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 Xenomancers wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Stats mean sweet. F. A.

Marines encounter the mirror match extremely commonly which is going to inevitably pull towards a 50% win rate.

They are also the entry level army, and also the most popular, so they also have by far, the largest amount of bad players dragging down that average.

But again.

Stats mean sweet F.A.








If your only understanding of competitive play is the the statistical results of other players, YOU SHOULD NOT BE DISCUSSING COMPETITIVE PLAY. If you can't tell why Marines are the best army of the game you just don't understand the game on a competitive level, it's that flat out simple.

We are looking at adjusted data with mirror matches removed. Stats don't mean FA. Stats is pretty much everything. No one is saying marines aren't the best army in the game ether. They clearly are - they just have some company.

Stats mean actually nothing, but if you insist, for your sake heres an interesting stat. 27% of lists are marines, and (yet) 52% of the top 5 will be marines. Insane numbers. There is nobody accompanying that.

Where are you getting that stat from exactly? 40k stats doesn't have a top 5 feature I can see. Only top 10. I broke that down in my OP. 22% of total lists and 28% of top lists since november. OFC stats can only give you an idea of what is happening and this tool isn't perfect. Deadalus has provided some excellent additional data though. Like the data that shows Custom eldar is performing at about the same rate as Ironhands.

https://www.40kstats.com/1st-round-loss



you can also total up the GT placings manually for the last few months without too much trouble if you feel so strongly that stats are better than using your brain

 Xenomancers wrote:
Plenty of units can be taken in singles with 2 quality shots. It practically doubles damage on an army straight up when you max it out. In practice it's pretty close to a reroll all hits and wounds buff for your whole army...and it only costs you 1 of 2 traits...LOL.

Come now. Don't fall victim to hyperbole. People are running vibro cannons, which is 35 points for an autocannon+ that negates part of the reroll to wound if they're shooting the same unit.

BrianDavion wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Oh look, a thread supposedly about balance from Xeno. The poster who brought us such gems as "the Stompa is overpowered" and "the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy is probably the best shooting unit in the game, point for point".

I'll be taking the opinions within this thread and their objectivity with a hefty mountain of salt methinks.

wasn't the "Stompa is OP" thread a tongue in cheek thread about how now that it lost a whole 50 points (it's generally agreed to be a few HUNDRED over pointed) it's now "totally OP"? or was this another post I missed?

Yes it was tongue in cheek. But at one point Xeno was arguing that the squigoth was competitive level good and squidbuggies were op. Unironically.

He never said the stompa was good.

BrianDavion wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Oh look, a thread supposedly about balance from Xeno. The poster who brought us such gems as "the Stompa is overpowered" and "the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy is probably the best shooting unit in the game, point for point".

I'll be taking the opinions within this thread and their objectivity with a hefty mountain of salt methinks.

wasn't the "Stompa is OP" thread a tongue in cheek thread about how now that it lost a whole 50 points (it's generally agreed to be a few HUNDRED over pointed) it's now "totally OP"? or was this another post I missed?

It was, but I guess that was lost on some.

This was posted before the whopping 50 pt CA drop.

 Xenomancers wrote:
It probably 100 points to expensive. It scales so hard with stratagems like moore dakka and freebootas that it's just the kind of unit that they couldn't fix if they tried...

at 650 it would be extremely OP.

(It can’t make use of More Dakka strat)

Xeno makes statements without knowledge all the time. He also defends all things Marine to the death. I’d take his posts as tongue in cheek, to be honest.

If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

.... lol is this for real, you didn't even name the best thing in the dex

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

.... lol is this for real, you didn't even name the best thing in the dex

Ishagu listed the things I see people complain about the most.

Dudeface wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

.... lol is this for real, you didn't even name the best thing in the dex

Ishagu listed the things I see people complain about the most.

The combination of doctrines and super doctrines is the biggest problem as they get them on everything for free. And plenty of people complain about just that.

The Newman wrote:


This. The uneven release schedule just kills any hope of maintaining balance. The other thing that kills it for competitive play is that without a checkmate condition it's very hard to recover once you start losing the attrition fight, and that sort of thing needs to be baked into the core rules. It's really hard to bolt such a thing on onto a system after the fact.

