Ok, it's finally time for me to admit something that I've been avoiding talking about for a while. Which is the the creeping realization that 40K is starting to get as unbalanced as Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Even amongst the newest 5th Edition Codices.
It was easy to deny it for a while. Because while the 5th Edition books were clearly superior to most of the legacy codices of 2nd/3rd/4th edition, the first 2-3 at least seemed to be pretty well balanced between themselves, with multiple interesting builds available. We in the competitive community were sure that once everyone was updated to 5th, the problems of balance in 40K would be much lessened, and multiple builds of all types would blossom forth.
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| The Orks' rating depends on how well they're rolling that day. :) |
At least until the new Tyranid book was released. Which limited it's players to just 2 viable builds right off the bat. Later, a bad FAQ reduced that to one build. Was it an aberration? We all thought so. Because then the Blood Angels book came out, and while we weren't happy with the costing of certain things (Death Company in particular), you had to admit the book had a lot of power.
Then the Dark Eldar hit and we tried to tell ourselves that GW had finally made a good 5th Edition Xenos Codex. Well, I'm still waiting to lose a game to a DE player. Hell, I'm still waiting to have even a reasonably CLOSE game with a Dark Eldar player. They've all been blowouts! Even when I've mistakenly taken 250 fewer points than my opponent. I struggle more against Tyranids than the dark kin. Though I have yet to lose to them either.
Who IS whipping me? As in, every single bleeping game? Space Wolves. Two and a half years on. My bane is Thunderwolf Cav, who get my vote for the most broken unit in the game. I shoot them with AP2, I torrent them with S6/S7, I block them, I try my best. But it's never quite enough. On the rare occasion I do actually kill them all, I still have to slog across a field that's dominated by Long Fangs. Ugh!
The Grey Knights have been tough lately too, but those games have all been close enough that I'm not crying about them yet. I see weaknesses, though there is some just plain broken stuff in that book.
And Orks? They still beat me silly when they roll well. It's just how it goes. That's their design.
I'm even watching the former plethora of IG builds slowly get whittled down to just a couple of viable ones as newer codices nerf certain kinds of armies.
But Crying Aside...
There's also something else that has me worried about where the new codices are going. That is the land of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
The Grey Knights are not balanced against all armies. They auto-rape certain books (Blood Angels, Daemons, Dark Eldar, Tyranids), and get raped in turn by Eldar. Do you want a balanced, all-comers force with Grey Knights? Mono-build time again with Razor/Rhino/Psycannon spam. The fun builds (Stormraven Rush) don't have enough redundancy to be reliable under 2K.
Is this all just a result of GW cutting Dev resources? Or is it (after several notable departures) a shift in the design studio's thinking about the game we play? I suspect it's both. Jervis is now in full control with nobody to get in the way of his 'vision', while the budget and personnel cuts ensure that not enough play-testing takes place to balance it.
Conclusion
Sure, player skill counts for a lot. But given two players of roughly equal skill, the book they choose will more often than not determine the outcome of the match. At least barring some amazing luck on the part of the weaker codex. Just looking at the armies that have been brought to the big tourneys in the last year will reveal a clear bias towards Wolves, Blood Angels, IG, and (for now) Grey Knights.
And yes, I know that the Nids made it to the top tables at Adepticon, but how many of those top players were playing with a Marine or IG book? While the Dark Eldar may have had some recent success, what's been YOUR experience with them? Mine has been disappointing.
Everyone is a product of their meta. Tyranid struggle, Dark Eldar struggle against GK and Mech IG, and Necron ... lolzycakes.
ReplyDeleteThe rest ... I can't get behind. GK are easy enough to rickroll if you have a strong list from any of the other dexes and play properly ... if you're better than your opponent, you win. If you're worse, you lose. Both of these results occur more often than not.
The same can apply to a variety of other situations.
Even Dark Eldar can build to better handle their nemeses.
You still hear people say that Orks are terrible, yet the 26-vehicle Ork list I've periodically run for years still runs over everyone.
I swear I'm not posting lately to be contrarian ... I just find all of my experiences with the game and with conversing about the game contradict the conclusion that the game is becoming LESS balanced. I actually see the opposite. Additionally, as more armies are going hybrid-mech by necessity and the game settles into more of that "place," you actually are seeing things like Tyranid become ... well, more viable, as their only weakness is having to deal with MSU tank saturation overloading a limited # of anti-tank ranged slots.
