Why Power Armour troops are mediocre and what can be done?

[totgeboren]

Guardsman should be dangerous though. Not letting Guardsmen shoot at all destroys their entire army.

 

The thing is, individual guardsman ARE terrible. Even at 4 shots, they are hitting on average twice, and then wounding on either 5's or 6's, so barely wounding anything, and saves block them, and are completely worthless in melee, and die to a stiff breeze.

 

a marine on the other hand is hitting 66% of the time so 1.32 hits, wounding on 3/4/5 depending on the target and while easy to block, the Marine is wounded less, and saves considerably more, especially when in cover (2+ save on troops is nuts) and can kill GEQs in close combat.

 

God knows if you give a marine sergant a power axe vs a Guardsmen with a power axe.

While concentration of power/points into a few models can sometimes be really useful in dense terrain, this doesn't really apply to the situation we are talking about (standard 40k games, matchups between basic troops of two armies, not Mortalis or Space Hulk-like terrain).

To take your example (with the 4-shots each guardsmen), lets take three guardsmen vs 1 marine, since that is about equal points.

At 4 shots each, that's 12 lasgun shots, 6 hits, 2 wounds vs marines, so 0.67 wounds to the marine.

1 marine shooting at the guardsmen gives 1.33 hits, 0.89 wounds, 0.59 go through the armour.

 

So what is better, doing 0.67 wounds to a marine (0.67*13= 8.67 pts dead) or doing 0.59 wounds to a guardsman (0.59*4=2.3)?

If one side loses 8.67 points per phase, while the other loses 2.3 pts per phase, the game is going to turn out pretty one-sided rather fast. One side loses almost 4 times as many pts per salvo. Even without the four-shots-guardsmen, the guards are still dishing out almost 2x the damage while taking little in return from marines.

 

Or to make the issue perfectly clear. A single Guardsman with 4 shots will kill more enemy Guardsmen in one round than what a single marine will. A single marine is actually more terrible than a single guardsman at shooting (if the guardsman has 4 shots). A single Guardsman will kill as many marines as a single marine with shooting. For less than a third of the cost. 

 

As a CSM player, having access to Cultists, I know first hand that cultists are simply amazing point-for-point compared to CSM. Or really, most units in my army are amazing in comparison with basic CSM.

[Finkmilkana]

If you say 4 shot guardsmen, that means there is an officer, which means the guardsmen cost at least (best case szenario of one officer at 30 always ordering 2 squads) 5.5 per model. At this point we would also need to account for marine auras, but at that would put too many variables in play so let’s just ignore Support characters (especially as when they are there it is unclear if the problem lies with the unit or with the support character).

 

Now put both of them without support into cover and suddenly the guardsmen only deal 0.16 wounds while the marine still deals 0.44.

 

Then comes moral. If a guardsquad looses 7, it’s quite likely the rest will follow.

 

And suddenly they look a lot more equal to each other, and this is still without taking things like transports/mobility, meele capabilities (even if you don’t use them, they still cost), minus to hit, and different roles on the battlefield ( strike squad vs line troops) into account.

 

Still, as I said I could see tactical getting 1 or maybe even 2 points cheaper, but the main problem I see is that people try to use tacticals as cannon fodder/screens and that simply is bound to fail.

[Beams]

You realize if auto fail in that circumstance it’s statistically no different then using the Commissars Leadership at -1? Dice doesn’t have memory. The reverse is also true rolling high rerolling low.

 

Like just means once you kill 8 people the leadership bubble Commissars give are 7 (and thus useless for infantry squads but still good for Special/Heavy/Conscripts)

One is a negative play experience, while the other isnt. It doesn't really matter what the average is, since there is a decent chance of "oh, I rolled a 3 which makes me fail, I kill a guy and reroll and get a 3 and have to kill two more guys. This is fun" vs "Commisars give the same rule that Eldar, Dark Angels (maybe more?) Have, which is worse than what Tyranids have" or even "Commisars kill a guy to switch dice roll to a 1" or "commisars kill D3 Conscripts".

 

No guard players in my area take Commisars anymore, and they've been a staple since long before 8th.

[totgeboren]

@Finkmilkana. But even in that situation, where the marines have the advantage, the guards will still take out about 23% more points per round of shooting.

But yes, guardsmen will probably lose more models from morale. But they need to lose 4 models to morale per marine lost to morale to be at a disadvantages on that front, which seems unlikely to me.

[Finkmilkana]

As I said, I completely agree that Marines are at a disadvantage, I just wanted to show it isn’t as bad as this thread might make people believe.

