Why are we being hyped as ‚strongest army‘?

[Panzer]

No bikes even for 10p? I'd spam the crap out of them for 10p....and people would hate me for it lol

[DuskRaider]

I, for one, applaud anyone who plays a thematic army such as a Chapter or Legion. It's what I've always done even when we had garbage rules. I personally find the soup stuff garbage, but I think Loyalist players are overreacting to the viability (or lack thereof) of their book.

[Panzer]

I enjoy both. Soup armies as well as armies restricted to a single chapter etc. It just depends on the narrative and whether someone is playing that kind of army to have something cool on the table or to cherry pick units and rules. ^^

[DuskRaider]

I can see some soup armies. Like for instance, World Eaters with Khorne Daemons and Khorne Renegade Militia ala Vraks or something like Blood Pact. It's when people do it to gain a competitive edge like taking Assassins purely for the rules or whatever that I shake my head.

[Stross]

No bikes even for 10p? I'd spam the crap out of them for 10p....and people would hate me for it lol 

 

They can do nothing in melee, can't advance/fallback and charge (except for Renegades, but play Renegades only for bikes? Well, not with orks or mobs of Conscripts). Until that they can do nothing with  chainswords. Tough meat for enemy to eat, nothing more, for my opinion.

 It's when people do it to gain a competitive edge like taking Assassins purely for the rules 

 

After taking Guiliman or Selestine only for their rules this is nothing X)

Edited December 18, 2017 by Stross

[Panzer]

 

No bikes even for 10p? I'd spam the crap out of them for 10p....and people would hate me for it lol 

 

They can do nothing in melee, can't advance/fallback and charge (except for Renegades, but play Renegades only for bikes? Well, not with orks or mobs of Conscripts). Until that they can do nothing with  chainswords. Tough meat for enemy to eat, nothing more, for my opinion.

Well they are quick and rather durable plus have at least a Combi-Bolter + Chainsword with two Special weapons per unit (+ combi-weapon). As said, for 10p I'd spam the crap out of them considering that a regular Chaos Marine costs 13ppm. and Raptors 17ppm. I'm not saying they would be all I'd take but they would make up a huge part of my army without question lol

[Commissar K.]

 

TLDR; 8th's design is fantastic considering the massive ammounts of units and while we will see the strongest combo's dissapear there is still tons and tons of possabilities for all Space Marine, be it following the Emprah or Chaos Gods.

 

It is true, but the possibility to build mono Legion without suffering losing more than 50 percent of capabilites is not so good for CSM. I hope they redone some things for the better balance, but I can't say, they understand things corrently. And it is not about Malefic Lords, increasing the price of special for renegades, but prices on csm. 

Vindicators and Defilers are pretty cheap for what they can do, I agree with them. But Bikes rules need to be changed, I would not run them even for 10 points. Also Mutilators need to be redone. Even for 45 they are not working. And many other units as well. 

It is look like they are not even tested, and for price changes they just looked at the army lists of players and didn't find these units and thought that a small price reduction is going to help. But it is not, when the core rules of the unit are broken. 

 

I think prices are to an extend the cause of some concern but at the same time I also see that GW has not really put the finger on giving Stratagems the correct cost. Some extremely powerful Stratagems cost 1, others 2 and in rarity they cost 3 because we view this as arguably too expensive allready because there are also great Stratagems at cost 1 and 2.

 

Generally speaking one of the few issues I have with the rulesbook as is isn't Smite spam, Guilliman or other specific characters. Instead I feel the current character protection rule feels odd, looks odd on the table and there is litterly no reason to not have it simply be functional (and only) if you have friendly units within 3". Why 3"? Because visually speaking this still looks somewhat plausible to have certain warriors thake the hit for the character. The way the rule works out now is possible but in almost every game scenery there will be a moment where it simply put feels wrong. So why is this still a source of issue? - Many strong combo's/spams are protected by a Character rule that only feels logical for melee orientated characters. The moment we'd alter that indeed all characters would be affected but in reality all characters should be affected and some care more due to ranged viability.

