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 catbarf wrote:
. . . .I think the current system where melee troops have to be so lethal that they wipe out units on the charge kinda sucks.

100% agree to that. The old "locked in combat" thing was a big tool to have in the design kit.

 catbarf wrote:
I remember Marines falling back but auto-rallying if they didn't get caught by Sweeping Advance, and Tyranids staying in combat but taking extra wounds that, ironically, was perceived as making them more vulnerable in melee rather than less. We're talking about a span of multiple editions here, in which melee changed a lot, so you'll need to be specific.

If you feel that none of them got it right and there's no possible way to reasonably handle the few exceptions to the normal morale system, suit yourself. I think the current system where melee troops have to be so lethal that they wipe out units on the charge kinda sucks.

Ah yea - the old fearless mechanic. Same for Orks over a certain size. If you lost all your models in base then you didn't swing and then fearless kept you there so you instead took some number of S3/S4 hits instead and allowed your opponent to be safe from shooting AND they probably got to swing first again.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I would be curious to see a couple of pros really take the screws to an older edition and see what happens.

If by "pros" you mean tournament players, I'd rather they didn't. The tournament scene already has a disproportionate amount of influence over 40k as it is. I hate to ever see it expanded.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
... but terrain now gives better protection overall - at least that's my gut feeling.

Terrain and LOS rules go hand-in-hand. Right now you can target the tip of a claw on a wing that's sticking out behind cover, even if you literally cannot see any other part of the model. That didn't used to be the case. You had to be able to see what you were shooting at - properly see it - and that combined with the flat cover saves that 3rd-7th gave you meant that cover meant more, did more and, in a strange twist, was a more interactive mechanic.

And that's something to keep in mind. 2nd Edition, and by extension 8th/9th, as they have basically the same systems for saves, are non-interactive for the opponent. There are so many save modifiers, and you so rarely ever get to roll your actual save if you don't start with a high one, that opponent shooting phases are just you removing casualties. Cover saves let you do something. They kept you involved. They were inelegant, and didn't scale perhaps as well as they should have, but it meant that you were doing something other than just pulling models off the board every time it wasn't your turn.

I distinctly remember a friend and I trying out our 3rd-7th style Guard and Eldar armies out in 2nd Ed, and when it got to the shooting phase I just spent my time putting models back in my case. Never got to roll a single die to protect myself. With cover saves, as clunky as the whole AP system might have been, I at least got to participate in the game when it wasn't my turn.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And that's something to keep in mind. 2nd Edition, and by extension 8th/9th, as they have basically the same systems for saves, are non-interactive for the opponent. There are so many save modifiers, and you so rarely ever get to roll your actual save if you don't start with a high one, that opponent shooting phases are just you removing casualties. Cover saves let you do something. They kept you involved. They were inellegant, and didn't scale perhaps as well as they should have, but it meant that you were doing something other than just pulling models off the board every time it wasn't your turn.

I distinctly remember a friend and I trying out our 3rd-7th style Guard and Eldar armies out in 2nd Ed, and when it got to the shooting phase I just spent my time putting models back in my case. Never got to roll a single die to protect myself. With cover saves, as clunky as the whole AP system might have been, I at least got to participate in the game when it wasn't my turn.

I've often felt that the cover save mechanic along with all-or-nothing AP system were weird and unintuitive from a design standpoint, but I liked what they did in practice. Guardsmen rarely benefited from their body armor and so hugged terrain whenever they could, while Marines ignored cover and relied on their armor against small arms, but would sensibly seek cover against heavy weapons. It allowed for both 'real-world' troops and power armored space knights to exist side-by-side and behave differently, and there's an elegance to achieving that with such a simple mechanic.

Representing cover as save modifiers instead has this counterintuitive effect where Guardsmen rarely bother with cover because prevalent AP renders it ineffective, while Marines get significantly more benefit and are incentivized to hide. And either way, if the enemy has AP-4 weapons you might as well be standing in the open in your birthday suit because you're probably not getting better than 6+ anyways. It makes more sense on paper, but has undesirable effects in practice.

I've told the story of my first experience with 3rd Ed before, and how it specifically relates to armour saves.

It was a demo game in a GW store, long after 3rd had come out, and it was the standard store 10 Tacs + Land Speeder vs 20 Dark Eldar Warrior set up of that era.

I only remember two things from that game:

1. Having a Land Speeder felt a bit OP for the Marines.
2. How utterly shocked I was at Marines getting to use their 3+ save.

