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I think that, statistically, there is evidence to support the overshot of the new Space Marine books. Anecdotal evidence is pretty poor evidence to counteract this regardless. It's also evident that not everyone will be getting a similar treatment. It's not really surprising that people will resent the new books. The issue is directing it at the players, and not Games Workshop, who are responsible.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Burnage wrote:
https://www.40kstats.com/subfaction-results

For October and November so far;

Imperial Fists - 59.35% win rate
Iron Hands - 68.14% win rate
Raven Guard - 55.65% win rate
Salamanders - 49.02% win rate
Ultramarines - 50.78% win rate
White Scars - 57.45% win rate

All of those are pretty damn high, bar Ultramarines and Salamanders (which didn't have their supplement for most of the data set).

Another way to look at this: win rates of other factions.

Only Sisters, Eldar, Mechanicus, Orks and Tau have > 50% win rates, the average is ~ 51% compared to 57% overall for Astartes.

If NuMarines were truly OP, I'd expect to see a larger margin. OTOH, from a subfaction perspective, Iron Hands are almost at a 70% win rate, and are the most frequently used sub-faction.

Have to think about what that means. Is it that Iron Hands really are that good, or that the rest of the meta hasn't adapted, or something else entirely?

The win rates for those factions you've mentioned has (Eldar, Mechanicus, Orks) has dropped significantly in recent months. See above video - Orks went from 55% (ish) to 48%. That in itself isn't too bad (if it wasn't such a rapid drop) but their TWiP (aka percentage of 4-0 players) and first loss has gotten much worse also. Your stats seem from legacy wins, not October and November only.

Sorry for replying to a post from a few days ago, had to really think about the point I'd like to get across.

This is what I think about NuMarines / PEQ in general: they represent the end of TAAC lists. They have rules that fundamentally alter the mechanics of the game in a way to provide a slight statistical advantage over other factions. Regardless of how the opponent's list is constructed, they will win the majority of games just by playing an optimal strategy. Tournament results will continue to bear this out and, even though rules get FAQed, certain chapters will continue to outperform others based on how they skew these advantages.

In various editions of 40k, mid-range shooting has mostly been limited to 24". There have not been too many factions (besides Tau) with line troops that can fire beyond that range, and there haven't been too many that also have more than one wound. PEQ have both. It sets up an interesting situation, where you could have an Intercessor squad firing at a full 30", your opponent moves forward the next turn, then you move backwards with your Intercessors to stay out of range of their guns.

A thoughtful player could position Intercessors in such a way where they would always get to shoot at 30" before an opponent is in range to return fire. More importantly, by moving backwards, they will be preventing everything but the longest charges - which are statistically likely to fail in the majority of cases.

Complicating this situation is the second wound. Shooting scales linearly with the number of models in a unit, not the number of points per model. A unit composed of models with 2 wounds will outperform a similarly priced unit of models with 1 wound precisely because the later loses firepower faster.

I've seen this in my games against PEQ Ultramarines. Bolt Rifle strategies are becoming a form of kiting where a player masses their troops near the center of the board and simply moves backwards in later turns. It amplifies the power of small arms against traditional mid-range armies and diminishes the impact of hard-hitting melee units by whittling them down before they can get close. Ultramarines are not the most powerful NuMarine chapter, this is a general strategy that can be employed by any of them to great effect.

There's other things about PEQ armies that screw with the mechanics of the game, especially with Repulsors (all those guns make it the priority target in almost every situation) and Infiltrators (12" deep-strike deny means no more deep-strike and charge.) The point is, PEQ effectiveness is a result of lots of small changes to the mechanics that counter common tactics for mid-range armies. Cumulatively, these give them the edge in most match ups. Even if you played without Chapter Tactics and Doctrines, each PEQ unit would still have slight advantages that make them more effective than similarly priced units from other factions. It's pre-8th edition ATSKNF spread over the entire army.

Here's the interesting thing I realized about these changes. They have more of an impact in tournaments, TAAC lists will do worse against them than others. You can tailor a list to destroy Iron Hands when you're not trying to simultaneously optimize against every other faction in the game.

Currently, I'm playing Daemon Primarchs, with Magnus, Mortarion, Ahriman, a Daemon Prince, Nurgle Daemons and a Sicaran. Totally different from traditional CSM lists I've been using, focused on moving fast, laying down as much psychic damage as possible, killing tanks from distance, and sitting on points with troops that are hard to remove - even with negative AP modifiers. Most importantly, it screws with PEQ mechanics. Melee units moving 24" to get first turn charges while they're still on Devastator doctrine takes away some of their punch. Laying down enough smites to immediately kill Infiltrators allows Plaguebearers to deep strike where I want them. Sicarans have a couple turns of free shooting because everything in the NuMarine army is being poured into those Primarchs, giving me some time to deal with Redeemers and Repulsors from range.

