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SemperMortis wrote:
4 to 6 months ends in december of 2017. I showed tournament results from 2018. SM finished 6th overall and were in close contention with 5th and 4th place. Clearly they were still performing fine after that 6 month window he randomly chose. So again, you and he are both wrong. Ohh and here it is incase you want to be lazy.

I’m not so lazy I don’t see you still lying about what what said. He made a claim, you misrepresented it and went off on all the other codexes not being out in 4-6 months.

I’m also not so lazy I don’t see you disregard anything that doesn’t fit your narrative like those firewarriors in half range instead of acknowledging a narrow exception. Like an honest person would.

And finally, I’m not so lazy I didn’t notice you changing from shooting the same target to fighting each other to muddy the waters with mixed durability. But I get it. Nobody can honestly claim/prove an average 3 or less S4 -0 D1 attacks will out fight 7.5 S4 -0 D1 attacks.

Breton wrote:

I’m not so lazy I don’t see you still lying about what what said. He made a claim, you misrepresented it and went off on all the other codexes not being out in 4-6 months.

except the initial statement was mine, and he responded that it wasn't 18 months but 4-6, I then disproved that both in the # of months between all major factions receiving a codex and the fact that even after that 4-6 months, SM still won the 6th most tournament placings during the entire year that followed.

Breton wrote:
I’m also not so lazy I don’t see you disregard anything that doesn’t fit your narrative like those firewarriors in half range instead of acknowledging a narrow exception. Like an honest person would.

You mean like the part where i said

At half range firewarriors do more damage but at the same time, if firewarriors are 15' from ork boyz, they are dead the next turn, where as those intercessors will move 6' double tap and attempt a charge, and if they get into CC with those ork boyz, they win.

Also, being better at longer than half range isn't a "Narrow exception" its literally half the range of the weapon. And on top of that as I originally stated, Firewarriors DO NOT want to be 15' or closer to Ork boyz or basically any other troops in the game, because at T3 WS5 they melt when in CC.

Breton wrote:
And finally, I’m not so lazy I didn’t notice you changing from shooting the same target to fighting each other to muddy the waters with mixed durability. But I get it. Nobody can honestly claim/prove an average 3 or less S4 -0 D1 attacks will out fight 7.5 S4 -0 D1 attacks.

wow....ok. So you mean this is somehow "Muddying the waters".

20 firewarriors = 180pts, 9 intercessors = 180pts.
20 firewarriors get 20 shots, 10 hits, 6.66 wounds for 5.55 Dead ork boyz.
9 Intercessors get 18 shots, 12 hits, 6 wounds for 6 Dead Ork boyz.
CC
20 Firewarriors 20 attacks, 6.66 hits, 2.22 wounds and 1.85 dead orkz
9 Intercessors get 28 attacks, 18.6 hits, 9.3 wounds and 7.77 dead boyz

Against one another though
20 firewarriors, 20 shots, 10 hits, 6.66 wounds 2 Dmg, 1 dead intercessor (20pts lost)
9 intercessors get 18 shots, 12 hits, 8 wounds for 5.33 dead firewarriors (45pts lost)
CC
20 attacks, 6.6 hits, 2.2 wounds and .73ish wounds. no dead marines (0pts lost)
28 attacks, 18.6 hits, 12.4 wounds and 6.2 dead Tau firewarriors (54pts lost)

At half range firewarriors do more damage but at the same time, if firewarriors are 15' from ork boyz, they are dead the next turn, where as those intercessors will move 6' double tap and attempt a charge, and if they get into CC with those ork boyz, they win.

How much more in depth should I go so I don't "Muddy the waters"?

You disproved his claim the CWE and IG codexes were out in 4-6 months by listing all of the codexes that we’re out in those 4-6 months. Including IG and CWE. Then trying to dunk on him about the SOB codex not coming out until after SM 2.0.

And I see you still haven’t done Choppa boys vs (something) and Intercessors against the same (something) to prove Intercessors with less than half the same number of the same quality attacks out fight ork boys.

Tell you what, I’ll do it.

1 intercessor charges a guard squad. 3 attacks, hit on 3’s 2 hits, wound on 3’s, 1.34 wounds, .67 damage.

2.5 orks, 7.5 attacks, 5 hits, 3.35 wounds, 1.675 damage.

That can’t be right. I was PROMISED Intercessors outfight orks, point for point.

