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Maybe all Aeldari should feel more like Harlequins. The clowns are the only subfaction that seems "glass-cannony". The rest aren't killy or tough enough to compete vs the field (SM) outside of tailored lists.

I guess Codexes will give us options

BrianDavion wrote:
marines are sold as being a tough army that can take a hit.

Yes, but Eldars of all stripes are a glass cannon army that can pack a punch, enough to kill marines. Don't worry, getting D2 and double attacks/shoots won't come without a point increase. Eldar will feel elite too, as they should.
Imperial guard or genestealer cult will still find marines are tough.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
marines are sold as being a tough army that can take a hit.

Yes, but Eldars of all stripes are a glass cannon army that can pack a punch, enough to kill marines. Don't worry, getting D2 and double attacks/shoots won't come without a point increase. Eldar will feel elite too, as they should.
Imperial guard or genestealer cult will still find marines are tough.

Yeah, there's always the hope that this new Marine identity allows design space where glass cannons have a better defined role.

Though that still doesn't solve a lingering problem IMHO that force fields and dodging (defensive reflexes) have both been rolled into the same type of defense, while reflexes in the offensive sense have been rather awkwardly moved into movement in a shooting meta and just messes around with the ever-problematic alpha strike.

 Hellebore wrote:

Voss wrote:
Well, eventually, anyway.

Its useful to remember this isn't the first marine upgrade.

They started life with T3 and a 4+ save, and were happily slaughtered by shuriken catapults and orks with mass bolter fire (This also dating back before ork shooting was nerfed and before their Strength and WS buff).

Heck, they were even honest about the rationalization for the upgrade.

A couple of years ago, when the game first came out, Space Marines were easily able to take on the likes of Orks, Eldar and whatever else the WH40K player cared to throw at them. However, over the ensuing years new models and new rules for their enemies have gradually shifted the balance of power, so that the once might Space Marines are now looking a little less heroic. Of course this is hardly appropriate!

Yeah. That was it. It just wasn't appropriate that space marines weren't top dog.

So came the +1 T, +1 to hit in close combat (because space marine power armor was more special than other power armor) and special morale rules.

This was in WD first, and reprinted in the WH40K Compilation in 1991. Same as the first craftworlds fluff and rules, as well as the genestealer invasion force and cults.

Somehow it's always justified for Marines but no one else.

Yes. That's literally the point. Welcome to 30 years of GW design philosophy. If it doesn't 'feel' right, they make no apologies about changing the rules.
For all the complaining about marines, its the same at year 31 of the game as it was in year 2.
Its way past time for people to stop being surprised by this.

Voss wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Voss wrote:
Well, eventually, anyway.

Its useful to remember this isn't the first marine upgrade.

They started life with T3 and a 4+ save, and were happily slaughtered by shuriken catapults and orks with mass bolter fire (This also dating back before ork shooting was nerfed and before their Strength and WS buff).

Heck, they were even honest about the rationalization for the upgrade.

A couple of years ago, when the game first came out, Space Marines were easily able to take on the likes of Orks, Eldar and whatever else the WH40K player cared to throw at them. However, over the ensuing years new models and new rules for their enemies have gradually shifted the balance of power, so that the once might Space Marines are now looking a little less heroic. Of course this is hardly appropriate!

Yeah. That was it. It just wasn't appropriate that space marines weren't top dog.

So came the +1 T, +1 to hit in close combat (because space marine power armor was more special than other power armor) and special morale rules.

This was in WD first, and reprinted in the WH40K Compilation in 1991. Same as the first craftworlds fluff and rules, as well as the genestealer invasion force and cults.

Somehow it's always justified for Marines but no one else.

Yes. That's literally the point. Welcome to 30 years of GW design philosophy. If it doesn't 'feel' right, they make no apologies about changing the rules.
For all the complaining about marines, its the same at year 31 of the game as it was in year 2.
Its way past time for people to stop being surprised by this.

right????
if this was 1993 maybe some complaints about how shocking this is would be ok.

It's not shocking, merely lopsided and wrong.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
marines are sold as being a tough army that can take a hit.

Yes, but Eldars of all stripes are a glass cannon army that can pack a punch, enough to kill marines. Don't worry, getting D2 and double attacks/shoots won't come without a point increase. Eldar will feel elite too, as they should.
Imperial guard or genestealer cult will still find marines are tough.

You'd have a point if Eldar weren't just regular cannons because saying Eldar aren't durable has been really inaccurate for several editions.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
marines are sold as being a tough army that can take a hit.

