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Honestly? I'm fine with White Scars bikers being better than Ultramarines bikers so long as a White Scars bike army isn't better than an Ultramarines bike army. Yes that takes more effort to do well through adequate points costs etc.

 PenitentJake wrote:

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

...vs...

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I'm using the White Scars codex."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them blue."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them red."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them whatever the hell colour 'Fang' is."

...

 insaniak wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

...vs...

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I'm using the White Scars codex."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them blue."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them red."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them whatever the hell colour 'Fang' is."

...

My response:
No, you're just playing blue/red/"fang" colored White Scars. I know this because you're using the White Scars codex/rules.
What you tell yourself is your own business.
What color you choose to paint your stuff, or even if you paint it? Doesn't matter to me.

The end result is the same, though. In both cases, you're using the same rules and the same army list... the only difference is what you choose to call them.

 insaniak wrote:
The end result is the same, though. In both cases, you're using the same rules and the same army list... the only difference is what you choose to call them.

The requirement of a white scars specific rule in the example is what breaks things. If it was "space marine bikers" rules then sure, but the fact people were encouraged to proxy as the "wrong" army to have their stuff work because the rules were intrinsically tied to a specific fluff relevant name is the issue.

Once you divorce flamers and meltas from Salamanders and instead pair them to "marine force that specialises in flamers and meltas", people gain creativity without breaking narrative stride.

Never the less, this wasn't too much of a problem in 3rd where irrc largely it was still based off what you chose to include to carry the theme, apart from those lucky few with additional rules supplements and the 3.5 chaos book.

Dudeface wrote:
Never the less, this wasn't too much of a problem in 3rd where irrc largely it was still based off what you chose to include to carry the theme, apart from those lucky few with additional rules supplements and the 3.5 chaos book.

Ironically the 3.5 book kind of killed one of the things that made chaos unique.

Loyalists were traditionally uniformly painted generalist battle brothers. Oldschool chaos was a disparate warband made up of more specialised sub-factions, and while the daemons stayed that way the marines gradually moved to being loyalists with spikes.

Definitely a problem Chaos has faced. At different points, they’ve been presented as disparate, temporarily aligned warbands, Spiky Marines, hyper competent, super incompetent, still capable of fielding massive, near Legion sized forces and Mere Handfuls.

So depending on when you got started, your take on Chaos can be pretty different from the next person, because GW Can’t Decide.

Whilst I’d say the current range, whilst not faultless, is the most coherent and interesting in a long while? Where are the mutations and gribbly body horror? Like tentacle arms, unusual legs and that. Where is the literal mark of chaos upon their benighted flesh?

Doesn’t even need in-game rules, just go with the visual. Because gorgeous as the current models are, they’re entirely missing the wackiness and manky corruption of the earliest models.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Definitely a problem Chaos has faced. At different points, they’ve been presented as disparate, temporarily aligned warbands, Spiky Marines, hyper competent, super incompetent, still capable of fielding massive, near Legion sized forces and Mere Handfuls.

Sounds pretty Chaotic. Chaos should encompass all of those things. Just as it can reward your devotion with daemon princedom or spawnhood.

 insaniak wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

...vs...

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I'm using the White Scars codex."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them blue."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them red."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them whatever the hell colour 'Fang' is."

...

This never bothered me though- the dude who wanted the Ultramarine bikers so he used blue Marines with the White Scars dex? That was fine, because in that arrangement, it's clear that the player is using a work around, rather than- "No, nobody actually specializes in anything, and nobody is better than anybody at anything else. I mean, the lore says they specialize, but that's not how the game works. Anyone who wants to can use the game to reflect the lore if they choose to, but that's the work around, not the default."

Dudeface wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The end result is the same, though. In both cases, you're using the same rules and the same army list... the only difference is what you choose to call them.

The requirement of a white scars specific rule in the example is what breaks things. If it was "space marine bikers" rules then sure, but the fact people were encouraged to proxy as the "wrong" army to have their stuff work because the rules were intrinsically tied to a specific fluff relevant name is the issue.

Once you divorce flamers and meltas from Salamanders and instead pair them to "marine force that specialises in flamers and meltas", people gain creativity without breaking narrative stride.

Never the less, this wasn't too much of a problem in 3rd where irrc largely it was still based off what you chose to include to carry the theme, apart from those lucky few with additional rules supplements and the 3.5 chaos book.

