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 JNAProductions wrote:
Give them durability through evasion.

One of the downsides of 40K is that they don't really have a defensive stat that shooting needs to overcome to work. Sure, there's Armor and Invul Saves, but that's something the owning player can use to negate the attack, not something the shooter has to beat, like Strength does with Toughness. This is something Initiative could have been converted to use, but that's water under the bridge right now. It will have to wait till they reset how the system works again like with 8th.

 Charistoph wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Give them durability through evasion.

One of the downsides of 40K is that they don't really have a defensive stat that shooting needs to overcome to work. Sure, there's Armor and Invul Saves, but that's something the owning player can use to negate the attack, not something the shooter has to beat, like Strength does with Toughness. This is something Initiative could have been converted to use, but that's water under the bridge right now. It will have to wait till they reset how the system works again like with 8th.

40K 2nd edition did have something like that built in. Any shots at a target that had moved 10" got a -1 (and anything at like a model that had moved 20" got a -2) to-hit. This was in an era when humans had a Move of 4" (thus running 8") while Eldar had a Move of 5" (running 10" and just enough to get the -1).

Tyel wrote:
You can't really argue with "I think Kabalites should be 15 points".

Okay. But they aren't. They won't be. That ship - if such ever existed - has sailed. In this case - unlike say Necrons it never even existed.

Yep. And the design space to shift them that way just doesn't exist either. They're t3, 1W and carry a pilow-gun- those things aren't going to change after the previews proving they haven't.
A huge pile of non-space marines are in the same boat, whether they have a 4++, a 5+, or slightly different pillow-guns, and they would _also_ need to be adjusted.

No amount of 'interesting' unspecified abilities is going to alter the fact that they're same basic GEQ troops with indifferent guns that are barely worth 8 points, let alone almost double that.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

In 5th edition marines were 18 and kabalites were 9 - so almost exactly the same as it is now

16 points. They were 16 points in 5th edition. With a sarge tax of about 26 to make them 90 for 5 with an additional 16 per. Because 5th edition had plenty of taxes from the Sarge to boost things to make it so you'd want to buy out rather then more squads.

Yea, but effectively 18. 10 man would get you down to 17 ppm.

Canadian 5th wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Give them durability through evasion.
Give them abilities that restrict or hamper the foe without outright killing them.
Give them something interesting.

Don't just make them cheap.

You haven't seen the faction rules, army stratagems, and unit rules yet, so it feels very early to be whining that they don't have anything going for them.

Heck, even without those things they seem like a solid unit at 8ppm. They get good returns against a lot of common target profiles, can be a credible melee threat on the charge, they're a very good baseline unit to build an army around, and doubly so now that the big gun on their transport got a massive buff. I could easily see a DE list built around warriors in raiders bringing lances while witches in Venoms pressure the mid-field.

They get good returns by being cheap.
They're not really a credible melee threat. They're (ignoring the Sarge's extra attack) 36 points per wound dealt to a GEQ. 108 points per wound dealt to a MEQ.

I'm not saying they're a bad unit, especially without knowing what else has changed. But given what GW has said in the community articles, and that they're likely still gonna be 8 PPM, they're not what I'd like them to be.

Tyel wrote:You can't really argue with "I think Kabalites should be 15 points".

Okay. But they aren't. They won't be. That ship - if such ever existed - has sailed. In this case - unlike say Necrons it never even existed.

*Shrug*

I'd like Kabalites and other Eldar to be similar in levels of badassery to Marines. Not quite as powerful, especially in durability, but a squad of 10 Marines shouldn't be fearless of a squad of 10 Kabalites.

 JNAProductions wrote:
*Shrug*

I'd like Kabalites and other Eldar to be similar in levels of badassery to Marines. Not quite as powerful, especially in durability, but a squad of 10 Marines shouldn't be fearless of a squad of 10 Kabalites.