I was a die-hard 2nd Ed player, right into Necromunda. Armour Save values were flights of fancy - you never got to actually take a 3+ save on power armour, or even a 3+ on 2D6 save on Terminator armour. Damn near everything in the game had a Save Modifier - even Lasguns! - so times when a 3+ save actually meant needing a 3+ were almost unheard of (Gretchin Autoguns was one area).

In Necromunda armour was rare, and why bother with a 6+ set of Flak Armour when, as I just said, even Lasguns had a -1 Save Mod? Flak Armour gave you a 5+ against blast weapons, but Frag weapons had a -1 Save Mod, so you were still taking 6+ saves! Armour was pointless.

This demo game took place sometime between 2001 and 2002 (after the 3rd Ed Tyranid Codex, but before the 3.5 Chaos Codex which is the book that got me back into 40k), but it sticks like a ever-shining lighthouse in my memory of the first time a Marine ever felt like a frickin' Marine, capable of standing in the open and letting his suit of bright blue tank armour actually take the hit.

I get the criticisms of the all-or-nothing AP system, but I'd take it over the jumbled overly lethal mess we have now. It was simple, it worked (mostly*), and it let you remain part of the game when it wasn't your turn.



*GW has never been good at finding a middle ground, so Choppas were an example of something that always frustrated me because they didn't scale and were good against one area, but did nothing in another. Reduce you down to 4+ save, so a choppa reduces Terminators to a 4+ yet has no additional effect on Guardsmen... what? Autocannons could crack vehicles, but they were AP4 and couldn't ding Space Marines. When we eventually did our own rules, we added a 'High Impact' rule that went with the standard 3rd-7th AP system. It was simple: If you had 'High Impact' rule (so heavy close combat weapons, things like Choppas) or were S7 and above you had a -1 Save Mod. Meant that an Autocannon didn't ignore a Marine's armour, but it also had a 50/50 shot of getting through. Meant that a Krak Missile didn't completely bounce off Terminators. Also meant a Choppa reduced Terminator saves, but not as much as Marine saves, and did reduce Guard saves. Worked pretty well.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Autocannons could crack vehicles, but they were AP4 and couldn't ding Space Marines.

Vehicles should have had both armor and AV, like a Rhino might have a 4+ save with 10 AV while a Land Raider is rocking a 2+ with 14 AV all around. It toughens up vehicles because you need both strength and AP to start generating rolls on the damage chart.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I've told the story of my first experience with 3rd Ed before, and how it specifically relates to armour saves.

It was a demo game in a GW store, long after 3rd had come out, and it was the standard store 10 Tacs + Land Speeder vs 20 Dark Eldar Warrior set up of that era.

I only remember two things from that game:

1. Having a Land Speeder felt a bit OP for the Marines.
2. How utterly shocked I was at Marines getting to use their 3+ save.

Many GW boxed sets (and that was the boxed set force of 3rd edition) often had weirdly unfavorable match-ups. But that one was, I think, the absolute worst. There was simply no pretense of being fair, but was regarded by quite a few GW employees as what the game was 'supposed to feel like.' Mostly it taught many a nascent dark eldar player (that was their introduction, sadly enough) that they absolutely needed to spam dark lances/blasters. Splinter cannons and rifles were horribly deficient.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


uh? No Man's land' size is the same, deployments are usually 12" from the centerline, not from the board edge

Eternal War: Outriders, Encircle, Crossfire, Four Pillars, All Out War just to name a few...

And you're forgetting the second half of the point. Now we have 30" range.

Once upon a time they entire concept of a first turn charge was next to impossible. Even in the days of Rhino Rushing I don't think it was possible outside of maybe Blood Angels and they supercharged engines (and I could be remembering that incorrectly as well). Maybe grey codex Eldar with their AV14 Wave Serpents where you could get out the front (rather than access points, which were added later, and probably should come back) could do it?

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
...with no conversation about what things should cost generally

What's the point of doing the math on what things should cost if you don't have the manpower to playtest the points costs you think things should be to find out where things are broken? Even if you did have the manpower to test it you wouldn't have the influence in even your local community to make them play with your points, because you certainly won't get the bigger community to accept it. Here's a shot in the dark.

