Dakka Pred

[KingDeath]

*edit* Your holocaust comparision is rather stupid. Ignoring the rather unfitting comparision ( wargame-warcrime ) the holocaust does not solely rely on anectodical evidence but actual, hard proof. In fact relying on anectodical evidence would give the sadly all too common revisionist scumbags even more amunition for their bs.

 

First of all, the comparison was meant to prove the point of ignorance is 100% situational & selective because believe me, in college I've had to debate both sides of the arguement of the holocaust (THAT was stupid). The point there is that people who claim it never happened flat out ignore whatever they're presented w/ proving otherwise, same as saying "Your defiler does well for you? That means nothing, it still sucks." So please don't try & turn this into any sort of flame war by taking my context wrong (BTW, I am Jewish).

 

Second of all, I'm genuinely curious: what would you consider hard evidence in a game like this? Only if you yourself witness it? But then it's only hard evidence to you, it's anecdotal to everyone else. It's not like on video games where you can track kills & stats for a certain character/weapon across the world, all we have to rely on is the other players who game using certain units for their performance, we sure can't rely on GW & their battle reports to prove anything cause everytime a new unit/model comes out they publish a battle report showing how uber that item is, even if it's not for the sole purpose of selling kits.

 

I agree that the vindicators being more expensive than a loyalist version sucks but that does not mean the tank sucks if used well. I refuse to believe that there's only x amount of list combinations that can be competitive when played by different people. Seriously, it's a commonly held belief that SM scouts & assault squads suck where I game, but I've seen both unit types used quite well competitively. BTW, a vindicator has an effective 30" range on the demolisher cannon, since we typically play short-edge to short-edge I've never had a problem w/ my loyalist vindicators doing massive amounts of damage & being well worth more than their points including in my SW army which can play similar to Chaos armies.

 

As for the predator variants, I've always liked the AC/Las variant but I still see nothing that should make chaos vehicles of any stripe more expensive than SM vehicles unless they came w/ possession like the defiler only w/ the BS of 4 still. I will agree 100% w/ you that by DIRECT apples to apples comparison, the CSM tanks pale compared to the SM tanks due to the costs & limitations, however, I do think that w/ the options available from a combined arms aspect, they can be useful & serve a purpose & even be competitive. So unless you go to every tournament around the world both big & small & know what every chaos list is that is being run, I fail to see how you could give me hard evidence otherwise since anecdotal proves nothing.

 

However, I apologize for inadvertently hijacking this thread, that was never my attempt. I'd be happy to continue this friendly debate elsewhere w/ you but I don't feel right doing so here.

First of all, the comparison was meant to prove the point of ignorance is 100% situational & selective because believe me, in college I've had to debate both sides of the arguement of the holocaust (THAT was stupid).

My condolences for having to do this. It must have been mindnumbingly stupid and degrading.

 

It is actually possible to give you some harder evidence by comparing a unit's capabilites with what you will generaly need in a game where mech is king. Let us take the Vindicator for example. We have all it's stats and the tanks rather simple utilisation allows us to determine it's efficiency. We know that the Demolisher canon has a range of 24inch and that it is the tank's only viable weapon. We also know that the tank will be useless in 6/6 of all the cases when it get's penned because all possible results will make it unable to fulfill it's primary function, either by being destroyed or by being unable to fire ( the demolisher canon doesn't sit on a turret so if the tank can't move then the weapon becomes rather difficult to use, even if it is theoreticaly in range ). We also know that the tank has a very thin side armour which, in combination with it's mainweapon's low range, allows such penetrating hits to occur rather too often ( even using rhinos to cover it's sides isn't truly practicable because the Vindi has to move slower if it wishes to use it's weapon ). Daemonic posession, as i already stated, helps but increases the tanks price to that of two Obliterators.

 

Now ask yourself, what do you need in every single list? AT firepower, preferably at range. What does the Vindicator fail to offer? Long range AT firepower.

Let us now compare our Vindicator to the two mentioned obliterators. Unlike the posessed Vindicator the Oblits will hit more often then not. They can also hide better and

are actually able to stay at range, which boosts their survivability. Since we know what a modern lists requires and we also know what the various heavy support choices offer

we can logicaly determine that the Vindicator is a rather inferior choice because it decreases your ability ( by being exceptionaly vulnerable to hostile fire and lacking a reliable gun, especialy when posessed ) to deal with hostile armour. The same can be said for the Defiler.

 

Sure, both units are most likely usable if you wish to play a purely friendly game where efficient listbuilding is a secondary consideration but keep in mind that the chaosdex is as a whole rather weak. Where Grey Knights or Space Wolves or IG or Blood Angels or Space Marines or Dark Eldar have the freedom to take a few inefficient choices without suffering too much the chaos codex generaly lacks this freedom because there is very little to balance out these weak choices.

 

Ah well, at least we can both agree that the autolas variant is the way to go.