What, if anything, should GW do about Legends

[HeadlessCross]

2 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

And frankly Knights have no place outside of Apocalypse.

Why? Because you say so?

[Dr. Clock]

4 hours ago, Orion said:

A new hobbiest doesn't need every option to enjoy a unit.

The problem was never so much with the basic 'pair of specialists' troops... I don't think that's the main issue people are focusing on as [borderline] predatory. The problem was with the 'modeler's dream' units where you could in theory take 'any loadout on any guy', but in practice it meant that the unit was either a useless dog's breakfast or an insanely specialized nightmare depending on how much money you wanted to throw away on a unit (or 3).

 

Yes - poorhammer conversions and kitbashing were important motivators for many of us grognards, but I kind of like that it doesn't feel as necessary because there are actually just more kits that I can build and paint without worrying much about how I can arm swap them into something better or spend 50% more on bits to get the meta build. My conversions now all tend to be to completely change the data-sheet rather than to eke the 'the good stuff' on to more units. That's all to say that I prefer it now where it feels more like overall list building is where the spice is, and not so much finding the niche loadouts to spam for efficiency.

 

I guess in the end I'll take 'limited loadout options that don't entail points differences' over 'we don't know how to make wargear points balanced'.

 

More toward the OP - I'll sustain the 'annual update on Legends would be grand' suggestion from a minute ago, but I don't expect they'll take the time for that and updates every three years is acceptable I guess ; )

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[ThaneOfTas]

56 minutes ago, Dr. Clock said:

I guess in the end I'll take 'limited loadout options that don't entail points differences' over 'we don't know how to make wargear points balanced'.

That would hold more weight for me if they they could manage to balance the limited loadout options without points, but they pretty clearly cant, the units are costed based on their one best loadout option and any others that you take you are hamstringing yourself. the old system wasnt perfect by any stretch of the imagination but at least there were more levers to pull to get closer to balance.

 

59 minutes ago, Dr. Clock said:

I prefer it now where it feels more like overall list building is where the spice is, and not so much finding the niche loadouts to spam for efficiency

I know that you're exaggerating your point for effect but to me, current list building has all of the spice of British cuisine, It feels much less like assembling a characterful force and more like picking out a TCG deck. And your point about spamming niche loadouts for efficiency really points back to previous comments about the best option being fully separating Competitive from narrative. Let competitive or WAAC players play with limited, theoretically balanced loadouts that they arent going to be able to exploit, and let narrative players have all of their toys back.

 

1 hour ago, Dr. Clock said:

More toward the OP - I'll sustain the 'annual update on Legends would be grand' suggestion from a minute ago, but I don't expect they'll take the time for that and updates every three years is acceptable I guess ; )

I'd settle for twice an edition. Once at the start and then once with the codex of whatever faction it is.

[Orion]

1 hour ago, Dr. Clock said:

The problem was never so much with the basic 'pair of specialists' troops... I don't think that's the main issue people are focusing on as [borderline] predatory. The problem was with the 'modeler's dream' units where you could in theory take 'any loadout on any guy', but in practice it meant that the unit was either a useless dog's breakfast or an insanely specialized nightmare depending on how much money you wanted to throw away on a unit (or 3).

 

Yes - poorhammer conversions and kitbashing were important motivators for many of us grognards, but I kind of like that it doesn't feel as necessary because there are actually just more kits that I can build and paint without worrying much about how I can arm swap them into something better or spend 50% more on bits to get the meta build. My conversions now all tend to be to completely change the data-sheet rather than to eke the 'the good stuff' on to more units. That's all to say that I prefer it now where it feels more like overall list building is where the spice is, and not so much finding the niche loadouts to spam for efficiency.

 

I guess in the end I'll take 'limited loadout options that don't entail points differences' over 'we don't know how to make wargear points balanced'.

 

More toward the OP - I'll sustain the 'annual update on Legends would be grand' suggestion from a minute ago, but I don't expect they'll take the time for that and updates every three years is acceptable I guess ; )

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

But that limited loadout is unbalanced from the getgo, so we basically have zero options to balance them now.

What they should have done is kept options and kept wargear points.

You will never balance a las pistol and a plasma pistol without mincing the intent of the weapon design and likely needing a different statline for the weapon for every unit.

