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Karol wrote:
But the missions are not better, they are different at best. They strongly promote marines, and more specific new primaris models and armies with the new set of rules. They do nothing to make weaker armies better. Necron or tyranids do not become better under the EW, nor do they get more options to play with under that rule set.

I'm sorry but that is absolutely not correct.

If you play all 6 Eternal War missions you will see a great deal of balancing as a whole. Certain units benefit from one mission, and utterly fail in another. This creates a situation where you can't focus too much on a single unit. EG: 3 Repulsors would lose you more games than they win, you just threw away 1000 points on 3 Tanks. You can table opponents in CA missions on turn 3 and still lose the game, hence the mentality of how lists are built has to change if you want to win.

For me the best way to play is the ETC one.

One EW mission + One Maelstrom mission simultaneously, with d3 objetives scoring 2 points and discarding impossible cards (Unless the Maelstrom mission lets you discard cards, like 6, then you can't discard impossibles because you should have done that before)

That way you can play the fixed EW objetive at the same time it forces flexibility but with the Maelstrom randomness greately dismished.

The ETC method is not bad, actually. I've enjoyed some events with those missions. I just find that their design takes away some of the best quirks and varierty form the EW missions.

I like how in certain CA missions only certain units can score, for example. That can ruin the day of a player who brought the minimum troop requirement so he can focus on units with more output.

In those cases if you lose those units you would be unable to play the EW mission, but maybe you can try to gain points with Maelstrom.

Is more of a disadvantage and less a "I killed all your troops, I win" situation.

It's a balance. I love having those mission peramaters as it encourages players to make the lists balanced.

And having the guy with the netlist lose a mission because his 3 units of Scouts were removed on turn 1 is a great way to deter people from simply spamming the strongest units.

It's not perfect of course, there's no such thing, but it's far better than the netlist focused ITC environment. But yeah, I'll take ETC missions over ITC any day lol

 Ishagu wrote:
It's a balance. I love having those mission peramaters as it encourages players to make the lists balanced.

And having the guy with the netlist lose a mission because his 3 units of Scouts were removed on turn 1 is a great way to deter people from simply spamming the strongest units.

It's not perfect of course, there's no such thing, but it's far better than the netlist focused ITC environment. But yeah, I'll take ETC missions over ITC any day lol

as i said in your other posts, what should i do when i have to play "cut of the head" and im using an army with fragile characters and i end up against some beefy melee characters or some snipers? might as welll scoop right there because the odds of my characters scoring is almost null.

Or what if I play Daemons and get the null zone mission?

Or worse, Harlequins?

 Ishagu wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Okay so Warhammer World uses an ITC house rule, why not just use all of them? Where is your proof that their missions create a more balanced environment than Champions Missions?

How am I supposed to destroy the enemy WL against an IH castle? I might not even get a kill T1 depending on terrain and everything. 3 IH Flyers can go almost anywhere and will almost certainly destroy a unit. Linebreaker is really hard to do if you've been wiped T2... Soooo.

Because not all ITC rules are good? The missions are poor, as an example. I use the plural generously here because it's basically one missions with different secondaries when you really break it down.

The "Magic Boxes" are not good for the game, and create some pretty janky situations. Do terrain rules need some changes? Yes. Should they adopt more ITC rules? Hell no.

The CA2018 EW missions are already a far superior way to actually play the game, and over half of the community is ignorant to this fact because most of the ITC is still ignoring the GW mission design. Were the ITC missions necessary in 7th edition and start of 8th? Yes. Are they now? No!

Of course CA2018 doesn't solve all problems, but Eldar flyers and the Castellan both used to be massive problems, and in CA missions these units were no-where near as useful. As for the power of Marines, they aren't beyond fixes - the power comes from a few rule combinations that can be altered.

-IH Doctrine - too good, remove the re roll 1s
-Leviathan needs a keyword change, make it a "Heavy Dreadnough" so it no longer benefits from the strats that make it invulnerable.
-Remove all Vigilus detachments from working with the new codex
-Remove some Stratagem interaction for Assault Centurions

That would fix most of the issues, and I'm really not concerned at this stage, especially as a new edition is on the horizon.

