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I like how 'muh relizm' always proposes wildly unrealistic and kludge mechanics because they don't like (or know) how it really works in practice

AV system was just comically bad because you magically teleported anime-style to the rear of the tank while punching it in the front, because you were forced to target arbitrary strong facing because tank was turned 1 degree to the left instead of plainly visible weak one (and it got even more comically stupid when the front was obscured and side was not but you still couldn't touch it), because half of big models in the game just ignored facings of armor and guns mechanics based on arbitrary unit types, and finally, BECAUSE TANK ARMOR DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

No, seriously, to give a simple example - British Challenger tank has equivalent of 1000 mm of steel on upper hull plate, but only 400 on bottom one - it's like having AV 13 on top of front 'wedge' of your hull, while only AV 7 on the bottom. Moreover, if you were to shoot left side of that weak bottom front armor, tank catastrophically explodes, because that's where the big ammo storage is. AV system just says frak you, it's all AV 13, and it will explode if you hit top right 1/6 of a time even though nothing that could do so is there.

And in 40K, the system is if anything even DUMBER, because all the massive hatches, front sponsons, gun ports, and spots perforated with rivets should have their AV values fluctuate even wilder than real tanks but nope, it's one value, and exposed engine/turret slot/sponson holes/hatches on Land Raider are made from stronger armor than front plate of other tanks, even superheavy ones. Or most knights/titans, too. ReALiSm!

And yes, you can argue it's all abstract and averaged over, but you know what system is actually abstract and realistic without having special tables on tables, Str working completely differently than the whole rest of the game, etc, etc, complicated nonsense that adds nothing besides artificially nerfing vehicles making them rare sight in multiple editions? Why yes, T introduced in 8th. Maybe it could use some fine tuning (say, modifiers to T if you manage to sneak close or engage tank in melee, or bonus at long range, etc), but it's vastly better than AV junk in virtually every way. Period.

leopard wrote:
there is no way an infantry side arm, laspistol or similar should be able to harm a knight, or even a decent tank. if it could there basically would be no tanks/knights as they wouldn't last long enough to be worthwhile

Erm, no, this is just wrong. Small arms can destroy tracks, engine, targeting systems, etc, etc, there is tons of exposed elements on every vehicle that you can't armor for multiple reasons that are easy targets. Hell, NATO doctrine calls for tank commanders riding forward sticking their head (or even whole torso) out so they can see where they are going and what they should target (it's the Soviets who advocated being always 'buttoned down' with hatches closed, incidentally) - if you were to headshot tank commander the 'damage' to tank would be pretty huge despite being done by lucky small arm shot. That's why you're supposed to support your tanks with infantry, so opposing infantry can't get close and use their 'useless' small arms to take out your big expensive vehicle. If anything, if you wanted realism, the infantry in really close range should 'wound' tanks not just on 6s, but on 5s.

Just ask germans how their 80 ton Elefants with gazillion armor all around (that led Nazis to declare they don't need defensive machine guns at all, after all it's immune to everything, right?) worked against humble Soviet squads with 'useless' rifles - oops, after a few dozen burned they were recalled from front lines with haste and machine guns installed in every free spot

Breton wrote:
Likewise I want anti-tank weapons to be fairly "non-interactive" with non-tanks

And this is just comical if you took a look at the two big conflicts going on currently (you know which ones). Enemy sees squad advancing? Vast majority of the time, first thing pointed on it will be tank gun, anti-tank missile, an RPG, salvo from grenade launcher, smaller cannons, or really any anti-tank weapon they have on hand - not just because these tend to have larger range, but modern infantry clad in protective gear is very hard to put down with small arms fire and if you need to kill or suppress them quickly, AT weapons are the only way to go. Hell, US grunts in their colonial wars in last 25 years used stuff like Javelins to hunt down single enemy soldiers to not come into range of small arms fire - why do you think this war cost two trillion dollars?

Just look at modern ads of NATO arms companies, you will notice virtually every new anti-tank rocket comes with shrapnel enhancers precisely to make it more deadly when it explodes used in anti-infantry role, such as HEDP warheads - this should give you a hint how common such use is. In game terms, if anything, AT weapons should be more, not less interactive with infantry, not just for realism reasons, but also to give them edge over stuff like plasma guns that was often used over them precisely because it was more interactive even if it was overall worse weapon...

They simplify armour profiles and gamify mechanics because accurately representing reality in a turn based combat game where everything is visible to the commander and the average range of an assault rifle equivalent is about 60ft (at a push), who would have thunk it?


