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Jarms48 wrote:

Just to be clear, you'd rather Ork Boys have two wounds at T4 (meaning they'd need 6 Bolt Rifle shots to put down) instead of one wound at T5 (needing 4.5 shots to put down) because that'd make them feel less tough?

Yes, because it means weapons like the stalker bolt rifle and heavy bolter will be the same as they are now.

Because Stalker Bolt Rifles (1 shot) is what I think when I think "What do I take against Orks?"
Not the 3-shot AutoBolt Rifle, no sirree! That'd be silly!

Moreover, Orks being tough isn't a bad thing for the setting. An Ork should be at least as tough as an unarmored Marine, and they've not even managed that. If we gave a Marine the same 6+ Armor an Ork has, there's no profile with D1 that the Ork is more durable against.

Seems like people are unhappy that the bolters which were the staple of the Great Crusade and the defeat of the Orks is now considerably less effective against Orks. Deciding which Cawl-pattern Bolter to use on an Ork doesn't really change that.

It also doesn't bode well for the future where GW can now say "Well SM players if you'd like to deal with that Ork menace by this kit with S5 uber-bolters."

 JNAProductions wrote:
Moreover, Orks being tough isn't a bad thing for the setting. An Ork should be at least as tough as an unarmored Marine, and they've not even managed that. If we gave a Marine the same 6+ Armor an Ork has, there's no profile with D1 that the Ork is more durable against.

I fondly remember the intro to Dawn of War, where a squad of Marines take on a bunch of Orks and it's, like, actually a reasonably close fight. And yeah, it's not like Orks are now tougher than Marines. Against S4, a Marine is still 3.33x harder to kill than an Ork. Against S3, a Marine is still 5x harder to kill than an Ork. Even if you take away the armor, Marines are still tougher.

Having inflated Marine stats considerably, GW now seems to want to use the newfound middle ground for non-human troops. Drukhari (and presumably Eldar) got an armor buff, and now Orks are getting a toughness buff. I'm all for it.

If there's one thing that bothers me, it's that Orks being T5/W1 while Marines are T4/W2 doesn't have any clear explanation or meaning for the distinction.

From a game perspective T5 W1 is far easier to track for a horde army. I much prefer it to 2W models.

Lore wise anything you could say as to why Marines are tough enough to have a 2nd Wound would also apply to Orks who still fight just fine looking like swiss cheese and have a good chuckle about it afterwards.

If we're looking at immersion-breaking core troops, Eldar Guardians win the prize.

In lore, they're talented centuries-old civilians of a dying race that can't afford to lose any more numbers.

On the table, they're disposable chaff to be boltered to shreds by the dozen.

At least Orks are depicted as being tough in the background, that's something that has been pretty consistent all along.

Stat variety is good and something that previous editions just haven't done, largely sticking firmly to the stats laid down in 3rd (and sometimes 2nd) edition. One of the things that 9th is getting right so far.

Eh it's fine honestly if you ask me. With Marines going to 2 wounds something had to be done and I think Orks at 1 wound but T5 is a nice way to represent their innate toughness while keeping the horde-fodder feel. For those advocating 6+ FNP, do you know how tedious that is to play with/against? I liked my old DG DR giving a 5+ because it at least felt meaningful, a 6+ is just pointless dice rolling most of the time. Multiply that by 120 Orks running around and it's just a load of wasted time. T5 is cleaner and, IMO, decently represents Ork toughness.

Cynista wrote:
It doesn't break the game but it does change it in a less than satisfying way. Orks are tough but they are not T5 tough. That doesn't pass the authenticity test and it makes a lot of lore sound absurd, especially as Marines are supposed to be a hard counter to Orks. Wounding on 5's they aren't

As mentioned already the only way this feels better is if the T8 softcap is removed and more granularity is introduced

What in the world is the authenticity test? And all of the lore is absurd, it always has been and is a key part of 40K's appeal. Make simple task robots? Nah screw that, let's take the corpses of our forebearers and stuff them with electronics to make servo skulls and such.

Also Marines weren't really made to hard counter orks, more to unite earth/planets that were separated during the age of darkness. There are many cases of marines getting their asses handed to them by orks. Imperial fists wiped out to one single survivor, the crimson fists, obsidian blades and many many more chapters have had unfavourable run ins with the greenskins.

I think Toughness 5 is the best way to represent "ork toughness" on the game table. I play orks because I like rolling lots of dice. And even for me, having to roll an extra FNP for every single wound my orks take sounds like less than fun when you multiply it across an entire board's worth of orks.

With their current armor saves, orks already die in droves anyway. An extra point of toughness makes them slightly harder to wound... which is kind of as it should be. For me, that's a good representation.

I like the addition of T5. I think of the wound roll as the round hitting a critical area or having some otherwise critical or threat stopping effect. In the case of orks, hitting them in the leg isn't really likely to drop one (at least, it's not entirely consistent in the lore) and thus vital area hits would be most likely to put an ork down. Given that almost always a bolter will blow through them and kill them once wounding, I think it represents the fact that bolters are significantly good against orks, but you have to hit the right spot.

