Balance and ‘how things should be’

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Space marines should not be able to put 100+ infantry on the table at 2k or even 2500 points imho, and this also in my opinion shows how broken this game is.

 

tank/monster skew can be dealt with via a little bit of AT, mid range S, focused fire and maneuvering.

 

but you can’t out maneuver 100+ models, and high D weapons don’t deal with number of wounds on the table the same way they would with high wound count models.

 

Imho a TAC list can survive and win against a vehicle/monster skew list easier than a horde skew list.

 

yea this list could be beaten fairly easily if you tailored to it, but tournaments people aren’t tailoring to one specific type of list…unless it becomes overwhelmingly common.

 

 

Edited Friday at 10:03 PM by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[HeadlessCross]

You really don't need to tailor to kill Marines...

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

21 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

You really don't need to tailor to kill Marines...

To kill 150 of them you do. That’s 300+ wounds with a 3+ save.

[SvenIronhand]

Clearly you’ve never encountered Blacktide.

[HeadlessCross]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

To kill 150 of them you do. That’s 300+ wounds with a 3+ save.

I don't know how to break this to you, but this is legit not a big deal. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, SvenIronhand said:

Clearly you’ve never encountered Blacktide.

If it’s so easy why did the list sweep a tournament with a perfect score on primaries and secondaries?

[DemonGSides]

Sometimes people play well.

Space Marine statlines aren't that scary.  You don't even need to kill ALL of them, just a good chunk of them each turn.

[HeadlessCross]

2 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

If it’s so easy why did the list sweep a tournament with a perfect score on primaries and secondaries?

The list does FINE but it's been nerfed a few times. 

[chapter master 454]

Horde armies have always been a thing. However they are equally miserable to play as to play against and can run into running out of time in tournaments which can hurt their scoring.

 

That being said, it depends on the lists it faces. Some armies have a better time against such things that maybe just have a ton of D2 on hand, I would see Custodes folding a marine horde army in no time flat, and Dark Angels would also likely pair not badly into with how Lion, Deathwings and ICC are now who all have D2 on mass.

 

With horde armies it is always the same question: can you kill enough of them to start scoring the game to overcome their advantage from early game scoring. It isn't they do damage, they just grind you out on VP. Again, they are vulnerable to certain match-ups even if they face a TAC list of that faction as certain factions just handle it better than others, similar to how you comment most TACs can handle tank skew, it isn't dissimilar just less notable because you don't spend 3 hours having to watch them move models vs. the tanks player whose turn will take half that of normal players.

 

Skew has always been a thing. Always will be. Doesn't matter how you look at it, if we were to bump up the stats of marines with their points, you just make the marine skew list 50 marines instead of 100 but still annoying as all get out to face but with less time wasted on models getting moved, deployed, removed, shifted, rolled for and so on.

 

"How things should be" will always been subjective. Back in yore, you could technically take a whole TON of marines despite a Force Org chart. up to 60 tacts, 30 devastators, 30 assault marines and then depending on when you want to place the timing, you could have up to another 30-60 veterans of some flavour.

This isn't new and "how things should be" is always our own rose-tinted glasses look at things.

 

I mean, isn't it fluffy for Black Templar to have their infantry spam list? Isn't that how they roll in fluff with their nigh legion level size of their chapter

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

22 minutes ago, chapter master 454 said:

Horde armies have always been a thing. However they are equally miserable to play as to play against and can run into running out of time in tournaments which can hurt their scoring.

 

That being said, it depends on the lists it faces. Some armies have a better time against such things that maybe just have a ton of D2 on hand, I would see Custodes folding a marine horde army in no time flat, and Dark Angels would also likely pair not badly into with how Lion, Deathwings and ICC are now who all have D2 on mass.

 

With horde armies it is always the same question: can you kill enough of them to start scoring the game to overcome their advantage from early game scoring. It isn't they do damage, they just grind you out on VP. Again, they are vulnerable to certain match-ups even if they face a TAC list of that faction as certain factions just handle it better than others, similar to how you comment most TACs can handle tank skew, it isn't dissimilar just less notable because you don't spend 3 hours having to watch them move models vs. the tanks player whose turn will take half that of normal players.

