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 Canadian 5th wrote:
If the game was balanced replacing certain meta units with more troops shouldn't overly disadvantage you as troops should have a valuable role that other units can't fill. So really, that shouldn't matter even if we expect such lists to be in our current dataset often enough to be more than noise.

That's not how it works. Bad list building is more than just taking lots of troops, it includes building completely dysfunctional lists. Anti-aircraft units can be perfectly balanced when used by players who are making choices based on trying to win the game but that isn't going to prevent you from losing every game if you decide that your lore is that you're playing an anti-aircraft regiment so you're going to take nothing but anti-aircraft units even if the meta has few aircraft. No balancing system can ever account for that kind of thing, which means you're going to have deviations from 50% win rate even in a perfectly balanced game. People will take the dysfunctional lists and bring their faction's win rate down, people will get paired against the dysfunctional lists for easy wins and bring their faction's win rate up. It's effectively noise in the data and if you over-react to that noise you make balance worse.


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 vict0988 wrote:
You got your quotes mixed up The only thing that for determining whether a unit is OP or UP is pts cost. A unit can be badly designed if it isn't fun to play with or against or if it doesn't represent the fluff of the unit. The two aren't linked. A well-designed unit can be OP if it costs too little and UP if it costs too much, a badly designed unit like JNA's Super Annihilator Weapons Platform can be OP if it costs 100 points and UP if it costs 100000 points.

There is no point cost that can appropriately balance "if you go first you automatically win the game". If it costs 2000 points or less it is an auto-take because you are guaranteed to win at least half your games and very likely more than half. If it costs 2001 points or more it can't be taken in a legal list for the standard game.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
There is no point cost that can appropriately balance "if you go first you automatically win the game". If it costs 2000 points or less it is an auto-take because you are guaranteed to win at least half your games and very likely more than half. If it costs 2001 points or more it can't be taken in a legal list for the standard game.

Sure there is. Let's say we gave the 50/50 ability to a Unique Space Marine Captain (despite your casual playtesters telling you that it's not fun to play with and the competitive players saying that it'd break the game). You'd need a points cost at which including the Unique Captain wouldn't massively change your win rate, so in 2000 points games he'd need to be so expensive that you have basically no shot of winning outside of that ability, somewhere at least 1500 points. Some units aren't meant to be taken in a standard game, making that a requirement is silly. Do you think Phantom Titans need to be reduced from 3000 points to 1500 points and have some kind of ability that gives the opponent a chance to win the game despite facing a Phantom Titan and a handful of other units? Do you think tournaments would be better if Phantom Titans made occasional appearances?

 vict0988 wrote:
Some units aren't meant to be taken in a standard game

Exactly. Some units can not be played in real games because point cost alone is not a sufficient balancing mechanism. If the required point cost to balance a potential unit is "so high you can never use it" then points have failed.

Are there examples of such units in the current game?

To my mind points can fix issues, because armies are usually aggregates of units, rather than just a unit themselves. Whatever the best army is would be worse if it has to give up 1-2 units (i.e. went up 100-200 points) and whatever it the worst army would be better if they had an additional 1-2 units on the table (say went down 100-200 points.)

I would argue that points have succeeded.

2,001 points keeps the game functioning for the most players and the most datasheets.

Well done points!

EightFoldPath wrote:
I would argue that points have succeeded.

2,001 points keeps the game functioning for the most players and the most datasheets.

Well done points!

Banning a unit and removing it from the game entirely is not balancing it.

Tyel wrote:
Are there examples of such units in the current game?

To my mind points can fix issues, because armies are usually aggregates of units, rather than just a unit themselves. Whatever the best army is would be worse if it has to give up 1-2 units (i.e. went up 100-200 points) and whatever it the worst army would be better if they had an additional 1-2 units on the table (say went down 100-200 points.)

Warhounds immediately spring to mind, not sure what price point you'd give them in reality.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Some units aren't meant to be taken in a standard game

Exactly. Some units can not be played in real games because point cost alone is not a sufficient balancing mechanism. If the required point cost to balance a potential unit is "so high you can never use it" then points have failed.

