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You just don't get it and you're not going to.

Where's the active defense system on most marine tanks? Or falcons? Or Hammerheads? Oh yeah, it's only certain units blessed with the magical invuln. Unfortunately its enough to wallpaper melta and rail guns.

Martel732 wrote:
You just don't get it and you're not going to.

Where's the active defense system on most marine tanks? Or falcons? Or Hammerheads? Oh yeah, it's only certain units blessed with the magical invuln. Unfortunately its enough to wallpaper melta and rail guns.

There are tons of reasons why a vehicle may not run an active defense system, especially one that either requires a relic or a ton of power to maintain. Besides, shouldn't you be happy that there are still vehicles that it's worth using melta or a railgun on?

I just said there are enough units and in fact, entire armies that render AP above -2 a poor gamble. Drukhari and daemons, and IKs come to mind. High AP weapons should be very effective vs targets like IKs, but game mechanics make it not so. So there's no real reason to bring them. At their current price point, anyway. Simply put, most lists don't have the points to throw away on weapons that won't get to use their primary feature at critical junctures.

"There are tons of reasons why a vehicle may not run an active defense system,"

But in this case, there is only one: the whim of GW. And their inability to grasp what spamming invulns into the game does to weapons that pay for reliability on low numbers of shots. Anything that can kill the units with invulns can kill the units without them, so why ever plan for units without invulns?

Martel732 wrote:
Anything that can kill the units with invulns can kill the units without them, so why ever plan for units without invulns?

This is why you lose. You need to look at the big picture, examine the lists you face in detail, and see which units are actually useless and which ones you write-off unfairly before even trying them. Your issue is that you're not skilled enough to pilot a pro's list, but also don't seem to be creative enough to build a meta beating skew list for your local scene. That and you hate half the games models, rules, and skip rolls shaving your win percentage down even lower than your skill should have it at.

The cherry on top is that in spite of this you come here as if you have some wisdom the rest of us have missed in spite of getting told off in almost every thread you post in. Do you ever get sick of being wrong?

I don't know. Do you?

You're the one not looking at the big picture if you pay high prices for AP in 8th ed.

" write-off unfairly before even trying them."

I've got at least 25K of BA. I've tried everything in the inventory except for the two fliers we recently got added to our inventory. Both of which suck anyway. Melta was my go to in 5th. Then, in 6th/7th it got harder and harder to use with fewer returns. Now, in 8th, it's almost worse than useless because of how it inflates my costs per wound and has almost no return.

"hate half the games models, rules, and skip rolls shaving your win percentage down even lower than your skill should have it at."

Turns out I'm allowed to skip FNP rolls, so my opponent gets to bleed out my time that way, too. And I hate way more than half the models and rules.

Also being told off by the posters in these threads unsurprisingly doesn't mean much to me.

Oh, and I"m undefeated with Box's list on the virtual game board app. I just hate playing it. So I'm not going to anymore.

It's always been an element of the game that you pick your targets.

If you're facing a 3++, you don't waste good AP on them. I never fired plasmas at THSS temrinators, I fired small-arms.

Nowadays, with AP being variable instead of outright removing saves (which synergised with the invulnerables better than the current system does) you can waste more shots on an invuln - previously, AP3 or worse was as bad as AP- vs a TH/SS terminator, so you just ignored it and went with strength and volume of fire to get through its 2+. Now, with the tantalising tidbit of AP-1 dropping a termy to a 3+, it's like more weapons are a waste - AP-2 or better is wasted if they have a 3++.

so you shoot AP-2 or better at other things. I've not faced any lists where everything has an invuln (except daemons, but that's their thing, and 5++ isn't all that). don't point your big guns at the 3++ and you won't waste them.

good job not playing a list you don't enjoy. It's about the game, not the win.

Yes, but if I don't play that list, I don't win. Basically ever. BA are melee glass cannons, which means tripoint or die. And there's one build to rule them all to maximize tripoint. End of story. GW somehow added like a zillion rules to marines and BA but they are still somehow gak to play.

Of COURSE I don't waste the AP. But if I buy lascannons or meltas, I want to target large things with lots of wounds. If those targets are all proof in a given match vs those weapons, I have no targets for them. You mentioned demons, but Drukhari and IKs come to mind as well. And mother fething space wolves with SS spam. We can't have weapons actually work against our resident furries.

Martel732 wrote:
Yes, but if I don't play that list, I don't win. Basically ever. BA are melee glass cannons, which means tripoint or die. And there's one build to rule them all to maximize tripoint. End of story. GW somehow added like a zillion rules to marines and BA but they are still somehow gak to play.