Variance Hammer did a really good article on why the game is harder to balance than a lot of people seem to think http://variancehammer.com/2018/06/04/how-would-nasa-balance-40k/

As for the win condition - that is in the missions. The CA19 missions are now really good and give a route to victory for some very diverse army builds. This is now the polar opposite of the ITC missions which are really showing their age and clearly narrow the meta to a dramatic degree. It is the easiest thing in the world to bolt onto a system after the fact, GW changes this every year as part of what balances the game. The problem is that large parts of the competitive scene totally ignore these changes.

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

Yes. Definitely. This is what happens when layered rule after layered rule are added to units en masse and without proper consideration. SM don't really have a bad unit when compared to other codexes.

How many games have you guys actually played? I really want to know if your evidence is first hand, second hand or merely anecdotal.

I ask because I have been unable to beat the most optimised Tau lists using my Ultras in both ITC and CA mission formats after multiple attempts. The shiny new codex and supplement can't top an old book.

I also see competitive players move back to Chaos with lists that can stack rules to create -4 to hit modifiers, as an example. Mr Cheema is back to Chaos for the Cadelonian Open.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

.... lol is this for real, you didn't even name the best thing in the dex

Ishagu listed the things I see people complain about the most.

The combination of doctrines and super doctrines is the biggest problem as they get them on everything for free. And plenty of people complain about just that.

A lot of ignorant and inexperienced people complain. The "Super Doctrines" are not all created equal, and don't all increase the power level to the same extent. In the case of Raven Guard and Salamanders, for example, the Super Doctrine is situational and may or may not come into play. For Ultras it's useful for making the army more mobile but again, is not on the level of Iron Hands.

The Super Doctrines are just rules, plain and simple. Some rules are too good, other are perfectly fine. If you actually look at the win/loss breakdown of chapters like Ultramarines, it's a FACT and not an opinion that the rules and army is not over-powered, despite having "Super Doctrines." In fact it loses significantly more than it wins.

Generalising and complaining about everything in a blanketed way is not helpful to anyone. Recognise what the specific issues are, don't label an entire faction in a certain way because of a specific supplement or a few units that benefit too much from some Chapter Tactics. To do so labels you as ignorant, uninformed and inexperienced.

 Ishagu wrote:
How many games have you guys actually played? I really want to know if your evidence is first hand, second hand or merely anecdotal.

I ask because I have been unable to beat the most optimised Tau lists using my Ultras in both ITC and CA mission formats after multiple attempts. The shiny new codex and supplement can't top an old book.

I also see competitive players move back to Chaos with lists that can stack rules to create -4 to hit modifiers, as an example. Mr Cheema is back to Chaos for the Cadelonian Open.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

.... lol is this for real, you didn't even name the best thing in the dex

Ishagu listed the things I see people complain about the most.

The combination of doctrines and super doctrines is the biggest problem as they get them on everything for free. And plenty of people complain about just that.

A lot of ignorant and inexperienced people complain. The "Super Doctrines" are not all created equal, and don't all increase the power level to the same extent. In the case of Raven Guard and Salamanders, for example, the Super Doctrine is situational and may or may not come into play. For Ultras it's useful for making the army more mobile but again, is not on the level of Iron Hands.

The Super Doctrines are just rules, plain and simple. Some rules are too good, other are perfectly fine. If you actually look at the win/loss breakdown of chapters like Ultramarines, it's a FACT and not an opinion that the rules and army is not over-powered, despite having "Super Doctrines." In fact it loses significantly more than it wins.

Generalising and complaining about everything in a blanketed way is not helpful to anyone. Recognise what the specific issues are, don't label an entire faction in a certain way because of a specific supplement or a few units that benefit too much from some Chapter Tactics. To do so labels you as ignorant, uninformed and inexperienced.

Ah yes, the old "you don't have enough experience" argument. How quaint. The big problem with arguments about specific chapters is that most SM armies can be easily converted from one chapter to another, so most of the best players gravitate towards the best chapters or custom traits, which can skew the data for the chapters that aren't quite so good. So from a practical point of view SM are broken regardless of whether specific chapters are individually weak because it's trivially easy to change from a weak to a strong chapter just by changing a keyword on your army list.

