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I think it could, if GW toned back on the "everything has to be different from everything else" mentality. Which is absolutely fine when trying to be "true to the fluff", but it makes a Tabletop game incredibly difficult to balance when you have to account for thousands of interactions when introducing new rules/datasheets.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 flandarz wrote:


Anything with a lot of shots and 1 Damage should have AP0.

Anything with Damage 2 and a middling amount of shots should have AP-1 or 2.

Anything with Damage 3 or greater and a low number of shots should have AP-3 or 4.

I think this blanderizes weapons far too much.

I can relate, but a lot of the issues of this game arise from having too many variables to account for in the design process.

No, it didn't work in 2nd, and doesn't work well in 8th. It makes costing too difficult. -1 AP halves the effectiveness of terminator armor. That's REALLY hard to cost. Now -1 didn't have that effect in 2nd, but that game had -6 everywhere and mass spam -3.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 flandarz wrote:
To be fair, I always thought the Marine statline was great. I'd have daydreams of Ork Nobs with the datasheet of a Tactical Marine (which even now is considered "awful").

It is great, traditionally. A Tac Marine has the toughness of an Ork at T4, the armor of a Heavy Aspect Warrior at 3+, is stronger than both at S4, and is more disciplined with AKSKNF. In turn they suffer from being fewer than Orks, and less specialized than Eldar. CSM were balanced at less disciplined, but potentially more individual power as granted by Marks or Cult status.

Last time I checked an Ork Nob costed as much as an intercessor. Why should the nob not get a 3+ save and a 3+ BS?

How many points do you think Nobs and Intercessors are? I am kinda curious.

Sorry, it's 3 points difference. Nobs 14 Intercessors 17.
Guess those 3 points are for +2BS, +18" range, +2ap, +1 ranged shot, +1 movement, +2 save, +2ap in melee and +4 leadership huh.

 Eonfuzz wrote:


Sorry, it's 3 points difference. Nobs 14 Intercessors 17.
Guess those 3 points are for +2BS, +18" range, +2ap, +1 ranged shot, +1 movement, +2 save, +2ap in melee and +4 leadership huh.

Where are Primaris getting AP2 in melee?
Only +1 save.
Nobs are LD7 so only 1 extra LD, but access to be easily better than that.
You also forgot Nobs are S5, +1A (+2 with Choppa), and get a "drone" for 4 points.

If Nobs has access to basic Kustom Shootas they'd produce more hits than Primaris would (at shorter range).

Nobs certainly aren't perfect, but they're not garbage, either. It just becomes a problem of delivering a primarily melee unit.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Points won't get them out of this mess and there's two parts to it.

A) Community hopes
B) GW procedures

The community hopes that GW will address the issue as quickly as possible, but the reality is GW will address the problem during the procedure which is most appropriate - that being Spring FAQ (and 2 week FAQs).

We all wished they would have done it in CA through rules changes, but the reality is any planned and tested changes would not be ready in time. It is the same thing that happened with Castellans - they address the pieces of the problem mainly within the scope of their procedure only occasionally breaking to put points in the FAQs.

As for where to start? I dunno. I have a bunch of dumb, half-baked ideas.

- Super Docs replace normal docs. No more stacking.
- Super Docs last 1 turn. CP to make use of it once more.
- Increase CP of various strats -- 2 or 3 CP for extra stacking trait, etc
- Only 2 or 3 relics instead of infinite
- Change how CP is made available and prevent massive CP dumping

A combination of those could work, especially the first and third, I think. The last idea would be great, but I seriously doubt it would ever be done in FAQ. That would probably have to wait for the fabled 9th edition.

Martel732 wrote:
No, it didn't work in 2nd, and doesn't work well in 8th. It makes costing too difficult. -1 AP halves the effectiveness of terminator armor. That's REALLY hard to cost. Now -1 didn't have that effect in 2nd, but that game had -6 everywhere and mass spam -3.

You say this all the time and it’s true but it works when getting the mod is conditional. I used the ap system haravikk posted on this forum several times. The only things that gave a -1 or -2 to TDA were ap3 like missiles or ap2 like las cannons, and if you could manage ap1 like a melta then it ignored the armor totally. It was tres bien, and no need for d12s.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Points won't get them out of this mess and there's two parts to it.

A) Community hopes
B) GW procedures

The community hopes that GW will address the issue as quickly as possible, but the reality is GW will address the problem during the procedure which is most appropriate - that being Spring FAQ (and 2 week FAQs).

We all wished they would have done it in CA through rules changes, but the reality is any planned and tested changes would not be ready in time. It is the same thing that happened with Castellans - they address the pieces of the problem mainly within the scope of their procedure only occasionally breaking to put points in the FAQs.

As for where to start? I dunno. I have a bunch of dumb, half-baked ideas.

- Super Docs replace normal docs. No more stacking.
- Super Docs last 1 turn. CP to make use of it once more.
- Increase CP of various strats -- 2 or 3 CP for extra stacking trait, etc
- Only 2 or 3 relics instead of infinite
- Change how CP is made available and prevent massive CP dumping

A combination of those could work, especially the first and third, I think. The last idea would be great, but I seriously doubt it would ever be done in FAQ. That would probably have to wait for the fabled 9th edition.

