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 catbarf wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
You almost have to roll the wounds one-at-a-time to ensure they're applied in the correct order...

Yep. If double-damage triggers on a wound roll of 6, that means once you've fast-rolled to hit, you then have to slow-roll from to-wound onwards.

So allocate a hit, roll to wound, see if you get double damage or not, work all the way through saves, repeat...

In practice, I suspect most players are opting to batch the double-damage and just allocate it all at once, but in certain matchups this can dramatically reduce the effectiveness like Kitane said. And there's no RAW way to do so; it's a workaround for a very clunky mechanic.

By strict RAW, you can never fast roll hit wound damage and save, since you can technically CP reroll the dice.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
... is the only thing...

I'm not going to pile on because a number of others have done a pretty good job of eviscerating you in this area, but I just wanted to point out this one part of your post because it's a reoccuring theme with you Daed.

You only ever see one solution, or, rather, you don't ever begin to look for other solutions. So many times when people have been debating 40k's rules over the past few months your standard response is basically "That's the way it is and there is no other way to do it!", then someone (usually Catbarf or Unit, but there are others) will come in with a litany of alternate solutions and the best you can usually muster is a miserly "Well, that's not really that different, is it?". I mean it's either that or you post a page of maths. Take your pick.

I mean, the chaff pod thing is easily the most indicative of this attitude that I've seen. You identified it as a problem, but despite how many times people have explained why making equipment into strats (and strats in general) are a problem in 40k, your "solution" is to make it like everything else and not entertain any other possible ways that could resolve any potential problems with that upgrade.

It's one thing to be happy with the way things are. It's another entirely to claim that any ideas against the current methodology aren't feasible because the current way is the "only" way.

I'm not blind to other solutions. I'm working within the system that we have and what I know works right now.

I expect "10th" to be in a year and a half with some further tweaks to the current system. Stratagems are a viable method to allow other interactions within the game that are too strong to exist regularly.

As much as you think I am intransigent I could say the same about posters from the other side ( "It isn't like old system X" or "this AA game does it better" ).

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Hiding your army is the only thing that prevents damage in an IGOUGO system. You can make everything hit like a wet noodle and have long games that favor large numbers of models, because everything takes so much to kill. I don't know that it would be fun.

It's amazing to me how you can make a statement then immediately refute it in your very next sentence.

Nothing about IGOUGO means hiding is the only way to prevent damage. Even just using 40k as an example we've seen in previous editions that reducing overall range, effective range and volume of fire/attacks do a pretty good job of reducing damage. Previous editions have made it impossible to shoot from one deployment zone to the other with anything other than heavy weapons, for example. They also generally didn't have re-rolls except for twin-linked weapons. If you really wanted to have your basic troops do anything other than plink away with the odd plasma gun or missile launcher you had to actually move them up the board to engage the enemy at closer range, which carried obvious risks that you had to work to mitigate.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

People want tactics, but what kind of tactic is it where you can put your guys in the open and it doesn't matter than your opponent went first? That seems antithetical.

If you're standing out of effective range it's not a bad tactic to be in the open to give you more movement options. Again, this happened in previous editions of 40k where you had the trade-off between moving through cover at a potentially slower rate or being in the open and being more vulnerable to shooting. Generally, once you got to about turn 2 you wanted to be in cover for the most part but starting out of cover had some tactical advantages.

The problem with 9th, and in 8th, is that if you don't literally completely hide everything there's a very good chance that whatever isn't 100% hidden will die because 9th is just far too lethal. As the LGT final demonstrated, even being hidden or in cover doesn't help when you can have 4 planes behind your lines in turn 1, along with a teleporting blob of infantry buffed up so much they can take down Dreadnoughts. If you look at the AdMech players movement in that game he had restricted targets for 2 of his infantry units but those units basically either killed their targets in one turn or cleaned up after they'd been softened up. There were then two Ironstriders that had to work a bit to get some shots at a good target but that didn't matter since the bulk of his firepower could shoot whatever it wanted.

Most of the 9th edition lists are prevalently melee with a bit of shooting. You can start out in the open without issues.

It just doesn't look like that, because right now you find Drukhari and Admech on all tables, and those don't allow you to do that. But playing against most marine lists, DG, many necron lists, most sisters and so on, you will hardly face a lot of long range firepower. This huge need for obscuring terrain is something fairly recent. Before the Admech release there really wans't that big of a need.

Well most of the traditional "shooting emphasis" armies haven't come out yet.

IG is still 8th. Tau is still 8th. AdMech is a 9th one but you yourself mention how bad it is. CWE are 8th. Etc.

Honestly I am taking bets locally whether they will come out before the end of the edition or not.

Admech is a mistake, plain and simple. Good thing is that we know that GW doesn't like it when a big tournament is dominated by a faction, so I expect a very harsh future for the mechanicus.

Spoletta wrote:
Admech is a mistake, plain and simple. Good thing is that we know that GW doesn't like it when a big tournament is dominated by a faction, so I expect a very harsh future for the mechanicus.