As for the Tau comparison, I fail to see what you're getting at. I don't think anyone's suggesting SM are the only extremely powerful or broken faction in the game right now and it's generally accepted that Eldar and Tau are also very powerful. I think people's problem with SM is their power comes from a huge number of overlapping rules and benefits and their popularity is huge, which creates a bit more of a feel-bad situation because you're pretty much guaranteed to run into SM at every single tournament of any size while your local meta may mean Tau and Eldar aren't as common.

 Ishagu wrote:
How many games have you guys actually played? I really want to know if your evidence is first hand, second hand or merely anecdotal.

I ask because I have been unable to beat the most optimised Tau lists using my Ultras in both ITC and CA mission formats after multiple attempts. The shiny new codex and supplement can't top an old book.

I also see competitive players move back to Chaos with lists that can stack rules to create -4 to hit modifiers, as an example. Mr Cheema is back to Chaos for the Cadelonian Open.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

.... lol is this for real, you didn't even name the best thing in the dex

Ishagu listed the things I see people complain about the most.

The combination of doctrines and super doctrines is the biggest problem as they get them on everything for free. And plenty of people complain about just that.

A lot of ignorant and inexperienced people complain. The "Super Doctrines" are not all created equal, and don't all increase the power level to the same extent. In the case of Raven Guard and Salamanders, for example, the Super Doctrine is situational and may or may not come into play. For Ultras it's useful for making the army more mobile but again, is not on the level of Iron Hands.

The Super Doctrines are just rules, plain and simple. Some rules are too good, other are perfectly fine. If you actually look at the win/loss breakdown of chapters like Ultramarines, it's a FACT and not an opinion that the rules and army is not over-powered, despite having "Super Doctrines." In fact it loses significantly more than it wins.

Generalising and complaining about everything in a blanketed way is not helpful to anyone. Recognise what the specific issues are, don't label an entire faction in a certain way because of a specific supplement or a few units that benefit too much from some Chapter Tactics. To do so labels you as ignorant, uninformed and inexperienced.

Did I accidentally hit a nerve?

The big problem with sm is all the rules they stack on top of each other. Notably doctrines, super doctrines, and chapter tactics. That's what makes ih and if, who you didn't mention, so strong.

Ultra marines probably have more trouble against tau because their chapter tactic is pretty useless against an opponent who has no interest in trapping them in cc much less getting close enough for that to happen in the first place.

Or you just need to get more informed and experienced.

And the Tau rules don't come from overlapping rules? lol

Sept rules, over-lapped with Marker Lights, over-lapped with character auras, over-lapped with Kauyon bonuses, over-lapped with faction core rules.

Just because some meta chasers in tournaments are spamming Iron Hands and Raven Guard Centurions that is no reason to paint the entire faction as over-powered or broken.

Are you playing against Iron Hands every day? Most people that complain tend to play very few games, hence they focus on problems and not positives. I do expect to face Iron Hands at tournaments, but can easily avoid them in pick up games if I so desired.
Unfortunately the cycle repeats with every new codex. A vocal minority that watches more than it actually plays becomes a loud element of complaints that can be found on forums like this. If only they hobbied as hard as they hated.

 Ishagu wrote:
And the Tau rules don't come from overlapping rules? lol

Sept rules, over-lapped with Marker Lights, over-lapped with character auras, over-lapped with Kauyon bonuses, over-lapped with faction core rules.

Just because some meta chasers in tournaments are spamming Iron Hands and Raven Guard Centurions that is no reason to paint the entire faction as over-powered or broken.

Are you playing against Iron Hands every day? Most people that complain tend to play very few games, hence they focus on problems and not positives. I do expect to face Iron Hands at tournaments, but can easily avoid them in pick up games if I so desired.
Unfortunately the cycle repeats with every new codex. A vocal minority that watches more than it actually plays becomes a loud element of complaints that can be found on forums like this. If only they hobbied as hard as they hated.

No do you play tau every day? All I did was point out that many people's problem with sm is all the special rules they get for free. I have no problem with centurions as they at least cost resources.

