Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Karol wrote:

Spoletta 789935 10863176 wrote:I can already imagine how the game went.

"Oh I'm gonna rush forward with all my stuff because they have claws! I'm totally gonna beat that castle of low mobility high firepower units with this approach! It's not like they have a wall of flamers with Vulkan and Agatone!"

You can win with that nid list against that marine list, but not if you make it a strenght contest. That marine list sucks badly in mobility, so just outmaneuver and outscore.Not that the nid list had much mobility either...

Man, you can make work pretty much any nid unit in the right list, but there is a limit to how badly you can assemble one.

But isn't this a lore vs game problem for some new players? They like nids, they read about nids, in lore the tyranids charge as a unstoppable wave, crushing everything in the end with thier big bugs, while taking heavy loses among the smaller ones. Only in the game this often means they lose the small ones, then they lose the big ones and then they are in for un happy times.

That's a problem for practically every army in the game, not just 'nids.

Marines are finally what the haters and whiners have been complaining about for 20 years.

Martel732 wrote:
Marines are finally what the haters and whiners have been complaining about for 20 years.

They've been really good the past year


Pic of table OP? for bugs that fairly important

Martel732 wrote:
Marines are finally what the haters and whiners have been complaining about for 20 years.

Hogging the release schedule?

The Newman 789935 10863684 wrote:

But isn't this a lore vs game problem for some new players? They like nids, they read about nids, in lore the tyranids charge as a unstoppable wave, crushing everything in the end with thier big bugs, while taking heavy loses among the smaller ones. Only in the game this often means they lose the small ones, then they lose the big ones and then they are in for un happy times.

That's a problem for practically every army in the game, not just 'nids.

This guy took Salamander incursors, Long Fangs, and Wolf Guard, and you guys are acting like the Nid list was built so poorly cause he played what? A Carnifex? Carnifexes are in the upper end of Tyranid units, the fact that the SM player could just take whatever and Tyranids couldn’t even safely take one of their upper units, is exactly what the imbalance IS you muppets.

Both armies were collected from models of about a similar level of competitiveness from each of their books. Some good stuff and some decent stuff. People just don’t want to admit that yeah there’s a massive imbalance in SM, these sort of threads attract the downplayers

Spoletta wrote:
We don't have marine points for 9E. We only had a fake spoiler, debunked directly by GW. That leak could have been a point proposal at a certain point during the playtesting, but we know for sure that they are not the final ones.

Wait, what's this now? The "leaks from Munitorum" are fake? Where did GW directly debunk this?

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
This guy took Salamander incursors, Long Fangs, and Wolf Guard, and you guys are acting like the Nid list was built so poorly cause he played what? A Carnifex? Carnifexes are in the upper end of Tyranid units, the fact that the SM player could just take whatever and Tyranids couldn’t even safely take one of their upper units, is exactly what the imbalance IS you muppets.

Both armies were collected from models of about a similar level of competitiveness from each of their books. Some good stuff and some decent stuff. People just don’t want to admit that yeah there’s a massive imbalance in SM, these sort of threads attract the downplayers

Thank you, I felt like I was in bizarro world reading this thread. Long Fangs and Wolf Guard are far from meta-busting hotness and literally nothing mentioned for 'Nids was egregiously bad. Triple 'Fexes, a Tyrant, and Genestealers could easily be the core of even a reasonably competitively-oriented list.

Both players took a scattershot mix of units and one player got stomped. Saying that Tyranids are 'hard to play' really boils down to the fact that being weaker makes any army less forgiving of mistakes. Marines are not balanced in their current state and have not been balanced since SM2.0, especially for casual play, where non-Marine armies aren't exploiting their dirtiest tricks to close the gap. The length some people will go to in order to deny this is ridiculous.

Remember the "marines just need to be cheaper" song? Yeah. feth GW and their UBER ALLES marines.

 catbarf wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
This guy took Salamander incursors, Long Fangs, and Wolf Guard, and you guys are acting like the Nid list was built so poorly cause he played what? A Carnifex? Carnifexes are in the upper end of Tyranid units, the fact that the SM player could just take whatever and Tyranids couldn’t even safely take one of their upper units, is exactly what the imbalance IS you muppets.