Yes, but Eldars of all stripes are a glass cannon army that can pack a punch, enough to kill marines. Don't worry, getting D2 and double attacks/shoots won't come without a point increase. Eldar will feel elite too, as they should.
Imperial guard or genestealer cult will still find marines are tough.

You'd have a point if Eldar weren't just regular cannons because saying Eldar aren't durable has been really inaccurate for several editions.

When people asked for more durable marines they weren't talking about Leviathans. When people ask for more durable Eldar they're not talking about their flyers.

BrianDavion wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

GW have actively nerfed the eldar since 2nd ed while still pedalling the 'speed as defence' fluff and the power of exarchs.

To be fair, "speed as defense" was generally a thing for eldar until recently. I started in playing in 5th when moving a skimmer far enough in the movement phase meant that it could only be hit on 6+ in melee and got a 4+ save against shooting (back when vehicles generally didn't have saves at all). Until 8th edition, our jetbikes could move after shooting meaning we could generally pop around corners and hide from retaliation after shooting. In 6th(?) and 7th, Jink was a genuinely useful form of defense, and Battle Focus used to let us do a smaller version of JSJ.

Of course, people got sick of the JSJ, so they took it away. Instead of using positioning or moving fast to get our defensive benefits, we just stacked to-hit modifiers to represent how hard we are to hit. It was hard to put better than a -1 on most of your army (unless you were spamming flyers), and it largely lacked the mobility aspect, but it got the job done. Of course, people (rightly) got sick of the to-hit mods, so 9th edition gave us the -1 to hit cap. Which is fine except they don't seem to have really given us anything to replace it.

So while we still have the speed, it doesn't really translate into "defense" outside of vectored engines and Lighting Fast Reactions.

Apparently only marines get to invoke the 'hardly appropriate' card whenever they get buffed...

I wouldn't get too salty about that line They said something similar when they gave drukhari a quality of life buff between their 3rd edition and 5th edition books. Seems pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek, and they assume a similar tone whenever they're announcing buffs to any given army.

GW generally has a vision for what each army is SUPPOSED to be like. the vision for Marines is "small in number but highly effective"

I do think GW's spent the latter half of 8th edition thus trying to make Marines "fit the vision" and I think have more or less made a solid go at it. Eldar could proably stand a revisit themselves I actually think GW was planning on doiung that with Ynnari but for whatever reason decided to change course and move away from that.

the problem with Space Marines being that they went about re-imagining that by giving them just about every toy imagineable and ramping their stats through the roof without much respect to other factions, resulting in one of the smallest factions in-universe (and one largely noted for being hidebound and tied to traditions and roles) having by far the widest and most diverse selection of units, weapons, and abilities of any army in the game, and a power level to match. That's not a sustainable option I suspect. I'm not sure how GW would handle Eldar in such a vein, typically they just try to make Eldar "fit the vision" by making a couple things unreasonably difficult to kill and pairing it with a couple absurdly overtuned firepower units and relying heavily on a must-take Farseer and ignoring the rest of the book

Power armour should grant +1 str and re- roll all saves if they wanted to make marines fluffy. Giving them two wounds doesn't seem correct to me but no matter I do not fear any marine army

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
marines are sold as being a tough army that can take a hit.

Yes, but Eldars of all stripes are a glass cannon army that can pack a punch, enough to kill marines. Don't worry, getting D2 and double attacks/shoots won't come without a point increase. Eldar will feel elite too, as they should.
Imperial guard or genestealer cult will still find marines are tough.

You'd have a point if Eldar weren't just regular cannons because saying Eldar aren't durable has been really inaccurate for several editions.

When people asked for more durable marines they weren't talking about Leviathans. When people ask for more durable Eldar they're not talking about their flyers.

Yeah just all the Wave Serpents and the units based on that hull and eventually the Biker units and stuff that could just hide behind cover after shooting and eventually just the multiple -1s to hit.

Eldar were basically always a durable army and the people that disagree are the ones mad that their army was called out on being actually low skill level to use.

Voss wrote:

Yes. That's literally the point. Welcome to 30 years of GW design philosophy. If it doesn't 'feel' right, they make no apologies about changing the rules.
For all the complaining about marines, its the same at year 31 of the game as it was in year 2.
Its way past time for people to stop being surprised by this.

Well it doesn't "feel right" that Genestealers and Howling Banshees are struggling to kill marines in melee.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
marines are sold as being a tough army that can take a hit.

Yes, but Eldars of all stripes are a glass cannon army that can pack a punch, enough to kill marines. Don't worry, getting D2 and double attacks/shoots won't come without a point increase. Eldar will feel elite too, as they should.
Imperial guard or genestealer cult will still find marines are tough.