But seriously, I’d prefer treating tanks if they were a crewed machines rather than a swollen infantry profile, give them the ability to be stunned or suppressed by non-lethal hits, but don’t make them vulnerable to infantry focusing them with standard weaponry.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I largely agree with Tyran. Before you can propose making vehicles immune to huge parts of the enemy army, you have to propose a way to prevent skew lists from being a thing.
In practice, rear armor was less of a vulnerability to be exploited by shooting and more of a way to hurt vehicles in melee. So the counterplay was basically, "Okay, strength 4 and better can hurt vehicles if they charge." So vehicles were "immune" to small arms fire, but in the shooting phase, basically. But this still sort of sucked for S3 armies. Marines had their choice of stunning a vehicle by punching it or whipping out the strength 6 krak grenades, so every unit in the marine codex functionally had a way of hurting vehicles. But S3 armies didn't.

Limit the amount of vehicles any given army can bring.
-> Force Organisation Charts that only allow 3 Heavy Support choices, where most armies would have their heavily armored units. (..as well as 3 Fast Attack, 3 Elite, ...)
-> Demand a basic amount of points being spent on infantry (again, FOC with at least 1 HQ and 2 Troop selections)
-> Price them properly so you can't just spam 3 Dreadnoughts with all the bling for 400 points. Adjust strength if needed.
-> Adjust inherently skewed armies like Tank companies and Knights with mandatory infantry selections.

S3 armies don't suck inherently against vehicles, as they have different methods to engage them.
-> Suicide melta drops, heavy weapon teams for IG (or their own tanks)
-> Eldar have lances and Fire Dragons (or their own tanks)
-> Tyranids have Monstrous Creatures that roll "Strength + 2W6 to overcome AV" in melee.
-> Sisters have melta spam, Paragons, Penitent engines and now their own tank.

That Marines could engage vehicles with their grenade is factually true, but that was never your first or only sort of AT. You would take Sternguard with melta in Drop Pods to take out priority targets.S6 grenades in melee are a "the SM player is in a bad situation with that unit" moment.

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I largely agree with Tyran. Before you can propose making vehicles immune to huge parts of the enemy army, you have to propose a way to prevent skew lists from being a thing.
In practice, rear armor was less of a vulnerability to be exploited by shooting and more of a way to hurt vehicles in melee. So the counterplay was basically, "Okay, strength 4 and better can hurt vehicles if they charge." So vehicles were "immune" to small arms fire, but in the shooting phase, basically. But this still sort of sucked for S3 armies. Marines had their choice of stunning a vehicle by punching it or whipping out the strength 6 krak grenades, so every unit in the marine codex functionally had a way of hurting vehicles. But S3 armies didn't.

Limit the amount of vehicles any given army can bring.
-> Force Organisation Charts that only allow 3 Heavy Support choices, where most armies would have their heavily armored units. (..as well as 3 Fast Attack, 3 Elite, ...)
-> Demand a basic amount of points being spent on infantry (again, FOC with at least 1 HQ and 2 Troop selections)
-> Price them properly so you can't just spam 3 Dreadnoughts with all the bling for 400 points. Adjust strength if needed.
-> Adjust inherently skewed armies like Tank companies and Knights with mandatory infantry selections.

S3 armies don't suck inherently against vehicles, as they have different methods to engage them.
-> Suicide melta drops, heavy weapon teams for IG (or their own tanks)
-> Eldar have lances and Fire Dragons (or their own tanks)
-> Tyranids have Monstrous Creatures that roll "Strength + 2W6 to overcome AV" in melee.
-> Sisters have melta spam, Paragons, Penitent engines and now their own tank.

That Marines could engage vehicles with their grenade is factually true, but that was never your first or only sort of AT. You would take Sternguard with melta in Drop Pods to take out priority targets.S6 grenades in melee are a "the SM player is in a bad situation with that unit" moment.

I mean knights don't have infantry, and if you force them into tank companies.... it's not a tank company. Suggesting MC's can punch vehicles ignores the fact the comment was about having mass access to handle volumes of tanks in melee with standard infantry, which in turn also defeats the point imo.

You've utterly divorced the problem from the solution and asked for the old FOC which solves nothing here.

Doesn't this discussion about skew lists just speak to a problem in 40k where it focuses on destruction of opposing forces over suppression and objective control? Skew lists typically gain advantages in some areas at the expense of others, so a game with multiple options for dealing with the opponent and winning can encorporate them. You should be able to handle a tank company by suppressing enemy vehicles or preventing them from holding ground instead of relying on outright destruction.

