PA Armies in general: How to improve them? Yep, again...

[Lemondish]

Sure ok. CA18 didn't really do anything for Bolters

 

The thread is about power armour armies, not just bolters.

[Kallas]

 

The thread is about power armour armies, not just bolters.

 

Um, sure? Bolters are a quintessential Power Armour weapon, being iconically an Marine weapon. Marines with bad Bolters are likely to be bad Marines.

 

Further, don't try and put that on me, you were making comments about Bolters just as much as anyone else, and trying to assert that Bolters have nothing to do with Marines is pretty   ridiculous!

 

Edit:

I see now that the quote had some text in it but not visible. Still, CA18 didn't actually do a huge amount of Marines. It dropped the points of a few things in dire need (eg, Dev Centurions) and it dropped some points in other places (eg, special weapons) but it made some huge missteps (eg, Meltaguns and Grav Guns still more expensive than the far superior Plasma Guns) and did nothing to make basic Marines actually worth a damn.

 

Further, the points drops Marines received were no more than the drops pretty much every other faction received, making the reductions functionally of little value - even worse, some factions received some massive drops to many units while Marines got some pretty lacklustre drops to units that needed far more than that.

 

Sure, CA18 wasn't about Bolters, but it definitely did nothing to make Bolters, and by extension Marines, better.

[Lemondish]

Further, don't try and put that on me, you were making comments about Bolters just as much as anyone else, and trying to assert that Bolters have nothing to do with Marines is pretty   ridiculous!

 

Calm down - my point was in direct response to your assertion that because CA18 did not change bolters, it had no effect to consider on the power armour 'problem'. 

 

That is what was pretty ridiculous, and I was trying to point it out in a more calm headed non-hostile manner. I don't see a point in fighting over this. My statement was pretty unequivocally subjective, but I'll rewrite it here so there's no ambiguity:

 

I personally do not think it is worth debating any further changes to power armoured armies before seeing what impact the beta rule, the points drops from Chapter Approved 2018, and the specialist detachment bonuses awarded in Vigilus Defiant will have on the competitive meta.

 

I feel this way because, as has been shown countless times before, the community outside of the tournament scene is a really poor predictor of what will actually happen in the meta. The tournament scene will take some time to explore these changes. It will take weeks of theory crafting, test games, tweaks to lists, further test games, assessing how the meta may shift and how to respond to it, analysis of tournament results from other events, etc. 

[Brother Casman]

Okay, I've gotta write this down somewhere. This might not be the right spot for it, but I don't know of any other threads where it would fit, and the idea isn't fully formed for a Homegrown Rules post (yet).

 

What if Drop Pod Assault worked something like the new Cult Ambush tokens? Perhaps, turn 1 the Marine player would place drop pod tokens, then commit their forces on turn 2. They'd have a turn to see how the battle is shaping up, then apply forces to shape the future conflict.

[PeteySödes]

Okay, I've gotta write this down somewhere. This might not be the right spot for it, but I don't know of any other threads where it would fit, and the idea isn't fully formed for a Homegrown Rules post (yet).

 

What if Drop Pod Assault worked something like the new Cult Ambush tokens? Perhaps, turn 1 the Marine player would place drop pod tokens, then commit their forces on turn 2. They'd have a turn to see how the battle is shaping up, then apply forces to shape the future conflict.

Not bad but for the points if pods don’t allow a turn 1 reserve they at least need to be able to get with 6” or danger close. That would fix a lot I think.

[Kallas]

 

Further, don't try and put that on me, you were making comments about Bolters just as much as anyone else, and trying to assert that Bolters have nothing to do with Marines is pretty   ridiculous!

 

Calm down - my point was in direct response to your assertion that because CA18 did not change bolters, it had no effect to consider on the power armour 'problem'. 

