Space Marine Codex 2.0

[Mogger351]

16 minutes ago, TheNicronomicon said:

Some people choose vanilla ice cream. Other people choose vanilla with chocolate chips. The people who chose vanilla didn’t get ripped off because they didn’t choose ice cream with chocolate chips, and trying to pretend that it’s a problem that some people have chocolate chips in their ice cream does not actually mean there is a problem with ice cream choice. 

 

The criteria for “balance” that your argument rests on is completely

divorced from what actual game balance means. It’s basically the child’s fallacy of counting two dimes as being worth more than a single quarter because the quantity is greater. 
 

I am open to any demonstration of actual harm or unbalancing effects in-game. That you are unable to produce any—any at all!—puts this to bed pretty conclusively. 
 

 

Just stop and look at the state of the game.

 

It's less than 6 months since vanilla marines were at times more than 10% behind some supplement chapter lists in competitive win rates. 

 

In order to restore some balance, they tied a series of rules tweaks to none supplementary characters and altered oath of moment.

 

The last update they had to make an exception for the BA detachment due to imbalance of accessing the now amended vanilla rules on top.

 

If I give you the benefit of the doubt, assume you legitimately don't know any of this, then the fact that vanilla chapters needed rules improvements of the magnitude received should be evidence enough.

 

Or am I to assume that vanilla marines win rates were lower and the buffs given were of no impact to the supplement chapters and their multiple extra options and a qaurtet of additional detachments for no cost don't matter?

[TheNicronomicon]

8 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

Just stop and look at the state of the game.

 

It's less than 6 months since vanilla marines were at times more than 10% behind some supplement chapter lists in competitive win rates. 

 

In order to restore some balance, they tied a series of rules tweaks to none supplementary characters and altered oath of moment.

 

The last update they had to make an exception for the BA detachment due to imbalance of accessing the now amended vanilla rules on top.

 

If I give you the benefit of the doubt, assume you legitimately don't know any of this, then the fact that vanilla chapters needed rules improvements of the magnitude received should be evidence enough.

 

Or am I to assume that vanilla marines win rates were lower and the buffs given were of no impact to the supplement chapters and their multiple extra options and a qaurtet of additional detachments for no cost don't matter?

“Vanilla Marines need some help” is vastly different than “let’s punish some chapters because vanilla marines need help.” These are two separate issues, and locking BA/BT/DA/SW out of Intercessors isn’t going to address the first at all. Dark Angels having access to two kinds of Terminator squads (for example) has absolutely nothing—zip, zero, zilch, squat, bupkis—to do with how vanilla marines perform. 
 

I do agree vanilla marines needed a boost. The current rule seems to be pretty effective. Even then, you explicitly reject the idea of rules tweaks to help vanilla marines. There’s no serious argument to engage with here. 

[Mogger351]

1 minute ago, TheNicronomicon said:

“Vanilla Marines need some help” is vastly different than “let’s punish some chapters because vanilla marines need help.” These are two separate issues, and locking BA/BT/DA/SW out of Intercessors isn’t going to address the first at all. Dark Angels having access to two kinds of Terminator squads (for example) has absolutely nothing—zip, zero, zilch, squat, bupkis—to do with how vanilla marines perform. 
 

I do agree vanilla marines needed a boost. The current rule seems to be pretty effective. Even then, you explicitly reject the idea of rules tweaks to help vanilla marines. There’s no serious argument to engage with here. 

 

There is, you just don't want to due to having blinkers on.

 

What is it that Dark Angels have that allows them to perform better? What do they lose comparative to the gains they make?

 

In addition, if the deathwing terminators are flat out better through the lenses of a dark angels force, what benefit is there to having the vanilla squads as well?

 

You seem willing to disregard anything that isn't simply "give me all the toys, no problem to see here".

[TheNicronomicon]

10 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

 

There is, you just don't want to due to having blinkers on.

 

What is it that Dark Angels have that allows them to perform better? What do they lose comparative to the gains they make?

 

In addition, if the deathwing terminators are flat out better through the lenses of a dark angels force, what benefit is there to having the vanilla squads as well?

 

You seem willing to disregard anything that isn't simply "give me all the toys, no problem to see here".