I try not to think of the weapons and stats in 40k as independent silos, I tend to think of them as interconnected. Now, while this is completely my own interpretation, it does, at least on my infantile level, explain why some things exist, like a t5 ork, or a t7 hive tyrant. For example, a guardsman's lasgun isn't str 3 because the output/capacity of a guardsman lasgun is 19 megathule in the magazine, it's because the weapon, the user, target, all culminate into the effectiveness of the weapon.

Maybe its the wrong way of looking at it, but it makes sense to me, and its why I like the idea of t5 orks (until I have to play against them )

T5 orks are definitely supported by the lore. They’re tough fighters who eschew armour. Therefore: high toughness, low armour save. I’m looking forward to the change.

Power creep is definitely occurring. And that’s not good for the game system. But this is how 40k works.

Flip side argument.

T4 orks coating more than 1 pt breaks the immersion of the lore. A space marine is able to fight off whole units of orks in the lore.

100% Lorehammer does not make a good game of Warhammer.

Discuss.

 Matt Swain wrote:


it just doesn't seem right to make a marines main weapon relatively ineffective against one of their main opponents. Linda breaks immersion a bit.

Doesnt seem right to me that space marines' boltguns now rapid fire at full range and have 1 more AP than they used to.

Kinda breaks the setting, increasing what they kill at super long range by more than 1/2 - enemies that are supposed to be durable get ripped through by basic boltguns.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cynista wrote:
especially as Marines are supposed to be a hard counter to Orks. Wounding on 5's they aren't

A squad of intercessors with no buffs gets 18% points return firing at t5 orks from 30" away - 3 turns away from a reasonable ork charge.

Meanwhile, shoota boyz 18" away from those same intercessors (nearly within reasonable charge range, if the intercessors feel like scoring some more kills) sees a 13% points return.

Seems like marines still have a pretty solid advantage here, given the massive range advantage.

I don't know that I'd point at this specific instance of stat creep as breaking the setting given that stat creep has been going almost continuously since late 5th.

I'm far less concerned with T5 Orks than I am with the direction codexes are going regarding effects in the command phase. Sorry, needs to be a separate thread.

It breaks the setting less than some of the space marine stuff I think.
If it has to happen to give ork players a good game, then I think that positive.
Orks are supposed to be damn scary, and space marines are supposed to be elite and tactically minded rather than just super cool powerful individuals.

Most marine weapons seem to be AP -1 these days, -2 if you’re in the right combat doctrine. Meaning even if those T5 orks are hiding in a building, they still get no save.

Game has been broken ever since the first 8th ed SM codex came out.

T5 on orks will just pile on the numerous gameplay mistakes made by GW rules teams.

I think there's some room on the Drukhari bandwagon after the DT nerf, I hear they dont give two figs about T5

GW has mentioned that they want to tone down horde armies and speed up the game. I can see them cutting max boyz squad sizes by 5 or 10 models to balance out this change. This to me seems like a fair trade.

There’s also an element of entitled whining from space marines players regarding this change. So you’ll have to actually suck something up for a change in the midst of your faction-wide upgrade to primaris. What proportion of ork armies have made the top of tournments in the last 5 years? 10? 15 even?

Let the green guys have a moment in the sun for once.

For Drukhari with their poisoned weapons and bugs with toxin sacs, the game remains effectively unchanged.

Tau are still the kings of shooty and the orks have to reach them first. Hey, kroot may actually see use as bubble wrapping.

Guard (and to an extent sisters) have all of the blast and flamer weapons they could want to counter this.

Necrons, Eldar, Ad Mech etc have enough toys to weather the storm.

It’s not such a game-breaking disaster.

I am not entirely against the change, though I feel that the basic Boyz should remain at T4 as these models are suppose to represent the weakest of in the Ork hierarchy. If they do intend to reduce the size of horde armies and and make units of Boyz smaller to compensate for the increased toughness I will be more on board.

 Xenomancers wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
What do you feel toughness represents as an individual quality.

It’s something to do with the ability to absorb damage. Orks can recover from wounds that astartes can not, like having your head cut off.

If SM are getting more wounds then Orks should have more wounds or toughness, I don’t think this breaks the fluff at all

Whatever T represents. There is no question that a bolter is more powerful than a lasgun and they do a lot more damage. Lasgun and bolter are now equal vs an ork.

That's an issue of the S vs T table.
If it were:
2+ on a difference of 2 or more (S>>T)
3+ on a difference of 1 (S>T)
4+ on S=T
5+ on a difference of 1 (S<T)
6+ on a difference of 2 or more (S><<T)
Then lasguns would wound T5 Orks on a 6+ and bolters would do it on a 5+.

I love the change to T5, currently Orkz are meant to be this horde of tough infantry who run at you screaming (on foot, on a buggy, on a giant ramshackle metal battle bus) whilst shrugging off firepower.

For such a supposedly tough creature, T4 6+ save. Thats... Not tough at all. Like seriously for a close combat unit which often footslogs its hilariously easy to gun now.

