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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I actually disagree somewhat Martel, BT have two ways of getting 6" consolidates (stratagem and litany) and the no-fallback stratagem that makes screens significantly less effective. Having to spread your screens out with a 7" gap is much worse than a 4" radius, and if you can charge one guardsman squad and tag a second you can hide in combat. It's still going to suck, but dropping some stuff in turn 1 and combining it with a barrage of TFCs and Intercessors plonking away gives you a decent shot to be able to capitalize on the disorganization in the enemy ranks in turn 2 in a way that I don't think Blood Angels can.

From a tournament perspective the fact that BA can be combined with other codex marine armies without breaking doctrines basically makes mono-BA lists a conceptual thing that won't happen if you're looking to get the maximum power out of marines.

You'll combine a BA detachment to get an elite melee unit, and use an IF/IH detachment for everything else.

GW terrain rules suck full stop. I use an absolute boatload of terrain when I play; planet bowling ball is not a fun game at all.

Dudeface wrote:


I'm going to bang on this drum again, but to add to this, it's the same people writing these ITC missions that are testing the CA approved missions and signing them off as fit for purpose. Either they're intentionally misleading GW with the mission feedback (possibly to keep ITC being a thing), GW aren't playtesting them or people are blindly stuck in their ways and unwilling to try change.

While they are subject to NDA regarding the play-testing I am pretty sure several of them have dropped very heavy hints that they use GW missions for the play-testing. Which is pretty much exactly what you would expect GW to mandate.

Dudeface wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think Klickor already said everything I have to say at this point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Martel's entire argument is that, his skill aside, he can pick the ITC secondary that's about killing hordes of dudes (I think it's 1 point for killing 10+? It might have been changed) and get extra VP while slogging through hordes, while in a non-ITC mission VP doesn't come from that (there might be a Maelstrom card for it? No idea) so he's at 0 until he can slog through 100 guys, if he can at all. ITC missions let him be at let's say 3 (3 turns of trying to get through) instead of 0 so he feels like he's doing something other than killing guys without any benefit for doing it.

That's it. And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the GW missions had something like that as a bonus in some missions. My issue with ITC secondaries is entirely that they are able to be tailored to your oppponent. So if you play someone with 100 dudes, you will pick the "kill hordes" secondary. If they have all elites, you will pick that. All knights, you pick the superheavy one. Etc. etc. it puts even more emphasis on what you bring versus how you use it, since you get to pick what extra bonuses you get based on your opponent's army, rather than not being certain of what you might face and having that push you more towards covering all your bases. It encourages the sort of gamey specific netlists that we see because there's no drawback to bringing a skew list since you'll always have SOME secondary objective that gives you a bonus against any sort of list.

While it's my viewpoint that being able to do that is part of the problem. If you didn't' know what mission you would get or, in the case of Maelstrom what card you might draw (I love the new version of this, however) it means you are less incentivized to bring a heavy skew list since you might get a mission that doesn't favor your skew and be at a disadvantage. On the contrary, you are incentivized to bring a more well-balanced list that can handle any of the missions you might get. Knowing the mission(s) beforehand on top of being able to tailor your secondaries removes any reason whatsoever to bring something more balanced.

The problem with Martel's view is he's fixating on killing those 150 dudes. Can't say for sure, but this may be a result of him playing nothing but ITC, where you can get rewarded for that and not appreciating that in many of the CA missions it doesn't really matter if you kill 100 Guardsmen or not. It's often much more important that you kill a specific 20-30 Guardsmen so you can control objectives. In the new Maelstrom missions you can tailor your deck to the opponent somewhat. So if you don't think you'll have much board control, take out a bunch of the objective-based cards and vice-versa. I agree adding in the odd secondary to the CA missions along those lines might be interesting.

I'm fixated on it because they physically prevent my army from functioning.

Define function please, it's not preventing you from capping/contesting objectives in your half/midfield, you have some shenanigans to get to the backfield if needed. What does it prevent you from doing that stops you competing within a game?