There is? Thank you not burdening your bald assertion with any evidence at all. Is it the Terminators that enable them to "perform better?" Is it the HQs? Is it the Detachments? I don't know, and you don't either, though you are pretending you do. Is the problem that those two units aren't in parity (that's what the point difference is for!), or that the vanilla Marines aren't operating up to snuff? The designers seem to think it's the latter, which is why they chose to boost vanilla Marines. 

 

"Better" is a subjective term. Better for what? Points are the main tool for balancing units, not this made-up farcical "number of units" fetish you're trying to force on us. It's nonsense. Once again, where has this harmed game balance? Without conflating other issues, please.

 

Your personal insults aren't doing your cause any favors. You still haven't demonstrated how the game is unbalanced due to this made-up issue. (Which, again, has been present since 8th edition!) 

[Valkyrion]

Lets not fabricate stories of 'personal insults' when there aren't any. 

[Dr. Clock]

11 minutes ago, TheNicronomicon said:

"Better" is a subjective term. Better for what? Points are the main tool for balancing units, not this made-up farcical "number of units" fetish you're trying to force on us. It's nonsense. Once again, where has this harmed game balance? Without conflating other issues, please.

Basically, the Rule of 3 exists for this reason. Before it was instituted, game balance was more difficult purely based on spam efficiency potential. Setting aside the question of whether having arguably duplicative Intercessor and Assault Intercessor data-sheets in one sub-faction would tip things much off-kilter (I don't think it likely would), there is definitely a point at which lists become oppressive when they have far more access than their peers to certain things.

 

It is interesting the extent to which spam just kind of isn't much of a problem this edition despite the very liberal army building mechanics. We can see inklings of it at the edges, but that's mostly about uneven detachment benefits kind of breaking internal balance on the way to breaking it externally lol [think Lootas and Bustaz in More Dakka right now]... But it feels like the lack of spam incentives are also due to a host of factors like 1) just less insane survivability 2) just less insane self-contained killiness and 3) the presence of distinct special rules or tricks for every unit, and 4) rules and tricks are more often 'support' rules, so that units become good not just by their basic stats, but by ability to help others.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Mogger351]

40 minutes ago, TheNicronomicon said:

There is? Thank you not burdening your bald assertion with any evidence at all. Is it the Terminators that enable them to "perform better?" Is it the HQs? Is it the Detachments? I don't know, and you don't either, though you are pretending you do. Is the problem that those two units aren't in parity (that's what the point difference is for!), or that the vanilla Marines aren't operating up to snuff? The designers seem to think it's the latter, which is why they chose to boost vanilla Marines. 

 

"Better" is a subjective term. Better for what? Points are the main tool for balancing units, not this made-up farcical "number of units" fetish you're trying to force on us. It's nonsense. Once again, where has this harmed game balance? Without conflating other issues, please.

 

Your personal insults aren't doing your cause any favors. You still haven't demonstrated how the game is unbalanced due to this made-up issue. (Which, again, has been present since 8th edition!) 

 

I'll give up after this as you seem willingly ignorant and wanting me to provide a thesis level statistical analysis for no real benefit, in 8th at various points the differing chapters were all "better" than one another (broviathan for example at the tail end, Guilliman parking lot at the front end). Iron hands singularly broke 40k briefly, not space marines, Iron Hands because of the special extras they got.

 

In 9th you couldn't run a space marine army because there was no point in not taking a supplement. You were punished for being a "successor" largely and instead rewarded for being a chapter but painted the wrong colours. Some were notably better than others due to the rules compounding and creating issues in the core codex and they couldn't easily balance them as to fix the units for the problem supplement made it over costed for the others. 

 

In 10th we have the supplement chapters gaining literally the full content bar a character of the vanilla chapters, including access to all their detachments, plus their own 4 extra detachments and 15 odd units for no cost. The result has been that the tools offered in the layered rules have interacted to an extent that units, not always of the specialist chapters, are notably better with those rules at times than with the vanilla ruleset. There has been no downside until recently, which as much as you're willing to say "boos vanilla marines" - guess what, you can't actually touch the units, because the supplements get them too. They've have to start with exclusions on army rules and then retroactively clamp down on them because the benefit of the extra rules and options of units was notable enough that it required an overhaul of the army rule.