Codex Drukhari came out in may. It is currently october. That hyper-fast nerfhammer doesnt seem to have fallen yet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I'm not blind to other solutions. I'm working within the system that we have and what I know works right now.

I expect "10th" to be in a year and a half with some further tweaks to the current system. Stratagems are a viable method to allow other interactions within the game that are too strong to exist regularly.

As much as you think I am intransigent I could say the same about posters from the other side ( "It isn't like old system X" or "this AA game does it better" ).

There are tons of ways to decrease the problems of 9th edition currently that do not involve going to full AA or reducing the baseline level of lethality at 'optimal engagement range' that currently cause playing 40k to feel more like a card game than a wargame.

a few examples:

-Infinity has an even lower turn-count than 40k but couples a fairly option-rich reaction system for the inactive player with the ability to act multiple times with the same unit in one turn. This allows you to create cool, multi-action mini narratives surrounding your important units within the space of a single turn, but has the trade-off of each player having several units in their army that essentially just exist as bullet sponge mooks. Since that game is trying to replicate a cyberpunk action movie/anime type setting like Ghost in the Shell, that works in its favor.

-Age of Sigmar has IGOUGO turns but an alternating combat phase, and engagement range is a full 3" so effectively every unit in the game can heroically intervene. This means 'your turn' is really 'your turn to move and shoot' and units pay a premium for firepower that doesnt exist in 40k. Additionally, as the inactive player you get to do things like heal a critical injured hero, move a unit, or shoot with a small penalty on your opponent's turn using AOS' analogue to the stratagem system, which unlike 40k's that incentivizes blowing large loads at once for combo-wombos appears to have the primary purpose of giving commander-type units cool stuff they can do and also allowing you to act in your opponent's turn.

-Apocalypse has a nearly-IGOUGO system that solves first turn advantage simply by resolving damage at the end of the battle round, which further naturally reduces lethality by introducing a game of risk vs reward for the player, where ensuring a unit's death generally means expending far more resources than simply giving it a chance to die.

-Battlegroup takes a twofold approach of limiting the number of units per turn that can act via an orders system (Commander type units increase the number of available orders you have, which makes them an important resource to protect while not causing them to unrealistically impact the combat performance of other units nearby) and by allowing you to defer action until your opponent's turn with Reaction orders. This also neatly solves the First Turn Problem by granting the second player a couple of free Reaction order chits in the first turn to make up for the loss of initiative.

40k currently takes the laziest, most basic approach to this incredibly old pair of problems, high lethality and low player agency in the opponent's turn by just. doing. nothing. Just hoping it works out. Units generally have EXACTLY the same effectiveness firing at max range as 2" away, and when firing at a unit they can see 1% as a unit they can see 100% of. Extremely high movement, deep strike and extremely high ranges relative to the tiny board size mean the table state generally means nothing when it comes to your deadliness. Morale just ADDS MOAR LETHALITY. Stratagems are 90% designed to be used only in your turn. Objectives depend on your units getting through your entire opponent's turn unmolested.

on a competitive level, the game is essentially a formality. We look at lists, and hardly have to ask any questions about what kinds of opponents the list faced off against. We know what the list is going to do....basically every game. It's going to execute its strategy, the one it has picked out in the list-building stage.

 Galas wrote:
I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.

And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.

As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I agree in general, but this also brings up my issues with Primaris and 2w marines. The troops of other factions struggle hard to dent them, making the on-table interactions much less rewarding. See Banshees/Guardians/Genestealers/Current CSM ( )/Necron Warriors etc vs. Intercessors.

For me, I always thought that SM's (and by extension CSM's) should be the one faction that was really hard to kill. When I played the older editions one of the things I disliked was how fast they died and how wildly inconsistent it was with the lore. Personally, I've always thought that the Space Marine army should have been designed kind of like the current Custodes style where you have a couple of super strong squads trying to take on a much larger army. But then GW wouldn't be able to sell anywhere near as many marine models and they are their flagship army so...

See, I can't get behind this at all because many of those units from other factions were originally set up to have certain advantages/balance points when contesting to Marines, so much so as to be defining features of said units.

Genestealers are a prime example. In Space Hulk they took Terminators apart in CC, and for the first 15(?) years of their existence in the lore they continued to be extremely lethal against Marines in CC, the balancing factor being that they had to get there through a torrent of shooting. Genestealers aren't half as dangerous to Marines as they used to be, and it's a sad, sad state.

For a long, long time, Eldar Aspect Warriors were balanced around roughly equal in value to Marines, but with their own specialist skew. Banshees would slaughter Marines in CC, but Marines would slaughter Banshees with shooting. Dark Reapers would slaughter Marines with shooting, but Marines would slaughter Reapers in CC. Shoot the punchy stuff and punch the shooty stuff. It's an ideal balance. But no more. Individually a Banshee is a shadow of her former self against Marines. Like Genestealers, Banshees used to butcher Terminators ffs.

