New changes from the Balance dataslate discussion?

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, Tacitus said:

Beyond that, are we limited to one Captain/Lieutenant?  I may have missed that while I was moving.

 

No, you can run multiple Captains up to the usual max of 3 of any particular dataslate. You can technically run 15 Captains in an army (3 Regular, 3 with Jump Packs, 3 Gravis, 3 Phobos, 3 Terminator). Blood Angels also have access to the Blood Angels Captain, Death Company Captain and DC Captain with Jump Pack meaning they can run 24 I think. You can only use Rites of Battle once per Battle Round so the benefit of bringing multiple captains quickly wanes but it is common to see a couple or 1 + a named Character.

[Indy Techwisp]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

No, you can run multiple Captains up to the usual max of 3 of any particular dataslate. You can technically run 15 Captains in an army (3 Regular, 3 with Jump Packs, 3 Gravis, 3 Phobos, 3 Terminator). Blood Angels also have access to the Blood Angels Captain, Death Company Captain and DC Captain with Jump Pack meaning they can run 24 I think. You can only use Rites of Battle once per Battle Round so the benefit of bringing multiple captains quickly wanes but it is common to see a couple or 1 + a named Character.

 

BA can run 24 Generic Captains, plus whatever named Captains they have as well.

[Tacitus]

18 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

No, you can run multiple Captains up to the usual max of 3 of any particular dataslate. You can technically run 15 Captains in an army (3 Regular, 3 with Jump Packs, 3 Gravis, 3 Phobos, 3 Terminator). Blood Angels also have access to the Blood Angels Captain, Death Company Captain and DC Captain with Jump Pack meaning they can run 24 I think. You can only use Rites of Battle once per Battle Round so the benefit of bringing multiple captains quickly wanes but it is common to see a couple or 1 + a named Character.

I was pretty sure it hadn't changed; the question was mostly rhetorical to point out you CAN run a captain in both Assault Intercessors AND Impulsor Intercessors.  I'm not sure you WANT to run a captain in either.  I mean, maybe if you don't have Titus as non-UM.  Or you reliably face something "too tough" for Astartes Chainswords.  

 

Their raison d'etre is generally to ginsu chaff you wouldn't use OOM on.  They have their own built in rerolls/accelerators - usually duplicating but not stacking with OOM. 

[HeadlessCross]

On 12/14/2024 at 10:00 AM, Indy Techwisp said:

 

No, I just picked a random unit that I use in my own Space Marine army.

 

Besides, it would be a Faction wide thing.

BA players use the BA points for the Marine units, which are seperate from the DA Points, the BT Points, the SW points, the DW points and the Base LSM points.

I highly doubt GW would go down to the granularity of units costing different points in different Detachments.

You still didn't answer my question though. 

 

Assume they're just a separate codex for whatever reason: should Blood Angels pay extra for Assault Intercessors and the Jump Pack ones when they're not super boosted (or boosted at all) by 2/3 of the detachments?

[Tacitus]

16 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

You still didn't answer my question though. 

 

Assume they're just a separate codex for whatever reason: should Blood Angels pay extra for Assault Intercessors and the Jump Pack ones when they're not super boosted (or boosted at all) by 2/3 of the detachments?

As a melee unit they ARE boosted by 2 out of the 3 BA specific detachments?

[HeadlessCross]

1 hour ago, Tacitus said:

As a melee unit they ARE boosted by 2 out of the 3 BA specific detachments?

The Death Company one does nothing for them, and Angelic Host hardly wants to target Jump Intercessors to begin with (and doesn't even buff the regular ones, which are also complained about).

[Tacitus]

8 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

The Death Company one does nothing for them, and Angelic Host hardly wants to target Jump Intercessors to begin with (and doesn't even buff the regular ones, which are also complained about).

You think a Detachment that's all about Jump Pack Marines getting mobility - and accelerators like advance and charge, Lethal Hits, Precision, etcetera hardly wants to target Jump Intercessors? 

[Indy Techwisp]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

The Death Company one does nothing for them, and Angelic Host hardly wants to target Jump Intercessors to begin with (and doesn't even buff the regular ones, which are also complained about).

 

LAG buffs stuff that wants to charge and Angelic Host is literally the Jump Pack Detachment.

 

So 2/3 of the BA Detachments favour JPAIs.