This is a spectrum though. Few people argue that there shouldn't be ordinary Marines and veteran Marines, yet veterans are just better versions (more subtly so before 5th edition). So if you think that is acceptable for both to be choices, the existence of a variant list with veteran bikers vs the default with ordinary bikers is also acceptable. The devil is in the details, in which the veteran unit is more capable but has drawbacks that prevent it being the better choice (like a higher points cost).

This works for everything- the list specialising in flamers and meltas shouldn't be better than the list that isn't, even if the individual capabilities are higher.

If you take the corollary to the extreme, why bother having different units and codices at all? So where should the line be drawn in variations? I do accept that balancing becomes harder with more lists, but I reiterate my position that mission variety discourages skew lists.

ccs wrote:
My response:
No, you're just playing blue/red/"fang" colored White Scars. I know this because you're using the White Scars codex/rules.
What you tell yourself is your own business.
What color you choose to paint your stuff, or even if you paint it? Doesn't matter to me.

It's useful to go back and look at 2nd for a moment. All marine armies had the same composition rules using the three types of units: characters, squads and support. Squads - which were required - included Terminators, tactical, scouts, bikes, assault and devastators. So one could create whatever flavor of force one desired.

All the specialist chapters got was a limited choice of special squads with special rules - and they paid extra points for them. If you wanted veteran assault marines, you played a Blood Angels chapter (or took them as allies). Same with Ravenwing, veteran tactical squads, etc.

What set your army apart was simply the composition and doctrine you used, which had the virtue of limiting the size of the rule book.

With 3rd, the org chart came into being and units could count towards different slots on different lists. The simplification of core rules (and shortening of the stat line) also required more special rules to create differences, and this was exacerbated by the all-or-nothing AP system and the cookie-cutter vehicle profile. The designers also varied the point values for the same weapons depending on what unit they were in, and players exploited this as well.

What that meant was armies necessarily had to be specialized, which created further design complexity, further worsened balance issues, and created a have/have not hierarchy and pushed the focus of the game more towards list creation and less towards tactical operations.

In 2nd, there were many really good, flexible options. You didn't have to be required to take "line units" because they were good on their own. As mentioned long ago, heavy bolters were really useful against everyone, so having a few was just common sense. In 3rd, balancing AP was a crucial and failing to do it could result in a blowout loss, which was annoying.

Yes, you could engineer a lop-sided game in 2nd, but amassing 100 hormaguants or a fleet of discs of Tzeentch was pretty unique (and expensive) way to do it. Starcannon spam was far more economical.

Composition in 2nd edition is all over the place, and includes examples that are fundamentally the same as FOC swapping. For example, Ork warbikes were support, unless you took Evil Sunz mobz as battleline and upgraded them with warbikes.

Imperial Guard had this bizarre, complex system that vaguely approximated the company and platoon structure in the lore of the book and tied units to a specific regiment. Except the only regiment that had different rules was rough riders- a Cadian and Catachan squad were identical. In addition, it meant that whilst Ratlings, Ogryns, and Storm troopers were battleline, in practice they were restricted by the system above as much as being elites in later editions.

 Haighus wrote:
Composition in 2nd edition is all over the place, and includes examples that are fundamentally the same as FOC swapping. For example, Ork warbikes were support, unless you took Evil Sunz mobz as battleline and upgraded them with warbikes.

Imperial Guard had this bizarre, complex system that vaguely approximated the company and platoon structure in the lore of the book and tied units to a specific regiment. Except the only regiment that had different rules was rough riders- a Cadian and Catachan squad were identical. In addition, it meant that whilst Ratlings, Ogryns, and Storm troopers were battleline, in practice they were restricted by the system above as much as being elites in later editions.

Right, but that's a feature to me, not a bug. The IG rules made sense insofar as they are not very flexible as an organization. Basically if you wanted armor, you had to take infantry to support it. That's fine.

I hated the FOC because it imposed totally inappropriate limits on force selection and did nothing to improve game balance. In fact, it made it worse by forcing factions to choose junk units in order to check a box, while more fortunate factions would slide around those restrictions and take nothing but the cream of the list.

The rules for 2nd were very loose, and that was a good thing because it allowed players the freedom to do specific scenarios while maintaining some sort of parity in terms of characters and heavy weapons/allies.

What that allowed was totally fluffy and appropriate lists, such as a terminator strike team or an "air assault" force of jump packs and land speeders. It supports a narrative form of gaming where you and your opponent talk about what combinations/restrictions make sense from a fluff and balance perspective.