Breton wrote:

100 tactical marines isn’t possible. You’d need three HQs, 3 elites, 3 FA, and 3 HS or some such. Even 100 first born assorted marines probably isn’t very possible. Definitely not with even minimal options like heavy bolters etc. 100 first born with no upgrades is going to run you roughly 1800 points, and a cap/LT will eat up the last 200.

400 gaunts will run you what 1600? Leaving a couple hundred for HQs and a couple hundred for some sort of specialist(s)? And no, 400 gaunts require 400 shots. 100 first born require 100 shots.

Those 37 Custodes (max 2K according to someone else I’m taking their word for it right now) get at most (usually) two shots per battle round. 37*2*5 = 370 shots the whole game if everything goes their way. 30 gaunts, plus hqs plus those specials will never be shot at.you can’t even roll lucky enough to take them out because you can’t even roll that many dice.

100 firstborn require 200 1D shots. Mathwise 2,000 Fleshborer shots from the gants not in cover. 4,000 in cover.

400 Gants require 1086 Bolter shots in return (not counting doctrine). 1355 in cover. Given the better bolter range the I'd say the marines would have the advantage, and if there was cover that advantage would dramatically increase.

I'm not saying a literal 100 marine army would be good, but neither would a 400 Gant army. But the broad strokes idea behind both could be the basis for a reasonable "hoard" skew build.

Breton wrote:
You disproved his claim the CWE and IG codexes were out in 4-6 months by listing all of the codexes that we’re out in those 4-6 months. Including IG and CWE. Then trying to dunk on him about the SOB codex not coming out until after SM 2.0.

And I see you still haven’t done Choppa boys vs (something) and Intercessors against the same (something) to prove Intercessors with less than half the same number of the same quality attacks out fight ork boys.

Tell you what, I’ll do it.

1 intercessor charges a guard squad. 3 attacks, hit on 3’s 2 hits, wound on 3’s, 1.34 wounds, .67 damage.

2.5 orks, 7.5 attacks, 5 hits, 3.35 wounds, 1.675 damage.

That can’t be right. I was PROMISED Intercessors outfight orks, point for point.

You are ignoring the fact that it is a lot easier to pick off orks. 4 Guardsmen (20 points), based on random mathhammer app I found online, swing their 4 close combat attacks and deal .5 wounds on average to Ork Boyz, or .22 wounds to an Intercessor, who has 2 wounds. Part of outchopping the choppy people are saying is that they can dish out damage on par with Ork Boyz while being far more survivable, and simultaneously outshooting them by a long shot.

That and I believe at least the original complaint was that facing off against each other, Marines can 1v1 Orks with ease, while simultaneously outshooting Tau, per the examples people are bandying about.

Breton wrote:
You disproved his claim the CWE and IG codexes were out in 4-6 months by listing all of the codexes that we’re out in those 4-6 months. Including IG and CWE. Then trying to dunk on him about the SOB codex not coming out until after SM 2.0.

And I see you still haven’t done Choppa boys vs (something) and Intercessors against the same (something) to prove Intercessors with less than half the same number of the same quality attacks out fight ork boys.

Tell you what, I’ll do it.

1 intercessor charges a guard squad. 3 attacks, hit on 3’s 2 hits, wound on 3’s, 1.34 wounds, .67 damage.

2.5 orks, 7.5 attacks, 5 hits, 3.35 wounds, 1.675 damage.

That can’t be right. I was PROMISED Intercessors outfight orks, point for point.

Go ahead and run the full math.

First off, Guardsmen have a 5+, not a 4+.

Second off, Intercessor does 3 attacks, 2 hits, 4/3 wounds and 8/9 failed saves.
Three Boys do 9 attacks, 6 hits, 4 wounds, and 8/3 failed saves.

But the strikes back, 11 and 9 respectively, do 1/6th of a wound each. That's .6 wounds to the Intercessor, but 1.25 Boys dead. The Guard fight twice before the charger fights again, for 1.2 wounds against the Intercessor and 2.5 dead Boys.

Then, Intercessor gets 4 attacks, 8/3 hits, 16/9 wounds, and 32/27 failed saves.
The one remaining Boy, if the Ork player got lucky, does 6 attacks, 4 hits, 8/3 wounds and 16/9 dead.