No good horde player lets me in their backfield. BA still obey all rules of deep strike. I can't cap or contest if my models are dead which happens very quickly vs Imperial gunline.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


I'm going to bang on this drum again, but to add to this, it's the same people writing these ITC missions that are testing the CA approved missions and signing them off as fit for purpose. Either they're intentionally misleading GW with the mission feedback (possibly to keep ITC being a thing), GW aren't playtesting them or people are blindly stuck in their ways and unwilling to try change.

While they are subject to NDA regarding the play-testing I am pretty sure several of them have dropped very heavy hints that they use GW missions for the play-testing. Which is pretty much exactly what you would expect GW to mandate.

This just complicates things as it suggests that either they're intentionally skewing for ITC balance in some places or that they're intentionally moving and balancing away from their own mission packs.

zerosignal wrote:
GW terrain rules suck full stop. I use an absolute boatload of terrain when I play; planet bowling ball is not a fun game at all.

A board can be full of GW terrain, and I can still be shot like it IS planet bowling ball. ITC ruins are sadly pretty critical and it still hard to survive.

Martel732 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think Klickor already said everything I have to say at this point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Martel's entire argument is that, his skill aside, he can pick the ITC secondary that's about killing hordes of dudes (I think it's 1 point for killing 10+? It might have been changed) and get extra VP while slogging through hordes, while in a non-ITC mission VP doesn't come from that (there might be a Maelstrom card for it? No idea) so he's at 0 until he can slog through 100 guys, if he can at all. ITC missions let him be at let's say 3 (3 turns of trying to get through) instead of 0 so he feels like he's doing something other than killing guys without any benefit for doing it.

That's it. And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the GW missions had something like that as a bonus in some missions. My issue with ITC secondaries is entirely that they are able to be tailored to your oppponent. So if you play someone with 100 dudes, you will pick the "kill hordes" secondary. If they have all elites, you will pick that. All knights, you pick the superheavy one. Etc. etc. it puts even more emphasis on what you bring versus how you use it, since you get to pick what extra bonuses you get based on your opponent's army, rather than not being certain of what you might face and having that push you more towards covering all your bases. It encourages the sort of gamey specific netlists that we see because there's no drawback to bringing a skew list since you'll always have SOME secondary objective that gives you a bonus against any sort of list.

While it's my viewpoint that being able to do that is part of the problem. If you didn't' know what mission you would get or, in the case of Maelstrom what card you might draw (I love the new version of this, however) it means you are less incentivized to bring a heavy skew list since you might get a mission that doesn't favor your skew and be at a disadvantage. On the contrary, you are incentivized to bring a more well-balanced list that can handle any of the missions you might get. Knowing the mission(s) beforehand on top of being able to tailor your secondaries removes any reason whatsoever to bring something more balanced.

The problem with Martel's view is he's fixating on killing those 150 dudes. Can't say for sure, but this may be a result of him playing nothing but ITC, where you can get rewarded for that and not appreciating that in many of the CA missions it doesn't really matter if you kill 100 Guardsmen or not. It's often much more important that you kill a specific 20-30 Guardsmen so you can control objectives. In the new Maelstrom missions you can tailor your deck to the opponent somewhat. So if you don't think you'll have much board control, take out a bunch of the objective-based cards and vice-versa. I agree adding in the odd secondary to the CA missions along those lines might be interesting.

I'm fixated on it because they physically prevent my army from functioning.

Define function please, it's not preventing you from capping/contesting objectives in your half/midfield, you have some shenanigans to get to the backfield if needed. What does it prevent you from doing that stops you competing within a game?

No good horde player lets me in their backfield. BA still obey all rules of deep strike. I can't cap or contest if my models are dead which happens very quickly vs Imperial gunline.

I'm still confused, so they're managing to block out 60%+ of the board with a tiny proportion of their army if they have that much quality shooting. But at the same time you lack the firepower to shift guardsmen who are stuck in their back field blocking you out of deep strike?

They get 100 models for 400 pts. That's how. That's tremendous board control for 20% of their points. Guardsmen are still pretty hard to kill for cost, even if marine gunlines got cranked to 11.

What a real marine list would do is just zorf the problem units with an executioner or something like that. GW funnels the BA, BT, and WS into punching which is far inferior.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Obviously in your extreme example the suggestion does not work. Your extreme example is not realistic, however.

