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 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
There was no Dev Doctrine in 2017. The information I responded to was all 2017.

2017 - got it... 5 storm ravens or gman Ultras with razors....middle of the pack...SO OP.

SM combined is above Eldar, and before the Eldar and Nid books came out it was dominating. So sure, for a short while it was OP.

1 team has way more tickets to the lotto. Win Rate is what matters in this discussion.

29 SM codex combined wins puts it equal to Nids. Win rate can easily be not usedul as a lot of nubs play marines, too.

So the largest book with the most options, releases and player base manages joint 6th most wins despite apparently having the top tier list in index and early 8th. They draw with nids, that notoriously powerful army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Sure, but UM are sitting right there with 23 wins, too. They are the army on the cover of the SM book.

Where would Eldar sit if they split out Alaitoc? Or Tyranids if you split out Kraken?

I don't know. I am not even sure why Ultramarines were separated out beyond Guilliman being that present as to form sub-faction branch. At the same time, I consider Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves their own faction as they have their own codex. At least for now. None of them were doing that great. I remember back around that time I didn't have that much difficulty beating Blood Angels and Dark Angels with my Abbadon-less, few Cultists Black Legion army at a casual level. The only thing that really changed was Warp Time was eventually nerfed after most of those games. I kinda felt bad for the Blood Angels player as even his smash captain wasn't that good since I always took the Murder Sword and could MW him away.

I think ultras are separated out to show the impact guilliman had on the success of the codex. I.e. a lot.

Mirror matches.
EVER heard of them.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Mirror matches.
EVER heard of them.

Yes, if they were often the deciding factor the numbers would be higher.

Dudeface wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
There was no Dev Doctrine in 2017. The information I responded to was all 2017.

2017 - got it... 5 storm ravens or gman Ultras with razors....middle of the pack...SO OP.

SM combined is above Eldar, and before the Eldar and Nid books came out it was dominating. So sure, for a short while it was OP.

1 team has way more tickets to the lotto. Win Rate is what matters in this discussion.

29 SM codex combined wins puts it equal to Nids. Win rate can easily be not usedul as a lot of nubs play marines, too.

So the largest book with the most options, releases and player base manages joint 6th most wins despite apparently having the top tier list in index and early 8th. They draw with nids, that notoriously powerful army.

Or maybe they were absolute top tier for part of 2017 and came down a few nothches as more armies were released.

Flyrant spam was nerfed for a reason.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
There was no Dev Doctrine in 2017. The information I responded to was all 2017.

2017 - got it... 5 storm ravens or gman Ultras with razors....middle of the pack...SO OP.

SM combined is above Eldar, and before the Eldar and Nid books came out it was dominating. So sure, for a short while it was OP.

1 team has way more tickets to the lotto. Win Rate is what matters in this discussion.

29 SM codex combined wins puts it equal to Nids. Win rate can easily be not usedul as a lot of nubs play marines, too.

So the largest book with the most options, releases and player base manages joint 6th most wins despite apparently having the top tier list in index and early 8th. They draw with nids, that notoriously powerful army.

Or maybe they were absolute top tier for part of 2017 and came down a few nothches as more armies were released.

Flyrant spam was nerfed for a reason.

That's fine because theres plenty of people claiming they've been top tier most/all of 8th, if we're able to identify they had a brief run with 1 build early 2017 and then were merely mediocre mid 2017 - August 2019, that sounds about right.

Dudeface wrote:
That's fine because theres plenty of people claiming they've been top tier most/all of 8th, if we're able to identify they had a brief run with 1 build early 2017 and then were merely mediocre mid 2017 - August 2019, that sounds about right.

8th didn't come out until June.

 NoPoet wrote:

People automatically want to start with a human faction - that's just human nature.

I disagree. This gets repeated but I really don't see any reason for it to be the case, especially when a lot of the alien factions aren't really alien but rather just effectively different flavours of human when it comes down to it.

About the only alien alien in 40K is the Tyranids. The rest could be easily replaced with humans with little to no loss of any of the themes of their faction.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 NoPoet wrote:

People automatically want to start with a human faction - that's just human nature.