Marines simply being all uber is just gross, imo. It is a blight on the game.

I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.

 Tawnis wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.

And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.

As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.

Yep, hard agree, and I wish the doubling of marines' durability didnt also correspond with the doubling of seemingly everybody's firepower RIP.

At the end of the day, people who play 40k want to be playing a game where their units feel like super space soldiers. being tough is part of the fantasy of almost every faction - tyranids and orks fighting with their limbs blown off, necrons rising from the dead, eldar dodging and weaving out of the way of enemy bullets, marines and sisters with bullets bouncing off of foot-thick ceramite armor.

People are just not going to accept a single-turn lifespan on the battlefield for their 10,000 year old uber warriors forever. It's not satisfying to play, it's not satisfying to watch. The streams at competitive events make this incredibly obvious, everyone is laughing about how comical it is to watch these space super heroes huddle all their units behind the hunks of available obscuring terrain, because anything else would result in them getting absolutely instantly exploded.

I would love to see the game adopt more of what they've gone for with Apoc and Kill Team with alternating activations. I'm hoping that seeing how well these games work will be the inspiration to make some kind of big change. While I'm not holding my breath, a 10th edition full revamp away from the IGOUGO system would be most welcome from me.

 Tawnis wrote:

I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.

Like maybe some kind of system whereby little gribbly units of goblins, or orks, or guardsmen or genestealer cults could be objectively worse for the points than marines, but could easily win battles of attrition by being cycled back onto the battlefield fairly easily via a variety of abilities. You could also give them bonuses for their weight of numbers.

Hmmm im trying to think of a system that has stuff like this in it, maybe one that the exact same single man James Workshop creates and produces.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.

And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.

As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.

Yep, hard agree, and I wish the doubling of marines' durability didnt also correspond with the doubling of seemingly everybody's firepower RIP.

At the end of the day, people who play 40k want to be playing a game where their units feel like super space soldiers. being tough is part of the fantasy of almost every faction - tyranids and orks fighting with their limbs blown off, necrons rising from the dead, eldar dodging and weaving out of the way of enemy bullets, marines and sisters with bullets bouncing off of foot-thick ceramite armor.

People are just not going to accept a single-turn lifespan on the battlefield for their 10,000 year old uber warriors forever. It's not satisfying to play, it's not satisfying to watch. The streams at competitive events make this incredibly obvious, everyone is laughing about how comical it is to watch these space super heroes huddle all their units behind the hunks of available obscuring terrain, because anything else would result in them getting absolutely instantly exploded.

Yeah, I think that the best option IMHO would have been the wound increase to Marines that we got, and other rules to accommodate the things you mentioned with the other races while keeping most of the weapons the same. Only anti-tank weapons' like Melta's, Lascannon, ect should have been able to cause multiple wounds (overcharged plasma at 2 D is prob still fine since it's risk vs reward).

In 3rd Ed it took a whole squad of Guardsmen remaining stationary rapid firing at under half range to kill a single Marine, and two full squads to kill a Terminator. To lose a couple of Terminators to lasgun fire realistically meant either your opponent's entire army was shooting at them, or you made a real bad roll (and could just as easily have those Terminators tank all that fire without issue).

If you start amping up the durability much beyond that, then either the lower-end models become completely worthless, or they have to get obnoxious power-boosters (like doubling their shots on orders) to compensate.

To give Marines a lopsided advantage without expecting the Guard player to show up with 300 models painted you have to start getting more creative with scenario and gameplay design than, essentially, putting a platoon of Navy Seals up against a Russian tank formation on open terrain and being surprised that the grizzled best-of-the-best tip-of-the-spear operators get blown up. The standard Matched Play equal-points pitched battle scenario is not a good format for showcasing Marines as they are in the fluff.

In any case, the reason Marines and Terminators felt weak was never Guardsmen with lasguns. It was Guardsmen with as many plasma guns and lascannons as they could stuff into a list, because building a TAC list meant optimizing to kill Marines. That sense of vulnerability is never, ever going away so long as Marines represent a majority of opponents any given player is likely to face.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:

I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.

Like maybe some kind of system whereby little gribbly units of goblins, or orks, or guardsmen or genestealer cults could be objectively worse for the points than marines, but could easily win battles of attrition by being cycled back onto the battlefield fairly easily via a variety of abilities. You could also give them bonuses for their weight of numbers.

Hmmm im trying to think of a system that has stuff like this in it, maybe one that the exact same single man James Workshop creates and produces.

I've heard that there was a Starship Troopers tabletop game that did this, but I've never played it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
In 3rd Ed it took a whole squad of Guardsmen remaining stationary rapid firing at under half range to kill a single Marine, and two full squads to kill a Terminator. To lose a couple of Terminators to lasgun fire realistically meant either your opponent's entire army was shooting at them, or you made a real bad roll (and could just as easily have those Terminators tank all that fire without issue).