 

That is what was pretty ridiculous, and I was trying to point it out in a more calm headed non-hostile manner. I don't see a point in fighting over this. My statement was pretty unequivocally subjective, but I'll rewrite it here so there's no ambiguity:

 

I personally do not think it is worth debating any further changes to power armoured armies before seeing what impact the beta rule, the points drops from Chapter Approved 2018, and the specialist detachment bonuses awarded in Vigilus Defiant will have on the competitive meta.

 

I feel this way because, as has been shown countless times before, the community outside of the tournament scene is a really poor predictor of what will actually happen in the meta. The tournament scene will take some time to explore these changes. It will take weeks of theory crafting, test games, tweaks to lists, further test games, assessing how the meta may shift and how to respond to it, analysis of tournament results from other events, etc. 

 

Sorry, I was a bit too abrasive there.

 

Anyway, while I agree that there's been little time to actually feel the impact of Bolter Discipline, I don't believe that CA18 has made enough of a stir to shift the meta much. The only major thing I think we'll see a rise of is Deathwatch Storm Shield spam which is certainly potent. It may have an impact on the amount of high AP weapons people bring, in the competitive scene anyway, such as Plasma which would have a knock on effect of making basic Marines a bit better, but I doubt that it'll have much of an impact as a lot of the high ROF anti-hordes weapons come packing AP-1 anyway (Assault Cannons are a prime example) which still hurts Marines a lot. We'll still see a lot of Guard Soup-ed into lists for CP; Knights are still extremely potent with counters still few and far between besides Smash Captains and your own Knight(s).

 

As I said, I don't believe that CA18 made enough of a change to Marines to make a noteworthy difference. While it's true that further testing may reveal a meta shift, I honestly don't think it will be anything particularly large - and if it is, it's more likely to be because of the Ork Codex, and soon the Genestealer Cult Codex, bringing more powerful hordes to the table (Orks particularly, but potentially GSC if their Codex isn't crap). Even then, we won't see much a of a change with regards to Marines: they die to anti-horde weaponry because it's plentiful enough to bypass their resilience; and they die to anti-armour weaponry because they don't have the numbers to sustain the attrition; and they can't outgun/outfight horde armies because while Bolter Discipline gives us a little more effectiveness at range it still doesn't make Bolters actually good - they still hit like a bag of farts impacting on a bunker.

 

Our best units are still Captains, Librarians (some of them, anyway), Twin Assault Cannon Razorbacks, and Devastators (kind of). We might see a slight resurgence of Centurion Devastators, as their CA18 points drops and their ability to utilise Hurricane Bolters make them a much more effective choice, and a few of our vehicles became more attractive through CA18 points drops and BD (such as Land Raiders and Crusaders), but with Knights still supremely dominant, they'll still keel over to the massed anti-Knight firepower that people need to bring.

 

If we want a significant meta change, Knights need more counters. Personally, I'd like to see Ion Bulwark :cuss right off... It's honestly just insanely good and GW simply did not playtest that enough, because a 3++ T8 24W model with incredibly potent firepower is ridiculous, especially considering that they simply don't understand Soup (at least their game designers are paying attention to tournaments and seeing the things that high-level competitive games bring out).

 

As for Vigilus...meh. I said it earlier that I'm glad GW didn't go overboard and were cautious with the Specialist Detachments, but I think you're being optimistic if you think Vigilus is going to have much of an effect on the competitive scene. At best, Imperial Fists will do a little better, but that's about it.

 

Honestly, I don't think Marines need a full redesign, and I sincerely hope that this is a small step approach to bringing Marines up and that more buffs are coming down the pipeline, because I strongly doubt that Bolter Discipline is going to do anything to make Codex not-Deathwatch Marines notably better in the meta overall.

[Panzer]

What if Drop Pod Assault worked something like the new Cult Ambush tokens? Perhaps, turn 1 the Marine player would place drop pod tokens, then commit their forces on turn 2. They'd have a turn to see how the battle is shaping up, then apply forces to shape the future conflict.

 

I don't think Marines have enough units on the board to utilise such things as well as GSC, especially when it's only for some few selected ones while GSC can do it with everything including tanks.

