Horus Heresy Solar Auxilia Hermes Light Sentinel

[Marshal Rohr]

53 minutes ago, Razorblade said:

But this is not about Mathhammer/waac. This is about any painfully average Legion list obliterating even fairly optimized Auxilia lists.

Balance between the Factione at this point is only achievable if each player limits themselves to a miniscule portion of their available units which is the opposite of what thematic/fun gaming should be. 

 

I get that people are excited for the model, they're adorable little duck-walkers. I'd just be nice if they'd actually be useful on the table

An average legion list should obliterate mortal human troops. Even the elite ones. Average Custodes obliterate legionaries. 
 

Asymmetry is a feature not a bug. You need to play different missions or vary points per side of you aren’t having fun. 

Edited February 2 by Marshal Rohr

[Razorblade]

4 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

An average legion list should obliterate mortal human troops. Even the elite ones. Average Custodes obliterate legionaries. 
 

Asymmetry is a feature not a bug. You need to play different missions or vary points per side of you aren’t having fun. 

That is complete and utter BS.

The points system exists specifically to enable balanced okay between asymmetrical units.

[Marshal Rohr]

Sounds like you should rework your list then! Good news, you’ll be able to have way more Lasrifles now in plastic. 

[SgtSharp]

31 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

An average legion list should obliterate mortal human troops. Even the elite ones. Average Custodes obliterate legionaries. 
 

Asymmetry is a feature not a bug. You need to play different missions or vary points per side of you aren’t having fun. 

It is fine for a tactical squad to beat the same size of Lasrifle section, that is fluffy and not necissarily bad game design, it just leads to asymmetry i.e. Solar Aux get more models, or get to bring stronger units from their line up to counter the superiority of the basic astates, if we are playing the same amount of points we should be weilding at least a simular amount of power.

 

The problem is that the same amount of points does not lead to both players wielding simular amounts of power, unless the Solar Aux list is way mopre optimised than the marines list then they have a distinct disadvantage, this is bad game design, no ways about it.

[SkimaskMohawk]

18 minutes ago, Matcap86 said:

 

I mean LVO lists or pretty much any other tournament/event style of play has absolutely 0 bearing on my own games or those of my game groups; it's actually kind of frowned upon.

 

Well you straight up claimed the game was narratively focused, so I talked about the narrative event as a metric of what that "narrative focus" actually ends up looking like. If youre only talking about your group, good on you, but then you should realize that it can be different for other groups. In my city there's a number of different 30k groups, with people who participate in all of them; none of them do the style of play/social frowning that you guys do. We buy stuff that has a function for our lists.

 

1 hour ago, Matcap86 said:

As I said; lots, maybe the majority (in my experience), play the game narratively/thematically and not math-hammer/tournament style.

 

And the opposite is true in my experience. 

 

1 hour ago, Matcap86 said:

If you want to be preemptively disappointed in the release. Go right ahead.

 

But declaring it unplayable while plenty of people are eager to get the kit and use it in their armies seems a bit premature to say the least.

 

Let me be very clear. People are free to be eager to buy the model and never build it. People are free to be eager  build and paint it and have it sit as part of their collection. People are free to be eager to play with it in their games because having these on the table will certainly look cool. 

 

But objectively, this ranged unit doesn't offer any role that the army isn't already super saturated with. This faction has very noticeable balance issues, and people who value having a more fair game would have liked to see this new unit addressing some of those issues. It doesn't though; it doesn't help the factions level playability in proportion to marines, Custodes, and mechanicum.

[Marshal Rohr]

22 minutes ago, SgtSharp said:

It is fine for a tactical squad to beat the same size of Lasrifle section, that is fluffy and not necissarily bad game design, it just leads to asymmetry i.e. Solar Aux get more models, or get to bring stronger units from their line up to counter the superiority of the basic astates, if we are playing the same amount of points we should be weilding at least a simular amount of power.

 

The problem is that the same amount of points does not lead to both players wielding simular amounts of power, unless the Solar Aux list is way mopre optimised than the marines list then they have a distinct disadvantage, this is bad game design, no ways about it.