Lots of statements of facts, yet no data or even reason to back up these facts, makes me think they are not facts and just opinions of someone with an irrational hate-on for Frontline. Take a look at Andrew Helland's winning list from Fresno Smackdown.


Which mission is the list weak in? What all-rounder list is going to be more well-rounded and win a higher percentage of games than this list at an Eternal War event? You might have lists that do better or worse in single missions, but in the majority of missions? Is your goal really just that once in a while IH or IF will lose a match against a Nids or Harlequins because they got a bad mission for that one specific match-up? Let's assume there is that one in six magical mission where the above list sucks against Nids or Harlequins, what then? What's the likelihood that exactly this mission will be the one you play in the first round against them? The one magical mission where IH suck might not even be used at an event. You're not going to see Assault Marines or Tactical Squads regardless of mission format. I really don't understand what kind of list you think can only be found at an Eternal War event?

I'm hoping Frontline nerfs the grossest things available to SM, I got caught out by a few Ultramarine Stratagems and lost my first game against them, but I'm confident I can win a very healthy chunk of my games against them with Necrons after I thoroughly read all the rules available to them, you are right that it's mostly a few bad apples that are making the pie very sour. I really should have figured UM would have some tricks up their sleeve being the doctrine for every situation chapter, it was actually a fun game. I also had several very fair games against pre-WD Black Templars with my casual list because they were sort of good at both melee and shooting and my opponent wasn't just a big clump of shooting but brought an actual balanced list. I managed to win a couple of ITC games against IH (yes ITC, boooh spoooky) because I was able to hide in ruins (that blocked LOS) and sit on objectives, win on secondaries both games. But trying to win a straight battle against IH is a nightmare and some missions are going to force that to a greater degree than any ITC mission is.

It is actually super fluffy that IH win straight match-ups I just think these sorts of rules belong in narrative battles and maybe if everyone got rules like this more people would have a reason to play narrative, add in some rules for vehicle facings and I'd be totally into doing that sometimes. But right now I just play Maelstrom for fun or ITC for competitive. The dislike I have for these supplements is really that I'm more or less forced to play against them and forced to learn a bazillion new Stratagems before the game starts unless I want to get caught out. I've had to deal with that from both UM and RG now, those are the most tacticool chapters so hopefully none of the other have anything else I'll get sniped by before I sit down and bother to read all the Stratagems.

I'm a big fan of the Frontline guys, their contribution to the hobby is without question.

Lots of things relating to the ITC are amazing, the stat tracking, hobby scores, faction scores, etc.
I think the missions are holding them back now, especially as GW have really upped their game since CA2018.

I can't comment on any other format then the CA17/18 missions as that's all I play but I do agree they tend to be rather friendly to TAC lists. Seeing as that is how I personally prefer the game they are good for me and my group. Having said that I watched 2 of my friends play last week and Cut of the Head vs Raven Guard is not a lot of fun. I can only imagine my own horror of playing against them in that mission with my fragile Ork HQ. So yes they do have balance issues of their own, although maybe that's just Marines being overtuned again.

Guys.... Just forge your pown narrative:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/11/28/chapter-approved-2019-forging-a-narrativegw-homepage-post-2/

I find it weird this article is basically saying: Play other stuff don't play 40k guys... Play kill...team.. Or apocalypse.. Or kill team...

Just stop with this nonsense whining NPCs ..FFS just buy Marines and STFU!!!!!!

 Ishagu wrote:

Karol wrote:
But the missions are not better, they are different at best. They strongly promote marines, and more specific new primaris models and armies with the new set of rules. They do nothing to make weaker armies better. Necron or tyranids do not become better under the EW, nor do they get more options to play with under that rule set.

I'm sorry but that is absolutely not correct.

If you play all 6 Eternal War missions you will see a great deal of balancing as a whole. Certain units benefit from one mission, and utterly fail in another. This creates a situation where you can't focus too much on a single unit. EG: 3 Repulsors would lose you more games than they win, you just threw away 1000 points on 3 Tanks. You can table opponents in CA missions on turn 3 and still lose the game, hence the mentality of how lists are built has to change if you want to win.