For every edition right up to this one, this has been true. Eldar elite warrior types, Aspects, Incubi, wyches, were all credible opponents to the marines, better in their speciality and worse at other things.

So it's not even about liking them to be that way, it's simply saying that the new rules should make them comparatively as good as they were in all other editions of the game.

 Hellebore wrote:
For every edition right up to this one, this has been true. Eldar elite warrior types, Aspects, Incubi, wyches, were all credible opponents to the marines, better in their speciality and worse at other things.

So it's not even about liking them to be that way, it's simply saying that the new rules should make them comparatively as good as they were in all other editions of the game.

Is it any wonder that Marine players hated editions where they paid a premium to be good at a bit of everything while other factions could pay less, cut out extra bits they didn't need, and then casually murder marines while costing less. Yeah, if you want those days back I'm not on board.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
For every edition right up to this one, this has been true. Eldar elite warrior types, Aspects, Incubi, wyches, were all credible opponents to the marines, better in their speciality and worse at other things.

So it's not even about liking them to be that way, it's simply saying that the new rules should make them comparatively as good as they were in all other editions of the game.

Is it any wonder that Marine players hated editions where they paid a premium to be good at a bit of everything while other factions could pay less, cut out extra bits they didn't need, and then casually murder marines while costing less. Yeah, if you want those days back I'm not on board.

I'm sure that the current situation is perfect for Marine players who adore their bolter porn.

However, Marines out-shooting Tau and out-meleeing Orks (just just on a per-model basis but even with equal points) is most certainly not the game I signed up for.

 vipoid wrote:
I'm sure that the current situation is perfect for Marine players who adore their bolter porn.

However, Marines out-shooting Tau and out-meleeing Orks (just just on a per-model basis but even with equal points) is most certainly not the game I signed up for.

Marines should just sit there being outshot, outfought, outranged, with fewer tricks, and that's fine because 'Shoot the fighty ones and fight the shooty ones' is the pinnacle of game design.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I'm sure that the current situation is perfect for Marine players who adore their bolter porn.

However, Marines out-shooting Tau and out-meleeing Orks (just just on a per-model basis but even with equal points) is most certainly not the game I signed up for.

Marines should just sit there being outshot, outfought, outranged, with fewer tricks, and that's fine because 'Shoot the fighty ones and fight the shooty ones' is the pinnacle of game design.

I haven't checked hive in months, glad to see you're still missing the point. /s

The concept is Jack of All Trades. A muhreeeen should outshoot, outtank, outthink and outskill an orc
A mehreeon should outtank and outshoot an eldar
a meryeen should outtank, outskill and outthink a tau

Is that not enough "out-x" for you? Or do you really want to tick all the boxes against all the other ( and more advanced ) alien races in the setting. lmao.

 vipoid wrote:
However, Marines out-shooting Tau and out-meleeing Orks (just just on a per-model basis but even with equal points) is most certainly not the game I signed up for.

Well, on a 1:1 basis, the Boyz were weaker, slower, and had a much worse armor Save, but one could bring a LOT more Boyz in to a scrum, even within the same unit. Fire Warriors were not as accurate without Markerlight support and their Armor wasn't as good, but they did Wound each other at the same rate, so long as other Marine gear isn't taken in to account. One could usually bring more Pulse Rifles than Marines, though, and start shooting Marines earlier, too.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I'm sure that the current situation is perfect for Marine players who adore their bolter porn.

However, Marines out-shooting Tau and out-meleeing Orks (just just on a per-model basis but even with equal points) is most certainly not the game I signed up for.

Marines should just sit there being outshot, outfought, outranged, with fewer tricks, and that's fine because 'Shoot the fighty ones and fight the shooty ones' is the pinnacle of game design.

Because Marines are better at everything than everyone else is the pinnacle of game design? Is this where you stand Canadian 5th? Cause you're sure making it sound that way.