 

The units you mention in terms of costs are indeed not amongst our most picked. At the same time though I feel the prime reason why Bikers and Mutilators are such a rarity is not only because of costs/rules but much more functionality. As hinted throughout this topic, CSM have a lot of choices and a metric ton of them do the same. From summonning Daemons to Warp Talons to using Dreadclaws, we have so many routes to get there that the ones with poor models (and alternatives) usually arn't taken. 

 

I, for one, applaud anyone who plays a thematic army such as a Chapter or Legion. It's what I've always done even when we had garbage rules. I personally find the soup stuff garbage, but I think Loyalist players are overreacting to the viability (or lack thereof) of their book.

It's cool but I think the perspective on soup completely depends on your faction and Codex recieved in the past to ensure soup isn't your only way to play. CSM do not have the same every chapter gets his Codex history as SM do. In addition from a narrative perspective it's even incorrect to say that mixed lists would be breaking narrative. However we indeed see that it's still the most competitive route. (Most lists who preformed great/won had some mix).

 

Space Marine players objectively speaking at tournament results have the better choice when it boils down to playing mono-Chapter if that's what a player bends it will to. As before though I find comments like SM not being able to thake great melee units redundant however because they can, it's just not that every Chapter can cover any base. This applies to Legions to for that matter. There are Legions with excellent melee capabilities (Blood Angels/World Eaters) and more than sufficient that have excellent ranged capabilities. Stating that CSM have more acces to these units as SM do simply put isn't correct.

 

In addition GW has a long history with mixed narrative and competitive mixed lists, if someone's intend is to actually win a tournament restricting yourself to a particular Chapter or Legion simply put is not the way to do it when we look at results ;) 

[Iron Skull Mask]

Pennywisdom from the table: I play IW only with FW units. Beat Ravenguard twice and Guilliman castle once. Lost to Tau, Necrons and lately twice to Tyranids. All games but vs. Guilliman (crippled the list so hard, game was decided after my 2nd turn - of course I went first) and second round vs Nids (There my alpha strike was too tame and the backswing crippled me, booting me out of the game by the end ofnturn two) were actually pretty close. Atm I feel like stratagems are basically one trick ponies people adapt to. I think currently a lucky alpha strike is key, and there we simply suffer from bad rules on things like Obliterators and Terminators and Forgefiends like Stross outlined. Against the Nids I had two units of Obliterators, a fire raptor, a dread with missles and double lasca and missle havocs alpha striking the Tyranid castle, only wiping 20 Genestealers and damaging but not killing an Exocrine and a Zoanthrope due to bad rolls on the fleshmetal guns with high ds and damage 1 for the Zoanthrope and low strength, ds and 3 damagae against the exocrine. The backswing crippled my Obliterators and I was out of contention by the end of turn 2. I just can't get over what they did to Obliterators.

They can keep their Mutilators which are ridiculous from concept to sculpt to rules... If they just fixed those fleshmetal guns and the unit sizes of Obliterators and Terminators. Oh and CSM in rhinos would also be just half as bad if them rhinos were not so extremely overpriced. Wow, was that a rant? OK, I'm off to painting 100 steel legionaries as cultists and some more FW flyers...

Edited December 18, 2017 by Iron Skull Mask

[DominikB]

Pennywisdom from the table: I play IW only with FW units. Beat Ravenguard twice and Guilliman castle once. Lost to Tau, Necrons and lately twice to Tyranids. All games but vs. Guilliman (crippled the list so hard, game was decided after my 2nd turn - of course I went first) and second round vs Nids (There my alpha strike was too tame and the backswing crippled me, booting me out of the game by the end ofnturn two) were actually pretty close. Atm I feel like stratagems are basically one trick ponies people adapt to. I think currently a lucky alpha strike is key, and there we simply suffer from bad rules on things like Obliterators and Terminators and Forgefiends like Stross outlined. Against the Nids I had two units of Obliterators, a fire raptor, a dread with missles and double lasca and missle havocs alpha striking the Tyranid castle, only wiping 20 Genestealers and damaging but not killing an Exocrine and a Zoanthrope due to bad rolls on the fleshmetal guns with high ds and damage 1 for the Zoanthrope and low strength, ds and 3 damagae against the exocrine. The backswing crippled my Obliterators and I was out of contention by the end of turn 2. I just can't get over what they did to Obliterators.