In reality having more options, more competitive play styles, more successful lists is obviously a benefit for a faction because it means that players of other factions are less able to predict what they are going to need to do to win the game against such an opponent. Not to mention that the more options a faction has, the more likely they have a competitive/OP option available to them. In addition it is exponentially more likely the faction has OP interactions and combos when they have more WL traits, stratagems etc to mix together.

If I go to a tournament and play against Codex Marines I could be against a huge range of different competitive builds. This is harder to counter and plan for.

If I go to a tournament and play against Tau I am against one of two very similar competitive builds or I am against an unoptimised list. The builds are well known, as are the way they play to win the game. This is much easier to counter and plan for.

You actually need a very tiny amount of points to screen much of the board. A 30 guardsmen list isnt a problem but when it goes above twice that it gets difficult. If BA had TFCs and some shooting buffs like the other marines it wouldnt be much of a problem clearing screens when its needed. But if you as a BA player need to move in to line of sight of tank commanders with your intercessors and other shooty units they soon gets wiped out but you most go out and clear and hope you remove enough of them that when your JP units get there there are no pesky guardsmen in the way. A BA list is most likely facing full firepower the first 2 turns since our efficient anti tank are all melee options so unlike against other marines they dont start loosing tanks turn 1 and maybe even not on turn 2. So if it goes until turn 3 before you can get through the screens then its very likely most of your things not in deepstrike are dead or you have given up a lot of the board/VPs and need to turn it around quick or you lose. Which will be hard when they most likely will have most of their tanks, bullgryns and knights left and if you dont kill them and get stuck in the open up close to those you die.

Another marine army against BA need very few scouts/incursors/infiltrators to stop any shenanigans at all and often you can use the artillery to screen 10" behind. This is more of the reality now and even harder to deal with than guard but the same principles apply.

BA in astartes soup is probably gonna be amazing but mono BA isnt gonna make drastic changes from where they were before.

Terrain rules do suck, I will say ITC's bottom floor rule is good there. Honestly, I think the cities of death version of terrain rules should have become baseline and adopted, those are pretty good.

Why GW likes those "mesh" walls, I have no idea. Yeah, I'll shoot this executioner laser through a cathedral window.

the_scotsman wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I actually disagree somewhat Martel, BT have two ways of getting 6" consolidates (stratagem and litany) and the no-fallback stratagem that makes screens significantly less effective. Having to spread your screens out with a 7" gap is much worse than a 4" radius, and if you can charge one guardsman squad and tag a second you can hide in combat. It's still going to suck, but dropping some stuff in turn 1 and combining it with a barrage of TFCs and Intercessors plonking away gives you a decent shot to be able to capitalize on the disorganization in the enemy ranks in turn 2 in a way that I don't think Blood Angels can.

From a tournament perspective the fact that BA can be combined with other codex marine armies without breaking doctrines basically makes mono-BA lists a conceptual thing that won't happen if you're looking to get the maximum power out of marines.

You'll combine a BA detachment to get an elite melee unit, and use an IF/IH detachment for everything else.

Both IH and CF lose their super doctrines and your BA as well. So you gain some traits for the shooty detachment but give up turn 3 melle bonus (lets be honest that turn 3 is a big melle round.) It's not as if regular marines don't have decent enough melle without BA. My ultras pretty much woop everything in CC that comes at me. Chaplain dreads +1 attack banner and 37 intercessors usually wins in CC vs both hordes and elite units. The issue is dedicated melle is just not good unless it's turn 1 charging vs unscreened units.

Another issue with the horde vs elite is the way objective caping is done. 10 guardsmen beat 9 marines when w/in 3" of the objective.

If objective control was done based on the PL of the units contesting or points value vs the sheer number of models some of the sting of looking out at 100 gaunts would be reduced because they can't just swamp the objective and make you kill them.

The ITC vs GW missions is a weird thing because GWs missions, until CA2019, removed a lot of the player agency and led to situations where regardless of your play the game state could be in a situation where, due to the RNG of the maelstrom cards, you practically couldn't win. Maybe fun for a beer and pretzels game but when the point of the game is to win, having the goal taken away without anything you can do about it doesn't lead to a great experience.

CA2019 does a much better job of addressing those feels bad moments and hopefully some of it is incorporated into tournament formats in the future.