I do think GW's poor morale and suppression mechanics are a big factor here.

 Haighus wrote:
Doesn't this discussion about skew lists just speak to a problem in 40k where it focuses on destruction of opposing forces over suppression and objective control? Skew lists typically gain advantages in some areas at the expense of others, so a game with multiple options for dealing with the opponent and winning can encorporate them. You should be able to handle a tank company by suppressing enemy vehicles or preventing them from holding ground instead of relying on outright destruction.

I do think GW's poor morale and suppression mechanics are a big factor here.

So Tyranids at present are good at board control, objective play and generally taking up space. What they're not great at is killing. This is a design choice and is often deemed "boring" and I've seen a few players online move away from the faction for that reason, I believe Necrons were the same last/this edition. Ultimately killing stuff is what people want.

Dudeface wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Doesn't this discussion about skew lists just speak to a problem in 40k where it focuses on destruction of opposing forces over suppression and objective control? Skew lists typically gain advantages in some areas at the expense of others, so a game with multiple options for dealing with the opponent and winning can encorporate them. You should be able to handle a tank company by suppressing enemy vehicles or preventing them from holding ground instead of relying on outright destruction.

I do think GW's poor morale and suppression mechanics are a big factor here.

So Tyranids at present are good at board control, objective play and generally taking up space. What they're not great at is killing. This is a design choice and is often deemed "boring" and I've seen a few players online move away from the faction for that reason, I believe Necrons were the same last/this edition. Ultimately killing stuff is what people want.

Sadly, this does fit with a trend since 3rd edition to make the game increasingly lethal. I may be in a minority when it comes to favouring reduced lethality and increased tactical options in 40k

 Haighus wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Doesn't this discussion about skew lists just speak to a problem in 40k where it focuses on destruction of opposing forces over suppression and objective control? Skew lists typically gain advantages in some areas at the expense of others, so a game with multiple options for dealing with the opponent and winning can encorporate them. You should be able to handle a tank company by suppressing enemy vehicles or preventing them from holding ground instead of relying on outright destruction.

I do think GW's poor morale and suppression mechanics are a big factor here.

So Tyranids at present are good at board control, objective play and generally taking up space. What they're not great at is killing. This is a design choice and is often deemed "boring" and I've seen a few players online move away from the faction for that reason, I believe Necrons were the same last/this edition. Ultimately killing stuff is what people want.

Sadly, this does fit with a trend since 3rd edition to make the game increasingly lethal. I may be in a minority when it comes to favouring reduced lethality and increased tactical options in 40k

I'd be for smaller armies with more relevance on movement and lower lethality, sign me up! I also don't have a problem with an army being a pain to handle but pillow fisted, if that's what's fun to the owner then crack on. My issue is you hit armies like DG where durability is the thing they're known for and people want, but then can't accept that the killing power is either going to have to be lower, or they're going to have to cost more. GW have tried to stretch them in too many directions imo and now they're not filling any of those niches.

Dudeface wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Doesn't this discussion about skew lists just speak to a problem in 40k where it focuses on destruction of opposing forces over suppression and objective control? Skew lists typically gain advantages in some areas at the expense of others, so a game with multiple options for dealing with the opponent and winning can encorporate them. You should be able to handle a tank company by suppressing enemy vehicles or preventing them from holding ground instead of relying on outright destruction.

I do think GW's poor morale and suppression mechanics are a big factor here.

So Tyranids at present are good at board control, objective play and generally taking up space. What they're not great at is killing. This is a design choice and is often deemed "boring" and I've seen a few players online move away from the faction for that reason, I believe Necrons were the same last/this edition. Ultimately killing stuff is what people want.

Sadly, this does fit with a trend since 3rd edition to make the game increasingly lethal. I may be in a minority when it comes to favouring reduced lethality and increased tactical options in 40k

I'd be for smaller armies with more relevance on movement and lower lethality, sign me up! I also don't have a problem with an army being a pain to handle but pillow fisted, if that's what's fun to the owner then crack on. My issue is you hit armies like DG where durability is the thing they're known for and people want, but then can't accept that the killing power is either going to have to be lower, or they're going to have to cost more. GW have tried to stretch them in too many directions imo and now they're not filling any of those niches.

In fairness I was also thinking about this in relation to skew lists. So players should be able to build balanced and skew lists for each major faction. Death Guard suffer from being essentially a skew list parcelled out of a balanced major faction (Chaos Space Marines). In the past you could choose to play an all-Nurgle list, but recognised that doing so was restricting options and reducing mobility and lethality in exchange for durability. Now it is harder to feature some plague Marines as part of a larger CSM whole.