 

Telling every newbie they have to "shove the plasma pistol and power sword on the sergeant or else" is the better option? 

You don't even need to have a brain to "spam for efficiency" with the current situation.

 

Wargear sucks now, creativity and choice is punished, and some people are encouraging it to get worse.

 

 

[Evil Eye]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

Why? Because you say so?

Because they're super-heavy units whose introduction into mainline 40K have made the game ever more ridiculous in terms of power creep and the aforementioned "flattening" effect. When the average size of monsters and vehicles is generally lower, things are far more manageable; if a Guard army are facing the Black Legion and they're rocking a Chaos Predator or two (plus support), they can be countered by their own tanks or even plucky Private Winkles with his meltagun if the fates allow. This still remains true if instead the Black Legion have a Land Raider with them, and whilst it may be much harder to destroy, it's not unreasonably indestructible and its removal will make the Chaos player's chances of victory quite slim, as a Land Raider is a large chunk of an army. A Knight, on the other hand, is a super-heavy and thus intended to be far more potent than the vast majority of other units. Even accounting for tabletop abstraction, a Knight should require mass combined infantry and armour support OR another super-heavy to disable. Now, if the game were designed such that if you took a Knight or other such mega-unit you were taking that and scant other support, meaning it was effectively the Knight and a bit of infantry versus the entire enemy army, that would be one thing. However, that's not what we have, and as it stands you either have it such that the only way to be safe against KEQs is to take your own (which is lame) OR to make it so that anything can wound anything and the idea of choosing weapons to counter certain enemy types goes completely out the window, which is also lame... Or, you know, you could just restrict mega-units to the kind of large-scale battles which would justify pulling out all the stops and sending in the big guns. A bit like we used to do with Apocalypse.

 

I don't even hate super-heavies. Knights are cool. Baneblade-chassis tanks are cool. Riptides are...well, they're OK (I actually don't think titanic mecha really suit the Tau that well, as their whole model of warfare means they'd be better served by close air support* and other more "modern" tactics as opposed to the Imperium's "The Interwar period is the future!" school of thought). Tyranid Bio-Titans are awesome. But they don't belong in games smaller than 3000 points.

 

*Though aircraft are one of those things that, as much as I love them, don't really work as actual gaming pieces at 28mm scale. If the Ork Dakkajet, one of the slower non-VTOL aircraft in the setting, were depicted properly it'd be over a large game board for one turn to perform a strafing run and would then exit the board if it hadn't been shot down. Aircraft are fast, and the idea of something like an Eldar plane, which bear in mind should be able to reach speeds that make an SR-71 look like a snail, going slow enough to spend long enough on a game board to even bother putting the model on the table is patently absurd.

[sarabando]

Bring back imperial armour. Put the legends stuff in there. 

 

Stop the edition churn, you can still have a refresh every 3 years with a new startset to get people hyped for new minis but just leave the rules alone for a while and let people play. 

[Robbienw]

10 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Predatory definition B Merriam webster: inclined or intended to injure or exploit others for personal gain or profit. 

 

Exploiting others (the customer) because they don't put all the parts in the box to make a possible load out with the hopes you purchase another of their products to get the bit for profit.

 

I see you are also misusing the word exploit 

 

It was done because the range was modular and parts were swappable between kits.  And to represent historically available in metal options they weren't able to put in plastic kits up to the early 2000's because of technological limitations, or because of sprue space limitations. 

 

GW also used to make new units with multiple options (and even sometimes even without representative models) they couldn't always full realise in model format back in the day.  This would encourage people to be creative and convert things.

 

Absolutely none of this is 'predatory' behavior.

[phandaal]

7 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

current list building has all of the spice of British cuisine,

 

Savage, but fair. 

[Special Officer Doofy]

3 hours ago, Robbienw said:

 

I see you are also misusing the word exploit 

 

It was done because the range was modular and parts were swappable between kits.  And to represent historically available in metal options they weren't able to put in plastic kits up to the early 2000's because of technological limitations, or because of sprue space limitations. 

 

GW also used to make new units with multiple options (and even sometimes even without representative models) they couldn't always full realise in model format back in the day.  This would encourage people to be creative and convert things.

 

Absolutely none of this is 'predatory' behavior.

 

Exploit (verb): make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource). 