If you start amping up the durability much beyond that, then either the lower-end models become completely worthless, or they have to get obnoxious power-boosters (like doubling their shots on orders) to compensate.

The reason Marines and Terminators felt weak was never Guardsmen with lasguns. It was Guardsmen with as many plasma guns and lascannons as they could stuff into a list, because building a TAC list meant optimizing to kill Marines. That sense of vulnerability is never, ever going away so long as Marines represent a majority of opponents any given player is likely to face.

Maybe it was just my personal experience vs what it should have been mathematically, but every time I put my terminators on the table, they ended up dying fast to a surprisingly small amount of firepower T4 just didn't feel like enough, even with 2+/5+. They just felt way more RNG reliant than any other unit I played and where one bad roll could make your massive points investment worthless, especially given how much smaller games were back in the day. I basically stopped playing them until 9th (I skipped 8th because of non-game reasons) because they just never felt even close to worth it for me.

The problem with making Marines 2 wounds apiece is that they're the most ubiquitous troops in the game.

There's a reason MEQ is the standard of comparison for anti-infantry weapons. Because, unlike in the actual 40k lore, you're far more likely to encounter Marines than, say, Guardsmen.

Hence, you're not just improving one army or one unit - you're effectively raising the floor for the most common units that other armies can expect to have to fight against. Thus, a lot of anti-infantry weapons inevitably had to get significant boots in damage output (usually going to D2), because the alternative would be for them to be inefficient and ineffective against what is (like it or not) their primary target.

This is why Marines cannot (and should not) be super-duper-mega-elites whilst also being the most-played army in the game. Because they inevitably form the baseline for the troops anti-infantry weapons need to kill to be worthwhile. If you make them more elite then you don't actually make them feel more elite, you just encourage people to leave behind any weapons/units incapable of killing them.

And this is before we get into the other issues this causes - like Marines being able to out-fight dedicated melee units in other armies, and supposedly-elite armies basically having to be turned into hordes in order to keep up with the ridiculous level of Marine buffs.

 vipoid wrote:
The problem with making Marines 2 wounds apiece is that they're the most ubiquitous troops in the game.

There's a reason MEQ is the standard of comparison for anti-infantry weapons. Because, unlike in the actual 40k lore, you're far more likely to encounter Marines than, say, Guardsmen.

Hence, you're not just improving one army or one unit - you're effectively raising the floor for the most common units that other armies can expect to have to fight against. Thus, a lot of anti-infantry weapons inevitably had to get significant boots in damage output (usually going to D2), because the alternative would be for them to be inefficient and ineffective against what is (like it or not) their primary target.

This is why Marines cannot (and should not) be super-duper-mega-elites whilst also being the most-played army in the game. Because they inevitably form the baseline for the troops anti-infantry weapons need to kill to be worthwhile. If you make them more elite then you don't actually make them feel more elite, you just encourage people to leave behind any weapons/units incapable of killing them.

And this is before we get into the other issues this causes - like Marines being able to out-fight dedicated melee units in other armies, and supposedly-elite armies basically having to be turned into hordes in order to keep up with the ridiculous level of Marine buffs.

That's a balance issue though, not a problem with how strong marines feel; it shouldn't be that weapons become 2 damage, it should be that you have twice as many shots to shoot at them. If they were a smaller more "elite" style army (similar to what the Custodes actually are on the table which is a whole other thing in and of itself) then it wouldn't matter if they were far more durable because you'd filed less of them. By nature, you're opponent would have lots more firepower to throw at them because you would always be drastically outnumbered. Circling back to the one of the first things I said on the matter, I think it's more an issue that GW wants people to buy a lot of marines and having them as a small elite army to match the lore, wouldn't be that good for sales.

 catbarf wrote:

In any case, the reason Marines and Terminators felt weak was never Guardsmen with lasguns. It was Guardsmen with as many plasma guns and lascannons as they could stuff into a list, because building a TAC list meant optimizing to kill Marines. That sense of vulnerability is never, ever going away so long as Marines represent a majority of opponents any given player is likely to face.

The IG's ability to optimize with as many plasma guns and lascannons as it wants is also part of the problem. The process that eventually lead to Marines getting 2 wound started with the mess that was the 5th edition IG codex.

 Tawnis wrote:


That's a balance issue though, not a problem with how strong marines feel; it shouldn't be that weapons become 2 damage, it should be that you have twice as many shots to shoot at them. If they were a smaller more "elite" style army (similar to what the Custodes actually are on the table which is a whole other thing in and of itself) then it wouldn't matter if they were far more durable because you'd filed less of them. By nature, you're opponent would have lots more firepower to throw at them because you would always be drastically outnumbered. Circling back to the one of the first things I said on the matter, I think it's more an issue that GW wants people to buy a lot of marines and having them as a small elite army to match the lore, wouldn't be that good for sales.

I actually prefer the 2D weapons over the twice as many shots, simply because it's faster.

The general lethality is similar, but rolling buckets of AP0 dice and hope to kill one or two 20pts marines in cover can be a fun once in a while, but not on a regular basis.