4‑9 Devastator Marines 14/model
1 Devastator Marine Sergeant 20
• The Devastator Marine Sergeant’s bolt pistol can be replaced with one of the following: 1 grav-pistol +1; 1 plasma pistol +2; 1 Astartes chainsword; 1 lightning claw +1; 1 power axe +1; 1 power fist +2; 1 power maul +1; 1 power sword +1; 1 thunder hammer +3.
• The Devastator Marine Sergeant’s boltgun can be replaced with one of the following: 1 combi-flamer +2; 1 combi-grav +2; 1 combi-melta +3; 1 combi-plasma +3; 1 storm bolter +1; 1 bolt pistol +1; 1 grav-pistol +2; 1 plasma pistol +3; 1 Astartes chainsword +1; 1 lightning claw +2; 1 power axe +3; 1 power fist +3; 1 power maul +2; 1 power sword +2; 1 thunder hammer +4.
• Up to 4 Devastator Marines can each have their boltgun replaced with 1 grav-cannon +10; 1 heavy bolter +5; 1 lascannon +10; 1 missile launcher +5; 1 multi-melta +20; 1 plasma cannon +8.
• The unit can be equipped with 1 Armorium Cherub +10.

OK, so no reason to ever take the chainsword unless you acknowledge you're not supposed to be in melee with them. Otherwise the tiny number of points means they're either an auto include due to negligible impact on the roster. Not really convinced 1bonus s4 ap-1 d1 attack is only worth 1 point less than a s5 ap-3 d1 profile for example.

I can't think of a situation where I would ever want the heavy bolter there, the points gaps are too small to differentiate clearly enough. I kinda feel plasma cannons are the easy go to point. For most issues with those points.

Why is the sergeant 20? Is a single melee attack worth 6 points? Do you think that 166 points for the 5 melta guys with a cherub seem a good choice? A whole 11 points less than the AoC version?

You don't get to choose whether your Devastators get into melee, 40k is an adversarial game. You also usually won't try to get them into melee. Where does that leave melee options? Usually useless, but still worth more than 0. 4 S4 AP-1 attacks aren't bad compared to 3 S5 AP-3 attacks when it's easy to get an extra AP. Better against T5 or heavily armoured units, but you'll rarely be facing them in melee and even then the power weapon is only going to help a little. I already acknowledged the points might be wrong, but that's still better than knowing the points are wrong because there is no incentive to take the boltgun boltpistol Sergeant with 4 HB Devastators. Hopefully someone would look at those points and say "why would I ever take anything other than heavy bolters, my Devastators always get sniped off the board I just need them to be cheap and hold my backfield objective". The Sergeant has the +1 BS thing and his cost is that high as an MSU tax.

 catbarf wrote:

vict0988 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Melee troops weren't regularly throwing 4+ attacks, because breaking the enemy through morale allowed melee to be decisive without needing to wipe out the enemy in one go.

No, it didn't. Because SM, Nids and cult CSM were immune to it and catching a unit with +2/+3 Initiative was super unlikely. It was a garbage rule and melee just dealing whatever damage it is supposed to do instead of that BS is a thousand times better.

I remember Marines falling back but auto-rallying if they didn't get caught by Sweeping Advance, and Tyranids staying in combat but taking extra wounds that, ironically, was perceived as making them more vulnerable in melee rather than less. We're talking about a span of multiple editions here, in which melee changed a lot, so you'll need to be specific.

If you feel that none of them got it right and there's no possible way to reasonably handle the few exceptions to the normal morale system, suit yourself. I think the current system where melee troops have to be so lethal that they wipe out units on the charge kinda sucks.

I hate all the ones where Necrons weren't Fearless. I don't know how you can combine the thought of "melee needs to be decisive" and "melee dealing enough damage to be decisive is problematic". Tri-pointing actually requires skill as opposed to just rolling your headless goons into the enemy and hoping the artificial stupidity of the game resolves it for you.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Maybee sm shouldn't have 2 wounds to beginn with, atleast not normal marines and aswell not primaris...
But that is another discussion tieing back to ap beeing handed out, abandoning the binary armor system whilest doing so and then being surprised why we see marines not taking hits well.

Nah, the Intercessor statline is what the baseline of Marines should've always been. The problem is GW deciding even Fleshborers should be AP-1 and wounding both Marines and Infantry on the same roll.

Also the modifier system is a lot better than the all-or-nothing system.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I would be curious to see a couple of pros really take the screws to an older edition and see what happens.

If by "pros" you mean tournament players, I'd rather they didn't. The tournament scene already has a disproportionate amount of influence over 40k as it is. I hate to ever see it expanded.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
... but terrain now gives better protection overall - at least that's my gut feeling.

Terrain and LOS rules go hand-in-hand. Right now you can target the tip of a claw on a wing that's sticking out behind cover, even if you literally cannot see any other part of the model. That didn't used to be the case. You had to be able to see what you were shooting at - properly see it - and that combined with the flat cover saves that 3rd-7th gave you meant that cover meant more, did more and, in a strange twist, was a more interactive mechanic.