For 330 Points you get 60 Auxiliaries shooting 120 Str 3 Shots at 30 Inches or 60 Str 6 shots at 18 Inches. For 300 Points you get 30 Legionaries shooting 60 Str 4 Shots at 12 Inches or 30 Str 4 Shots at 24 Inches. Seems pretty balanced at the most basic level. And you can only ever fit 120 Marines into your Troops but you can 360 Auxiliaries into your troops and still have 1000 points left for other things in a 3000 point game. 
 

When the new edition dropped and the Mech and Solar Aux lists came out and everyone was complaining about how not lethal everything was, I said it’s because they expect you to take more of some things once they come out in plastic, and I was right. Solar Aux isn’t as lethal because nothing is as lethal, but when you buy the units in the volume plastic allows the performance gap narrows significantly. No one was taking 12 Castellax or whatever because it was a bajillion dollars but now you very much can take 12 Castellax and 18 Thallax and still have points to take multiple Thanatar or whatever the most deadly robot is once they arrive in plastic. 

Edited February 2 by Marshal Rohr

[SgtSharp]

21 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

For 330 Points you get 60 Auxiliaries shooting 120 Str 3 Shots at 30 Inches or 60 Str 6 shots at 18 Inches. For 300 Points you get 30 Legionaries shooting 60 Str 4 Shots at 12 Inches or 30 Str 4 Shots at 24 Inches. Seems pretty balanced at the most basic level. And you can only ever fit 120 Marines into your Troops but you can 360 Auxiliaries into your troops and still have 1000 points left for other things in a 3000 point game. 
 

When the new edition dropped and the Mech and Solar Aux lists came out and everyone was complaining about how not lethal everything was, I said it’s because they expect you to take more of some things once they come out in plastic, and I was right. Solar Aux isn’t as lethal because nothing is as lethal, but when you buy the units in the volume plastic allows the performance gap narrows significantly. No one was taking 12 Castellax or whatever because it was a bajillion dollars but now you very much can take 12 Castellax and 18 Thallax and still have points to take multiple Thanatar or whatever the most deadly robot is once they arrive in plastic. 

And to fire their guns the Lasrifle men have to waddle like they have soiled themselves about at 3 inches a turn and cannot run at all unless you take one particular cohort doctrine.

 

Meanwhile the Tacs can have a nice lesurely stroll at 7 inches a turn, can run, and also have the ability to fury if they stayed still, as well as heart of the legion. and get a save against ap4 weapons, and outside of niche results don't get IDed by strength 6 weapons, or by strength 4 weapons in those niche cases, and are harder to wound by a fair number of weapons, including the bolter. and hit more often, and have twice the unit coherency rannge

Edited February 2 by SgtSharp
forgot something, also formatting

[Marshal Rohr]

Just now, SgtSharp said:

And to fire their guns the Lasrifle men have to waddle like they have soiled themselves about at 3 inches a turn and cannot run at all unless you take one particular cohort doctrine, meanwhile the Tacs can have a nice lesurely stroll at 7 inches a turn, can run, and also have the ability to fury if they stayed still, as well as heart of the legion. and get a save against ap4 weapons, and outside of niche results don't get IDed by strength 6 weapons, or by strength 4 weapons in those niche cases, and are harder to wound by a fair number of weapons, including the bolter.

And there are still only 30 of them. 

[SgtSharp]

7 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

And there are still only 30 of them. 

and the rest of the army, just in the same slot marines can take breachers, assault squads, despoilers, tac support, recons. all sorts of things which can play havoc, yes, lasrifle squads if just allowed to gun down tacticals can, but they also get killed excessively well by a lot of things, and solar aux cant return the favour

Edited February 2 by SgtSharp

[Marshal Rohr]

1 minute ago, SgtSharp said:

and the rest of the army

That only supports my point. 
 

If you fundamentally cannot understand Solar Auxilia is twice as many, half as fast, with six inches of reach on a comparable amount of marines and think that’s just some random coincidence, I don’t know what to tell you. 