I've played a couple Iron Hands PEQ armies that were hard but not impossible to beat. At the same time, I'd never think about bringing this list to a tournament, Orks and Tyranids could tear it apart with high model count and a massive number of attacks.

The point is, the advantages enjoyed by NuMarines / PEQ are more exaggerated in a tournament, where everyone is trying to beat anything else they might fact. NuMarines are just one faction where GW chose to skew the mechanics, imagine if this principle was applied across each faction - maybe Tyranid charge range changes to 3d6", Eldar get hit and run on all units, CSMs can cast any psychic power multiple times per turn without penalty, etc. And then they start doling out Doctrines on top of that.

Eventually, you won't be able to build TAAC lists any more. The mechanics would be so different between each faction you wouldn't be able to confidently plan for what to bring. Mid-range and melee oriented wouldn't mean as much because there's nothing consistent between each faction.

 Argive wrote:

So you didint use supplements rules?

Vanilla rules. New Codex.

 Argive wrote:
You used a hodge podge of units up to 1500 points without taking into account things like efficiencies, redundancies, duality etc. Which is how one mormaly builds a list and just picked what you liked rather than what works.. i.e. only 5 interecessors rievers incursors etc

And yet you still won half the games?

In case its not obvious im highlighting the sample size and control of you experiment.

Considering that Intercessors and Hellblasters are the only Primaris SM units I've used in the last 2 years, I wanted to mess around with all the things.

I was testing things out, not trying to make an optimized tournament list.

SeanDrake wrote:
yeah but going by the torrent of threads like this one and the previous 30-40 episodes mostly consisting of an echo chamber of the same people raging hard then surely he should have won every single game as marines are omgopwtf and some of the armies he fought were "auto lose" choices.

Hey, do you remember the Squats and how awesome they were? 8th edition sucks, they need to make it like 3rd Edition again.

I don't really have anything to back either of those things up, but it gets repeated on the internet enough so I just said it.

I mean, every time something new drops, it's OP.

Back when Space Marines got an actual Codex before everyone, it was OP (even though, you know, it really wasn't). Drukhari Codex was OP, too. Guard were OP.

None of this is a really new complaint. It comes out, it works well (and God forbid vanilla SM actually be decent without having to use Bobby G or requiring allied detachments), and people eventually develop a counter for it and adjust their tactics (God forbid people have to change up their lists to deal with a meta).

Darsath wrote:
I think that, statistically, there is evidence to support the overshot of the new Space Marine books. Anecdotal evidence is pretty poor evidence to counteract this regardless. It's also evident that not everyone will be getting a similar treatment. It's not really surprising that people will resent the new books. The issue is directing it at the players, and not Games Workshop, who are responsible.

Alternative take:

Statistically, more Marine lists are winning. Statistically speaking, more players own Marines than any other faction.

Just a thought.

You know, we can compare before and after to the release of the new Codex, right? Your alternative take is not supported by any evidence. Mine is.

Darsath wrote:
You know, we can compare before and after to the release of the new Codex, right? Your alternative take is not supported by any evidence. Mine is.

More Marine lists are winning at tournaments after this new list. That's your evidence.

I posit that yes, they are. And the lager numbers of Marine tournament list winners is likely because there are a lot more people playing Marines out there. There always have been. That's why the poster boys for 40k are Space Marines, and not some Commissar or Tech Priest.

Marines got a (much needed) boosts and are now capable of actually winning without being souped. That is true.

Give it a little time, and this will change. I'm sure the extremely talented tactical minds will have their netlists up in no time at all, so people can find the counter.

This isn't new.

Remember- people still want FW models banned because they're OP, too.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

I mean, every time something new drops, it's OP.

Orks got 6 new buggies last year and GW even dedicated the entire month to that release calling it "orktorber"... and we actually got 4 average mediocre units and two absolute garbage ones.

Drukhari new incubi and Drazhar have no place in competitive lists.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Back when Space Marines got an actual Codex before everyone, it was OP (even though, you know, it really wasn't). Drukhari Codex was OP, too. Guard were OP.

I disagree. When SM played with a codex while other armies didn't they were OP, at least a couple of their most competitive builds. Guard were really OP only when everyone just played with indexes then they were maybe OP only for the same reason why SM were OP, because they had the advantage of a codex and other factions didn't. Drukhari were never really OP, they just surprised the other players for a couple of months because their codex really makes them play in a very different way than before, but pure drukhari aren't OP in the slightest and elves soups have never been superior than imperium ones.