And that's something to keep in mind. 2nd Edition, and by extension 8th/9th, as they have basically the same systems for saves, are non-interactive for the opponent. There are so many save modifiers, and you so rarely ever get to roll your actual save if you don't start with a high one, that opponent shooting phases are just you removing casualties. Cover saves let you do something. They kept you involved. They were inelegant, and didn't scale perhaps as well as they should have, but it meant that you were doing something other than just pulling models off the board every time it wasn't your turn.

I distinctly remember a friend and I trying out our 3rd-7th style Guard and Eldar armies out in 2nd Ed, and when it got to the shooting phase I just spent my time putting models back in my case. Never got to roll a single die to protect myself. With cover saves, as clunky as the whole AP system might have been, I at least got to participate in the game when it wasn't my turn.

Your post is just TL;DR when lethality is bad, IGOUGO makes it not a game. No gak you didn't get to interact with your opponent. You don't interact with your opponent on their turn period unless melee is involved.

And no, rolling saves is not interacting with the opponent.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Once upon a time they entire concept of a first turn charge was next to impossible. Even in the days of Rhino Rushing I don't think it was possible outside of maybe Blood Angels and they supercharged engines (and I could be remembering that incorrectly as well). Maybe grey codex Eldar with their AV14 Wave Serpents where you could get out the front (rather than access points, which were added later, and probably should come back) could do it?

Blood Angels in 3rd could do it, definitely. They could max out at a 32" charge on turn one I think. 6 (Blood Rage) + 18 (Supercharged Engine transport) + 2 (Disembark) + 6 (Charge). It was bogus.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Maybee sm shouldn't have 2 wounds to beginn with, atleast not normal marines and aswell not primaris...
But that is another discussion tieing back to ap beeing handed out, abandoning the binary armor system whilest doing so and then being surprised why we see marines not taking hits well.

Nah, the Intercessor statline is what the baseline of Marines should've always been. The problem is GW deciding even Fleshborers should be AP-1 and wounding both Marines and Infantry on the same roll.

Also the modifier system is a lot better than the all-or-nothing system.

I disagree.
- A Marine has no buisness being a nob in regards to wounds. Especially since marines unlike Nobs are massable, meaning we enter the defensive profile skewing that i mentioned. (but considering the whole detachment system nobs and their cousin profile the flashgit would techncally also be massable but both suck kinda unlike you stack shenanigans.)

- And the reason why the binary system was as absurd as it was, was the fact that GW didn't give a lot of weapons armor penetrating properties whilest making them plenty workable against tanks (cue Krak rockets and Autocannons and heavy bolters).

- Whilest making AP3 a gold standard for a good shooting weapon and handing them out far to easily.

Incidentally HH solves my second point fairly well and the third point decently by reducing AP 3 availability.

Further against the modifier system speaks: it increases lethality on high armor units per points excessivly (hence AP-1 being such a massive problem because it is a "cheap" stat whilest any armor over 5+ is an comparatively expensive one) due to GW deciding that any pip of armor after the first increases quite a bit in cost. There's also the fact that the wound chart as you brought up is hillariously lopsided compared to the old one making fleshborers stupid but it doesn't stop there, because a lasgun or autogun doesn't care if it shoots a medium bug, chaos spawn or a marine, all the same to it, despite there being a clear size toughness increase that is basically worthless pts wasted due to the wounding chart, hence why we see so many correction "rules" to such units to increase their durability again or even more wounds.

Not Online!!! wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Maybee sm shouldn't have 2 wounds to beginn with, atleast not normal marines and aswell not primaris...
But that is another discussion tieing back to ap beeing handed out, abandoning the binary armor system whilest doing so and then being surprised why we see marines not taking hits well.

Nah, the Intercessor statline is what the baseline of Marines should've always been. The problem is GW deciding even Fleshborers should be AP-1 and wounding both Marines and Infantry on the same roll.

Also the modifier system is a lot better than the all-or-nothing system.

I disagree.
- A Marine has no buisness being a nob in regards to wounds. Especially since marines unlike Nobs are massable, meaning we enter the defensive profile skewing that i mentioned. (but considering the whole detachment system nobs and their cousin profile the flashgit would techncally also be massable but both suck kinda unlike you stack shenanigans.

From experience with my own rules I can say that Marines with 2 wounds baseline work pretty well, but you have to be quite restrictive with damage 2 weapons and up. They need to be rare and/or expensive. Even having modifiying AP on most weapons is no issue then. Everything is too cheap right now in 9th edition, units and equipment.