The remaining attacks from the Guard kill the Intercessor or lone remaining Boy. But since there's a close to 50% chance of the Guard killing the Boys in two combat phases, whereas there's only about a one in three chance of doing that to the Intercessor...

8/3+(16/9)/2=3.56 dead Guard, averaged
8/9+2(32/27)/3=1.68 dead Guard, averaged

Alright, fair. Against GEQ, Intercessors come out right about half as effective as slightly more points of Orks. (The exact effectiveness, point to point, would be 56.63%.)

 kurhanik wrote:


You are ignoring the fact that it is a lot easier to pick off orks. 4 Guardsmen (20 points), based on random mathhammer app I found online, swing their 4 close combat attacks and deal .5 wounds on average to Ork Boyz, or .22 wounds to an Intercessor, who has 2 wounds. Part of outchopping the choppy people are saying is that they can dish out damage on par with Ork Boyz while being far more survivable, and simultaneously outshooting them by a long shot.

That and I believe at least the original complaint was that facing off against each other, Marines can 1v1 Orks with ease, while simultaneously outshooting Tau, per the examples people are bandying about.

What does “how easy it is to pick off orks” have to do with how hard they fight, point for point?

And no, the original math was Tau Shooting Orks, then Marines shooting orks. Then we switched to Genestealers/Orks fighting marines and Marines fighting Orks as opposed to both of them fighting the same target with the same T and Sv.

We had to add another variable for our Ork claim

To the original question..

Marines can't do top 4 in 9th like they did in 8th. So far.
And uh, they can't make friends either.
That is all.

dominuschao wrote:
To the original question..

Marines can't do top 4 in 9th like they did in 8th. So far.
And uh, they can't make friends either.
That is all.

yeah, with all the complaining you'd think we where in the early days of the iron hands supplement. the problem is that 9th edition is a game of manuver and objective capture. it's hard to mathhammer out who can capture the most objectives for 2000 points.

What! Are you telling me that movement and board control are things that we cant mathhammer out, and thus any conclusion solely based on mathhammer doesnt include a significant number of factors that are important to victory. Perhaps it is the interaction of a variety of things that determines somethings value, situational variables that you cant just apply a number to?

No, no its the people who think the game is more than simple D6 math who are wrong.

Okay, show of hands, since I've been guilty of mischaracterizing people on this one before - Who here is genuinely arguing that marines aren't far too good and multicapable right now?

I mean, you might argue against one point or another but if you've come to the overall conclusion that they're anything but overtuned at the moment, then clearly our basis for what is even going on is so vastly disparate that I wouldn't even know where to begin bridging that gap.

I think most people agree that they are too powerful right now, but disagree on to the extent of that power differance.

Also at some point it gets annoying seeing it come up everywhere and infecting every conversation.

“So I was enjoying this bagel and would you..”SOME ELDAR MODELS CAN LEGALLY DRINK, marines are getting to much stuff”

“Yes, but I was talking about my bage “ “MARINES ARE OVERPOWERED”

“Jesus Christ, it’s not that bad, relax I was talking about my bagel”

“Look at those marines trying to silence criticism”

At some point the negativity echo chamber gets beyond obnoxious to the point where it is actively off putting. I mean we have people proud of yelling at the people who are just front line staff at the warhammer community page until they got banned for Christ sakes. If anyone did that to retail workers most of us would tell them off for being a gakwit

Constructive criticism is all well and good, I approve of it and really like community ideas that would improve the game or tone down broken things but the hyperbole, goalpost moving, and just nonstop over reacting to everything gets really old really quick.

Honestly if it weren’t for covid and limited contact with people I wouldn’t even bother coming here anymore. Even bolter and chainsword is getting an influx of dakka types and it sucks. Luckily that community seems more tolerant of pushback against people who create a hostile space.

 Leth wrote:
I think most people agree that they are too powerful right now, but disagree on to the extent of that power differance.

Also at some point it gets annoying seeing it come up everywhere and infecting every conversation.

“So I was enjoying this bagel and would you..”SOME ELDAR MODELS CAN LEGALLY DRINK, marines are getting to much stuff”

“Yes, but I was talking about my bage “ “MARINES ARE OVERPOWERED”

“Jesus Christ, it’s not that bad, relax I was talking about my bagel”

“Look at those marines trying to silence criticism”

At some point the negativity echo chamber gets beyond obnoxious to the point where it is actively off putting. I mean we have people proud of yelling at the people who are just front line staff at the warhammer community page until they got banned for Christ sakes. If anyone did that to retail workers most of us would tell them off for being a gakwit

Constructive criticism is all well and good, I approve of it and really like community ideas that would improve the game or tone down broken things but the hyperbole, goalpost moving, and just nonstop over reacting to everything gets really old really quick.