 

Resource is the customer. Why put all the parts in the box when you can get them to buy a different box as well?

 

Let's use that heavy bolter for example. The tactical marine box came out in 6th edition in 2013 if memory serves me correct. Long after everything you just mentioned. Why was a heavy bolter not put in there? That devastator kit that came out a year or so after had em, just buy that too!

 

At any rate it's water under the bridge, GW (moving forward at least) is only letting you use what's in the box now.

Edited October 11 by Special Officer Doofy

[Robbienw]

They have limitations on the sprues as to what they can put on, so they have the missile launcher in there.  Other heavy weapon choices were historically available to tactical squads, so the options are left in so as not to upset the player base and avoid complaints of options being taken away. 

 

The Devastator squad, despite only being *5 marines*, comes with a total of *12 heavy weapons*, so GW was deliberately giving you spares to put into your tactical squads.

 

So its the player who can EXPLOIT the surfeit of heavy weapons in the devastator box to equip tactical squads.

 

None of this behavior from GW was 'predatory' or 'exploitative', its actually rather helpful.  I rest my case 

 

42 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

GW (moving forward at least) is only letting you use what's in the box now.

 

For shame.

Edited October 11 by Robbienw

[NovemberIX]

Legends is the absolute least GW could be doing. Some folks may prefer smaller books and less variety, but that's not why I got into this hobby, I liked having options to kitbash weird squads. I don't know anyone else who has a squad of Grav Pistol Storm Shield vets, they're not great, but they look cool. I'm still salty there are no rules for the Land Raider Ares (which was a GW encouraged kitbash) or the Razorback Rikarius (another kitbash they recommended) or for anything from Badab War (who else had a Hand-flamers Jump Command squad?)

 

26 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

...

Resource is the customer. Why put all the parts in the box when you can get them to buy a different box as well?

 

Let's use that heavy bolter for example. The tactical marine box came out in 6th edition in 2013 if memory serves me correct. Long after everything you just mentioned. Why was a heavy bolter not put in there? That devastator kit that came out a year or so after had em, just buy that too!

 

At any rate it's water under the bridge, GW (moving forward at least) is only letting you use what's in the box now.

Because you can't fit every option in a tac box unless you want it to be 8 sprues large with a commensurate price. By moving some options to specialist boxes you allowed to more variety and creativity. Besides the different body parts, you could get enough heavy weps to outfit 10 squads with heavies or two 5 man mixed dev squads, same sorta deal with the vanguard vets and their melee weps and the sternguard with special weps. Those kits came with enough variety and bits you would always have more than you needed so you could use the left overs to fill your tac squads or make more specialist squads. What you call predatory, I call modularity that allows creativity.

 

And it's only water under the bridge for now, at some point some bright spark might realize that variety and options are why some people stay with this hobby and go back to actually being appealing to gamer-collectors instead of this hyper focus on tournament play.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

11 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

Why? Because you say so?

No because it really skews the game.

 

you can’t have super heavy vehicles be something that can be common place and have balance.

 

People complain about vehicles not being survivable enough, in order for armies to deal with superheavies in a moderately efficient way, or people complain that vehicles are too tough particularly the superheavies.

 

 

[Tawnis]

15 hours ago, Grotsmasha said:

Outside of Tournaments, it's baffling to me that people refuse to play, or let others play Legends models.

I think the suggestion that the Community should reframe to the "Sandbox" is standard, and "Tournaments" are the extra makes the most sense.

Excluding another person's models that they've sink countless hours into building and painting because GW decided "we're not going to update this model/rules any further" is, imo, selfish. 

 

A Question for those who know: Are there any OP Legends units? because I get the impression, that as time moves on, they become more and more sub-optimal, and it won't be like people using Legends are doing so for advantage?

100% Agree.

As for Legends, there were some in the past, which I do think contributed a bit to the concern that they could be OP. For example, the Kroot Great Knarloc was a super low costed unit. It was only a little weaker than a Carnifex, but at half the points (65 vs around 125-160 depending on how you kitted the Carnifex out.)  The were so good that they were still decent at the end of 9th after the major power creep.

However, I've been looking over a lot of Legends units this edition for my various armies and there's very few that look too strong. The Great Knarlocs got nerfed into the ground for their 9th edition sins and the Knarloc Riders are very well balanced vs the Krootox and Rampagers as very much a side grade. 