There really isn't anything wrong with marines being 2 wounds. The problem is wanting them to be "survivable" in all circumstances.

If someone brings 15 plasma Inceptors, a dozen Grav Cannons, and wall-to-wall S5 AP-3 2 damage melee attacks, then Marines are going to die - and they should die. This has to be even more exaggerated if you also make them functionally immune to fleshborers, lasguns and so on.

But I don't see why this is any more of a problem than going "yeah, my Footdar really seem to melt before several hundred S4 AP-1 attacks." The issue is making a meta such that running an anti-Marine skew shouldn't be the default build option. Arguably I think GW have tried to alter this by pushing 3 wound Marine models (and to some extent with other factions) - which in turn invites 3 damage weapons into the meta.

Tyel wrote:
The issue is making a meta such that running an anti-Marine skew shouldn't be the default build option.

RT - present, it's always been the default. Because marines are a very common opponent. And "If you can kill a SM...."

a_typical_hero wrote:

From experience with my own rules I can say that Marines with 2 wounds baseline work pretty well, but you have to be quite restrictive with damage 2 weapons and up. They need to be rare and/or expensive. Even having modifiying AP on most weapons is no issue then. Everything is too cheap right now in 9th edition, units and equipment.

And why do you think D2 has become the norm for a lot of weapons?

Surely it has nothing to do with moving a whole army up the wound bracket, that would not lead to any issues at all right? Especially one of the most commons that also has a brother faction and outnumbers other factions played massively.
/S

Not Online!!! wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

From experience with my own rules I can say that Marines with 2 wounds baseline work pretty well, but you have to be quite restrictive with damage 2 weapons and up. They need to be rare and/or expensive. Even having modifiying AP on most weapons is no issue then. Everything is too cheap right now in 9th edition, units and equipment.

And why do you think D2 has become the norm for a lot of weapons?

Surely it has nothing to do with moving a whole army up the wound bracket, that would not lead to any issues at all right?
/S

Maybe it shouldn't push up the normal?

Maybe a faction getting 2 wounds as a defensive profile should be allowed to use it without everyone else being given reasonably spammable solutions making it trivial?

D2 was common and spamable long before Marines got their second wound. Marines getting their second wound only made it way more prevalent.

Dudeface wrote:

Back at you, I can see the vapour trail of my point in the distance - Marines got AoC to assist survivability because they were too easily killed by most lists/forces. Highlighting that they die faster/easier as an example of how amazing free gear is, is kinda like pointing out water is wet. Please, continue to fixate on "OMG FREE THINGS" rather than the reason they have them - they cannot reasonably rework marine survivability without altering the entire games lethality. Increasing marine lethality in turn accentuates their issues and actually highlights why AoC was brought in, this has a net gain for a lot of people playing into marines if you can get past the concept they have free stuff. They could have made devastators cheap per model and pay for the grav cannons to the same points value, but for some reason I don't think you'd be complaining as much then.

Marines got AoC because yet again GW doesn't know how to handle their biggest issue, whatever happens to Marines intrinsically impacts every other aspect of the game; Why? Because they are the most common army in the game...bar none. Its like a revolving door of ridiculousness that for some reason a lot of folks can't seem to see. Marines complained that they were too squishy, so GW gave them a 2nd wound. The rest of the game (including Marines) then complained they didn't have enough dakka to take down 2W Marines, so GW pushed the dakka up again; to which Marines complained they were too squishy again so GW gave them AoC. Marines continued to complain they weren't competitive enough (they weren't). So here we sit now with Marine players losing AoC, more importantly, EVERYONE lost AoC, and realistically Marines were the only faction that were compensated for it which means Marines will go up while most everyone else goes down.

Dudeface wrote:

Again, the total end value in points can be kept the same and they can stop being free, would that help in your head? If so how cheap should a AoC-less marine be?

How about writing Marine rules such that they are balanced? Or, if you are really concerned about your T4 3+ profile, maybe find a way to encourage players to bring other armies since Power armored factions are literally over half of all competitors I face at GTs and until that ends we will always build my army and do pre-game math hammer with T4 3+ in mind.

Dudeface wrote:

They just lost AoC, your Kommandos now do at least 1 extra marines worth of wounds in return but have to fear a free thunder hammer. Well done, those super lethal marines (because we're focusing on firstborn for some reason today) do the exact same damage in return rounding off as before because the thunder hammer cancels out the extra casualty. I'd agree they've gained a lot of oomph, more than I'd like to see from any faction, but I think they've shown that they can't rules stack marines into relevance.

