Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Karol wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
D2 was given out too much because people complained Marines are too durable and with how GW plays in house they probably agreed.

The problem is that marines got 2W, because in 8th , even primaris with their 2W were considered not worth taking.

Yep, it was totally the durability problem and not the fact that Gravis Units like Bolt Aggressors with shoot twice were a thing. I mean...who wouldn't want to take an intercessor with 2 shots at 30' instead of those garbage Aggressors with T5, 3 wounds and functionally 24 shots each against horde units.

The problem wasn't durability, it was as always is the case with Marines, there were even better options available.

In 8th, Intercessors were beating Tau Firewarriors at ranged combat point for point, and by a significant amount. But again, why take a lesser unit when you could just take MSU troop choices and grab aggressors instead.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Plus not every army has been updated yet so until the dust settles we're all in a weird limbo right now.

Here's the problem though: The moment the game is "settled", GW will flip the table. Back in 8th, right before SM 2.0 came out, the game was in a pretty decent spot. It lasted a couple months, then SM 2.0 plus supplements came out and traahed it. Before corrections could be made, SMs 2W and 9th ed. Churn, baby, churn!

 Insectum7 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Plus not every army has been updated yet so until the dust settles we're all in a weird limbo right now.

Here's the problem though: The moment the game is "settled", GW will flip the table. Back in 8th, right before SM 2.0 came out, the game was in a pretty decent spot. It lasted a couple months, then SM 2.0 plus supplements came out and traahed it. Before corrections could be made, SMs 2W and 9th ed. Churn, baby, churn!

While churn will always be a thing (they can't get you to buy new stuff if it's identical to the old after all), the game did go 5 editions before they shook up weapon profiles and statlines in a major way, so once it's settled into the new system I could see them looking at other ways to tweak the game instead.

SemperMortis wrote:

Karol wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
D2 was given out too much because people complained Marines are too durable and with how GW plays in house they probably agreed.

The problem is that marines got 2W, because in 8th , even primaris with their 2W were considered not worth taking.

Yep, it was totally the durability problem and not the fact that Gravis Units like Bolt Aggressors with shoot twice were a thing. I mean...who wouldn't want to take an intercessor with 2 shots at 30' instead of those garbage Aggressors with T5, 3 wounds and functionally 24 shots each against horde units.

The problem wasn't durability, it was as always is the case with Marines, there were even better options available.

In 8th, Intercessors were beating Tau Firewarriors at ranged combat point for point, and by a significant amount. But again, why take a lesser unit when you could just take MSU troop choices and grab aggressors instead.

Up until marine codex 2.0. marines armies would consists of scouts, because they were the cheapest marines, 2 suicide smash hammer captins, and the rest was spend on everything but marine stuff. The loyal 32 , castellans etc. No one was running aggresors, and the primaris stuff was for most of 8th considered unplayable,and the old classic marine stuff wasn't that much better.

marines, or to be exact IH, got resilient in 8th. And aggresor builds were a thing for salamanders for like second, and GW destroyed that way of playing in an instant. As they really didn't want people to play armies made out of 6 ETB boxs.

SemperMortis wrote:
In 8th, Intercessors were beating Tau Firewarriors at ranged combat point for point, and by a significant amount. But again, why take a lesser unit when you could just take MSU troop choices and grab aggressors instead.

I feel in late 8th it was common to see Marine armies with 30 Intercessors, sometimes even 40, because yes, they were clearly undercosted relative to the rest of the game.
Aggressor spam feels more like an early 9th thing. But as the years go on its getting hard to remember accurately.

I guess the deeper point is that this greater variety of profiles was meant to break the curse of "just take what's efficient". On paper it would encourage more TAC lists across codexes and result in a more variety of lists and potentially at least a more balanced game (as viewed through tournament performance). But that hasn't really happened. People should have been able to build to counter Marines - but couldn't when they were busted. Then build to counter DE - but couldn't when they were busted. And now to Custodes/Tau, probably Harlequins etc - but won't, because they are just busted.

Or at least that's my thoughts. From the position of Orks say - could you list tailor into Custodes? Or would it just be "grab all the units you tend to see in functional Ork lists and hope"?

Tyel wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
In 8th, Intercessors were beating Tau Firewarriors at ranged combat point for point, and by a significant amount. But again, why take a lesser unit when you could just take MSU troop choices and grab aggressors instead.

I feel in late 8th it was common to see Marine armies with 30 Intercessors, sometimes even 40, because yes, they were clearly undercosted relative to the rest of the game.
Aggressor spam feels more like an early 9th thing. But as the years go on its getting hard to remember accurately.