The nu marines are so OP that I wouldn't be surprised if in casual metas SM players start struggling finding games, unless they give up on all the cheese they can bring. Truth is, SM don't even need optimized lists now, they just can field anything the average SM player has in his collection and he'll be good against lots of other players.

 Blackie wrote:
Guard were really OP only when everyone just played with indexes then they were maybe OP just like SM, because they had the advantage of a codex and other factions don't. Drukhari were never really OP, they just surprised the other players for a couple of months because their codex was really makes them play in a very different way than before, but pure drukhari aren't OP in the slightest.

This is exactly what's happening right now, with SM. It too shall pass.

 Blackie wrote:
The nu marines are so OP that I wouldn't be surprised if in casual metas SM players start struggling finding games, unless they give up on all the cheese they can bring. Truth is that SM don't even need optimized lists now, they just can field anything you have in your collection and you'll be good against lots of other players.

I've seen no problems at all, and we have groups that are competitive and groups that are casual.

I can even say it like this- I know quite a few WAAC gamers that obsessively chase the meta, to the point of financial struggle. I know that if they've swapped armies, it's because something is broken and they're exploiting a bad rule or nasty combo that the meta hasn't figured out how to counter. I watch what they do (they tend to drive off less-competitive players, and will target newer players). When I start seeing these guys buying Nu-Marines, I might come back in here and say, "OK, this needs to be adjusted". Because I assure you, these guys will sell off everything they have and overdraft themselves into financial oblivion with a stack of models at the cash register if the Nu-Marines are disgustingly OP.

Again, anecdotal evidence doesn't amount to much here. And as I've said, Space Marines having both a high play rate and a high win rate (exceeding the Ynarri non-sense earlier in the edition) is pretty concrete evidence to disprove your theory.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Argive wrote:

So you didint use supplements rules?

Vanilla rules. New Codex.

... This is a pretty significant omission from your playtesting.

An opinion I'm hearing from lots of players is that Codex Space Marines by itself would put Marines in a strong, but not overpowered, place. It's when you add in the supplements that things get wonky.

Darsath wrote:
Again, anecdotal evidence doesn't amount to much here. And as I've said, Space Marines having both a high play rate and a high win rate (exceeding the Ynarri non-sense earlier in the edition) is pretty concrete evidence to disprove your theory.

And you couldn't say the win rate was somewhat proportional to the number of people playing SM?

I'm just saying, if there's a tournament out there with 10 people, probably 4-5 are playing SM. 2 are playing guard, 1 is playing Custodes, and the rest are playing Chaos or Xenos. Some armies will not even be on the tables at all.

So, sure- if the rules change... there's going to be an increase in wins. But unless those wins are extremely disproportionate- I wouldn't worry. So if there's 5 SM players and 4 of them are in the top place, and that one was a fluke because he has no idea how to play the game... yeah, that's a problem.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Darsath wrote:
Again, anecdotal evidence doesn't amount to much here. And as I've said, Space Marines having both a high play rate and a high win rate (exceeding the Ynarri non-sense earlier in the edition) is pretty concrete evidence to disprove your theory.

And you couldn't say the win rate was somewhat proportional to the number of people playing SM?

I'm just saying, if there's a tournament out there with 10 people, probably 4-5 are playing SM. 2 are playing guard, 1 is playing Custodes, and the rest are playing Chaos or Xenos. Some armies will not even be on the tables at all.

So, sure- if the rules change... there's going to be an increase in wins. But unless those wins are extremely disproportionate- I wouldn't worry. So if there's 5 SM players and 4 of them are in the top place, and that one was a fluke because he has no idea how to play the game... yeah, that's a problem.

My numbers are from 40kstats.com, and account for a significant proportion of tournament results to avoid skew. The proportion of players playing SM would decrease the win rate if anything.

 Burnage wrote:
... This is a pretty significant omission from your playtesting.

Last I checked, the Iron Hands Codex Supplement wasn't required to play anything other than Iron Hands or their Successors, so... not sure why I would omit something that I didn't need or have a reason to use. I'd have specified if I had used it.

Just so you know, I didn't mention this- but I also didn't wear a Halloween costume while I played. I figure this would go without saying, but I didn't see a need for it.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Burnage wrote:
... This is a pretty significant omission from your playtesting.

Last I checked, the Iron Hands Codex Supplement wasn't required to play anything other than Iron Hands or their Successors, so... not sure why I would omit something that I didn't need or have a reason to use. I'd have specified if I had used it.