We play only 4 out of 6. No one here likes the hero score one, specially after eliminators became a thing. Although maybe my view on this is skewed.

 Argive wrote:
Guys.... Just forge your pown narrative:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/11/28/chapter-approved-2019-forging-a-narrativegw-homepage-post-2/

I find it weird this article is basically saying: Play other stuff don't play 40k guys... Play kill...team.. Or apocalypse.. Or kill team...

Just stop with this nonsense whining NPCs ..FFS just buy Marines and STFU!!!!!!

That's literally not what they're saying.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Guys.... Just forge your pown narrative:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/11/28/chapter-approved-2019-forging-a-narrativegw-homepage-post-2/

I find it weird this article is basically saying: Play other stuff don't play 40k guys... Play kill...team.. Or apocalypse.. Or kill team...

Just stop with this nonsense whining NPCs ..FFS just buy Marines and STFU!!!!!!

That's literally not what they're saying.

No it isn't. But if they're suggesting recreating anything from the night lords trilogy in kt it'd be nice if they let heretic astartes take raptors so the bleeding eyes can come along.

Spearhead could be fun if they'd just undo what they did to my super heavys last ca.

The topic of this thread isn't 'ITC Missions Suck!' Or 'Narrative Play Sucks!' - it's to discuss the new Marine Meta, whether marines are OP and what fixes we'd like to see to bridge the gap between them and other factions.

Stick to the broad topic please people, there are threads dedicated to other discussions. Ishagu - you've made a topic about ITC vs Eternal War missions, we don't need 2.

How is discussion of whether ITC makes Marines OP or more OP not relevant to this thread? If Marines were super pts-effective in terms of killing but somehow lost every game they were used in then they wouldn't be good. The question is whether the mission format changes Marine win-rates.

 vict0988 wrote:
How is discussion of whether ITC makes Marines OP or more OP not relevant to this thread? If Marines were super pts-effective in terms of killing but somehow lost every game they were used in then they wouldn't be good. The question is whether the mission format changes Marine win-rates.

It is absolutely relevant.

I have shown, multiple times now, that marines have excellent win rates, TWiP and First Loss statistics regardless of mission format.

Not sure what more you want on that particular point?

So I put 500pts of orks against 500pts of primaris marines played by a young man who had only been into the game for 1 year.

The kid had these eliminators who can choose to shoot at things that they cannot see from 36inches away. They got +2 armor saves and were pesky but he only had 3 of them.
The rest of his army was shooty-primarises of some sorts or other, and one unit with knives that gave them double attacks.

We played with one objective in the center of the table

He brought two mines of some sort, infiltrated past the objective, and set those up.

Then he camped a couple of units near the objective, left his eliminators in ruins and left another long-shooty squad of some sort way in back behind a wall.

His mines could only damage one model each, so they ended each eating a gretchin each.

I rolled my bonebreaka onto the objective turn 2.
Charged the mega armored warboss into the unit with 2 knives and ended them turn 3.

End of the game the warboss and bigmek and half dead bonebreaka were sitting in the center of the table, grots and orks otherwise dead, his eliminators still chillin and his long shooty dudes still out of the picture.

He killed himself with model placement, movement, basically every strategic decision that could be made he made wrong.
If he had done things right, then he should have been able to to win I think.

In the end it was a fun game, though I still struggle with 8th ed rules on some points, overall it seemed to play OK.

And, I can see where - at higher point levels - all of the buffs on buffs and rerolls and rerolls from stacked superdudes would be super annoying.
I mean, it seemed as if nothing on his side of the table was simply a rifle, or s shoota. It seemed as if nothing that he ever aimed to do wasn't trademarked somehow, and it was just... cheesy, really.

There is a thread here recently on Dakka asking why GI Joe doesn't have a mini game. I think that they do - Primaris marines with their kung-fu grips and so on.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
To echo some of the comments above, I checked into the local GW and spoke with the man. The ITC is the trouble with nuweenies being so tough. This is the view from that side of the fence.

Given my limited experience with 8th ed so far I think that I agree with him.

 jeff white wrote:
So I put 500pts of orks against 500pts of primaris marines played by a young man who had only been into the game for 1 year.

