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 Canadian 5th wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Nothing you just said counters any point I make, unless you are arguing that since kanz used to be good (5th-6th edition) that its ok for them to be god awful generalists for 7th, 8th and probably 9th.

Simply put, I think Generalist units can be appropriately priced, but at the moment, the SM codex doesn't contain any. Hell, aggressors technically fall into the generalist list because they are great at shooting and pretty damn good in melee but are relatively cheap.

Let's ask this then, if we 'balance' Space Marines by increasing their points costs that's not going to fix them. It's going to remove them from tournament play where they're already completely fine, and then it's going to mean they get to enjoy being dunked on by the next flavour of the month army that gets overturned and 'ruins' casual play.

Really depends doesn't it? Are SM really OP right now (yes) or are they simply balanced by 9th edition standards. so in 18+ months, when everyone finally gets their new codex they might be balanced, by which point Codex 2.0 will come out and restart the cycle again.

SemperMortis wrote:
Really depends doesn't it? Are SM really OP right now (yes) or are they simply balanced by 9th edition standards. so in 18+ months, when everyone finally gets their new codex they might be balanced, by which point Codex 2.0 will come out and restart the cycle again.

Are SM actually OP given that they aren't dominating the tournament scene?

 Canadian 5th wrote:
[ OP given that they aren't dominating the tournament scene?

That's how metas work. If Space Marines are OP they will gate keep everything that does not beat Space Marines and go 50-50 in mirror matches. The things that rise to the top are the things that beat Space Marines without being equally vulnerable to everyone trying to beat Space Marines.

I've played several different competitive games and the things that are over powered must be so incredibly unbalanced to have 0 counters in the entire game to actually rise to the top.

So isn't the thing that beat the super OP Space Marines OP? Often that tactic/strategy/comp has it's own weaknesses that are shored up by Space Marines gatekeeping any counter by it's sheer player base size.

So why do people not switch to the counter instead of the OP thing?

If faction A has 80% Win Rate.

Faction B has 30% rate but 90% win rate vs faction A then Faction A will still be better until there is a critical mass of Faction A so it kind of self regulates to the point that even in testing it looks like an obvious pick.

It's kind of interesting, it becomes a super strange dance in some more complex games.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Are SM actually OP given that they aren't dominating the tournament scene?

This rather assumes that the top-tier tournament meta is perfectly reflective of general play.

Space Marines right now are a gatekeeper army. In casual they are oppresive just like Tau in 7th but in competitive there are many other armies that can make lists that work better or counter better space marines.

Where are you guys getting this from? The fact Marines don't get the top 4 spots in every tournament ever?

Its like saying Eldar were a gatekeeper army in 7th. No, they were just OP. Now various factions could keep up - and it is still a dice game - but they were clearly head and shoulders over a whole range of codexes.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Really depends doesn't it? Are SM really OP right now (yes) or are they simply balanced by 9th edition standards. so in 18+ months, when everyone finally gets their new codex they might be balanced, by which point Codex 2.0 will come out and restart the cycle again.

Are SM actually OP given that they aren't dominating the tournament scene?

The factions that currently make up Codex:Space Marines were 30% of the tournament meta in october. Other factions, like Harlequins, which represented about 1/10th as much of the pool, pulled slightly higher win rates, but not high enough to explain the MASSIVE number of mirror matches that would occur, shoving the marine percent much closer to 50% than it otherwise would be.

I'd like to know what percentage of armies a faction would need to represent for you to consider them to be 'dominating' if 30% isn't it.

Considering that more then half people playing w40k play sm, only 30% of the tournament lists being some sort of marines isn't domination. Specialy when some of the marine subfactions don't have even a 50% win ratio, and those that have one above 50%, do not reach the close to 60% win rates harlis or custodes have. And that is with more armies playing them.

If 1/3 of all wrestlers in competition are from one country or school, but only 1 gets in to top 4, then the school ain't dominating at all.
Now if marines were 10% player and had 50% + of placing in top 4, then it would be different.

40k Stats just reported 2 tournaments from Halloween, Marines got a 1st place and a 2nd place finish.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ohh and in Vasteras Autumn Bash, 5th and 6th place were also Marines, and 7th was custodes

Karol wrote:
Considering that more then half people playing w40k play sm, only 30% of the tournament lists being some sort of marines isn't domination. Specialy when some of the marine subfactions don't have even a 50% win ratio, and those that have one above 50%, do not reach the close to 60% win rates harlis or custodes have. And that is with more armies playing them.