I have to agree with Mike on this. My local meta is overloaded with grey knights right now, but we also have a few regular tyranid players having no issues winning regularly outside of the "single build" from the net. Dark Eldar are doing well too, and even Chaos Daemons place well at the local tournaments. I call it all in the player now, as the balance is creeping in more and more. I will say a few books have less in variety, but that is improving as well.
ReplyDeleteI just saw a Dark Eldar take 1st place at a local tournament of around 50 players, so I can't say they are a terrible book.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do agree with the Rock-Paper-Scissor aspect that is slipping into the game. The above DE player dodged a lot of IG lists that I imagine would have stopped his venom spam in its tracks.
I don't worry that it is an intended design by GW, I worry more that it is an unintended design by GW.
Either way, I still believe that any given codex can take on any other codex, if both take all-comers lists. (So says the IG/BA player, haha)
Biggest problem still hasn't been brought up or well maybe I have missed it. 6th ed isn't that far off and we still have really old books and armies that need updated. Since 3rd GW has tried to change a tire while the car is in motion. At least when they went from a slow tank of a game in second they stopped to swap wheels for tracks and lighten the load to make it run faster and smoother. That is what concerns me the most. Small rules changes in the game change the dynamic of the game a lot suddenly shooting becomes less important and assault is the way to go. Now units that are assault oriented and cheap spam the field then they alter the points to fix the problem and then they go back to shooting game and once again everything is undercosted. Its sad to think of all the work that goes into these games just to see them scrap it all and start over but if they were smart they would leave the situation alone until 6th. Let the masses stay content with where they are and write new books edit some of the existing ones, change the layout and alter points to fit 6th ed. That is the best solution to surving the scrap yard. Simply put you can't balance a tire on a car that is in motion why would you think you could balance a game in motion.
ReplyDeleteSandwyrm. I will answer this with a small history of my playing past.
ReplyDeleteI started playing space marines and got my butt kicked by chaos space marines. You know how competitive I am. I took the same space marines I had and changed the style to finally beat Scottydont.
When he bought Daemons, I bought daemonhunters mixed with Guard allies. By themselves daemonhunters sucked so I used what was best in their codex which was the allies rule.
As I played against tyranids I loved the idea of all those giant carnifexes so I bought them and ran them for 6 months almost never loosing. They got boring so I decided to buy some guard stuff to go with my allies of daemonhunters. I played them for 6 months doing well, but missing my love of power armor.
Then the space wolves came out. They were exactly what I wanted to play! Great close combat space marines. I didn't even know about thunderwolves and longfangs when I bought the codex. I started playing them and they evolved into the best army and codex I have ever played. I had fun with them, more than anything else. I have been playing them now for over a year and branched out trying all kinds of different combinations. I still am not bored with them because the codex was written so well, almost everything is good.
When the tyranid codex came out I cried and stopped playing them because they didn't fit the way I liked them.
When the grey knights came out, and I already had ton of the stuff, I decided to buy a few more things to build my secondary army back to where I wanted.
I say all this to say, "the evolution of my gaming experience has been all about me having the most fun with the army or codex I want"
I have never been interested in dark eldar, orks, blood angels, black templars, chaos daemons, chaos marines, etc. I feel confident I can take any of those armies and make them competitive, but I don't want to. I also see more balance in today's game.
On a side note, changing someone's approach to their gaming style such as not taking all drop pods, using hydras or ordinance, straken, more rhino's, etc is hard for some people to try, but the more I change my playstyle the more fun I have in finding new things.
Dark Eldar are not a 7; our local area is not representative of the actual power of that Codex.
ReplyDeleteAlso, one more round of sky-is-falling crap over half of a Codex that we haven't seen wargear or POINTS COSTS for and my head is going to explode. Take it down a notch, Sisters players, jesus.
@Spag
ReplyDeleteI'm not attacking you personally. I'm complaining about the Wolf book. You've found combinations of tools from it that work great, and that's fine. I would do the same. I'm just at a loss as to how to compete with it.
People that say "well DE won this" or "my local tyranid player won this" don't get out very often. I've been to tournaments where 80% of the community is xenos, of course a DE player could win or a tyranid player. However when the roles are reversed and there are 80% marine players the xenos players often get knocked out the first round and no-one hears from them again (this is much like the area in which spag, sandy and I come from).
ReplyDelete@Mike. . .really? You think that as imperial army books come out with more units, better statlines and cheaper high STR weapons tyranids will get better? I'm lost, I understand you think people are going to move into a hybrid mech with foot troops. I will throw you a bone and say, sure they will. But the only thing you will see is maybe 2 squads of guys on foot bubble wrapping the tanks or blocking charge lanes.