I don't know either man lol. there's just soo much going on with those books. So far we've only seen the most obvious things. Like character dreads unkillable levis (which people said wouldint be a problem)
Again this will hopefully likely be addressed with FW books.

I think flat out no mixing and matching supplement rules with base codex. I.e. If you choose to play supplement you get that super doctrine and only access to those strats and relics present in the supplement.
This gets rid of a lot of the interactions and unkillabile stuff.. Obviously IH doctrine/trait needs to be adjusted and nerfed a bit.

Basically there should be a downside to gaining heaps of rules..

I like some of your ideas for sure, solid start.

But you can't charge points without upping the durability on the models. What a mess.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:


Sorry, it's 3 points difference. Nobs 14 Intercessors 17.
Guess those 3 points are for +2BS, +18" range, +2ap, +1 ranged shot, +1 movement, +2 save, +2ap in melee and +4 leadership huh.

Where are Primaris getting AP2 in melee?
Only +1 save.
Nobs are LD7 so only 1 extra LD, but access to be easily better than that.
You also forgot Nobs are S5, +1A (+2 with Choppa), and get a "drone" for 4 points.

If Nobs has access to basic Kustom Shootas they'd produce more hits than Primaris would (at shorter range).

Nobs certainly aren't perfect, but they're not garbage, either. It just becomes a problem of delivering a primarily melee unit.

Right. Primaris don't have base AP -1 in melee, my bad.
Guess those 3 points are for +2BS, +18" range, +2ap, +1 ranged shot, +1 movement, +1 save, +1ap in melee and +1 leadership huh.

Slap on Blood Angels, Black Templars or Space Wolves and you've got a more efficient shooting and melee unit.
Edit: Kustom Shootas are legend, so we can't get those anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Honestly super doctrines should be more interactive.
ie, "At the start of the game select a turn and a doctrine. The doctrine becomes active on that turn and only for that turn.
Pay 1CP to select a previously unchosen doctrine and gain that for the turn afterwards,
Pay 3CP to extend the duration of the current doctrine by 1 turn"

That way players can use terrain and positioning to their advantage outside of turn 1 alphas and magic boxes.

 Argive wrote:

I don't know either man lol. there's just soo much going on with those books. So far we've only seen the most obvious things. Like character dreads unkillable levis (which people said wouldint be a problem)
Again this will hopefully likely be addressed with FW books.

Changing the keyword on the leviathan so it can't benefit from Duty Eternal would be a start, along with moving oop models (read chaplain dreads) to legends.

Of course knowing gw they're currently digging the mold for the chaplain dread out of mothball status right now because $$$.

 flandarz wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 flandarz wrote:


Anything with a lot of shots and 1 Damage should have AP0.

Anything with Damage 2 and a middling amount of shots should have AP-1 or 2.

Anything with Damage 3 or greater and a low number of shots should have AP-3 or 4.

I think this blanderizes weapons far too much.

I can relate, but a lot of the issues of this game arise from having too many variables to account for in the design process.

I'll disagree with you here, a lot of the issues this game has is because there's not the system granularity required to maintain so many "Unique and interesting options" without there being clear cut better ones.

It's both.

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 flandarz wrote:
To be fair, I always thought the Marine statline was great. I'd have daydreams of Ork Nobs with the datasheet of a Tactical Marine (which even now is considered "awful").

It is great, traditionally. A Tac Marine has the toughness of an Ork at T4, the armor of a Heavy Aspect Warrior at 3+, is stronger than both at S4, and is more disciplined with AKSKNF. In turn they suffer from being fewer than Orks, and less specialized than Eldar. CSM were balanced at less disciplined, but potentially more individual power as granted by Marks or Cult status.

Last time I checked an Ork Nob costed as much as an intercessor. Why should the nob not get a 3+ save and a 3+ BS?

How many points do you think Nobs and Intercessors are? I am kinda curious.

Sorry, it's 3 points difference. Nobs 14 Intercessors 17.
Guess those 3 points are for +2BS, +18" range, +2ap, +1 ranged shot, +1 movement, +2 save, +2ap in melee and +4 leadership huh.

Yeah, I know what each unit can do and how much points they were. I was just wondering if you thought Intercessors were only 14 points. I would assume that as an Ork player you already knew what the cost of an Ork Nob was. I will completely agree that a 14ppm Intercessor is way too cheap. A good portion of this thread doesn't seem to know what units do and appear to exaggerate Intercessors' ability. Intercessors haven't changed all that much from half a year ago. Yet, before the codex dropped they weren't anything special. I would argue they were the best of a bad lot. Now they are suddenly the Emperor's Wrath incarnate.