Yes the idea of a generalist unit is that it can achieve its goals by using it's medium strength skills against the weakest skills of an enemy unit to shift a matchup back in its favour. There is nothing wrong inherently with this game design and it suits what GW seems to want marines to be. The fact that in past editions they have failed to make the generalist role work for marines is not a admonishment of this design but rather of GWs ability to balance marines properly. Now we are seeing the other side of this where marines as generalists do every role better than anyones specialty, they're still a generalist but simply punching well above their weight against matchups that they should have been struggling against. This is simply the other side of the coin for GWs inability to find the right middle-ground with marines.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Because Marines are better at everything than everyone else is the pinnacle of game design? Is this where you stand Canadian 5th? Cause you're sure making it sound that way.

Yes the idea of a generalist unit is that it can achieve its goals by using it's medium strength skills against the weakest skills of an enemy unit to shift a matchup back in its favour. There is nothing wrong inherently with this game design and it suits what GW seems to want marines to be. The fact that in past editions they have failed to make the generalist role work for marines is not a admonishment of this design but rather of GWs ability to balance marines properly. Now we are seeing the other side of this where marines as generalists do every role better than anyones specialty, they're still a generalist but simply punching well above their weight against matchups that they should have been struggling against. This is simply the other side of the coin for GWs inability to find the right middle-ground with marines.

*leans in the microphone and whispers* Yeah, but it's always going to be that way. Designing a game as large as this is hard and GW is bad. Either find a new hobby or deal.

The problem is this line of thinking turns into a decades long debate on the roll of "Tactical Marines" in SM army lists in the context of evolving editions and metas. And for the most part its meaningless.

SM are not winning games today because of tactical marines or intercessors. So complaining about how Kabalites or Necron Warriors stack up to SM troops is a bit meaningless (especially when in the case of Necron warriors they stack up fine point for point, and Kabalites seem likely to do the same). The vast majority of games do not consist of 40 Intercessors and "outshooting" 90 Fire Warriors. Or out-punching 100 Boyz. And if they do it may be because those factions are weak and need help.

The idea of a generalist was that the unit should always be "okay". So a tactical squad with a flamer and missile launcher (yes) could shoot boyz, it could shoot other marines or yes it could throw krak missile at a vehicle. By today's standards this is incredibly stilted - but the comparison was say fire dragons, who would far more specialised. Point them at a predator and its happy days. Shoot them at some boyz and you may as well not have bothered. In practice however, GW has rarely followed this design philosophy through and players always quickly identify the break points.

On average the new Incubi, without any additional special rules (which are surely almost inevitable given every other codex release so far and 40k in general), will be getting 175% returns attacking Intercessors. So... yeah. I'm not sure I'd be that worried.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

*leans in the microphone and whispers* Yeah, but it's always going to be that way. Designing a game as large as this is hard and GW is bad. Either find a new hobby or deal.

you sure sound like someone fun to play again... glad your not in my area

 warmaster21 wrote:
you sure sound like someone fun to play again... glad your not in my area

Were you 'fun' to play against when your army was OP or does the perception warp with the meta?

Tyel wrote:
The problem is this line of thinking turns into a decades long debate on the roll of "Tactical Marines" in SM army lists in the context of evolving editions and metas. And for the most part its meaningless.

SM are not winning games today because of tactical marines or intercessors. So complaining about how Kabalites or Necron Warriors stack up to SM troops is a bit meaningless (especially when in the case of Necron warriors they stack up fine point for point, and Kabalites seem likely to do the same). The vast majority of games do not consist of 40 Intercessors and "outshooting" 90 Fire Warriors. Or out-punching 100 Boyz. And if they do it may be because those factions are weak and need help.

The idea of a generalist was that the unit should always be "okay". So a tactical squad with a flamer and missile launcher (yes) could shoot boyz, it could shoot other marines or yes it could throw krak missile at a vehicle. By today's standards this is incredibly stilted - but the comparison was say fire dragons, who would far more specialised. Point them at a predator and its happy days. Shoot them at some boyz and you may as well not have bothered. In practice however, GW has rarely followed this design philosophy through and players always quickly identify the break points.

