. They shouldn't use Autocannons, but Reaper (okay they already have this, but it's basically the same thing) and Hades autocannons. Ectoplasma instead of plasma. They shouldn't just have ported over Chaos vehicles, they should be more twisted and warped, maybe not full Daemon Engine as they can certainly look like something that once was a Rhino or a Predator or a Land Raider, but they should certainly look different. There has been some of this done with the daemon engines, especially the newer ones like the Venomcrawler or the Lord Discordant, but daemon engines have proven to be too weak to be of use in most cases (you get some outliers like that Lord Disco spam list) because they typically have better WS than BS so you want them as melee units and not ranged. The new Havocs are a good example of this, although I think they could have done a bit more with weapons.

Back to the Cult troops since I can wax all day about how I think they should fix Chaos and it wouldn't do any good. The issue with most of them is they are too expensive and don't offer much. My primary army is Death Guard, and despite having the 5+ FNP the army is pretty weak all things considered because Plague Marines are fairly expensive and die the same as any other MEQ unit. Would giving them 2 wounds fix this? Maybe. I think what we need to do is to look at similar units that see play. Intercessors, for example, see play fairly frequently (or they did as of a few months ago. The meta may have changed since then). So the question is why? What makes them useful with a MEQ statline and 2 wounds, and a slightly better bolter. Is it the 2 wounds? Is it the better weapon? Is it better synergy with buffs? That will reveal if 2 wound cult troops would be a worthwhile addition (I think it would be regardless but I mean more in the realm of making them see more play).

I know as a Death Guard player there is more hurting my army than *just* having bad core units like a highly limited army design, an outdated design approach that was quickly moved away from and never updated, etc. but a big problem with everything at the moment is there's an emphasis on quantity over quality. If a MEQ and a GEQ die just as fast, then why spend more on the MEQ when you can get 2 or even 3 GEQ for the same cost? As a result you see (or saw) more spamming of chaff units rather than using the better quality unit because in the end, they die to the same things (which is another issue but a much larger one. Things are TOO deadly, and therefore remove the benefit of using tougher, more elite units. Plasma is the biggest offender here).

TL;DR Cult troops with 2 wounds is a start (assuming no price increase). Think of why units like Intercessors with 2 wounds are seen fairly regularly while other MEQ are not, and that will indicate if 2 wound cult troops will be "enough".