I disagree with your definition of failure.

GW wrote:Points values are used to determine the strength of matched play armies, allowing the effectiveness of a given force to be fine-tuned down to the last bit of wargear.

So if your goal is to create a scenario where you have a high chance of failure playing against a 4000 point army including a 3000 point model using your 2000 point army and failing most of the games in this scenario would be a success for points since it will have helped you determine the strength of the two armies accurately enough for you to achieve the goal of the scenario you were trying to create. The 4+ to win or ultra glass cannon units aren't fun and you're conflating that with not being balanced. The idea that every datasheet should be balanced at 2000 points is silly.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Spoiler:

Move 6"
WS 6+
BS 2+
S 1
T1
W1
A1
Ld 4
Sv 8+

It is armed with 20 Super Annihilators.

Super Annihilator
Range 240"
Type Rapid Fire 100
S 20
AP -10
D 100
This weapon can target units not visible to the wielder. This weapon ignores Look Out Sir. This weapon rerolls all failed hits and wounds. On a successful wound, this weapon deals an additional 100 Mortal Wounds. This weapon ignores Wound Caps per turn and/or phase. This weapon cannot be fired if the wielder moved in the preceding movement phase.

Abilities
This unit cannot benefit from Look Out Sir or Obscuring Terrain.
This unit automatically fails all saving throws.
Enemy units have +1 to-hit this unit.

I punched the values into my own points calculator that I use for my homebrew for funsies.

Creature would be 1 point per model, the weapon would be ~326.000.
Context: Guardsman is 9ppm, Space Marine is 40ppm, Predator Annihilator is ~430ppm.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
If the game was balanced replacing certain meta units with more troops shouldn't overly disadvantage you as troops should have a valuable role that other units can't fill. So really, that shouldn't matter even if we expect such lists to be in our current dataset often enough to be more than noise.

That's not how it works. Bad list building is more than just taking lots of troops, it includes building completely dysfunctional lists. Anti-aircraft units can be perfectly balanced when used by players who are making choices based on trying to win the game but that isn't going to prevent you from losing every game if you decide that your lore is that you're playing an anti-aircraft regiment so you're going to take nothing but anti-aircraft units even if the meta has few aircraft.

Just make it so that AA guns have a useful role in attacking units on the ground. Ask the Allies in WW2 and Korea how effective AA guns can be against troops and light armor. For missile units, give them blast so they have some utility against larger units or just give them an alternate fire mode. You can bring the ceiling and floor of each unit closer together by making smart design choices.

There's also the fact that I was saying that 45-55% balance, on a per faction basis, is too wide a range. Outlier joke lists that don't even end up in the tournament meta at a significant rate, really won't move the needle.

Tyel wrote:
Are there examples of such units in the current game?

To my mind points can fix issues, because armies are usually aggregates of units, rather than just a unit themselves. Whatever the best army is would be worse if it has to give up 1-2 units (i.e. went up 100-200 points) and whatever it the worst army would be better if they had an additional 1-2 units on the table (say went down 100-200 points.)

Howabout titans? Warhound. Atm 2k and autolose. How far you drop points? 1k? It is starting to toss on vastly inferior stompa. And still likely lose game...

Howabou warlord titan? Atm 6k but even if it was 2k you autolose game with it. Opponent no need to even bother try to kill it.

Drop it to 1k? Some msu infantry army likely wins anyway but then knights autolose.

Lets be fair, the point of Titans' point costs is to be too high to be viable in a 2k game, because they have never been meant for 2k games.

There is no way to balance a unit that is meant for an entirely different scale. Titans not being viable at 2k games isn't a failure of the point system, it is a feature.