Beautiful strawman. nobody has claimed Marines are going to be great because a Sgt gets a free thunderhammer. Instead lets look at two of the Kommandos biggest impacts on the game, area denial and durability (Pt for pt). My Kommandos start every game forward deployed in no-mans land and on objectives. They ALWAYS start the game in cover, bar none. Turn 1 my opponents who seem to rarely face off against orkz will do the normal "Shoot the scary orkz" routine. They will inevitably focus on my big units and mostly forget about those kommandos, thinking they can finish them off with a few extra bolter shots. An ork boy in cover takes 6.75 bolter shots to kill. A Kommando in cover (+1 armor) takes about 14.5 bolter shots. Realistically a squad of 5 tac Marines isn't going to kill even 1 Kommando. Now though, the Sgt has a Kombi weapon and the squad has a lascannon or a multi-melta. Those 5 Marines cost the same but now just those 2 models average 1-2 dead Kommandos. so against throw away firepower those kommandos went from losing nothing to losing about 2 Kommandos. Which because GW, means they have to take a Morale test.

So in just this little example of real life scenarios that i've had happen multiple times, a single squad of throw away troop tax just went from killing about 9/14th of an Ork to killing 28+/14th of an Ork. And on the return those Kommandos are only deadlier when they finally get into CC and they went from doing 3dmg to doing 4.5dmg.

Main point though is that Marines just got a lot deadlier for no points increase which means that its not going to be rare at all where my 3 Kommando units get wiped out turn 1 even while hanging out in cover, not to mention, any vehicle i bring is going to have to start the game out of LoS or off the table because there is literally no way for them to survive if they can be seen thanks to all the heavy weapons floating around now in those lists. Don't worry though, my Ramshackle will save a grand total of.....(does math in head)...0 wounds.

If space marines were very resilient, they would either have to be pretty bad at the whole damage dealing business compared to other factions or they would have to be much more expensive. And that in turn would make them more fragile for their points. Another issue is that marines and derivatives are by far the most common armies in the game, so everyone will always be looking to include the best ways to kill them.

SemperMortis wrote:

Marines got AoC because yet again GW doesn't know how to handle their biggest issue, whatever happens to Marines intrinsically impacts every other aspect of the game; Why? Because they are the most common army in the game...bar none. Its like a revolving door of ridiculousness that for some reason a lot of folks can't seem to see. Marines complained that they were too squishy, so GW gave them a 2nd wound. The rest of the game (including Marines) then complained they didn't have enough dakka to take down 2W Marines, so GW pushed the dakka up again; to which Marines complained they were too squishy again so GW gave them AoC. Marines continued to complain they weren't competitive enough (they weren't). So here we sit now with Marine players losing AoC, more importantly, EVERYONE lost AoC, and realistically Marines were the only faction that were compensated for it which means Marines will go up while most everyone else goes down.

Are you not noticing that there's a trend there of GW caving into complaints rather than actually taking a hard stance to fix something? if that whole process stopped at "Marines complained that they were too squishy, so GW gave them a 2nd wound" (which is inaccurate anyway since primaris launched at 2 wounds before there was chance to be "too squishy"), then problem solved? you can then adjust the rest via points and lowering the damage output of marines to compensate, instead we end up with the eternal arms race.

How about writing Marine rules such that they are balanced? Or, if you are really concerned about your T4 3+ profile, maybe find a way to encourage players to bring other armies since Power armored factions are literally over half of all competitors I face at GTs and until that ends we will always build my army and do pre-game math hammer with T4 3+ in mind.

People will bring what they bring, it should be the games dynamic that the tools for you to kill MEQ effectively aren't good into GEQ etc. Again the kill things super fast ideology is the problem, lower numbers of weaker attacks all round would accomplish this.

Beautiful strawman. nobody has claimed Marines are going to be great because a Sgt gets a free thunderhammer. Instead lets look at two of the Kommandos biggest impacts on the game, area denial and durability (Pt for pt). My Kommandos start every game forward deployed in no-mans land and on objectives. They ALWAYS start the game in cover, bar none. Turn 1 my opponents who seem to rarely face off against orkz will do the normal "Shoot the scary orkz" routine. They will inevitably focus on my big units and mostly forget about those kommandos, thinking they can finish them off with a few extra bolter shots. An ork boy in cover takes 6.75 bolter shots to kill. A Kommando in cover (+1 armor) takes about 14.5 bolter shots. Realistically a squad of 5 tac Marines isn't going to kill even 1 Kommando. Now though, the Sgt has a Kombi weapon and the squad has a lascannon or a multi-melta. Those 5 Marines cost the same but now just those 2 models average 1-2 dead Kommandos. so against throw away firepower those kommandos went from losing nothing to losing about 2 Kommandos. Which because GW, means they have to take a Morale test.