 

Moral losses are sadly a bit tricky to calculate, since they depend on how much damage was sustained, how big the squad is etc. But considering that a guardsquad that lost 7 will with 66% completely evaporate (and otherwise still loose 1 or 2) while a marine squad that lost 4 guys has a almost 90% chance of not loosing the last guy (assuming it is the sergeant , otherwise 75%), I’m pretty confident that guardsmen are hit harder. Especially once you take into account that the last few guys are usually special or even heavy weapons guys that cost a lot more.

[Trevak Dal]

I can only speak for myself but I find it depressing that MEQ for both loyal and traitor are rather pathetic in 8th. The literal Chaos Space Marine codex should be renamed Chaos Cultist and Other Options because of how superior cultists are to CSM. The same would be true if Loyal SM got something like cultists.

 

It clashes so much with the fluff/lore and history of the setting that Astartes are so mediocre against lowly mortals.

I think that GW had an opportunity to make marines stand out more, but they did so in half measures. Marines should be the ONLY unit to be able to move and fire heavy weapon (infantry), and marine-like units (Tau battlesuits, etc). Marines should also be the only infantry that moves 6" standard, orks/guard/Tau infantry (firewarriors) should move 4-5".

 

But they went with half measures, because a lot of match ups are already marine X vs Marine The and that would only push that further by them actually playing like super soldiers.

 

A possible thing to try, would be to basically scale up Bolter weapons. So Bolters fire like twinlinked Bolters/storm Bolters, twinlinked Bolters and storm Bolters get more shots, on up the scale.

 

THEN that 10 man (or 5 man) tac/ctac/greyHunter squad becomes a sharper threat. And grey knights o-:cussing-bliterate stuff (and give them all +1 attack across the board for crying out loud. They are 'super' marines, before the Primaris came along.

[Gentlemanloser]

And accolytes with storm bolters?

[Atrus]

Keep these ideas coming. My sisters drool at pretty much everything said. Rapid firing heavy bolters? Storm bolters with more shots? Thank you.

[Wargamer]

The real problem is that, once again, GW had decided to completely bypass its own core mechanics.

 

None of the horde armies people talk about would be a problem if Morale was an actual game mechanic. Yeah, 30 Genestealers mobbing you all at once is instant death, but if you can kill a third and make another third run away, that unit becomes manageable. Sure, a Conscript blob can put out so many lasguns it turns night to day, but sneezing loudly in their general direction will rout a big chunk of the unit.

 

The problem is that none of these units run away. Ever. Orks are fearless as long as they are in, or close to a big blob of other Orks. Tyranids don't run away if in Synapse. Guard don't run away if close to Commissars or recruited from Valhalla. The fact that you could inflict a dozen casualties on a Conscript mob and no matter what the IG player rolls only ONE of them will be removed speaks volumes.

 

So honestly, before people start suggesting all these wild and whacky fixes of making Space Marines fire eight times if stationary or give them a re-rollable re-roll on a re-rollable 2+ save, maybe we should try this revolutionary idea: Get rid of Fearless units, and remove any rule that places a hard cap on how many people can run away.

 

Because I think part of the way horde vs elite units are supposed to work is this: Horde are meant to be stronger than Elite when at full strength, but Elite are meant to be useful even if there's only one guy left standing.

 

Again, consider the setups. Which would you think is better at holding an objective - 30 Orks, or 5 Terminators? I'm willing to bet you'll say Orks just because you need an entire bucket of dice to get rid of them, whereas the Terminators can be removed by one squad with the right kit. But what if we make the choice between 6 Orks and 1 Terminator? Would anyone remotely consider 6 Orks to be a problem? What do you need to reliably kill that? 36 lasgun shots? 18 bolt shots? 12 heavy bolter shots? One really lucky frag missile? And that's assuming you need to drop every last one and can't simply break them with morale. 

But the Terminator? Mathhammer says you'd need 18 bolt shots to wound him once, and he has two wounds. That's already soaking up twice the firepower of that Ork mob. We can't break him so he has to drop. Maybe throw a heavy weapon at him? An overcharged plasma gun would do it, but there's that 1/6 chance of killing the gunner to consider. Lascannons, Krak Missiles and Meltaguns would all do the job nicely, but there's two problems there; you might roll a 1 for damage, in which case the damn Terminator is still on the objective, and he has an invulnerable save which means a third of the time your attack will bounce off regardless.

 

Thus, it feels to me like a Horde army should be one you can fight piecemeal; simply drum enough fire into a unit to remove a critical mass of them, and it no-longer matters if the unit is dead or not - it's fighting potential is spent. Elite units like Space Marines, on the other hand, should be units you are never entirely comfortable with leaving behind. A central part of achieving this balance is to make it so morale checks are a reliable source of attrition against the horde player, but against Elites are more like a small bonus for proper use of focus fire.