I won't deny that Intercessors aren't better post-codex. Which is what the title should be. The OP isn't talking about marines. The OP isn't even talking about Primaris. The OP is only talking about Intercessors. And I get it. I also have a Genestealer Cult army and Intercessors are right hard unit to deal with. They killy enough at range and melee while being pretty tough and just cheap enough to have me struggle. At the same time, I already knew that if I want to take Genestealers not to take them as GSC and take them in a Tyranid detachment. I shouldn't have to, as I don't think Deep Strike is worth 3ppm, the loss of subfaction trait and evolution options, but I didn't make the rules. I think GSC has a lot issues that Psychic Awakening didn't really help. I don't think gimping Space Marines is going to help either. I personally have far more of an issue with Rubrics who mostly deny my Cult Creed (Rusted Claw) while also being incredibly hard to kill.

Now as a Primaris and Chaos Space Marine player, I don't see too much wrong with marines in general. Perhaps the supplements went overboard and should have been more of sidegrades than upgrades. And some chapters [cough] Iron Warriors were given a little too much. I don't know. I only play the codex only with my Primaris only army., and continuing shortages in certain roles (melee, Anti-tank) asideI do okay but not great with them. I do think that Bolter Discipline isn't a good rule in that it incentivizes marines to stand still way too much. Personally, I think Bolter Discipline should allow the Rapid Fire Bolt weapons to have the option to be treated as Assault weapons a la the Black Legion trait. That way it is better than nothing, just barely, and keeps marines on the move where I think they should be. Standing in way the back in cover is what guardsmen do. Marines move to engage the enemy.

Would we rather take a trip back to the past to Leaf Blower Guard, Necron Flying Bakeries, Ork Battle Wagons Full of Lootas and Burna Boyz, Fateweaver Bomb, Invisible Deathstars, etc... Compared to prior versions of the game Iron Hands seem positively tame.

There's a couple of problems with how people feel about space marine "eliteness"

1) As mentioned before, 40k lore is... very marine slanted, to put it nicely. Every army will get pumped up in their codex as a means to selling it to people interested in that army, but no one quite gets that treatment to the same level as Marines, and since they get the lion shares of stories it's likely someone coming into the game that would be interested in Space Marine would hear amazing stories of single squads of space marines taking on entire armies on their own and winning. And if they get into the game, and read the stories in there that only push that up even more.

I think this instills an idea that how space marines work is much like OGREs do in their respective game, where it's this asymmetrical battle between a massive killing machine vs an entire army. The problem is that 40k isn't that kind of asymmetrical battle, and OGRE makes it clear from the get go that it's slanted against the defenders. So Bobby puts his tac squads down thinking his men can heroically walk across the field, slaying enemies by the truck full. Only by using their options and tactics carefully can the enemy even have a chance to defeat the Emperor's chosen!. And then they slam their face into a brick wall because their opponent actually is being smart by playing against the new marine player's naivety.

I think most people learn their lesson after that, but there is still that feeling of pain when the stories don't line up the game, that longing for something like how they remember it, while others never grow out of that idea that other armies should exist to be baby shake'd by Marines.

2). The focus on math hammer creates a bad idea on how *effective* a unit is, because the metric most people use is *efficiency*. Specially, single aspect efficiency which makes generalist look bad by default because you're thinking of a model as paying it's full cost for only part of it's kit. It's actually the worst way to balance things, as scotsman shows, because trying to balance around that results in the current situation where you have units that are better or as good as the specialist... but with none of the drawbacks.

*Effectively*, space marines were better that guardsman. A space marine squad could beat an Infantry squad, without a doubt. Efficiently, they had a had time getting over three squads or two squads and a commander. Problem was that the people took this a meaning that space marines *couldn't* handle IS and guard was overpowered, rather than learning the lesson "Maybe I shouldn't be trying to get in a pissing contest with that out of cover". People who tend to use Mathhammer a lot advocate it as being fair, but different variable aren't equal even when applied equally. If the guardsmen and space marine are both in cover, the space marine benefits more than the guard do. If there's a LoS blocking terrain in the middle of both forces, the marines benefit more because they have better force concentration. If the marines are placed in a flanking position while the guardsmen are in a line, the guardsmen are losing shots to range while the marines aren't. Marines are better when they're not lining up at the scrim line out of cover trying to, but it's easier to argue about two sides lining up on the planet cueballia than about why positioning is useful.

3) There's a few bad habits that everyone can fall in, but is worse for marines because there's so many people who play them A lack of understanding melee tends to make it look worse for non-melee specialist than it actually is, because if the only melee you get into is the melees you don't want to be in, you're going to never think to use those melee stats you do have to your advantage and will just throw your hands up when you're charged.

Everyone likes the idea of their units are able to be workable without needing a dozen supports units and special abilities to work. That's fine. But as we've seen example of in this very thread, that's not extended to other armies. So people want to be able to have their unsupported units in the middle of no man's land being able to go toe to toe with a unit who's stacked with everything. This goes double with thing that are meant to counter that unit.

And of course, bad rolls hurt people playing elite armies more. If you lose a handful of models in a horde army, it doesn't really matter as long as you still have board control. Rolling a 1 on a hit/wound/armor save for marines is a bigger deal, psychologically. People want less of those those bad feel moments, which can poorly balance the game if people push for it hard enough.