 

Skew has always been a thing. Always will be. Doesn't matter how you look at it, if we were to bump up the stats of marines with their points, you just make the marine skew list 50 marines instead of 100 but still annoying as all get out to face but with less time wasted on models getting moved, deployed, removed, shifted, rolled for and so on.

 

"How things should be" will always been subjective. Back in yore, you could technically take a whole TON of marines despite a Force Org chart. up to 60 tacts, 30 devastators, 30 assault marines and then depending on when you want to place the timing, you could have up to another 30-60 veterans of some flavour.

This isn't new and "how things should be" is always our own rose-tinted glasses look at things.

 

I mean, isn't it fluffy for Black Templar to have their infantry spam list? Isn't that how they roll in fluff with their nigh legion level size of their chapter

Horde armies have always been a thing, yes. For factions that should be hordes. Guard, nids, orks, etc.

 

have not always been a thing for space marines and other armies that are supposed to be elite.

[Valkyrion]

On average between 3rd and 7th, marines were 15 points each if they came with a bolter, and 18 points each if they came with a Jump Pack, Bolt Pistol and Chainsword, so six bare bones tactical squads, two bare bones assault squads and two bare bones devastator squads would cost around 1560. You'd then need at least one HQ (say 100 points), leaving you around 300 points to squeeze in special weapons. 

Hard to work out exactly, because lascannons were about 35 points each, some editions heavy bolters were free, power fists were always expensive etc, but basically 100 marines have been possible in every edition after 2nd.

 

I couldn't tell you which edition the space marine horde would have been most effective in.

[Antarius]

4 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

On average between 3rd and 7th, marines were 15 points each if they came with a bolter, and 18 points each if they came with a Jump Pack, Bolt Pistol and Chainsword, so six bare bones tactical squads, two bare bones assault squads and two bare bones devastator squads would cost around 1560. You'd then need at least one HQ (say 100 points), leaving you around 300 points to squeeze in special weapons. 

Hard to work out exactly, because lascannons were about 35 points each, some editions heavy bolters were free, power fists were always expensive etc, but basically 100 marines have been possible in every edition after 2nd.

 

I couldn't tell you which edition the space marine horde would have been most effective in.

I regularly played with 4-5 (sometimes 6) tactical squads, a devastator squad and a couple of assault squads in 4th. It worked out pretty well in that I usually didn't win big, but I never really lost big either. Plus, it felt like a "real" army to me (I've always been fond of infantry).

Edited Saturday at 06:23 PM by Antarius

[crimsondave]

Marines are two wounds now though.  Obviously damage output is higher but you’re not killing a Marine with a lucky lasgun shot anymore.  Interesting topic.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

14 hours ago, crimsondave said:

Marines are two wounds now though.  Obviously damage output is higher but you’re not killing a Marine with a lucky lasgun shot anymore.  Interesting topic.

Damage output going up is also helpful to the marines in whittling away meaningful damage from the other side.

[jaxom]

This thread seems relevant: 

My take away was that Elite Hard-To-Kill infantry units are now less Hard-To-Kill and their points dropped to match. 2nd ed: five Deathwing Terminators were 340 points, now 180; Jump Pack Intercessors are 160 for ten, used to be 350 for ten Jump Pack Assault Marines; Tactical Squads were 300 points and now 140 points. 5th ed: 200 points for five Terminators, 240 points for five Devastators with lascannons - now 120 points; Tactical Squads were 180 points. Simultaneously, army composition and weapon effectiveness has changed and that has reinforced a cycle of driving points further down because it has been too easy to kill a T4 W2 Sv3+ model during various times in modern 40k era. For example, the 9th ed Strike Force Acheran example army is now 1810 points.

 

Here's an example of what one could do when starting to iterate on points.