[Ishagu]

It is ironic that the units punished most by Morale are full squads of Marine variants.

[Dreagher]

Geanstealers aren't horde models... They already are a glasscannon unit that dies fast enough without morale.

[Ishagu]

Gaunts are certainly hordes.

[Ahistorian]

Marines shouldn't be cheaper, they be better. That follows fluff and doesn't incentivise horde PA armies. Improved Marines, even with a slightly higher points cost, would help players play their elites as elites.

[chapter master 454]

I think wargamer touches on something important: bypassing key mechanics. Now for Orks it's their standard way of playing, it's how they work so naturally they seem to bypass morale the most but that's been there thing for a while now and despite being powerful does have draw backs (mowing down enough of them WILL result in runners). However Synapse and Commissars just being 'Na...you boys stay RIGHT there' is a problem. As someone noted: morale hurts marines more than hordes as when one or two of our squads run it's 26+ points while when a guardsman or conscript squad lose ONE guy or tyranids lose nothing from having 10 models killed really doesn't help. The losses at that point for the squad start to hurt as now the squad is likely down to 5 models when they take the test then now down to 3, maybe even 2 with crap rolls. It's why marine squads are being run in 5s these days, no point bringing the extra wounds because they would of just lost you more guys and it's better to SPREAD OUT.

 

Maybe if commissars could only keep so many in line with executions, I mean I really don't think conscripts should even be bothered by ONE of their guys being executed ether because they are too panicked by then and thus another dying just looks like more enemy fire. They were forced into this fight without any real rights so I don't think they care what a commissar has to say. To be honest I find that the Catachans seem to have it the best, with their commissars all having such sad events fall upon them...truly a shame. I think it would be a point to make conscripts unable to benefit from ANY rules the Imperial Guard have and have to just like it.

 

For tyranids, maybe make Synapse staged: within 6" unit ignore morale, outside that up to 12" they use the leadership of the synapse creature but HAVE to be within the area of effect, ALL members of the squad to benefit from this otherwise they take the weakest option they get (basically, the squad doesn't count in cover unless EVERYONE is in cover) which means you can't just string them into the fearless aura. Possibly also add just in case any Synapse creatures are allowed to hide from character rules, Synapse overrules this and the main Synapse creature is vulnerable to being targeted regardless.

[Captain Idaho]

I don't like the morale mechanic in 8th edition. I never did before the game was released back when we had rumours and teasers.

 

I can see Orks or Guardsmen fleeing in drips and drabs, but let's be honest in a fire fight, three blokes won't disappear whilst the rest of the squad fights on.

 

I'd like to see Morale wholly changed. Essentially add a pinned mechanic and remove the "models flee" nonesense.

 

I'd do this:

 

- A unit is required to take a Morale check by taking a Leadership test if it suffers any casualties that turn.

 

- Take a Leadership test by rolling 2D6 and scoring equal to or under the Leadership value of the unit (counting the highest leadership value in the unit).

 

- For each model lost that turn, add +1 to the test.

 

- if the test is failed, deduct 1 from movement and to hit rolls in the units next turn.

 

- if the test is failed by more double the units Leadership value or more then the unit suffers -2 to movement and to hit rolls next turn instead.

 

***

 

Then add special rules as needed. And They Shall Know No Fear could mean a unit might ignore the first -1, suffering only at double Leadership failures.

 

Regardless what is implemented, Morale is a problem that affects Marines and not hordes in the way the rules seem to work. That's a problem.

[Mileposter]

I never liked morale when they were announcing 8th edition as well, but I've seen the Morale phase affect a game so rarely that I stopped caring about it. Nearly every army has a way around the morale phase or a way to ignore it... Killing something from morale just seems to be a bonus damage against the unprepared. If morale was made to be a tactic to kill your opponent with, certainly that didn't work out, but the fip side of the coin - if it was built with the intention of organizational penalties like the detachments were... That parts woking pretty brilliantly.

[Ishagu]

Marale in 8th is fine. It's just ignored by too many horde variants.

[Charlo]

I like the simplicity and how it is supposed to represent the savage ferocity of war in the M41.

 

I however don't like how Space Marines are as affected, especially thing like Terminators in comparison to Guard/ 'Nids/ Orks.

[Zodd1888]

Rather than remake the rules around leadership entirely, maybe they should simply look at adding special rules that negatively impact morale for chaff instead?

 

That sounds alright.