Also I don't see how that would be different than simply putting units in Drop Pods right now?

[Brother Casman]

[snip]

Not bad but for the points if pods don’t allow a turn 1 reserve they at least need to be able to get with 6” or danger close. That would fix a lot I think.

 I think the points for pods could probably come down a fair bit, maybe down to 35-40 points.

 

[snip]

I don't think Marines have enough units on the board to utilise such things as well as GSC, especially when it's only for some few selected ones while GSC can do it with everything including tanks.

Also I don't see how that would be different than simply putting units in Drop Pods right now?

Well, the Cult Ambush preview indicates that the enemy cannot move within 9" of the ambush tokens. So it would provide the Space Marines with a different form of area denial. Perhaps the "radius of denial" is smaller (6 inches maybe?), but then the pods can land closer to an enemy than "standard" deep striking. Plus what's in each pod could be a secret until they're deployed.

 

Anyway, like I said above, it was just an idea I had to write down.

[Volt]

 

8th edition is objectively crap because several armies (including some marine ones) have sub-40% win rates.

I would say that's actually a sign of massive improvement given how more than half of the possible factions in 7th were sub-20% competitively.

 

That proves nothing objectively.

 

But it sounds like you don't like this game. That's fine - take a step back and come back when the next edition comes. Until then it's probably better to focus the discussion on how to fix power armour rather than sharing your dear diary wishlist for a new edition. You're derailing the discussion by suggesting the only way to improve marines is a wholesale rebuild of the entire game, which is downright absurd.

 

Except you need to change the base mechanics or else you simply upset the balance again and cause something else to suck, which isn't fun for the new army that gets shafted by the change. The issue with 40k is that troop efficiency is one solely of a mathammer nature as external tactics don't really factor into how good an infantry unit is. If you make Marines good then they become the most points-efficient model with something like guard, custodes, sisters, etc becoming comparatively awful. Also, this entire thread is nothing but pining for a new edition with dear diary wishlists. GW isn't going to make some sweeping changes based on what we say here (especially not in 8th); the most that will happen is that Primaris will get another points drop in the future to encourage marine players to buy more marines for an army. 

 

And it's not derailing either. You want marines to be good? You need to fundamentally overhaul 40k or convince somebody else that they need to take a hit just so your dudes can now be the points-efficient, superior infantry choice. And it doesn't address the main issue that power armor infantry suffers from - giant stompy mecha outpacing the killing power of infantry as to casually wipe them off the board. Even with just their current statline, marines would be worth taking if tactical squads packed a bigger wallop in the AT department to punish superheavies that didn't move cover-to-cover.

[Lemondish]

You keep making that definitive statement that marines can only be fixed with a sweeping rewrite of the edition.

 

I keep rejecting that because you have yet to provide any support for that claim.

 

Just because you say it doesn't make it so. Support the claim!

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

I've been toying with the numbers, and this is my suggestion:

 

All power armor units ignore the first point of AP against them.

Terminator invulns also go down by 1 across the board, with the exception of cataphractii captain.

All Astartes units reroll armor saves of 1.

Terminator units, centurions, and vehicles ignore the heavy weapons penalty for movement.

All astartes shooting gains +1 to wound while at half range.

Chainswords get -1 AP.

 

There aren't many power armored armies. From this point, all you'd need to do is fix Sister's acts of faith to make the army effective, but different in function from Astartes. Custodes could accept the power armor buff and be happy that they're slightly more durable than they were. The point isn't to make marines the strongest there is, the point is to make them function like elites, and to give other armies that use their armor a notable benifit. Just 3+ armor isn't much of a benifit in this edition. AP was handed out too readily across weapons with high rate of fire, and even 0 AP weapons win out when given to giant blobs, who can accept casualties more readily and have more opportunities for luck to swing in their favor. If we can make marines last longer, and squeeze more efficiency from their gear, we can make them feel like marines again.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

+1 to wound for half-range gunnery action the board? Sternguard become the new broken and Chaos shoots up the ladder as they are now wounding other Marines on 2s with their bolters with stratagem support. That seems a little excessive.

