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

[BitsHammer]

And we have aura’s? Also our Sgts have Bolters (the Gaurd example you should -9 attacks). And we are flexible and reasonably can be full mechanized. “Armies have special rules and gimmicks”. I mean yes?

Orders have larger ranges and wider variety than making an army that should feel elite before the auras start punching closer to where they should. Not to mention how cheap Officers are compared to Marine characters for "similar" benefits.

 

We can drag melee into this too, but most troop Marines don't have melee build options to take advantage of their tougher stats and better melee to try and reap through GEQs. Killing ten models with a full strength unit of Marines by getting a charge? Sure. Killing a unit of 20 or 30? Not likely to happen even taking multiple turns into account.

[Schlitzaf]

Orders are 6” range and only affect two targets vs 6” and affect all targets in range. I mean you on average with a 10 Man Squad Kill 4 Gaurdsman. And then in shooting kill another 3 with pistols. I mean 10 Tacticals won’t kill a 30 Man horde. If the basic of basic unit could do so.

 

The 30 Man horde be largely pointless

[chapter master 454]

Maybe we need to address the issue in a non-one turn format. How well will the 10 man tactical squad do against the corresponding amount of guardsman over the course of the game?

 

Let's be generous and give the marines a ride in big papa smurfs rhino and drop them off for their first turn in the guardsman house and they get to go first. Lets assume the transport used is dealt with later and has other things to do other than play with the kids. The 30 odd guardsman will certainly be reduced to a mere 20 easily for the first round then then the follow up charge will like achieve only a few kills on the guardsman squad reducing their numbers. The guardsman then return fire as best they can with some falling back and allowing the last 10 to rapid fire and for the sake of being nice, lets give the marines 3 dead guardsman from the second and thus having 17 total rapid firing not happy guardsman on them. That comes out to being about 34 shots so accordingly this will like off a couple of marines. Down to about 8, maybe 7 at worst. Will the guardsman fix bayonets? I think so since even if they are ultramarines they will take a -1 to shooting. So 10 guardsman charge and lets give them an extra kill. down to about 6 or 7 depending on how well the marines did last melee.

From here I would say the guardsman will win. Even if the ultramarine tactic kicks in you have now lost a big chunk of your squad and will now rapidly lose effectiveness. Someone want to run that maths over the course of say 2 full battle rounds (so thus: Marine Turn, Guard turn, Marine Turn, Guard Turn) and see what comes of it. For this instance we are even giving the marines an advantage to see if they can even match this one batch of guardsman.

[Schlitzaf]

I have actually done it Chapter Master, the Marines win hand down. Once you tabulate and add in the method and points of engagement. Also table space etc. Essentialty what makes the marines win is Battleshock.

 

The math is in Karack’s thread about buffing Marines

[BitsHammer]

Orders are 6” range and only affect two targets vs 6” and affect all targets in range. I mean you on average with a 10 Man Squad Kill 4 Gaurdsman. And then in shooting kill another 3 with pistols. I mean 10 Tacticals won’t kill a 30 Man horde. If the basic of basic unit could do so.

 

The 30 Man horde be largely pointless

Orders aren't 6" with voxes, but those cost points, so fair.

 

The whole point of this thread is how hordes are more efficient for your points than Marines. Even Scouts (while more efficient for points than Tacticals) are less effective than hordes for the points.

 

I know people like to point out that assault is a thing, but let's be honest, one of the reasons the hordes are so good is that they have so much shooing when compared to the Marines. And since we can't do something to increase the amount Marines are shooting (unless we brought the HH shooting rule for bolter units into 40k where they can fire twice but then can't shoot the next turn because they need to reload) to compensate, then making shooting more efficient is the only way for them to compete with it. If you can't have quantity, then quality is needed. If the quality in question isn't enough, then the quality in question isn't high enough to be balance the difference between having more shots over ones that hit more often.

 

Marines are being expected to take buckets of dice while throwing only handfuls themselves. Especially when many Hordes can ignore (or at least mitigate) the problem of Battleshock (that is unless they have access to Power Armour, then you don't get to ignore it so easily), which is why I look so heavily on the damage outputs of equivalent levels of points and how units that cost 3x as much should be seeing more effect on the table versus hordes than they currently do.