To your comment about Tyranids "only" weakness. My friend, that's just the start of it. MSU tanks would be less difficult if the haunting mass of an imperfection they call a codex was fixed. I'll give you five simple examples of there the write wasn't thinking at all when he wrote it
-Swarmlord 4+ invuln. . .in close combat only
-No wings on a Tyranid Prime
-No grenades for an "assault oriented codex" as the internet likes to call it
-No balance of units, cramming 3 viable units and 2 characters into a 0-3 slot.
-Raveners have acute senses. . .why? They do not have ranged weapons good enough to come on turn 1 and shoot in nigh fight and by turn 2 when they deepstrike night fight is over.
The FAQ as sandy mentioned further destroyed the book by simply not allowing it to function like the rest of 40k. One glaring example not being able to put ICs inside spore pods.
Lastly a quick hint to everyone out there GW has a way of saying when they think a book is good or bad. If they think a book is good enough that people will buy models they make models, DE is getting 2 more new models in the next 2 weeks. Guard has gotten Several new tank kits and a valk along with the majority of it's models being made in finecast(crap). Space wolves have the best deal on a battle force out of almost all the armies. However, if GW thinks a book will be bad or poorly received they don't make models. Sure they made a Mawloc and trygon kit. . .but where's the meat of the codex? The tervigon kit from several web sites has been cancelled along with the harpy kit. I fear sisters of battle will face the exact same fate, they will receive a kit that looks amazing but nothing else. No new models to back up the book or encourage people to play them.
@dodger I agree on the power of the codex comment. Without stepping on any toes there are only 2 DE players at my FLGS and 2 where I go to college. I can say that of the four the only one that I have seen win games regularly is in Muncie. The 2 DE players at my FLGS dont play to the strengths of the codex and looking at their lists I feel it's a copy paste from the old book.
The reason people are freaking about sisters is because the acts of faith are just bad, along with no new units to compensate for the things they were lacking, along with no bolster to their statline to make them more than lack luster marines. Also GW has spoken 0 words of new models. This is a testament to "we dont even care enough or think they are good enough to make new models."
That's because every Sisters player seems to have expected them to leave all the amazing parts of that Codex alone, copy and paste them into a new book, and then just update all the bad stuff.
ReplyDeleteThat isn't how a new Codex works, and thinking that way was just willfully ignorant. Especially when you're talking about one of the oldest Codexes being updated from 3rd to 5th. Things were not going to magically stay the same in all the ways you want while all the bad things disappear; that's not a new Codex.
There's no way a modern 5th Edition Codex was going to include "3++ for everyone!" or "Razorbacks with fire points!" because that isn't how things work in 5th Edition. The only reason they worked in that book currently was BECAUSE everything else in it was so underpowered; otherwise, abilities like that flat out have no place in the game right now.
Basically, 3rd Ed Sisters still worked in 5th Ed because they had a handful of flat-out over the top abilities that allowed them to compensate for having an outdated, overcosted Codex.
So what did everyone expect to happen when they bring the outdated and overcosted stuff up to date and cost it properly? They're trying to make it a actual army rather than a couple of Faith gimmicks backing Immo-spam unto infinity. It's inconceivable that people expected Faith to get BETTER; it was as good as it could have possibly been.
For the rest of the army to be brought in line, Faith had to be toned down. We're going to be looking at at army of BS4 models in Power Armor that cost 8-9 points apiece, and people expected Faith to be maintainted at the level it was before?
It's utterly impossible to bring the old Faith into a new Codex without leaving the rest of the army looking just as terrible as it was in the old book.
I'm just saying "THEY TONED DOWN FAITH" and "IMMOLATORS DON'T HAVE FIRE POINTS" were the most obvious things that HAD to go in order for them to try to make Sisters into a functional army on the whole, so seeing people immediately denounce the entire thing as a failure because two incredibly obvious things happened, and knowing absolutely nothing beyond that, is insane.
I'm not saying it WON'T be a terrible trainwreck of a Codex; the entire point is, we don't have enough information to make that call. We have half the information, and it's the less important half. All we know is that it's not the same book it used to be, and, uhh...I believe that's the point of a new book.
WOW!! Go boyyyyyyyyyeeeeee!