 

The closest unit I've found in Legends to OP is the Space Marine Apothecary on Bike. This unit lets you revive 1 biker unit per round in it's attached unit. A unit of Outriders can attach a 70pt ATV which is a biker model, so you can take all the wounds on and revive each turn. Pretty strong, but I don't think it's strong enough to be really considered OP. 

[Valkyrion]

Maybe legends could become Classic. 

People are typically bothered about Legends because they already have the mini. New people are less likely to be lamenting the loss of the Bike captain than those who made dedicated bike armies 5-25 years ago, for example.

 

So Classic could become a proper supported game, maybe with a yearly campaign book and some nice anachronism like templates, armour values or warp cards, but, crucially, no new models. A whole new ruleset released by GW, but only supported narratively, using no models from the current range - e.g, everything released prior to (insert arbitrary year) is nuked from Current and given back to Classic.

 

 

[phandaal]

18 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

Maybe legends could become Classic. 

People are typically bothered about Legends because they already have the mini. New people are less likely to be lamenting the loss of the Bike captain than those who made dedicated bike armies 5-25 years ago, for example.

 

So Classic could become a proper supported game, maybe with a yearly campaign book and some nice anachronism like templates, armour values or warp cards, but, crucially, no new models. A whole new ruleset released by GW, but only supported narratively, using no models from the current range - e.g, everything released prior to (insert arbitrary year) is nuked from Current and given back to Classic.

 

 

 

Worth a shot! People are already playing that game mode on their own anyway, with old rulebooks and 3rd party rulesets. And it worked for video games, giving people back the OG versions of products that changed significantly over the years.

 

Also, the "Legends" branding has a stigma at this point, just like "Power Level" ended up with a stigma among a large portion of the community.

 

Someone would have to convince GW that making those rules available would equate to more money in the coffers, of course.

[Timberley]

20 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

@Timberley Thanks for the shout out.

 

Your point about the online landscape hits home for me. I have sought Narrative and Crusade batreps that detail the story that games form, and I have been sadly disappointed. The Scaredcast (I think that's what it's called) is about as close as I got- he had 2-3 consecutive Crusade games with his Drukhari, and they were pretty cool... Although I thought he could have gone farther with narrative- but even so, it was only 2-3 videos, with dozens and dozens of unconnected 2k matched play one-off games.

 

This week, I've been working on two terrain pieces for my Drukhari Wych Cult arena- pieces with opening doors and removable ceilings that will allow me to play a Hidden objective game. This is a 3-round match between two bare-bones Cults to determine who each of them will grow. I vow to have this bat-rep up by the end of the year, and you'll see what I mean about how every little detail of the game contributes to the character of the army as it grows. Only one Cult will be chosen by the Archon for realspace raiding- likely the team that wins the right to crown their MVP a Succubus... But it's a tough call, because there are also 3 Wych Cult weapons and some Khymerae pups up for grabs in the other rounds of the fight.

 

After that batrep, we'll switch to Realspace for another narrative, this one exploring the foundations of one of the protagonist forces (the Sisters of Battle). This will be an Imperial ritual where a Novitiate is selected as a living embodiment of an ancient saint. She has to make it to the altar to be consecrated- she'll have a group of Death CUlt Assassins as a bodyguard; the Preacher and the Superior of the Novitiates will be overseeing the consecration with banner bearers on either side and the remaining Novitiates as an audience- so very non-standard deployment.

 

Agents of a fledging Chaos Cult will try to interrupt the ritual and kill the Saint's effigy in order to discredit both the Sororitas and the noble house from which the effigy was selected. The game will skew toward a Sisters victory for Narrative purposes, but the Chaos forces have an opportunity to distinguish themselves in the eyes of the gods- the MVP from the chaos force will be gifted with psychic powers as a result of the battle.

 

The problem is I'm a painfully slow painter, and sometimes whole editions come and go before I'm ready to play a game worthy of batrepping. This why I wish OTHER people would lead the way, posting monthly batreps in an ongoing Narrative that really examines how Crusade Battle Honours and Requisitions can shape the narrative and be assigned based in in-game, on-table events. But NO ONE is doing that, and it sucks, because I'm not prolific enough to lead by example. 