[Deschenus Maximus]

Yeah, no they don't. Not in a real setting where the Guard player is not an idiot.

 

EDIT: Was talking to Schlitzaf.

[Schlitzaf]

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/342269-8th-ed-pa-points-and-stats-adjustment-questions/page-3 - is about halfway done.

 

Hordes mitigate battleshock because if they didn’t they would be non-functional (see Orks and Nids, any horde army with fearless in 5th. Where fearless as functionally similar to modern battle shock).

 

Horde units cannot deploy or be used as a surgical implements. They cannot choose the method or point of engagement. Marines and similar armies can

[BitsHammer]

Sclitzaf, the problem is that the current meta is being dominated by hordes because the things being used to ensure Hordes aren't punished too heavily by battleshock (to keep them competitive) but removing it almost completely means that they're not being balanced by the very rule that should be balancing them (and the part of your arguement on why they're not that much of a problem).

 

And with Hordes you don't bother needing surgical implements because you have a hammer and everything you're hitting is just another nail.

[Deschenus Maximus]

That was a fantasy situation and remains so. Completely devoid of use as to wether Tacticals are actualy able to compete with Guardsmen.

[The Unseen]

I have actually done it Chapter Master, the Marines win hand down. Once you tabulate and add in the method and points of engagement. Also table space etc. Essentialty what makes the marines win is Battleshock.

 

The math is in Karack’s thread about buffing Marines

 

Edit: Maximus beat me too it.

 

The guard win on the tabletop just like they do in the math.

The tournament results back that claim up pretty easily, considering Guard are literally top army for wins right now, Marines are like 3rd or 4th, or if they aren't blue, bottom of the barrel for wins.

 

And people keep saying horde armies can't choose the engagement profile, you do realize nothing in the rules stops people from having their 10 man guard squads stand in 5"x2" bricks right? You can fit a whole lot of bodies into a very small space, even with 24" range guns, and have them all shoot the same target. It isn't like in previous editions where a horde player pulling that would get annihilated by templates, those don't exist anymore.

[BitsHammer]

 

I have actually done it Chapter Master, the Marines win hand down. Once you tabulate and add in the method and points of engagement. Also table space etc. Essentialty what makes the marines win is Battleshock.

 

The math is in Karack’s thread about buffing Marines

 

Edit: Maximus beat me too it.

 

The guard win on the tabletop just like they do in the math.

The tournament results back that claim up pretty easily, considering Guard are literally top army for wins right now, Marines are like 3rd or 4th, or if they aren't blue, bottom of the barrel for wins.

 

And people keep saying horde armies can't choose the engagement profile, you do realize nothing in the rules stops people from having their 10 man guard squads stand in 5"x2" bricks right? You can fit a whole lot of bodies into a very small space, even with 24" range guns, and have them all shoot the same target. It isn't like in previous editions where a horde player pulling that would get annihilated by templates, those don't exist anymore.

 

Heck, one of the Guard doctrines gives you benefits for standing in rank and file bricks.

[Schlitzaf]

So now we are adding in outside elements? If so I must back out. I have known one player who I face regularly, who can actually theory hammer out an army vs army engagement beyond bias what if. And tell you the final result. The Moral Immunity conundrum comes from investing in 70+ Point characters for Tyranids, Non-existence for Gaurdsman and vs Orks easily negatable with proper target priority. And can we just be aside every Marine army beside GK can be moral immune. As a BT I take Cenos and Rites of Wars (alongside Helm) to negate battle shock. Also Chaplains are LD 9, losing 7 you have only a 1/3rd chance of losing another guy.

 

I mean sure you can stand in bricks. 3 Gaurd Squad standing in bricks still taking up several times the space as Marine Squads. And Marines can get -1 to hit outside rapid, fall and shoot. If we are comparing army to army it’s a different discussion

 

Like basically any army currently releases can negate battleshock if they wanted too. It comes up with hordes because hordes need it or are non-functional.