 

 

Pick a unit and weapon to be the baseline. Figure out how killy and survivable it is against itself. Price it each factor at 100 for simple percentage math later. This baseline unit is now 200 points. Work out killy and survival for another unit and price relative: for example, 5 gene-mods can take the same damage as 10 humans, but the math shows the relative difference in wounding and how that changes the survivability. The 10 humans are only 66 or 67 points survivable compared to 5 gene-mods against the baseline weapon. Humans have a worse weapon, the laser rifle. The laser rifle is less effective: it takes 36 shots relative to the HEx-rifle's 9 shots. That gives the ratio to apply to killy: 100 pts --> 25 points. So 5 gene-mod with HEx-rifles are 200 (100 killy+100 survivable compared to each baseline) points and 10 humans with laser rifles are 91 or 92 points (25 killy + 66/67 survivable compared to each baseline).

 

The biggest thing one can do is choose how to iterate points to get the size one wants. It's too hard to unravel what is corporate input to the GW design team and what is the team's actual design philosophy. In my example, a 2000 point army could have 50 gene-mod with HEx-rifles. I might say, "Okay, that's more infantry I want for an elite force in this game system; but if I think about what it would look like with a few special units and/or vehicles, that number of models is going to drop fast," and be okay with 200 point price tag. I'd then look at the humans, "About 210 humans with laser rifles assuming nothing else, yeah that's Skaven levels of horde. I'm going to keep on an eye on this, maybe have some fail-safes in how armies have to made so there's an upper limit of 120-150 basic troopers."

 

 

23 hours ago, crimsondave said:

Marines are two wounds now though.  Obviously damage output is higher but you’re not killing a Marine with a lucky lasgun shot anymore.  Interesting topic.

9 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Damage output going up is also helpful to the marines in whittling away meaningful damage from the other side.

 

I did a big math analysis when 8th ed came out. The change to Wound Table and AP system most negatively impacted the basic Astartes statline. The 2nd wound didn't help against most of the weapons which were already common and had gotten better at successfully getting past a Marine's save. Plus, other weapons got boosted to 2 damage. Marines used to laugh at autocannons, heavy bolters, and flamestorm cannons, and now they're really good at picking up Marine kills. The reduction in Damage 1 weapon effectiveness then dropped the price down more for units with Bolters.

[chapter master 454]

I feel like there is an amount of cherry picking here. Not all of it, some is valid but others not.

 

marines getting +1 wound was a VERY significant change and cannot be understated. In fact, I would say marines are tougher NOW than they ever were in prior editions because they fell very quickly under any sort of pressure. Heck, back in your days of yore Power weapons just ignored armour and so a random sergeant with a power weapon was often a major problem for any target.

Point costs of back then also do have some oddities. If we were to try and math out of what good back then, it could be a fun game of trying to see what would be competitive within today's understandings and mainly with a better knowledge of getting terrain. Though then we'd have to organise points at the more classical 1500 points, not 2k we are used to now.

 

However I'd think we'd rapidly run into issues. Whip of Submission lists by chaos would have entire units removed from the table by vindicators with little concern, monsters would once again run rampant and...tar pit dreadnought would be a thing again...

 

Just a reminder to all those here: back in "the good ol' days" you didn't get to fall back from melee willfully. You had to first lose the combat, then FAIL the leadership check then not fail the sweeping advance contest to get a unit out of melee. It was hilariously easy to dodge gun-lines by just running into unit that were even remotely poorly placed.

But that is countered by the fact charging wasn't random. Infantry moved 6", and all charges were 6". No "running", no advancing. Infantry moved 6. Unless you were eldar...pretty sure I remember they were different somehow.

Oh and Tau had Move Shoot Move on ALL crisis suits. They may not of had riptides then but who needed them when you can shoot freely and not get caught.

 

I again assert: there never was a perfect edition. You don't want a balanced game, you just yearn for days of glory past...

 

...and...I can respect that.

Hard not to.

We all just want...to have fun.

[Emperor Ming]

Like I know balance is better than ever atm...

 

But IKnights are top atm and they've just got massive points decreases

[jaxom]

In general, I think tough units across the board needed a boost, and some weapons getting boosted along with them. I've accepted that was not done, and applaud GW for at least boosting Custodes and Death Guard.