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Tau are one army Primaris that aren't Iron Hands really struggle with.

I lost 30 Intercessors by the end of turn 2 in the last game I played against Tau. Very little you can do against 3 Riptides guarded by drones you can't see.

 Ishagu wrote:
I mentioned 60 because I personally know someone who runs that many in a list.

You know how in 40k if you take a single tank it will get destroyed or fail in it's role, but if you take 3 they are very effective? 1 is none, 2 is some, etc.

You need to apply that rule to PA troops, and account for the lethality in the game. This isn't 5th edition. 15 Chaos Marines are not enough unless you're farming CP. Bring 60, reach the critical mass where they become a real danger to the enemy. 60 PA bodies supported by elite units and vehicles become a problem. They can be overwhelming especially if you have to divert firepower to other threats.

But why take them at all if you can take cultists instead, more bodies and more wounds. And most important more points to spend on those elite things that kill stuff.

 Ishagu wrote:
They are costed correctly.

510 points for 30 Intercessors. 700 points for 60 Chaos Marines.

60 pa bodies are overall more resilient than 30 Intercessors due to multi damage weapons being so common.

That's not an equal comparison and you know it. Efficiency is measured by points, you can't compare 510 points worth of something against 700 points of something else. That's the equivalent of comparing a 1500 point list to a 2000 point. The fact that you need to use 28 percent more csm to equal a number of primaris shows that the primaris are more efficient.

You're also still ignoring the point. Csm are supposed to be an elite army, not a horde.

The Cultists have practically no save and no ranged damage output. 60 Marines are still firing 120 bolters at 24" if standing still, and have a 3+ save on top.

Shifting 15-20 Marines off an objective, or dealing with them becomes very hard on turn 4 when most big guns have been silenced.

@Gadzilla

Perhaps Primaris are more efficient than CSM. Cultists are more efficient than both.

 Ishagu wrote:
Tau are one army Primaris that aren't Iron Hands really struggle with.

I lost 30 Intercessors by the end of turn 2 in the last game I played against Tau. Very little you can do against 3 Riptides guarded by drones you can't see.

This isn't about tau. Stop dragging us off the topic.

The only PA faction that can really play the horde style are Sisters of Battle with a ton of 9ppm bodies with 3+ saves that ignore -1 Ap and even -2 Ap.


But the fact that intercessors are the best troop in the game is probably undisputed. They are great at every phase. Maybe they lack the damage potential of ork boyz but I don't think theres another troop thats better tham them. Custodes for the price are worse, for example.

Well actually that same Tau list would have killed the same number of Chaos Marines, but those cost a lot less than Primaris.

That's the point. A Primaris marine isn't always strictly more durable.

 Ishagu wrote:
The Cultists have practically no save and no ranged damage output. 60 Marines are still firing 120 bolters at 24" if standing still, and have a 3+ save on top.

Shifting 15-20 Marines off an objective, or dealing with them becomes very hard on turn 4 when most big guns have been silenced.

@Gadzilla

Perhaps Primaris are more efficient than CSM. Cultists are more efficient than both.

Cultists are completely inneficent to any primaris, dropping dead long before they are in range and getting their pitifull saves ignored long before they acutally can sneeze in the general direction of Intercissors.

as for shifting marines. At turn 4 for or later i am happy with a horde build to even have that many left including 9 cp used to recycle what will ammount on average to 15 CSM.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
The only PA faction that can really play the horde style are Sisters of Battle with a ton of 9ppm bodies with 3+ saves that ignore -1 Ap and even -2 Ap.


But the fact that intercessors are the best troop in the game is probably undisputed. They are great at every phase. Maybe they lack the damage potential of ork boyz but I don't think theres another troop thats better tham them. Custodes for the price are worse, for example.

This, cheaper and the better synergizing traits for a PA horde build is why sisters can function as a PA horde.

Cultists are not useless lol. They are countered by Primaris, that's a different thing entirely.

 Ishagu wrote:
Cultists are not useless lol. They are countered by Primaris, that's a different thing entirely.

Cultists are not marines. The name of the faction is Chaos Space Marines. Cultists are meant for Alpha Legion. They have no place in many legions canononicaly. Night Lords and Emperors Children armies shouldn't be compromised of cultists. That's the point. An adeptus astartes faction should have good astartes. Not hordes of standard humans.