Im so much happier with W1 T5 for Orkz than W2 T4 ala Marines. It's a different profile, it'll make the army feel nicer to play and lets be honest, Marines still have all the tools to deal with this and are still more durable than ork boyz against basically all weapons barring heavy anti tank (And if that's shooting at Ork boyz or Intercessors, you're already winning or hilariously losing)

I'm hyped for my Nobz to be S5 T5 and possibly stand up to all the other melee units.

If you see the setting primarily as a Space Marine power fantasy, then yes, T5 orks break the setting. A lot of players do see the game in those terms and are encouraged to do so by GW.

But if you don't see the setting that way then I think T5 Orks are fine. It seems to me that GW is going in an "increase everyone's offensive output and then also tweak the defensive stats" route since the introduction of 2W marines. That's fine, it's just changing the scale of the game a bit I think. Personally I'm fine with all non-large infantry being 1W and using other methods to model resilience (reducing weapon capability across the board, or increasing non-wound defenses somehow) but going for more offense with more defensive capabilities is a valid design choice. Warmachine and Hordes had a similar approach with their elite infantry squads having multiple damage points each. But it lends itself to a slightly smaller game size, which I actually think is a pro-consumer move from GW.

Feel no pains slow the game down, 2 wounds is a marine thing, armour saves not possible (boyz don't have armour, unless they are ard boyz, but that is a different topic) so GW had no alternative than to up a point of toughness.

I do agree that a lasgun and a bolter should not be on par when hitting an ork boy. Anyway for me bolters should cost more and be more potent weapons, so issue doesn't lie with the ork boy.

Perhaps sisters of battle and other cheaper bolter carriers should not have the same bolters SM di then, obviously...

IMHO the setting NEEDS to be broken.

Boyz getting +1T and remaining cheap is a step towards the right direction, AKA encouraging players to bring real full TAC lists which won't be optimized against anything but they won't also be terrible against anything. Finally competitive SM players will stop tailoring their lists against other SM and they won't complain about auto losing against anything else that isn't SM or any other elite oriented army. It's everyone's win.

Start taking 48 assault cannon shots instead of 20 melta ones. Heavy bolters are still gold. Basic bolters at AP-1 will still delete tons of boyz comfortably. All those options are also amazing against drukhari, which SM seem to suffer a lot but somehow refuse to counter.

I do worry that we're going to be returning to the old rock/paper/scissors dynamic.

Is it going to be possible to bring enough firepower to simultaneously deal with all these variant interpretations of "tough infantry"?

TAC listss have an inherent problem in 40k that any given faction is almost always skewed to some level of durability or another.
If you bring a mix of anti-horde, anti-elite, and anti-tank guns against any given army at least one of those is not going to have any targets. Now they're adding more and more nuanced statlines but with the same skewed distributions things will only get worse imo.

Aren't Orks supposed to be obscenely tough monsters who can survive injuries including outright decapitation? If they can handle that, what does an explosive round really matter?

 blood reaper wrote:
Aren't Orks supposed to be obscenely tough monsters who can survive injuries including outright decapitation? If they can handle that, what does an explosive round really matter?

This. They’ve used T value to represent ignoring damage as much as actually being tough, without a second time wasting dice roll. Maybe Marine players are rattled by it but what’s bad about that!? And weren’t you all going to buy Heavy Intercessors anyway?

 Blackie wrote:
IMHO the setting NEEDS to be broken.

Boyz getting +1T and remaining cheap is a step towards the right direction, AKA encouraging players to bring real full TAC lists which won't be optimized against anything but they won't also be terrible against anything. Finally competitive SM players will stop tailoring their lists against other SM and they won't complain about auto losing against anything else that isn't SM or any other elite oriented army. It's everyone's win.

Start taking 48 assault cannon shots instead of 20 melta ones. Heavy bolters are still gold. Basic bolters at AP-1 will still delete tons of boyz comfortably. All those options are also amazing against drukhari, which SM seem to suffer a lot but somehow refuse to counter.

Yeah. I think this is part of GW's continued attempt (which takes a one step forward, two steps back approach, but still) to produce meaningfully different stat lines, that have meaningful different "optimal comp" counters. So you have less "Oh you play X? Take Y, it counters everything you will ever meet the best."

I don't see how it "breaks the setting" in any meaningful way, unless you believe movie marines should be a thing. I can question whether this the best way to make Boys not some of the most fragile units in the game - but I can see it offering more variety than "eh, just give them a 4+ save and call it good."

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I do worry that we're going to be returning to the old rock/paper/scissors dynamic.

Is it going to be possible to bring enough firepower to simultaneously deal with all these variant interpretations of "tough infantry"?

TAC listss have an inherent problem in 40k that any given faction is almost always skewed to some level of durability or another.
If you bring a mix of anti-horde, anti-elite, and anti-tank guns against any given army at least one of those is not going to have any targets. Now they're adding more and more nuanced statlines but with the same skewed distributions things will only get worse imo.

You could use a form of reserves for that, units that are only deployed or swapped out when needed or not. Never a full army, but portions of it.