Tau Codex Rules Preview

[ValourousHeart]

On 5/9/2024 at 5:21 AM, Karhedron said:

 

To give an example, Blood Angels Death Company can take a variety of melee wargear but always cost the same points. This means that everyone takes a Power Fist and Inferno Pistol on every model because they are the most effective weapons and there is no reason not to do so. You don't save any points by taking weaker options.

 

Oh I get that POV.  "There is only one good* choice and we all take it."  But we also tend to ignore the asterisk in that statement.  The one presuming an expected opponent.  I'll address this further in a minute.

 

But it doesn't really address the issue.  And at best it leaves you with a rather crappy dichotomy of cheap vs best.  We already saw what cheap looks like in 3rd edition.  Nobody took grenades because you saved 30 points off the cost of a 10 man tactically squad, which covered the costs of your special and heavy weapon.

 

Only focusing on the points cost can only take us so far.  And can't give a compelling reason for a 3rd or 4th choice which some units have.

 

On 5/9/2024 at 6:43 AM, chapter master 454 said:

as karhedron said, really. The other factor is that GW now seems to have given up trying to balance gear against each other because for whatever reason they can't seem to understand why people didn't want to shell out twice the cost of the model in points for a lascannon when you could take a meltagun for less than half the points and do the exact same thing.

 

Ah yes... the "everyone knows you always take Multi-meltas on your attack bikes."  A multi-melta or a heavy bolter should have been a more situational choice, but it wasn't... everyone always took multi-meltas.  But why?

 

Because of expected opponent.  Nobody was going to travel to a tournament with an all infantry ork army... because they wouldn't be able to get through their turns in the allotted time.

 

On 5/9/2024 at 6:48 AM, phandaal said:

No, everyone was not complaining about the existence of Points. If you recall, people were very happy when Games Workshop announced that Power Level was going away and Points would be the only system in 10th Edition. (And not so happy when it turned out Power Level was just getting renamed to Points.)

 

I wasn't saying people complained about the existence of points... they complained that the points on whatever unit was front and center this week either cost too many points or not enough.  It was a balancing act that GW was never going to get right because the system wasn't granular enough... and there is no one who is looking for 40k to add a couple of decimals to the standard game size for the same number of models.

 

I'm not sure why anyone was caught off guard by the power level being renamed points.  That is what AOS does.  And all of the communication from GW telegraphed that was their intention very clearly.

 

On 5/9/2024 at 6:56 AM, LSM said:

No-upgrades-cost works well in a system where various choices are balanced against one another (even if it's situational). 

 

It doesn't work when certain choices are just flatly better. When a model can take a Bolt Pistol or a Plasma Pistol, using the former is "wrong".

 

I'm hopeful that this can be fixed over time. For example, in Index: Necrons, Tomb Blades could take Shieldvanes - not replace something, just... they could or could not be equipped with Shieldvanes. Doing so gave them a 3+ save, not doing so kept their save at 4+. That's... a bad rule. However, in Codex: Necrons this was updated to giving a 3+ save and reducing movement from 12" to 8".

 

If Plasma weapons got rid of their "wimp mode" and went back to always getting hot, the Bolt Pistol would be a reasonable option again. Maybe not the best option, but at least reasonable. Or characters could get Master Crafted Bolt Pistols, with 2 shots, etc, etc. There are things that can be done.

 

Now we are getting to novel solutions.  If the only thing that can be changed is points... then we are stuck with bad weapon profiles.  But if all weapon options were balanced to be situationally optimal then we can make adjustments to profiles if a pairing is out of sorts.

 

On 5/9/2024 at 8:24 AM, Tokugawa said:

Once most people adapted to faster and easier points calculation, they don't want to look back.

 

Actually, since rules are written by human, all the options on one unit can't be equally useful. If a model could choose 1 from 7 options for its main gun, and each option is 0pts, then 5-6 of them would see no use. But if each one of the 7 option has different cost, like 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 15 and 25pts, then the final result would be 4-5 of them would see no use. 

 

Balance point between simplicity and fairness may be : +10~20 pts for the several best choices, other wargears 0pts.

 

That isn't what would happen.  People tend to do things for one reason... and it is a very stupid reason... it is because that is what they did before.  They pick a choice because of a bias, and then stick with that choice despite changing circumstances.

 

The way you balance things out is you start by identifying broad target groups.  In the past it was infantry and vehicles.  You could then further break that down into light transports and heavy tanks.

 

If one weapon choice is +10-20 points better than the other choices, some serious updates need to happen to those other weapon profiles.

 

On 5/9/2024 at 9:58 AM, Karhedron said:

That is very true but anti-tank weapons tend to kill more points than anti-infantry weapons each time they are fired. Plus most basic infantry squads come with anti-infantry guns anyway. This means that it is usually better to take the anti-tank option when it is available.

 

There are some exceptions such as Primaris Inceptors where GW have actually done a good job of balancing the bolter and plasma options. But on the whole, a lot of units with weapon options don't seem to have had the same level of balanvce applied.

 

Attack bikes had this issue.  3 in a unit with heavy bolters could really dent some infantry units.  But if they had good armor or multiple wounds, the attack bike squadron was unlikely to wipe the unit.  3 multi-meltas on the other hand was going to pop a tank.

 

Then came the invader ATVs... Those got the onslaught instead of the heavy bolter, and last edition had the autobolt rifles instead of bolters.  All that meant that they could be a real threat to infantry squads as well.  So you had the tactical choice of what roll you wanted your ATVs to play.

[Indy Techwisp]

Is it time to close this thread yet?

The codex has been out for a while now, the correct points are available and the full range of new Models are either out or on their way in the pre-order step, so it seems like there's nothing else for this thread to really discuss that's on topic.

[Guiltysparc]

I will say there is something to the expected army point being made above.  Tournaments and internet opinions/analysis on gear gets weighted too heavily by the community as a whole.  It really only applies to people playing the meta.  In my usual beer hammer games with friends, it's very possible that I could play against army that looks nothing like the meta and so taking meltas instead of bolters on my attack bikes might make no sense at all.  If I'm playing my buddy's X army and I know he doesn't have a lot of vehicles, I'm going to adjust loadouts for that, and, if I'm being honest, I like not having to fiddle with points to do that.