[Matcap86]

59 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Snip 

 

"It probably doesn't fill the gap in the army that I see/would like to have seen". Is quite different from "completely unplayable, even though I haven't seen the rules yet". That was my point.

 

No one is arguing that different gaming groups don't have different gaming styles.

 

Though compared to 40k the HH community is generally far more narratively focused from what I've seen both on and offline and at events. Even if there are variations in level of list building and meta chasing among groups (of course).

Edited February 2 by Matcap86

[SgtSharp]

41 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

That only supports my point. 
 

If you fundamentally cannot understand Solar Auxilia is twice as many, half as fast, with six inches of reach on a comparable amount of marines and think that’s just some random coincidence, I don’t know what to tell you. 

 yes if the marine play compliantly builds to allow me to counter his list and plays to let me do that thing I will win, you are correct, but any army will, and the problem is, they aren't going to do that.

As i stated, both lists compose of more than tac squads and lasrifle sections. most people aren't taking marines to play Napoleonics with tac marines, if that is how you play, more power too you.

Edited February 2 by SgtSharp
comma, and ics

[WrathOfTheLion]

4 minutes ago, SgtSharp said:

 yes if the marine play compliantly builds to allow me to counter his list and plays to let me do that thing I will win, you are correct, but any army will, and the problem is, they aren't going to do that.

As i stated, both lists compose of more than tac squads and lasrifle sections. most people aren't taking marines to play Napoleon with tac marines, if that is how you play, more power too you.

Napoleon was originally an artillery commander, so perhaps not the best analogy :)  *

But that is what the Stormwing Right of War is for in Dark Angels. One day that'll see the field 

 

* As a fun fact for us here as a wargame, from now going back to Napoleon's time, artillery has stayed fairly constant as the primary source of casualties/cause of damage.

Edited February 2 by WrathOfTheLion

[SgtSharp]

3 minutes ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

Napoleon was originally an artillery commander, so perhaps not the best analogy :)
 

yeah, was meant to be Napoleonics, but my inability to type won out.

[OttoVonAwesome]

1 hour ago, Razorblade said:

But this is not about Mathhammer/waac. This is about any painfully average Legion list obliterating even fairly optimized Auxilia lists.

Balance between the Factione at this point is only achievable if each player limits themselves to a miniscule portion of their available units which is the opposite of what thematic/fun gaming should be. 

 

I get that people are excited for the model, they're adorable little duck-walkers. I'd just be nice if they'd actually be useful on the table

It's a good thing allies exist to shore up those weaknesses in your lists huh. Grinding through masses of scoring infantry with 4+ saves isn't a cake walk especially when a return fire or overwatch has you potentially seeing up to 60 str 6 shots coming your way up to 120 at +1 bs if it's an Ultramar pattern cohort. Hope you got tons of heavy bolters in your list if your going up against that but prolly not cuase gross those don't erase marines no way your gonna have any of those stinky artillery tanks they don't have Ap 2 either. It's a pretty big exaggeration to say average legion lists are obliterating auxilia and these sentinels are useless when we are talking about a game with list construction that is very much rock paper scissors and completely open and unrestricted.

 

Sure the Solar Aux could use a few more things to even the playing field within thier own list like special weapon support squads but I'm 100% sure those sentinels will still be useful as hell in lots of situations especially as the meta evolves when more armies like the Skitarrii, Dark Admech and Imperial Army are added that don't have 3+ armour saves. So many people have this view of what's good and what isn't because thier meta has them always looking for that rock to smash scissors cuase no one ever does paper. 

[Razorblade]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

For 330 Points you get 60 Auxiliaries shooting 120 Str 3 Shots at 30 Inches or 60 Str 6 shots at 18 Inches. For 300 Points you get 30 Legionaries shooting 60 Str 4 Shots at 12 Inches or 30 Str 4 Shots at 24 Inches. Seems pretty balanced at the most basic level. And you can only ever fit 120 Marines into your Troops but you can 360 Auxiliaries into your troops and still have 1000 points left for other things in a 3000 point game. 
 