Space Marines didn't feel elite pre 2.0 because a lot of expectations wasn't met, proof used was based calculations that were intentionally worse for marines, and general lack of understanding that resulted in changes that were much more significant for smaller armies than the larger ones they were being compared to. They feel more elite now, sure, but it was done by stacking stat boosts and special rules that just make them flat out better rather than changing the army to allow it to benefit from it's natural advantages.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Points won't get them out of this mess and there's two parts to it.

A) Community hopes
B) GW procedures

The community hopes that GW will address the issue as quickly as possible, but the reality is GW will address the problem during the procedure which is most appropriate - that being Spring FAQ (and 2 week FAQs).

We all wished they would have done it in CA through rules changes, but the reality is any planned and tested changes would not be ready in time. It is the same thing that happened with Castellans - they address the pieces of the problem mainly within the scope of their procedure only occasionally breaking to put points in the FAQs.

As for where to start? I dunno. I have a bunch of dumb, half-baked ideas.

- Super Docs replace normal docs. No more stacking.
- Super Docs last 1 turn. CP to make use of it once more.
- Increase CP of various strats -- 2 or 3 CP for extra stacking trait, etc
- Only 2 or 3 relics instead of infinite
- Change how CP is made available and prevent massive CP dumping

A combination of those could work, especially the first and third, I think. The last idea would be great, but I seriously doubt it would ever be done in FAQ. That would probably have to wait for the fabled 9th edition.

Super Doctrines shouldn't have been a thing to begin with. Relics are not an issue, Doctrines by themselves aren't an issue, but Super Doctrines are all broken. Even the melee ones are absurd.

There's also no need for as many rules as there is. The Angels should not be separate codices, there shouldn't be 6 Warlord Traits for each Chapter on top of the generic ones ON TOP of the Phobos ones. There shouldn't be 15+ Stratagems for whatever reason, TWO relics each for the promoted Characters, on top of that many relics for each Chapter...

It's ridiculous. This is the same garbage we were promised that we would move away from in 7th.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Points won't get them out of this mess and there's two parts to it.

A) Community hopes
B) GW procedures

The community hopes that GW will address the issue as quickly as possible, but the reality is GW will address the problem during the procedure which is most appropriate - that being Spring FAQ (and 2 week FAQs).

We all wished they would have done it in CA through rules changes, but the reality is any planned and tested changes would not be ready in time. It is the same thing that happened with Castellans - they address the pieces of the problem mainly within the scope of their procedure only occasionally breaking to put points in the FAQs.

As for where to start? I dunno. I have a bunch of dumb, half-baked ideas.

- Super Docs replace normal docs. No more stacking.
- Super Docs last 1 turn. CP to make use of it once more.
- Increase CP of various strats -- 2 or 3 CP for extra stacking trait, etc
- Only 2 or 3 relics instead of infinite
- Change how CP is made available and prevent massive CP dumping

A combination of those could work, especially the first and third, I think. The last idea would be great, but I seriously doubt it would ever be done in FAQ. That would probably have to wait for the fabled 9th edition.

Super Doctrines shouldn't have been a thing to begin with. Relics are not an issue, Doctrines by themselves aren't an issue, but Super Doctrines are all broken. Even the melee ones are absurd.

There's also no need for as many rules as there is. The Angels should not be separate codices, there shouldn't be 6 Warlord Traits for each Chapter on top of the generic ones ON TOP of the Phobos ones. There shouldn't be 15+ Stratagems for whatever reason, TWO relics each for the promoted Characters, on top of that many relics for each Chapter...

It's ridiculous. This is the same garbage we were promised that we would move away from in 7th.

As somebody who's been away from the game a while this seems like a great time to play 40k. Do we want to go back to the days when Tau and Necrons essentially only had 1 Troop, 2 Elites, 2 Fast Attack, and maybe 3 heavy support choices and when named characters never saw play on most people's tables?

 Eonfuzz wrote:

I'll disagree with you here, a lot of the issues this game has is because there's not the system granularity required to maintain so many "Unique and interesting options" without there being clear cut better ones.

Granularity is all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that a single weapon needs to be priced and balanced in accordance to a)the units that can field it, b) the rules which can affect it, and c) the units that will be targeted by it, which (in turn) influences how those units and rules are priced and balanced. Even if the granularity was increased to a d20 size, the fact remains that you still need to account for all those variables during the design process. And the more options that there are, the larger the complexity becomes and the more "impossible" balance is.

 Stormonu wrote:
Marines are supposed to be the epitome - if not superhuman model of humanity.

I'll just point out that for 7 editions of the game that title in the fluff belonged to Grey Knights (as "the elite marines"), and then for the last 2 editions has been Custodes, who fluffwise are to marines what marines are to guardsmen. And in a game with Imperial Knights, giant Tyranids and Primarchs there is definitely room for Marines to NOT be the best...and we shouldn't expect that they are.

That said, there's no problem with making something in the game "super elite", as long as you cost it appropriately. That's the entire purpose of points/power level.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
There's a couple of problems with how people feel about space marine "eliteness"

Spoiler:

1) As mentioned before, 40k lore is... very marine slanted, to put it nicely. Every army will get pumped up in their codex as a means to selling it to people interested in that army, but no one quite gets that treatment to the same level as Marines, and since they get the lion shares of stories it's likely someone coming into the game that would be interested in Space Marine would hear amazing stories of single squads of space marines taking on entire armies on their own and winning. And if they get into the game, and read the stories in there that only push that up even more.