I disagree. This gets repeated but I really don't see any reason for it to be the case, especially when a lot of the alien factions aren't really alien but rather just effectively different flavours of human when it comes down to it.

About the only alien alien in 40K is the Tyranids. The rest could be easily replaced with humans with little to no loss of any of the themes of their faction.

Totally agree!
Proper oldcrons from 3rd felt suitably alien.
I've played them as my only real army since then. The only one I ever truly tried to win with, the following other forces were purely for fun, I was happy if I played to a Draw. Currently at ~ 4,400 points assuming my usual wargear, and that I can run 9 full Scarab Swarm units.
When the CA 2004 came out within Kroot Mercenaries, I started a super fun conversion heavy Kroot force. Never had more than 750pts.
I have an all Ripper Tyranid force, 60+ bases of Rippers. The lovingly converted Malanthrope and Parasite of Mirtrex sold for pandemic food. At one point, when FW Broodnests were a thing, and you could make super Rippers, I had almost 2,000 points, not, it's not even 1,000.
A grot horde. Sold for pandemic food. Never broke the 500 point level.
I've never played a human faction, or been interested in one. That's makes 40k a really rough game to play.

 NoPoet wrote:
People automatically want to start with a human faction - that's just human nature.

Yeah I don't know about that. IIRC the most popular faction in WHFB at its peak was High Elves, not Empire, Bretonnia, or Kislev. I know plenty of people (myself included) who started with xenos factions, and Chaos is a huge deal too. The masculine machismo fantasy that Marines and Guard embody doesn't seem to resonate with a lot of women, either.

WW2 with laser guns isn't a surefire hook either- personally, I never got into Guard until I started working in a military-adjacent sector and found myself inundated with inspirational reference material. I still don't really like the WW2-with-lasers style and much prefer the more stylistic/sci-fi regiments.

What I do know is that Marines are on every piece of marketing, come in all the starter sets, are the focus of all the learning-to-paint demos, and are the constant center of attention. There are some good reasons for Marines to be pushed as beginner armies (affordability and ease of painting chief among them), but I think it's a stretch to assume that players always want to start with humans.

 Xenomancers wrote:

DE had Flayed skull and poison tounge. Both very good. IMO better overall

By what possible measure is Poison Tongue good?

Tyel wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
That's fine because theres plenty of people claiming they've been top tier most/all of 8th, if we're able to identify they had a brief run with 1 build early 2017 and then were merely mediocre mid 2017 - August 2019, that sounds about right.

8th didn't come out until June.

Fair point, so they had even less time at the top then I guess.

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

DE had Flayed skull and poison tounge. Both very good. IMO better overall

By what possible measure is Poison Tongue good?

Squigbuggies-will-dominate-the-meta good!

 catbarf wrote:

What I do know is that Marines are on every piece of marketing, come in all the starter sets, are the focus of all the learning-to-paint demos, and are the constant center of attention. There are some good reasons for Marines to be pushed as beginner armies (affordability and ease of painting chief among them), but I think it's a stretch to assume that players always want to start with humans.

When I first wandered into a GW and grabbed a kit, the staffer just stopped short of ramming the Space Marine paint set in my hands and hiding the other beneath the till whilst telling me not to start with anything but Space Marines and pretty much nothing has changed on that front as far as I can tell. Hell, don't they give out single Intercessors you can paint in store or free or something now?

Catulle wrote:
By what possible measure is Poison Tongue good?

Squigbuggies-will-dominate-the-meta good!

The squigbuggy still is at least four times as efficient at shooting any target than the stompa is

Catulle wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

DE had Flayed skull and poison tounge. Both very good. IMO better overall

By what possible measure is Poison Tongue good?

Squigbuggies-will-dominate-the-meta good!

haha, yep...poor old 8th, just didn't get long enough time for that squigbuggy meta to evolve! Missed opportunities!

 Jidmah wrote:
The squigbuggy still is at least four times as efficient at shooting any target than the stompa is

Tbf tho, that is like comparing a blind man to a Drunk one shooting at 300 m
.

So not really a high bar to be better either Way.

