SkimaskMohawk

I'm describing how people actually used carnifexes in 4th edition, having played against a lot of tyranid players in 4th edition. Sometimes one of the carnifexes would be tooled up defensively with extra toughness, armour save, and wound to really demand a specific answer (lascannons). This extra tanky build is what people would redefine into the "distraction carnifex" of meme legend, because people would have to focus it before it hit their line (because you'd then chain consolidate from combat to combat, T7 was immune to S3, and they'd score unless under half wounds). But, even still, their output was way lower compared to hormagaunts or stealers that'd sweep pretty much anything they charged right away, which is why it was "wrong" to be distracted by the carnifex. It was always threat overload, and carnifexes were excellent in 4th. And the parallels in use case are there for the new WE leader. The eight bound flavours are much more durable than the berserkers, are still a respectable threat, but don't have the sheer damage ceiling as a full unit of 20 beserkers. You force your opponent to make target priority decisions as a melee army surges super fast up the field. Idk if the new WE can get an average 21.5" threat range like the hormagaunts of old, but their carnifex analogues definitely move way faster than 6".

No, you've missed the point like always. Distraction carnifex really just meant threat overload, because the 4th edition list could include 6 carnifexes, on top of the hyper fast genestealers and leaping hormagaunts; everything was a threat, but the carnifexes seemed extra scary (because they could crush vehicles) and soaked up a lot of incidental small arms fire when people tried to focus fire them down, and allowed the smaller (but still every deadly) things in. So using the new world eaters leader with a deep striking unit as a "distraction carnifex" isn't just throwing them up to die and lose points, it's to overwhelm your opponents target priority and have something deadly hit the lines no matter what. The recursion ability really ties into forcing a disproportionate commitment from them.

Back in the day, abilities were tied to something tangible. If your wargear didn't let you deep strike, and you didn't have access to wargear that did, you didn't get to do it. The drop pod broke that rule, and also broke the rules for reserves and deep strike mishaps. It opened up a lot of new options and play styles for Marines, especially with dreadnoughts piling out of them. But ya, if you're used to everything is an abstract stratagem and uppy downy of a bunch of units/sub factions, then the pod seems superfluous in this era of rules. It's hard to reconcile its effect now with the impact it had back in 5th.

"I always thought iron hands were cool" vibes lol. I remember back in 5th, one guys generic marine collection would pivot to the newest codexes rules with a terrible representation of their special unit. Generic assault Marines that were "obviously" death company for his "obviously" blood Angels. And then space Wolves, where he glued some marine upper bodies to chaos knights (from fantasy) to make "thunder horses". He had real stakes in faction conversations, that's for sure.

In terms of pods though, no matter what edition they were in, their mechanics were either very feast or famine, and the models always caused issues. The doors being glued shut to deny line of sight; the doors being open to deny a chunk of the board from enemies (especially with the 3-5 that was popular). Hopefully there's a valid reason to take them in the new book, because pods were a pretty iconic part of the marine list after they got a model, and it's be really cool to see them again.

The designers using that reasoning doesn't make it any less incorrect lol. Just like "we had to keep him recognizable as a space marine/he's still a space marine"; he was never a space marine, and his armour was very divergent from the power armour aesthetic. Or "keep his back pack intact"; he didn't have one, see the previous error. Or "I like how simple his armour is, not overly covered in filigree in detail"; a comment placed directly under fulgrim and his heavily detailed, filigreed armour. Or "the winged symbol of the emperor remains untouched by the warp"; but it was touched on the transfigured version, and also this is not the same as on the original fulgrim. Like, the sculptor being dumb doesn't retcon anything. But at least him being massively wrong on some of the lore didn't really affect his work; it's still a cool model, and the worst thing thing that happened is having a bit less variety than Magnus.

Sure? Don't think I said whether the nerfs unjustified or missed the mark. At most I said there was less dakka now lol.

Err...based on what lol? Lorgar had to fetch him from the warp to participate in the siege (and attempted coup). In the conversation Fulgrim says "time is not what it was", "That war. I remember it. How did it end again?", and "But no matter, what you have come all this way to say is that I should come back to your pitiful age..." ; Lorgar then binds him with his true name and brings him back to real space. He's a daemon during the heresy and has already experienced its events. Sure. He changes himself a lot during the events I referenced above; he can look however he wants based on how he feels. He can absolutely look like his 40k model. I'm just saying the "he's been in the warp forever, he should look like a monster" line is a flawed argument.

