How would you make the Solar Auxilia more "competitive"?

[Brofist]

I'm of the opinion that every army should be able to stand against the others in some way. It might only be a few specific lists, but there should be balance among the army lists.

[Noserenda]

Ha, yeah template spam is bad, but only because the template rules are bad, and its far too late to just squat off inconvenient units, especially when they have long been a fluffy choice for Iron Warriors. The ideal solution would be fixing/removing blast templates but gotta hook the "nostalgia".  Thats speaking as someone who's missile launcher heavy supports never fired frag because screw that noise :D 

There is a simple lampshade you could use though, Legion artillery units are dropping out of favour (For rockets and the like) and using defunct kit or different shells that are lighter for more range or something, whilst the army has specialised more in that direction and has the cutting edge boom shells.

[WolfLogic]

2 minutes ago, Brofist said:

I'm of the opinion that every army should be able to stand against the others in some way.

Same, in a perfect world every unit would be viable and sensibly costed, taking into account their staying power, damage output, or special rules they inherently have. Every weapon option would fill a niche that it excels in, whether that be through numbers, weight of fire, or potency. 
 

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and instead got some pretty questionable decisions on the part of GW that can potentially diminish people’s enjoyment of the hobby.  
 

Luckily the HH tabletop community is primarily a narrative one, and homebrew rules are widely accepted. 

[Astartes Consul]

On 4/27/2023 at 4:11 PM, WolfLogic said:

Pretty regularly I've seen that the Solar Auxilia just doesn't hold up rules-wise when playing against the Legions. What changes to the rules would you make to make them more able to compete. I'm also curious to hear what other changes you might make to the Solar Aux rules. For example, I'd change the transport capacity of a Dracosan with a Demolisher Cannon to 12 instead of 10. 

 

Make the models affordable so that the kind of list that has enough bodies to take on a Legion list is financially viable.

 

Also, maybe Sentinels / Weapons Platforms to provide some more AP2?

[WolfLogic]

2 minutes ago, Astartes Consul said:

 

Make the models affordable so that the kind of list that has enough bodies to take on a Legion list is financially viable.

 

Also, maybe Sentinels / Weapons Platforms to provide some more AP2?

Just move some of them to plastic, everyone I know who has seen the Solar Aux loves the models. I’m sure they’d sell like crazy. 
 

The Lasrifle Section, Veletaris Storm Section and a Tactical Command Section with special weapon options.  

[WolfLogic]

Was looking for videos about the HH tabletop and found the video The Outer Circle recently put out about AP4 and it's effect on Solar Aux, Militia, and Daemons. It raised a lot of good points, so many weapons are AP4 that it makes a 4+ save rather pointless. 

 

An idea I have to fix this is the following:

Make sure all artillery has a unique unit type or rule. 

Each army, and it differs by army, can only take X percent of their total points with units with the unique unit type/rule

 

Not sure I worded that the best so I'll give an example

A 2000 point Solar Auxilia list can take 35% of those points as units with the ARTILLERY type/rule

A 2000 point Legiones Astartes list can take 15% of those points as units with the Artillery type/rule

 

Might take a bit of playtesting to make it balanced, but I thought it might work if you revert back to AP2 blast and add that rule

[Gorgoff]

On 4/28/2023 at 11:32 PM, WolfLogic said:

I think the easier solution would be to make a few retcons to try and distance the wargear Solar Aux and the Legions use from each other. 

Make it so the Legions either stopped using the Basilisk, Medusa, and Malcador long before the Heresy and so that they don’t have any left in their armories. 

 

It really wouldn’t be that big of a deal IMO. 

Except for sll those Legion players like me who have spend hundreds of money to own these models you just casually want to take away.

 

On 4/28/2023 at 11:33 PM, Lord Marshal said:

 

Not sure I agree with this. Militia is looking stronger than SA

 

Funny enough the militia players complain about SA being so much better and more cost effective.

 

On 4/28/2023 at 11:44 PM, WolfLogic said:

This is exactly why I don’t take 10-man Plasma Cannon Heavy Support Squads. I find it rude to expect my opponent to wait for me to do 10 scatter rolls, “argue” over how many models are covered by the pie plate, then I might get to do it all again next turn. Sounds like a good way to have people not want to play you tbh. 

Lay the template down how you want.

"This way I hit three" for example.

Take ten scatter dice and throw them at once. 

It cuts the work quite significantly. 

And of course one shouldn't be a dick about how many you hit when you shoot ten templates. 

 

7 hours ago, WolfLogic said:

Was looking for videos about the HH tabletop and found the video The Outer Circle recently put out about AP4 and it's effect on Solar Aux, Militia, and Daemons. It raised a lot of good points, so many weapons are AP4 that it makes a 4+ save rather pointless. 

 

An idea I have to fix this is the following:

Make sure all artillery has a unique unit type or rule. 

Each army, and it differs by army, can only take X percent of their total points with units with the unique unit type/rule

 

Not sure I worded that the best so I'll give an example

A 2000 point Solar Auxilia list can take 35% of those points as units with the ARTILLERY type/rule

A 2000 point Legiones Astartes list can take 15% of those points as units with the Artillery type/rule

 

Might take a bit of playtesting to make it balanced, but I thought it might work if you revert back to AP2 blast and add that rule

Going back to older edition rules where Artillery only hit the level in a building you were aming at and can't hit models under roofs at all. Artillery only became problematic when they changed the rules for terrain.

 

How I would fix the balance is simple:

Raise point costs of everything.

Standard gaming size would be 30.000 (obviously).

A tactical squad comes at 300 (just an example). So one tac is 30 points.

This way you have way more juggling room to balance things out.

[OttoVonAwesome]

Large artillery and battle cannons need breaching 5+. It's absurd they don't. When they nerfed down the plasma guns they should have taken the same approach with the large artillery tone down the killing power but not so much as to make them crap. That alone would be enough but also SA just lacks unit diversity that they should have. 

 

More support squad options like Melta and Plasma squads, Snipers all things they really should have but never got for some reason.

 

That dude that was cut who had the exo suit... What a cool idea that was. Giving the SA an exosuit unit would be incredibly cool and a neat way to distinguish them from the second line guard and third line militia as a more high tech human force. 

[Pacific81]

On 4/27/2023 at 11:03 PM, Marshal Rohr said:

 

And if you take 300 Auxiliaries and 12 Tanks in a 3500 list, you will win the game. People cant afford the size armies needed to balance the killiness of marines. 

 

When you get to this point, unless you are sort of painting machine, this is arguably where the thread about the Epic HH game comes in..