The FOC was GW saying "yeah, never mind worrying about that, it's fixed," and people absolutely adopted that attitude. It was understood in 2nd that "legal" was not balanced because of the skew. Going all WAAC on someone with with a tweaked list was socially frowned upon because anyone could do that.

In 3rd that became an art form, and the internet fueled that to the extent that list discussions needed their own dedicated space because they spammed up the regular discussions. Nobody carried about "killer lists" in 2nd because everyone knew you could do it, but it was lame. Throwing 100+ hormaguants was simply a matter of model purchases and doing it was - if nothing else - a commendable financial commitment, but no one acted like they'd discovered the cure for cancer or a lost civilization.

In 3rd people did do that, and it was a sub-competition of people critiquing one another, arguing that the list wasn't optimized enough, or pointing out how that list was bad, but THIS list would beat it.

To be fair, the internet was in its infancy, so maybe 2nd ed. list-building could have gotten that way, but I don't think so because there is a community today, and perhaps because it's out of print, no one approaches the game with that kind of competitiveness. Or if they do, it's open and wrapped in irony ("My mates and I decided what was the weirdest, cheatiest list possible. Here's what we came up with...")

My point stands, however: the FOC was part of the professionalization of 40k, an assumption that cooperative play was for losers and the best and greatest relied on GW's fickle balancing efforts to guide their path of victory.

No, WAAC was happening during 2nd. I was on the receiving end of it. You know what else was happening in 2nd edition that bled into third? NAAC: Narrative At All Costs. You seem to act like the only thing destroying the player base was people playing competitive, but here's the funny thing: competitive play did not block out narrative play, but narrative play most assuredly blocked out competitive play nine times out of 10. Position The Knack players were some of the most gatekeeping people I've ever met in my life and they most assuredly treated the game as if their way of playing was the only way of playing, whereas your competitive players welcomed any challenge because they were there for the game. This once again dips back to some people wanting a role-playing game in their war game or vice versa, not realizing that those things probably should be kept separate. Games Workshop themselves realize this, and that's why they came out with Inquisitor to scratch that itch.

Also, I'm going to go ahead and throw the BS flag down on the entire optimization garbage that you keep spouting. The thing about competitive play is that you are more often than not completely unaware of who you were going to wind up playing, unless you had to make a list as equally able to Dish it to whomever you're playing and have a chance of surviving. This meant that star cannon spam would be absolutely useless against 2/3 of the Army's being played. This doesn't sound like the best bit of odds, does it? It definitely doesn't seem like a logical choice if you're trying to prepare to go up against anyone. To me it sounds like you had a TFG in your group during Third Edition who specialized the list against you and you've held it against them pretty much ever since. I'm also going to go ahead and throw down that by your logic second edition ruin 40K because Crimson fists were the poster child of the game before second came along.

I'll go ahead and suggest this once again, even though I understand that this is a sledge thread and I should just back out instead of Defending the addition that's getting sledged against people making off base comments. Just say "super special bestest" and that's all the explanation you need. That way you don't have to get caught spouting stuff that is flat out untrue.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Spoiler:

 Haighus wrote:
Composition in 2nd edition is all over the place, and includes examples that are fundamentally the same as FOC swapping. For example, Ork warbikes were support, unless you took Evil Sunz mobz as battleline and upgraded them with warbikes.

Imperial Guard had this bizarre, complex system that vaguely approximated the company and platoon structure in the lore of the book and tied units to a specific regiment. Except the only regiment that had different rules was rough riders- a Cadian and Catachan squad were identical. In addition, it meant that whilst Ratlings, Ogryns, and Storm troopers were battleline, in practice they were restricted by the system above as much as being elites in later editions.

Right, but that's a feature to me, not a bug. The IG rules made sense insofar as they are not very flexible as an organization. Basically if you wanted armor, you had to take infantry to support it. That's fine.

I hated the FOC because it imposed totally inappropriate limits on force selection and did nothing to improve game balance. In fact, it made it worse by forcing factions to choose junk units in order to check a box, while more fortunate factions would slide around those restrictions and take nothing but the cream of the list.

The rules for 2nd were very loose, and that was a good thing because it allowed players the freedom to do specific scenarios while maintaining some sort of parity in terms of characters and heavy weapons/allies.

What that allowed was totally fluffy and appropriate lists, such as a terminator strike team or an "air assault" force of jump packs and land speeders. It supports a narrative form of gaming where you and your opponent talk about what combinations/restrictions make sense from a fluff and balance perspective.