ReplyDelete@Dodger3: I agree with the sentiment that faith should be significantly different in the new codex, and the fact that it is, and isn't technically "as good" as the old faith, is perfectly fine. But only if you add the new and shiny and cool that a new codex deserves. The addition of Repressors, Arbites, and other new cool kinds of units and mechanics would be awesome! But without that, it's just taking the best parts of an already outdated codex and whacking them with the nerf bat. Makes the army uninteresting and not fun.
ReplyDeleteHowever, all of that is a matter of opinion. The only things from a game design point (other than points costs) that I have a HUGE problem with, is the fact that faith points don't scale.
500 point game: D6 faith
1000 point game: D6 faith
3000 point game: D6 faith
That is downright lazy and HORRIBLE game design and is inexcusable. It's total crap as a matter of fact and I'm disgusted that GW would publish something so half-assed and untested.
With regards to the 5th edition codices, I think they've been very well balanced with the glaring exception of Tyranids. Even 'Nids are almost there, all they needed was for a not-fail FAQ and possibly a few ways to manipulate the Force Org chart and they'd likely be in pretty good shape. As a DE player, I can count on one hand the number of games I've lost, and I consider most of my gaming club to be pretty darn competitive. Not to mention that I'm one of only a handful of DE players in the region. They're inherent fragility and their extreme finesse requires them to be played with few mistakes, and they can't survive extended strings of tough luck in the game. Marines and IG can survive either through their resiliency or redundancy, but DE comparatively fall short in this regard. They are capable of great damage and seriously dominating games, but if your darklight weaponry decides to betray you for a few turns, it's going to be a downhill spiral from there.
Except nobody's seen what any of the wargear does yet.
ReplyDeleteKnow what a Simulacrum does in the new Codex? Or a Laud Hailer? Or the Book of St. Lucius?
No. Nobody does. But they're all going to do something.
Who says none of those things are Sister Superior upgrades for +1 Faith per turn? Or +D3 for some upgrade your vehicles can take? Or the INFINITE OTHER WAYS non-scaling Faith could be fixed when we see the OTHER HALF of the Codex.
Tying your Faith pool to your wargear is the simplest way to make it scale, plain and simple. Not a clue how everyone is overlooking that and skipping straight to "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PLAY WITH D6 FAITH AT 329,392 POINTS???"
...T_T My poor Tau didn't even make it on his list...
ReplyDeleteThe list is 5th Edition Codexes.
ReplyDeleteMy Tyranids have never failed to beat up Space Marines; the games just became very much the same as the last one though since the only real option seemed to be between a Tyrant and Swarmlord.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of people struggle with Xenos because they are so used to having a 3+ save. Orks are fine because they have the bodies to soak up wounds but the other races just lose if you make a tactical misstate.
Wow.
ReplyDeleteAlright. Sandwyrm, no way in hell do Dark Eldar deserve a 7. Just because the 2 guys who play DE in your area are not competitive/not good who play eh lists have never beaten you, does not mean they deserve the rating you gave them. They are at least an 8, I would say 9.
You rate Space Wolves and Grey Knights so high because Spag plays them and, sorry to say, Spag seemingly whoops up on you guys all the time. Just because he outplays you with his aggressive lists and rolls above average doesn't mean those armies are bonkers.
I have never met you, nor played most of the "elite", but I've met most of the people who frequent this blog and have watched them play, have heard many stories, I know it better than you would think.
Also, just to spread the mean around, by the sound of your story Spag your history of gaming is basically you going around and metagaming the crap out of where you live while simultaneously playing nothing but the strongest armies of the time. If you are as competitive and WAAC as you claim, I guess that's great. I'll just keep playing Eldar I guess lol.
How do GK rape Dark Eldar? Does anyone in your area even try playing Venoms? You guys know what those do to short range Marine players? Raider rush is dead. As an Eldar/Dark Eldar player, the only things I don't like seeing across the table from me are Psycannon Dreads.
@Sisters: No one will have the money to buy the horde of 3++ ladies if their point costs are what people hope they will be. If they are 12+ the book will suck, if they are 8 or around they will be too expensive, unless you could all the people who counts-as, then they might as well jump right on.
Where does that leave us?
Orks (aren't 5th ed, don't care what they were "designed for", they take luck to do well and thats that)
Sisters aren't out yet, so I refuse to rate them unless you want to go by Stelek's prediction (he hints at having seen point costs) that they suck anyway, but we won't because we don't have his clairvoyance.
Space Marines and DE are an 8.
Space Wolves are (IMO) a 10.