On average the new Incubi, without any additional special rules (which are surely almost inevitable given every other codex release so far and 40k in general), will be getting 175% returns attacking Intercessors. So... yeah. I'm not sure I'd be that worried.

If I were in a more serious mood today, this is the kind of argument I'd make. Again.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I'm sure that the current situation is perfect for Marine players who adore their bolter porn.

However, Marines out-shooting Tau and out-meleeing Orks (just just on a per-model basis but even with equal points) is most certainly not the game I signed up for.

Marines should just sit there being outshot, outfought, outranged, with fewer tricks, and that's fine because 'Shoot the fighty ones and fight the shooty ones' is the pinnacle of game design.

Because Marines are better at everything than everyone else is the pinnacle of game design? Is this where you stand Canadian 5th? Cause you're sure making it sound that way.

Yes the idea of a generalist unit is that it can achieve its goals by using it's medium strength skills against the weakest skills of an enemy unit to shift a matchup back in its favour. There is nothing wrong inherently with this game design and it suits what GW seems to want marines to be. The fact that in past editions they have failed to make the generalist role work for marines is not a admonishment of this design but rather of GWs ability to balance marines properly. Now we are seeing the other side of this where marines as generalists do every role better than anyones specialty, they're still a generalist but simply punching well above their weight against matchups that they should have been struggling against. This is simply the other side of the coin for GWs inability to find the right middle-ground with marines.

Yes, if anything Marines' specialty is surviving long enough to make up for their slightly worse ability in other areas - they can survive incoming enemy fire to punch an enemy unit to death, or they can survive enemy melee long enough to move and gun them down.

but to do this, it's a balance between defence, ranged offense and melee and balanced by cost. So to reflect this, an intercessor/tac marine should be worse at melee, worse at shooting but good at survival. currently they're just good at all of them. Devastators should be bad at melee, good at survival and good at shooting, but currently they're also good at melee. Marines have specialists too.

It's basically a distribution chart between those 3 things. In pic attached the big blue circle is intercessors, meaning they have a large presence in all 3 zones, while specialist units in black and white are mostly just one thing.

GW have not balanced their cost vs their output, and also by making even the most base level marine unit this good, it either overpowers marine specialists, or makes them too expensive, or makes them suck by comparison.

 Hellebore wrote:
Yes, if anything Marines' specialty is surviving long enough to make up for their slightly worse ability in other areas - they can survive incoming enemy fire to punch an enemy unit to death, or they can survive enemy melee long enough to move and gun them down.

However in practice because marines are so much of the meta lists are designed to defeat their defenses and negate this advantage. See pretty much every edition ever including this one. Every discussion compares units to them and talks about how well they kill a PEQ or TEQ model. If you want marines toned down they need to not be the threat every meta builds to kill.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Yes, if anything Marines' specialty is surviving long enough to make up for their slightly worse ability in other areas - they can survive incoming enemy fire to punch an enemy unit to death, or they can survive enemy melee long enough to move and gun them down.

However in practice because marines are so much of the meta lists are designed to defeat their defenses and negate this advantage. See pretty much every edition ever including this one. Every discussion compares units to them and talks about how well they kill a PEQ or TEQ model. If you want marines toned down they need to not be the threat every meta builds to kill.

Which could happen if Marines aren't every other release, and stop making up the majority of armies.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Which could happen if Marines aren't every other release, and stop making up the majority of armies.

Show me a single edition of 40k where this didn't happen first. I'll wait.

Hellebore basically just argued my point for me.

In previous editions, the "jack of all trades" thing was hindered by marines not actually being all that durable and by missions that basically just came down to trying to table the other guy until the end of the game. The game only really rewarded killing things (unless you were deathstar-durable), so any points spent not killing things efficiently were a hindrance. Now that marines are appreciably more durable and modern missions put more emphasis on progressive scoring, I could see the "tough generalists" gimmick working out.