The kid had these eliminators who can choose to shoot at things that they cannot see from 36inches away. They got +2 armor saves and were pesky but he only had 3 of them.
The rest of his army was shooty-primarises of some sorts or other, and one unit with knives that gave them double attacks.

We played with one objective in the center of the table

He brought two mines of some sort, infiltrated past the objective, and set those up.

Then he camped a couple of units near the objective, left his eliminators in ruins and left another long-shooty squad of some sort way in back behind a wall.

His mines could only damage one model each, so they ended each eating a gretchin each.

I rolled my bonebreaka onto the objective turn 2.
Charged the mega armored warboss into the unit with 2 knives and ended them turn 3.

End of the game the warboss and bigmek and half dead bonebreaka were sitting in the center of the table, grots and orks otherwise dead, his eliminators still chillin and his long shooty dudes still out of the picture.

He killed himself with model placement, movement, basically every strategic decision that could be made he made wrong.
If he had done things right, then he should have been able to to win I think.

In the end it was a fun game, though I still struggle with 8th ed rules on some points, overall it seemed to play OK.

And, I can see where - at higher point levels - all of the buffs on buffs and rerolls and rerolls from stacked superdudes would be super annoying.
I mean, it seemed as if nothing on his side of the table was simply a rifle, or s shoota. It seemed as if nothing that he ever aimed to do wasn't trademarked somehow, and it was just... cheesy, really.

There is a thread here recently on Dakka asking why GI Joe doesn't have a mini game. I think that they do - Primaris marines with their kung-fu grips and so on.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
To echo some of the comments above, I checked into the local GW and spoke with the man. The ITC is the trouble with nuweenies being so tough. This is the view from that side of the fence.

Given my limited experience with 8th ed so far I think that I agree with him.

The revivers with knifes only get +1 attack not double attacks.

Al lot of what you are talking about with the eliminators is just their basic rules, they have camo cloaks for the bonus to their saves in cover and that’s nothing new, their snipers have a few different ammunition choices. They are a bit cheap for their points, probably need To be closer to 90ppm.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Or what if I play Daemons and get the null zone mission?

Or worse, Harlequins?

Perhaps ignoring AP is a benefit they should only have sometimes. Invune saves are not properly costed to begin with.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Or what if I play Daemons and get the null zone mission?

Or worse, Harlequins?

Perhaps ignoring AP is a benefit they should only have sometimes. Invune saves are not properly costed to begin with.

Did you just imply Harlequins are OP?

Daemons, at least, are placing well in tournaments. But Harlequins?

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

bananathug wrote:
What exactly are people seeing in the BA PA that is so upsetting?

Litanies will boost the power of BA for sure. Just getting those will bring BA up in power significantly but no where near where nu-marines are as far as I can tell.

Well, they're a better Assault army than World Eaters and Black Templars, but they get to keep their psykers. A 5 man squad of Death Company fully buffed can get upwards of I think 40 attacks on the charge? Who needs to attack twice at that point?

bananathug wrote:
+1 attack on the charge isn't powerful if you have to wait until t3 to do it and without a way to get units into melee who cares.

It is unlikely (to the point of absurdity) that they will have to wait until turn 3 to put a squad into Assault Doctrine. Black Templars can do it for one squad any time they want, I seriously doubt BA won't be able to do the same or better.

bananathug wrote:
Without a bunch of new strats (deepstrike, advance and charge, something like trans-human, something to protect the dreads), an ability to skip to assault doctrine and reduction on costs of existing strats (pre-game move, 3d6 charge are done cheaper by vanilla) BA are still SM -1 (which probably is a good thing given how broken SM are).

I guess it's a good thing they mention that there are new warlord traits and strats and such in the new supplement, might have had something less than amazing for an SM chapter. Whew!

Looks like they missed the ability to change doctrines, didn't get advance and charge or the ability to scout/deepstrike units nor did they get reduction on existing strats as far as I know.

Trans-human and the half-damage to dreads strats will help but we are no where near a BA meta. BA should fit in nicely in soup lists and bring a lot more than they did pre-ca/pa but still not competing with nu-marines.

