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Hi everyone,
So this is a rant, but one from someone who loves this edition. A rant, because I hated that in 7th (deathstars with invisibility cast upon them, all who played 7th know what I am referring to), and mephitic blight haulers, Ctans, super apothercaries, etc. I think GW is either:
1. Not being careful enough, stuff that is too hard to bring down has (from what I have seen over the years) a terrible effect on casual play, a neg effect on comp play, and really I see no one liking this except maybe the dude who just hates having to remove his units from the table (though it is just part of the game... but oh well)
2. Perhaps like that Ctan who ignores invuls, GW will give some units the rules to get through many layers of defence (invulnerable saves, often written like X++), feel no pains, often written like X+++ ), in which case... Yeah why not, I am open to try new concepts.

Now many of us know how to win around that by parking more obsec stuff on objectives to get primary objec points, and by scoring secondary object points. Because near indestructible stuff costs a lot of points, thankfully.

But what does everyone think ? I love 9th (didn't at first though), honeslty this is like one of the only things I dislike about it so far, with rulesbloat and rulebook bloat, obviously, but that goes for everyone i think.

I have the opposite problem; I think units in general are far too destructible, and these special exceptions (resurrecting 8 wounds, proliferation if invulns/FNPs, and max wounds per phase) are all desperate attempts to make things durable in the face of withering amounts of power.

The rapidity with which ostensibly tough units are vaporized off the board is staggering.

In my ideal world, a typical game of warhammer would end on turn 5 with approximately 1/4 of the starting combat force for either side remaining on the board.

A force being completely tabled on turn 5 would be rare, and on turn 4 would be exceedingly rare. A turn 2 or turn 3 tabling would be unheard of, a turn 1 tabling would be essentially impossible.

That is not where we are at in the current state of the game. Turn 3-4 tablings are common, and an army being tabled by the end of turn 5 is much more common than both players having something, anything on the board by the end of the game. Turn 2 tablings are not even particularly rare depending on the army involved, but more commonly what you see with heavy alpha strike armies is turn 2 an opponent is reduced to basically nothing but a few stragglers, empty transports, and units still sitting in reserves who basically have no way to impact the outcome of the game.

This is pretty much the biggest fundamental issue the game has currently in my eyes. The sheer amount of terrain required to make "one side is almost completely removed from the board by the bottom of turn 3" not the default state is staggering and represents an undue burden on organizers to try and put a table together, and even then, most armies we're seeing hit competitive play don't particularly care about that thanks to easy reliable deep strike, high speed melee units, and universal outflank of almost anything for 1cp.

So, no, basically I totally disagree with your premise on all counts, both that hyper-durability exists in 9th (I would argue that it doesn't, anywhere) or that hyper-durability is somehow a problem in 9th.

I really haven't found anything to be super invulnerable. Even my peddly GSC were able to take out both a C'tan and the Silent King in one game, and the C'tan was in just 1 turn. The thing is, with a lot of these really tough things that are out there, there are a bunch of little things about their rules that allows for vulnerability.

For example, the C'tan - if all you do is shoot in the shooting phase and fight in the fight phase, then yes, it will be nearly impossible to take down. But if you cast psychic powers in the psychic phase, or shoot in the charge phase, or bomb him as you fly over in the move phase, then it becomes much more manageable to deal with!

In essence; look through your codex and find those additional opportunities. Same with other stuff; it's only really, really hard to kill in a certain way - and there are ways around them. Do you have a psychic power that removes Inv saves? If you can't, can you literally just pile on a ton of crumby attacks? Can you cause mortal wounds with charges? All these things and more are options available to you!

This is way better than 7th edition, where there were even more incredibly tough units that could be protected in insane ways that had even LESS interaction. And those ways had way fewer work-arounds.

I think that there is too much of a discrepancy between the indestructable and the mundane.

Take orks for example. Ghazzy can only take 4 wounds per phase, and yet armies are out there which don't struggle to kill 90+ boys per turn. That's somewhat obscene, that the same armies aimed at Ghazzie can do 4 wounds maximum.