 

Were Blood Angels to be it's own thing entirely, and points changes to their generic units not affect the other non-Blood Angels Marines, then I would say JPAIs would probably be a unit that has it's points nerfed often, since it's a unit that would be a core component to most armies running the BA Detachments.

 

Then again, as a primarily Thousand Sons player I'm used to getting the core unit of my army (Rubrics) repeatedly jacked up in price to the point they now cost more than most armies Elite units simply because we play them a lot and Base CSM play them a lot, so maybe that's a viewpoint alien to you as an LSM player?

 

ETA:

The only reason Death Company doesn't also favour JPAIs as another charge into melee focused Detachment is that Death Company JPAIs use a seperate datasheet entirely rather than having a Dark Angels style thing where some units gain keywords when taken in specific circumstances.

Edited December 16 by Indy Techwisp

[HeadlessCross]

5 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

LAG buffs stuff that wants to charge and Angelic Host is literally the Jump Pack Detachment.

 

 

I already pointed out LAG benefitting everyone, but Angelic Host being a "Jump Pack Detachment" doesn't make it target Jump units equally, and you know that. I don't know if you've been following people that have tried that Detachment, but it isn't Jump Pack Intercessors being targeted for the rule 99% of the time. 

 

So does it warrant a theoretical Blood Angels Codex getting a price increase on both variants of Assault Intercessors?

[HeadlessCross]

6 hours ago, Tacitus said:

You think a Detachment that's all about Jump Pack Marines getting mobility - and accelerators like advance and charge, Lethal Hits, Precision, etcetera hardly wants to target Jump Intercessors? 

Have you not seen the other targets for those Strats? Lemartes' and Dante's units are gonna be taking most of them. It would be like stating regular Deathwing Terminators should get a points increase because of all the stuff Deathwing Knights can do with Strats you're using on them instead. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

17 hours ago, Tacitus said:

As a melee unit they ARE boosted by 2 out of the 3 BA specific detachments?

Plus the whole army rule

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Can y’all stop arguing about detachments when the army rule makes both variants of assault intercessors significantly better than their non-BA counterparts?

[Indy Techwisp]

25 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Can y’all stop arguing about detachments when the army rule makes both variants of assault intercessors significantly better than their non-BA counterparts?

 

I mean I've been trying to stress that I literally picked JPAIs as my example unit at random.

I've got no idea whether or not JPAIs need a points buff or drop or how BA having their own separate points for the LSM units would affect that.

And yet it seems that I keep being redirected to "Ok, but does that mean you want the points to go up?" every time.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

I mean I've been trying to stress that I literally picked JPAIs as my example unit at random.

I've got no idea whether or not JPAIs need a points buff or drop or how BA having their own separate points for the LSM units would affect that.

And yet it seems that I keep being redirected to "Ok, but does that mean you want the points to go up?" every time.

I just don’t understand why people are trying to knitpick, this example with detachments when the army rule makes them flat out better. 
like if they get the charge off I’m pretty sure they have a significant chance of wiping their non-BA counter parts before the fight back can occur

[jaxom]

On 12/14/2024 at 9:54 AM, Indy Techwisp said:

What I mean by that is "Each Divergent Chapter should have their own point cost for each Base LSM unit."

 

This entire go around reminds me of the discussions of aura in 8th edition and how they should be pointed. Are the perks truly part of the base units cost or not? One could continue on a say each unit should have their own point cost based on which detachment they are in and which characters are included in the army. Is tweaking individual units for each possible benefit too much for the pace of game balance? Etc etc. At the end of the day, it is what it is because GW, @Karhedron said:

 

On 12/14/2024 at 5:17 PM, Karhedron said:

Having just done away with squad upgrade costs, I can't see GW looking to add upgrade costs back in for detachments. Also, as long as the detachments are reasonably balanced against each other, it should all even out. Of course the problem in 10th was that there were no longer any drawbacks for taking special Chapters which meant that the vanilla ones were getting left behind. The boost to OOM seems to address this on paper so we will see how it pans out.

 

The problem is that the detachments are not balanced against each at the moment, depending on perspective. I don't mean just SM detachments; but there's definitely some detachments that seem to me to be either half-baked or made by people who's play experience seems out of step with what I experience.

[Orange Knight]

Rules were never balanced. It wasn't as much of an issue when 40k was strictly a narrative driven experience. 

 

It's a faux-competitive game now, it's heavily marketed as such, and people now just follow trends when it comes to armies or rules to use.