Both armies were collected from models of about a similar level of competitiveness from each of their books. Some good stuff and some decent stuff. People just don’t want to admit that yeah there’s a massive imbalance in SM, these sort of threads attract the downplayers

Thank you, I felt like I was in bizarro world reading this thread. Long Fangs and Wolf Guard are far from meta-busting hotness and literally nothing mentioned for 'Nids was egregiously bad. Triple 'Fexes, a Tyrant, and Genestealers could easily be the core of even a reasonably competitively-oriented list.

Both players took a scattershot mix of units and one player got stomped. Saying that Tyranids are 'hard to play' really boils down to the fact that being weaker makes any army less forgiving of mistakes. Marines are not balanced in their current state and have not been balanced since SM2.0, especially for casual play, where non-Marine armies aren't exploiting their dirtiest tricks to close the gap. The length some people will go to in order to deny this is ridiculous.

We're just washing over the Ragnar, flamer aggressors, flamer centurions, Vulkan, and Agatone? That is absolutely NOT scatter shot.

We know nothing of what the Nids had for weapons, but based on the list I'd bet all melee. If he carried stock weapons then the piddly AP1 would be straight ignored by the Salamanders, too. So, no, this isn't an impeachment of Tyranids and their weaknesses, because we know so very little about what was used and how it was used. Yes, I'm sure any chump could pick up that marine army and do well until they faced someone competent. Not all the armies will have the same skill floor and there isn't anything wrong with that.

Salamanders don't have the same capability of flinging Centurions around. He could easily have had some Biovores and used spore mines to control the board against the very slow moving Cents and Aggressors and those would still be a good choice in any other matchup.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yes, I'm sure any chump could pick up that marine army and do well until they faced someone competent. Not all the armies will have the same skill floor and there isn't anything wrong with that.

Is the idea here that Marines have a high skill floor but low skill ceiling? Because that doesn't seem borne out by tournament results.

Or high skill floor, high skill ceiling... but that doesn't point to any sort of imbalance?

 catbarf wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yes, I'm sure any chump could pick up that marine army and do well until they faced someone competent. Not all the armies will have the same skill floor and there isn't anything wrong with that.

Is the idea here that Marines have a high skill floor but low skill ceiling? Because that doesn't seem borne out by tournament results.

Are you really certain of that? Marines got nerfed on 2/27. A few weeks later COVID really took hold. In the time between that nerf and the end of tournaments these were a few of the top results -

(And I have no idea how many of these before 3/14 used the FAQ)

Martel732 wrote:
Remember the "marines just need to be cheaper" song? Yeah. feth GW and their UBER ALLES marines.

except no marine player actually wanted cheaper marines, we didn't want "5 point guardsmen and 7 point marines" marine players wanted marines to feel like elite bad asses

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
This guy took Salamander incursors, Long Fangs, and Wolf Guard, and you guys are acting like the Nid list was built so poorly cause he played what? A Carnifex? Carnifexes are in the upper end of Tyranid units, the fact that the SM player could just take whatever and Tyranids couldn’t even safely take one of their upper units, is exactly what the imbalance IS you muppets.

Both armies were collected from models of about a similar level of competitiveness from each of their books. Some good stuff and some decent stuff. People just don’t want to admit that yeah there’s a massive imbalance in SM, these sort of threads attract the downplayers

 catbarf wrote:
Thank you, I felt like I was in bizarro world reading this thread. Long Fangs and Wolf Guard are far from meta-busting hotness and literally nothing mentioned for 'Nids was egregiously bad. Triple 'Fexes, a Tyrant, and Genestealers could easily be the core of even a reasonably competitively-oriented list.

Both players took a scattershot mix of units and one player got stomped. Saying that Tyranids are 'hard to play' really boils down to the fact that being weaker makes any army less forgiving of mistakes. Marines are not balanced in their current state and have not been balanced since SM2.0, especially for casual play, where non-Marine armies aren't exploiting their dirtiest tricks to close the gap. The length some people will go to in order to deny this is ridiculous.