The +1 advance and charge is probably better than the t3 super-doctrine. Sucks BA didn't get something to help out their vehicles but other marines do marine mech so much better than BA it's probably for the best.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
So I put 500pts of orks against 500pts of primaris marines played by a young man who had only been into the game for 1 year.

The kid had these eliminators who can choose to shoot at things that they cannot see from 36inches away. They got +2 armor saves and were pesky but he only had 3 of them.
The rest of his army was shooty-primarises of some sorts or other, and one unit with knives that gave them double attacks.

We played with one objective in the center of the table

He brought two mines of some sort, infiltrated past the objective, and set those up.

Then he camped a couple of units near the objective, left his eliminators in ruins and left another long-shooty squad of some sort way in ...

The revivers with knifes only get +1 attack not double attacks.

Al lot of what you are talking about with the eliminators is just their basic rules, they have camo cloaks for the bonus to their saves in cover and that’s nothing new, their snipers have a few different ammunition choices. They are a bit cheap for their points, probably need To be closer to 90ppm.

Actually i didnt mind the eliminator cheater rifles. That was fine in the hands of a veteran spamming that shat then ok. Trouble. He should be using 6 at least at one time.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Or what if I play Daemons and get the null zone mission?

Or worse, Harlequins?

Perhaps ignoring AP is a benefit they should only have sometimes. Invune saves are not properly costed to begin with.

Did you just imply Harlequins are OP?

Daemons, at least, are placing well in tournaments. But Harlequins?

Harliquens have a really high win rate. Not specifically saying harlequins are OP (with their point drops they probably will be). Invune saves always work though. Except against mortals which aren't exactly high output in this game anyways. Armor saves can be completely ignored but invunes always get their value. That isn't really fair for a whole army to ignore AP considering the way the ap system works. Maybe invune saves shouldn't always work ether.

Harlequins have that high a win rate? I thought it was just around 40% which I expect for an army with like 0 options.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Or what if I play Daemons and get the null zone mission?

Or worse, Harlequins?

Perhaps ignoring AP is a benefit they should only have sometimes. Invune saves are not properly costed to begin with.

Did you just imply Harlequins are OP?

Daemons, at least, are placing well in tournaments. But Harlequins?

Harliquens have a really high win rate. Not specifically saying harlequins are OP (with their point drops they probably will be). Invune saves always work though. Except against mortals which aren't exactly high output in this game anyways. Armor saves can be completely ignored but invunes always get their value. That isn't really fair for a whole army to ignore AP considering the way the ap system works. Maybe invune saves shouldn't always work ether.

So what would you propose changing Daemons to? How would you modify them?

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Or what if I play Daemons and get the null zone mission?

Or worse, Harlequins?

Perhaps ignoring AP is a benefit they should only have sometimes. Invune saves are not properly costed to begin with.

Did you just imply Harlequins are OP?

Daemons, at least, are placing well in tournaments. But Harlequins?

Harliquens have a really high win rate. Not specifically saying harlequins are OP (with their point drops they probably will be). Invune saves always work though. Except against mortals which aren't exactly high output in this game anyways. Armor saves can be completely ignored but invunes always get their value. That isn't really fair for a whole army to ignore AP considering the way the ap system works. Maybe invune saves shouldn't always work ether.

So what would you propose changing Daemons to? How would you modify them?

A pokemon/starcraft type damage system. Weapons have an ideal target they excel against and do poorly against. Nothing is effective against everything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Harlequins have that high a win rate? I thought it was just around 40% which I expect for an army with like 0 options.

Every option is very good though. They just got massive points drops. This number is going to go up a lot now. A LOT.

https://www.40kstats.com/faction-breakdown-report

They've had high win rate all edition man.

So you want a whole system rewrite.

Okay, I can support that.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So you want a whole system rewrite.

Okay, I can support that.

I mean, a total rewrite to get rid of IGOUGO would be a good start, and I don't know why some people here defend that system still...

 JNAProductions wrote:
So you want a whole system rewrite.

Okay, I can support that.

Yeah - invune saves are a huge issue and shouldn't exist. However. A mission that turns them off in a certain location - it's not really a big deal. Units with armor saves have their saves ignored all the time. I don't see a big difference in cost between armor and invo saves on models.