 Insectum7 wrote:
29 SM codex combined wins puts it equal to Nids.

Oh, yeah, because by far the most widely played faction barely scraping comparable wins to weakest and least played xeno faction suuurely means everything is okay and the game is well balanced.

Did you even try to read aloud this sentence before clicking send?

 wuestenfux wrote:

Playing with not too competitive SM lists helps a lot, it's something I suggest to all SM players, especially those ones who started when their army was already broken.

Right.
What I recognized over the years is that Marine players have no deeper understanding of tactics (such as refused flank or symetrie de position).
They just rely on the staying power of Marines and whatnot.

Yeah, as opposed to GENIUS of xeno players relying on their laughably broken garbage nullifying damage from whole armies by using shield drones (Tau 8th), outright leaving the table so enemy can do nothing (Tau 7th), making their armies only hittable on 6 (Eldar with invisibility), jump-shoot-jump nonsense, rerollable 2++ all around, and all the other broken gak xeno players spammed (with best honours going to eldar transports having this ludicrously broken shield that not only made them most durable vehicles in the game, but also doubled as supergun for some insane reason). It's like this straw prowerb, except the beam in the eyes of xeno players is the size of Mount Everest if they thing T4 3+ compares with all this

Let me guess, according to you, it takes a GENIUS to do the above cookie cutter netlist spam, then rolling buckets of D-shots (7th) or mortal wounds (8th) these xeno armies could spew? Because funnily enough, if there was auto-play army even three year old could easily take to win, it was not SM. It was xenos of all sorts. The ones spamming riptidewings and 190 pts Eldar titans requiring room temperature IQ to play. The same xenos who smugly said 'git gud, totes balanced' for 2.66 editions, but as soon as marines are actually good for once, then suddenly the skies are falling and saltworks explode with the force of small nuke despite SM not coming even remotely close to old xeno gak

So, allow me to get this straight, Irbis-if Xenos or Chaos has ONE competitive build, then that's what we should focus on for them, but when Marines have one, you have to look at them all across the board?

Because what about 50 Fenrisian Wolves that were Hammerhanded, Invisible, and could Hit&Run?
What about pretty much any tournament build in 8th with the G-Man?

Marines aren't always the BEST. But they've never, as far as I know, been the worst. Even at their personal worst, they still see tables.

Tyel wrote:

Poison Tongue on the other hand is this weird trait that *seems* like it would be good - especially if you've never played DE. I mean if you are going to venom spam, why not have reroll 1s to wound on all that splinter fire? Unfortunately Flayed Skull essentially gets the same buff due to rerolling 1s to hit, while also ignoring cover, and getting to move further.

Notionally (really notionally) I think poison tongue was meant to be for kabal-tide builds. Run loads and loads of bodies, have reroll 1s to hit from archons and reroll 1s to wound from the trait. Problem is they just die in droves and with 1 S3 attack, even at WS2+, can't fight their way out of a paper bag.
And now, for unclear reasons, kabalites cost 9 points.
So... yeah. Deader than disco.

Yeah, I look at the 'reroll 1s to wound in melee' and find myself wondering whether GW actually forgot that they'd removed all the actual melee units from Kabal. Was there a period during development when Incubi and Mandrakes could get the traits of their parent detachment? And then that got removed but Poison Tongue's ability stayed the same? Then again, even the custom Kabal traits in Phoenix Rising were all centred around melee for some moronic reason.

Though the other problem is that Poison Weapons are abysmal to begin with. Poison Tongue could give them full rerolls and they'd still struggle to be worth their points. Hell, it's a sad fact that Coven are now vastly better at Poison Shooting than Kabal, because some genius at GW headquarters decided that Coven needed Custom traits that vastly outclass Poison Tongue, whilst Kabal needed a slew of melee abilities that fail to fix any of Kabal's issues when it comes to melee.

It's a shame because I actually really like the Poison Tongue relic. Whilst I do think it's in dire need of a third shot (or at least let it benefit from the sodding Poison Tongue bonus), it's nevertheless a nifty little pistol with a fun collection of rules. I used to really like the idea of using it to make a pseudo-Mandrake HQ. Unfortunately, I simply can't bring myself to take Poison Tongue just for that anymore. Especially now that Lhamaeans (previously about the only other thing Poison Tongue did semi-well) have also received a pointless nerf that's rendered them utter trash.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
This is completely false. SM have never been bottom tier or amongst the worst armies.