[Karhedron]

Some Detachments are better than others but they mostly buff a specific subset of units well or the army as a whole more weakly.

 

The problem with charging more for melee units in a Blood Angels list is that to keep it balanced you then need to charge more points for vehicles in Ironstorm etc. Then you are in a situation where Detachments that buff all units rather than a subset are outright better because they get all units are the cheapest price and still get an army-wide buff.

 

Pricing different units according to the Detachment seems like a bad idea to me because it makes things much more complicated and actively penalises players trying to build a list that the Detachment is supposed to represent.

 

I would rather see GW buff weak Detachments so that all options are equally valid. They have shown some willingness to do this as Sons of Russ was awful when first released but is now decent. Now if they can improve the White Scars Detachment then we would be in a reasonable place. 

[Crimson Longinus]

It seems people have again accidentally realised why detachments/factions/whatever providing buffs to units makes balancing the game impossible.

[DemonGSides]

Game is pretty balanced faction to faction right now. Needs some better internal faction balancing but that's literally a horse that'll never be caught perfectly.

[Indy Techwisp]

5 hours ago, Karhedron said:

The problem with charging more for melee units in a Blood Angels list is that to keep it balanced you then need to charge more points for vehicles in Ironstorm etc. Then you are in a situation where Detachments that buff all units rather than a subset are outright better because they get all units are the cheapest price and still get an army-wide buff.

 

Pricing different units according to the Detachment seems like a bad idea to me because it makes things much more complicated and actively penalises players trying to build a list that the Detachment is supposed to represent.

 

The entire Thousand Sons faction agrees with you on this point.

We love having our main units priced as hyper elites because they benefit from our Army and Detachment rule

/s

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

5 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Some Detachments are better than others but they mostly buff a specific subset of units well or the army as a whole more weakly.

 

The problem with charging more for melee units in a Blood Angels list is that to keep it balanced you then need to charge more points for vehicles in Ironstorm etc. Then you are in a situation where Detachments that buff all units rather than a subset are outright better because they get all units are the cheapest price and still get an army-wide buff.

 

Pricing different units according to the Detachment seems like a bad idea to me because it makes things much more complicated and actively penalises players trying to build a list that the Detachment is supposed to represent.

 

I would rather see GW buff weak Detachments so that all options are equally valid. They have shown some willingness to do this as Sons of Russ was awful when first released but is now decent. Now if they can improve the White Scars Detachment then we would be in a reasonable place. 

Or just increase the price on units in those other detachments, just a little less.

 

but I don’t think the firestorm detachment without any points increases to units would really out shine LAG where assault intercessors and JAIs are 2 or 3 PPM higher.

[HeadlessCross]

5 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Or just increase the price on units in those other detachments, just a little less.

 

but I don’t think the firestorm detachment without any points increases to units would really out shine LAG where assault intercessors and JAIs are 2 or 3 PPM higher.

Except Firestorm does benefit certain units considerably more. With this logic you can argue Assault Terminators should get point cuts if you take Firestorm or Anvil. 

[Indy Techwisp]

6 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

Except Firestorm does benefit certain units considerably more. With this logic you can argue Assault Terminators should get point cuts if you take Firestorm or Anvil. 

 

You could argue that.

 

However, Games Workshop have shown that they have no intention of giving individual detachments different point costs for units.

We can tell this is the case because otherwise they would have done it already.

[Karhedron]

8 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Or just increase the price on units in those other detachments, just a little less.

 

This is still kinda missing the point of Detachments. They provide specific bonuses to support certain play styles. If you raise the points of the units that make the most of the benefits then you are defeating the object of the exercise.

[Orange Knight]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

This is still kinda missing the point of Detachments. They provide specific bonuses to support certain play styles. If you raise the points of the units that make the most of the benefits then you are defeating the object of the exercise.

 

I also agree with this.

 

GW also shouldn't punish those units with point hikes if certain detachments are getting better results, but instead they should tone those detachments down.

 

I'm hoping that the Divergent Chapters lose access to the core codex detachments entirely going forward. GW needs to restrict chapters more to both balance them, and also to create an incentive to play individual chapters.

 

I think the White Scars have been done so dirty. In general I think a lot of chapters are neglected, but the White Scars in particular suffered a lot as Outriders were underpowered and there is no Outrider Captain for them to take. It created the situation where the best White Scars were Space Wolves. Hopefully this will be addressed in the near future.

Edited December 18 by Orange Knight