I guess the deeper point is that this greater variety of profiles was meant to break the curse of "just take what's efficient". On paper it would encourage more TAC lists across codexes and result in a more variety of lists and potentially at least a more balanced game (as viewed through tournament performance). But that hasn't really happened. People should have been able to build to counter Marines - but couldn't when they were busted. Then build to counter DE - but couldn't when they were busted. And now to Custodes/Tau, probably Harlequins etc - but won't, because they are just busted.

Or at least that's my thoughts. From the position of Orks say - could you list tailor into Custodes? Or would it just be "grab all the units you tend to see in functional Ork lists and hope"?

The to-wound table and AP as a modifier conspire to make the greater variety of profiles less mathematically relevant.

Tyel wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
In 8th, Intercessors were beating Tau Firewarriors at ranged combat point for point, and by a significant amount. But again, why take a lesser unit when you could just take MSU troop choices and grab aggressors instead.

I feel in late 8th it was common to see Marine armies with 30 Intercessors, sometimes even 40, because yes, they were clearly undercosted relative to the rest of the game.
Aggressor spam feels more like an early 9th thing. But as the years go on its getting hard to remember accurately.

That was at the very end of 8th, when the 2.0 marine book and more important the supplements came out. Before that the basic marine model, who wasn't a smash hammer or a scout, was a razorback. Same way for the orks under the new book the basic ork was a buggy. And they weren't undercosted, they were just better then what was considered broken before them. And again this was the end of an edition. For most of 8th if someone was running intercessor, it ment they were a noob.

Karol wrote:
Up until marine codex 2.0. marines armies would consists of scouts, because they were the cheapest marines, 2 suicide smash hammer captins, and the rest was spend on everything but marine stuff. The loyal 32 , castellans etc. No one was running aggresors, and the primaris stuff was for most of 8th considered unplayable,and the old classic marine stuff wasn't that much better.

marines, or to be exact IH, got resilient in 8th. And aggresor builds were a thing for salamanders for like second, and GW destroyed that way of playing in an instant. As they really didn't want people to play armies made out of 6 ETB boxs.

And Karol, was that because Marines were garbage tier or was it because Soup was just stupid and allowed for even more options to powerbuild which further diluted the power of individual codex's? I'll give you a hint, Marines weren't garbage tier and if you claim they were you're either ignorant of the meta or lying. They had Marine only builds placing well in GTs and majors and even had I believe a top 8 at LVO, they weren't broken, nor were they top tier, but they weren't garbage tier.

Soup was just a stupid rule by GW, now instead of competing against internal balance options, Codex's had to compete against several others. And in this case Imperial players were spoiled for choice, you could Soup with literally any imperial faction so you had EVERY Marine chapter to choose from, Every Regiment of IG, Custards, SoB, assassins, inquisitors, Grey Knights, Imperial Knights and of course Cult Mechanicus.

And it was Ravenguard players who were really abusing Bolt Aggressors. Ravenguard brought 6 of them at Dicehammer in 2019 and won the GT where the player even said he wanted to take more Centurions instead but was glad he had brought those instead because they were the deciding unit in 3 of his 5 games at the GT. Being able to sneak up to the enemy turn 1 and just unload was a wicked powerful build and would decimate Ork gate keeping armies that were bringing mobz of 30 boyz. A unit of 5 of them was 1 shotting a mob of 30 boyz a turn. In other words, they had a better than 100% return on investment turn 1 against horde lists.

Tyel wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

I feel in late 8th it was common to see Marine armies with 30 Intercessors, sometimes even 40, because yes, they were clearly undercosted relative to the rest of the game.
Aggressor spam feels more like an early 9th thing. But as the years go on its getting hard to remember accurately.

I guess the deeper point is that this greater variety of profiles was meant to break the curse of "just take what's efficient". On paper it would encourage more TAC lists across codexes and result in a more variety of lists and potentially at least a more balanced game (as viewed through tournament performance). But that hasn't really happened. People should have been able to build to counter Marines - but couldn't when they were busted. Then build to counter DE - but couldn't when they were busted. And now to Custodes/Tau, probably Harlequins etc - but won't, because they are just busted.

Or at least that's my thoughts. From the position of Orks say - could you list tailor into Custodes? Or would it just be "grab all the units you tend to see in functional Ork lists and hope"?