Nobody in this thread even closely suggested that Marines and Tyranids are on the same power level. Most posters wrote that Marines are stronger and easier to play and that the Tyranid player has to work harder.

What did happen was people giving proper advice how both players could level the playing field instead of just accepting that one side is better and there is nothing that can be done about it till the next Codex drops.

Crackedgear wrote:

And then in talking about it afterwards, we realized that I had completely forgotten to use my faction trait at all. It was forgotten among all the other bonuses. I’m used to armies where you describe them by saying “yeah, they’re pretty good, but...”. There was no but here, there was just my wiping someone out. How is this ok?

Marines are the master race that's there to kill evil guys heroicly. Tyranids are not marines and thus are NPC so their role is to be killed in droves by the heroic marines.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
This guy took Salamander incursors, Long Fangs, and Wolf Guard, and you guys are acting like the Nid list was built so poorly cause he played what? A Carnifex? Carnifexes are in the upper end of Tyranid units, the fact that the SM player could just take whatever and Tyranids couldn’t even safely take one of their upper units, is exactly what the imbalance IS you muppets.

Both armies were collected from models of about a similar level of competitiveness from each of their books. Some good stuff and some decent stuff. People just don’t want to admit that yeah there’s a massive imbalance in SM, these sort of threads attract the downplayers

Thank you, I felt like I was in bizarro world reading this thread. Long Fangs and Wolf Guard are far from meta-busting hotness and literally nothing mentioned for 'Nids was egregiously bad. Triple 'Fexes, a Tyrant, and Genestealers could easily be the core of even a reasonably competitively-oriented list.

Both players took a scattershot mix of units and one player got stomped. Saying that Tyranids are 'hard to play' really boils down to the fact that being weaker makes any army less forgiving of mistakes. Marines are not balanced in their current state and have not been balanced since SM2.0, especially for casual play, where non-Marine armies aren't exploiting their dirtiest tricks to close the gap. The length some people will go to in order to deny this is ridiculous.

We're just washing over the Ragnar, flamer aggressors, flamer centurions, Vulkan, and Agatone? That is absolutely NOT scatter shot.

1.) he did not wash over that at all? he said a scattershot mix of units - some were top tier, some were not. Nothing you said conflicts with that

2.) what's are Tyranids' Ragnar / Aggressors etc to lean on if not OOE and Genestealers? Tyranid player picked some of the best units in the dex and none of the junk ones. Yeah, Ragnar and aggressors are a lot better than anything he has - that's the entire point. It's not balanced.

punisher357 wrote:
Marines are overpowered and some of the table top tactics testers said so too. However, without lists, point values, etc. there isn't really any info to point out where things went wrong.

Marines being crap in former editions when it came to competitive play now made it to the top.
With all the shiny new units they can easily outperform any other faction in the game.
My experience with my Eldar is that in former editions I had never big problems eliminating SM armies.
But I've not yet played a game against the new IH, Imperial Fists, RG and Salamanders.
This will be my plan next time as soon as I can see how to play Eldar in the 9th.

Phenatix wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
We don't have marine points for 9E. We only had a fake spoiler, debunked directly by GW. That leak could have been a point proposal at a certain point during the playtesting, but we know for sure that they are not the final ones.

Wait, what's this now? The "leaks from Munitorum" are fake? Where did GW directly debunk this?

When I said that, we didn't have the munitorum leaks, we had a random page from a random unidentified document whose point cost for the Lt didn't match with one of GW articles.

Unfortunately, apart from that they ended up pretty much spot on.

The SM points aren't so bad in the end, it was a massive nerf for the most part. And it was well deserved.

The issue is in the new units from Indomitus, Eradicators in particular, which are beyond broken at that point cost.

Everything else doesn't feel really OP anymore. It took just 5 rounds of nerf to achieve that. (IH first nerf, Strategem nerf, Doctrine nerf, CA2020 point nerf and finally Vigilus removed).