Wasn't there a point in 7th or 8th, where you could literally summon endless "horrors"? I.E. not baked into reserve cost, but they could just keep coming? And that was before Ro3. So it's amazing with a unit like that, that Daemons were not the most broken thing ever. Tau, IG, and GK all ate their lunch. So maybe there is a problem with extremely broken units, but if they don't imbalance the entire codex, it's ok?

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Just make it so that AA guns have a useful role in attacking units on the ground. Ask the Allies in WW2 and Korea how effective AA guns can be against troops and light armor. For missile units, give them blast so they have some utility against larger units or just give them an alternate fire mode. You can bring the ceiling and floor of each unit closer together by making smart design choices.

That's not how balance works. If AA guns are effective enough against non-aircraft units that an army of nothing but AA guns can have a reasonable chance of winning against an army with no aircraft then one of four things has happened:

1) AA guns are blatantly overpowered, being equal to non-AA units in roles other than shooting down enemy aircraft and also being good against aircraft. If unit A can do everything that unit B can do and also has other benefits that B lacks then why would you ever take B?

2) Faction balance is hopelessly broken. The faction with the all-AA list is so absurdly overpowered relative to the faction of the opposing list that even a completely dysfunctional and one-dimensional AA spam list can expect to win.

3) Aircraft are pushed out of the game entirely, as even non-AA units are fully capable of dealing with them and the additional effectiveness of a dedicated AA gun is of minimal value.

4) Aircraft are just tanks with a different model and there's no such thing as a dedicated AA gun anymore. An AA unit might be 5% more effective than a tank shooting its main gun at planes but, as you say, the floor and the ceiling are close together and it's all just exchanging dice with homogenous units. While technically this isn't a balance failure it's a complete design failure that gives you a mess like 9th edition 40k, where aircraft don't act like aircraft because GW wanted to get rid of distinct unit roles.

Any of these things is a failure and the only way to avoid it is to make AA guns effective against planes but weak against non-aircraft targets and accept that if someone is stubborn enough to bring an all-AA list they're just going to lose.

There's also the fact that I was saying that 45-55% balance, on a per faction basis, is too wide a range. Outlier joke lists that don't even end up in the tournament meta at a significant rate, really won't move the needle.

Deliberate joke lists are rare. Poorly optimized lists are not. The all-AA list was just an exaggerated example to illustrate how the problem works, the fundamental problem is that even if every unit is balanced in isolation that doesn't mean that every combination of those units will also be balanced. There will always be synergies between units, strategies that work better or worse together, a correct level of investment in counter units to expected threats, etc. And if you balance the game such that the well designed lists have the target 50% win rate someone who decides that their fluff requires a poorly designed list will struggle to win games. And in 40k that happens very frequently. Tournaments are full of people on the bottom tables playing their "fluff" list because a tournament is a great opportunity to get 3-5 guaranteed games in a day and those people are going to add a lot of noise to the data. And if you over-react to noise in the data you will make all of your balance problems worse.


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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Wasn't there a point in 7th or 8th, where you could literally summon endless "horrors"? I.E. not baked into reserve cost, but they could just keep coming? And that was before Ro3. So it's amazing with a unit like that, that Daemons were not the most broken thing ever. Tau, IG, and GK all ate their lunch. So maybe there is a problem with extremely broken units, but if they don't imbalance the entire codex, it's ok?

No, because overall faction win rates aren't the only thing that matters. If demons are at an acceptable win rate but only because of a single list that exploits a major balance issue you have a broken faction where internal balance is nonexistent and if you try to bring anything other than the one functioning list you get wiped off the table. That's a miserable experience and it needs to be fixed.

No, it didn't happen, or no it's not ok to have a broken unit, but an acceptable Codex?

Because for all of 8th and 9th, the most broken units in the game hasn't really had a major impact on win percentages. I mean, look at Harlequins troupes, Smash Captains, and Melta Intercessors. All horribly broken. It was the rules and abilities that broke them, not the stats.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
That's not how balance works. If AA guns are effective enough against non-aircraft units that an army of nothing but AA guns can have a reasonable chance of winning against an army with no aircraft then one of four things has happened

E) Look at if aircraft are in scope for a skirmish scale game and consider moving them into a version of the game played on larger tables.