Martel does illustrate a problem with the way GW "balances" the game. BA got the short end of the stick with the PA release (although longer than some of the xeno factions) with missing out on a lot of the basic buffs from the space marine 2.0 upgrade (proper chapter master re-rolls and some really good units). The "unique" chapters should have been based off the 2.0 books with unit restrictions (no TFC/Cents...) and additions (sang guard) in a proper codex supplement rather than 4 pages in a campaign book.

Now SW players are suffering from this doubly because having to wait 6-8 months to be playable has left me feeling quite bitter and salty about 40k in general (already had an uphill battle, now it's not even worth putting my models on the table without a significant pre-game discussion, forget about playing a competitive game). If all the 2.0 stuff was released at once (and it's all been done for a while now) GW could go forward with balancing what they've broken but until this release cycle is complete new meta-breaking things are going to keep popping up because it's clear that GW has no idea how to balance units/abilities/strats without a beta release to the community at large.

The fact that a lot of you don't understand how strong guard shooting/board presence is just means you have never played against someone like Brandon Grant who leverages the footprint and speed of guard units to dictate where you can land, what you can fight while controlling the initiative of the first turn or two to put you on the back foot and make your decisions that much harder for you. Shield drones do a very similar thing for Richard Siegler with the added problem that you can't wrap them and the make his shooting pretty much invincible until turn 3 (I've played both, they are way better than I am and could probably beat me with grey knights but whatever).

The issue is that marines, now, can just brute force their way through superior play leaving a lot of armies without any way to contest/control objectives after t2 because of the oppressive fire-power of marines 2.0 which is an issue across all formats.

Regardless of the format I'm pretty sure I ID'd the issues that GW could address with the SM 2.0 release that would take the game back to a playable state for a lot of players (outside of the "pros" who will adapt because they understand the game better, have more time and greater 40k resources and the other end of the scale because they don't care about balance and just want to push the narrative).

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Obviously in your extreme example the suggestion does not work. Your extreme example is not realistic, however.

In reality having more options, more competitive play styles, more successful lists is obviously a benefit for a faction because it means that players of other factions are less able to predict what they are going to need to do to win the game against such an opponent. Not to mention that the more options a faction has, the more likely they have a competitive/OP option available to them. In addition it is exponentially more likely the faction has OP interactions and combos when they have more WL traits, stratagems etc to mix together.

If I go to a tournament and play against Codex Marines I could be against a huge range of different competitive builds. This is harder to counter and plan for.

If I go to a tournament and play against Tau I am against one of two very similar competitive builds or I am against an unoptimised list. The builds are well known, as are the way they play to win the game. This is much easier to counter and plan for.

I'd nitpick and say that the likelihood of having some strong strats doesn't make having more OP, but overall your explanation is rather reasonable. There's also an argument to be made that the variety of stratagems only applies on a listbuilding level, in that once you see what you're facing you'd be able to know what to do to fight that particular variation. Still, having an advantage in the list-building stage is obviously good.

An Actual Englishman wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Obviously in your extreme example the suggestion does not work. Your extreme example is not realistic, however.

In reality having more options, more competitive play styles, more successful lists is obviously a benefit for a faction because it means that players of other factions are less able to predict what they are going to need to do to win the game against such an opponent. Not to mention that the more options a faction has, the more likely they have a competitive/OP option available to them. In addition it is exponentially more likely the faction has OP interactions and combos when they have more WL traits, stratagems etc to mix together.

If I go to a tournament and play against Codex Marines I could be against a huge range of different competitive builds. This is harder to counter and plan for.

If I go to a tournament and play against Tau I am against one of two very similar competitive builds or I am against an unoptimised list. The builds are well known, as are the way they play to win the game. This is much easier to counter and plan for.

Whilst I can see where you are coming from with more options = higher performance. This doesn't automatically make it the case, just look at TV, lots and lots and lots of channels, mostly filled with nothing worth watching.

Isn't being able to provide a variety of lists a sign of something that is (internally) balanced? That there isn't a single optimium solution?

Also as far as not knowing what kind of list you are going to face and thus not knowing how to counter them, how does having different flavours of marines differ from there being entirely different armys... Afterall there are Daemons, Guard, Knights, Nids, Eldar, Ad-Mec, Orks.....