There's too much killiness, and it's probably due to too much big stuff. They are now scaling the small stuff up (instead of the big stuff down) so that they become less killable, but then they increase the effectiveness of weapons at killing them by giving them 2 damage, which then makes them too good at killing big things, and means that tougher things need 3 wounds not 2, and the arms race continues.

What they need to do is make a whole edition, with all the codexes, all in one hit, release it all at once, after intense playtesting, and then start work on the next edition. Hell, just put all the codexes in the rulebook in one hit, with a wave of new models, and then start work on the next wave.

Yeah, 'indestructible' isn't a thing.

I'm a little aghast at the _idea_ its a problem after the first two codexes and fresh off this weekend's and todays previews. 'More attacks, more damage' is being shoved in sideways.

I had to put down my e-reader and walk away from the BA preview this morning. Came back later for the details, but for feth's sake...

Lethality is super high, that is why they had to limit alpha strikes by nerfing deepstrike, that is why they give out more wounds and made Ctan and Ghaz take limited wounds.

And instead of doing the logical thing and bringing down lethality so that stuff actually survives without a dozen special rules they are keeping the trend going of upping lethality.

Sigh.

I wish GW was more open in why they are doing what they do. Because I don't get some of the decisions they are making.
its obvious they realise there is a problem, else we don't get stuff like Ghaz/Ctan.

Are they so deadly afraid of nerfing Space Marines after going overboard in 2.0?

 Yarium wrote:


In essence; look through your codex and find those additional opportunities. Same with other stuff; it's only really, really hard to kill in a certain way - and there are ways around them. Do you have a psychic power that removes Inv saves? If you can't, can you literally just pile on a ton of crumby attacks? Can you cause mortal wounds with charges? All these things and more are options available to you!

.

What if you do exactly that, but are an elite force and don't do MW durning charges? 2MW from short range smites and bolter shots strugle to kill a ctan fast enough, specialy considering the same units have to do primaris, secondaries and stop the opponent from doing those at the same time.

Karol wrote:

 Yarium wrote:


In essence; look through your codex and find those additional opportunities. Same with other stuff; it's only really, really hard to kill in a certain way - and there are ways around them. Do you have a psychic power that removes Inv saves? If you can't, can you literally just pile on a ton of crumby attacks? Can you cause mortal wounds with charges? All these things and more are options available to you!

.

What if you do exactly that, but are an elite force and don't do MW durning charges? 2MW from short range smites and bolter shots strugle to kill a ctan fast enough, specialy considering the same units have to do primaris, secondaries and stop the opponent from doing those at the same time.

Grey Knights are among the list of armies the least likely to worry about a C'tan, given that they're fairly competent in 3 phases of the game - Psychic, Shooting, and Assault. It may be difficult to destroy a C'tan in a single turn, but in two turns it should be trivial.

 Ordana wrote:


And instead of doing the logical thing and bringing down lethality so that stuff actually survives without a dozen special rules they are keeping the trend going of upping lethality.

the problem with lowering lethality is that suddenly you start seeing more and more armies with 150+ models being very uninteractive. It is also creates problem with armies that were build around being tough or super tough. Drop the avarge kill ratio in the game, and suddenly DG and necrons don't die at all.

Apart from custodians with their BS ignore AP-2 stratagem on units that have 3++ saves and 1+ saves. Nothing even approaches being indestructible. Even units with 3++ saves die quickly if you just shoot them with the right weapons (though invunes of over 5++ are just silly and shouldn't exist IMO and no rules like "ignore AP" should exist ether").

 Unit1126PLL wrote:



Grey Knights are among the list of armies the least likely to worry about a C'tan, given that they're fairly competent in 3 phases of the game - Psychic, Shooting, and Assault. It may be difficult to destroy a C'tan in a single turn, but in two turns it should be trivial.

I wasn't thinking about GK, but about armies like custodes, DW armies or loyalist knight lits.

 some bloke wrote:
I think that there is too much of a discrepancy between the indestructable and the mundane.

Take orks for example. Ghazzy can only take 4 wounds per phase, and yet armies are out there which don't struggle to kill 90+ boys per turn. That's somewhat obscene, that the same armies aimed at Ghazzie can do 4 wounds maximum.

Yes exactly, most units are not durable at all, for the best or for the worst (I for one don't mind that at all), and on the other hand other units can tank just so much... It is the discrepancy, like some bloke says, that really gets on my nerves.