You talking C:SM or all non-Deathwatch/ Grey Knights loyalist marines? Because I certainly remember a time with Codex: Dark Angels was the bottom of the barrel. The list below might refresh some people's minds. To be certain, a number of the are allied armies which muddy the water, but to claim space marines were never at the bottom is not quite right.

2017 ITC Data for Armies taking top 3 spots in GT or Major

69 Astra Militarum
59 Ynnari
39 Dark Eldar
39 Daemons
34 Chaos Space Marines
29 Tyranids
31 Imperial Knights
25 Eldar
23 Ultramarines
21 T’au Empire
22 Orks
17 Thousand Sons
14 Death Guard
12 Genestealer Cults
11 Adeptus Custodes
8 Sisters of Battle
8 Harlequins
8 Blood Angels
8 Grey Knights
8 Adeptus Mechanicus
6 Space Marines
5 Necrons
4 Deathwatch
3 Officio Assassinorum
2 Renegade Knights
2 Space Wolves
2 Dark Angels

Sorry but ITC results don't reflect reality. You're referring to tournament level with some house rules. A real SM player, with some experience in playing his army, was never trash tier in 8th edition as a regular SM collection is not trash, never have been. Tournaments have skew lists which are extremely uncommon in real metas, and your data is affected by house rules that aren't legit everywhere. No one plays ITC here. I've seen most of those competitive orks lists that placed high at those tournaments, except they weren't competitive at all outside 3 turns based games with ITC house rules. Or they were so skew list oriented (with abominations like 120-150 gretchins and/or 12-18 Smasha Gunz) that no one would chase them outside the toxic WAAC.

SW are way better than orks overall, but according to your table they're the gakkest thing in 40k, which is clearly false.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Errr...

Couldn't it be read as just another proof that SM players aren't that good in playing the game?

 Irbis wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
29 SM codex combined wins puts it equal to Nids.

Oh, yeah, because by far the most widely played faction barely scraping comparable wins to weakest and least played xeno faction suuurely means everything is okay and the game is well balanced.

Did you even try to read aloud this sentence before clicking send?

1: Popular doesn't mean it's necessarily representing the highest quality players.

2: Space Marines and Tyranids getting the same amount of wins at high levels of play can also be an indicator of balance.

3: Did you just call the Tyranid codex the "weakest" xeno faction even though they placed 6th out of 27 in that list?

4: Did you even read your sentence before clicking send?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

Spoiler:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
There was no Dev Doctrine in 2017. The information I responded to was all 2017.

2017 - got it... 5 storm ravens or gman Ultras with razors....middle of the pack...SO OP.

SM combined is above Eldar, and before the Eldar and Nid books came out it was dominating. So sure, for a short while it was OP.

1 team has way more tickets to the lotto. Win Rate is what matters in this discussion.

29 SM codex combined wins puts it equal to Nids. Win rate can easily be not usedul as a lot of nubs play marines, too.

So the largest book with the most options, releases and player base manages joint 6th most wins despite apparently having the top tier list in index and early 8th. They draw with nids, that notoriously powerful army.

Or maybe they were absolute top tier for part of 2017 and came down a few nothches as more armies were released.

Flyrant spam was nerfed for a reason.

That's fine because theres plenty of people claiming they've been top tier most/all of 8th, if we're able to identify they had a brief run with 1 build early 2017 and then were merely mediocre mid 2017 - August 2019, that sounds about right.

I haven't seen much talk about marines being "top tier" so much as marines not being "trash tier" for 8th. It's indisputable they had their time in the spotlight.

What that means about the rest of the edition, well YMMV. But I seem to recall some players doing well in tournaments with them throughout the edition. Locally I certainly did fine. The thing about the marine book is that it has a bajillion options in it. It only takes a couple decent ones to make a good army. I'd argue that marines were pretty solid middle-tier for 8th, despite what a certain vocal group would say. Personally a lot of what I saw for a good portion of 8th was people playing primaris lists even though the line hadn't filled out, and thus hamstringing themselves.