 

This is relevant, because you'll soon have in the "troops" category:

• melee marine with chainsword
• melee marine with chainsword and slightly worse pistols
• ranged marine with slightly worse gun and chainsword
• ranged marine with slightly better gun

The odds of one of those being better than the rest by some margin is high and because 2 of them exist only for 1 supplement, there's a 50% greater chance the "good" one in game terms is locked into that supplement whilst retaining the vast majority of functionality of the vanilla marines.

 

Those are all factual historic trends. That's 9 years of poor balance and poor game design. I'm not making mathematical models nor producing graphs or charts for you. I won't argue further, but pleading ignorance and bad faith because you're enjoying having a roster of over 100 units with overlapping forms and functions and twice the rules of everyone else whilst ignoring the problems isn't going to end well. Look what happened to Stormcast.

[Evil Eye]

32 minutes ago, Dr. Clock said:

Basically, the Rule of 3 exists for this reason. [snip]

Slight tangent but the Rule of 3 always seemed like a less effective version of the FOC. Having a limitation on the number of units of a particular role seemed like a far better solution than just saying "no more than 3 of any one datasheet" and honestly I feel it should make a return in some form, even if it's closer to the WHFB style rarity- based system than the "classic" 40K chart.

 

As far as Wolves getting Intercessors or not I'd say the solution to the datasheet bloat and such is to majorly condense units into fewer datasheets with more options. So Space Wolves, instead of having Tacticals, Intercessors and Grey Hunters, would have a single "Grey Hunters" sheet that could be outfitted with the options from any of those sheets; so either with the bolt carbine and CCW combo or with bolt rifles as their standard equipment (and any other additional options that those three sheets can have).

[HeadlessCross]

40 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

Slight tangent but the Rule of 3 always seemed like a less effective version of the FOC. Having a limitation on the number of units of a particular role seemed like a far better solution than just saying "no more than 3 of any one datasheet" and honestly I feel it should make a return in some form, even if it's closer to the WHFB style rarity- based system than the "classic" 40K chart.

 

As far as Wolves getting Intercessors or not I'd say the solution to the datasheet bloat and such is to majorly condense units into fewer datasheets with more options. So Space Wolves, instead of having Tacticals, Intercessors and Grey Hunters, would have a single "Grey Hunters" sheet that could be outfitted with the options from any of those sheets; so either with the bolt carbine and CCW combo or with bolt rifles as their standard equipment (and any other additional options that those three sheets can have).

Anyone clamoring for the return of the FOC for balance concerns does not have a clear memory of the game's history, as it did NOT help with balance concerns. Hell, Grey Hunters were a troop choice and broken in the 5th edition codex. 

[Petitioner's City]

7 hours ago, Mogger351 said:

Stop moving the goal posts the context is obviously in relation to the current edition.

 

I mean it wasn't clear, since you didn't make that clear?

 

Marine chapters had special rules in the last two editions, didn't they? The chapter codices in late 8th, and then continuing into 9th, right? And then before that, in 3rd and 4th, was the heydey of "vanilla" chapter rules (the index Astartes era and then arguably in the doctrines era of 4th). Even more so, wasn't this was also a thing in 6th and 7th too, wasn't it, in chapter tactics (x) special rules then? 

 

It doesn't feel new, since it's part of marine history going back to 3rd :)

[Mogger351]

6 minutes ago, Petitioner's City said:

 

I mean it wasn't clear, since you didn't make that clear?

 

Marine chapters had special rules in the last two editions, didn't they? The chapter codices in late 8th, and then continuing into 9th, right? And then before that, in 3rd and 4th, was the heydey of "vanilla" chapter rules (the index Astartes era and then arguably in the doctrines era of 4th). Even more so, wasn't this was also a thing in 6th and 7th too, wasn't it, in chapter tactics (x) special rules then? 

 

It doesn't feel new, since it's part of marine history going back to 3rd :)

3rd - 7th, the external chapters were codex rather than supplement, so pointed independently and with isolated entries. Even in their closest relationship you were told to reference a subset of units in the Marine codex via the chapter one.

 

You are correct there were chapter traits in those editions, but everything in codex space marines was used by and kept on a level within codex space marines.