I think this instills an idea that how space marines work is much like OGREs do in their respective game, where it's this asymmetrical battle between a massive killing machine vs an entire army. The problem is that 40k isn't that kind of asymmetrical battle, and OGRE makes it clear from the get go that it's slanted against the defenders. So Bobby puts his tac squads down thinking his men can heroically walk across the field, slaying enemies by the truck full. Only by using their options and tactics carefully can the enemy even have a chance to defeat the Emperor's chosen!. And then they slam their face into a brick wall because their opponent actually is being smart by playing against the new marine player's naivety.

I think most people learn their lesson after that, but there is still that feeling of pain when the stories don't line up the game, that longing for something like how they remember it, while others never grow out of that idea that other armies should exist to be baby shake'd by Marines.

2). The focus on math hammer creates a bad idea on how *effective* a unit is, because the metric most people use is *efficiency*. Specially, single aspect efficiency which makes generalist look bad by default because you're thinking of a model as paying it's full cost for only part of it's kit. It's actually the worst way to balance things, as scotsman shows, because trying to balance around that results in the current situation where you have units that are better or as good as the specialist... but with none of the drawbacks.

*Effectively*, space marines were better that guardsman. A space marine squad could beat an Infantry squad, without a doubt. Efficiently, they had a had time getting over three squads or two squads and a commander. Problem was that the people took this a meaning that space marines *couldn't* handle IS and guard was overpowered, rather than learning the lesson "Maybe I shouldn't be trying to get in a pissing contest with that out of cover". People who tend to use Mathhammer a lot advocate it as being fair, but different variable aren't equal even when applied equally. If the guardsmen and space marine are both in cover, the space marine benefits more than the guard do. If there's a LoS blocking terrain in the middle of both forces, the marines benefit more because they have better force concentration. If the marines are placed in a flanking position while the guardsmen are in a line, the guardsmen are losing shots to range while the marines aren't. Marines are better when they're not lining up at the scrim line out of cover trying to, but it's easier to argue about two sides lining up on the planet cueballia than about why positioning is useful.

3) There's a few bad habits that everyone can fall in, but is worse for marines because there's so many people who play them A lack of understanding melee tends to make it look worse for non-melee specialist than it actually is, because if the only melee you get into is the melees you don't want to be in, you're going to never think to use those melee stats you do have to your advantage and will just throw your hands up when you're charged.

Everyone likes the idea of their units are able to be workable without needing a dozen supports units and special abilities to work. That's fine. But as we've seen example of in this very thread, that's not extended to other armies. So people want to be able to have their unsupported units in the middle of no man's land being able to go toe to toe with a unit who's stacked with everything. This goes double with thing that are meant to counter that unit.

And of course, bad rolls hurt people playing elite armies more. If you lose a handful of models in a horde army, it doesn't really matter as long as you still have board control. Rolling a 1 on a hit/wound/armor save for marines is a bigger deal, psychologically. People want less of those those bad feel moments, which can poorly balance the game if people push for it hard enough.

Space Marines didn't feel elite pre 2.0 because a lot of expectations wasn't met, proof used was based calculations that were intentionally worse for marines, and general lack of understanding that resulted in changes that were much more significant for smaller armies than the larger ones they were being compared to. They feel more elite now, sure, but it was done by stacking stat boosts and special rules that just make them flat out better rather than changing the army to allow it to benefit from it's natural advantages.

A good post that breaks down a number of issues.

I'll supplement it by throwing out the "generalists suck" sentiment which is symptomatic of point 2. Generalists give you flexibility with the balance point that they can be harder to use than more specialized units. "Decent" at everything but not highly "efficient" at anything when it comes down to points vs. points. thus, less exciting math-hammer because math-hammer rarely encompasses anything beyond a very tight/controlled scenario. Generalists are the opposite of role-defined specialists, and instead their role will be more informed by the opposing models. TLDR: Shoot the punchy stuff, and punch the shooty stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
The reintroduction of AP to the game makes marines and other heavy infantry VERY difficult to cost.

I don't think this is really an issue. Certainly far less of an issue than lackluster terrain rules and the escalation of invuln saves. Arguably 3rd through 7th AP system is harder to price because of it's all-or-nothing-ness.

And the "perfectly balanced points" fantasy should really die. It won't happen, it can't happen, and it's not even in GWs interest for it to happen if it were possible. All we can hope for is "close enough". There are far to many unquantifiable variables (like terrain) and contexts (a Drop Pod is worth more for some units than others).

All or nothing only have two modes. The AP system gives marines anything from a 3+ to no save at all. Invuln is also a problem. Terrain is a total wild card as different events have access to completely different terrain.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Points won't get them out of this mess and there's two parts to it.

A) Community hopes
B) GW procedures

The community hopes that GW will address the issue as quickly as possible, but the reality is GW will address the problem during the procedure which is most appropriate - that being Spring FAQ (and 2 week FAQs).