Yeah I kind of agree that generally balance is not the problem of Marines (maybe now it is, not playing against them that much) but the sheer amount of options they have compared to other armies, so it's easier for a SM player to build the army more or less however he likes and do well with it, even if he does'nt win vs the TOP lists.

Xenos armies feel so one dimensional that there's one or two ways to play if you want to at least present a challenge to a SM list.

Maybe they should study ways to give Xenos armies more variety, even without new models but new ways to play them... in AoS, some of the factions can play Fast Attack units as Troops if they are part of a subfaction. I'm not sure, maybe it would break the game even more...

 JNAProductions wrote:
So, allow me to get this straight, Irbis-if Xenos or Chaos has ONE competitive build, then that's what we should focus on for them, but when Marines have one, you have to look at them all across the board?

Sure totes balanced , that is just it, These are the true problems ,nevermind that all These dexes share somewhat 30% never pick options through internal issues allready...
Without even going externally, or the the fact that whole factions needed to soup which in theory should be a massive advantage.

 Denegaar wrote:
Yeah I kind of agree that generally balance is not the problem of Marines (maybe now it is, not playing against them that much) but the sheer amount of options they have compared to other armies, so it's easier for a SM player to build the army more or less however he likes and do well with it, even if he does'nt win vs the TOP lists.

Xenos armies feel so one dimensional that there's one or two ways to play if you want to at least present a challenge to a SM list.

Maybe they should study ways to give Xenos armies more variety, even without new models but new ways to play them... in AoS, some of the factions can play Fast Attack units as Troops if they are part of a subfaction. I'm not sure, maybe it would break the game even more...

One big issue i have really notice over the years, is they often with marines push for new Design space. But then have nothing for other factions to fill that space with.

Drop pods being awesome, And then not always come of this way. For me, it always seemed like the only defense i had as an option was standing in every space they may want to land one. Making it useless, or at least less useful. Which did not work so well with troops that cost to much for that task.
I have not really seen any drop pods in games for a while, not sure if they work now but i think they needed more defenses against it first. and then making it more risky for space marine players, but a large payoff as the idea of drop pods should be.

Drop pods actually exemplify one of the biggest issues with Space Marine design.

Alpha strike from reserves were a problem, so GW changed the rules so no one could deepstrike turn 1.

Except they then allowed Space Marines to ignore that by letting Drop Pods deepstrike turn 1.

And no one else

Its such a clear cut example of 1 set of guidelines for Space Marines and another for everyone else.

There would be no issue with giving marines the ability to break certain rules to make them unique if they weren't just breaking all the rule with no drawbacks whatsoever.

Drop pods come with the build-in drawback of having to buy an immobile rhino.

 Jidmah wrote:
There would be no issue with giving marines the ability to break certain rules to make them unique if they weren't just breaking all the rule with no drawbacks whatsoever.

Drop pods come with the build-in drawback of having to buy an immobile rhino.

The reason I bring up drop pods, is they had at the time a great opertuny cost. By the time I could react the damage had been done, wiping out the unit was more work, and ignoring the pod often gave it a few extra kills over the game. The drawback was extremely cheep when they would kill most of there points easy enough and often kill some more, now I wasn’t running a competive army, but I really didn’t have any options ether.

It’s one of the reasons I simply got annoyed and left the game, was awful to play against.

 Insectum7 wrote:

2: Space Marines and Tyranids getting the same amount of wins at high levels of play can also be an indicator of balance.

I'm counting 63 space marine wins here (ignoring the spiky ones) VS the tyranids' 29. Which colors those marines are is as important as which colors the nids are. But more importantly this is data from a tournament known for employing a set of meta-warping house rules, so it's not representative of actual 40k gameplay balance.


Edit: fixed quotation

Which colors those marines are is as important as which colors the nids are

You think there is no difference between ultramarines or SW? I mean if we go at this from this angle, then we can say that there is no difference between eldar, necron, tyranids either.