Just so you know, I didn't mention this- but I also didn't wear a Halloween costume while I played. I figure this would go without saying, but I didn't see a need for it.

All marines are successors of some legion. Marine armies are intended to use supplements. Not using a significant power boost available to you is of course a nice thing to do in a casual setting, but makes your playtesting utterly worthless for actually evaluating the power of the army.

 Crimson wrote:

All marines are successors of some legion. Marine armies are intended to use supplements. Not using a significant power boost available to you is of course a nice thing to do in a casual setting, but makes your playtesting utterly worthless for actually evaluating the power of the army.

So let me get this straight, I am required to use the Iron Hands, Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, Salamanders, or Ravenguard supplement in order to play a generic chapter of SM?

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:
yeah but going by the torrent of threads like this one and the previous 30-40 episodes mostly consisting of an echo chamber of the same people raging hard then surely he should have won every single game as marines are omgopwtf and some of the armies he fought were "auto lose" choices.

Hey, do you remember the Squats and how awesome they were? 8th edition sucks, they need to make it like 3rd Edition again.

I don't really have anything to back either of those things up, but it gets repeated on the internet enough so I just said it.

I mean, every time something new drops, it's OP.

Nope, just when it's OP, nobody complained that Necrons were OP when they were released, because they were below the power curve.

Back when Space Marines got an actual Codex before everyone, it was OP (even though, you know, it really wasn't). Drukhari Codex was OP, too. Guard were OP.

If you can't see how unfair it is for Chapter Tactics to be released in waves I don't know what to tell you. Whenever GW produces a product that increases imbalance or decreases the fluff value of the game people complain, this isn't rocket science. If GW only produced products that increased fluff value and balance very few people would complain. When people complain about Psychic Awakening being weak they are actually complaining about SM being OP, in part because a lot of people were saying that with the coming releases everything would be put up to IH levels of OP.

None of this is a really new complaint. It comes out, it works well (and God forbid vanilla SM actually be decent without having to use Bobby G or requiring allied detachments), and people eventually develop a counter for it and adjust their tactics (God forbid people have to change up their lists to deal with a meta).

Not everyone has access to things that are pts efficient enough to ever stand a chance at winning not only against the three or five different kinds of SM but also the ten or twenty other types of list that are common in the meta. SM got too many buffs too fast. Combat Doctrines and Super Doctrines was badly implemented.

Darsath wrote:
I think that, statistically, there is evidence to support the overshot of the new Space Marine books. Anecdotal evidence is pretty poor evidence to counteract this regardless. It's also evident that not everyone will be getting a similar treatment. It's not really surprising that people will resent the new books. The issue is directing it at the players, and not Games Workshop, who are responsible.

Alternative take:

Statistically, more Marine lists are winning. Statistically speaking, more players own Marines than any other faction.

Just a thought.

Space Marines win proportionately more than they should according to the number of SM participants in tournaments, this again isn't rocket science, if SM only had as many top placings as they had proportional participants there would be very few people that complain, maybe you'd know about the discrepancy if you knew anything about tournaments stats.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

All marines are successors of some legion. Marine armies are intended to use supplements. Not using a significant power boost available to you is of course a nice thing to do in a casual setting, but makes your playtesting utterly worthless for actually evaluating the power of the army.

So let me get this straight, I am required to use the Iron Hands, Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, Salamanders, or Ravenguard supplement in order to play a generic chapter of SM?

You're certainly intended to.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

All marines are successors of some legion. Marine armies are intended to use supplements. Not using a significant power boost available to you is of course a nice thing to do in a casual setting, but makes your playtesting utterly worthless for actually evaluating the power of the army.

So let me get this straight, I am required to use the Iron Hands, Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, Salamanders, or Ravenguard supplement in order to play a generic chapter of SM?

Not required, just intended. Just like you are not required to use stratagems but if you don't then your playtesting is worthless for assessing power.

 Crimson wrote:
Not required, just intended. Just like you are not required to use stratagems but if you don't then your playtesting is worthless for assessing power.

Are those books required if I am taking my Chapter Tactics from the list of options, and they fall under no particular First Founding chapter?

The answer is, "no".

So the complaint isn't SM in general.

It's over, honestly, what seems like one particular (IH) codex supplement.

Also I love how bad a particular couple of Successor traits are. Rapid Assault and Preferred Enemy are pretty laughable not gonna lie.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Are those books required if I am taking my Chapter Tactics from the list of options, and they fall under no particular First Founding chapter?

The answer is, "no".

So the complaint isn't SM in general.

No one said it is required. But the are no 'generic chapters' all chapters are successors of someone. If you don't use half of your rules, then your playtesting is worthless. I really don't understand how this can be so hard to get.