When the new edition dropped and the Mech and Solar Aux lists came out and everyone was complaining about how not lethal everything was, I said it’s because they expect you to take more of some things once they come out in plastic, and I was right. Solar Aux isn’t as lethal because nothing is as lethal, but when you buy the units in the volume plastic allows the performance gap narrows significantly. No one was taking 12 Castellax or whatever because it was a bajillion dollars but now you very much can take 12 Castellax and 18 Thallax and still have points to take multiple Thanatar or whatever the most deadly robot is once they arrive in plastic. 

Except that whole point is again BS because even when compared to tactical marines (one of the worst legion units in terms of output and the best target for mass lasrifles your going to find in a legion list) equal points of lasrifles are loosing the shootout. That is in addition to being slower, worse in Melee and lacking HotL

[Razorblade]

3 minutes ago, OttoVonAwesome said:

It's a good thing allies exist to shore up those weaknesses in your lists huh. Grinding through masses of scoring infantry with 4+ saves isn't a cake walk especially when a return fire or overwatch has you potentially seeing up to 60 str 6 shots coming your way up to 120 at +1 bs if it's an Ultramar pattern cohort. Hope you got tons of heavy bolters in your list if your going up against that but prolly not cuase gross those don't erase marines no way your gonna have any of those stinky artillery tanks they don't have Ap 2 either. It's a pretty big exaggeration to say average legion lists are obliterating auxilia and these sentinels are useless when we are talking about a game with list construction that is very much rock paper scissors and completely open and unrestricted.

Except the scoring is worthless because the legion infantry is going to be on those objectives first and you have no way to remove them because auxilia socks at Melee. Those 60 Shots assume you can line them up and haven't suffered casualties (not happening). Even if you pull that off you're killing 8 Marines, fewer if they're in hotL range and/or have an apo. 

Assuming 15 marines (half as many points as those 60 lasrifles) charged, the remaining 7 will still comfortably butcher whatever they connect with. 

It's not an exaggeration. In fact I could post any of my legion Lists right now and be confident that even knowing the List it would be impossible to come up with an auxilia list that could beat it.

[SgtSharp]

I got so distracted with internal balance that I forgot to comment on the actual topic, so here it is:

 

I'm not sure about the little duck, either from a narative or gameplay perspective, I'm not sure there is a capabilities gap for them to fill, especially the velesarii model, and I'm not overly a fan of the regular version which is a shame as I think I the gl be the only one there may be a proper niche for.... IDK, we will see when we see their weapons stats.

[Marshal Rohr]

49 minutes ago, Razorblade said:

Except the scoring is worthless because the legion infantry is going to be on those objectives first and you have no way to remove them because auxilia socks at Melee. Those 60 Shots assume you can line them up and haven't suffered casualties (not happening). Even if you pull that off you're killing 8 Marines, fewer if they're in hotL range and/or have an apo. 

Assuming 15 marines (half as many points as those 60 lasrifles) charged, the remaining 7 will still comfortably butcher whatever they connect with. 

It's not an exaggeration. In fact I could post any of my legion Lists right now and be confident that even knowing the List it would be impossible to come up with an auxilia list that could beat it.

The 15 marines can only ever charge 20 Auxiliaries at one time. Assuming they survive the reaction, a Tercio is 3 units so you could disordered charge into two sections if you wanted, but why would you? 

Edited February 2 by Marshal Rohr

[Razorblade]

54 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

The 15 marines can only ever charge 20 Auxiliaries at one time. Assuming they survive the reaction, a Tercio is 3 units so you could disordered charge into two sections if you wanted, but why would you? 

Because even on a disordered charge they'll outkill them 4:1 on average and probably sweep the whole bunch

[Marshal Rohr]

They might out kill them 4:1. You fundamentally misunderstand how mortal forces are supposed to play in the Heresy. It’s not 40K where they are plasma delivery systems or whatever the most meta special weapon is, they’re supposed to get high quantity dice rolls off once or twice and be arranged in depth while the high strength, low cost tanks and artillery chip away at the lethal stuff. That’s how the army plays, that’s how it’s intended to play and it’s meant to be assymetric. If you army isn’t effective you don’t have enough bodies screening your tanks. 
 

