Hellebore wrote:
My main issue with
GW is that they've ingrained a bias towards marines for so long, that no one bats an eyelid when terminators get more T and W, primarchs jump 3pts of T!, or gravis armour goes to T6(!) or that custodian termies are T7, but you apply that same logic to any other army and you have to fight tooth and nail to justify it. if you look at the new Grimnar and Helbrect rules they both has sweep and strike attacks and make the phoenix lords pretty crappy by comparison which is to me a travesty.
No one is arguing for those marines stats to reduce again, but
PLs dropped T in a game that was making things less lethal, lost their damage cap and lost a resurrection strategem.
It's like anything you do to marines to make them more uber is fine, because marines, but dare to suggest something else should be more uber and you get shot down.
The same kinds of fluff arguments to justify why terminators deserve the buff also works for the immortal soul infused suits of the phoenix lords, but the bias towards marines means it's always justified while anything else isn't. So that's where my frustration at these things comes from.
I hear you, but for me the reluctance is specifically with increasing Strength and Toughness. It's easy enough to picture the big gorillas wrapped in ceramite being able to bench press automobiles and and tank a wrecking ball to the face. In contrast, phoenix lords are space elves. Or at least haunted suits of space elf armor. Giving them S4 and T4 makes them peak human or low-tier superhuman. Which is okay. The suit of haunted armor can arm wrestle Captain America. But taking them up a notch to S5 and T5 means they're not just superhuman, they're more superhuman than the gorilla-shaped superhumans like astartes. Which you can still justify with superhero haunted armor logic (I don't think you're "wrong" for wanting those stats in your version), but it's a more blatant contrast to lithe elf aesthetic.
Giving them better
WS than marines back in the old
WS system made sense. Giving them more Attacks than marines makes sense. Letting them beat marines at arm wrestling is where it gets a little more iffy for me.
Lowering their T in 10th is grumble-worthy, but it also kind of makes sense from a gameplay perspective. The
GW versions are obviously intended to join squads, and lowering their Toughness to match the squad's means you don't have to worry about mixed Toughness values when you're down to your last couple of models. If their Toughness remained at 4 while they're designed to join squads, we'd be grumbling about hoping that that
GW didn't charge us points for the extra Toughness we never get to use.
As for your comments, the main reason I made them lone operatives is because that's how they are portrayed in the fluff. They have no shrines, no students. They are permanent wanderers being drawn by the skeins of fate to important battles. They will lead their aspects in war, but they aren't their direct teachers. They don't have a gaggle of students following them around, but will meet up with the followers of their aspects when battle calls.
Right. So it's a bit of a mixed bag, right? In the Asurmen novel, he's basically a lone operative throughout that book, but you also have. In Jain Zar, she spends most of the book in duels and skirmishes running around on her own, but she takes charge of a squad of banshees as soon as there are some around. During his brief appearance in the Path series, Karandras seems to be leading squads rather than going off on his own.
So the impression I get is that, while they *are* heroic wanderers in their own right, they make a habit of joining squads whenever they're on an actual battlefield (such as the ones portrayed on the tabletop.) So again, I don't think your approach is incorrect, but I also think it's probably valid (if more limiting) for
GW to want
PLs to join squads of their aspect. Although it *does* feel like
GW may be forgetting the issues they've had making
PLs useful in the past.
As for kill better rules - I assume you mean rules that just make them fight better rather than add strategems or tactics? My reasoning for this is that they aren't warlords or military leaders, they are ronin who join battles to turn the tide and then leave again. Their skills are entirely focused on their martial prowess and the slaughtering of foes and they've become supernatural demigods of war as a result.
"Kill-better" is the term I've been using to refer to rules that increase
raw lethality rather than doing something rooted in maneuvering or some other change of game state, yeah. So a rule that gives an attached squad +1 to-hit or Devastating Wounds or whatever is a "kill-better" rule while a marine biker character letting his squad shoot after advancing is not. I usually use the term in reference to buffs rather than
raw abilities.
Jain Zar having a powerful sweep attack is not a kill-better rule. Giving banshees +1 to-wound is.
I started using the term in 9th to refer to all the lethality-boosting rules we were getting in lieu of rules that created interesting counterplay and maneuvering options. New codex comes out with a subfaction rule that just blandly makes your guns more lethal? That's a kill-better rule.
Thanks for your feedback.
Thanks for sharing your work!