I know deathgard/nurgle is not "1st place place tournament tier" for being so resistant to damage (for necrons we will see), but maaan... On these small tables, it just seems like a drag... All this dice throwing and doing nothing in the end...
For me it is just bad game design. That huge units (titanic or close in size), or those with obvious heavy defences (as seen on the model) like land raiders, or even shield drones (which I hate), are very hard to shift, I am fine with. But others... Just feels odd and badly designed, like "ooops we didn't see you could stack all those def buffs on mephitic blight haulers, sorry... Waiit for nex errata"

Karol wrote:

 Yarium wrote:


In essence; look through your codex and find those additional opportunities. Same with other stuff; it's only really, really hard to kill in a certain way - and there are ways around them. Do you have a psychic power that removes Inv saves? If you can't, can you literally just pile on a ton of crumby attacks? Can you cause mortal wounds with charges? All these things and more are options available to you!

.

What if you do exactly that, but are an elite force and don't do MW durning charges? 2MW from short range smites and bolter shots strugle to kill a ctan fast enough, specialy considering the same units have to do primaris, secondaries and stop the opponent from doing those at the same time.

Ctan is fine. So many ways to kill it. Costs like a LOW. If you can do damage in any phase other than shooting or melee the ctan can easily be destroyed in a single turn - plus their powers are pretty short ranged and they are very susceptible to tarpit.

The issue is as said above; they've made the game very lethal and at range not just in close combat. As a result units can get blasted off the table very fast.

When you then give players big shiny characters and unique models; those players want to see that model do something. Yet without protective measures (limited wounds per turn etc...) the high lethality rate would see most of them wiped off the table in a turn or two and before they could really do anything.


It's a way to retain high powered attacks and yet still have key units that feel powerful on the tabletop. It's no different to if power was reduced across the board.

I think it also helps break up tactical elements a bit because it shifts thinking away from just "mob that unit with fire for a turn" thinking. Instead now players have to consider that they can't just fire and remove a unit. So now they've got to remember that and not waste shots; perhaps even use a weaker unit against it because they only need to hit 4 wounds (or whatever) and they can use their better unit to fire at something else.
Then they might learn screening; seeking cover; tarpitting; or even learning to let a super unit take an objective, because its out on a flank and they've focused the rest of their army on the other objectives etc...


It's not an outright bad thing; though perhaps for some people its a forced learning curve in learning to mitigate a different type of unit that they can't just sit back and shoot holes in.

 Xenomancers wrote:

]Ctan is fine. So many ways to kill it. Costs like a LOW. If you can do damage in any phase other than shooting or melee the ctan can easily be destroyed in a single turn - plus their powers are pretty short ranged and they are very susceptible to tarpit.

if you play an elite army, you generaly have fewer models then necrons, even if they take a ctan. I don't see custodes or knight players doing a lot of tar piting . Chaos knights can get psykers and summon or soup in some demons, but loyalists have shoting and melee, and that is it. Custodes don't have psykers, and their whole schtick is being resilient and alfa striking with charges from stuff like jetbikes. Can't really alfa strikes something that just ignores and heals damage.

Again I ain't saying the ctan is not fine. But I wonder what elite army players do when they play against a 9th ed codex, with a rule set like that.

Karol wrote:

 Ordana wrote:


And instead of doing the logical thing and bringing down lethality so that stuff actually survives without a dozen special rules they are keeping the trend going of upping lethality.

the problem with lowering lethality is that suddenly you start seeing more and more armies with 150+ models being very uninteractive. It is also creates problem with armies that were build around being tough or super tough. Drop the avarge kill ratio in the game, and suddenly DG and necrons don't die at all.

As with everything its a balance act. If you make the game less lethal some of the super durable units that were designed around the super lethal meta might also need to get nerfed until they are the right level of 'tough'.

And the reason you are seeing 150+ model armies is because that is the only way to survive for those armies.
Nid monsters all die when dedicated anti-tank looks at them funny (lol Eradicators) They can't even get that far in combat when they run into BGV. So the only way to survive is to flood the board with cheap garbage that doesn't care about your str 6-8 ap -zillion 2+ damage guns.