---------------------
Regarding how elite drukhari should be, I actually don't hate them being cheap for the most part. I certainly wouldn't mind if every kabalite were only a stone's throw away from matching a marine's abilities, but I think keeping them cheap(ish) actually helps the overall feel of the army.

Currently, drukhari are numerous enough that you can sort of flood the board with them. By turn 3, you probably have floating boats in every quadrant of the table, and your opponent has probably killed several squads worth of nameless, sinister space elves. Basically, drukhari troops are good at being the bad guy ninjas that show up in numbers and get beaten down in droves. And to some extent, I actually kind of like that. We shouldn't feel like orks or guardsmen, but we should feel like we showed up in enough numbers to overwhelm and unnerv our prey.

I don't want drukhari to just be an "NPC faction" that exists to get beaten by imperials, but I do love how well they fill the role of love-to-hate-them moustache twirlers.

Maybe keep the rank and file cheap and humble, but let the squad leaders be little mini-bosses? A warrior is impressiev and all, but the sybarite that managed to keep his position for the last two centuries is even moreso. Maybe give the sybarites access to the special ammo and make agonizers something to worry about again.So in a given fight, your opponent can feel good about killing off your mooks, but then he's going to feel it when the guy that mattered hits him back.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Because Marines are better at everything than everyone else is the pinnacle of game design? Is this where you stand Canadian 5th? Cause you're sure making it sound that way.

Yes the idea of a generalist unit is that it can achieve its goals by using it's medium strength skills against the weakest skills of an enemy unit to shift a matchup back in its favour. There is nothing wrong inherently with this game design and it suits what GW seems to want marines to be. The fact that in past editions they have failed to make the generalist role work for marines is not a admonishment of this design but rather of GWs ability to balance marines properly. Now we are seeing the other side of this where marines as generalists do every role better than anyones specialty, they're still a generalist but simply punching well above their weight against matchups that they should have been struggling against. This is simply the other side of the coin for GWs inability to find the right middle-ground with marines.

*leans in the microphone and whispers* Yeah, but it's always going to be that way. Designing a game as large as this is hard and GW is bad. Either find a new hobby or deal.

That is one of the most defeatist things I've ever heard. So if things are not good should we just always accept them and never expect or desire anything to be better? Do you take this stance in all things in life or just in the hobbies you presumably play to have fun with? I've played 40K since 4th edition. There has been highs and lows for each edition but one thing I can say for sure is this: 7th edition was an all-time low for me, and I played craftworld and drukhari back then. I had to specifically tailor my lists (for craftworld, drukhari were just hopeless) up or down to each opponent I had because the power difference between each codex was so wildly swingy. GW dropped the ball so hard there and made almost no effort to solve any of it in any meaningful way and it took a major shakeup and blowing it all up to start over with 8th to make things feel more right. I enjoyed 8th immensely and have been very grateful for the more communicative stance GW has taken as well as their willingness to address problems much faster so we don't get stuck in rut for years like we used to. This has caused some of its own problems but ultimately is the lesser of two evils in my opinion. 9th, despite some of its own issues, is probably my favourite edition to date (haven't gotten to play as much for obvious reasons but the matches I did play were fun and felt fairly balanced, right up until I was pitting my 8th edition dex to the shiny 9th editions ones that is).

All this to say that in my opinion GW indeed has improved over the years, they're still not perfect and never will be, but at least they are BETTER and as long as they keep striving to be better I'll be happy. It's not some dystopian future where you can't voice an opinion or express concerns over problems lest you get carted away by the corporate police, if GW messes up it should absolutely be spoken about and brought to their attention so they can work to fix it.