Dudeface wrote:
I mean knights don't have infantry, and if you force them into tank companies.... it's not a tank company. Suggesting MC's can punch vehicles ignores the fact the comment was about having mass access to handle volumes of tanks in melee with standard infantry, which in turn also defeats the point imo.

You've utterly divorced the problem from the solution and asked for the old FOC which solves nothing here.

Knights don't have infantry yet. Introduce something akin to "Household militia", limit the availability for big Knights in regular armies and work more with Armigers.
A Tank company can be accompanied by infantry in transport vehicles without taking much away from the fantasy. It may steer more towards a "mechanised brigade" maybe, but that is the suggestion to make a skew list workable. There used to be a time where a list like that needed confirmation from player 2 and I would like to make it usuable for general use without resorting to limitations like that. Though there is an argument to be made wether or not such a specific "Leman Russ and variants only" list got a place in the scope of a typical 40k game at all.

The base argument that your "100 pts for 10 S3 models" type of units need to be able to combat tank skew effectively is flawed to begin with and that is why I don't entertain it. The aforementioned S6 grenades were upgrades in 3rd and 4th edition, before they became mandatory and baked into the base equipment for Marines in 5th. Without them and with S4 only they are only a little bit less useless against the lowest armor value. You should take specialised weapons against specialised targets. A lascannon for a tank and a flamer for a horde of gaunts.

That a model with strength 3,1 attack and 4+ weapon skill needs to be effective against tanks before we can allow skew is something that needs to be proven first and is not supported by how 3rd, 4th and 5th edition was actually played.

I think Imperial Guard armoured companies are fine given there are 11 functionally distinct 40k Leman Russ variants (LRBT, demolisher, exterminator, vanquisher, conqueror, executioner, annihilator, eradicator, punisher, thunderer, destroyer) and as many supporting vehicles (chimera, salamander, both sentinels, hellhound, devil dog, bane wolf, basilisk, medusa, griffon, atlas, trojan, centaur). They are a common feature in 40k lore.

That is a bigger unit line up than a lot of factions today

Technically, there's at least 4 Sentinel variants known for Armoured Companies!

The biggest fix that they need for that setup is Tank Commanders ceasing to be an actual unit, and instead being a thing that gets to be assigned to any tank from your list.

a_typical_hero wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I mean knights don't have infantry, and if you force them into tank companies.... it's not a tank company. Suggesting MC's can punch vehicles ignores the fact the comment was about having mass access to handle volumes of tanks in melee with standard infantry, which in turn also defeats the point imo.

You've utterly divorced the problem from the solution and asked for the old FOC which solves nothing here.

Knights don't have infantry yet. Introduce something akin to "Household militia", limit the availability for big Knights in regular armies and work more with Armigers.
A Tank company can be accompanied by infantry in transport vehicles without taking much away from the fantasy. It may steer more towards a "mechanised brigade" maybe, but that is the suggestion to make a skew list workable. There used to be a time where a list like that needed confirmation from player 2 and I would like to make it usuable for general use without resorting to limitations like that. Though there is an argument to be made wether or not such a specific "Leman Russ and variants only" list got a place in the scope of a typical 40k game at all.

The base argument that your "100 pts for 10 S3 models" type of units need to be able to combat tank skew effectively is flawed to begin with and that is why I don't entertain it. The aforementioned S6 grenades were upgrades in 3rd and 4th edition, before they became mandatory and baked into the base equipment for Marines in 5th. Without them and with S4 only they are only a little bit less useless against the lowest armor value. You should take specialised weapons against specialised targets. A lascannon for a tank and a flamer for a horde of gaunts.

That a model with strength 3,1 attack and 4+ weapon skill needs to be effective against tanks before we can allow skew is something that needs to be proven first and is not supported by how 3rd, 4th and 5th edition was actually played.

That's really not what was said at all. The point was rear armour 10 was intended to be a high risk low reward method for common mooks with nothing else to do vs vehicles to slap them down a bit in melee as it was generally easier than getting guardians etc into rear armour via range. In fact the grenades costing points wasn't addressed because it was pointed out it didn't need to be - a marine can punch a rhino hard enough to kill it. Krak grenades just made that easier.

So to that end, we'd be back to every unit having to have access to some form of anti-armour capacity, even if weak. All those s3 units would need a way to contribute other than existing to be shot, so grenades for all? Make sure they always have access to an anti-vehicle weapon, but better make it cheap? Who knows.

Never the less, as I did also say, if you then gear the game up to be able to always handle a hard counter, it's not a hard counter, so what is the point.