Kitane wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:


That's a balance issue though, not a problem with how strong marines feel; it shouldn't be that weapons become 2 damage, it should be that you have twice as many shots to shoot at them. If they were a smaller more "elite" style army (similar to what the Custodes actually are on the table which is a whole other thing in and of itself) then it wouldn't matter if they were far more durable because you'd filed less of them. By nature, you're opponent would have lots more firepower to throw at them because you would always be drastically outnumbered. Circling back to the one of the first things I said on the matter, I think it's more an issue that GW wants people to buy a lot of marines and having them as a small elite army to match the lore, wouldn't be that good for sales.

I actually prefer the 2D weapons over the twice as many shots, simply because it's faster.

The general lethality is similar, but rolling buckets of AP0 dice and hope to kill one or two 20pts marines in cover can be a fun once in a while, but not on a regular basis.

I guess I didn't explain that very well. It's not that every other army would have twice as much shooting, they'd have the same as they do now just with less power to each shot, the marines would have about half the forces we are seeing now to compensate (would probably be more like 2/3rds when you think of how it would be default reduce their shooting power, but I'm just talking broad strokes here). Dice roles would be about what we are seeing now, you would just kill a lot less marines. That wouldn't change too much of the balance though as there would be far less marines to kill. That's what I was trying to get at with the comparison to Custodes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think I've gone WAY off of what we were originally talking about on this thread so, if people want to keep talking about this, we can make something new. Let's get back on topic. XD

 Tawnis wrote:

Spoiler:

 Galas wrote:
I'm sorry. I'll never accept 1 wound terminators as something right or usable. When you work with 1 wound and max 2+ save, no amount of crap (That ends up making something more expensive) will evade the fact that with one 1, it dies just like anything else. Genestealers destroyed Terminators because that was a closed game with his own athmosphere were Genestealers were literally the aliens from the movies , absolutely lethal criatures in dark spaceships.

And I can accept that 1w marines felt durable in 3rd or 4th, I didn't played those editions. They were paper mache since the lethality of the game sky rocketed.

As someone who started back in 3rd, my biggest complaint about marines (and especially terminators) was that they never felt durable. I was a super casual kitchen table player, so keep that in mind, but still... The change to 2W marines was one of my favorite things GW has done in recent years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I agree in general, but this also brings up my issues with Primaris and 2w marines. The troops of other factions struggle hard to dent them, making the on-table interactions much less rewarding. See Banshees/Guardians/Genestealers/Current CSM ( )/Necron Warriors etc vs. Intercessors.

For me, I always thought that SM's (and by extension CSM's) should be the one faction that was really hard to kill. When I played the older editions one of the things I disliked was how fast they died and how wildly inconsistent it was with the lore. Personally, I've always thought that the Space Marine army should have been designed kind of like the current Custodes style where you have a couple of super strong squads trying to take on a much larger army. But then GW wouldn't be able to sell anywhere near as many marine models and they are their flagship army so...

See, I can't get behind this at all because many of those units from other factions were originally set up to have certain advantages/balance points when contesting to Marines, so much so as to be defining features of said units.

Genestealers are a prime example. In Space Hulk they took Terminators apart in CC, and for the first 15(?) years of their existence in the lore they continued to be extremely lethal against Marines in CC, the balancing factor being that they had to get there through a torrent of shooting. Genestealers aren't half as dangerous to Marines as they used to be, and it's a sad, sad state.

For a long, long time, Eldar Aspect Warriors were balanced around roughly equal in value to Marines, but with their own specialist skew. Banshees would slaughter Marines in CC, but Marines would slaughter Banshees with shooting. Dark Reapers would slaughter Marines with shooting, but Marines would slaughter Reapers in CC. Shoot the punchy stuff and punch the shooty stuff. It's an ideal balance. But no more. Individually a Banshee is a shadow of her former self against Marines. Like Genestealers, Banshees used to butcher Terminators ffs.

Marines simply being all uber is just gross, imo. It is a blight on the game.

I don't mean that marines should feel uber, I do agree that the feel you are going for is correct, but there is a flipside to that as well. When you have a handful of guardsman fire some lasguns into your Terminators and a couple go down becuase you rolled a few 1's doesn't feel like it should even be possible. They are supposed to esentially be walking tanks. I feel like if there was a broader spectrum of what was possible both the feel of marines greatly outclassing standard humans, but also having a solid matchup against things like Eldar or Genestealers could be achieved.

Right right, so to be clear I'm totally sympathetic, especially when it comes to Terminators which have a history of being particularly susceptible to rolling a couple 1's and suffering hard. But let's set Terminators aside for a moment though (since we probably agree more on that) and focus on Marines to start with (because they are the baseline), and they're relationship to Guard/GEQs, because that's sort of a fundamental relationship to Marines feeling elite.