The FOC was GW saying "yeah, never mind worrying about that, it's fixed," and people absolutely adopted that attitude. It was understood in 2nd that "legal" was not balanced because of the skew. Going all WAAC on someone with with a tweaked list was socially frowned upon because anyone could do that.

In 3rd that became an art form, and the internet fueled that to the extent that list discussions needed their own dedicated space because they spammed up the regular discussions. Nobody carried about "killer lists" in 2nd because everyone knew you could do it, but it was lame. Throwing 100+ hormaguants was simply a matter of model purchases and doing it was - if nothing else - a commendable financial commitment, but no one acted like they'd discovered the cure for cancer or a lost civilization.

In 3rd people did do that, and it was a sub-competition of people critiquing one another, arguing that the list wasn't optimized enough, or pointing out how that list was bad, but THIS list would beat it.

To be fair, the internet was in its infancy, so maybe 2nd ed. list-building could have gotten that way, but I don't think so because there is a community today, and perhaps because it's out of print, no one approaches the game with that kind of competitiveness. Or if they do, it's open and wrapped in irony ("My mates and I decided what was the weirdest, cheatiest list possible. Here's what we came up with...")

My point stands, however: the FOC was part of the professionalization of 40k, an assumption that cooperative play was for losers and the best and greatest relied on GW's fickle balancing efforts to guide their path of victory.

So you are saying that 2nd was good because it allowed you to take broad lists with lots of flexibility, unless you were Guard because the Guard isn't very flexible, even though the Guard codex wouldn't let you make a force that matches lore in that very codex:

(Note, you could build an armoured company in 3rd, and an artillery company in the list released at the beginning of 4th based on the 3.5th IG codex).

So Space Marines can run an unsupported Terminator strike but Guard cannot have an armoured spearhead. "Tax units" are good for Guard only.

Meanwhile, 3rd is bad because now it makes everyone take their basic troop units in the default rules?

In addition, the FOC is recommended for 3rd but is explicitly optional and they give suggestions for varying the FOC. If your gaming group was not willing to play games without the FOC or with a modified FOC for a narrative mission, that was a problem with your gaming group. Plus, there were 4 different FOCs provided in the 3rd edition rulebooks for different types of mission. They had different required units (all have at least one troops) and force list variety for different roles to fit the narrative. Did they provide balance alone? No. But it definitely helps to limit spam, especially when using different FOCs across different mission types. It also generates lists that follow typical formations for various forces more closely. Sole Terminator strike forces are rare outside the Deathwing. Terminator strikes supporting Tactical squads in Drop pods is more common.

Honestly, it sounds more like your community changed when the edition did, and that is as much part of why you don't like 3rd as the rules changes. You had a good group in 2nd that put effort in to avoid cheesing the game and were willing to make houserules. You didn't have that in 3rd.

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Also, I'm going to go ahead and throw the BS flag down on the entire optimization garbage that you keep spouting.

So you're actually saying that no one ever optimized the FOC? Um, okay.

The thing about competitive play is that you are more often than not completely unaware of who you were going to wind up playing, unless you had to make a list as equally able to Dish it to whomever you're playing and have a chance of surviving. This meant that star cannon spam would be absolutely useless against 2/3 of the Army's being played.

Power armor troops of various types were grossly overrepresented in the codices released and I'm pretty sure the sales figures are representative of that. GW hung its hat on space marines, launched a doomed lawsuit to protect their monopoly on the models, so while they were not the majority of factions, they were well-represented in tournaments and every other measure of popularity I saw. When in doubt, use AP 3 because - like Colt Malt Liquor - it works every time. But I could be wrong, it was a long time ago. Maybe Dark Eldar took the 40k world by storm, which is why people were giving away the figures. Nobody gave away marines.

I'll go ahead and suggest this once again, even though I understand that this is a sledge thread and I should just back out instead of Defending the addition that's getting sledged against people making off base comments. Just say "super special bestest" and that's all the explanation you need. That way you don't have to get caught spouting stuff that is flat out untrue.

The difference is that 2nd ed. players happily admit their flaws. They're known, and while some embrace the psychic phase or guys getting set on fire and spending the rest of the game running in a circle, we can also admit that it was time-consuming and limited force sizes.

There are also known ways to mitigate them, which is why the " 2nd problems" thread is so mellow. There's just not much to argue about.

It's interesting that almost none of the 3rd edition stuff can be defended on its own - it's always "Well, 2nd sucked so..."