Wayniac wrote:Terrain rules do suck, I will say ITC's bottom floor rule is good there. Honestly, I think the cities of death version of terrain rules should have become baseline and adopted, those are pretty good.

Martel732 wrote:Why GW likes those "mesh" walls, I have no idea. Yeah, I'll shoot this executioner laser through a cathedral window.

Would agree that the terrian rules are exceedingly weak. Being able to shoot at 100% efficiency a target that is 99% obscured by terrain, but not in any terrain is a huge huge weakness.

As for the ITC ruin rules have you checked out GWs take on the issue? The principle difference being that if those bottom floor ruins are blocking LOS irrespective of opennings then they are classed as impassable terrtain (i.e. Infantry can't pass through them)?

Yeah, the poor terrain rules is one of the biggest weaknesses of the current edition. But the official rules are still much better than ITC's invincible magic boxes. It worries me that people who came up with that are involved in the playtesting... (Certainly explains how so many obviously abusable things slip through the playtesting...)

I feel like to solve the magic box conundrum heavy weapons should be able to attack the buildings/ruins. Maybe just give any building/ruin 10 wounds with a 4+ save and automatically explode for d3 mortal wounds to any units inside (they emergency disembark) if the building is destroyed. After that they are just considered to be area terrain.

Probably to advanced but would solve the problem. It really is dumb...being in a shanty ruin is basically the worst place you could possible be if you are taking fire from .50. A tank can pop an HE into any building and kill everything inside a lot easier than if they were in the open. Even today they make handheld grenade launchers specifically designed for ruining people in enclosed buildings. These aren't fortified bunkers for crying out loud.

Another Idea I had for ILOS weapons would be that they obviously can't be fired when inside a building/ruin with a roof and have to be 3 inches away from any ruin/building in order to be fired (have to be able to shoot over the wall). These would be specifically ITC house rule fixes to the issues with their house rules.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Realistically most armies only use a handful of the strategems, WL traits, and relic choices available to them since a significant chunk will be bad or not relevant so let's assume 25% of each are actually usable. They have 12 strategems, 6 warlord traits and 3 relics to choose from and build a list around. You have 2 strategems, 1 warlord trait and maybe a useful relic to build with. Your opponent is more likely to be able to assemble a strong synergistic list than you are. If you want to test this, try playing an army that didn't have a codex yet using only the strategems, WL traits, and relic available in CA 2017 against armies with access to their full codex. Its possible, but it will be a lot harder and you will notice that your opponent will more frequently have something to use CP on than you do.

Now let's test this with an extreme example that actually involves playing out the game since an instant "I win, the game is over" doesn't actually test anything. Using only the CA 2017 options or a non-marine codex, play against a marine list that is allowed to use every single supplement/PA strategem, WL trait, and relic available as if they were every chapter at the same time, but still only using units from 1 chapter. Iron Hands smash captains, overwatch that hits on 5+ and can use the ultramarine bootleg FTGG, self sacrifice iron hand intercessors protecting your choice of aggressors/centurions of any flavor that were infiltrated into position via raven guard strats. Even if its only 1 or 2 extra strategems total from each supplement being used, you can see how broken combos start to really pile on.

No, they're not better. 1st floor LoS blockers are critical.

 DominayTrix wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Realistically most armies only use a handful of the strategems, WL traits, and relic choices available to them since a significant chunk will be bad or not relevant so let's assume 25% of each are actually usable. They have 12 strategems, 6 warlord traits and 3 relics to choose from and build a list around. You have 2 strategems, 1 warlord trait and maybe a useful relic to build with. Your opponent is more likely to be able to assemble a strong synergistic list than you are. If you want to test this, try playing an army that didn't have a codex yet using only the strategems, WL traits, and relic available in CA 2017 against armies with access to their full codex. Its possible, but it will be a lot harder and you will notice that your opponent will more frequently have something to use CP on than you do.