[Shockmaster]

I like the morale system but echo others that hordes need to stop being so easily completely immune to it, frustrating when elite super soldiers are more likely to lose heart then some cheap cannon fodder. 

[totgeboren]

Yeah, I think the issue is probably the chaff unit, and especially their general resilience to morale effects, which is reinforced by them being so cheap per model. The loss of 3 guardsmen is comparable to the loss of a single marine on a points basis, so if guards lose 3x as many models to morale as marines, they are in effect equally affected by morale. As it is, chaff often lose less models, so are much better at handling morale than marines/csm.

 

The removal of templates, though it speeds up the game, is also something that makes hordes much better. The only really efficient tool for dealing with hordes are other hordes, since weapons like blasts are often more useful against squad with low model counts rather than big units. It's only really FW than has given us some weapons that are good vs hordes, like the Grav Flux Bombard and in part the C-beamers.

[Nova_Dew]

From my point of view GW missed out one simple rule for horde armies, while there is safety and an espirit de corps in large numbers there is also a down side, when enough run they all run, make losses due to moral failure double and set an upper limit to LD for units over a set number.

 

say limit LD to 17 for orks

Nobs add one, bosses two via differently name aura's so a max of 20 for Orks.

 

IG limit of 15

Commissars add one, Lord Commissars two (again two different aura's) for max of 17.

 

Nids not sure about.

 

They all start strong but when they hit a threshold they dwindle extremely fast. and if one of you fine frater's who can math better than i can run the numbers i'd be thankful

[Trevak Dal]

And accolytes with storm bolters?

No the true potential of Bolters and the like would only work on Astartes and vehicles.

[Arganias]

I don't mean to come off as confrontational by saying this, but aren't most PA armies supposed to elite? As in, they are not meant to spread out and fight hordes on the hordes terms? They are supposed to be a spear, not a hammer. It is on the MEQ player to pick what flank to push and drive into while the GEQ players respond. There is a little cross over between the fluff and game play in how Marines should operate. Even Marines cannot hope to engage hordes on a broad axis, but, instead, find a vulnerability and exploit it.

 

I think that the army that deploys first is supposed to go first is to give more elite armies a first strike advantage. My group is trying to change it to a simple +1 in a dice roll off like tournaments, but I have been resistant, and I play Elysian IG. My group has been talking about the power level discrepancies between horde and elite armies for  couple months, but keep trying to make house rules that favor hordes. I love my group to the death, but I think there is a lot of "not seeing the forest for the trees" going on. A lot of people, this 3++ apparently too, are taking a look at mechanics in a vacuum and not taking into account how the game actually works in reality.

 

PA armies are still strong as far as I'm concerned. 

[BitsHammer]

I want to make two points:

 

First, let's be honest, Marines are pretty much perfect where they are. If we made them cheaper they'd potentially unbalance the game, likewise with giving them buffs they don't have to pay for. Marines are solid, well balanced troops that can handle a wide variety of roles much more easily than your average Horde units (whose load outs are usually limited to being just anti-troops and rely on quantity to make their shooting good). This lack of specialization is a double-edged sword though as it does mean that the Marines have less dedicated focus on any one task, meaning that while you can spread your threats around (like not keeping your anti-tank in one or two units), you may have to dedicate multiple units' weapons where a more specialized unit could do the job by themselves.

 

Thankfully being able to split fire has basically solved this for Marines as your anti-tank weapons can team up while your anti-troop weapons focus elsewhere allowing you to keep your weapons spread around while not diluting their usefulness.

 

Right now the current edition is just over 6 months old and honestly it shows. Armies are still being updated and brought up to speed and we got our first Chapter Approved with more of those coming in the future. Hordes will honestly only get to stay on top of the heap for the next six months or so before we start seeing the design studio swing the warhammer back the other way. We may even see FAQ based changed before then to help armies have better anti-horde options. So let's not go full Chicken Little over the fact that Hordes are strong right now because unlike past editions, this won't be a permanent thing. The more people play and the more people submit feedback to GW the more the game will evolve and become more balanced. I mean, right now the best melee Horde killer in the game is Mortarion. I can't imagine that to be a permanent thing as more armies get their codexes and more updates roll out.

 

That said, I feel like the 3++ comparison is only good in a vacuum. Are we playing without terrain? Without buffing auras? Without supporting elements? Without target priority or employing the right tools for the job? Marines are armies that work by stacking things. From buffs, to shooting, to melee Marines work by adding 1+1 to get 3 (because the effect is better than just adding 1+1 normally). Taking them out of that sort of design and setting up a comparison between two units in a vacuuum to compare points isn't completely honest because it ignores the way the armies the units draw from are designed to work.