As soon as Soup became a thing, Intercessors were functionally dead. In fact, karol was kind of right in that you rarely saw anything besides scouts, and why? because they were a troop tax to unlock the better units, AKA centurions and Aggressors etc or to fill out the troop requirements to take Smash captains and then field the loyal 32 and/or some knights.

I'm going to disagree with you though on your last comments. In 8th, nobody could build against IH, they were just too broken. Too much durability teamed with too much firepower, GW being GW. But in 9th you had Cult Mech and Drukhari going head to head in most GTs and orkz and several other factions were able to steal top finishes from them occasionally, it was nowhere near as bad as IH, the only saving grace i think for us in 8th 2.0 was that very few IH players existed and few were willing to really convert lists near the end of an edition.

Against Tau/custards i'm just going to flat out say it, its too soon to judge how broken they are. They are clearly broken, the question is, are they Drukhari/Admech broken or are they Iron Hands broken. I'm hitting a GT next weekend and can say a bit more with first hand knowledge but we will see.

As far as list tailoring against Custards...I mean...yeah you totally could, its just they are a relatively rare list so you could build against them and in a GT literally never face them unless you beat several lists that aren't custards and meet them in the finals to finally use your tailored list against them.

SemperMortis wrote:
As far as list tailoring against Custards...I mean...yeah you totally could, its just they are a relatively rare list so you could build against them and in a GT literally never face them unless you beat several lists that aren't custards and meet them in the finals to finally use your tailored list against them.

Its a fair point on Ad Mech. I think the mid 2021 meta got old, but yes, it wasn't just Marines and Marines with Marines.

With that said (and things may change/all tournaments are somewhat bespoke) - but aren't Custodes currently the most played tournament list, with about 13% or something of lists? (I need Daed to run in with some stats).
But yes. Its probably why "meta adaption" is relatively rare in 40k. You don't want to lose your 2nd game to some random Daemons list you'd normally crush, but you can't when hard skewed into taking on something else. So everyone kind of ends up running "faction good stuff".

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I feel like the 2 wounds on Marines paired with D2 weapons was to start splitting the game up so no one weapon is good against everything.

I honestly have no idea how that was supposed to work.

With Marines being by far the most common army, you're basically halving the effectiveness of all D1 weapons against infantry. So far from increasing choice, you're basically cutting off the lower-tier of weapons by making them outright terrible at their job. If your anti-infantry weapons can't efficiently kill the most common infantry in the game, what is even the point?

This is yet another case of GW wanting to have their cake and eat it, and buggering the game in the process.

Marines cannot be elite because of their sheer ubiquity. It doesn't matter how strong or weak you make them - they will always, always be the benchmark for infantry because they represent by far the most common profile you'll see on the table.

The only way for Marines to be as elite as people want them to be is for them to also be rare. You either need to convince 80-90% of Marine players to pick different armies or else change the way Marines work so that their lists have to be 90+% Imperial Guard or Inquisition units, and no more than 10% Space Marines.

Nah, elite has to do with the size of the army put on the table, not the number of players. I mean at this point there are more Custodes models on tables than there are actual Custodes.

 vipoid wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I feel like the 2 wounds on Marines paired with D2 weapons was to start splitting the game up so no one weapon is good against everything.

I honestly have no idea how that was supposed to work.

With Marines being by far the most common army, you're basically halving the effectiveness of all D1 weapons against infantry. So far from increasing choice, you're basically cutting off the lower-tier of weapons by making them outright terrible at their job. If your anti-infantry weapons can't efficiently kill the most common infantry in the game, what is even the point?

This is yet another case of GW wanting to have their cake and eat it, and buggering the game in the process.

Marines cannot be elite because of their sheer ubiquity. It doesn't matter how strong or weak you make them - they will always, always be the benchmark for infantry because they represent by far the most common profile you'll see on the table.

The only way for Marines to be as elite as people want them to be is for them to also be rare. You either need to convince 80-90% of Marine players to pick different armies or else change the way Marines work so that their lists have to be 90+% Imperial Guard or Inquisition units, and no more than 10% Space Marines.

What garbage logic. It doesn't matter how common the army is to play against, otherwise you're saying nobody in a casual setting should have a counter to Dark Eldar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:

Karol wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
D2 was given out too much because people complained Marines are too durable and with how GW plays in house they probably agreed.

The problem is that marines got 2W, because in 8th , even primaris with their 2W were considered not worth taking.