We all wished they would have done it in CA through rules changes, but the reality is any planned and tested changes would not be ready in time. It is the same thing that happened with Castellans - they address the pieces of the problem mainly within the scope of their procedure only occasionally breaking to put points in the FAQs.

As for where to start? I dunno. I have a bunch of dumb, half-baked ideas.

- Super Docs replace normal docs. No more stacking.
- Super Docs last 1 turn. CP to make use of it once more.
- Increase CP of various strats -- 2 or 3 CP for extra stacking trait, etc
- Only 2 or 3 relics instead of infinite
- Change how CP is made available and prevent massive CP dumping

A combination of those could work, especially the first and third, I think. The last idea would be great, but I seriously doubt it would ever be done in FAQ. That would probably have to wait for the fabled 9th edition.

Super Doctrines shouldn't have been a thing to begin with. Relics are not an issue, Doctrines by themselves aren't an issue, but Super Doctrines are all broken. Even the melee ones are absurd.

There's also no need for as many rules as there is. The Angels should not be separate codices, there shouldn't be 6 Warlord Traits for each Chapter on top of the generic ones ON TOP of the Phobos ones. There shouldn't be 15+ Stratagems for whatever reason, TWO relics each for the promoted Characters, on top of that many relics for each Chapter...

It's ridiculous. This is the same garbage we were promised that we would move away from in 7th.

As somebody who's been away from the game a while this seems like a great time to play 40k. Do we want to go back to the days when Tau and Necrons essentially only had 1 Troop, 2 Elites, 2 Fast Attack, and maybe 3 heavy support choices and when named characters never saw play on most people's tables?

You'd be completely incorrect.

The endless bloat doesn't add flavor, it just adds calories. It doesn't matter how many options of Lasguns you give Intercessors if they're still gonna just stick to their Bolt Rifle variants, so why even make it an option? More options does NOT equal depth.

GW loves its false choices.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
There's a couple of problems with how people feel about space marine "eliteness"

Spoiler:

1) As mentioned before, 40k lore is... very marine slanted, to put it nicely. Every army will get pumped up in their codex as a means to selling it to people interested in that army, but no one quite gets that treatment to the same level as Marines, and since they get the lion shares of stories it's likely someone coming into the game that would be interested in Space Marine would hear amazing stories of single squads of space marines taking on entire armies on their own and winning. And if they get into the game, and read the stories in there that only push that up even more.

I think this instills an idea that how space marines work is much like OGREs do in their respective game, where it's this asymmetrical battle between a massive killing machine vs an entire army. The problem is that 40k isn't that kind of asymmetrical battle, and OGRE makes it clear from the get go that it's slanted against the defenders. So Bobby puts his tac squads down thinking his men can heroically walk across the field, slaying enemies by the truck full. Only by using their options and tactics carefully can the enemy even have a chance to defeat the Emperor's chosen!. And then they slam their face into a brick wall because their opponent actually is being smart by playing against the new marine player's naivety.

I think most people learn their lesson after that, but there is still that feeling of pain when the stories don't line up the game, that longing for something like how they remember it, while others never grow out of that idea that other armies should exist to be baby shake'd by Marines.

2). The focus on math hammer creates a bad idea on how *effective* a unit is, because the metric most people use is *efficiency*. Specially, single aspect efficiency which makes generalist look bad by default because you're thinking of a model as paying it's full cost for only part of it's kit. It's actually the worst way to balance things, as scotsman shows, because trying to balance around that results in the current situation where you have units that are better or as good as the specialist... but with none of the drawbacks.

*Effectively*, space marines were better that guardsman. A space marine squad could beat an Infantry squad, without a doubt. Efficiently, they had a had time getting over three squads or two squads and a commander. Problem was that the people took this a meaning that space marines *couldn't* handle IS and guard was overpowered, rather than learning the lesson "Maybe I shouldn't be trying to get in a pissing contest with that out of cover". People who tend to use Mathhammer a lot advocate it as being fair, but different variable aren't equal even when applied equally. If the guardsmen and space marine are both in cover, the space marine benefits more than the guard do. If there's a LoS blocking terrain in the middle of both forces, the marines benefit more because they have better force concentration. If the marines are placed in a flanking position while the guardsmen are in a line, the guardsmen are losing shots to range while the marines aren't. Marines are better when they're not lining up at the scrim line out of cover trying to, but it's easier to argue about two sides lining up on the planet cueballia than about why positioning is useful.

3) There's a few bad habits that everyone can fall in, but is worse for marines because there's so many people who play them A lack of understanding melee tends to make it look worse for non-melee specialist than it actually is, because if the only melee you get into is the melees you don't want to be in, you're going to never think to use those melee stats you do have to your advantage and will just throw your hands up when you're charged.

Everyone likes the idea of their units are able to be workable without needing a dozen supports units and special abilities to work. That's fine. But as we've seen example of in this very thread, that's not extended to other armies. So people want to be able to have their unsupported units in the middle of no man's land being able to go toe to toe with a unit who's stacked with everything. This goes double with thing that are meant to counter that unit.