 Ishagu wrote:
Cultists are not useless lol. They are countered by Primaris, that's a different thing entirely.

Cultists aren't useless indeed but i never stated they are, they just suck as battleline without specific builds.

@Gadzilla

Perhaps. When I read any of the lore it seems to me that most Chaos factions are raving Cultists and a few chaos Astartes amongst them. Perhaps GW is taking the faction in this direction.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Cultists are not useless lol. They are countered by Primaris, that's a different thing entirely.

Cultists are not marines. The name of the faction is Chaos Space Marines. Cultists are meant for Alpha Legion. They have no place in many legions canononicaly. Night Lords and Emperors Children armies shouldn't be compromised of cultists. That's the point. An adeptus astartes faction should have good astartes. Not hordes of standard humans.

I mean we could go for the whole legion approach as a PA horde, but that would require significant adaptaion, for one the RC stratagem would need to become general, for two you'd have to further drop the pts on csm, and for 3 you'd have to give them boni depending on squad size with the bigger the better approach.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ishagu wrote:
@Gadzilla

Perhaps. When I read any of the lore it seems to me that most Chaos factions are raving Cultists and a few chaos Astartes amongst them. Perhaps GW is taking the faction in this direction.

considering they recently curbed the Fodder chaos faction more or less i seriously doubt that.
if anything they tend to go more daemonic and daemonengine but failed significantly in making that approach work.
Not to mention that it leaves legions like Night lords and AL thematically out in the rain to freeze to death.

 Ishagu wrote:
They are costed correctly.

510 points for 30 Intercessors. 700 points for 60 Chaos Marines.

60 pa bodies are overall more resilient than 30 Intercessors due to multi damage weapons being so common.

Those Intercessors are going to put out an order of magnitude greater firepower, and at greater ranges, and for the difference in cost noted here (the Chaos Marines costing almost 40% more!) the Intercessors are at least as durable if not moreso for the same investment in points even with multidamage weapons about. If you match those 30 Intercessors against those 60 CSM's, those CSM's are going to get absolutely wasted. The Intercessors are, both in terms of cost efficiency and absolute performance, superior to the CSM's.

To underline this nobody is successfully running 60 CSM armies competitively. There are no such lists placing in events that I have seen.

The CSM might be better if players were going ALL IN on 2 damage spam, but they don't appear to be. MIGHT be better. There's still mortal wounds to think about.

All Intercessor firepower is Str4. 90% is damage 1

Let's not over do the "orders of magnitude" more firepower statements lol

Have you never seen stalker rifle spam?

Yes I face it regularly. One of my friends plays Raven Guard.

Put a few T8 units on the board.

 Ishagu wrote:
All Intercessor firepower is Str4. 90% is damage 1

Let's not over do the "orders of magnitude" more firepower statements lol

If you want to pretend AP, Doctrines, and range is irrelevant, be my guest, but those Intercessors are putting out 133-200% (AP-1/AP-2) of the wounds those CSM's are doing against a 3+sv infantry target. And, again, the CSM's are almost 40% more points than the Intercessors in your comparison.

 Ishagu wrote:
All Intercessor firepower is Str4. 90% is damage 1

Let's not over do the "orders of magnitude" more firepower statements lol

Yeah, weirdly, all the firepower those CSMs put out is as well, and has no AP because they don't get doctrines or free AP just cus.

Putting T8 models on the board shuts the CSMs down far, far harder than the intercessors, who also have access to reroll 1s to wound for 50pts.

They are relevant, yes.

Certainly nothing game breaking or titanic outside of a maybe a few combinations I've already brought up.

Is this about Chaos players wanting a more powerful faction? Is that all it comes back to time and again? Change the record lol

the_scotsman wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
All Intercessor firepower is Str4. 90% is damage 1

Let's not over do the "orders of magnitude" more firepower statements lol

Yeah, weirdly, all the firepower those CSMs put out is as well, and has no AP because they don't get doctrines or free AP just cus.