Yep, it was totally the durability problem and not the fact that Gravis Units like Bolt Aggressors with shoot twice were a thing. I mean...who wouldn't want to take an intercessor with 2 shots at 30' instead of those garbage Aggressors with T5, 3 wounds and functionally 24 shots each against horde units.

The problem wasn't durability, it was as always is the case with Marines, there were even better options available.

In 8th, Intercessors were beating Tau Firewarriors at ranged combat point for point, and by a significant amount. But again, why take a lesser unit when you could just take MSU troop choices and grab aggressors instead.

Most people aren't agreeing that Aggressors should've had the ability to shoot twice. The complaints of them going to W3 is silly though since it's an expensive model.

vipoid wrote:The only way for Marines to be as elite as people want them to be is for them to also be rare. You either need to convince 80-90% of Marine players to pick different armies or else change the way Marines work so that their lists have to be 90+% Imperial Guard or Inquisition units, and no more than 10% Space Marines.

You're not wrong, but also, yeah, neither of those options are going to happen.

EviscerationPlague wrote:The complaints of them going to W3 is silly though since it's an expensive model.

Not sure I followed that logic. There are lots of expensive models that aren't 3W.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Nah, elite has to do with the size of the army put on the table, not the number of players.

Provably wrong.

Marines have always, always been the standard specifically because of their ubiquity. They never *felt* elite because they represented the standard troop and also the one that people primarily tailored against.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

What garbage logic. It doesn't matter how common the army is to play against, otherwise you're saying nobody in a casual setting should have a counter to Dark Eldar.

Nothing I said or suggested in the post you quoted alluded to that so I have no clue what you're even on about.

What you're describing is ludonarrative dissonance. And no, the number of people playing a faction isn't a factor to how elite something feels, it's the rules that do that.

I didnt interpret them saying that its about how the army feels but that gw has to balance around them being the baseline (back in the day it was the guardsman or the ork but times change). No idea if they are onto anything with that but seems to be a misunderstanding.

Dai wrote:
I didnt interpret them saying that its about how the army feels but that gw has to balance around them being the baseline (back in the day it was the guardsman or the ork but times change). No idea if they are onto anything with that but seems to be a misunderstanding.

I disagree. They could just as easily use Guard, or a statline of all 4s if they want. There is no requirement to choose one faction over another just because it's more commonly played.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Dai wrote:
I didnt interpret them saying that its about how the army feels but that gw has to balance around them being the baseline (back in the day it was the guardsman or the ork but times change). No idea if they are onto anything with that but seems to be a misunderstanding.

I disagree. They could just as easily use Guard, or a statline of all 4s if they want. There is no requirement to choose one faction over another just because it's more commonly played.

I think it’s pretty true that GW had to design affordable plasma guns into guard infantry, or something with the same function, because marines are a common opponent. They also could have left heavy bolters in their can’t-pierce-power-armor status. We’d probably still have griffon mortars, in plastic. Grenade launchers and ap4 are better against cultists, orks, Eldar, even necron warriors sometimes.

pelicaniforce wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Dai wrote:
I didnt interpret them saying that its about how the army feels but that gw has to balance around them being the baseline (back in the day it was the guardsman or the ork but times change). No idea if they are onto anything with that but seems to be a misunderstanding.

I disagree. They could just as easily use Guard, or a statline of all 4s if they want. There is no requirement to choose one faction over another just because it's more commonly played.

I think it’s pretty true that GW had to design affordable plasma guns into guard infantry, or something with the same function, because marines are a common opponent. They also could have left heavy bolters in their can’t-pierce-power-armor status. We’d probably still have griffon mortars, in plastic. Grenade launchers and ap4 are better against cultists, orks, Eldar, even necron warriors sometimes.

Ideally every army should be able to handle a range of targets with their weapons, not just Marines. Balancing around Marines would be more about relative points cost if anything else.

That’s depressing

pelicaniforce wrote:
That’s depressing

That's game design for you. Like sure you want your thematic stuff in there, but you have to balance it against a variety of things not just around a single enemy type.

Dai wrote:I didnt interpret them saying that its about how the army feels but that gw has to balance around them being the baseline (back in the day it was the guardsman or the ork but times change)..

It was never guard or orks. Guard provided the baseline points calculation in Rogue Trader (based on the WFB points calculation for normal humans, where every stat point above 3 (or 7 for leadership and the like, or 1 for wounds or attacks) costs extra), but they weren't ever the baseline for gameplay performance or power.