Of COURSE I don't waste the AP. But if I buy lascannons or meltas, I want to target large things with lots of wounds. If those targets are all proof in a given match vs those weapons, I have no targets for them. You mentioned demons, but Drukhari and IKs come to mind as well. And mother fething space wolves with SS spam. We can't have weapons actually work against our resident furries.

I can see how it might be frustrating to have a huge army and it be kinda crap (I have many thousands of points worth of orks, and my main meta in 7th was Eldar, so believe me when I say I feel your pain).

I think the things to focus on are that damage isn't mitigated by invulns, so perhaps look for higher ROF, Damage 2 or D3 weapons and disregard the AP - as you say, it's worthless!

SS spam is a crap thing to face - not going to argue - but do you know what's worse? Paying a lot of points for stormshields and instead facing every AP0 weapon all game. Invulns wasted.

I'm not going to say that BA aren't glass cannons, but if I were to play with them (with my limited knowledge) I would look to bring a pair of vindicators to blow chunks out of heavy units (wounding on 2 or 3+ and D6 damage with D6 shots, AP is all well and good but volume speaks... ...volumes). If you're on table-top simulator then you can try out all sorts of wacky combos to see what gets through the best. I've had a filler unit (single mek with kustom-mega-pistol) turn out to be a brilliant unit (deffskulls so rerolling hits/wounds/damage, with a 6++ and character protection, being jumped by a weirdboy to chase down anything trying to cling to life for another turn with his S8 pistol). he stayed in my lists for a few games!

I've found before that targeting things for overkill actually becomes more effective than targetting the unit you're "supposed" to shoot. My anecdote for this one is 3 smasha guns. They are meant to hunt tanks, but there were 5 sniper-primaris causing me grief. I shot them instead - almost guaranteed to wound (roll a 4+ on 2D6), D3 shots per gun with BS4+, I killed 4 of them, ridiculously easily. it was a far better result than targeting his massive tank (who might have lost some paintwork), and a lot more satisfying for me as a player.

I hope you find a few more builds that you enjoy!

I really, really enjoy 6 inceptors with the FNP banner. But I don't think deviations from the formula will work.

But SS are 2 pts a piece. They are only limited by access. Think of it this way, your SS are forcing your opponent to use AP 0 on you.

Martel732 wrote:
I really, really enjoy 6 inceptors with the FNP banner. But I don't think deviations from the formula will work.

But SS are 2 pts a piece. They are only limited by access. Think of it this way, your SS are forcing your opponent to use AP 0 on you.

wow, that's cheap.

All I can say is that if the meta is pushing massed 3++, push massed AP0.

another anecdote (oh, I'm full of them) is in a much older edition when grey knights were released and became akin to the emperor himself (5th, maybe?). Facing rerollable 2+ saves on 2 wound models with wound allocation shenanigans, as Orks (who had basically 0 AP2 ranged weapons). My normal tactics didn't work, trukk boys just died before they swung (ye olde days of initiative), weirdboys would explode trying to zzap them. And then I tried Burna boys in a battlewagon.
Needless to say, when I hit 6 of his guys with a template and he said "6 hits" and I said "no, actually that's... ...90 hits", he started to sweat a bit.
Next few games, I brought massed small-arms fire. Burnas, shootaboys, lootas for the vehicles - would you believe it, his deathstar started to get less and less points put into it.


If you find yourself regularly not using the AP you're paying for, it might be worth trying some lists which focus around decent ROF, strength and damage but mediocre AP, so you get 100% of the bang you paid for. I don't know BA all that well so I'm afraid I can't offer more specific advice!

"If you find yourself regularly not using the AP you're paying for, it might be worth trying some lists which focus around decent ROF, strength and damage but mediocre AP, so you get 100% of the bang you paid for. I don't know BA all that well so I'm afraid I can't offer more specific advice!"

This is exactly what I'm doing. But it renders all my models with meltaguns and such basically useless. My favorite heavy weapon is actually the accelerator autocannon on suppressors for this exact reason. I don't like having to avoid high AP weapons because GW can't stop handing out invuln like candy.

It's not just SS. Your typical AT gun sucks vs Drukhari boats and the like. Still wounds on a 3+, because its not S10, but loses most of its AP because 5++. Maybe in this case, the wounding is the bigger issue, but the 5++ is salt in the wound for sure. Then look around at all the 5++ that GW just haphazardly throws around.

Martel732 wrote:
"If you find yourself regularly not using the AP you're paying for, it might be worth trying some lists which focus around decent ROF, strength and damage but mediocre AP, so you get 100% of the bang you paid for. I don't know BA all that well so I'm afraid I can't offer more specific advice!"