They can keep their Mutilators which are ridiculous from concept to sculpt to rules... If they just fixed those fleshmetal guns and the unit sizes of Obliterators and Terminators. Oh and CSM in rhinos would also be just half as bad if them rhinos were not so extremely overpriced. Wow, was that a rant? OK, I'm off to painting 100 steel legionaries as cultists and some more FW flyers...

I’ve gotta agree with you. I just can’t shake how much of a who goes first it is this edition :/

[Panzer]

Not just this edition, 7th was largely decided by who goes first as well.

 

On that matter tho I can't stretch enough how important Line of Sight blocking terrain is. People still don't use enough of it.

[Bulwyf]

I echo the concerns about who goes first. Quite frankly it decides at least 90% of the games I've been in, either in my favor or against me. I have to ask a local gamer to make some complete LOS blocking buildings for my home table to try and give people a chance. Alpha strike is something CSM do very well in 8th but the same can be said for any army. Unless you have something like DG with FNP type rules to give you some kind of cushion to fall back on whoever goes first is most likely going to win.

[DuskRaider]

Well the dumbing down of deep strike and combi-weapons doesn't help either.

[bozo69pd]

Well the dumbing down of deep strike and combi-weapons doesn't help either.

I think the new rules for that are great! Now super awesome precision grav chutes can actually put you on the board without mishapping every game. And it doesn't take an hour to resolve a null deployed armies deep strike. Plus if a gun has a secondary grenade launcher why would you not be able to use both in a turn?

[Panzer]

As if spamming Drop Pods was any more tactical. At least loyalists can't get in range for flamers and melta this easily anymore.

And I prefer this precision deep striking over the old "uh I better don't deep strike at all because It's not unlikely that my whole unit gets either wiped or made useless by placing them somewhere else on the field far off of their actual target". The current deep striking is definitely an improvement. Alpha strikes are an issue, with or without it lol

Edited December 19, 2017 by sfPanzer

[DuskRaider]

The whole thing was supposed to represent how unreliable the technology had become in the 10,000+ years since it's inception, especially when basically using the Warp to teleport down planetside, most of the time blind. There should be some inherent risk to deep striking or at least bring back the reserve roll. Combi-weapons too... if they wanted to give Terminators Plasma Guns or whatever, they should have just added the option...

[Panzer]

Then play narrative play. There you still have the reserve rolls afaik but in return you can decide to drop your whole army instead of just half of it and can hold reserves back past turn 3 even.

[Commissar K.]

There are certinly downsides to many features of the game, be it all the 24" guns or indeed turn 1 deepstrikes out of nowhere. But then again I do like the chaotic nature that aspect has, it isn't too much removed from a real scenario where the one who gets to find his opponent first with gun or hand weapon has the advantage for sure.

A thing that could be considered however to put the emphasis less on the first turn is the killpoint and objective scoring. In many other systems this isn't done turn 1 largely because it shifts the game a lot towards importance of doing X or Y. This isn't bad but does indeed mean that a lot is decided in turn 1 of 40k as opposed to turn 2 or 3 (which is often the case in other games).

I do however think the game works fine enough as is. Even when we look at tournament results it isn't like ALL tournaments spell forth the same combo-design to have won it for them. They are just aspects of what I see as high-competitive gaming. Something 40K isn't exclusively designed with from the beginning and because of that these (what some view as) problematic combo's excist. 

The core principle of balance is still very much there though. Which boils down to "if you can do it and I can do it too, it's still balanced". This applies for massive unit deep strikes, infiltrating, protections, smite spam etc.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Commissar K.