So in just this little example of real life scenarios that i've had happen multiple times, a single squad of throw away troop tax just went from killing about 9/14th of an Ork to killing 28+/14th of an Ork. And on the return those Kommandos are only deadlier when they finally get into CC and they went from doing 3dmg to doing 4.5dmg.

Main point though is that Marines just got a lot deadlier for no points increase which means that its not going to be rare at all where my 3 Kommando units get wiped out turn 1 even while hanging out in cover, not to mention, any vehicle i bring is going to have to start the game out of LoS or off the table because there is literally no way for them to survive if they can be seen thanks to all the heavy weapons floating around now in those lists. Don't worry though, my Ramshackle will save a grand total of.....(does math in head)...0 wounds.

You admit marines weren't capable of competing, you acknowledge they took away their defensive crutch, you can't then complain they gave them the one thing they could in order to reasonably give them a chance: much higher damage output. We ultimately agree that the current state of play is a problem and marines weren't salvageable with point adjustments and a balance dataslate. The difference is you're so fixated on "OMG THEY GOT FREE GUNS" that the rest doesn't seem to matter. I really doubt we'll see marines breach 55%, I'd be shocked if all but a couple of sub-flavours breach 50% and in honesty it's downright unfair what has happened to SoB, DG, CSM & Tsons out of all this.

Again we come back to: what else could they have done in the confines of 9th edition to fix marines without making them more lethal? Very little is the answer I think beyond turning them into a pseudo horde, which they did in a round about way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dolnikan wrote:
If space marines were very resilient, they would either have to be pretty bad at the whole damage dealing business compared to other factions or they would have to be much more expensive. And that in turn would make them more fragile for their points. Another issue is that marines and derivatives are by far the most common armies in the game, so everyone will always be looking to include the best ways to kill them.

That's exactly the niche they were supposed to fall in, base bolters suck, combat doctrines was brought in to give them a semblance of teeth without stacking full rerolls on everything, the 2nd wound came with a price bump to make them fewer in number and yes people will bring the best tool to kill then, but the best tool to kill marines, or at least an adequate tool, also happens to kill everything else generally.

 Dolnikan wrote:
If space marines were very resilient, they would either have to be pretty bad at the whole damage dealing business compared to other factions

I think this is also part of the issue. People say they want Marines to be resilient - but they also want them to be exceptionally lethal. The tip of the spear, somehow elite in a game with Custodes and Knights. (And fancier Necrons, Aspect Warriors, basically anything that's not sub 10 point chaff.)

And you can't be both "for the points" without being overpowered. So Marines can be made overpowered for a bit, as has happened various times in 40k's history. But its never going to last. Because its boring. (And GW loves the Sun Elfs, Tau etc).

Tyel wrote:

 Dolnikan wrote:
If space marines were very resilient, they would either have to be pretty bad at the whole damage dealing business compared to other factions

I think this is also part of the issue. People say they want Marines to be resilient - but they also want them to be exceptionally lethal. The tip of the spear, somehow elite in a game with Custodes and Knights. (And fancier Necrons, Aspect Warriors, basically anything that's not sub 10 point chaff.)

And you can't be both "for the points" without being overpowered. So Marines can be made overpowered for a bit, as has happened various times in 40k's history. But its never going to last. Because its boring. (And GW loves the Sun Elfs, Tau etc).

Welllll . . . . . They actually made this work before, during the days of 3rd and 4th edition.

Step 1: Reduce the availability of high AP weapons.

Step 2: Reintroduce mechanics that allow Infantry to be credible threats to high armor targets like big tanks and Knights, without those mechanics being a threat to Marines, i.e. use of Krak and Melta in CC against them.

Step 3: Make hyper elite armies like Custodes cost a lot, balanced with retaining the effectiveness of the few high AP weapons available against them.

This is totally doable, imo.

 vict0988 wrote:
I don't know how you can combine the thought of "melee needs to be decisive" and "melee dealing enough damage to be decisive is problematic". Tri-pointing actually requires skill as opposed to just rolling your headless goons into the enemy and hoping the artificial stupidity of the game resolves it for you.

Melee needs to be decisive, and the game having such high lethality that units are wiped out altogether before they get to swing back is problematic. There is no contradiction there. The problem can be resolved by making melee decisive through mechanics other than raw lethality. The same goes for shooting, to a lesser degree, where the middle ground between an attack doing nothing and an attack killing a unit is too narrow.