This is exactly what I'm doing. But it renders all my models with meltaguns and such basically useless. My favorite heavy weapon is actually the accelerator autocannon on suppressors for this exact reason. I don't like having to avoid high AP weapons because GW can't stop handing out invuln like candy.

It's not just SS. Your typical AT gun sucks vs Drukhari boats and the like. Still wounds on a 3+, because its not S10, but loses most of its AP because 5++. Maybe in this case, the wounding is the bigger issue, but the 5++ is salt in the wound for sure. Then look around at all the 5++ that GW just haphazardly throws around.

I agree that invulns are too prevalent - no doubt in part due to the way AP-1 now affects 2+ saves, where they used to be nigh-invulnerable in their own right, outside of combat. The more things affect 2+ saves, the more invulns will be needed to compensate for things being easily killed by being reduced from a 3+ to a 5+ by basic AP.


As for Dark Eldar, their vehicles were always a waste for anti-tank weapons, and were best dealt with using autocannons and other mid-strength weapons.

I would recommend building some army lists which are completely outside of your regular approach - some people have a core of units which they auto-include in every army list, as they consider them to be the best value for their points. If this sounds like you, it might be worth shaking that up and seeing if it yields different synergies than your current lists.

The theory, if you play against the same players regularly, is that by not taking AP and instead taking volume of shots, you will start to get them thinking about droppng their invulns in favour of more bodies or better guns, and then your meltaguns (which you should probably have a couple of, not everything is invulnerable after all) will see a bit more utility.

it took a lot of losing for me to start winning with my orks vs eldar in 7th - I had a few games where I was simply testing units, rather than expecting a win (I think I actually won one as well, which was a bonus!). The game's changed a lot since then, and the meta has shifted, but the principle is still the same - half the game is making a list that works, the other half is applying it to your opponents army. you can lose a game at either stage, so if you hink y played the best game you could, it's time to look at your lists.

I don't play vs the same players, so that's not an issue.

I long ago benched every meltagun and multimelta I own. I'm just very unhappy this was necessary. This was obvious after a single game against IKs. The fact that these weapons are outright terrible vs IKs and T8 in general makes me so sad.

GW doesn't appear to be aware of the math of AP. The first two points of AP should be expensive, not the third and the fourth. But thats' not how they price weaponry.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't play vs the same players, so that's not an issue.

I long ago benched every meltagun and multimelta I own. I'm just very unhappy this was necessary. This was obvious after a single game against IKs. The fact that these weapons are outright terrible vs IKs and T8 in general makes me so sad.

GW doesn't appear to be aware of the math of AP. The first two points of AP should be expensive, not the third and the fourth. But thats' not how they price weaponry.

yeah, they definitely didn't think through the ramifications. AP-1 is really quite powerful; AP5 never was.

I would still expect that meltaguns, with their 2D6 damage mechanic in half range, would still have something of a place facing high toughness models with lots of wounds... Really they should inflict an additional D3 mortal wounds when in half range, and boom, they would be nice AT weapons and reflect their fluff.

Good luck with reworking your lists, I really do recommend changing your army list up entirely to see if it helps at all - there's every chance it'll give you a massive loss, but it might give you more insights for different combos. It works for me with Orks. I play entirely different lists every time, with entirely different tactics, and get a fairly average W/D/L ratio. Helps me to think on my feet in games, I found. It might help you!

"would still have something of a place facing high toughness models with lots of wounds..."

They don't because after to hit, to wound, then invuln, they clear VERY little damage per shot. And you are paying a lot for each shot. Giving them mortals would be a huge bump up, I agree.

I'm not sure how much reworking there needs to be. Stephen Box has solved BA for the current meta. The choices seems to be use that kind of list or lose with BA. BA can't succeed at shooting because of their chapter tactic, and they can't sustain damage during the opponent's turn because of the cost of marine bodies. Mass tripointing is the only solution.

BaconCatBug wrote:He is suggesting removing the concept of Toughness.

I think you need to go and re-read the posts you're replying to, because nobody suggested removing toughness, we suggested removing armor saves and instead folding that into toughness, which has a lot more scope for variation than saves.

BaconCatBug wrote:Having better armour and being tougher are not synonymous. Something can be extremely tough but be poorly armoured, and something can be extremely heavily armoured but not be tough. His proposal would make heavy armour low toughness the same as light armour high toughness.