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
This guy took Salamander incursors, Long Fangs, and Wolf Guard, and you guys are acting like the Nid list was built so poorly cause he played what? A Carnifex? Carnifexes are in the upper end of Tyranid units, the fact that the SM player could just take whatever and Tyranids couldn’t even safely take one of their upper units, is exactly what the imbalance IS you muppets.

Both armies were collected from models of about a similar level of competitiveness from each of their books. Some good stuff and some decent stuff. People just don’t want to admit that yeah there’s a massive imbalance in SM, these sort of threads attract the downplayers

Canrifexes aren't the upper end of Tyranid units. A specific Carnifex build, one that isn't intuitive for new players reading the fluff and iirc not build-able out of the box, was effective enough at filling a specific role that it showed up in some lists. Right now over on the Tyranid Tactics page there is a two page long discussion about if the changes to the new edition might make any of the other ways to build Carnifexes useful, and the answer is basically maybe? If you work hard enough at it? We hope?

Warriors can be good, if you use the right Hive Fleet and add in defensive abilities that are not in the core rules. A new player to the faction wouldn't be expected to know that Warriors evaporate like morning dew unless you use the right strategem with them and have the right Adaptive Physiology on them.

I could go on about how Genestealers and Tyrants showing up in competitive builds doesn't mean that plugging and handful of them into a list makes it a strong list. Or how I don't see Hive Guard, or Exocrines, or Neurothropes. Point being, Tyranids are odd and tricky to learn and new players to the faction tend to lose badly until they figure them out.

Marines are pretty strong, sure. Tyranids are probably mid tier. Marines might be overpowered in 9th. They might not be. I have zero doubt that OP is acting in good faith, and believes that marines are over powered and badly balanced. OP could be 100% right about that.

I'm not willing to take two beginning players running poorly optimized lists as proof that we need to bow to our new marine overlords. Particularly seeing as how one of these players was running a faction that is designed to be straightforward to play, because it is the flagship product of the entire company, and the other was running a faction that is notorious for being one of the hardest to learn in the game.

He didn't have Hive Guard and his opponent didn't have vehicles for them to shoot at, or thunderfires to counter his ground assault. That works both ways.

babelfish wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
This guy took Salamander incursors, Long Fangs, and Wolf Guard, and you guys are acting like the Nid list was built so poorly cause he played what? A Carnifex? Carnifexes are in the upper end of Tyranid units, the fact that the SM player could just take whatever and Tyranids couldn’t even safely take one of their upper units, is exactly what the imbalance IS you muppets.

Both armies were collected from models of about a similar level of competitiveness from each of their books. Some good stuff and some decent stuff. People just don’t want to admit that yeah there’s a massive imbalance in SM, these sort of threads attract the downplayers

Canrifexes aren't the upper end of Tyranid units. A specific Carnifex build, one that isn't intuitive for new players reading the fluff and iirc not build-able out of the box, was effective enough at filling a specific role that it showed up in some lists. Right now over on the Tyranid Tactics page there is a two page long discussion about if the changes to the new edition might make any of the other ways to build Carnifexes useful, and the answer is basically maybe? If you work hard enough at it? We hope?

Absolute nonsense. Carnifexes are one of the better units in the dex without a doubt. I contributed to that discussion. YOUR answer was "maybe, if you work hard enough at it". Other people's answers were either "they seem pretty good" or "time will tell".


I'm sorry, let's just take a step back here anyway - are we genuinely arguing that there isn't a serious power level imbalance between the Marine codex and the Tyranids?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You know what, you're right. We should wait and see. I suspect Marines are broke as hell, but we don't know. I thought this thread was about 8th cause it was made two weeks ago, but I see OP was testing 9th rules.


This still works both ways though. If we don't know what's strong yet, it's way too early to also say that the Nid players list was gak. Looks tight enough to me, and yeah I'm standing strong that Carnifexes arent bad - depends on their loadout but I think they've actually improved.

As long as Eradicators are not in the equation, I'm not going to express an opinion on the matter.

The points nerfs on marines were harsh, and I'm not sure that they cope reall well with 9th missions structure. Nids could very well be better than them at this point, who knows.