F) Allow a 500-point sideboard so players can switch up units after seeing their opponent's list and sideboard.

G) Make a separate unit that uses the same model as the AA-unit and allow players to switch to it if the opponent's list doesn't contain any fliers. (This would apply to any such hyper-specialized unit and it could be a game design goal to standardize points to where swapping units is easy and expected.)

Deliberate joke lists are rare. Poorly optimized lists are not. The all-AA list was just an exaggerated example to illustrate how the problem works, the fundamental problem is that even if every unit is balanced in isolation that doesn't mean that every combination of those units will also be balanced. There will always be synergies between units, strategies that work better or worse together, a correct level of investment in counter units to expected threats, etc. And if you balance the game such that the well designed lists have the target 50% win rate someone who decides that their fluff requires a poorly designed list will struggle to win games. And in 40k that happens very frequently. Tournaments are full of people on the bottom tables playing their "fluff" list because a tournament is a great opportunity to get 3-5 guaranteed games in a day and those people are going to add a lot of noise to the data. And if you over-react to noise in the data you will make all of your balance problems worse.

You could cut the data from lists that start 0-2 and exclude it from the sample size which should help remove completely terrible lists from the pool, but I think it would make more sense to bring down the powerful units while bringing up the weak ones. Repeat on a short cycle until you get a desired state of balance or the meta shifts and you start the cycle over again.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
E) Look at if aircraft are in scope for a skirmish scale game and consider moving them into a version of the game played on larger tables.

That's dodging the question. Feel free to replace AA guns with some other specialized unit, AA guns were just the example I happened to pick.

F) Allow a 500-point sideboard so players can switch up units after seeing their opponent's list and sideboard.

Which does nothing because the AA gun player is committed to playing their AA regiment and not swapping out units. If they were willing to swap out units at the expense of the theme they wouldn't be bringing a pure AA gun list in the first place.

G) Make a separate unit that uses the same model as the AA-unit and allow players to switch to it if the opponent's list doesn't contain any fliers. (This would apply to any such hyper-specialized unit and it could be a game design goal to standardize points to where swapping units is easy and expected.)

See above.

And you're completely missing the point of the example. "You can choose not to play the dysfunctional list" and providing lots of solutions for not playing it doesn't address the fact that when people do play the dysfunctional list either they will win few games and skew the faction win rates or you will have a balance problem.

You could cut the data from lists that start 0-2 and exclude it from the sample size which should help remove completely terrible lists from the pool, but I think it would make more sense to bring down the powerful units while bringing up the weak ones. Repeat on a short cycle until you get a desired state of balance or the meta shifts and you start the cycle over again.

You could, but then you're making genuinely under-performing factions look better and in less need of buffs because you excluded their worst results from the data set. It does nothing for balance to get everyone to a 50% win rate by pretending that a 40% win rate faction is now at 50%.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
That's dodging the question. Feel free to replace AA guns with some other specialized unit, AA guns were just the example I happened to pick.

What other pure specialist roles are there in a game as shallow as 40k? GW has removed things like WS and Initiative being combat relevant, has made armor useless with a poorly thought-out AP system, and generally seems to want every game to boil down only to lost building, movement, and how much damage you have.

Even anti-horde weapons seem to be pushing into the S5 D2 AP-2 range these days because GW has realized that anything that can't crack a NuMarine isn't worth bringing.

Which does nothing because the AA gun player is committed to playing their AA regiment and not swapping out units. If they were willing to swap out units at the expense of the theme they wouldn't be bringing a pure AA gun list in the first place.

It allows for easier filtering of your data. You can see which players didn't bring and/or didn't use their sideboard and adjust the weight of that data.

And you're completely missing the point of the example. "You can choose not to play the dysfunctional list" and providing lots of solutions for not playing it doesn't address the fact that when people do play the dysfunctional list either they will win few games and skew the faction win rates or you will have a balance problem.