You'd have a point if Eldar weren't just regular cannons because saying Eldar aren't durable has been really inaccurate for several editions.

When people asked for more durable marines they weren't talking about Leviathans. When people ask for more durable Eldar they're not talking about their flyers.

Yeah just all the Wave Serpents and the units based on that hull and eventually the Biker units and stuff that could just hide behind cover after shooting and eventually just the multiple -1s to hit.

Eldar were basically always a durable army and the people that disagree are the ones mad that their army was called out on being actually low skill level to use.

And the infantry in conflict vs. marines?

Elfric wrote:Power armour should grant +1 str and re- roll all saves if they wanted to make marines fluffy. Giving them two wounds doesn't seem correct to me but no matter I do not fear any marine army

yup

Armor value represents how good is the armor a unit is using. Tougthness value represents how difficult is to damage the unit reliably, because it is compared to strenght.

Wounds represents how much punishement a unit can take before going out of action.

So why shouldnt space marines have two wounds? They are harder to wound, thats why they have toughtness 4. They have good armor, thats why they have a 3+. And a space marine can fight without half of his body , and can take much more punishement than a lowly ork boy, an eldar, or a normal human.

Thats why Sicarians all have 2 wounds with a normal human toughtness of 3 because they are more cibernetic than biological and can take a ton of punishement. Theres no reason for Space Marines to not have 2 wounds. The problem it has taken so long and that not many more units have a higher variance of wounds.

^So why shouldnt Orks and Necrons have 2w?

 Insectum7 wrote:
^So why shouldnt Orks and Necrons have 2w?

boys & warriors should!

can't really think of any reason they shouldn't.

Yeah, I also believe , maybe not warriors (Because they have been fluff degraded to Vampire Counts like skeletons) but inmortals should have two wounds. Normal orks have two wounds in AoS so it would not be so extrange for them to have two in 40k. It would actually make them proper resilient like in the fluff, like, ok they have 6+ saves but they are T4 and 2wounds base, with nobz and 3 and meganobz at 4.

Using the full range of stat variance the system offers would make easier to have units be actually different, and balance them with proper point costs.

2W boyz makes sense, they can take just as much, if not more, physical punishment as marines. They just aren't as heavily armoured, hence the 6+. But T4 2W sounds right.

 Galas wrote:
Tougthness value represents how difficult is to damage the unit reliably, because it is compared to strenght.

Wounds represents how much punishement a unit can take before going out of action.

Historically, what you just described is why Marines were T4 instead of T3. For infantry, being harder to kill usually translated into a higher T value; you had to be either a character or substantially larger than a human to get multiple wounds.

With the multi-damage system in 8th/9th, there no longer is any clear structure for how physical toughness translates into T and W. Just play it by ear.

Outside fluff the game design logic here is that theres three values to represent how hard to kill is something: Tougthness, wounds and save (Or aftersaves but lets put those in saves)

So theres really no reason to arbitrarly not use one of those, wounds, in most of the infantry of your game.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
2W boyz makes sense, they can take just as much, if not more, physical punishment as marines. They just aren't as heavily armoured, hence the 6+. But T4 2W sounds right.

2W boyz would detract from Orks being able to play hoard. so I'd not support that, rather as a comprimise I'd rather see Nobz moved to troops.

Nids have no or redundant vital organs even on their smallest organisms. Why are hormagaunts and termagants not 2 wounds and warriors 4-5?

 Lance845 wrote:
Nids have no or redundant vital organs even on their smallest organisms. Why are hormagaunts and termagants not 2 wounds and warriors 4-5?

gaunts have always been cheap and reasonably easy to kill. do you want 15 point gaunts? and 'nids have 3 wounds. thats pretty beefy

 Lance845 wrote:
Nids have no or redundant vital organs even on their smallest organisms. Why are hormagaunts and termagants not 2 wounds and warriors 4-5?

While I believe there is fluff out there stating that gaunts have next to no vital organs, there is also plenty of fluff that says gaunts die if you shoot them with lascannons and chop them up with chianswords. Conceptually, gaunts are "smaller bugs that die easy but come in numbers." Being one wound and cheap reflects that pretty well even if some fluff makes you wonder why they die so easily to lasguns. Their rules match their fluff pretty well in regards to durability is what I'm saying.

Personally, I'd be all for warriors gaining a couple of wounds. They had 3 wounds when the Damage stat wasn't a thing, and then they never got more wounds when weapons became capable of killing them in less than three shots without being S8+. Making them W5ish would reflect their ability to keep fighting without gaping wounds blown out of them quite well.