Going all the way back to third I think overall Marine toughness gets muddied by Starcannons and Choppas being around but I think when you're talking about strictly Marines with Bolters vs. GEQ with Lasguns, the relationship was -reasonable-, with the primary issues being that Marines didn't receive any benefit from cover in the exchange, and probably the fact that Boltguns could only fire once on the move (which was changed in 4th). As catbarf points out it did take a lot of effort from basic Guardsmen to take out marines, and Marines firing twice against Guardsmen did pretty well, especially in the open. But the real important bit about Marines vs. GEQ during 3-7th was the potential offensive capability of Marines once you started looking at dedicated anti-GEQ weapons, and Morale. Marines, even the basic Tacs, with the right weapons and useage could absolutely butcher GEQ. One flamer and a round of Assault could easily mean a wiped-out Guardsmen squad and further shennanigans as the Marines started contacting more units through consolidation. Like, Marines could trade comfortably with lasgun GEQ in the open and that could generally work out ok to a point for point exchange that was reasonable, (favorable to the side with the right supporting elements), but once Marines actually contacted GEQ lines in CC, it could easily become a massacre.

I can remember a game where an Assault squad of mine took some casualties, and maybe was down to 6-7 guys, but it had two flamers and the opponent was doin the classic Guard-Gunline thing. The Assault Squad (which everybody poopoohs) landed close, flamed through one squad and into another, killing members of two or three squads in the process. Then they charged into two units, handily won the combat, Sweeping Advanced through them and into two more units (some already damaged from the flamers) won the following round of combat in the opponents turn and Sweeping Advanced through them. 6 or 7 marines killing 40ish Guardsmen in one round of shooting and two rounds of combat. Marines, even 'regular' ones armed appropriately and attacking in the right ways could just absolutely annihilate GEQ becuase they could ignore GEQ armor in the open with Bolters, in cover with Flamers (and later Whirlwinds), and pummel GEQ through Assault and Morale. To me, all this meant that it was ok for GEQ to occasionally kill a Marine with a Lasgun because. . . I mean if someone is going to buy a bunch of Guardsmen and paint them all up, the basic troops shouldn't feel totally ineffective. In addition, for the Marine side of things it's good to have a reason to bring Flamers and Whirlwinds, the weapons purposefully built to handle lightly armored hordes.

. . .
8th edition
. . .

8th edition brought three brutal changes to the Marine vs. GEQ thing.

1. The first was the change to Morale mechanics. Morale is nowhere near as decisive a mechanic (vs. GEQ specifically) as it was.
2. Removal of blasts/templates. Marines could no longer take advantage of the tendency for more numerous armies to clump up, especially in cover.
3. GEQ got a 5+ save against bolters in the open under the new paradigm, immediately cutting the effectiveness of a Bolter against a GEQ out of cover by 33%.

The fix for all this from GW was that twin linked weapons got to fire twice as much and rerolls (and a new type of marine and a tank that could shoot like 50 fuggin shots in a turn), but all the extra dice/bullets also meant that Marines themselves died faster too. The older paradigm at least had this class of weapons that was genuinely fantastic at killing GEQ (and not MEQ), plus Morale mechanics that were extremely rewarding if you were able to leverage them to your favor. Post 8th just raised the amount of bullets involved, which hurts everybody equally, and downplays the more dynamic mechanics of pre-8th Assault vs. "mook" infantry. Not only that, but now the more effective solutions for dealing with GEQ (which was once flamers and Assault) were taken out of the basic Marine Squads (I'm talking Tacticals, since we're talking about 1W Marines) and given to TLAC Razorbacks or similar platforms. Which, while effective, is just not as exciting or "spech-mahreens OOH RAH" as having your basic Marine squad slaughter GEQ by boltering them in the open, burninating them by the bushell with flamers, and then murdering them in CC before turning to their terrified comrades and threatening the same.

Of course you got new Intercessors with Assault Bolters (?) that had two wounds and rolled more dice per turn for shooting and in CC, but MOAR shots/attacks hurts everybody and *yawn*.

The Marine vs. GEQ thing was eventually addressed again with Bolter Discipline and whatever the +1 attack thing is called, which from my perspective put Marines and GEQ closer to the right spot in terms of balance, but again was just a MOAR dice fix which affects everybody. And then of course we got Supplements and 9th, etc.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Going all the way back to third I think overall Marine toughness gets muddied by Starcannons and Choppas being around but I think when you're talking about strictly Marines with Bolters vs. GEQ with Lasguns, the relationship was -reasonable-, with the primary issues being that Marines didn't receive any benefit from cover in the exchange, and probably the fact that Boltguns could only fire once on the move (which was changed in 4th).

I know I keep talking about ProHammer (can't help myself) but we have a rule where if the weapons AP = Sv, then instead of your save being negated you take it with a -1 penalty. AP3 weapons means marines save on a 3+. The proliferation of AP2 weapons at least lets terminators save on a 3+, etc.