[SkimaskMohawk]

2 hours ago, Dr. Clock said:

Basically, the Rule of 3 exists for this reason. Before it was instituted, game balance was more difficult purely based on spam efficiency potential

 

Evileye touched on this, but that spam potential only really existed in the first 8 or so months of 8th and arguably in 7th once all the detachment stuff had landed/6th depending on locally allowed supplements The actual old FOC did a much better job of balancing lists compared to rule of 3, as you'd lock out other options if you went all in on one unit outside of troops.

 

 

[Evil Eye]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

Anyone clamoring for the return of the FOC for balance concerns does not have a clear memory of the game's history, as it did NOT help with balance concerns. Hell, Grey Hunters were a troop choice and broken in the 5th edition codex. 

5th edition Space Wolves' problems had nothing to do with the FOC though, they had more to do with the sheer amount of utterly broken groxdung they had access to. I'd also argue pointing to 5th edition is somewhat disingenuous, given that 5th was notoriously busted and filled with awful stuff (Tyranids getting a codex not only more sterile and boring than the excellent 4E book but also arguably weaker, whatever the hell they were doing with the Necron retcons, Guard and Grey Knights being miserable to play against etc) compared to its precursors, and only fondly remembered because of everything that came after it*. Well, and the Dark Eldar refresh to be fair, that was a good one. Point being, 5th is not a good yardstick to judge pre-8th 40K by. There's a reason I've been looking to 4th with a mix of 3.5E and 4E codices for any games I play now.

 

I also don't see how adding some form of FOC back can possibly make things any worse. There's a reason it's a standard feature of wargaming; it works!

 

*It's also worth noting that 5th seemed to coincide with the explosion of tournament popularity and the subsequent plague of netlists as WAAC players looked at tournament results and decided to copy the winners' homework to bring woe and depression to their FLGSes, and due to the lack of readily-available metal Dreadnoughts to put in socks to discourage said players, the problem persisted and grew. For all 5th's problems I wonder if I'd have nicer things to say about it if wannabe-tourney-winners hadn't suddenly become so commonplace. Prior editions had their busted tactics/"I win" buttons (Fish of Fury) but the greater containment of tournament-play to, well, tournaments and generally lower tolerance amongst the community for nonsense meant that it became notorious as "the broken thing you shouldn't do if you don't want spontaneous dentistry-by-pewter" rather than "the AWESOME game-winning HACK you should play NOW if you want to WIN".

[Dr. Clock]

1 hour ago, Evil Eye said:

Slight tangent but the Rule of 3 always seemed like a less effective version of the FOC. Having a limitation on the number of units of a particular role seemed like a far better solution than just saying "no more than 3 of any one datasheet" and honestly I feel it should make a return in some form, even if it's closer to the WHFB style rarity- based system than the "classic" 40K chart.

Unfortunately once there were different FOC options, it stopped being much of a balance tool, because you could just take an Outrider detachment or whatever to get more of the particular role you were interested in. Also, the roles were just not very precisely designed, implemented or assigned; 'Elites' was an embarassing catch-all in particular. Then you also got problems where when you wanted to theme a list, you'd still run into really arbitrary restrictions. Like, why are Dark Reapers competing for slots with Fire Prisms and Falcons and Wraithlords, but fire dragons are competing with scorpions and wraithblades? Why are assault squads competing with landspeeders, which are competing with bikes? Why are dreadnoughts competing with Scouts?

 

The rule of 3 (really the rule of 1, 3 or 6) is so much better from a pure collecting and theme standpoint to my mind that I'm loathe to consider a return to an FOC model. For the sake of balance it could be interesting to make the rule of 3 more restrictive, and indeed I generally adopt a 'rule of 2' in my own collecting, but I accept that some people are going to want 3 of some things.

 

It's interesting to bring up the WHFB model because on that side the AoS army selection system is frankly a mess despite the ability on paper to spam anything as much as you want. The whole 'collection of warbands' thing is interesting and relatively thematic, but in practice it's pretty shambolic, though that's more related to the lack of balance between characters, infantry, monsters and cav than the regiment rules as such I suppose.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[HeadlessCross]

3 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

5th edition Space Wolves' problems had nothing to do with the FOC though,

It 100% does, because you make mention that it helps stop the spam of a supposed "broken" unit, when that doesn't actually happen the moment they're a Troops choice. 