[Panzer]

+1 to wound for half-range gunnery action the board? Sternguard become the new broken and Chaos shoots up the ladder as they are now wounding other Marines on 2s with their bolters with stratagem support. That seems a little excessive.

Not to mention plasma wounding most vehicles on 2+ and with the Slaanesh Stratagem even regular Bolter would wound vehicles on a 3+ lol

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

I think you need to re-evaluate what broken is. Death Watch get what you are refering to all of the time, and this buff wouldn't change that for their bolters at all. You could ad all of the above changes to marines and then send them against an army running knights or Eldar, and they'd still probably be able to table you. The +1 to wound is strong, and the most questionable of the changes I proposed for sure, but not quite as busted as you'd think. It also encourages standard marines to play themselves like highly mobile troupes, rather than gunlines. That is, if you aren't playing Dark Angels or another army type that likes being a gunline. I see too many new marine players getting stuck in the trap of not moving, because Marines need cover bonuses to live, and they want to hide and throw damage down range with hellblasters or the like. That isn't how marines are supposed to feel.

[Aurica]

How about a strategem to boost marine armor?

 

"My faith is my shield"

The selected unit ignores AP of the enemy weapon when rolling for armor saves. 

Cost: 1 CP

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

It's a neat idea in theory. Making it a strategem also makes it easier to balance than an army wide ability. But I don't know if people would use it. I'd have to play test with it as a home brew rule before I could really give an informed opinion. it still wouldn't fix the problem of hoard fire, though. Mathmaticly, a basic guard unit (the stick against which all hoard units are measured) of equal points to a tactical unit, each using lasgun/bolter, will out shoot the marines by a fairly notable degree. Weight of fire is too important in this edition. Having more bodies to lose will be better than a lower save in nearly every instance.

 

I don't think it is possible to fix marine armor without giving them a reroll. However, I don't think every army that has power armor needs rerolls. It is one thing to give every army with power armor a useful buff to represent their advanced protection. it is another to compensate for the increased cost of marines, who pay a lot for a relatively low rate of fire and low survivability. I also don't feel that making marines cheaper fixes that, as that makes them into a hoard army, not an elite one.

 

Sorry for jumping off and on the topic at hand, but how well Marines function is really the yard stick we use to measure how well Power Armor is functioning. Sisters are just the half way point between IG and Marines, with a hoard army design backed up with some elite rules. They don't need the full range of good armor, but they do need to feel tougher than Guard. Marines need to feel tougher still than Sisters. We can't do that with wounds due to Primaris screwing up balance measurements, and so we need to do it with armor. Lowering AP helps with anti elite weapons like plasma, but it doesn't help with anti infantry weapons like assault cannons or massed lasguns. That's why I'm such a big supporter of a two stage fix. AP reduction for the armor itself, and then rerolled saves for units that need more relyable toughness. The trick is to not go overboard in either direction.

 

There is also the trickle down effect that has to be considered for other units that are already quite tough. An example is what might happen if we give these abilities to Plague Marines. It's my personal opinion that units with those sorts of buffs should be balanced against these new armor rules, rather than getting them as well. Possibly with the result that Plague marines, Berserkers, etc wind up costing the same amount as standard marines, with all of them being equally strong in different ways. That'd require a touch more work than balancing their Armor, though.

 

In the end, it's hard to imagine a fix for Power Armor as a whole that will work for every army that has access to it, but eh. My previous suggestion is as close as I can get.

[Quixus]

How about a strategem to boost marine armor?

 

"My faith is my shield"

The selected unit ignores AP of the enemy weapon when rolling for armor saves. 

Cost: 1 CP

I really don't like giving out abilities that should be always on and/or tied to equipment in form of stratagems. It makes little sense that just because there are more scouts on the field that a PA unit suddenly becomes more resilient. It is equally nonsensical that units become more resilient in larger scale battles (i.e. more CPs). Stratagems should be restricted to actual stratagems (e.g. what the skyhammer annihilation force allowed you to do), not equipment functions.