Given that you're asserting that these lists are a large enough proportion of the data set to skew balance, I want you to show me how many of them are actually present in the current data pool. Put up or shut up.

You could, but then you're making genuinely under-performing factions look better and in less need of buffs because you excluded their worst results from the data set. It does nothing for balance to get everyone to a 50% win rate by pretending that a 40% win rate faction is now at 50%.

Only if you're an idiot. You want to filter your data through several lenses and composite what each lens says about game balance. You want to look at faction prevalence, average points per battle, average placement at the end of tournaments, list diversity with that faction, etc. No one way of looking at the data can solve a problem but you can use the data to filter noise from signal if you put in the time.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
You could cut the data from lists that start 0-2 and exclude it from the sample size which should help remove completely terrible lists from the pool, but I think it would make more sense to bring down the powerful units while bringing up the weak ones. Repeat on a short cycle until you get a desired state of balance or the meta shifts and you start the cycle over again.

That is not a horrible idea. Removing outliers from from the win rate calculation, both high and low, could lead to a more nuanced calculation.

Image removing the top 10% and bottom 10% of each tournaments players players and judging faction win rate by the middle 80% of players? What do you think that would do?

In general it would give a better representation of how the list performs at mid tables, but it would introduce 2 distortions in the data:

1) Gatekeeper lists would receive a very high win rate.
2) High skill ceiling factions like Harlequins would appear worse than they are.


It is a good metric, but it has to be coupled with another one.

 alextroy wrote:
What do you think that would do?

Bias the data in the direction of making the meta look healthier than it really is. The lists/factions/units/etc that have the greatest need for balance changes are the ones that are disproportionately found in the top and bottom 20%, by excluding all of those results from the data set you're deliberately leaving yourself blind to those issues.

 alextroy wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
You could cut the data from lists that start 0-2 and exclude it from the sample size which should help remove completely terrible lists from the pool, but I think it would make more sense to bring down the powerful units while bringing up the weak ones. Repeat on a short cycle until you get a desired state of balance or the meta shifts and you start the cycle over again.

That is not a horrible idea. Removing outliers from from the win rate calculation, both high and low, could lead to a more nuanced calculation.

Image removing the top 10% and bottom 10% of each tournaments players players and judging faction win rate by the middle 80% of players? What do you think that would do?

It would give a distorted view of army performance, making terrible Codices seem better and overpowered ones worse. We already know some armies have much greater representation at the upper or lower end of the win-rate spectrum than they should if balance was better. With balance being so off at the top and bottom ends you'll basically eliminate a lot of the data that tells you a faction is overpowered or underpowered. It's pretty rare for Nids or Harlequins to do very badly in a tournament and also very common for them to do very well, so if you ignore the instances of them doing very well you probably remove most of the data about those armies, but only from one end of scale, skewing their numbers downwards.

An approach where you remove the top and bottom of the data set would work better if the general balance was better than it is. We're still at the stage of entire armies being overpowered or underpowered to the extent that isn't possible yet.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
What other pure specialist roles are there in a game as shallow as 40k?

Anti-tank, action fodder, movement blocking, etc. 40k is a shallow game but it still has plenty of room to create a bad list even if the individual units in that list are balanced.

It allows for easier filtering of your data. You can see which players didn't bring and/or didn't use their sideboard and adjust the weight of that data.

That's worthless data though. "Did they use the sideboard" tells you nothing of value because you can't distinguish between "didn't use the sideboard because they are committed to not changing their list" and "didn't use the sideboard because the main list was better suited to that matchup". Nor can it even tell if the player had an effective sideboard.

Given that you're asserting that these lists are a large enough proportion of the data set to skew balance, I want you to show me how many of them are actually present in the current data pool. Put up or shut up.