Now let's test this with an extreme example that actually involves playing out the game since an instant "I win, the game is over" doesn't actually test anything. Using only the CA 2017 options or a non-marine codex, play against a marine list that is allowed to use every single supplement/PA strategem, WL trait, and relic available as if they were every chapter at the same time, but still only using units from 1 chapter. Iron Hands smash captains, overwatch that hits on 5+ and can use the ultramarine bootleg FTGG, self sacrifice iron hand intercessors protecting your choice of aggressors/centurions of any flavor that were infiltrated into position via raven guard strats. Even if its only 1 or 2 extra strategems total from each supplement being used, you can see how broken combos start to really pile on.

But, again, that is due to the quality of the stratagems, not the quantity. The CA2017 options were pretty poor, whereas some of the stratagems in Codex: Space Marines are really good. Take Imperial Guard pre-Vigilus as an example. They have a bunch of stratagems that aren't all that great. A single powerful stratagem on its own can warp the game much harder than a billion useless ones.

The argument with options is that you get the edge case stratagems. Don't plan to use this every game, but if circumstance X turns up, use stratagem Y for high value. It beats not having the option at all because you are not paying anything but the potential.

But yeah, normally having lots of obviously inferior options that have to be used instead of better ones (relics, warlord traits, chapter tactics) doesn't help.

Martel732 wrote:
No, they're not better. 1st floor LoS blockers are critical.

That is actually a nice rule, a lot of people I have talked to who don’t play ITC like that one, same for the rule about objectives counting as on the ground floor even if they are not. We generally don’t play the ITC missions as we don’t find them as fun in the super casual flgs I primarily play at.

bananathug wrote:
The fact that a lot of you don't understand how strong guard shooting/board presence is just means you have never played against someone like Brandon Grant who leverages the footprint and speed of guard units to dictate where you can land, what you can fight while controlling the initiative of the first turn or two to put you on the back foot and make your decisions that much harder for you. Shield drones do a very similar thing for Richard Siegler with the added problem that you can't wrap them and the make his shooting pretty much invincible until turn 3 (I've played both, they are way better than I am and could probably beat me with grey knights but whatever).

These are good points but where do we put skill in this equation? People who have a better understanding of the game will be at an advantage no matter what army they play.

Martel732 wrote:
No, they're not better. 1st floor LoS blockers are critical.

Not the 'base' rules, as in the rules for GW GT which can be found Here

A pure codex astartes list can,only counting supplements and not vigilus or PA, have 80 or so stratagems, choose between 30 warlord traits, 36 psychic powers and more relics than i care to count and use up to 7 chapter tactics across their 3 detachments each gaining what is most suitable for the units inside it. Sure they lose the super doctrine but its not like every option available is bad. Even if most of the options arent that good its hard for even GW to make all of them bad and even though quite a few are situational with so many available you will propably have something good for each situation.

And quite a few relics, traits and stratagems have already been nerfed. IH, RG and Salamanders have all had some nerfs to these options but they still have many powerful left.

One of the real strength of all these options are that you dont have to commit many of them until you actually see your opponents list and what mission you are playing. Might not matter if you only have 2 relevant warlord traits but for marines who can get a warlord trait extra on a non warlord mdoel and 2, from a host of good ones, on the warlord it can definetly change things. Same with the librarians and the chaplains.

Lets say you have a RG detachment and have an infantry squad (that isnt centurions since if it were you would do it anyway) you usally put in reserve but against certain lists you might want to deploy them forward, then you can use honor the chappter on a hq and Master of Ambush that unit instead. But against close combat armies you keep it in reserve instead and use the stratagem.

You can do lots of things like that with astartes soup and its hard for other players to know what can be done or not since the options for marines are so insanely many that you can surprise people and get an advantage just because of that.

Cornishman wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, they're not better. 1st floor LoS blockers are critical.

Not the 'base' rules, as in the rules for GW GT which can be found Here

Never played a GW GT, but these rules look okay. But the scoring is still very meh if they are just using CA missions.

Yoyoyo wrote:

bananathug wrote:
The fact that a lot of you don't understand how strong guard shooting/board presence is just means you have never played against someone like Brandon Grant who leverages the footprint and speed of guard units to dictate where you can land, what you can fight while controlling the initiative of the first turn or two to put you on the back foot and make your decisions that much harder for you. Shield drones do a very similar thing for Richard Siegler with the added problem that you can't wrap them and the make his shooting pretty much invincible until turn 3 (I've played both, they are way better than I am and could probably beat me with grey knights but whatever).

