No primarchs ...

[The Unseen]

8 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

Just to play devils advocate (because I only work witth Crusade, so I'm not as in tune with match victory conditions), isn't it usually controlling objectives that wins games, not killing things?

 

And if so, what's the OC of a Baneblade or knight or Guilliman compared to the OC of the average battleline unit?

Can't hold objectives when you're dead. And that's 10ths whole deal so far, baring a couple of outliers. Why bring battleline with marginally boosted OC, when you can instead take something with slightly less OC that just actually kills what enemy units are on the objective, and THEN take it. I think the 1 horrible but still technically functional Admech list does that. Just move blocks and holds objectives while failing to kill anything, but taking so long to die while literally just getting in the way that it outscores you. Please note, that nobody, not the Admech player, and not the Opponent, find this engaging or enjoyable, it just does technically work, if you hate yourself, your wallet, and your opponent.

[MysticTemplar]

On 4/29/2024 at 2:21 PM, TheArtilleryman said:

Drop Robot GirlyMan on the table and he’s harder to deal with than his equivalent points value in other units. The way this affects the game is when it makes such characters an auto-take in armies. The Lord Solar in IG is a prime example of this. I definitely think that tournaments should go back to the old “no named characters” rule that they used to have back in the day.

 

I don't think this would help anything - a lot of named Characters are bad!  From a design perspective they're useful for armies because it means that you can use them to provide a venue for effects that you don't want to appear multiple times in an army list.  There is nothing inherently unbalanced about a model having a personal name rather than just a rank or type.

 

To put it another way: A named character being an auto-take in armies isn't any different than when everyone is auto-taking some non-named unit because they're far and above better than the curve in their army list.  It's a weird hill to make your stand on.  (The first example that comes to mind is the prevalence of the Calidus Assassin, which is admittedly still an Epic Hero in that you're only allowed one of them, but is also definitely not a "Named Character".)

[jaxom]

1 hour ago, MysticTemplar said:

A named character being an auto-take in armies isn't any different than when everyone is auto-taking some non-named unit because they're far and above better than the curve in their army list.  It's a weird hill to make your stand on.  (The first example that comes to mind is the prevalence of the Calidus Assassin, which is admittedly still an Epic Hero in that you're only allowed one of them, but is also definitely not a "Named Character".

Apothecary Biologis, perhaps? Or the old, fire-and-forget Smash Captain? Or whatever that Tau command suit was? Really, it works for any extremely popular meta-unit which is too points-efficient for what it does. I think it just gets more attention when a named character is either too points-efficient ("Ventris is an autotake!") or the opposite ("The Lion is trash!").