And of course, bad rolls hurt people playing elite armies more. If you lose a handful of models in a horde army, it doesn't really matter as long as you still have board control. Rolling a 1 on a hit/wound/armor save for marines is a bigger deal, psychologically. People want less of those those bad feel moments, which can poorly balance the game if people push for it hard enough.

Space Marines didn't feel elite pre 2.0 because a lot of expectations wasn't met, proof used was based calculations that were intentionally worse for marines, and general lack of understanding that resulted in changes that were much more significant for smaller armies than the larger ones they were being compared to. They feel more elite now, sure, but it was done by stacking stat boosts and special rules that just make them flat out better rather than changing the army to allow it to benefit from it's natural advantages.

A good post that breaks down a number of issues.

I'll supplement it by throwing out the "generalists suck" sentiment which is symptomatic of point 2. Generalists give you flexibility with the balance point that they can be harder to use than more specialized units. "Decent" at everything but not highly "efficient" at anything when it comes down to points vs. points. thus, less exciting math-hammer because math-hammer rarely encompasses anything beyond a very tight/controlled scenario. Generalists are the opposite of role-defined specialists, and instead their role will be more informed by the opposing models. TLDR: Shoot the punchy stuff, and punch the shooty stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
The reintroduction of AP to the game makes marines and other heavy infantry VERY difficult to cost.

I don't think this is really an issue. Certainly far less of an issue than lackluster terrain rules and the escalation of invuln saves. Arguably 3rd through 7th AP system is harder to price because of it's all-or-nothing-ness.

And the "perfectly balanced points" fantasy should really die. It won't happen, it can't happen, and it's not even in GWs interest for it to happen if it were possible. All we can hope for is "close enough". There are far to many unquantifiable variables (like terrain) and contexts (a Drop Pod is worth more for some units than others).

Except when you're purchasing upgrades and not list tailoring, you can't be a generalist. Especially in what is primarily a shooting game, when you get to shoot with everything at once, it isn't hard to get things to a more correct point value. People screaming "you can't make perfect balance" miss the grand point that GW isn't even TRYING. You can't even defend them on that, especially with the PAID updates that do silly things like 40 Thunder Hammers (while missing the fact it was particular smash captains), more expensive Ogryns (had to balance them somehow with that broken mortal wound Stratagem!), and the disparity of power between Genestealers in two separate codices, let alone that same disparity between Loyalist Marines.

So can we please not pretend generalist works in the current rule set? It doesn't the moment you put a modicum of effort into making a list for a game that isn't even hard to break. Hell we found all the combos in each Marine supplement in less than a day, with some stuff that could just be done by accident!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
GW loves its false choices.

Exactly. Remember fething Power Lance's last edition? Of course not!

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You'd be completely incorrect.

The endless bloat doesn't add flavor, it just adds calories. It doesn't matter how many options of Lasguns you give Intercessors if they're still gonna just stick to their Bolt Rifle variants, so why even make it an option? More options does NOT equal depth.

Except that a lot of the debate here is centred around the casual players not enjoying the sudden surge the power of Marines invalidating their old unoptimized lists. These casual players might actually use some of the trap options because they enjoy the fluff and that's to be encouraged. Focusing on balance to exclusion of everything else leads to D&D 4e and nobody wants that.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
There's a couple of problems with how people feel about space marine "eliteness"

Spoiler:

1) As mentioned before, 40k lore is... very marine slanted, to put it nicely. Every army will get pumped up in their codex as a means to selling it to people interested in that army, but no one quite gets that treatment to the same level as Marines, and since they get the lion shares of stories it's likely someone coming into the game that would be interested in Space Marine would hear amazing stories of single squads of space marines taking on entire armies on their own and winning. And if they get into the game, and read the stories in there that only push that up even more.

I think this instills an idea that how space marines work is much like OGREs do in their respective game, where it's this asymmetrical battle between a massive killing machine vs an entire army. The problem is that 40k isn't that kind of asymmetrical battle, and OGRE makes it clear from the get go that it's slanted against the defenders. So Bobby puts his tac squads down thinking his men can heroically walk across the field, slaying enemies by the truck full. Only by using their options and tactics carefully can the enemy even have a chance to defeat the Emperor's chosen!. And then they slam their face into a brick wall because their opponent actually is being smart by playing against the new marine player's naivety.

I think most people learn their lesson after that, but there is still that feeling of pain when the stories don't line up the game, that longing for something like how they remember it, while others never grow out of that idea that other armies should exist to be baby shake'd by Marines.

2). The focus on math hammer creates a bad idea on how *effective* a unit is, because the metric most people use is *efficiency*. Specially, single aspect efficiency which makes generalist look bad by default because you're thinking of a model as paying it's full cost for only part of it's kit. It's actually the worst way to balance things, as scotsman shows, because trying to balance around that results in the current situation where you have units that are better or as good as the specialist... but with none of the drawbacks.