Templarted wrote:
But seriously, I’d prefer treating tanks if they were a crewed machines rather than a swollen infantry profile, give them the ability to be stunned or suppressed by non-lethal hits, but don’t make them vulnerable to infantry focusing them with standard weaponry.

Addendum, I would also prefer if monsters were treated as tank equivalents rather than swollen infantry profiles, because they are tank equivalents as far as Tyranids are concerned. That would also include giving them their own damage table because it is kinda ridiculus that a 1w left Carnifex was functionally the same as a full wounds one while beffing up their vulnerability to small arms.

A lasgun is as treatening to a Tyrannofex as it is to a Land Raider.

Dudeface wrote:
That's really not what was said at all. The point was rear armour 10 was intended to be a high risk low reward method for common mooks with nothing else to do vs vehicles to slap them down a bit in melee as it was generally easier than getting guardians etc into rear armour via range. In fact the grenades costing points wasn't addressed because it was pointed out it didn't need to be - a marine can punch a rhino hard enough to kill it. Krak grenades just made that easier.

So to that end, we'd be back to every unit having to have access to some form of anti-armour capacity, even if weak. All those s3 units would need a way to contribute other than existing to be shot, so grenades for all? Make sure they always have access to an anti-vehicle weapon, but better make it cheap? Who knows.

Never the less, as I did also say, if you then gear the game up to be able to always handle a hard counter, it's not a hard counter, so what is the point.

Why does every unit need to be able to engage every kind of unit meaningfully or at all? If the army itself is able to, then it is your decision wether you gear up to face a variety of targets, including horde, elite and vehicle spam.
Getting into the rear of a vehicle in melee when your unit is not equipped for it is so ineffective, that you would not use it as a regular strategy. How would you get there easier than with ranged weapons anyway? The Predator Annihilator isn't coming to you. The Rhino will drop off its cargo most likey before you make it into combat with your S3 Guardsmen where they will spend the rest of the game trying to damage it (read: it is likely irrelevant and you would have been better off shooting the passengers with said Guardsmen).

At the very least every army needs the tools, preferably in a variety of options, to engage every kind of unit meaningfully.

E.g. Tyranids MC may be able to punch tanks to death, they still need ranged options to deal with that Predator Annihilator at the other side of the table. Moreover not all of said options have to be on a MC platform otherwise MC spam becomes the only real way to play if your oponnent likes Predator Annihilators.

 Haighus wrote:
I think Imperial Guard armoured companies are fine given there are 11 functionally distinct 40k Leman Russ variants (LRBT, demolisher, exterminator, vanquisher, conqueror, executioner, annihilator, eradicator, punisher, thunderer, destroyer) and as many supporting vehicles (chimera, salamander, both sentinels, hellhound, devil dog, bane wolf, basilisk, medusa, griffon, atlas, trojan, centaur). They are a common feature in 40k lore.

That is a bigger unit line up than a lot of factions today

To be fair, most of the difference between Russes is the turret weapon (back when AV was a thing, some of the Russes were "siege" variants with +1 rear armor). They only got their own datasheets because GW is...well, GW. Same deal with the Hellhounds (HH, Devil Dog, Bane Wolf) and Chimera-chassis artillery (Bassie, Medusa, Griffon, Wyvern; given that the Medusa and Griffon were FW and the Wyvern only showed up with the plastic Hydra kit (presumably as an add-on to say it was really two kits in one box for whatever reason), it makes more sense that those weren't a single "SPG" choice with weapon swaps the way the Russ was). That said, there's even more non-Russ vehicle options in FW than you've listed (Salamander Command, Tauros/Tauros Venator, Colossus, Macharius et al, Malcador et al...), and I'd agree that armored companies should be allowed for Guard in general (especially since Knights are allowed to be their own thing).

Although Russes being squadrons was such a weird thing, specially as the BRB squadron rules were clearly written with very light and cheap vehicles in mind, not heavy tanks that could easilly get in the 200+ ppm range.

a_typical_hero 812145 11613781 wrote:
Why does every unit need to be able to engage every kind of unit meaningfully or at all? If the army itself is able to, then it is your decision wether you gear up to face a variety of targets, including horde, elite and vehicle spam.
Getting into the rear of a vehicle in melee when your unit is not equipped for it is so ineffective, that you would not use it as a regular strategy. How would you get there easier than with ranged weapons anyway? The Predator Annihilator isn't coming to you. The Rhino will drop off its cargo most likey before you make it into combat with your S3 Guardsmen where they will spend the rest of the game trying to damage it (read: it is likely irrelevant and you would have been better off shooting the passengers with said Guardsmen).

