Thoughts on Invulnerable Saves and Command Points

[kombatwombat]

The issue there isn’t with flanking not mechanically working but with the sheer first-turn lethality. Toning that down opens up a lot of other mechanics to working much better.

 

Knights did also have an odd firing arc, which while it didn’t gel very well with the physical model, had a nice side effect of forcing the knight to turn and face its target, which opened up its flank for return fire.

 

I see the 7th Ed ion shield mechanic working well in 30k, though that is certainly helped by 30k having a lower first turn lethality than either 7th or 8th Ed 40k, so you have time to move and counter-move.

[Panzer]

That I can agree on.

[MARK0SIAN]

 

There's no issue with invuls now. The real enemy are hit modifyers.

There is, but only on units that are already tough, have lots of wounds and a good armour save - namely Knights and Daemon Primarchs. Blocking low-volume high-impact shots can be downright obnoxious on a model that small arms only wound on 6s and medium weapons wound on 5s.

But knights and other superheavies are meant to be tough and difficult to kill! That’s the whole point! Without a lot of wounds, an invulnerable and T8 a knight would be dead in turn one every single time, they already die in turn 1 or 2 as it is.

 

No invulnerable? Plasma and lascannon eat them alive.

No T8? Bolters are wounding them on 5

No 3+? Only a 50% chance of saving even a lasgun shot and anything with even -1 AP means it’ll saving everything on its invulnerable save.

 

It sounds like you’re complaining that small arms don’t have more than 1/3 chance of wounding a titanic superheavy that costs around 400 points. Or that high damage anti-armour weapons don’t have a guarantee of killing a big unit.

 

Everything already dies super quick this edition and means games are over by turn two. We shouldn’t be complaining that stuff is too difficult to kill, we should be trying to make a lot of stuff harder to kill.

[Panzer]

 

 

There's no issue with invuls now. The real enemy are hit modifyers.

There is, but only on units that are already tough, have lots of wounds and a good armour save - namely Knights and Daemon Primarchs. Blocking low-volume high-impact shots can be downright obnoxious on a model that small arms only wound on 6s and medium weapons wound on 5s.

But knights and other superheavies are meant to be tough and difficult to kill! That’s the whole point! Without a lot of wounds, an invulnerable and T8 a knight would be dead in turn one every single time, they already die in turn 1 or 2 as it is.

 

No invulnerable? Plasma and lascannon eat them alive.

No T8? Bolters are wounding them on 5

No 3+? Only a 50% chance of saving even a lasgun shot and anything with even -1 AP means it’ll saving everything on its invulnerable save.

 

It sounds like you’re complaining that small arms don’t have more than 1/3 chance of wounding a titanic superheavy that costs around 400 points. Or that high damage anti-armour weapons don’t have a guarantee of killing a big unit.

 

Everything already dies super quick this edition and means games are over by turn two. We shouldn’t be complaining that stuff is too difficult to kill, we should be trying to make a lot of stuff harder to kill.

 

 

I'm fine with Knights being tough as nails but they should also cost accordingly. Point for point they are more durable than basically any other unit while doing good damage and also have access to Stratagems, Warlord traits and relics that make them even tougher which other super heavies don't get. ^^

[Ishagu]

I don't think Knights are particularly durable now. If you want one destroyed it can be done in a turn or two.

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

 

 

There's no issue with invuls now. The real enemy are hit modifyers.

There is, but only on units that are already tough, have lots of wounds and a good armour save - namely Knights and Daemon Primarchs. Blocking low-volume high-impact shots can be downright obnoxious on a model that small arms only wound on 6s and medium weapons wound on 5s.

But knights and other superheavies are meant to be tough and difficult to kill! That’s the whole point! Without a lot of wounds, an invulnerable and T8 a knight would be dead in turn one every single time, they already die in turn 1 or 2 as it is.

 

No invulnerable? Plasma and lascannon eat them alive.

No T8? Bolters are wounding them on 5

No 3+? Only a 50% chance of saving even a lasgun shot and anything with even -1 AP means it’ll saving everything on its invulnerable save.

 

It sounds like you’re complaining that small arms don’t have more than 1/3 chance of wounding a titanic superheavy that costs around 400 points. Or that high damage anti-armour weapons don’t have a guarantee of killing a big unit.

 

Everything already dies super quick this edition and means games are over by turn two. We shouldn’t be complaining that stuff is too difficult to kill, we should be trying to make a lot of stuff harder to kill.

I'm fine with Knights being tough as nails but they should also cost accordingly. Point for point they are more durable than basically any other unit while doing good damage and also have access to Stratagems, Warlord traits and relics that make them even tougher which other super heavies don't get. ^^

I agree but my solution would be to improve other superheavies rather than nerf knights. I actually think knights point costs are fine, it’s other units that are overcosted which make knights seem too good.

[kombatwombat]

Knights being so durable has the very unpleasant side effect of utterly invalidating every other big model in the game without at least two or preferably three of 24+ wounds, Invul and T8. Land Raider? Pointless. Repulsor? Paperweight. Monolith? Laughable. Armies are built around the idea of ‘need to kill a 4++ Castellan turn 1’. If you can do that you can kill 2 Land Raiders T1.