On your topic of people tailoring to fight marines: Of course we have to, they are the dominant force in the meta and the single army you are most likely to face. They're so strong right now that if you don't write your list with a plan to take on marines you are very likely going to have a very bad match. Marines are the #1 faction in terms of playerbase to boot so even if they aren't flavour of the month in the meta you are still likely to go head to head with them more often than not, it only makes sense to keep them in mind while list building. In early 8th they were so weak I doubt most people tailored to fight them, honestly almost any list you brought would have a chance against them but now that's changed, they need to be planned for or else you struggle. It's not just marines, it's the MEQ profile in general, it applies to DG and in time chaos as well (and custodes to a point as well), they all have a MEQ profile that we will have to plan for and deal with. Just because marines are insanely popular doesn't give the development team free reign to just make them bonkers powerful cause they have a target on their back, they can still strive for balance regardless of that. Also everything getting compared to MEQ makes sense, they are supposedly the generalist army of the game and as such deviation in to any other part of the design triangle posted above will move off their central point. They're also the poster boys of the game and make for an easy point of reference.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Which could happen if Marines aren't every other release, and stop making up the majority of armies.

Show me a single edition of 40k where this didn't happen first. I'll wait.

You asked for a way to solve the "Everyone builds for anti-MEQ" problem.

That's a solution. Just because GW hasn't done it in the past doesn't mean it won't work.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Which could happen if Marines aren't every other release, and stop making up the majority of armies.

Show me a single edition of 40k where this didn't happen first. I'll wait.

You asked for a way to solve the "Everyone builds for anti-MEQ" problem.

That's a solution. Just because GW hasn't done it in the past doesn't mean it won't work.

It's almost like targeting the most ubiquitous and powerful basic faction is the pro gamer move.

Call me crazy, but a game where you can field about twice as many Drukhari as Astartes sounds relatively accurate to the background. The Aeldari in general are much more dangerous than an average human, but they are no Astartes. So 5.5 point Guardsman, 8 point Kabalite Warrior, and 20 point Intercessor doesn't seem horribly bad.

Tyel wrote:
You can't really argue with "I think Kabalites should be 15 points".

Especially when the POINT of Dark Eldar is the transports they use for their movement and durability.

The current power units with SM are:

A) Anything with a storm shield - because good assault combined with a 2+/4++ is incredibly solid.
B) Dreadnoughts - usually Redemptors, sometimes a Leviathan is thrown in.
C) Melta platforms. Attack Bikes probably preferred, although Eradicators and even bog standard MM toting Devastators can still work.

When you look a modern Marine list potentially as little as 300 points is going to your now standard T4/3+ 2 wounds troops. (I think 1 unit of Infiltrators is a must take, but YMMV.) They are not impacting the meta compared with the above three sections.

So it really doesn't matter if in a theoretical world, someone running nothing but intercessors would expect to be someone running nothing but kabalites. That's not how the game is played outside of some very niche garages. Its not a major feature of why SM are a good faction right now.

I feel like there has to be *something* we're not getting from the poison rule ATM, because otherwise the profile changes on the splinter weaponry just makes no sense.

There must be some reason why Cannons are S3 and Rifles and Pistols are S2. I suppose it's conceivable that they just put the base S value in there to make it more "intuitive" that they wound vehicles always on 6s, but it just hurts my brain that someone would bother making one S2 and one S3 if that were the case, it just seems like such an arbitrary change.

It could be that they're bringing back the old 'if your S = the toughness of the target, then the wound is re-rollable' thing, in which case Splinter Cannons would be better and Rifles unchanged, but it is an odd thing.

"Strength doubled vs non-vehicle target" would finally move splinter away from its now fairly stupid conceptual role as "ohhhh but you could just point it at a big ol' monsterous creature and wound it on a 4+ thats soooooo strooooooonk.....and then it makes a no-AP save....which is generally always a 2+ or 3+....and then it takes 1 of its 10 wounds....you could have just pointed a lance at it dummy...."