Putting T8 models on the board shuts the CSMs down far, far harder than the intercessors, who also have access to reroll 1s to wound for 50pts.

i mean yesn't you can Votwl if you don't run horde csm.

Basically Chaos players want complete parity with the loyalists with their strong units, and they also want to keep all their unique units like Cultists, and the ability to ally without sacrificing faction rules.

Until this happens, there will be sour faces all across the planet.

It's not about Chaos Primaris, it's about faction power. Never mind that Chaos Lists are stronger than most.

It would make them more compelling bad guys.

I must be imagining all the close games, losses and stalemates against people using Chaos Marines.

They are garbage I tell you. Utterly useless army. Nothing positive about it.

Iron Hands or bust.

 Ishagu wrote:
They are relevant, yes.

Certainly nothing game breaking or titanic outside of a maybe a few combinations I've already brought up.

Is this about Chaos players wanting a more powerful faction? Is that all it comes back to time and again? Change the record lol

No, it's pointing out you're making really bad comparisons that don't help your case

If you're wanting to show that Intercessors are fine, don't compare them to a substantially more expensive group of units that the Intercessors substantially outperform both in terms of absolute performance and cost efficiency, with the sole exception in the singular scenario of being more resilient if the overwhelming bulk of firepower directed at them is multidamage weapons, which isn't terribly relevant when an opponent is likely to have tons of single damage weapons anyway and Intercessors aren't going to be any less of a target for those.

"I must be imagining all the close games, losses and stalemates against people using Chaos Marines."

Maybe you aren't very good? You shouldn't have any problems against CSM with loyalists now. The tourney batreps I watched before lockdown were pretty one sided.

Try designing a list to give your opponent as little chance to compete as possible, then try CSM.

Not Online!!! wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
All Intercessor firepower is Str4. 90% is damage 1

Let's not over do the "orders of magnitude" more firepower statements lol

Yeah, weirdly, all the firepower those CSMs put out is as well, and has no AP because they don't get doctrines or free AP just cus.

Putting T8 models on the board shuts the CSMs down far, far harder than the intercessors, who also have access to reroll 1s to wound for 50pts.

i mean yesn't you can Votwl if you don't run horde csm.

Yep, one unit can spend 2CP to gain 1/6th more benefit to their wound rolls than the other unit can just constantly have on from a 50pt hq model.

Clearly, all is well in the world lol.

I don't think most CSM players were sold on their faction by wanting to play a huge horde of expendable mooks to get mowed down by the Great Big Heroes TM.

And that's the issue: There are a few factions designed around that idea, but right now, basically every faction whose undies don't go clank for the emperor had better learn to love shoveling their models off the table with a pooper-scooper, because nobody's allowed to be elite anymore. Aspect warriors are horde units. Sisters are horde units. CSMs are horde units. genestealers are horde units. Wyches and Kabalites are horde units. necrons are horde units. Tau are horde units. most infantry from the previously "elite" factions are now lucky if they have troops that cost over 10ppm, and kabalites fire warriors guardians sisters dire avengers boyz genestealers lesser daemons are getting steadily jammed farther and farther down the points scale until what distinguishes them from a guardsman or a cultist is essentially nothing.

The fact that a basic marine elite unit now puts out EIGHTEEN shots, the equivalent of an entire full squad of marines or two squads of dedicated anti-infantry devastator marines in previous editions, and people pretend that that's OK and it's not even some exceptional, amazing thing now just kind of highlights the problem. A squad of intercessors sitting 30" away from their target can pretty casually put down "20 man ork boyz squad in melee" levels of dice with a stratagem. Of course everything smaller than a W2 3+ model feels like a cultist. Of course a 2,000 point list of most factions features 50+ infantry models just jammed onto the table in the hopes of getting to turn 3-4.

It still amazes me that apocalypse hasn't gained more traction than it has. I play that game and I go "Holy gak, it's been 3 turns and this detachment still EXISTS and is still DOING gak even though they've taken fire! I don't feel like I'm just tossing models I took hours and hours to paint off the board left and right!" and that's a game where whole squads have a single hit point and die fething instantly, and individual models don't even have RULES.

Have you played Apocalypse? It's fun but is an inferior game.

I've read the rules set. I'd rather play that, honestly. But lack of interest is a bitch.