GW has openly said it designs around marine performance. Go all the way back to the end of 1st and dawn of 2nd, and marines got their first stat adjustment- better power armor, and toughness rise for 3 to 4. Why? They didn't feel 'heroic' enough.
The quote from GW was that with the better army lists for their enemies (particular orks and eldar, craftworld rules had just happened) marines had fallen behind in performance and (exact quote here, complete with exclamation point) "this is hardly appropriate!"
9th edition blatantly reopened with that attitude- marines just needed to be better, so 2nd wound and better imperial guns. Next marine codex will bring them back up.

Marines are, and have always been, the default. Everything is mapped to how marines perform. Other factions are 'too good' if playing marines feels bad. So marines got the statbump at the dawn of 2nd, and when that wasn't good enough, eldar got their shuriken catapults snapped over GW's knees, and it took almost 25 years to get that back into something resembling its old self.

Now, this rarely actually made marines OP, because GW game design is... uh... well, its GW game design. Well, partly anyway. Much of the marine problem's with success versus other armies is they're often designed as generalists in a system that doesn't actually reward that. Hyper-specialization often wins more and marine lists tend to be more successful when they can lean into that. But the baseline assumptions for the game are around marines, and yes its because they're so popular and common on the table. They sell, so they get more attention, if not always good quality support.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
That’s depressing

That's game design for you. Like sure you want your thematic stuff in there, but you have to balance it against a variety of things not just around a single enemy type.

It’s like the opposite of game design. They’ve printed rules for 3 out of four weapons that are barely ever used. Grenade launchers never, and if infantry squads had never had melta or flamers, there wouldn’t be a lot of dakka threads demanding the option to replace a plasma gun with a melta. Just a few.


Game design would be saying that since there is practically only one weapon, and three other mostly dispensable lines of print, we’ll just say that all four weapons have the same profile.

Well the designers job is to make things worth taking. So melta and plasma are more powerful weapons. Then the g.launcher have real utility. Maybe it can fire grenades that can slow opponents down, maybe they can put out LoS blocking smoke for a turn, maybe a grenade is really devastating if you are sitting inside a walled room. Options are not the enemy of any game. Only options not worth taking. It is like having a codex of 100 potential units, but if in reality everyone just take 4-5, then the codex is a 4-5 option codex.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
What you're describing is ludonarrative dissonance. And no, the number of people playing a faction isn't a factor to how elite something feels, it's the rules that do that.

Sure it does. If everybody is playing marines then marines don't ever get to roflstomp lesser troops.

Marines are very rarely a top army. And it mostly happens at the start or very end of an edition. And some marines go through a whole edition or more without getting to stomp anyone.
And all of those things have their roots in rules of the game, and nothing else. In the lore Salamnders, Crimson Fists etc are doing great.

 vipoid wrote:
I honestly have no idea how that was supposed to work.

With Marines being by far the most common army, you're basically halving the effectiveness of all D1 weapons against infantry. So far from increasing choice, you're basically cutting off the lower-tier of weapons by making them outright terrible at their job. If your anti-infantry weapons can't efficiently kill the most common infantry in the game, what is even the point?

Because they should be balanced against each other. It goes back to the thread title - how good should bolters be?

The point of making Marines 2 wounds was to "de-glass" them.
Ignore all the rules that were piled on later (and the fact GW didn't just do this, but did boost Primaris attack values a bit on release at 20 points).
Lets say you could take basic tactical marine at 13 points a model - or "Primaris tactical marine" at 18 points but with 2 wounds.

Well he's twice as tough versus 1 damage shooting/assault. But he also only does about 72% the damage to everything. Because his bolt gun and punch is just as effective for 18 points as it was when he was 13.

Put another way - the game can be "balanced" at various different levels of damage. If I "expect" to do 25% points worth of damage to you, you should "expect" to do 25% of damage to me. But we could also match at 50% - or 100%. "Primaris Tactical Shooting" would be "bad" but so would "everything 1 damage into him". There's a bit of flavour to this - DE vs Harlequins should be a ludicrously lethal everything dies ASAP - while DG into say DA Terminators should be a slow 5 turn grinding slog.

2 damage weapons should have offered a higher exchange rate against Marines - but in turn these should have been expensive. So Marines were relatively efficient back into them - and they shouldn't have been efficient against a range of other targets, and so shouldn't have been spammed on a TAC basis. But in classic GW style they screwed up. Plasma guns were far too cheap. 3 buffed up Dissie Ravagers could more or less table entire Marine armies if they got to shoot over 3 turns. And its not like these weapons were taken to explicitly tailor into Marines - they were taken to tailor into basically everything in the game, and efficient against anything with a higher points/wound ratio than an Ork Boy.