[Evil Eye]

1 minute ago, HeadlessCross said:

It 100% does, because you make mention that it helps stop the spam of a supposed "broken" unit, when that doesn't actually happen the moment they're a Troops choice. 

Then the problem isn't the FOC system, it's the Codex itself.

[jaxom]

Seems like this should be a discussion about FoC, Rule of 3, etc over in Amicus.

[chapter master 454]

Also, discussing the past here isn't the goal, we are talking about the possibility of a marine codex 2.0 in some sense, be it some sort of collection of supplement books, various free PDFs to go with new models or what have you.

 

Look at what you've done Valrak, you've upset the fraters again with your rumours and whispers, back into the pain glove with you and think about what you have done!

[SkimaskMohawk]

Last word on the foc and 5th was it took a lot of codex creep to overcome it. Like grey hunters were overly good as a tac choice with meltas and a ton of melee output, but they died to that veteran guard squad the same as a vanilla tac squad (and weren't even the problem unit in the space wolf list, that being thunder wolves and long fangs; there wasn't no hunter tide style lists).

 

The current marine range suffers from overcrowded design space syndrome. We have the firstborn that they're trying to mostly phase out (but not totally on some things) that really contribute to it, but, we also have a lot of stuff in the primaris range too. On the side of stealthy, anti infantry units there's...5 options, 4 being ranged; that's a lot of overlap. Aggressors and terminators share the same mid range firepower/durable/melee space. Hellblasters, infernos, and desolators. Theres obviously more.

 

But really, the issue is that every kit has to be it's own specific unit in the game, with its own special rule and some slightly different reason to take it that doesn't matter, and war gear that is now auto take instead of a route of customization. If there were fewer marine units in the codex, but they were able to be built into the different (or mixed) configurations, there'd by far less complaints. Just go back in time; the devastator squad is the equivalent of 4 separate units, the assault Marines had options to go without jump packs so was the equivalent of two units, the original veteran squad was another two. All those phobos units could be a super cool single unit with a bunch of war gear options a la 4th edition nobs or 5th Ed veteran guardsmen. 

 

Idk what to say about divergent chapters and having more/having less. Back in the day, the restrictions combined with the special units to give them that flavor, and those special units had no real equivalent from the vanilla list; that overall difference was the appeal. And that gain/loss dynamic was across the entire game and was what gave factions their identity. But the ranges have expanded so much, combined with the culture of next to no restriction in list building, that identification is from special units, characters, and the detachment. There's no going back to 4th style, so imo they probably should have gone full chaos legions with them (but not :cuss:ty like WE and EC, but good like DG). Just lean into how divergent they really are, with some superficial overlap. Guess it didn't really work narratively with the primaris and guilliman and all that, especially when they changed the timeline to 12 years or whatever. 

 

 

[ThaneOfTas]

1 hour ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

But really, the issue is that every kit has to be it's own specific unit in the game, with its own special rule and some slightly different reason to take it that doesn't matter, and war gear that is now auto take instead of a route of customization. If there were fewer marine units in the codex, but they were able to be built into the different (or mixed) configurations, there'd by far less complaints.

I've said it before, but back when the 10th ed space marine index dropped, I went through and worked out how much they'd be able to reduce the number of unit entries by if they just went back to a proper wargear customisation system, and I went from 105 non named character data sheets, down to 60 sheets, while actually increasing the variety of options. If you want to reduce bloat, getting rid of the one datasheet per Loadout and bring back a wargear points system is the way to do it.

[HeadlessCross]

8 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

Then the problem isn't the FOC system, it's the Codex itself.

Then it can be argued it's not the more relaxed army building system isn't the problem, it's the problem units. 

[Northern Walker]

1 hour ago, ThaneOfTas said:

I've said it before, but back when the 10th ed space marine index dropped, I went through and worked out how much they'd be able to reduce the number of unit entries by if they just went back to a proper wargear customisation system, and I went from 105 non named character data sheets, down to 60 sheets, while actually increasing the variety of options. If you want to reduce bloat, getting rid of the one datasheet per Loadout and bring back a wargear points system is the way to do it.

I think you're really on to something there, but GW have seemingly made their devils' bargain with this competetive/videogame-esque style of balance and I can't see things like that ever coming back.