It's common knowledge among tournament players and people who run tournaments that the majority of people at larger events are just there to play a bunch of games in a weekend, not because they have any reasonable expectation of winning. I'm not going to do a bunch of data analysis to prove that water is in fact wet, especially since "bad list" isn't even a quantifiable term and you'll just argue about whether the criteria I set were correct.

Only if you're an idiot. You want to filter your data through several lenses and composite what each lens says about game balance. You want to look at faction prevalence, average points per battle, average placement at the end of tournaments, list diversity with that faction, etc. No one way of looking at the data can solve a problem but you can use the data to filter noise from signal if you put in the time.

Cutting the lists that start 0-2 is equally bad for all of those things! If your sample doesn't include the worst lists then you're deliberately blinding yourself to the fact that those lists are performing very badly. It doesn't matter what metric you use to evaluate the remaining data set because you've already biased the data and made it useless for its intended purpose.

Internal balance is a concern - but internal balance can be worked on later. Its far better all factions have some "good stuff" than none. GW can then look at why the other stuff isn't seeing play. Sometimes the answer will be obvious mathhammer, other times it will be movement/objective scoring/surrendering problems. I don't think this requires a super computer simulating a million games.

Ultimately a balanced game is not one with 45-55% win rates - or even one with perfect 50% win rates. Its one where a top player can pick any faction (not any list) and fancy themselves to do well at a major tournament.

A balanced win rate is a decent short-hand - because if you have factions with 70% win rates and 30% win rates, you are sort of compelling faction choice. But its not the be all and end all. A bad player, running a bad list, and doing badly, is not a balance problem.

This is why there's a view 9th has had better balance (certainly over the past 6 months) - the pool of factions for which the above has been true has been comparatively high by the standards of 40k's history.

Tyel wrote:
I'd argue a "balanced" 40k isn't one where factions are falling in 45-55% win rate range (although, it is likely more balanced than where factions are between 30% and 70%). Its one where "good players", can take any faction to a tournament and expect to perform well. Which is basically saying "skill matters" rather than faction choice. In such a scenario, you are likely to have a diverse mix of factions placing, as good players don't just pick from the 2-3 that mop up all the top spots.

Internal balance is a concern - but internal balance can be worked on later. Its far better all factions have some "good stuff" than none. GW can then look at why the other stuff isn't seeing play. Sometimes the answer will be obvious mathhammer, other times it will be movement/objective scoring/surrendering problems. I don't think this requires a super computer simulating a million games.

Problem is that there are at least four different concepts of balance bandied about regularly:

- External balance, as in 'Every army can achieve a winrate around 50% in tournaments'
- Internal balance, as in 'Every unit in an army is worth taking or viable in some circumstances, and no degenerate lists exist'
- Player skill balance, as in 'Every army requires about the same amount of player skill, and noticeable skill differences directly influence the win rates'
- Matchup balance, as in 'No particular Matchup between two given armies is always a forgone conclusion'

On top of that, i'd also say that there's a desireable Stochastic balance, i.e. 'Every army should be susceptible to the inherent randomness of dice rolls to about the same degree', but that is debatable - i think it matters for the tournament scene because it ultimately is linked to Skill balance.

Tsagualsa wrote:

Problem is that there are at least four different concepts of balance bandied about regularly:

- External balance, as in 'Every army can achieve a winrate around 50% in tournaments'
- Internal balance, as in 'Every unit in an army is worth taking or viable in some circumstances, and no degenerate lists exist'
- Player skill balance, as in 'Every army requires about the same amount of player skill, and noticeable skill differences directly influence the win rates'
- Matchup balance, as in 'No particular Matchup between two given armies is always a forgone conclusion'

I'd agree. I think the importance is to try and determine which are a priority. Which will inevitably vary.

To my mind if a lot of factions are placing in competitive tournaments, there must be a degree of external, player skill and matchup balance. Internal balance will be all over the place - but that can then be adjusted for.
Sure its bad if you love a specific unit and it sucks. But at least if you love a specific faction, you can take its good units.

 Eldarsif wrote:
So, here is a top 8 listing from an AoO GT with 228 players(Courtesy of r/warhammercompetitive).