Because unless someone plays horde or a hyper over efficient army, specialisation is always bad. Especialy for elite armies. Having 2 units that do anti tank, 2 units that do anti infantry and 2 units do anti heavy infantry, and they better be really good at it means the units are easy to focus fire and make the army stop working, if they are destroyed early game. In good armies the units counter almost everything in the game. There is very little things in the game that 3 nurgle rhinos full of 3 lords, 3 chosen units and 3 csm units, can easily deal with. Night spinners are good vs everything that is not a tank. Same with the avatar.
Meanwhile, if you take an army where there is one anti tank, supposed, the game becomes very problematic when the meta shifts in a such a way that this only anti tank unit gets easily hard countered by the entire games meta. It is even worse then stat check armies, that have an easy to pass stat check.

Karol wrote:

Because unless someone plays horde or a hyper over efficient army, specialisation is always bad. Especialy for elite armies. Having 2 units that do anti tank, 2 units that do anti infantry and 2 units do anti heavy infantry, and they better be really good at it means the units are easy to focus fire and make the army stop working, if they are destroyed early game. In good armies the units counter almost everything in the game. There is very little things in the game that 3 nurgle rhinos full of 3 lords, 3 chosen units and 3 csm units, can easily deal with. Night spinners are good vs everything that is not a tank. Same with the avatar.
Meanwhile, if you take an army where there is one anti tank, supposed, the game becomes very problematic when the meta shifts in a such a way that this only anti tank unit gets easily hard countered by the entire games meta. It is even worse then stat check armies, that have an easy to pass stat check.

I don't agree. I get what you mean, but I don't agree. "Not every units needs to be able to" does not mean that only a specialised unit will be able to.
Looking back at Marines in 4th and 5th edition, you had your 5 men Tactical squads hanging back with a lascannon on objective and your suicide melta squads of 5 Sternguards.

Imperial Guard in 5th used tanks for anti-armor duty as well as the newly introduced 4 lascannon Vendetta. Infantry was mostly Veterans with triple plasma or melta.

Tau never had a proper anti tank option on their troops and had to concentrate it into either Hammerheads, Broadsides or Crisis.

Eldar had the best anti-tank unit in the form of Fire Dragons for a long time. It wasn't very fluffy for them to be used as suicide melta, but they got the job done.

In your example, the weapon profiles of your 6 specialised units will most likely overlap to some degree as well.
Not every vehicle on the other side is a Land Raider or Monolith with AV14. And not every horde is a 30 model Ork blob. Autocannons or plasma work alright-ish against a variety of targets.

I can't say much about the pre 8th ed meta, as I know it only from stories. But from what you say the IG army looks exactly what I say a good army looks like. The plasma/melta/lascanon counters everything or most of the field. It kills monsters, it kills tanks, it kills marines and it kills heavy infantry like terminators. Eldar I think are a bad example for everything, as the norm with them is that they are hyper efficient, to a point where an eldar army can be considered to have a 500 or more pts extra. On top fo that their specialists are REALLY good. A night spinners counters everything that is not a vehicle or in a transport. That is a huge.

The "suicide melta" only worked for eldar, because they had unkillable transports and the units, both the transports and the cargo, were undercosted for what they did.

Tau "anti tank" wasn't just anti tank. It massed killed monsters, marines etc Yes their troops were a tax. But that is a case for many cases. Aside for small moments at the end of 8th ed, the core of marine armies wasn't tacticals or intercessors. It is minimal troops and then skewing hard in to the good stuff. Chaos marines right now have it really good with how their uber cultists units are both super powerful, have good rules and low point costs for what they can do. With no point adjustment for the army core rule. But in the past csm were the codex, where troops were minimal to a point where taking csm in a csm army was considered stupid.

In my 6 units example, only for good armies with good rules, the things may over lap. In mid tier or bad armies they will not. And then you end up with armies that have no anti tank in a vehicle heavy edition. Or Knights being unable to deal with stuff like flyers or hordes of infantry. Specialisation, and I am saying this again, is only good for armies with big pools of units and a good rule set. For other armies, especialy elite ones like custodes, knights or GK, not being able to counter everything has really bad results on the table. Because if you have 2 NDKs, which are your only source of "anti tank";and a bad one too. Then all it takes to be unable to play in a vehicle heavy meta is to lose those two models. And in a stat check, hyper damage setting those two NDK evaporate.