And in practice the difference doesn't actually mean much. High-S guns almost always have high AP, low-S guns almost always have low AP. The difference between shooting a high-S, low-AP weapon at a Marine versus a low-S, high-AP weapon is negligible- it statistically washes out. The edge cases where you have targets with high T but light armor and have the opportunity to engage with either low-S-high-AP or high-S-low-AP are few and far between, and in any case even if S and AP were consolidated, high-S-but-low-Dam and low-S-but-high-Dam would reflect those two niches. If something is supposed to be unarmored and easy to damage but take a lot of firepower to put down (like, I don't know, a Nurgle daemon), low T with a whole ton of wounds would cover that just fine, and be mechanically different from something with high T but one wound.

At this point it's chrome for the sake of chrome. We have a stat for measuring 'how hard something is to hurt', another stat for measuring 'how hard something is to hurt, but because of armor', and a stat for 'how much hurt a thing can withstand', and they all work mechanically differently. At least one of these three doesn't need to exist.

But it gets even better, because 40K already uses Toughness to represent different levels of armor in some cases- just look at all the vehicles with 3+ armor saves, but different Toughness values. A Leman Russ is certainly better-armored than a Chimera, but they both have the same 3+ save, and instead the difference is that a Russ is T8 and a Chimera is T7. The Russ is certainly a bigger, heavier vehicle that can take more damage, which is why it has significantly more Wounds, but the lower likelihood of taking damage to begin with is modeled through Toughness rather than Save.

So really we have two different concepts of what T and Sv represent, both occupying the same design space, with the logical difference between the two already being accounted for by the W characteristic.

Canadian 5th wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
That doesn't matter. Wounding on 6s is not much better than not wounding at all. What's stupid is that assault bolters suffer less vs IKs than meltaguns.

Fancy that a vehicle's active defenses work best against anti-vehicle weapons... You must be equally upset that the real-life Iron Dome system doesn't shoot down handgun bullets but does shoot down rockets and mortar shells.

I must have missed where the real-world counter to Merkavas is to mass handgun bullets so as to circumvent Iron Dome.

I just quit engaging. He doesn't get my point and doesn't WANT to get it. All's fine in his mind.

 catbarf wrote:
I must have missed where the real-world counter to Merkavas is to mass handgun bullets so as to circumvent Iron Dome.

You have no clue what Iron Dome is, do you?

At any rate, how about we try tanks being defeated by midrange weapons! Did you know that ERA bricks can be countered by 20 - 30mm autocannon fire? How about Abrams having well known weak points where very outdated RPGs can mission kill them with a single shot? It sucks that sometimes real life weapons have flaws and that other times your better weapons get countered.

Just like how it sucked that the best armor penetration weapon available to British tank crews in late-WW2 couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, the devs should have fixed that one in a balance patch.

At any rate, bring the weapons that work against the foes you commonly face, leave the things that don't work on the shelf until they get rotated back in as the new hotness. It's the circle of GW, things rise and fall and rise again.

"leave the things that don't work on the shelf until they get rotated back in as the new hotness."

Oh, I thought melta was fine, though? Because that's exactly what I'm doing. I just shouldn't have to.

Martel732 wrote:
"leave the things that don't work on the shelf until they get rotated back in as the new hotness."

Oh, I thought melta was fine, though? Because that's exactly what I'm doing. I just shouldn't have to.

You've literally been shown tournament winning lists that run melta and been dismissive of them...

If a weapon doesn't work for you, bench it until it gets changed and refine your list towards what works. That's how 40k has always worked in every edition. If you don't like it, as others have suggested, try chess or perhaps an online game that gets a balance patch every week or two. Or spend some serious time and brew your own fandex and try to get people to play against you with it, be the change you want to see, and all that nonsense.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
You have no clue what Iron Dome is, do you?

Funny, I could ask you the same thing, seeing as you were talking about vehicle APS and then cited Iron Dome. Sounds like you got it mixed up with Trophy. And missed the sarcasm in my post.

Rest assured we are all very impressed by your Wikipedia military technology anecdotes. It was definitely relevant and necessary to illustrate the point that war isn't fair, regardless of that maxim's actual applicability to a toy soldier game, and while simultaneously ignoring the points relevant to the thread.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"leave the things that don't work on the shelf until they get rotated back in as the new hotness."

Oh, I thought melta was fine, though? Because that's exactly what I'm doing. I just shouldn't have to.

You've literally been shown tournament winning lists that run melta and been dismissive of them...

If a weapon doesn't work for you, bench it until it gets changed and refine your list towards what works. That's how 40k has always worked in every edition. If you don't like it, as others have suggested, try chess or perhaps an online game that gets a balance patch every week or two. Or spend some serious time and brew your own fandex and try to get people to play against you with it, be the change you want to see, and all that nonsense.

I shouldn't have to bench it.