Now, put Eradicators back into the pack, and they are the best of best at everything.

Spoletta wrote:
As long as Eradicators are not in the equation, I'm not going to express an opinion on the matter.

The points nerfs on marines were harsh, and I'm not sure that they cope reall well with 9th missions structure. Nids could very well be better than them at this point, who knows.

Now, put Eradicators back into the pack, and they are the best of best at everything.

You keep repeating the same "marine point increases were harsh" BS but you don't seem to fathom the fact that they were HORRIBLY underpriced in 8th

KurtAngle2 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
As long as Eradicators are not in the equation, I'm not going to express an opinion on the matter.

The points nerfs on marines were harsh, and I'm not sure that they cope reall well with 9th missions structure. Nids could very well be better than them at this point, who knows.

Now, put Eradicators back into the pack, and they are the best of best at everything.

You keep repeating the same "marine point increases were harsh" BS but you don't seem to fathom the fact that they were HORRIBLY underpriced in 8th

....and?

I fail to see how it is a valid counterpoint you are making.

Were the point increases harsh? Yes, that is simple math, can't argue with that.

So if I were to say "This post got longer with our messages." you would reply "That's BS! It was too short!"? Should that make my statement "BS"?

You keep using that BS word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

Spoletta wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
As long as Eradicators are not in the equation, I'm not going to express an opinion on the matter.

The points nerfs on marines were harsh, and I'm not sure that they cope reall well with 9th missions structure. Nids could very well be better than them at this point, who knows.

Now, put Eradicators back into the pack, and they are the best of best at everything.

You keep repeating the same "marine point increases were harsh" BS but you don't seem to fathom the fact that they were HORRIBLY underpriced in 8th

....and?

I fail to see how it is a valid counterpoint you are making.

Were the point increases harsh? Yes, that is simple math, can't argue with that.

So if I were to say "This post got longer with our messages." you would reply "That's BS! It was too short!"? Should that make my statement "BS"?

You keep using that BS word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

...and? The're not harsh at all if the base points are hugely undercosted to begin with, in comparison the +30 points a Tervigon received are much harsher than the additional cost of a Thunderfire since the former was already nearly unplayable and the latter on the other hand was oppressive asf.
Percentage increments don't tell the truth, what really matters the most is the final points cost and Thunderfires at 140 pts (with the included Techmarine) is not a steep cost (still undercosted if you consider the BS 2+ no LoS shooting that can halve any type of movement for 2 units)

Maybe GW wants codex marines to have good rules and good points costs for the army. It is their flag ship product, with the most sales, and most people playing and buying stuff. Any company that turns their back on their core audiance has better have some super good plan how to get new people from somewhere, or it starts bleeding money really fast.

And in case of armies like tyranids or other xeno armies. GW seems to only be interested in them, when a new codex and a new model line for that army comes out. Their anwser to them being bad or much weaker right now, seems to be play another GW game or buy a good army, waiting till we update your codex with new rules and new models.

Karol wrote:
Maybe GW wants codex marines to have good rules and good points costs for the army. It is their flag ship product, with the most sales, and most people playing and buying stuff. Any company that turns their back on their core audiance has better have some super good plan how to get new people from somewhere, or it starts bleeding money really fast.

And in case of armies like tyranids or other xeno armies. GW seems to only be interested in them, when a new codex and a new model line for that army comes out. Their anwser to them being bad or much weaker right now, seems to be play another GW game or buy a good army, waiting till we update your codex with new rules and new models.

You have to be very careful as a company that focus only on a core audience, as that tends to mean a ever shrinking audience if you are not very careful. From what we see i already feel GW maybe pushing into that a lot. Still very profitable, but on the backs of getting more and more money from a core audience tends to push towards colapse.

As its been said, on that poll i think i also put something other than balance. But its still very important for me from a narrative perspective. And it really sucks as a eldar player, as every space marine player complains constantly about OP stuff i never even used against them >.<

KurtAngle2 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
As long as Eradicators are not in the equation, I'm not going to express an opinion on the matter.