Karol wrote:
I can't say much about the pre 8th ed meta, as I know it only from stories. But from what you say the IG army looks exactly what I say a good army looks like. The plasma/melta/lascanon counters everything or most of the field. It kills monsters, it kills tanks, it kills marines and it kills heavy infantry like terminators. Eldar I think are a bad example for everything, as the norm with them is that they are hyper efficient, to a point where an eldar army can be considered to have a 500 or more pts extra. On top fo that their specialists are REALLY good. A night spinners counters everything that is not a vehicle or in a transport. That is a huge.

The "suicide melta" only worked for eldar, because they had unkillable transports and the units, both the transports and the cargo, were undercosted for what they did.

Tau "anti tank" wasn't just anti tank. It massed killed monsters, marines etc Yes their troops were a tax. But that is a case for many cases. Aside for small moments at the end of 8th ed, the core of marine armies wasn't tacticals or intercessors. It is minimal troops and then skewing hard in to the good stuff. Chaos marines right now have it really good with how their uber cultists units are both super powerful, have good rules and low point costs for what they can do. With no point adjustment for the army core rule. But in the past csm were the codex, where troops were minimal to a point where taking csm in a csm army was considered stupid.

In my 6 units example, only for good armies with good rules, the things may over lap. In mid tier or bad armies they will not. And then you end up with armies that have no anti tank in a vehicle heavy edition. Or Knights being unable to deal with stuff like flyers or hordes of infantry. Specialisation, and I am saying this again, is only good for armies with big pools of units and a good rule set. For other armies, especialy elite ones like custodes, knights or GK, not being able to counter everything has really bad results on the table. Because if you have 2 NDKs, which are your only source of "anti tank";and a bad one too. Then all it takes to be unable to play in a vehicle heavy meta is to lose those two models. And in a stat check, hyper damage setting those two NDK evaporate.

My memory of 5th ed GK is hazy, but you still had the S8 rifleman dreads, the rending psycannons and hammerhand was a power to double strength iirc and hammers still existed everywhere. They did not struggle at all and were OP at release. The rifleman dreads in particular were a bit of a scourge as there wasn't a bad target for them generally.

Eldar, as you note, didn't have many problems accessing the stuff they needed either. Good specialists in tough vehicles that carry a pair of lance weapons made them well rounded.

What people are commenting on, and I fully understand, is when you're playing against a tank company, or knights, or any heavy mech force, that unit of flamer guys might as well not exist, everyone in the infantry squads that isn't a special weapon is just a wound counter, nothing more. Your tactical choices for the vehicle player is "kill the big gun" and the other player has "protect the big gun" and whoever does that best wins the game.

Such is the nature of hard counters or skew lists.

I think a mid ground can exist without forcing people to field stuff they don't want or need (just because: wooo the knight player has 20 basic humans for me to bolter before I become wound counters again!) and allow most units have the ability to interact, without making rate of fire on crap guns kill everything. Maybe all units should have access to some form of melta bomb equivalent baked in where they can trade melee attacks from the unit to land 1 good hit on a vehicle, or maybe make wounds re-roll against a vehicle unless it's ap-2 or more but any weapon can wound on a 6? There can't be many spammable S3-4 weapons with ap-2 or greater.

Templarted wrote:
They simplify armour profiles and gamify mechanics because accurately representing reality in a turn based combat game where everything is visible to the commander and the average range of an assault rifle equivalent is about 60ft (at a push), who would have thunk it?


But seriously, I’d prefer treating tanks if they were a crewed machines rather than a swollen infantry profile, give them the ability to be stunned or suppressed by non-lethal hits, but don’t make them vulnerable to infantry focusing them with standard weaponry.

Almost everything Irbis said is bs anyways so not worth engaging with. You don't engage armor with small arms except to force the crew to button up. I wonder if he's getting his knowledge from a videogame or something.

But also, the AV system was a pretty decent abstraction of varying armor levels- generally a given weapon against a given thickness of armor is either going to reliably penetrate or reliably bounce, but the S+D6 system added some 'wiggle room' in which the AV represents the average level of armor protection, and then your D6 roll determines whether you hit a weaker spot or solid plate.

It's still fine with SvT, or using the armor save as the mechanism for resolution, but like you said the modern system does omit the ability to mission kill or temporarily incapacitate a vehicle. It's either hard kill or nothing, except with maybe a degrading profile for the last few wounds.

I’m pretty sure you engage tanks with infantry from multiple directions so that they hopefully don’t notice the anti-tank weapons lining up to get mission kill hits on them.

You don’t need to blow up a tank to defeat it. Blowing out a track with an RPG is a win for the infantry.