And I never avoid certain armies in games. Never back down from a challenge.

Did I say anything about backing down? I'm saying that a vocal minority like many of the posters in this topic focus on the bad as though it's the only thing they'll encounter.

And no, the over-lapping rules are not a problem. Specific rules in specific situations cause issues, and they can and should be addressed on a case by case basis.

Saying the whole codex is bad does not offer any solutions, and hence it is an ignorant statement.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
For gaks and giggles I added Ta'u and Orks and gave a side by side of ITC to Non-ITC. It looks to me that people who say ITC is bad for the game are both correct and incorrect. Ta'u suffer greatly outside of ITC, but Orks see a boost. Despite this Eldar and Codex Marines maintain a stranglehold. Whether the new missions will upset this dynamic will remain to be seen over coming months.

Data is whatever was available for Nov and Dec tournaments at the time I grabbed it (a few days ago).

Thank you for your excellent work on the stats!

I find this quite interesting. I wonder what it looks like across all factions.

Having different rulesets comes at a cost; it makes the statistics less reliable and the game harder to balance for GW.

In order to justify their existence, the ITC rules should be able to show that they are a much more balanced rule set than the base game. This means that factions should have win rates closer to 50% in ITC than they do otherwise. If the results are similar, then there really isn't any justification for ITC being used for tournaments. Unless people just find it more fun, of course.

In the above sample 3/4 armies are less balanced in ITC.

Nice factual evidence that ITC is worse for game balance than Chapter Approved missions!

Time to ditch ITC missions. (again, mission is a generous statement - it's one mission with a few variations)

 Ishagu wrote:

Just because some meta chasers in tournaments are spamming Iron Hands and Raven Guard Centurions that is no reason to paint the entire faction as over-powered or broken.

Indeed. I mean it might be, but we can't really know that. Better start nerfing the things we know to be a problem and then see how well the marines do without them, Nerfing marines as a whole without touching the problem builds would be the worst thing they could do, as that would just make those builds mandatory even lower tiers of play. A bit like when marines were bad previously and everyone who wanted to have chance had to field Guilliman as that build was more powerful than the rest.

 Ishagu wrote:
Did I say anything about backing down? I'm saying that a vocal minority like many of the posters in this topic focus on the bad as though it's the only thing they'll encounter.

And no, the over-lapping rules are not a problem. Specific rules in specific situations cause issues, and they can and should be addressed on a case by case basis.

Saying the whole codex is bad does not offer any solutions, and hence it is an ignorant statement.

I have multiple tournament 1st places in 8th alone. I play plenty, I play competitively, and I have done for years, to a level of success that I'm quite comfortable with.

I agree it's often the same people whining about something they don't understand. I too see those very people in this thread. In the past it was 4pt Guardsmen are too OP, before that it was Shield Captains, Flyrants, GSC ambushes, Disintegrator Cannons, whatever was slightly hot at the time got the same treatment. But that doesn't mean anything they say is automatically incorrect, I don't think the argument that Marines aren't OP really holds any weight, they are incredibly powerful. Aeldari and Chaos soup is great too, it's just not at that level.

Not to be rude (or at least, not any ruder than you were), perhaps you just need more experience. The very stats that you are cosigning in here to support your claims about Marines, also say Marines have a 62% win rate vs Tau at higher levels, compared to your 0% win rate. Maybe you just need to play more?

Iron Hands and Raven Guard have a high win rate against Tau. The Ultras don't.

That's the key point.


Marines are a faction that encompasses multiple Chapters. They are not all equal.
If anyone wants to say that Iron Hands and Centurions with the right chapter combination are too strong that would be perfectly reasonable. Blanket claims against the entire faction are not.

 Ishagu wrote:
Did I say anything about backing down? I'm saying that a vocal minority like many of the posters in this topic focus on the bad as though it's the only thing they'll encounter.

And no, the over-lapping rules are not a problem. Specific rules in specific situations cause issues, and they can and should be addressed on a case by case basis.

Saying the whole codex is bad does not offer any solutions, and hence it is an ignorant statement.

You're statement implied that you would avoid ih in a casual setting.