These are good points but where do we put skill in this equation? People who have a better understanding of the game will be at an advantage no matter what army they play.

My point is that marines 2.0 are so OP that they take skill out of the game. Maybe not totally but to the point where only a very large skill gap has any impact on the outcome of the game (like those guys vs me ). And that's when two armies are designed to be as cutthroat as possible, if both sides are not squeezing the most efficiencies out of their lists the imbalances are such that skill (or call it in game decisions) hardly impacts the outcome at all (a problem a lot of people have with a lot of IH lists).

When armies are so imbalanced AND you have such bad internal balance, you have a situation where a reasonably constructed army (not 100 assault marines) can have a nearly impossible matchup vs a different reasonably constructed army (IF vs GSC). This is more of a problem for pick-up games (not cutthroat tourny list or narrative lists between friends) but I think it turns a lot of people off to the game and creates a lot of feels bad moments. Feeling like you were going to lose regardless of your decisions is one of the most frustrating experiences I've had on the table top (my space wolves vs nu-marines) and is an issue that GW should balance around. The extreme ends will figure themselves out but the middle is kind of at the mercy of GW.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'd nitpick and say that the likelihood of having some strong strats doesn't make having more OP, but overall your explanation is rather reasonable. There's also an argument to be made that the variety of stratagems only applies on a listbuilding level, in that once you see what you're facing you'd be able to know what to do to fight that particular variation. Still, having an advantage in the list-building stage is obviously good.

It's not guaranteed that a faction with more stuff gets the better stuff for sure, just much more likely. Exponentially so when we imagine different combinations that can be combined to create uber combos. The more combos you can make, the more chance some of them are busted.

Cornishman wrote:

Whilst I can see where you are coming from with more options = higher performance. This doesn't automatically make it the case, just look at TV, lots and lots and lots of channels, mostly filled with nothing worth watching.

Isn't being able to provide a variety of lists a sign of something that is (internally) balanced? That there isn't a single optimium solution?

Also as far as not knowing what kind of list you are going to face and thus not knowing how to counter them, how does having different flavours of marines differ from there being entirely different armys... Afterall there are Daemons, Guard, Knights, Nids, Eldar, Ad-Mec, Orks.....

Indeed, it's not an automatic thing. That said the TV comparison isn't that useful. If we imagine a game, say chess for ease of discussion, where one player can use only 2 moves and the other player has 20 different moves to choose from, it is obvious that the player with more options is at a huge advantage. Assuming all stratagems, relics, WL traits etc are equal in their worth - the more options the better.

List variety does indeed mean great internal balance. It's just a shame when that internal balance comes at the cost of every other codex in the game.

Your not comparing apples and apples in your last sentence. Yes there are Orks, Ad Mech, GSC, Nids, Eldar etc. The "problem" we are discussing here is that one faction (Codex Marines) has 3-5 times the number of options than any other faction. This is one of the reasons (not the only one) Codex Marines are so strong competitively. For parity my Evil Sunz Orks (that is to say, my 'Chapter' of Orks) would have the same number of options as Raven Guard, IH etc. I have one unique relic, one unique WL trait and one unique Stratagem. How many do RG, IH, UM have? It's a huge discrepancy. For some reason some people seem to think this is OK too. My sub faction is less important and therefore less worthy of the number of rules interactions as the Codex Marines sub factions. This is bogus.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:


If I go to a tournament and play against Tau I am against one of two very similar competitive builds or I am against an unoptimised list. The builds are well known, as are the way they play to win the game. This is much easier to counter and plan for.

T'au already have lots of options - outside of ITC that is.

I am pretty sure my ridiculous Kroot/Vespid/Ghostkeel list would beat a typical Riptide/Shield Drone list 7/10 games in CA19 missions. So long as I do not bleed kill points for my Kroot dying I am going to win on objectives (plus the fact that kroot kill shield drones a lot faster than shield drones kill kroot).

I do agree that in general having more options such as stratagems does open up more possible builds - but sometimes a top tier competitive army is not about how many options it has so much as just having one really stupidly good combo. Honstly you could take 3/4 of the strats/relics/traits away from Iron Hands and nobody would even notice.