[The Unseen]

So now we are adding in outside elements? If so I must back out. I have known one player who I face regularly, who can actually theory hammer out an army vs army engagement beyond bias what if. And tell you the final result. The Moral Immunity conundrum comes from investing in 70+ Point characters for Tyranids, Non-existence for Gaurdsman and vs Orks easily negatable with proper target priority. And can we just be aside every Marine army beside GK can be moral immune. As a BT I take Cenos and Rites of Wars (alongside Helm) to negate battle shock. Also Chaplains are LD 9, losing 7 you have only a 1/3rd chance of losing another guy.

 

Like basically any army currently releases can negate battleshock if they wanted too. It comes up with hordes because hordes need it or are non-functional.

 

Umm....

what?

Orks are, if run en mass and deployed intelligently, are effectively morale immune. You have 3, 30 man blobs within range of each other, and see how many you have to kill before they start running. Hint: it's almost all of them.

 

The argument isn't that marines are weak to morale, they aren't, especially when their in 5 man squads like people run these days; its that their weak in general, and battleshock, even without adding in "outside" factors, doesn't swing the balance nearly far enough over. Even when factoring in morale, Guard are still more points efficient, period. When you include outside factors, it gets even worse, because guard officers are dirt cheap for orders, where Marine officers are very expensive for roughly equivalent utility buffs. ( buffs I might add, that don't change, where the guard ones can change from turn to turn. Hell, guard orders can recreate like half the marine chapter tactics on the fly, fall back and shoot, move faster, advance and still shoot, they can even recreate a freaking 3 CP stratagem for an order, fight again! Though marine characters are much stronger themselves, but that doesn't help the tactical marine not suck)

 

And hell, Guard still have 1 way to get the old Commissar rule back even, the relic pistol for Voystroyans.

 

And when 2 players of roughly equal skill go at it in game, but one has a 15-200% better points to effectiveness ratio, doesn't take a genius to figure out who has the better chances of winning.

[Schlitzaf]

.....here what you do vs those blobs

 

Shoot each of them until they are about 12-16 each. You do not try and delete one Squad. A basic marine army should be able to kill 45 Orks easily. Ork Moral is really really easy to mitigate if you know what you are doing.

 

Orders are Gaurdsman Auras, cheaper because less units are affected. Also Astra Militarum army is strong. Cheers? Sky is blue. I mean a Gaurd Squad fighting is 12 attacks at best, 6 hit them 1-3 wound depending. Very different than a tactical 12 attacks, 8 hit them 3-5 wounds depending.

 

Further an infantry squad attacking again is basically shooting Las Pistols. I dunno depends on army composition. And how the players respond to the table and enemy.

[BitsHammer]

How many turns would it take to reduce the Orks to half sized hordes each while taking shooting and then charges from those hordes?

 

EDIT: Also a Guard army isn't just "strong". It's so strong that when facing armies of the same size, being used by players of similar skill levels, it is flat out dominating. Especially against MEQ armies.

[Schlitzaf]

I dunno it takes 81 RAW Bolter Shots Or 66 Intercessor Shots. Also you can include charging a Marine Squad by puts out 32 Bolter Shots in Rapid So each Tactical does 42. So functionally give or take 2 turns? You’d need to see the rest of the army and how everything compares. Orks reroll charging as and advanced with warboss thus giving effectively 17” threat range. However a unit in front like scouts set to receive slows them down by a turn. They have trouble cracking Rhinos at 74 Points put out 8 Bolt Shots. Two Marine Mounted Rhinos could do it effectively in one turn.

 

However if you are in captain range you give or take 12 Bolter Shots. So a Rhino + Tacticals give 63 Shots. Which is 75% over the course of two turns. Meaning if Squads in Rapid, Rhino and Captain range about 500 Points could kill enough Boyz. The Boyz squares are depending 200 Points each. And and kill 5 marines if they can get in 18. However if advancing they take -1 reducing that number to 2.5 and as mostly inconquenstial. Of course a Pain Boy for 60 reduces your damage output by 50% effectively doubling the require Shots. Sense now they have a 5+. Include a Warboss that 800 Points to your 500. Meaning easily a third Tacticals Squad and a Liutanent. And depending how bear bones you could include a Razor.

 

So to come about 2 Squads Rapiding in one turn before we include other things.