The bane of terminators is volume of fire against them. Even back in 2nd edition with their armor save being a 3+ on a 2D6, there was still a chance to fail and even with just a -1 or -2 their saves drop down to a similar 1/6 chance fail level that they had in 3rd-7th edition. Terminators are tough and expensive and pack a punch - but they are specialized and need to be deployed carefully and protected as they close range. You can't just plop them down on the table and march towards the enemy. I think strong units SHOULD require careful use and consideration.

Does this fit the lore? Maybe, maybe not. Everything in 40K is the strongest thing ever until the next thing comes along. The lore has always been a saga of one-upping the competition. The irony also being that the imperium "maybe isn't as strong as its propaganda claims to be" with regard to its units.

Anyway, the ProHammer AP/Sv tweak works well and helps reduce lethality a little bit across the board for everyone.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Going all the way back to third I think overall Marine toughness gets muddied by Starcannons and Choppas being around but I think when you're talking about strictly Marines with Bolters vs. GEQ with Lasguns, the relationship was -reasonable-, with the primary issues being that Marines didn't receive any benefit from cover in the exchange, and probably the fact that Boltguns could only fire once on the move (which was changed in 4th).

I know I keep talking about ProHammer (can't help myself) but we have a rule where if the weapons AP = Sv, then instead of your save being negated you take it with a -1 penalty. AP3 weapons means marines save on a 3+. The proliferation of AP2 weapons at least lets terminators save on a 3+, etc.

The bane of terminators is volume of fire against them. Even back in 2nd edition with their armor save being a 3+ on a 2D6, there was still a chance to fail and even with just a -1 or -2 their saves drop down to a similar 1/6 chance fail level that they had in 3rd-7th edition. Terminators are tough and expensive and pack a punch - but they are specialized and need to be deployed carefully and protected as they close range. You can't just plop them down on the table and march towards the enemy. I think strong units SHOULD require careful use and consideration.

Does this fit the lore? Maybe, maybe not. Everything in 40K is the strongest thing ever until the next thing comes along. The lore has always been a saga of one-upping the competition. The irony also being that the imperium "maybe isn't as strong as its propaganda claims to be" with regard to its units.

Anyway, the ProHammer AP/Sv tweak works well and helps reduce lethality a little bit across the board for everyone.

@Prohammer , although even there Terminators suffer from the advent of rolling a couple 1's.

Terminators are almost their own special case, and I'd almost go the other route and say that I'm ok with AP 2 knocking Terminators out while the issue Tawnis brought up was about the fact that massed Lasgun fire would still knock out Terminators if the target player rolled one bad set of 1's. For the 3-7 Paradigm it might have made more sense for Terminators to be T5, which would have Lasguns wound on 6+ rather than 5+, and Boltguns wounding on 5+, reducing the effect of small arms rather considerably. The proliferation of AP 2 was also an issue of course, but I don't know if having Lascannons only kill a Terminator on a 1 or 2 (Prohammer) feels right either.

There might be some mechanic that takes the strength of the weapon into account. Like if the Strength is +3 over the Targets toughness then the full AP is in effect. It's a little sloppy, but it helps Terminators (if they were T5) sustain hits from Plasma and Starcannons, while still letting true AT weapons do their thing.

There you go, there's my fix for Terminators for 3-7. T5 base, Prohammer rules for AP until attacker S is +3 over target. Ship it!


I do remember playing Necrons in 4th (whi had very limited high AP options) that Terminators actually felt pretty resilient and took a lot of effort to remove if I didn't have Heavy Destroyers around.

I like it

One that's been interesting in our ProHammer games is seeing how wildly the points cost swing around from edition to edition.

3rd edition jump pack troops (e.g. Assault marines, Chaos Raptors), biker units, and terminators were REALLY freaking expensive. To the point, I think, that if you're going to run a list heavy on those in ProHammer you should probably use at least the 5th edition books.

That said - we haven't found too much power creep in our games, even when armies draw from different editions. I played a series of 3rd Edition Feral Orks vs 6th edition imperial guard (and lost) but then won against 7th edition Tau with nearly the same list.

I think playing to the mission objective (which are fairly varied) is more critical than the relative "power" of your lists. At least to a certain point.

Slipspace wrote:
It's amazing to me how you can make a statement then immediately refute it in your very next sentence.

Sorry, I worded that very poorly. I mean to say in this current edition as an IGOUGO system.

If you're standing out of effective range it's not a bad tactic to be in the open to give you more movement options. Again, this happened in previous editions of 40k where you had the trade-off between moving through cover at a potentially slower rate or being in the open and being more vulnerable to shooting. Generally, once you got to about turn 2 you wanted to be in cover for the most part but starting out of cover had some tactical advantages.

I think in general if we all went back to those old editions with the mindset we had now it wouldn't be that straightforward. Kind of like how athletes today are incredibly more honed in than their predecessors.