That list could have won in spite of melta as well. Single lists prove nothing.

 catbarf wrote:
Funny, I could ask you the same thing, seeing as you were talking about vehicle APS and then cited Iron Dome. Sounds like you got it mixed up with Trophy. And missed the sarcasm in my post.

Go back and read the post where I bring up Iron Dome. Which weapons do I bring up as being countered by it?

Ignoring the points relevant to the thread.

I've still yet to see a convincing argument for changing invulnerable saves when changing the weapons they supposedly invalidate is a far less drastic change that has the same end result.

It's just a boring mechanic. "Oh that AP you payed for? It means nothing!"

It doesn't help that GW has given entire armies access to them. Or, in some cases, huge swaths.

Martel732 wrote:
It's just a boring mechanic. "Oh that AP you payed for? It means nothing!"

It doesn't help that GW has given entire armies access to them. Or, in some cases, huge swaths.

Again, we can fix the most disadvantaged weapons and resolve the issue.

Perhaps meltas within half range, in addition to other rules, could force a reroll of successful invulnerable saves.

Perhaps a lascannon, might roll damage before saves and force a save for each point of damage.

There are ways to fix things* without flipping the entire table.

*This assumes they're actually broken, which I've yet to see any actual evidence for.

Why is changing or removing invulns "flipping the table"?

Your melta fix is interesting, but now we have to do that for almost every high AP weapon. Why make a lot of changes when you can make one?

I mean, we can also just reduce the costs of these kinds of weapons tremendously.

We can also implement sides bars to lists.

We can do lots of things. But why we do have to do THOSE things and NOT nerf invuln saves?

"This assumes they're actually broken, which I've yet to see any actual evidence for."

My position is more mathematical than evidentiary. Unless you count the evidence of getting to melta range never paying off. But that anecdotal. There's also the problem that melta went from THE tank buster to being a joke. Maybe you don't care, but some of us do.

Maybe you're not aware but vs a T8 3+ vehicle, the kind I REALLY want to kill with melta, a marine clears 1.5 W on average. Add a 5++, and they clear one wound. One. That's after paying the points and staggering across an 8th ed battlefield with a 12" gun. feth GW.

Martel732 wrote:
Why is changing or removing invulns "flipping the table"?

Mainly because it changes literally hundreds of unit entries which now need to be playtested and rebalanced.

Your melta fix is interesting, but now we have to do that for almost every high AP weapon. Why make a lot of changes when you can make one?

Yes and this is less of a change to the game than changing every unit with an invulnerable save.

My position is more mathematical than evidentiary. Unless you count the evidence of getting to melta range never paying off. But that anecdotal. There's also the problem that melta went from THE tank buster to being a joke. Maybe you don't care, but some of us do.

The usefulness of weapons has always changed from edition to edition. This change is a bit more drastic than some changes, but such is life.

Maybe you're not aware but vs a T8 3+ vehicle, the kind I REALLY want to kill with melta, a marine clears 1.5 W on average. Add a 5++, and they clear one wound. One. That's after paying the points and staggering across an 8th ed battlefield with a 12" gun. feth GW.

Just taking off an invuln won't save the single shot, high strength, variable damage weapons. Even without the invulnerable save I'd still rather pack plasma than melta because it's far more flexible and can never roll a 1 for damage.

"The usefulness of weapons has always changed from edition to edition. This change is a bit more drastic than some changes, but such is life.:

Why was this admission so difficult?

You're right though, the single shot is awful even with invulns gone. So GW sabotaged their own AP rules.

Martel732 wrote:
Why was this admission so difficult?

I don't think I ever said that melta was perfect and exactly as good as it was in the past. My claim has always been that the proposed changes to invulnerables are a poor way to fix things and that even a weapon like a melta gun can have a place if used well.

You're right though, the single shot is awful even with invulns gone. So GW sabotaged their own AP rules.

The AP isn't the issue, it's always going to be better to have extra AP than not, the issue is that a single shot weapon that multiplies its damage after saves has too great a chance of just doing nothing and even the best hit it can land isn't going to pop a tank like it used to. There are still uses for these weapons, especially for something like a melta gun where it may be the best special weapon a unit has access to, but their niche is smaller than it was in editions of yesteryear.

Also, Martel, you've yet to show that Invulns are a universal issue.

Big, tough models with Invulns are problematic, because it devalues weapons meant specifically to deal with them.
Little models with Invulns, like Daemons or Harlequins, are still perfectly vulnerable to small arms fire-sure, it's inefficient to shoot a Lascannon at a Bloodletter, but it's pretty much just as inefficient to shoot it at a Cultist.