[Beams]

How many turns would it take to reduce the Orks to half sized hordes each while taking shooting and then charges from those hordes?

 

EDIT: Also a Guard army isn't just "strong". It's so strong that when facing armies of the same size, being used by players of similar skill levels, it is flat out dominating. Especially against MEQ armies.

See, I don't really see that. Outside of tournaments, I exclusively play against guard and tyranids. You just have to build with hordes in mind. A lot of the people the guard players smash in local tournaments are bringing Guilliman Gunlines with insane amounts of lascannons, or other super antitank killers, because they are afraid of super heavies. Which means they end up firing lascannons at a guardsman. You have to have bodies and guns to fight hordes, 10 man squads and a decent amount of them, else you lose hold off objectives and get overwhelmed.

[BitsHammer]

That's kind of my point though, you stated it like it was something that was easy to do, but we're looking at at least two turns for most armies, if not more than two turns, by which you're usually getting punching in the face by Orks (if not by turn 2). Not exactly as easy to solve as you presented initially.

[Mileposter]

While I've consistently argued against what this thread has come up with to fix/bolster Marines, there really can't be a lot of argument that Marines need the bolstering to be on par with juggernaut armies like Astra Militarum. If the topic is swinging around to "Do marines Perform Poorly" again, the same statistics that came around last time still hold true... They do perform poorly. Regularly. And with measurable results.

[The Unseen]

I don't know of any marine list that can kill 45 orks in a single turn "easily", considering that takes over 160 bolter shots, or just a hair over 100 heavy bolter/assault cannon shots.

 

And guard orders don't really effect fewer units in practice or on the table as your so fond of saying. Order range is 6", baseline HQ can give 2 orders, and cost 1/3 what marine characters do. How many units do you have surrounding your captain/lieutenant/etc in practice? maybe 5-6 max? alright, you take 3 company commanders for similar price to 1 marine captain to give 6 units of guardsmen orders. But now, all your units have to hang out in a 6" bubble around 1 character, and the guard player can have 3 groupings of 2 units, giving them much more flexibility, aka that thing marines should be good at.

 

 

I dunno it takes 81 RAW Bolter Shots Or 66 Intercessor Shots. Also you can include charging a Marine Squad by puts out 32 Bolter Shots in Rapid So each Tactical does 42. So functionally give or take 2 turns? You’d need to see the rest of the army and how everything compares. Orks reroll charging as and advanced with warboss thus giving effectively 17” threat range. However a unit in front like scouts set to receive slows them down by a turn. They have trouble cracking Rhinos at 74 Points put out 8 Bolt Shots. Two Marine Mounted Rhinos could do it effectively in one turn.

However if you are in captain range you give or take 12 Bolter Shots. So a Rhino + Tacticals give 63 Shots. Which is 75% over the course of two turns. Meaning if Squads in Rapid, Rhino and Captain range about 500 Points could kill enough Boyz. The Boyz squares are depending 200 Points each. And and kill 5 marines if they can get in 18. However if advancing they take -1 reducing that number to 2.5 and as mostly inconquenstial. Of course a Pain Boy for 60 reduces your damage output by 50% effectively doubling the require Shots. Sense now they have a 5+. Include a Warboss that 800 Points to your 500. Meaning easily a third Tacticals Squad and a Liutanent. And depending how bear bones you could include a Razor.

So to come about 2 Squads Rapiding in one turn before we include other things.

 

And you sir, cannot do math. Orks are T4, with a 6+ save, marines hit on 3's and wound them on 4's, which is

2/3 hit, 1/2 wound, 5/6 go through save= .28, you need 3 and a half bolter shots to kill an ork on average.

81 bolter shots only kill 21 orks, not 45.

 

Also, 10 tactical marines put out 20 bolter shots naked,not 32.

Even if you give your sarges Storm Bolter and Chainsword, your looking at 22 bolter shots and 12 cc attacks max, so 34, not 42.

[BitsHammer]

 

How many turns would it take to reduce the Orks to half sized hordes each while taking shooting and then charges from those hordes?

 

EDIT: Also a Guard army isn't just "strong". It's so strong that when facing armies of the same size, being used by players of similar skill levels, it is flat out dominating. Especially against MEQ armies.