Sounds like a great idea for a crusade series, keep at it!  I'm also a painfully slow painter, so creating all of the ZM terrain for my Necromunda board is taking forever.  I don't have a place for my 3D printer in the current flat, so I'm kind of stuck as well, as official ZM is very expensive (though absolutely gorgeous)!  One thing I like about the Necromunda batreps I watch on YouTube and the like (MGM Gaming is great for this) is that they're always presented in a narrative context, and show the consequences of injuries and such during the battle (as built into the post-battle sequence of Necromunda).

 

Anyway, looking at the bigger idea of Legends rules, I have a bunch of Elysians (one of each unit and 2x infantry squads - I had more disposable income back then), and whilst I have rules for the sniper team and the drop sentinel as Legends, I have no rules for the Lascutter team or anything to indicate that my Drop Troops are different to Standard Issue Infantry squads.  I have to use House Rules to give them their 'flavour' back (in this case all infantry models have the 'Deep Strike' and 'Precision Strike' key words but are otherwise normal infantry), and the Lascutter follows a modified set of rules from IA3.  To my regular group this is thoroughly acceptable, but very occasionally I will get asked by randoms in an FLGS why I field the models at all if they have no official rules (my unit card is a 'crib card' I've written everything on).  It'd be better to have an official Legends sheet for those times when someone's liable to clutch their pearls over such things.

 

1 hour ago, Robbienw said:

They have limitations on the sprues as to what they can put on, so they have the missile launcher in there.  Other heavy weapon choices were historically available to tactical squads, so the options are left in so as not to upset the player base and avoid complaints of options being taken away. 

 

The Devastator squad, despite only being *5 marines*, comes with a total of *12 heavy weapons*, so GW was deliberately giving you spares to put into your tactical squads.

 

So its the player who can EXPLOIT the surfeit of heavy weapons in the devastator box to equip tactical squads.

 

None of this behavior from GW was 'predatory' or 'exploitative', its actually rather helpful.  I rest my case 

 

 

For shame.

You've kind of proven Doofy's point of view there.  In order to build all options for Box A, you MUST own Box B.  I agree that space is a premium in boxes, and I can see why they'd only go with one option, but you're predicating your argument on the idea that people who buy a Tactical Squad (say) will automatically buy a Devastator Squad, or will have done in the past.  If I was just getting into the hobby and bought a Tactical Squad box because they looked cool and like they had a range of weapons unlike those other marines (and reading my mate's Codex they come with a tonne of useful weapon options unlike those Intercessors), then not having those options present in the box would be disappointing, and the revelation that I had to buy another box (which is more expensive) to get those bits would feel a bit like GW were deliberately fleecing me.

[HeadlessCross]

10 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

Because they're super-heavy units whose introduction into mainline 40K have made the game ever more ridiculous in terms of power creep and the aforementioned "flattening" effect. When the average size of monsters and vehicles is generally lower, things are far more manageable; if a Guard army are facing the Black Legion and they're rocking a Chaos Predator or two (plus support), they can be countered by their own tanks or even plucky Private Winkles with his meltagun if the fates allow. This still remains true if instead the Black Legion have a Land Raider with them, and whilst it may be much harder to destroy, it's not unreasonably indestructible and its removal will make the Chaos player's chances of victory quite slim, as a Land Raider is a large chunk of an army. A Knight, on the other hand, is a super-heavy and thus intended to be far more potent than the vast majority of other units. Even accounting for tabletop abstraction, a Knight should require mass combined infantry and armour support OR another super-heavy to disable. Now, if the game were designed such that if you took a Knight or other such mega-unit you were taking that and scant other support, meaning it was effectively the Knight and a bit of infantry versus the entire enemy army, that would be one thing. However, that's not what we have, and as it stands you either have it such that the only way to be safe against KEQs is to take your own (which is lame) OR to make it so that anything can wound anything and the idea of choosing weapons to counter certain enemy types goes completely out the window, which is also lame... Or, you know, you could just restrict mega-units to the kind of large-scale battles which would justify pulling out all the stops and sending in the big guns. A bit like we used to do with Apocalypse.