And by making the game less lethal I don't mean making a bolter str 3. Anti light infantry weapons are not really a problem outside of outliers like the old double shooting Aggressors. The ability to kill hordes doesn't have to be nerfed that much, its the ability to kill elites that don't bristle with special rules that is the problem currently.

 Ordana wrote:
I wish GW was more open in why they are doing what they do. Because I don't get some of the decisions they are making.
its obvious they realise there is a problem, else we don't get stuff like Ghaz/Ctan.

Are they so deadly afraid of nerfing Space Marines after going overboard in 2.0?

GW does not think you have the right to hold them accountable, let's be real.

I find the C´Tan a bit off an odd duck in this case. Yes he is very pricey but my DG does not really have something to tarpit him with because he just deletes everything he touches and it´s all expensive. So here we have a unit that on the one hand makes the game way more lethal by outright ignoring the things that normally make me tanky, while having a arbitrary defense himself that makes sure he will last for at least 2 turns.

 Castozor wrote:
I find the C´Tan a bit off an odd duck in this case. Yes he is very pricey but my DG does not really have something to tarpit him with because he just deletes everything he touches and it´s all expensive. So here we have a unit that on the one hand makes the game way more lethal by outright ignoring the things that normally make me tanky, while having a arbitrary defense himself that makes sure he will last for at least 2 turns.

Couldn't you ally in some Nurgle Daemons and tarpit him with a carpet of Nurglings?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
I find the C´Tan a bit off an odd duck in this case. Yes he is very pricey but my DG does not really have something to tarpit him with because he just deletes everything he touches and it´s all expensive. So here we have a unit that on the one hand makes the game way more lethal by outright ignoring the things that normally make me tanky, while having a arbitrary defense himself that makes sure he will last for at least 2 turns.

Couldn't you ally in some Nurgle Daemons and tarpit him with a carpet of Nurglings?

Nightbringer does d6 damage a pop, right? Ignoring Invulns?

He'd eat Nurglings for a snack, not even breakfast.

Plaguebearers would do miles better.

Looking at his stats on BS, he's got 6 WS 2+ S14 AP-4 Dd6 attacks, or twice that many at S7 AP-3 D1. Ignores any rule that would ignore damage.

So he does...

5 hits
25/6 wounds
25/6 failed saves
Anywhere from 2-4 dead bases of Nurglings.

Against Bearers, he does...

5 hits
25/6 wounds
25/6 failed saves
4.17 dead Bearers, or

10 hits
20/3 wounds
20/3 failed saves
6.67 dead Bearers.

And the Plaguebearers might plink a few wounds off. The Nurglings won't.

I don´t soup, we play Mono-dex over here. Summoning might be an option but I'm not sure it would be ideal.
To the OP, besides obnoxious and (imo) arbitrary wound caps on models I would actually like more things to be as though as my MBH. Things die way too fast in my opinion and a general increase in survive ability trough normal means has my preference. So upping wounds, playing more with the toughness value, maybe accept Marines shouldn't get free AP on all their attacks. Rather than 8th's -3/4 to hit Disco Lords and Flyers, or wound caps like Ghaz/C'tan that some armies can still bypass rather trivially and others really struggle against.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Nightbringer does d6 damage a pop, right? Ignoring Invulns?

He'd eat Nurglings for a snack, not even breakfast.

Plaguebearers would do miles better.

Looking at his stats on BS, he's got 6 WS 2+ S14 AP-4 Dd6 attacks, or twice that many at S7 AP-3 D1. Ignores any rule that would ignore damage.

So he does...

5 hits
25/6 wounds
25/6 failed saves
Anywhere from 2-4 dead bases of Nurglings.

Against Bearers, he does...

5 hits
25/6 wounds
25/6 failed saves
4.17 dead Bearers, or

10 hits
20/3 wounds
20/3 failed saves
6.67 dead Bearers.

And the Plaguebearers might plink a few wounds off. The Nurglings won't.

Thanks for the math.

Looking at the numbers, it doesn't seem like the Nightbringer earns back his points very quickly against either of those targets which means they're probably as decent a tarpit as you're likely to find against such an offensively powerful model.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Nightbringer does d6 damage a pop, right? Ignoring Invulns?