The weird thing about the AV system is that armor penetration didn't actually help you penetrate armor.

I vastly prefer the SvT and APvSV system everything else uses. It is only missing a damage table but that shouldn't be hard to implement and monsters should also have a damage table anyway.

 alextroy wrote:
I’m pretty sure you engage tanks with infantry from multiple directions so that they hopefully don’t notice the anti-tank weapons lining up to get mission kill hits on them.

You don’t need to blow up a tank to defeat it. Blowing out a track with an RPG is a win for the infantry.

That was a nice part about the old system. You could immobilize vehicles and play to avoid primary firing arcs, keep out of LOS, and engage them on your own terms. And the Shaken/Stunned results worked as a good stand-in for the crew being unable to engage effectively because of incoming fire.

 Tyran wrote:
The weird thing about the AV system is that armor penetration didn't actually help you penetrate armor.

I vastly prefer the SvT and APvSV system everything else uses. It is only missing a damage table but that shouldn't be hard to implement and monsters should also have a damage table anyway.

Vehicles using AV but also having armor saves (3+ as the default, 4+ for skimmers and flyers, -1 the save on rear armor hits, maybe the tank USR adds +1 to the front armor save) would of fixed a fair amount of issues that plagued 6 and 7 edition balance between MCs and Vehicles and would of added more impact from AP than just adjusting the vehicle penetration table results. Would of kept the high rate of fire, relatively high strength but AP crap weapons from shredding vehicles while still preserving the true AT weapons like melta, lascannons, railguns, missile launchers, etc.

 Vankraken wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
The weird thing about the AV system is that armor penetration didn't actually help you penetrate armor.

I vastly prefer the SvT and APvSV system everything else uses. It is only missing a damage table but that shouldn't be hard to implement and monsters should also have a damage table anyway.

Vehicles using AV but also having armor saves (3+ as the default, 4+ for skimmers and flyers, -1 the save on rear armor hits, maybe the tank USR adds +1 to the front armor save) would of fixed a fair amount of issues that plagued 6 and 7 edition balance between MCs and Vehicles and would of added more impact from AP than just adjusting the vehicle penetration table results. Would of kept the high rate of fire, relatively high strength but AP crap weapons from shredding vehicles while still preserving the true AT weapons like melta, lascannons, railguns, missile launchers, etc.

In that scenario AV is just T with extra steps.

AV10=T6
AV11=T7
AV12=T8

etc

S4 wounds a T6 model on a 6 - the amount needed to glance an AV10 model.

The mechanics are the same, the facade is different. IMO the facade isn't worth creating extra pointless rules that are basically the same as existing ones.


For the current rules T and Sv for vehicles and monsters, you can apply old damage tables like so:

For each point on the die you roll over the needed value to wound, add 1 to the table (ie you need 4+ to wound and roll 6, add +2 to the table)

1 - glance
2 - shake
3 - weapon damage (-1 BS/WS to weapons)
4 - locomotion damaged (halve M)
5 - penetrating hit (+1d3 damage)
6+ - massive hit (+1D6 damage)


Roll to wound, roll to save, roll on damage table

 Hellebore wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
The weird thing about the AV system is that armor penetration didn't actually help you penetrate armor.

I vastly prefer the SvT and APvSV system everything else uses. It is only missing a damage table but that shouldn't be hard to implement and monsters should also have a damage table anyway.

Vehicles using AV but also having armor saves (3+ as the default, 4+ for skimmers and flyers, -1 the save on rear armor hits, maybe the tank USR adds +1 to the front armor save) would of fixed a fair amount of issues that plagued 6 and 7 edition balance between MCs and Vehicles and would of added more impact from AP than just adjusting the vehicle penetration table results. Would of kept the high rate of fire, relatively high strength but AP crap weapons from shredding vehicles while still preserving the true AT weapons like melta, lascannons, railguns, missile launchers, etc.

In that scenario AV is just T with extra steps.

AV10=T6
AV11=T7
AV12=T8

etc

S4 wounds a T6 model on a 6 - the amount needed to glance an AV10 model.

The mechanics are the same, the facade is different. IMO the facade isn't worth creating extra pointless rules that are basically the same as existing ones.

Not quite.
T6 is wounded by S4 on a 6, but so is T7. AV11 is immune to S4.

Edit: At least, in the wounding chart of 3rd-7th edition.

Not quite but it would be such a tiny difference that doesn't justify having an entire different system that works on mostly the same math.

If you want T7/AV11 to be immune to S4 then make T7 immune to S4.