[Maschinenpriester]

@sf panzer- Regarding LOS blocking terrain, some people even refuse using it, when i bring my 12 inch tall wall piece. (I also play shooty stuff so nothing to manipulate the game in my liking)

[Panzer]

@sf panzer- Regarding LOS blocking terrain, some people even refuse using it, when i bring my 12 inch tall wall piece. (I also play shooty stuff so nothing to manipulate the game in my liking)

Then those people lost EVERY right to complain to be honest. ;)

[Ishagu]

@sf panzer- Regarding LOS blocking terrain, some people even refuse using it, when i bring my 12 inch tall wall piece. (I also play shooty stuff so nothing to manipulate the game in my liking)

Don't play those people.

 

I can hide Wraithknights and shadowswords on the typical boards I play on.

 

Are you playing a tactical game or a shooting gallery? Honestly 99% of complaints about this game can be solved with more terrain.

[Commissar K.]

Terrain is a partial fix but at the same time shooting should also be a viable part of a shooting heavy game.

 

To me there is a difference between tournament play and casual play. Each local meta will have one favour over the other and usually the larger your meta yhe more competitive, thus akin to tournament play it gets.

 

Frankly speaking though I do agree on a particular type of scenery ammount and do hope GW will cover this in their core rules aswell. Stating hight and percentage of the board leads to games as they presumably tested them.

 

Though terrain does not prefent the use of very potent combos though and in reality enough will remain.

In addition its also not correct to state that each Tournament is capable to generate "enough" terrain. Though in order to do generate enough GW could include a rule stating what enough is.

 

Malifaux has a wonderful 30% terrain rule and I tink GW should include it too. They have profided a ton for 40k to use it after all.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Commissar K.

[Panzer]

Terrain is a partial fix but at the same time shooting should also be a viable part of a shooting heavy game.

 

To me there is a difference between tournament play and casual play. Each local meta will have one favour over the other and usually the larger your meta yhe more competitive, thus akin to tournament play it gets.

 

Frankly speaking though I do agree on a particular type of scenery ammount and do hope GW will cover this in their core rules aswell. Stating hight and percentage of the board leads to games as they presumably tested them.

 

Though terrain does not prefent the use of very potent combos though and in reality enough will remain.

In addition its also not correct to state that each Tournament is capable to generate "enough" terrain. Though in order to do generate enough GW could include a rule stating what enough is.

 

Malifaux has a wonderful 30% terrain rule and I tink GW should include it too. They have profided a ton for 40k to use it after all.

Shooting will always be viable. Taking more terrain won't suddenly make shooting unviable and neither is it supposed to.

[Ishagu]

Watch Chapter tactics, the figures have come in after all 8th edition ITC tournaments. Data from 11k+ players in multiple games.

 

Chaos (20% Marines, 5% Daemons) are by far the most powerful faction.

 

Loyalists aren't even close, literally less than half the top 3 finishes. This includes soups etc.

Now let's end this debate. Chaos Marines are so much better it's not even a contest.

 

Astra Militarum are the best loyalist faction and perform better as a pure codex than Loyalist Soups.

 

Keep in mind that the data shows Imperium is more popular in numbers but still can't touch Chaos success.

Guilliman armies perform average. Chaos soups are the top lists consistently. Marines the main focus with daemon support is popular.

 

 

Seems the hype was true. The meta is Chaos.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Ishagu

[bozo69pd]

Yup Ishagu. I must say though that tourneys don't rate spoiler lists very high. Eldar or GK can make a list that will 100% defeat any Chaos Soup army we have if they get first turn. But it will auto lose to Astra Militarum. This is the time of Chaos to be sure! In a few weeks we will get our new Chaos Daemon codex too, and mark my words IT WILL DESTROY.

 

The question is in the following month will Codex Necrons powercreep enough to decimate the forces of chaos?

[Panzer]

It's also worth mentioning that many successfull Chaos lists relied on FW smite spam mixed with horror spam and Alpha Legion Obliterators (either Tzeentch + Changeling or Slaanesh obviously).

Things are constantly changing tho. The FW smite spam isn't really possible that badly anymore, the Daemon Codex will get released soon and we have to expect Chapter Approved etc. keep getting released.