 

I don't even hate super-heavies. Knights are cool. Baneblade-chassis tanks are cool. Riptides are...well, they're OK (I actually don't think titanic mecha really suit the Tau that well, as their whole model of warfare means they'd be better served by close air support* and other more "modern" tactics as opposed to the Imperium's "The Interwar period is the future!" school of thought). Tyranid Bio-Titans are awesome. But they don't belong in games smaller than 3000 points.

 

*Though aircraft are one of those things that, as much as I love them, don't really work as actual gaming pieces at 28mm scale. If the Ork Dakkajet, one of the slower non-VTOL aircraft in the setting, were depicted properly it'd be over a large game board for one turn to perform a strafing run and would then exit the board if it hadn't been shot down. Aircraft are fast, and the idea of something like an Eldar plane, which bear in mind should be able to reach speeds that make an SR-71 look like a snail, going slow enough to spend long enough on a game board to even bother putting the model on the table is patently absurd.

This is literally "because I say so".

Knights aren't an oppressive army in any sort. If you can't handle a Knight, you're honestly not going to be able to handle a Land Raider much better, regardless of edition. 

[Dr. Clock]

12 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

The units are costed based on their one best loadout option and any others that you take you are hamstringing yourself. the old system wasnt perfect by any stretch of the imagination but at least there were more levers to pull to get closer to balance.

 

I will freely admit that we're in a super awkward place where depending on the ahem vintage of a unit they either do or don't have a 'clearly best option' for game build, and this can definitely play havoc with overall points costs. To recently, Death Company were terrible for this IMO, but I also definitely wish I could take even one or two thunder hammers in vanguard veterans.

 

In either of these 'points regimes', the model fails to account for any compounding effects. You buy the third thing and it costs the same points as the second one or first one. Basically, one slightly over or undercosted thing won't usually matter much, but I don't either want to go to a place where every unit has 3 costs depending on how many you've bought already, because it would likely still be unbalanced, just in favor of other things. Much better to simply lower the ceiling and invoke an actual comp system more restricted than 'rule of 3 or 6 or 1'. Put another way, it's never the first 5 points you spend on better wargear that's the problem, it's the n*5 (where you've spent a heap of money) paid to 'unlock the potential' of a compounding effect. Wonky abuseable or useless loadout situations definitely still exist, they are just becoming much more rare as we see the duplication/specialization whittled out of the 'hyper elites' and older 'one size fits all heavy weapons' units. 

 

I would definitely be in favor of the classic heavy support 'quad heavies' units getting basically 2 data sheets - one for their 'high-AP' options and one for the 'low-ap and switch hitters' options. The problem with that is that some of those units (e.g. Scourges) don't have any duplicates in the kit... and in principle the 'one of each' loadout feels like it should be an option even though it's never really been a good one. I also want to hold a bit of space for the idea that mechanically the game is best when you don't have to roll each of 5 models in a unit separately because they all have pretty widely divergent weapons. One 'regular guys' profile and '1 special guy per 4 regular' is plenty IMO.

 

So yeah - we're in the middle of a big transition now and I understand that some of the mechanics people really enjoy are just... not in 40k 10th.

12 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

 let narrative players have all of their toys back.

 

If you're a narrative player (I am), I recommend just... taking the toys, and having a discussion with your opponents if you want to homebrew a datasheet. You don't need official permission to create different point values based on wargear if that's your jam. My narrative just looks like 'min. 1 non-Epic character up to 100 pts with no enhancements', and increasing the point limit to 2100 points so that we play a bit more with consistent bespoke heros of the hammer. We used to try and have an XP system for the 'POV characters', but it's alot of upkeep and invariably we just forget what the upgrades even are once in-game lol.

 

11 hours ago, Orion said:

Wargear sucks now, creativity and choice is punished, and some people are encouraging it to get worse.

 

I don't really disagreee, but I would qualify that 'some wargear has always sucked, some choices/creativity has always been punished, and the model we're moving toward, understanding that it is not completely implemented yet should reduce the suck and punishment and the abuse and perverse incentives'.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

Edited October 11 by Dr. Clock

[Robbienw]

28 minutes ago, Timberley said:

You've kind of proven Doofy's point of view there.  In order to build all options for Box A, you MUST own Box B.  I agree that space is a premium in boxes, and I can see why they'd only go with one option, but you're predicating your argument on the idea that people who buy a Tactical Squad (say) will automatically buy a Devastator Squad, or will have done in the past.  If I was just getting into the hobby and bought a Tactical Squad box because they looked cool and like they had a range of weapons unlike those other marines (and reading my mate's Codex they come with a tonne of useful weapon options unlike those Intercessors), then not having those options present in the box would be disappointing, and the revelation that I had to buy another box (which is more expensive) to get those bits would feel a bit like GW were deliberately fleecing me.