The points nerfs on marines were harsh, and I'm not sure that they cope reall well with 9th missions structure. Nids could very well be better than them at this point, who knows.

Now, put Eradicators back into the pack, and they are the best of best at everything.

You keep repeating the same "marine point increases were harsh" BS but you don't seem to fathom the fact that they were HORRIBLY underpriced in 8th

....and?

I fail to see how it is a valid counterpoint you are making.

Were the point increases harsh? Yes, that is simple math, can't argue with that.

So if I were to say "This post got longer with our messages." you would reply "That's BS! It was too short!"? Should that make my statement "BS"?

You keep using that BS word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

...and? The're not harsh at all if the base points are hugely undercosted to begin with, in comparison the +30 points a Tervigon received are much harsher than the additional cost of a Thunderfire since the former was already nearly unplayable and the latter on the other hand was oppressive asf.
Percentage increments don't tell the truth, what really matters the most is the final points cost and Thunderfires at 140 pts (with the included Techmarine) is not a steep cost (still undercosted if you consider the BS 2+ no LoS shooting that can halve any type of movement for 2 units)

You fail to understand the basics of balancing if you think that percentages don't matter.

So, on one hand you have a model which wasn't really played, so it didn't really receive a cost increase (Tervigon, 16,66% increase). On the other hand you have a model which was played a lot, so it received one of the biggest nerfs in the edition (TFC, 52%). 52% is harsh? Yes it is, maths says so. What you say doesn't matter. If you say otherwise you are wrong by definition.
Now, if I did say "SM were nerfed a lot, they are now underpowered" you could have a point. But I didn't do that, so you don't have one.
I always said "SM received a big nerf, but they deserved it".
So, again, what's your point?

Harsh does not mean unjustified, Kurt.

Spoletta wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
As long as Eradicators are not in the equation, I'm not going to express an opinion on the matter.

The points nerfs on marines were harsh, and I'm not sure that they cope reall well with 9th missions structure. Nids could very well be better than them at this point, who knows.

Now, put Eradicators back into the pack, and they are the best of best at everything.

You keep repeating the same "marine point increases were harsh" BS but you don't seem to fathom the fact that they were HORRIBLY underpriced in 8th

....and?

I fail to see how it is a valid counterpoint you are making.

Were the point increases harsh? Yes, that is simple math, can't argue with that.

So if I were to say "This post got longer with our messages." you would reply "That's BS! It was too short!"? Should that make my statement "BS"?

You keep using that BS word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

...and? The're not harsh at all if the base points are hugely undercosted to begin with, in comparison the +30 points a Tervigon received are much harsher than the additional cost of a Thunderfire since the former was already nearly unplayable and the latter on the other hand was oppressive asf.
Percentage increments don't tell the truth, what really matters the most is the final points cost and Thunderfires at 140 pts (with the included Techmarine) is not a steep cost (still undercosted if you consider the BS 2+ no LoS shooting that can halve any type of movement for 2 units)

You fail to understand the basics of balancing if you think that percentages don't matter.

So, on one hand you have a model which wasn't really played, so it didn't really receive a cost increase (Tervigon, 16,66% increase). On the other hand you have a model which was played a lot, so it received one of the biggest nerfs in the edition (TFC, 52%). 52% is harsh? Yes it is, maths says so. What you say doesn't matter. If you say otherwise you are wrong by definition.
Now, if I did say "SM were nerfed a lot, they are now underpowered" you could have a point. But I didn't do that, so you don't have one.
I always said "SM received a big nerf, but they deserved it".
So, again, what's your point?

And again it's not a nerf if the previous price points was WAY WAY off what it should have been, therefore you cannot claim that the nerf was "bigger or more impactful" only due to percentage increases, but solely in light of new usability and competitiveness (Thunderfire went from autoinclude to strong, Tervigon to nearly unplayable to totally unplayable)


TFC was rebalanced, Tervigon was nerfed, understood?

To nerf something means to make it not as good as it was before. It has nothing to do with how well balanced the end result is, Kurt.

Rebalancing can go either way, both up and down. Buffing means going up, nerfing means going down