*Effectively*, space marines were better that guardsman. A space marine squad could beat an Infantry squad, without a doubt. Efficiently, they had a had time getting over three squads or two squads and a commander. Problem was that the people took this a meaning that space marines *couldn't* handle IS and guard was overpowered, rather than learning the lesson "Maybe I shouldn't be trying to get in a pissing contest with that out of cover". People who tend to use Mathhammer a lot advocate it as being fair, but different variable aren't equal even when applied equally. If the guardsmen and space marine are both in cover, the space marine benefits more than the guard do. If there's a LoS blocking terrain in the middle of both forces, the marines benefit more because they have better force concentration. If the marines are placed in a flanking position while the guardsmen are in a line, the guardsmen are losing shots to range while the marines aren't. Marines are better when they're not lining up at the scrim line out of cover trying to, but it's easier to argue about two sides lining up on the planet cueballia than about why positioning is useful.

3) There's a few bad habits that everyone can fall in, but is worse for marines because there's so many people who play them A lack of understanding melee tends to make it look worse for non-melee specialist than it actually is, because if the only melee you get into is the melees you don't want to be in, you're going to never think to use those melee stats you do have to your advantage and will just throw your hands up when you're charged.

Everyone likes the idea of their units are able to be workable without needing a dozen supports units and special abilities to work. That's fine. But as we've seen example of in this very thread, that's not extended to other armies. So people want to be able to have their unsupported units in the middle of no man's land being able to go toe to toe with a unit who's stacked with everything. This goes double with thing that are meant to counter that unit.

And of course, bad rolls hurt people playing elite armies more. If you lose a handful of models in a horde army, it doesn't really matter as long as you still have board control. Rolling a 1 on a hit/wound/armor save for marines is a bigger deal, psychologically. People want less of those those bad feel moments, which can poorly balance the game if people push for it hard enough.

Space Marines didn't feel elite pre 2.0 because a lot of expectations wasn't met, proof used was based calculations that were intentionally worse for marines, and general lack of understanding that resulted in changes that were much more significant for smaller armies than the larger ones they were being compared to. They feel more elite now, sure, but it was done by stacking stat boosts and special rules that just make them flat out better rather than changing the army to allow it to benefit from it's natural advantages.

A good post that breaks down a number of issues.

I'll supplement it by throwing out the "generalists suck" sentiment which is symptomatic of point 2. Generalists give you flexibility with the balance point that they can be harder to use than more specialized units. "Decent" at everything but not highly "efficient" at anything when it comes down to points vs. points. thus, less exciting math-hammer because math-hammer rarely encompasses anything beyond a very tight/controlled scenario. Generalists are the opposite of role-defined specialists, and instead their role will be more informed by the opposing models. TLDR: Shoot the punchy stuff, and punch the shooty stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
The reintroduction of AP to the game makes marines and other heavy infantry VERY difficult to cost.

I don't think this is really an issue. Certainly far less of an issue than lackluster terrain rules and the escalation of invuln saves. Arguably 3rd through 7th AP system is harder to price because of it's all-or-nothing-ness.

And the "perfectly balanced points" fantasy should really die. It won't happen, it can't happen, and it's not even in GWs interest for it to happen if it were possible. All we can hope for is "close enough". There are far to many unquantifiable variables (like terrain) and contexts (a Drop Pod is worth more for some units than others).

Except when you're purchasing upgrades and not list tailoring, you can't be a generalist.

Why not? You can buy special weapons for shooting, and CC weapons for CC, and then play the unit to do both/either.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Why not? You can buy special weapons for shooting, and CC weapons for CC, and then play the unit to do both/either.

Then you'll proceed to lose to the lists that actually specialize.

Even the TAC style of list isn't a generalist list, it's just tailored to a specific tournament meta and includes tools to defeat or bypass common threats.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Why not? You can buy special weapons for shooting, and CC weapons for CC, and then play the unit to do both/either.

Then you'll proceed to lose to the lists that actually specialize.

Often not my experience, but you need to operate under different strategies.

GW likes it's stats so it give choices, even if those choices don't really do much. The appearance of choice feeds the consumerism.

Remove ap and you remove one more choice they can delineate between units.

The easiest method of balance for armour is all or nothing. But not in the 3rd edition AP sense, in the 3rd edition power weapon sense.

Fixed armour that everyone always gets and the weapons that either let you have a save or don't. But applied to melee and ranged.

AT vs AP.



Personally I like modifiers as it gives a bit more atmosphere to your attacks. I just think that, like 2nd ed, there are too many.

Infantry rifles shouldn't be getting it regardless of their eliteness.

In fact I would argue that there should only be a max of 3 levels of modifier:

Anti infantry -1
Anti materiel -2
Anti armour -3

No -4 or 5.

Scale everything back again. A lascannon is -3, a plasma gun is -2 and an assault cannon is -1.

A thunder hammer is -3, a power fist is -2 and a power sword is -1.

Everything is aligned with that.

As for number of wounds, they should either all be random, or reduced or both.

Damage 2 should be roll a d6, on a 1-3 1 on a 4-6 2.

Or, it should just be:

Anti infantry 1
Anti materiel d3
Anti armour d6

And again, that's it.

Anything else should be a special rule: 6 to hit is +1 strength, 6 to hit is +1 hit etc.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Even the TAC style of list isn't a generalist list, it's just tailored to a specific tournament meta and includes tools to defeat or bypass common threats.

TAC doesn't necessarily preclude multi-role units, however.