Kabalites having a gun that's basically a boltgun but it just wounds the targets you're not supposed to point it at on a 6 instead of a 5 would be perfectly A-OK in my book (given that compared to marines you get 2x as many of them for the points), and then you'd have splinter cannons as basically a slightly different but not strictly worse heavy bolter (better at killing GEQs and T5-T6 heavy infantry/light monsters, worse at killing light vehicles, equivalent vs meqs)

I think what is going to be interesting is how this new book is received/performs. I'm not familiar with Necrons to know how their book landed, and each other book so far has been power armour based. And as much as people don't like them, marines actually finally feel like they are portrayed in the fluff. I'm sorry that you don't think they should be destroying Orks in melee, but that's pretty much what I read all the time....now numbers, different story. Just take away the double shoot of the Erads like you did the Aggies and all good, but I don't want to make this a marine love/hate thread, too many of those.
The next series of books (barring Chaos) will showcase armies that are not marine based, and it's going to be interesting (and game defining) how they perform in this edition. Drukhari are the first on the list and they will show what GW thinks a T3 1W based force needs to win in 9th, so it's a pretty important book, even though I'm more of a craftworlder myself. I think it boils down to more than just Drukhari players being happy, it basically sheds light on how other non marine players can expect to play in this edition (hopefully not the NPC trope)

I'm pretty pleased with Wyches out of all this. +1A and AP-1 hekatarii blades mean that while they still can't fight astartes hyper longrange shooting specialists (what dedicated all-melee unit can though!) when equipped with a suitable anti-marine special weapon they can at least give MEQ something to think about and they absolutely carve up GEQ.

4A AP-1 is exactly enough for a full 10 wych squad to be able to basically overwhelm a standard 5-man 2 wound MEQ squad, which is just about where they need to be to be a useful semi-glass cannon unit that can pull some tricks with Dodge.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 bullyboy wrote:
I think what is going to be interesting is how this new book is received/performs. I'm not familiar with Necrons to know how their book landed, and each other book so far has been power armour based. And as much as people don't like them, marines actually finally feel like they are portrayed in the fluff. I'm sorry that you don't think they should be destroying Orks in melee, but that's pretty much what I read all the time....now numbers, different story. Just take away the double shoot of the Erads like you did the Aggies and all good, but I don't want to make this a marine love/hate thread, too many of those.
The next series of books (barring Chaos) will showcase armies that are not marine based, and it's going to be interesting (and game defining) how they perform in this edition. Drukhari are the first on the list and they will show what GW thinks a T3 1W based force needs to win in 9th, so it's a pretty important book, even though I'm more of a craftworlder myself. I think it boils down to more than just Drukhari players being happy, it basically sheds light on how other non marine players can expect to play in this edition (hopefully not the NPC trope)

Necron players in my experience are pretty unimpressed. Mathematically, warriors and immortals are fine, but they're not representing what necron players in my area think they ought to be compared to the baseline of astartes. Chalk that up to the fact that, pound for pound, immortals are exactly identical durability-wise to baseline astartes vs almost every type of weapon. Vs the current durability-focused marine units - DA terminators, DW vets with storm shields, plague marines - nothing necron even comes close to holding a candle.

Theyve also got the same old problem they've had since their 5th ed redesign which is that they've got sooooooooooooo many units trying to do the exact same thing of being "beefy mid-T infantry with good save and RP with anti elite gun and no melee or with anti-elite melee and no gun." That ends up leaving holes in their roster that can really only be filled by 1 or 2 units that inevitably show up in every list or whole swathes of units that dont get used because there's one "best" for the category, like Wraiths were for the longest time the best all-melee-mid-strength-anti-elite category unit, so nobody used Flayed Ones Lychguard Praetorians etc.

If anything GW doubled down on that setup - the new walker thing is near-identical to the doomsday arc, the 2 new forms of destroyers are just "wraiths again, twice", the new hexmark looked at what deathmarks were doing and was like 'hey bro can i borrow that exact play pattern from you for a sec, you can have this bland generic sniper statline"

The most meaningful addition was something they had in the original 5e book - all the different types of cryptek. So while it's a nice add, it's more just something they get back than something that's really new.