Guys, we don't need huge posts full of anecdotal evidence about 'my first few games with codex 2.0 marines against random people at my club'. I have provided links to actual evidence and statistics that show how OP codex 2.0 Marines are. These stats have been gathered over 6000 games or so.

Doritos, your post on testing is an interesting read but unfortunately I fear you have wasted your time because it is unreliable. You didn't use supplement rules I gather? You played against 3 or 4 people. Your games were 1-1.5k in size. You picked units seemingly at random. In effect you didn't reproduce the tournament/competitive environment at all and your sample size is minute. I mean you didn't even use the full ruleset for nu-Marines.

He's just being deliberately obtuse. That seems to be his entire shtick

Dumb Smart Guy wrote:
He's just being deliberately obtuse. That seems to be his entire shtick

No.

I just... did not see a need to purchase a book for a subfaction that I'm not using. I'm not sure how that's obtuse, seems pretty common sense to me.

And people are complaining about Marines in general, rather than the specific supplements. That's a new animal altogether.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Doritos, your post on testing is an interesting read but unfortunately I fear you have wasted your time because it is unreliable. You didn't use supplement rules I gather? You played against 3 or 4 people. Your games were 1-1.5k in size. You picked units seemingly at random. In effect you didn't reproduce the tournament/competitive environment at all and your sample size is minute. I mean you didn't even use the full ruleset for nu-Marines.

I went for what seemed effective, and I'm sensible enough to synergize what works. And yeah, small size- literally my entire force was a few things I've built over a few months but never used, and a few things that I had never assembled.

And what I want clarification on- actual REAL clarification is this:

-I wanna make my own chapter. I wanna chose my chapter tactics. I want to use the most up-to-date rules and options. Do I need to buy the [insert chapter] Codex Supplement? Or just the Adeptus Astartes Codex?

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Dumb Smart Guy wrote:
He's just being deliberately obtuse. That seems to be his entire shtick

No.

I just... did not see a need to purchase a book for a subfaction that I'm not using. I'm not sure how that's obtuse, seems pretty common sense to me.

And people are complaining about Marines in general, rather than the specific supplements. That's a new animal altogether.

Because 'no supplement' is not an actual way anyone who isn't intentionally gimping themselves or just being chronically stupid is playing. Now we can certainly discuss the fact that some supplements seem to be much more powerful than others, but 'no supplement' army is not a thing in any competitive or even semi-competitive setting.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
-I wanna make my own chapter. I wanna chose my chapter tactics. I want to use the most up-to-date rules and options. Do I need to buy the [insert chapter] Codex Supplement? Or just the Adeptus Astartes Codex?

If you want the most up-to-date rules and options, then yes, you need to pick a Founding Chapter and buy that Supplement. There's no such thing as a "generic" or "vanilla" Marine chapter currently.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

And what I want clarification on- actual REAL clarification is this:

-I wanna make my own chapter. I wanna chose my chapter tactics. I want to use the most up-to-date rules and options. Do I need to buy the [insert chapter] Codex Supplement? Or just the Adeptus Astartes Codex?

You don't need to, but there is no reason besides showing mercy to your opponents not to.

 Burnage wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
-I wanna make my own chapter. I wanna chose my chapter tactics. I want to use the most up-to-date rules and options. Do I need to buy the [insert chapter] Codex Supplement? Or just the Adeptus Astartes Codex?

If you want the most up-to-date rules and options, then yes, you need to pick a Founding Chapter and buy that Supplement. There's no such thing as a "generic" or "vanilla" Marine chapter currently.

I just want you to know that I have, out loud, alone in my own house, uttered three consecutive expletives.

...I don't wanna buy more books, dammit.

FINE. I'll... get the Ravenguard one or something. This is dumb.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
And what I want clarification on- actual REAL clarification is this:

-I wanna make my own chapter. I wanna chose my chapter tactics. I want to use the most up-to-date rules and options. Do I need to buy the [insert chapter] Codex Supplement? Or just the Adeptus Astartes Codex?

You'll want to get a (or multiple) supplement book(s) assuming you're using a successor chapter. They contain all of the rules you'll need to play. You can play without but you have more rules, more options with.

Marines in general are complained about because marines in general are too strong. The supplements are part and parcel of this OP package.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Marines in general are complained about because marines in general are too strong. The supplements are part and parcel of this OP package.

Seems to me without those supplements, they seem to be pretty decent but not OP.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Marines in general are complained about because marines in general are too strong. The supplements are part and parcel of this OP package.

Seems to me without those supplements, they seem to be pretty decent but not OP.

This indeed probably is the case. Supplements were just too much.