Orks are a bit trickier. Conceptually, I think of an ork boy as being more difficult to take down than something like a lone gaunt, but a horde of boyz has a similar "die easy but come in numbers" feel to gaunts. 2 wounds would make them feel "meaty", but would you have to raise their points to such an extent that they no longer get taken in large numbers? Or alternatively, is a 30 strong mob of W2 models with potential invul and FNP support too chonky to balance well? Maybe. Genuinely not sure. With death company having their squad size reduced and primaris being more about 3 and 6 man units, maybe we could get away with reducing the max size of a boyz mob to 20 models and giving them 2W? They'd still be large enough units to feel more "horde-like" than elite armies, but it would make a given squad a bit more managable.

I like that marines got 2 wounds. I think there's even a world where you could bump their wounds up even more. But you should probably consider giving multiple wounds to some of the other units out there. If we were talking about D&D or Pokemon or whatever, you wouldn't be surprised if I told you that a tactical marine has more hitpoints than a termagaunt. So it's weird to me that people have an issue with some infantry having multiple hitpoints in a wargame.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Nids have no or redundant vital organs even on their smallest organisms. Why are hormagaunts and termagants not 2 wounds and warriors 4-5?

gaunts have always been cheap and reasonably easy to kill. do you want 15 point gaunts? and 'nids have 3 wounds. thats pretty beefy

No, because I think it's dumb that all space marines have 2 wounds. But if they are going to all have 2 wounds then 1 w models more or less needs to be reserved for the weakest of the weak. Minor deamons and snotlings.

Anything the size of a man or bigger is going to be 2w. Hormagaunts and Termagants are bigger then a normal man and while they are very weakly armored (poor save) and easy to wound (low toughness) they can survive extremely severe wounds and keep on going without even noticing any amount of pain due to the hive mind. They have the correct toughness and save but not the correct wounds by any argument being given by people who think it's fine for all SM to be 2w.

If we are going to be talking about fluff justifying rules AND trying to create a balanced game then there it is. Don't like it? Then Old Marines should be dropped back down to 1.

I think after the other 9th edition codex’ drop the weapons of other armies will do more damage or even balance out the wound issue. BUT the big thing GW is doing make marines OP people buy tons of them to stay relevant than rinse wash and repeat for further armies

 Insectum7 wrote:
^So why shouldnt Orks and Necrons have 2w?

Necron Immortals definitely should. Warriors no, they're a "silver tide" who are reasonably easy to kill comparatively, just with the ability to repair themselves after taking critical damage.

Orks I get where people are coming from since their physiology is so robust, but for real: in every bit of 40k lore I can remember Boyz get slaughtered en masse and are a threat largely due to their overwhelming numbers. They can crush normal human beings physically and can take a rifle butt to the face with a grin sure, but Marines can slaughter them in melee by the dozen and even a firing nest of guardsmen can gun them down by the dozens. They aren't up to par with even an unarmoured Marine and bluntly haven't been for a long time, at least fifth edition.

Nobz should be troops though, to enable lower model count more elite Ork lists, definitely.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
2W boyz makes sense, they can take just as much, if not more, physical punishment as marines. They just aren't as heavily armoured, hence the 6+. But T4 2W sounds right.

2W boyz would detract from Orks being able to play hoard. so I'd not support that, rather as a comprimise I'd rather see Nobz moved to troops.

That would probably work, though actual Ork players should weigh in on that (I don't play Orks). I'd like to see a lot of units moved to troops in their respective armies to help balance against all of the troops options loyalists have *cough *Chosen *cough*.

I would rather see Ork Boyz have toughness 5 instead of two wounds. Harder to kill with low-strength weapons but still cheap and numerous, plus it makes D2+ weapons less useful against them.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
2W boyz makes sense, they can take just as much, if not more, physical punishment as marines. They just aren't as heavily armoured, hence the 6+. But T4 2W sounds right.

2W boyz would detract from Orks being able to play hoard. so I'd not support that, rather as a comprimise I'd rather see Nobz moved to troops.

Not necessarily. Firstborn marines got their 2nd W for +3 points (and just +2 for some units, like Long Fangs or Wolf Guard), so boyz would be 11ppm. Cheap enough to bring 100ish of them if the ork player desires so, just 50-55% of a 2000 points lists budget. Tournament ork hordes lists have already 90-120 boyz at most as there's currently no point in bringing more. Hordes with 150-200 troops would be dead (aren't they already?), but is that a bad thing?

And horde style is just one built for orks, not the only way to field them.

I'm actually not a fan of things going up in W and damage, I'd rather reduce the dice rolling. Halving weapons' damage output and number of shots or units' attacks for example.