Honestly if it weren’t for covid and limited contact with people I wouldn’t even bother coming here anymore. Even bolter and chainsword is getting an influx of dakka types and it sucks. Luckily that community seems more tolerant of pushback against people who create a hostile space.

I agree, and it's been this way for waaaay too long.

I feel like loyalist marines have an inordinate amount of support. Compared to my other armies that have maybe 1/5 the entries if they're lucky. And on paper yes they are too good. But in game at least from my experience it's not that simple. I can consistently win against the varieties I've faced but it requires soup and tailoring specifically to deal with marines. But that's the meta for many people I would guess.

 Leth wrote:
What! Are you telling me that movement and board control are things that we cant mathhammer out, and thus any conclusion solely based on mathhammer doesnt include a significant number of factors that are important to victory. Perhaps it is the interaction of a variety of things that determines somethings value, situational variables that you cant just apply a number to?

No, no its the people who think the game is more than simple D6 math who are wrong.

If the people who seem compelled to continuously lie and insist that Intercessors aren't actually that good in raw combat power would actually make a case for Intercessors on the basis of those non-quantifiable factors, then we could have that discussion.

Instead we get these bs claims about their combat power that are easily refuted with basic math, then derail the thread when the people making them exercise their right to deny simple facts.

 Leth wrote:
Even bolter and chainsword is getting an influx of dakka types and it sucks.

Maybe more people are getting tired of the lopsided nature of support/releases/etc.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
Okay, show of hands, since I've been guilty of mischaracterizing people on this one before - Who here is genuinely arguing that marines aren't far too good and multicapable right now?

I mean, you might argue against one point or another but if you've come to the overall conclusion that they're anything but overtuned at the moment, then clearly our basis for what is even going on is so vastly disparate that I wouldn't even know where to begin bridging that gap.

I don't know that Marines are overtuned. I do think too many armies were broken/hammered by the massive and short sighted changes to 8th and haven't been fixed yet. Marines are where they've pretty much always been. I can look at the 2nd Ed Codex Army Lists that came in the box and I can see Marines and Orks at the same time, and I can do the math. Until just recently the first born had 1W, and the same stat line they almost always have. Their points cost was roughly half of what it was then (at 1W). Now it's roughly 67%. Orks have multiple improved stats, one worse one(with a special rule offset), and they're roughly 67% of their points cost. Guardians got more skillful, less obedient, and went up 33%. Guard Infantry Squads are half the price. Termaguants are half price and a little less accurate. Stealers are half priced. You look at the then vs now for a lot of units that fall into the same archetypes (basic troop, main battle tank, etc) and they're following similar patterns with a little wiggle room for some stat changes and one wacky outlier (like the guardians going up in price)

What I'm getting at is the stat sheets for XYZ points per model(s) haven't changed very much. The only part that has changed significantly is usually the XYZ points, and even then they usually fit in the same ratio everyone else's data sheet changed by. Most infantry got cheaper, many vehicles went up. In other words, they haven't tuned the units/armies very much at all.

Genestealers didn't get nerfed. Close Combat changed and it absolutely screwed them. Banjo music in a canoe screwed them. But again, they didn't retune Genestealers, they broke fighting. And then did a single-cheeked job of fixing what they broke with chopas, Astartes Chainswords, (Half of that Single-Cheek here: )Scything Talons, and Shock/Hateful Assault etc.

Edit to break unintended emoticon

 CEO Kasen wrote:
Testy and irrational stuff in defense of Marines winds up self-fulfilling the prophecies by making it very difficult to keep the fury correctly laser-focused on GW, and winds up with people really, really wanting to attack Marine players. Some of them do, and then the Marine players say "You just hate marines!" And the cycle devolves.

The vast majority of marine players have entitlement complexes anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Leth wrote:
Also at some point it gets annoying seeing it come up everywhere and infecting every conversation.

To be frank, the fact that you find it annoying is a problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breton wrote:
I don't know that Marines are overtuned. I do think too many armies were broken/hammered by the massive and short sighted changes to 8th and haven't been fixed yet.