And few people are complaining about the codex. It's the codex in combination with the supplements which seems to cause most of the complaints.

Do you think the Black Templars are over-powered? Are they a problem for the game?

 Ishagu wrote:
Do you think the Black Templars are over-powered? Are they a problem for the game?

No melee only army or heavy melee archetypical army seems to perform atm though.

Also maybee not all chapters are equal, does that mean that i should stop paying 95pts / obliterator since i play WE?
My point with this is the following, some factions seem to need to pay for their best possible combinations, others get a free pass.
That ain't equal long pikes for everyone, and that is the issue i have.

( the second main issue beyond the fact that GW thought that endemic issues of an army can just be fixed by slapping bandaid's over it until the bandaids fill in the enemys sword to the point where he might aswell use a foam sword.)

So you admit that a new codex chapter along with the relevant supplement is not a problem?

Now please direct your complaints more accurately from now on without making blanket statements about the whole faction.

 Ishagu wrote:
So you admit that a new codex chapter along with the relevant supplement is not a problem?

Now please direct your complaints more accurately from now on without making blanket statements about the whole faction.

Did i ever make a blanket statement in this thread.
You should seriously start to look who is talking to you.

Secondly: Yes more codex chapters means ultimately more marine release slog.
GW had their chance at fixing CSM and SM, they fethed up, end of story, other factions deserve sunlight just as much.

 Ishagu wrote:
If you exclude Iron Hands and Centurions in RG/WS detachments, does anyone actually think Astartes a problem?

Yeah I do. For starters, they have about six times as many psychic powers, relics, warlord traits, and stratagems to choose from than anybody else has at this point, and all the downsides that are baked in to other factions are waived for marines for no reason.

Look at everyone else's custom traits: You give up ALL subfaction-specific bonuses from the codex subfactions if you take them in Eldar, Drukhari, and Tyranids. What happens if you're space marines?

You get the super-doctrine, psychic list, half dozen WL traits/Relics/Strats of any of the codex subfactions of your choice. You give up named characters and that's it.

Take out the "Ravenguard+Assault Cents" combo, and someone will find something else. Take out the "IH flyers moving and shooting" combo, and someone will find something else. There are more possible power-gameable combinations in the massive mountain of rules available to the Space Marines faction than any other three factions combined, and all GW has been doing since their release is giving them YET MORE gak in faith and fury and YET MORE OPTIONS in Blood of Baal, since now it's clear that the non-codex compliant chapters are going to be soupable with marines without losing doctrines.

Even if other armies are universally given a non-soup bonus (Which, given the Sisters release and the rumors that Admech are getting reworked Canticles as a bonus, seems to be a carrot reserved only for Imperium factions) marine armies will still have the benefit of being able to maintain their bonus while souping with more other codexes than anyone else can.

What's the point of putting a "non-soup bonus" in the game if you can still freely mix codex: Space Marines, Codex: Grey Knights, Codex: Blood Angels, Codex: Dark Angels, Codex: Deathwatch and Codex: Space Wolves? That's more soup than anyone outside the imperium umbrella has access to. You can still take whoever's got the best marine troops paired with whoever's got the best assault alpha strike and do exactly what everyone was doing with soup before the "fix". And if you give every army that could bring soup a bonus while leaving out the ones who could never benefit from allies, how are you not just making the gulf wider between the preferred factions and the neglected ones?

You give up allies. And even though there is a big variety of powers and traits you are locked into a very specific list tied to your chapter.

You also lose your Doctrine bonus if you mix chapters. Those are pretty significant things you fail to mention.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
So you admit that a new codex chapter along with the relevant supplement is not a problem?

Now please direct your complaints more accurately from now on without making blanket statements about the whole faction.

Did i ever make a blanket statement in this thread.
You should seriously start to look who is talking to you.

Secondly: Yes more codex chapters means ultimately more marine release slog.
GW had their chance at fixing CSM and SM, they fethed up, end of story, other factions deserve sunlight just as much.

Fixing marines has nothing to do with a release cycle however, but it'd be better for all factions if marines are brought down a notch.

Rather than just leaving them as they are so they can release a less powerful xenos unit, take the time to even the playing field first.