If 1/3 of all wrestlers in competition are from one country or school, but only 1 gets in to top 4, then the school ain't dominating at all.
Now if marines were 10% player and had 50% + of placing in top 4, then it would be different.

Do you have data that proves that 50% of people playing w40k play SM?

My impression was that the only actual data we had was of the competitive play pool.

There is also the fact that with 3% playrate and a 56% winrate, harlequins will almost never see a mirror match (which always results in a loss and a win for that faction, pushing their win pct closer to 50%) but with a 30% playrate and a 55% winrate, Space Marines will see mirror matches nearly 1/3 of the time.

the_scotsman wrote:

Karol wrote:
Considering that more then half people playing w40k play sm, only 30% of the tournament lists being some sort of marines isn't domination. Specialy when some of the marine subfactions don't have even a 50% win ratio, and those that have one above 50%, do not reach the close to 60% win rates harlis or custodes have. And that is with more armies playing them.

If 1/3 of all wrestlers in competition are from one country or school, but only 1 gets in to top 4, then the school ain't dominating at all.
Now if marines were 10% player and had 50% + of placing in top 4, then it would be different.

Do you have data that proves that 50% of people playing w40k play SM?

My impression was that the only actual data we had was of the competitive play pool.

There is also the fact that with 3% playrate and a 56% winrate, harlequins will almost never see a mirror match (which always results in a loss and a win for that faction, pushing their win pct closer to 50%) but with a 30% playrate and a 55% winrate, Space Marines will see mirror matches nearly 1/3 of the time.

In other words, in a 5 game tournament, every Marine player is likely to play between 1 and 2 mirror matches.

it is tough to overstate just how much that mirror match percentage matters to the overall winrate.

If marines were played the same % as now, but they won 100% of the games that were not mirror matches, Space Marines would only have an 85% winrate.

Generalists can actually be very effective, if not flat out OP. Take SM: a "generalist" SM army can be extremely good both offensive and defensive wise.

Offensive: with doctrines everything sooner or later gets a boost in AP and pretty much any weapon, including free ones, have natural AP-1 or better. Those weapons also have high rate of fire and easy access to re-rolls which means they are good against multiple kinds of targets.

Defensive: an entire army of high save, multiwound and T4-5 bodies is extremely resilient as it can soak tons of anti infantry shots while proper anti tank is kinda wasted on those platforms of 20-40ppm bodies.

IMHO the real SM problem is that SM aren't generalists at all. To be generalists they should be "just" decent in everything (mobility, staying power, melee potential, firepower, strong psychic phase, etc...) while in fact they are excellent in multiple fields and terrible in nothing. Only in a few aspects they're really the "jack of trades" that used to define them.

So in conclusion, they really aren't generalists but they are extremely good.

 Blackie wrote:
Generalists can actually be very effective, if not flat out OP. Take SM: a "generalist" SM army can be extremely good both offensive and defensive wise.

Offensive: with doctrines everything sooner or later gets a boost in AP and pretty much any weapon, including free ones, have natural AP-1 or better. Those weapons also have high rate of fire and easy access to re-rolls which means they are good against multiple kinds of targets.

Defensive: an entire army of high save, multiwound and T4-5 bodies is extremely resilient as it can soak tons of anti infantry shots while proper anti tank is kinda wasted on those platforms of 20-40ppm bodies.

IMHO the real SM problem is that SM aren't generalists at all. To be generalists they should be "just" decent in everything (mobility, staying power, melee potential, firepower, strong psychic phase, etc...) while in fact they are excellent in multiple fields and terrible in nothing. Only in a few aspects they're really the "jack of trades" that used to define them.

So in conclusion, they really aren't generalists but they are extremely good.

I think its hard to represent generalists in GW's game system. You either get target dummy marines or 9th ed marines. With the scale of the game now, I don't really understand how marines can possibly work. The Tau have like 1000 times more Riptides than the Imperium does marines. Entire marine chapters would be lost in an afternoon the way they are deployed.

Tyel wrote:
Where are you guys getting this from? The fact Marines don't get the top 4 spots in every tournament ever?

Its like saying Eldar were a gatekeeper army in 7th. No, they were just OP. Now various factions could keep up - and it is still a dice game - but they were clearly head and shoulders over a whole range of codexes.

You aren't disagreeing with me. As I said, in casual they are oppresive because their power level is just too much in literally all of the codex. But some armies can make better competitive lists (That doesnt mean marines aren't competitive or can't reach tops, is obviously they can and are). But a casual space marine army will trash any casual other codex army.