So marines are overtuned, because balanced is relative to the play environment they're found in.

Hecaton wrote:

 CEO Kasen wrote:
Testy and irrational stuff in defense of Marines winds up self-fulfilling the prophecies by making it very difficult to keep the fury correctly laser-focused on GW, and winds up with people really, really wanting to attack Marine players. Some of them do, and then the Marine players say "You just hate marines!" And the cycle devolves.

The vast majority of marine players have entitlement complexes anyway.

Sounds pretty entitled of you.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Leth wrote:
Also at some point it gets annoying seeing it come up everywhere and infecting every conversation.

To be frank, the fact that you find it annoying is a problem.

Just take it, you deserve it for playing Marines anyway.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breton wrote:
I don't know that Marines are overtuned. I do think too many armies were broken/hammered by the massive and short sighted changes to 8th and haven't been fixed yet.

So marines are overtuned, because balanced is relative to the play environment they're found in.

No, the rules are bad. Marines haven't changed much. Few datasheets have. Demanding datasheets be nerfed for this year's ruleset is silly. You don't change the constant, you change the variable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:


If the people who seem compelled to continuously lie and insist that Intercessors aren't actually that good in raw combat power would actually make a case for Intercessors on the basis of those non-quantifiable factors, then we could have that discussion.

Instead we get these bs claims about their combat power that are easily refuted with basic math, then derail the thread when the people making them exercise their right to deny simple facts.

No kidding, did you see the guy trying to claim 7.5 S4 -0 D1 attacks were worse than between 2 and 3 S4 -0 D1 attacks?

Hecaton wrote:

 CEO Kasen wrote:
Testy and irrational stuff in defense of Marines winds up self-fulfilling the prophecies by making it very difficult to keep the fury correctly laser-focused on GW, and winds up with people really, really wanting to attack Marine players. Some of them do, and then the Marine players say "You just hate marines!" And the cycle devolves.

The vast majority of marine players have entitlement complexes anyway.

Look, I hate what GW has done with Marines - and not done with other armies - with a passion that makes rabid wolverines look sedate, and I wouldn't even say that. For a variety of reasons.

1) Certainly some do feel like they should just be better, but vast majority feels like a stretch.
2) "Entitlement" meant something at some point, but these days, I don't know. I find the word leaves a bad taste in my mouth, one used to provoke arguments rather than solve them.
3) If I do say that, we're never actually going to find any common ground whatsoever with the numerous Marine mains who aren't dickbags.

Breton wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 CEO Kasen wrote:
Testy and irrational stuff in defense of Marines winds up self-fulfilling the prophecies by making it very difficult to keep the fury correctly laser-focused on GW, and winds up with people really, really wanting to attack Marine players. Some of them do, and then the Marine players say "You just hate marines!" And the cycle devolves.

The vast majority of marine players have entitlement complexes anyway.

Sounds pretty entitled of you.

Sounds like he's proving Kasen's point completely.

Intercessors can have 3 shots and 3 attacks a turn. Assuming it isn't turn 1, 3 of which will have a point of AP. Therefore they expect to do 14.66 points worth of damage to Ork Boyz before any other effects. This is just shy of a 75% return.

By contrast an Ork boy can have say 1 pistol shot and 4 attacks. Which expects to do about 5 points of damage to the Intercessor, for a 63% return. This drops to 4 damage and 50% if there are fewer than 20 boyz in the squad. This is worse.

Unfortunately is doubly worse because as anyone whose ever played Orks (or any horde army really) will tell you, getting 25-30 boyz to actually fight is difficult. Most likely some won't be swinging in which case the expected output falls further.

Why won't Marines be claiming all the top 4 spots everywhere? Because, despite what people say, 40k has elements of skill beyond just picking the best units in the game. 9th is an objective based game, and if you remember to play to your objectives, and your opponent doesn't, you are likely to win even if his units are doing far more damage than yours. Also, dice are a thing. Just because the above expectations have the Marines killing 1.83 Orks a turn doesn't mean they will. You can roll badly, your opponent can roll well.

All theory suggests Marines remain the best codex in the game, therefore the army everyone is Meta-ing against. This doesn't mean they have or will ever have a 100% win record against everyone.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
They can't do a carpet of bodies. Pretty much everything else they can do to some extent well, but just maybe not as well as other armies.