He'd eat Nurglings for a snack, not even breakfast.

Plaguebearers would do miles better.

Looking at his stats on BS, he's got 6 WS 2+ S14 AP-4 Dd6 attacks, or twice that many at S7 AP-3 D1. Ignores any rule that would ignore damage.

So he does...

5 hits
25/6 wounds
25/6 failed saves
Anywhere from 2-4 dead bases of Nurglings.

Against Bearers, he does...

5 hits
25/6 wounds
25/6 failed saves
4.17 dead Bearers, or

10 hits
20/3 wounds
20/3 failed saves
6.67 dead Bearers.

And the Plaguebearers might plink a few wounds off. The Nurglings won't.

Thanks for the math.

Looking at the numbers, it doesn't seem like the Nightbringer earns back his points very quickly against either of those targets which means they're probably as decent a tarpit as you're likely to find against such an offensively powerful model.

Considering his offense, it's basically PPM for defense.

So Grots, Guardsmen, or Gaunts would probably be best.

Things are way too easy to kill in this game.

1. Everything can wound everything.
2. GW seems petrified of going above T8 (and even that is quite rare).
3. Weapons are causing more damage, but the big things aren't getting more wounds (or a higher T) to compensate).
4. Things with lots of wounds are penalised in the cover rules.
5. If you can see any part of a model - the tip of a claw, the tip of an antenna, heraldry - you can kill it.
6. You can walk away from combat with real downsides and leave the enemy unit there to be blasted to pieces and it can't do anything about it.

I unfortunately haven't had a game last past turn 3 in 9th. It's really disheartening just how lethal everything is, even at a very non-competitive level that I play at.

I go out of my way to make fluffy lists and I have been tabling opponents by turn 2. It's bad.

Don't all the C'Tan have Fly? Meaning that you can't really tie him down.

 greyknight12 wrote:
Don't all the C'Tan have Fly? Meaning that you can't really tie him down.

Fallback still disallows actions, advancing, shooting, and charging. I don't know how it interacts with C'Tan special abilities though - however some of them are forced to target the closest enemy model.
If the C'Tan does fall back - I can still charge it with that same chaff (or other chaff elements of my army)

The big thing is you can charge it with some chaff (IE guardsmen, nurglings, or even Transhumaned Primaris) and it just can't cut through them effectively. It only has 5 or 6 attacks IIRC, and it's an expensive model so it has to do something besides kill a couple points of chaff a turn.

 Castozor wrote:
I don´t soup, we play Mono-dex over here. Summoning might be an option but I'm not sure it would be ideal.
To the OP, besides obnoxious and (imo) arbitrary wound caps on models I would actually like more things to be as though as my MBH. Things die way too fast in my opinion and a general increase in survive ability trough normal means has my preference. So upping wounds, playing more with the toughness value, maybe accept Marines shouldn't get free AP on all their attacks. Rather than 8th's -3/4 to hit Disco Lords and Flyers, or wound caps like Ghaz/C'tan that some armies can still bypass rather trivially and others really struggle against.

I had no issues just gunning the nightbringer down, and you could always just stick im him in a blob of poxwalkers. He is going to kill most of them, but not all.
He also just moves 8" per turn and is a great target for plague mortars, so he can't hide well either. The two times I faced him, he died way before causing 350 points worth of damage, the necron player stopped bringing him afterwards.

As for the OP calling out MBH as "too durable" - a fair number of my DG wins are due to people not bringing reasonable amounts anti-tank. In semi-competitive environments people can get away with a lot less anti-tank in general, so when they suddenly face a DG army with 7+ DR daemon engines they hit a brick wall, hard.

Hecaton wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
I wish GW was more open in why they are doing what they do. Because I don't get some of the decisions they are making.
its obvious they realise there is a problem, else we don't get stuff like Ghaz/Ctan.

Are they so deadly afraid of nerfing Space Marines after going overboard in 2.0?

GW does not think you have the right to hold them accountable, let's be real.

True, granted , the last time there were names under dexes some of the writers got death threats.
But frankly, a gak job is a gak job and let's be real here, some armies and factions allways get the short stick in regards to writing.