[Panzer]

The problem with handling their durability problem via Stratagems is that CP are an extremely limited ressource for Marines and that you can use that Stratagem only once per phase. Stratagems shouldn't fix problems, they should offer interesting tactical options.

[MARK0SIAN]

Yeah, if a piece of equipment, some wargear or a unit cannot perform its job without a stratagem then it is broken and needs fixing by addressing its stats/rules so that it functions effectively all the time.

 

Stratagems aren’t band aids to fix problems, every army in the game should be capable of playing effectively without them.

[Volt]

You keep making that definitive statement that marines can only be fixed with a sweeping rewrite of the edition.

 

I keep rejecting that because you have yet to provide any support for that claim.

 

Just because you say it doesn't make it so. Support the claim!

Do you live under a rock where this game is balanced or do you not get how that one unit will always be mathematically superior in the game unless you add contextual problems to neutralize that difference? Let's say you bump up marines to toughness 5, two wounds, and even double their bolter shots at the same 13pmm cost. All that does is now make guardsmen suck arse because marines have become the most points efficient unit. The entire issue at hand is one of points efficiency, where one unit will always be the "objective best choice" for its FOC slot in a game where all that matters is the amount of bases you can slap down on the table pumping out the greatest amount of firepower. The reason why you need things such as suppression mechanics, LOS blocking smoke, morale, etc is to add the tactical depth that breaks down their absolute state of efficiency. And once you start cranking up stats you need to fiddle around with the points of everything to preserve some semblance of balance and prevent marines from turning into the 40k version of 30k's Custodes nonsense. 

 

Besides, this doesn't fix anything in the long term either. 40k frankly has been fairly gakky for most of its existence, merely having a state of flux where there are objectively bad armies and objectively good armies in each edition because GW can't do their rudimentary jobs. Right now we marines are the ones getting slapped around, but if the response is purely a stat buff all that happens is shifting that imbalance onto somebody else. If you want marines to be good without screwing up other armies you need more tactical mechanics to give marines a function beyond relying on simplistic and crude durability and attack stats. My desire is for marines to be good due to added utility (and severely nerfing the superheavy meta), without punishing guard (or any other) players by making guardsmen squads objectively inferior choices to marine squads on a PPM basis. Every single unit needs to be an equally valid choice based on its function and FOC niche. 

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

There will always be a best and worst army, objectively, in every game. No matter what you do to add depth and crunch, that won't change. All that crunch does is make it more difficult to balance said armies. The more rules and exceptions to rules, the easier it is to make one change that completely breaks how an army works. The answer to balancing armies is rarely more crunch. if they can't do it with the basic rules, they won't be able to do it with advanced ones.

 

 

The actual goal of balance is to move the lowest armies up until everyone is within, say, 5 percent of one another, efficiency wise. That is hard to do, but I think tournaments are likely the best indicator of what is good and what is bad. Not at first, and not with so many things under-represented. But they are the best way we have to gather real world data at a competitive level over any period of time. If generally good players are winning and losing X often with Y armies, then this is roughly where those armies stand. And the more data, the more accurate these very situational measurements are.

 

 

outside of using tournaments as a guide, the only way to objectively balance things is to roughly equalize efficiency. By which I mean, take 32 guardsman and 10 tactical marines, then determine what you need to alter on said marines for those two units to function on roughly equal terms. this, is hard to do. Even if you can balance out the number of wounds it takes for a marine and guard squad to go down in efficiency at the same rate while keeping roughly equal volumes of fire, you then have to take into account the vast difference anti tank weaponry will have against a squad of marines vs a squad of guards, as well as the innate advantage hoard armies have in Objective Secured. You then have to consider the difference in power of their relative characters, balance their differences in armor support, how many CP can be generated, how many can be regenerated on average, and how easy it is for each respective army to spread around their various buffs. Only then do you begin to get into rules that step outside of the norm, like stratagems, army wide tactics, etc. Exceptions to all of the balance you have just equalized. Jumping straight to the special rules section of the process without changing the base numbers is going to get you very chaotic results. That's why it's generally best to balance things within the rules as much as possible, then give situational bonuses otherwise. It's also why I tend not to mind seeing some stratagems repeated between books. While that might not be exciting, it is much easier to balance.