 

The overall lethality of the game needs to come down, but big models will remain useless so long as people are gearing up to kill knights when they’re an outlier in durability. Alternatively, bring the durability of everything else up and leave Knights as is. Not sure which path is easier tbh.

[MARK0SIAN]

Knights being so durable has the very unpleasant side effect of utterly invalidating every other big model in the game without at least two or preferably three of 24+ wounds, Invul and T8. Land Raider? Pointless. Repulsor? Paperweight. Monolith? Laughable. Armies are built around the idea of ‘need to kill a 4++ Castellan turn 1’. If you can do that you can kill 2 Land Raiders T1.

 

The overall lethality of the game needs to come down, but big models will remain useless so long as people are gearing up to kill knights when they’re an outlier in durability. Alternatively, bring the durability of everything else up and leave Knights as is. Not sure which path is easier tbh.

I’d favour bringing everything else up in durability.

 

What you say about killing a Castellan in turn one is essentially the problem as far as I’m concerned. The fact that most armies can put together a list that has no problem killing a Castellan in turn 1, without significantly hampering the rest of their army, is ridiculous.

 

I know a lot of people disagree with that, but if I phrased it slightly differently (but still accuarately) by saying: most armies can easily put together that easily kills 1/3 of an opponents army. Then it seems clear to me there is an issue with those big models being too easy to kill and/or everything else being too deadly.

 

Survivability doesn’t scale with points in this edition and it really needs to.

[Finkmilkana]

 

 

I’d favour bringing everything else up in durability.

 

What you say about killing a Castellan in turn one is essentially the problem as far as I’m concerned. The fact that most armies can put together a list that has no problem killing a Castellan in turn 1, without significantly hampering the rest of their army, is ridiculous.

 

I know a lot of people disagree with that, but if I phrased it slightly differently (but still accuarately) by saying: most armies can easily put together that easily kills 1/3 of an opponents army. Then it seems clear to me there is an issue with those big models being too easy to kill and/or everything else being too deadly.

 

Survivability doesn’t scale with points in this edition and it really needs to.

The problem is that big models (even with degradation, though loyalist knights are obviously worse) are somewhat of an all or nothing deal.

 

Killing half a knight? Useless.

 

Killing 200 out of 400 points of infantry or 1 out of 2 smaller tanks? Potentially a big blow to the opponent, both in firepower and board control. If you can specifically eliminate those units that can threaten whatever you have on the relevant flank, it might even be crippling.

 

Unless they greatly ramp up degradation, large models need to be relatively at least somewhat easier to kill than the same points in cheaper models.

[Panzer]

Killing half a Knight is not useless though. It reduces it's efficiency drastically unless your opponent keeps feeding it CP ... and if he has 2+ half-killed Knights he can only apply it to one of them. That's pretty much the whole reason why big models got degrading profiles this edition.

[Closet Skeleton]

 

 

IMO invulnerable saves aren’t an issue with the weight of fire available to most forces. If anything I’d say there are quite a few units in the game that should get an invulnerable save that don’t already have one because (as The Unseen says) any expensive model without one just dies to a stiff breeze.

This. A prime example is the primaris dreadnought, it cost a ton of points and dies easilly due to no invuln. To a degree Bjorn also falls into this as he is a venerable dreadnought that lacks a invulnerability and dies to mass fire, only surviving because people hide him behind troops that do have a invuln save.

Exactly. The way the ‘To Wound’ table works (and the fact that everything can wound everything) along with the AP mechanic in use this edition means it is way too easy to inflict wounds on big models like vehicles. Add in the increase in volume of fire and rerolls and it almost becomes a farce.

 

It’s made good armour worth a lot less than it used to be and means units that you would never dream of needing an invulnerable in a previous edition, desperately need one to be survivable.

 

 

2+ saves have always been worthless outside of pure terminator armies and the days of 4+ cover ruins made the whole AP system irrelevant half the time.

 

Tanks can be killed easily in 8th but they still feel tougher than previous editions when they would blow up in one hit all the time.

[Finkmilkana]

Killing half a Knight is not useless though. It reduces it's efficiency drastically unless your opponent keeps feeding it CP ... and if he has 2+ half-killed Knights he can only apply it to one of them. That's pretty much the whole reason why big models got degrading profiles this edition.

A CP for fighting a 400-700 points at full strength is not really a large cost. Sure, if he has 2+ half killed knights he can’t do it to both, but at that point the enemy clearly also had the firepower to completely kill 1 knight, so why is it even relevant to the discussion whether being able to kill a knight in 1-2 turns is required? 2+ half killed knights are also still far far stronger than 1 healthy knight.

And even without the CP, 50% wounds left decreases its efficiency by only 1/4, compared to the often more than 50% of killing those smaller units that would counter it. And if it’s at 50%+1 wound, it doesn’t reduce its efficiency at all.

Note that I’m not saying killing a knight in 1-2 turns when focused is really great, but as long as knights are both good offensively and only ‘die’ in big chunks of points because degradation is so inconsequential, it is kinda required. Believe me, I would love it if packing less anti tank and still having a fighting chance would be viable.

 

Though I just noticed that we are kinda moving away from the original point of the topic, which was invuln saves, not how durable super heavies are. Sorry for that. Maybe we should split this discussion off into a different threat if there is more to say on it and otherwise try to love back to the main topic.