 

Quite the opposite, I've shown why it had no validity.  There were historical options there they couldn't fulfill in plastic (although they did manage it with special weapons, combi-weapons and close combat weapons), which were provided for by a massive amount of spares in another box.

 

There is no way someone collecting Space Marines pre-2017 wouldn't have got at least 1 Devastator box.

 

If they'd taken away all the heavy weapons, save the missile launcher, in 2013 then you would be complaining about weapon options being removed from tacticals.  If they had added an extra sprue with all the heavy weapons and increased the price by 25%, you'd be saying that you'd been deliberately fleeced by GW making you pay more for extra weapons you could have gotten from the Devastator box  

[Orion]

3 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Exploit (verb): make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource). 

 

Resource is the customer. Why put all the parts in the box when you can get them to buy a different box as well?

 

Let's use that heavy bolter for example. The tactical marine box came out in 6th edition in 2013 if memory serves me correct. Long after everything you just mentioned. Why was a heavy bolter not put in there? That devastator kit that came out a year or so after had em, just buy that too!

 

At any rate it's water under the bridge, GW (moving forward at least) is only letting you use what's in the box now.

 

So anytime you buy anything you feel exploited?

[Kallas]

32 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

Knights aren't an oppressive army in any sort. If you can't handle a Knight, you're honestly not going to be able to handle a Land Raider much better, regardless of edition. 

The point isn't that you can't possibly handle a Knight, it's that by having them present, you have to either:

1. be capable of dealing with an army of Knights, rendering smaller vehicles much less viable (since the presence of anti-tank will shoot up), or
2. not be capable of dealing with an army of Knights, meaning list building becomes more Rock-Paper-Scissors than it already sometimes can be.

They do, by their very nature of being all-vehicle, all-high Toughness/Wound/Save armies, skew the landscape of the game. It's not that they themselves are oppressive, but that their design inherently is skewing. Having one Land Raider on the field is a lot easier to handle with smattering of anti-tank weapons: facing down an army of Knights with only a few Lascannons and Meltaguns is going to end in disaster because they will stomp you flat - you could say this is a failure of army build, but that's kind of the point: the Knights demand an answer because without one, you cannot manage.

[INKS]

=] Let's leave the business practice talk for a thread in which we are talking about such matters. This thread is about Legends and what should or should not be done with them [=

[HeadlessCross]

47 minutes ago, Kallas said:

The point isn't that you can't possibly handle a Knight, it's that by having them present, you have to either:

1. be capable of dealing with an army of Knights, rendering smaller vehicles much less viable (since the presence of anti-tank will shoot up), or
2. not be capable of dealing with an army of Knights, meaning list building becomes more Rock-Paper-Scissors than it already sometimes can be.

They do, by their very nature of being all-vehicle, all-high Toughness/Wound/Save armies, skew the landscape of the game. It's not that they themselves are oppressive, but that their design inherently is skewing. Having one Land Raider on the field is a lot easier to handle with smattering of anti-tank weapons: facing down an army of Knights with only a few Lascannons and Meltaguns is going to end in disaster because they will stomp you flat - you could say this is a failure of army build, but that's kind of the point: the Knights demand an answer because without one, you cannot manage.

If you can't handle Knights, you can't handle a Guard Tank Company. Why aren't you speaking up against that?

[Kallas]

19 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

If you can't handle Knights, you can't handle a Guard Tank Company. Why aren't you speaking up against that?

I have spoken up against things like the removal of the Force Organisation Chart which has allowed Guard Tank Companies to be fielded without any attenuating circumstances.

Why aren't you digging through all of my posts to find that out 

 

Yes, a Tank army is also a skew - Knights are simply one example of such things, not the only thing people have issue with.

[alfred_the_great]

And this thread demonstrates why GW can never please anyone.