You can take 180 Auxiliaries, 9 Leman Russ, and 3 Medusa for around 2800 points. That’s enough dice per turn you should substantially reduce even optimized marines over 6 turns and that is with zero optimization. It’s about Volume. That’s the intention. If you aren’t playing with volume you are missing the point

[SkimaskMohawk]

I don't think people misunderstood the intent on the 2nd solar aux. Obviously all the artillery and almost every tank is garbage to rely on individually. Obviously "only" 80 auxilia can't be trusted to survive in the face of every weapon getting better (at least against them) and cover getting worse. Obviously the tercio rules really incentivize taking overwhelming amounts of low quality units. And so, obviously, the intent is to flood the board with so much nonsense that you can outlast your opponent. I don't think that concept actually escaped the attention of people looking at the list.

 

They just disagree with the decision in the first place. Going from big book tanks being screened by mooks to torrent of mid strength bad ap isn't the guard fantasy people bought into back in 2015; that's straight up Orks, but with no melee spike to compensate. People dont want their lasguns to kill cataphractii better than the medusa. People don't agree that the solution to making their army have the best of a bad chance is to buy 180 infantry minimum and then just max out on the best quality weapons to get close to an even experience. And people certainly don't agree that it's fair for new game devs to encourage rules churn to fit a never before standard of "makes narrative sense". 

 

The design feature is bad game design and anti-consumer at its core. Video game devs that make systems that are unfun for the user and encourage ridiculous spending get called out all the time, especially when it's also a drastic redesign of previously established norms. Being deliberate is more of a detriment than it being some sort of cascade of mistakes (though I strongly believe it is just that).

 

I'll try and illustrate the "buy new model" dilemma. If you need to buy all new heavy supports to fit the revamped "spam :cuss:" design ethos and were lacking on Russes, it costs $720cad before taxes to get those 9 tanks. Or, it costs a ruinous $2025 to get the maxed rapiers that allows you to go all the way into imo, their best build. This is on top of the duders you may need to hit critical mass, when you can cram roughly 200+ into either version of the list; let's say another 5 boxes of 20 (were being generous with the las sections) at a guestimate same cost as the mk 3 of $90 cad a box for another $450 chunk. This is for a preexisting owner to now play the "totally always intended mega-horde solar aux quantity spam" style to get on an even playing field according to some. 

 

 

Edited February 3 by SkimaskMohawk

[Petitioner's City]

I think it's more that they took away so much from the earlier auxilia, and presented a dry, optionless list too.

 

There are what four or five things which are good in an auxilia list? Vanquisher and Executioner Russ, carnodon with triple volkite, laser destroyer rapier, thunderbolt and - maybe - mooks en masse.

 

Everything else kinda sucks, because of a mix of (a) points are too high in general and (b) rules are not great.

 

Even those good options are overpointed versus marines equivalents - as they lack BS4, and Legiones Astartes (x). Even the basic mook is 5 points, and a tactical marine (without LA (x)) is far better than two of them will ever be (never mind a dark angels inductii with free volkite charger, for 10 points!). Veletarii are cool, but a veletarii with volkite is 8 points; a support squad marine with volkite charger is 12 points. It is a theme which continues. For example, a marine laser destroyer (bs 4, with LA (X)) is 65 points, a solar Aux one (bs3) is 60 points. 

 

Edit - I guess plasma or melta companions are nice, but also pricey too at 22 or 27 points per model. While the refractor is nice, and wounds, companions are still a t3 squishy platform, versus a support marine with LA(x) at same costs.

 

Overall, the auxilia costs and list hasn't been balanced against marines. Dare I say it, I'm not sure it was in any way playtested against marines - certainly not against the many different builds that can easily outclass them.

 

Or the worse possibility - it was playtested and a list which loses most of the time was thought ok?

Edited February 3 by Lord_Ikka

[Lord_Ikka]

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