Again, what's considered a horde?

Marines can field 90+ bodies in a 2k list.
They can field 60+ and still have plenty of room for toys.

I'd agree that it's not the most optimal way to play them, but that's not so much because they CAN'T horde, and more because their other options are better. Hell, this top-placing Ork list only had about 100 bodies, and they were not NEARLY as durable as Space Marine bodies.

That list has exactly 137 bodies, but I do understand your point.

You are applying two different metrics here though.
Either you look at both marines and orks from a perspective what makes a good list OR you look at both of them from a perspective what is potentially possible for them to do.

A space wolves horde list I found here goes up to 105 models, but the vast majority of models were fenrisian wolves, not marines. Most other lists I could find in the recent articles on goodhammer had 70-80 models at best. From just looking at the lists, it seems like many high cost models are just too good to pass up on.
If you go for the theoretical maximum, a goff horde could easily go up to 200 bodies with just a single battalion and still bring Thrakka.
So, when you apply the same metric to both, orks outhorde marines either way.

 Jidmah wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
They can't do a carpet of bodies. Pretty much everything else they can do to some extent well, but just maybe not as well as other armies.

Again, what's considered a horde?

Marines can field 90+ bodies in a 2k list.
They can field 60+ and still have plenty of room for toys.

I'd agree that it's not the most optimal way to play them, but that's not so much because they CAN'T horde, and more because their other options are better. Hell, this top-placing Ork list only had about 100 bodies, and they were not NEARLY as durable as Space Marine bodies.

That list has exactly 137 bodies, but I do understand your point.

You are applying two different metrics here though.
Either you look at both marines and orks from a perspective what makes a good list OR you look at both of them from a perspective what is potentially possible for them to do.

A space wolves horde list I found here goes up to 105 models, but the vast majority of models were fenrisian wolves, not marines. Most other lists I could find in the recent articles on goodhammer had 70-80 models at best. From just looking at the lists, it seems like many high cost models are just too good to pass up on.
If you go for the theoretical maximum, a goff horde could easily go up to 200 bodies with just a single battalion and still bring Thrakka.
So, when you apply the same metric to both, orks outhorde marines either way.

I capped out at 82 and 75 doing a first pass on Old Marines. Now I wasn't doing "horde" or anything like that, just playing around, but at 18+ PPM you're not making a full Firstborn Company anymore inside of 2,000 points. 100 Bodies is 1800 even before you add the Heavies, Specials, Cap, Chap, and 2 LT's. I didn't try playing with scouts yet, but I tend to go sniper with them instead of BP/CCW etc.

So Battle Scribe just released their first pass on the new codex.

And I figured I'd try all first born.

Cap, Jump Pack, TH/SS Shield Eternal

LT Jump Pack, pair of Lightning Claws (potentially a Hero of the Chapter for more goodies)

10 Tacs, Flamer, Grav Cannon
10 Tacs Flamer, Grav Cannon
10 Tacs Flamer, Grav Cannon
10 Tacs Flamer Grav Cannon

10 Vanguard Vets Jump Packs, 5 TH/SS 5 TwinLC

10 Assault Marines 2 Eviscerators

10 Devs 4 GC+A
10 Devs 4GC+A

Works out to exactly 2K.

Also Exactly 2K

Cap, Jump Pack, TH/SS Shield Eternal

LT Jump Pack, pair of Lightning Claws (potentially a Hero of the Chapter for more goodies)

10 Tacs, Flamer, Grav Cannon, Drop Pod
10 Tacs Flamer, Grav Cannon, Drop Pod
10 Tacs Flamer, Grav Cannon, Drop Pod
10 Tacs Flamer Grav Cannon, Drop Pod

10 Assault Marines 2 Eviscerators
10 Assault Marines 2 Eviscerators

5 Devs 4 GC+A
5 Devs 4GC+A

Ah they are usually quickly shouted down and then don’t show up again over there.

It’s like rats, if you let them in and breed, eventually they take over the place, but if you stop them from settin up shop? Your food stays rat dropping free.

This point I started coming here for popcorn rather than any actual meaningful conversations about the hobby. That was just an exercise in frustration. It’s rough talking about the game with people who seem to hate it yet still play.

 Jidmah wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
They can't do a carpet of bodies. Pretty much everything else they can do to some extent well, but just maybe not as well as other armies.