Horus Heresy 2.0 has achieved this by making pinning and morale both relevant, so you can have games where lots of stuff happens but you aren't pulling models off the table by the handful, and might still have an army by turn 4.

Also, tri-pointing can die in a fire. A mass-battle game with 100+ models on the table having you micro-positioning individual models down to the millimeter (before rolling all attacks in aggregate, when it suddenly remembers it's not a skirmish game) is garbage. There is skill in it- more grade-school than grandmaster, since you can learn to tri-point optimally in about fifteen minutes- but it's a clunky, time-consuming, unintended, and all-around poor mechanic for what 40K is trying to be. Save the fiddly micromanagement for Kill Team.

I haven't seen tripointing be a big thing for quite a while. Maybe it's mostly a blood angel thing these days?

Having anti-fallback or long consolidate to turn off shooting for a unit tends to be more what happens in my games.

Occasionally I see a tank getting locked up.

@catbarf thank you. You're a fan of Initiative too though right? How do you combine liking Initiative with not liking when units don't get to fight back because they get destroyed. If you don't actually kill tonnes of enemies at your higher Initiative step because you're relying on other game mechanics for melee to be viable then Initiative is mostly meaningless right? Or do you think that Initiative had just enough effect in previous editions because of the lower lethality?

Dudeface wrote:
Marines got AoC to assist survivability because they were too easily killed by most lists/forces.

I think they got it because of power creep and a low win rate. They said they removed it because it stopped working because people stopped taking AP-1 weapons and SM still had a bad win rate. I'm wondering if there was a statement as to why they implemented it in the first place.

 vict0988 wrote:
@catbarf thank you. You're a fan of Initiative too though right? How do you combine liking Initiative with not liking when units don't get to fight back because they get destroyed. If you don't actually kill tonnes of enemies at your higher Initiative step because you're relying on other game mechanics for melee to be viable then Initiative is mostly meaningless right? Or do you think that Initiative had just enough effect in previous editions because of the lower lethality?

Dudeface wrote:
Marines got AoC to assist survivability because they were too easily killed by most lists/forces.

I think they got it because of power creep and a low win rate. They said they removed it because it stopped working because people stopped taking AP-1 weapons and SM still had a bad win rate. I'm wondering if there was a statement as to why they implemented it in the first place.

Because they died too easily due to the proliferation of AP:

In addition to these changes, we have also introduced a new generic rule: Armour of Contempt. Applying to certain faction keywords, this rule is intended to reduce the lethality of the game for a whole swathe of factions which have traditionally relied on their armour to help them survive the punishing battlefields of Warhammer 40,000, and which are currently finding the ubiquity of high AP weaponry a little bit much!

 vict0988 wrote:
@catbarf thank you. You're a fan of Initiative too though right?

No, I'm really not. I liked that the system took wargear and cover into account, at least, so there were more things that could affect it. And as you said, the generally lower lethality meant that wiping out a unit before it got to strike back was much rarer than it is now, so striking first just reduced the amount of incoming attacks you would take rather than mitigating them entirely. But GW wrote a numerical system and then only modified it with essentially 'strikes first' and 'strikes last', and the idea of every member of Species X always without fail every time getting to hit before any member of Species Y regardless of circumstance never sat right with me.

It works better in HH, where most armies are some flavor of Marine, so differences in Initiative come from unit types and wargear. But I'm okay with the side that charged hitting first, and having that be the bonus to charging, so long as melee isn't so overwhelmingly lethal that whoever charges first often wins. And it'd be nice if they could re-write it as a coherent system that takes activation-order-modifying abilities into account, rather than having to write FAQs on how to resolve strikes-first and strikes-last abilities interacting.

Breton wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


uh? No Man's land' size is the same, deployments are usually 12" from the centerline, not from the board edge

Eternal War: Outriders, Encircle, Crossfire, Four Pillars, All Out War just to name a few...

And you're forgetting the second half of the point. Now we have 30" range.

the "9" radius circle" deploymenat was a thing before too.
All-out war is still 24" between deployments.

i had no idea about Encircle, isnt combat patrol played on a super small board tho?

i don't think no man's land really got smaller than before, more that you have less room to backpedal in your deployment.

100% agreed on ranges being too long, i've been of the opinion that 24" should be the longest range that is easily accessible, with very few rare 36" weapons and almost no 48" weapons


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:
D2 was common and spamable long before Marines got their second wound. Marines getting their second wound only made it way more prevalent.

Do we have a list of weapons that got D2 following primaris? (aka, weapons that historically were D1 or new weapons that feel like they shouldve been D1)