So far, good variety of factions at Adelaide Uprising Top 8 after 6 games:

Adeptus Custodes

T'au Empire

Dark Angels

Adeptus Mechanicus

Chaos Demons

Knights Renegades

Adeptus Custodes

Astra Militarum

That's one Space Marine faction. I get the feeling OP is forgetting that losing Armor of Contempt is a huge blow to Marines and makes everything else deadlier.

I love the lack of critical thinking involved in this post. "Haha! Marines only won a 2nd place in an 8 round 200+ person GT, clearly you are wrong OP!" They also went 1st and 3rd in the WTC Spain tournament, but in fairness that was a 46 player tournament. SO out of 2 GT sized events they won....3 out of the top 6 places. Yeah definitely not top tier.

SemperMortis wrote:

I love the lack of critical thinking involved in this post. "Haha! Marines only won a 2nd place in an 8 round 200+ person GT, clearly you are wrong OP!" They also went 1st and 3rd in the WTC Spain tournament, but in fairness that was a 46 player tournament. SO out of 2 GT sized events they won....3 out of the top 6 places. Yeah definitely not top tier.

I think it stands sufficiently in contrast with the opening statement for this thread. Potentially they didn't overvalue AoC. But, of course it is still really early and lots can change.

It is also pretty notable that none of the marines that did ( visibly ) well consisted of any significant amount of shooting.

a_typical_hero wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Spoiler:

Move 6"
WS 6+
BS 2+
S 1
T1
W1
A1
Ld 4
Sv 8+

It is armed with 20 Super Annihilators.

Super Annihilator
Range 240"
Type Rapid Fire 100
S 20
AP -10
D 100
This weapon can target units not visible to the wielder. This weapon ignores Look Out Sir. This weapon rerolls all failed hits and wounds. On a successful wound, this weapon deals an additional 100 Mortal Wounds. This weapon ignores Wound Caps per turn and/or phase. This weapon cannot be fired if the wielder moved in the preceding movement phase.

Abilities
This unit cannot benefit from Look Out Sir or Obscuring Terrain.
This unit automatically fails all saving throws.
Enemy units have +1 to-hit this unit.

I punched the values into my own points calculator that I use for my homebrew for funsies.

Creature would be 1 point per model, the weapon would be ~326.000.
Context: Guardsman is 9ppm, Space Marine is 40ppm, Predator Annihilator is ~430ppm.

You may need to tweak that calculator if a gun that can kill entire armies - and literally not figuratively - this one gun deletes all but a few possible opposing armies every turn.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

I love the lack of critical thinking involved in this post. "Haha! Marines only won a 2nd place in an 8 round 200+ person GT, clearly you are wrong OP!" They also went 1st and 3rd in the WTC Spain tournament, but in fairness that was a 46 player tournament. SO out of 2 GT sized events they won....3 out of the top 6 places. Yeah definitely not top tier.

I think it stands sufficiently in contrast with the opening statement for this thread. Potentially they didn't overvalue AoC. But, of course it is still really early and lots can change.

It is also pretty notable that none of the marines that did ( visibly ) well consisted of any significant amount of shooting.

Literally the first two results for AoO I have seen, so yeah very much early and I have a strong feeling that its only going to get worse, not better. Because realistically what is the counter to free stuff? Yeah, Marines are squishier now then before, but you can also take more of them. I do find it a bit...interesting, that the two armies that did take troops, still took Infiltrators instead of just tac Marines with a free heavy weapon and a Sgt with an upgraded weapon. I guess the forward deploy and the Free Helix Gauntlet is just too good for 200pts as opposed to 180pts of Tac Marines with 2 Multi-Meltas (Or Lascannons) and 2 Combi Meltas (or plasmas) and 2 Thunderhammers.


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As a side note, I apologize, there were two other smaller GTs that utilized AoO, so Marines only finished with 4 out of 12 top 3 finishes...2 of which were 1st place.