Except that's not how daemons work lol. It's how non daemons hanging out in the eye work, but fulgrim....is a daemon; there's no further corruption.

I don't disagree; the power/fun/theme level should be consistent across the board, so no one loses out because they're a fan of the "wrong" faction. I was just pointing out the balance whiplash and resulting subtraction of fun and theme can feel terrible (not even mentioning GWs propensity to over do it).

The sad truth is usually the most fun factions/subfactions tend to have that fun premised on having better/more rules. Those rules can also be framed to support a faction or sub factions theme fairly well, really adding to the fun using the rules since the ludonarrative is so strong. Stuff like 8th sisters of battle, 8.5 Marines, 9th DE, admech, orks, etc...Super thematic, super fun to pilot, super busted. So when the nerfs roll in but also hit something that's also centrally tied to the theme, it feels extra worse. Its just really occasional dakka now

I've only looked at the core rules faq so far, but i was very pleasantly surprised with all the internet discussed things that they captured. Usually the specialist games get like, half at most, but there's a lot here. Tarantulas in transports, master tactician invalidating assault transports, the super weird loophole of starting thunderhawks in hover and embarking ogryns into them, fall back order and running away from combat. There was a lot of good balance fixed in there too, like March being more proportional to reign in infantry maneuverability, flyers bring unable to overwatch so the first person to get a lightning on the board wins the aerial trade, and infiltrators being unable to charge. But. The game is still basically small scale apocalypse with massive weapon/unit disparity. There's no substantive rules restriction on spamming the good options, and those options drown out all the other choices. It's like if 10th had even fewer restrictions, was even more hyper lethal, and some how took longer to play the "recommended" game size.

Sure ya, that definitely makes people want to intercept, especially as it comes in hovering and being hit in ballistic skill. And all this has definitely gone passed the point that updated sheets haven't really fixed core issues with units, and it might not even matter if there's just new rules coming out soon enough (which should hopefully fix core issues).

Ya, but they can't be dropped anywhere useful the turn it comes on, so again, the intercept is a much a lower priority for this than a lot of things. And it's kinda funny on the flare launcher thing. Back in 1st, flyers could just jink if they were targeted by anything, and they'd get a 4+ save. Much like interceptor it was a trade off to make, and much like going to ground, got butchered into a reaction for the current rules regime. If the new edition rumours are true, I'll be very interested to see how the reaction system gets handled.

Last word on the foc and 5th was it took a lot of codex creep to overcome it. Like grey hunters were overly good as a tac choice with meltas and a ton of melee output, but they died to that veteran guard squad the same as a vanilla tac squad (and weren't even the problem unit in the space wolf list, that being thunder wolves and long fangs; there wasn't no hunter tide style lists). The current marine range suffers from overcrowded design space syndrome. We have the firstborn that they're trying to mostly phase out (but not totally on some things) that really contribute to it, but, we also have a lot of stuff in the primaris range too. On the side of stealthy, anti infantry units there's...5 options, 4 being ranged; that's a lot of overlap. Aggressors and terminators share the same mid range firepower/durable/melee space. Hellblasters, infernos, and desolators. Theres obviously more. But really, the issue is that every kit has to be it's own specific unit in the game, with its own special rule and some slightly different reason to take it that doesn't matter, and war gear that is now auto take instead of a route of customization. If there were fewer marine units in the codex, but they were able to be built into the different (or mixed) configurations, there'd by far less complaints. Just go back in time; the devastator squad is the equivalent of 4 separate units, the assault Marines had options to go without jump packs so was the equivalent of two units, the original veteran squad was another two. All those phobos units could be a super cool single unit with a bunch of war gear options a la 4th edition nobs or 5th Ed veteran guardsmen. Idk what to say about divergent chapters and having more/having less. Back in the day, the restrictions combined with the special units to give them that flavor, and those special units had no real equivalent from the vanilla list; that overall difference was the appeal. And that gain/loss dynamic was across the entire game and was what gave factions their identity. But the ranges have expanded so much, combined with the culture of next to no restriction in list building, that identification is from special units, characters, and the detachment. There's no going back to 4th style, so imo they probably should have gone full chaos legions with them (but not :cuss:ty like WE and EC, but good like DG). Just lean into how divergent they really are, with some superficial overlap. Guess it didn't really work narratively with the primaris and guilliman and all that, especially when they changed the timeline to 12 years or whatever.