Again, what's considered a horde?

Marines can field 90+ bodies in a 2k list.
They can field 60+ and still have plenty of room for toys.

I'd agree that it's not the most optimal way to play them, but that's not so much because they CAN'T horde, and more because their other options are better. Hell, this top-placing Ork list only had about 100 bodies, and they were not NEARLY as durable as Space Marine bodies.

That list has exactly 137 bodies, but I do understand your point.

You are applying two different metrics here though.
Either you look at both marines and orks from a perspective what makes a good list OR you look at both of them from a perspective what is potentially possible for them to do.

A space wolves horde list I found here goes up to 105 models, but the vast majority of models were fenrisian wolves, not marines. Most other lists I could find in the recent articles on goodhammer had 70-80 models at best. From just looking at the lists, it seems like many high cost models are just too good to pass up on.
If you go for the theoretical maximum, a goff horde could easily go up to 200 bodies with just a single battalion and still bring Thrakka.
So, when you apply the same metric to both, orks outhorde marines either way.

Besides, I think "can be done while moderately effective" goes without saying. I CAAAAN grab a bunch of fire warriors and run them up the board to get in close combat. but I would not say "you can play Tau as a melee horde army" (..... I'd love to see someone try mind you just to see the look on his opponents face)

I actually played against such an army in 7th. It was beautiful.

Beautiful slaughter that is, my lootas have never killed that many models in melee. And probably the only way orks would ever beat tau in that edition.

BrianDavion wrote:
Besides, I think "can be done while moderately effective" goes without saying. I CAAAAN grab a bunch of fire warriors and run them up the board to get in close combat. but I would not say "you can play Tau as a melee horde army" (..... I'd love to see someone try mind you just to see the look on his opponents face)

I'm not sure about melee - but I think if Vior'la and FSE could be combined in one trait, there is potential for a quite fast, short ranged infantry horde list. Breachers/Carbines/Drones provide a mountain of shots, while Kroot serve as aggressive forward positioning bubble wrap. A couple of commanders could provide some point-anti tank.
You could do it anyway, but I feel without the free rerolls though you don't have the damage, and BS5 is awful, so without Vior'la its too slow.

If money/time was no object though it could be fun to experiment with.

This talk of Tau trying to lean into melee kind of leans back to where conversation was like 3 or 4 pages ago. The army is designed with range in mind, and if say it is an S tier gunline, their standard melee is D tier. Now, with some use of Breachers for close quarters firepower and leaning into Kroot, you could make some melee capabilities in the army, maybe bumping it to a C, but at the cost of some long range firepower, synergies within your army, and since Kroot are essentially made of paper, staying power. So yeah, you could probably bully some gunline units that are not expecting melee / cqc Tau, but vs a dedicated melee unit they would fold fast - but still have a good chunk of their shootiness to compensate.

From what I understand, the ideal for Marines would be a solid B across the board, with say an A in survivability - and then the ability to tilt in any direction, though not as hard as a fully specialized force would be. So if you go gunline tank brigade marines, you'd probably be say A in firepower, survivability, and vehicle power, probably a D in hordiness, and still have that solid B across the board elsewhere. That means that if they find a foe they cannot out shoot with the gunline, they still have average to above average melee capabilities to stick it to them.

The problem is that right now, from what I am gathering from this thread and elsewhere and a casual glance at what Marines can do, they are more A tier across the board (except hordiness, which they probably cap out at a B at best if going all in), and from there can shift one or more abilities up to S tier without much sacrifice - and while still paying prices as if they were upper B across the board like the ideal.

Sorry for the alphabet soup, I just find it easier to visualize by ranking things in tiers D, C, B, A, S going from lowest to highest.

This is just my understanding of the issue people are having with Marines right now (and I suppose since the 2.0 codex), so take that for what you will.

In piggy backing on that point. I don't think it's fair to compare an 8th edition book to a 9th edition book.

Necrons and Space Marines both are so different than their 8th edition books, I don't think we'll be really playing true "9th edition" Until all the codex's get updated.

For better or for worse. I know it sucks to have to wait, especially for other armies. I play Ynnari and Harlequins, I have no idea when I'll be updated. Space Marines will always have a lot of datatsheets, that's just what it is. But, I think the discussion on power level and capabilities will be very different when more books get updated.