See, I don't really see that. Outside of tournaments, I exclusively play against guard and tyranids. You just have to build with hordes in mind. A lot of the people the guard players smash in local tournaments are bringing Guilliman Gunlines with insane amounts of lascannons, or other super antitank killers, because they are afraid of super heavies. Which means they end up firing lascannons at a guardsman. You have to have bodies and guns to fight hordes, 10 man squads and a decent amount of them, else you lose hold off objectives and get overwhelmed.

 

Lascannons can split fire off onto Guard Tanks or Weapon Teams instead of being used into regular squads though, so it's not like they aren't getting used properly just because they're in a list.

[Beams]

 

 

 

How many turns would it take to reduce the Orks to half sized hordes each while taking shooting and then charges from those hordes?

 

EDIT: Also a Guard army isn't just "strong". It's so strong that when facing armies of the same size, being used by players of similar skill levels, it is flat out dominating. Especially against MEQ armies.

See, I don't really see that. Outside of tournaments, I exclusively play against guard and tyranids. You just have to build with hordes in mind. A lot of the people the guard players smash in local tournaments are bringing Guilliman Gunlines with insane amounts of lascannons, or other super antitank killers, because they are afraid of super heavies. Which means they end up firing lascannons at a guardsman. You have to have bodies and guns to fight hordes, 10 man squads and a decent amount of them, else you lose hold off objectives and get overwhelmed.

Lascannons can split fire off onto Guard Tanks or Weapon Teams instead of being used into regular squads though, so it's not like they aren't getting used properly just because they're in a list.

The point is, once you kill the tanks or if there are no tanks, those 10+ lascannons aren't doing anything.

[BitsHammer]

 

 

 

How many turns would it take to reduce the Orks to half sized hordes each while taking shooting and then charges from those hordes?

 

EDIT: Also a Guard army isn't just "strong". It's so strong that when facing armies of the same size, being used by players of similar skill levels, it is flat out dominating. Especially against MEQ armies.

See, I don't really see that. Outside of tournaments, I exclusively play against guard and tyranids. You just have to build with hordes in mind. A lot of the people the guard players smash in local tournaments are bringing Guilliman Gunlines with insane amounts of lascannons, or other super antitank killers, because they are afraid of super heavies. Which means they end up firing lascannons at a guardsman. You have to have bodies and guns to fight hordes, 10 man squads and a decent amount of them, else you lose hold off objectives and get overwhelmed.

Lascannons can split fire off onto Guard Tanks or Weapon Teams instead of being used into regular squads though, so it's not like they aren't getting used properly just because they're in a list.

The point is, once you kill the tanks or if there are no tanks, those 10+ lascannons aren't doing anything.

 

Assuming that they're still alive that late in the game: kill weapon teams with them instead of using them to kill Infantry Squads. Or pull them as casualties.

 

Since Marines lost template weapons to fight hordes with (instead getting meager random shot rolls on their weapons) the ability to soften hordes through shooting has definitely fallen to the side regardless. If it hadn't then people would still be using their Vindicators instead of letting them collect dust.

[Schlitzaf]

Well that was me failing to continue my math, my 81 hits (curious Where mistake was 54 wounds = 45 wound, then I added 27) . Or 162 Shots. I apologize. However 2 Squads still are able to do so at 60 Shots each. If they can properly pace themselves and use the terrain. Orks aren’t particularly fast. And if they break apart they become easier to deal with. If you actually divide and conquer it becomes even easier.

 

Also 20 Bolters + 12 Melee (functionally a STR 4 Bolter Shot is a the same as a Marine hitting with a STR 4 attack). And then you get +10 Bolter Shots form T1.

 

Also the additional attacks come the Rhino (+12). Rerolling 1’s add functionally 10% additionally Shots (33 misses, rerolling half. 16%, hit 66% i.e increase of 10%)

[BitsHammer]

162 shots would require more than 2 squads (who would do a max of 20 shots (Rapid fire 1 weapons) each at rapid fire range if everyone has bolters, and 22 at half range if the SGT has a storm bolter). It'd require 8 squads (around 7 if we're running Storm bolters). Or four squads over two turns.