And so the Marine players wept bloody tears, despite getting to the last 8 of the LVO, had to be buffed quickly and dramatically. With bolter discipline, shock assault, doctrines, super doctrines etc etc. At which point we are throwing the aim to "de-glass" out the window. Its all about upping the offensive power for the points (with IH providing ludicrous defensive bonuses on top). And this is where we are now - basically every unit and faction in the game is a glass hammer. And to "not" be a glasshammer, you need something like a 2+/4++, protection to mortal wounds, transhuman and cut off people's rerolls (and even then you still die, just not as consistently as most other stuff). The relative damage/points exchange rate in 40k goes up and up.

I guess you can argue that Marines were so popular people would always spam the 2 damage weapons - but I'm not convinced that's automatically true. I don't think anyone putting a list together for tournaments today thinks "wait, can I beat space marines?" The issue is that GW failed to make 2 damage=the anti-marine choice, and bad against a range of other armies. Which is why in 9th I think they took another approach - with -1 damage on DG, Ork vehicles, dreadnoughts etc. This was meant to temper damage 2 spam. But again, codexes were not all written which this philosophy. Buffed up Fire Warriors can get 100% shooting returns into Intercessors. Buffed up Skitarri get 70% returns. Guardians are about 45% before buffs and rise quite rapidly etc. This is all 1 damage shooting. As always, GW does balance by throwing knives at a board.

People don't build their armies around, can this beat marines, because most of the time marines aren't the army to be beat, if you want to do good. This does have the effect that games played outside of tournaments, become less fun for marine players. Because unless they play a close copy of tournament lists, they often are not having a good time vs basic weapons of other armies. And ad mecha or eldar players don't have to meta in to killing marines, even if his list is a casual one, it will happen by itself just by virtue of him taking stuff to take out tanks, monsters or stuff like custodes etc.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
What you're describing is ludonarrative dissonance. And no, the number of people playing a faction isn't a factor to how elite something feels, it's the rules that do that.

No, it's also the ubiquity on the table and therefore the default optimised force being deliberately anti marine. It's a probability game - you are so much more likely to fight a space marine army that it's safe bet to optimise your force against them. Which then undermines how elite they are because then they will drop quickly. What your argument amounts to is 'marines need to be elite as default, but even when facing elite destroying enemies, they should still be mostly elite' which is not a balanced force at all.

Perhaps the classic example of this was back in 3rd when eldar had Heavy 3 starcannons. Starcannon spam was the default list because it took out marines effectively and you were almost always going to face them. Had it been guard in ubiquity, then they'd be carrying shuriken cannons which would have been relatively useless against marines.

If guard were the most ubiquitous force, the a marine army equipped with nothing but heavy bolters and other lighter Anti Infantry weapons would be effective. But as soon as it was turned on other marines, suddenly that effectiveness bottoms out.

Then of course there's the fact that it's often marines VERSUS marines that is the common battle and marine players want their army to be survivably elite AND destructively elite, which is a zero sum game when fighting other marines. Either you both destroy each other, or you do bugger all to each other.

But either way, their eliteness is going to suffer.

 Hellebore wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
What you're describing is ludonarrative dissonance. And no, the number of people playing a faction isn't a factor to how elite something feels, it's the rules that do that.

No, it's also the ubiquity on the table and therefore the default optimised force being deliberately anti marine. It's a probability game - you are so much more likely to fight a space marine army that it's safe bet to optimise your force against them. Which then undermines how elite they are because then they will drop quickly. What your argument amounts to is 'marines need to be elite as default, but even when facing elite destroying enemies, they should still be mostly elite' which is not a balanced force at all.

Perhaps the classic example of this was back in 3rd when eldar had Heavy 3 starcannons. Starcannon spam was the default list because it took out marines effectively and you were almost always going to face them. Had it been guard in ubiquity, then they'd be carrying shuriken cannons which would have been relatively useless against marines.

If guard were the most ubiquitous force, the a marine army equipped with nothing but heavy bolters and other lighter Anti Infantry weapons would be effective. But as soon as it was turned on other marines, suddenly that effectiveness bottoms out.

Then of course there's the fact that it's often marines VERSUS marines that is the common battle and marine players want their army to be survivably elite AND destructively elite, which is a zero sum game when fighting other marines. Either you both destroy each other, or you do bugger all to each other.

But either way, their eliteness is going to suffer.

Now you're describing people's list design and not game design itself.