The problem with 9th, and in 8th, is that if you don't literally completely hide everything there's a very good chance that whatever isn't 100% hidden will die because 9th is just far too lethal. As the LGT final demonstrated, even being hidden or in cover doesn't help when you can have 4 planes behind your lines in turn 1, along with a teleporting blob of infantry buffed up so much they can take down Dreadnoughts. If you look at the AdMech players movement in that game he had restricted targets for 2 of his infantry units but those units basically either killed their targets in one turn or cleaned up after they'd been softened up. There were then two Ironstriders that had to work a bit to get some shots at a good target but that didn't matter since the bulk of his firepower could shoot whatever it wanted.

There's a third option that no one wants to use. He had enough CP to stuff his Redemptors into reserves and stick everything else out of range of all but the teleporting blob and the planes, but he wanted to gamble on getting first turn. If you're know you're going to get spanked why wouldn't you spend that resource? It's like people playing Magic that don't look at life as a resource.

He still would have lost, because Admech and DE still have things that are a bit much, but then he'd also still have a good hard fought game. Just because a couple of factions are on the edge doesn't mean the whole game is a trash fire.

 Mezmorki wrote:
I like it

One that's been interesting in our ProHammer games is seeing how wildly the points cost swing around from edition to edition.

3rd edition jump pack troops (e.g. Assault marines, Chaos Raptors), biker units, and terminators were REALLY freaking expensive. To the point, I think, that if you're going to run a list heavy on those in ProHammer you should probably use at least the 5th edition books.

That said - we haven't found too much power creep in our games, even when armies draw from different editions. I played a series of 3rd Edition Feral Orks vs 6th edition imperial guard (and lost) but then won against 7th edition Tau with nearly the same list.

I think playing to the mission objective (which are fairly varied) is more critical than the relative "power" of your lists. At least to a certain point.

The goofy thing when I look back at those editions is that Marines didn't have Bolt Pistols for two editions.

Also the points for Heavy Weapons are balanced around squads being unable to Split fire (I forget, can squads shoot freely at multiple units in Prohammer?). That limitation is something I'd drop from earlier editions. It made for some very critical decision making, but it also felt a bit too artificial for most people, imo.

Slipspace wrote:

Spoiler:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Hiding your army is the only thing that prevents damage in an IGOUGO system. You can make everything hit like a wet noodle and have long games that favor large numbers of models, because everything takes so much to kill. I don't know that it would be fun.

It's amazing to me how you can make a statement then immediately refute it in your very next sentence.

Nothing about IGOUGO means hiding is the only way to prevent damage. Even just using 40k as an example we've seen in previous editions that reducing overall range, effective range and volume of fire/attacks do a pretty good job of reducing damage. Previous editions have made it impossible to shoot from one deployment zone to the other with anything other than heavy weapons, for example. They also generally didn't have re-rolls except for twin-linked weapons. If you really wanted to have your basic troops do anything other than plink away with the odd plasma gun or missile launcher you had to actually move them up the board to engage the enemy at closer range, which carried obvious risks that you had to work to mitigate.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

People want tactics, but what kind of tactic is it where you can put your guys in the open and it doesn't matter than your opponent went first? That seems antithetical.

If you're standing out of effective range it's not a bad tactic to be in the open to give you more movement options.

Spoiler:

Again, this happened in previous editions of 40k where you had the trade-off between moving through cover at a potentially slower rate or being in the open and being more vulnerable to shooting. Generally, once you got to about turn 2 you wanted to be in cover for the most part but starting out of cover had some tactical advantages.

The problem with 9th, and in 8th, is that if you don't literally completely hide everything there's a very good chance that whatever isn't 100% hidden will die because 9th is just far too lethal.

Spoiler:

As the LGT final demonstrated, even being hidden or in cover doesn't help when you can have 4 planes behind your lines in turn 1, along with a teleporting blob of infantry buffed up so much they can take down Dreadnoughts. If you look at the AdMech players movement in that game he had restricted targets for 2 of his infantry units but those units basically either killed their targets in one turn or cleaned up after they'd been softened up. There were then two Ironstriders that had to work a bit to get some shots at a good target but that didn't matter since the bulk of his firepower could shoot whatever it wanted.

One of the smartest posts I have read since probably something that unit wrote… exalted.

The Prohammer phenom is amazing. Encyclopaedic… yeah I agree about the split fire limitation. Never made sense. I mean, why not have most of the unit tie down the infantry with cover fire while the missile launcher takes aim at the turret of the predator poking over the ruined wall, the very turret of the tank that the targeted infantry may be supporting? Just… weird.

Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.

Racerguy180 wrote:
Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.

You want to roll 30+ saves individually, be my guest. I don’t. And that can be from ONE unit-and at AP-1, so you can’t even use the reroll trick to get the same math.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Terminators can be significantly beefed by just needing saves on 2d6. Like they used to.

You want to roll 30+ saves individually, be my guest. I don’t. And that can be from ONE unit-and at AP-1, so you can’t even use the reroll trick to get the same math.

there are ways to sorta fast roll 2d6 if the -AP isn't to high.
If you need to roll 30 saves you roll 30 dice and any that are not high enough to already be saved you individually (or in groups) add another dice.