 

 

As a final note, just on the topic of super heavies being a problem. Yes, they are powerful. I personally don't like them much myself. But they aren't even the most broken army of 40K. Eldar have retained their spot at the top of the list, and they don't even need soup to do it. Knights can table you, but they can't control a board without support. You can out play knights, as much as it feels frustrating to do so. The real problem with knights is rolled into the problem of hoards. Hoards and knights love one another, and together they are where tournament lists get super nasty. But guard can play on their own without knights, knights struggle to play without guard. Eldar, on the other hand, do it all on their own. Stacking negatives to hit, wide spread psychic powers, speed, and good WS/BS is a lot of power to give to a single army, and their PPM is usually good.

[Lemondish]

 

 

You keep making that definitive statement that marines can only be fixed with a sweeping rewrite of the edition.

 

I keep rejecting that because you have yet to provide any support for that claim.

 

Just because you say it doesn't make it so. Support the claim!

Do you live under a rock where this game is balanced or do you not get how that one unit will always be mathematically superior in the game unless you add contextual problems to neutralize that difference? Let's say you bump up marines to toughness 5, two wounds, and even double their bolter shots at the same 13pmm cost. All that does is now make guardsmen suck arse because marines have become the most points efficient unit. The entire issue at hand is one of points efficiency, where one unit will always be the "objective best choice" for its FOC slot in a game where all that matters is the amount of bases you can slap down on the table pumping out the greatest amount of firepower. The reason why you need things such as suppression mechanics, LOS blocking smoke, morale, etc is to add the tactical depth that breaks down their absolute state of efficiency. And once you start cranking up stats you need to fiddle around with the points of everything to preserve some semblance of balance and prevent marines from turning into the 40k version of 30k's Custodes nonsense.

 

Besides, this doesn't fix anything in the long term either. 40k frankly has been fairly gakky for most of its existence, merely having a state of flux where there are objectively bad armies and objectively good armies in each edition because GW can't do their rudimentary jobs. Right now we marines are the ones getting slapped around, but if the response is purely a stat buff all that happens is shifting that imbalance onto somebody else. If you want marines to be good without screwing up other armies you need more tactical mechanics to give marines a function beyond relying on simplistic and crude durability and attack stats. My desire is for marines to be good due to added utility (and severely nerfing the superheavy meta), without punishing guard (or any other) players by making guardsmen squads objectively inferior choices to marine squads on a PPM basis. Every single unit needs to be an equally valid choice based on its function and FOC niche.

I think all you've done here (besides come off as terribly insulting) is prove that the problem might actually lie with the other unit, not Marines ;)

 

But I detest these sort of "it's obvious, can't you see it?" arguments. It's a lazy argument. If it's so obvious that you need to upend the entire game to solve it, then it shouldn't take so much effort to actually explain why it's obvious.

[Kallas]

I think all you've done here (besides come off as terribly insulting) is prove that the problem might actually lie with the other unit, not Marines

But I detest these sort of "it's obvious, can't you see it?" arguments. It's a lazy argument. If it's so obvious that you need to upend the entire game to solve it, then it shouldn't take so much effort to actually explain why it's obvious.

Well, it's either and/or both, really, because you can always buff one, nerf the other, or both.

 

As it stands, however, Marines don't stand up to many units at all. It's pretty much just Grots that are scared of actual Tactical Marines, and that's a pretty :cuss -y place to be.

[Captain Idaho]

=][= I'm closing this topic down due to the circular arguments getting nowhere. 8 pages on, there's nothing new to add at this point. =][=