Everyone else is 9 (except Nids who blow).
For a company that has a shitty way of updating everything, having 6/7 of the books at most 2 levels of power in difference is pretty good, and means games mostly come down to list and play ability. For instance, my main man Brodrick went 2-1 at Kokomo against Marines (won), lost to Dodger for the same reason everyone lost to dodger that day (he refused to fail invul saves, even with Null Zone eh Scotty lol) and won against Farmpunk's GK list with a crappy "for fun" DE list that had silly stuff like gimped Beastmaster squads, Razorwings, and Harlequin squads. Brodrick does so well for the some of the same reasons Spag does well, he just outplays you. Know, B doesn't player FOTM Marine armies or roll well (as everyone who has played him can attest) but hey, play ability means A LOT. A lot more than many people give it credit.
@master Kai,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the positive comments and respect your critical ones.
To correct your inadequate statements, I dont put my army lists together by reading online, using what others use, or metagaming what is in my area. I was learning to play against the best with Scottydont when I decided to buy daemonhunters.
In fact I take all the puzzle pieces I have in my codex and put together what I like and think will work. I don't build my lists around who will be where.
Having 2 marine armies really doesn't constitute Flavor of the month marines.
My 'rolling well' is not a fact. The probability of rolling well in my games is the same as others. I have tons of bad luck in lots of games but still win. You are correct about tactics and playing ability.
And Finally, I have never claimed to be WAAC like you suggested. (Competitive yes)
Is it folly that I happen to play Grey Knights and Space Wolves? No, because that is what I like.
And I am more than happy to 'play' you anytime!
ReplyDeleteWhy is "play" in quotations?
ReplyDeleteWe can play for sure, especially if you are going to the tournament ScottyDon't is hosting (I think the guys I am rolling with are going).
Just know, I consider myself competitive, but not nearly as much as you are (else I wouldn't play Eldar). I also don't claim to be a good player, I am pretty average. We'll see what happens., but if your Long Fangs down key transports turn 1, well, that's Eldar for you, there really isn't much I can do.
Already mentioned that nobody plays proper DE armies around here. Think I've seen one Venom on a table locally, ever, which is the bulk of the problem.
ReplyDeleteAnd Brodrick lost to me because he was playing that goofy Beastmaster army; I'm well aware by now that the go-to whenever I beat someone is that I made too many saves (and that's because 90% of people choose to not do the math on Fateweaver-assisted saves just so they can continue saying that) but Brodrick flat out didn't engage me until Turn 4; there was never a meaningful amount of saves to be rolled.
The luck went against me in that game in every way, and if he says otherwise, he's lying to you or himself. Ask him about the Assault on Vect's Raider, or the Assault on Vect himself. Meanwhile, in the entire game, he forced me to roll one save on Fateweaver, smashed through the one Bloodcrusher squad he engaged, and finished off my Bloodthirster with 4 Splinter Pod shots.
It wasn't a dice game. But I'm betting he never said that in the first place, and you're just taking it upon yourself to speak for him.
You're right, it wasn't a dice game. The game was pure strategy for the most part and B's gamble didn't pay off, it was a really fun game to watch.
ReplyDeleteI remember B rolling 19 Shadowfield saves in a row, as well as not engaging you until turn 4.
In reference to you, the "refused to fail saves thing" was more of a joke. I do know that even with Null Zone active, you weren't failing them vs Scotty, which was the crux of the joke. I'm known to not fail cover saves myself.
It does look sort of fishy when you roll your big dice for certain things over others, just saying. Not saying certain dice are loaded, it just looks that way when you change dice like you do. No accusations. That's just me though.
@meister kai,
ReplyDeleteBecause I play a certain army or codex doesn't mean I am competitive. I am competitive by nature at everything I do. You want me to play you with Grey Knights, fine. My guard, fine. My space wolves, fine. Either way we will play and I will be competitive.
The game is for fun.
I would tread lightly on the tone of some of your comments.
I'd love to know who originally cooked up this amazing "your red dice are loaded, your blue dice aren't" theory that I heard THREE separate times at Kokomo. It's fun being casually accused of cheating.
ReplyDeleteYou do know that one set of dice is a 12-block of 16mm and the other is a 36-block is 12mm, right? And that I only use the little dice for things that require more than 12 dice, or mixed Shooting attacks, because that's common sense?
It's pretty much how everyone uses their dice, all the time. They just don't play armies whose entire foundation is re-rolling saves to stay alive, so nobody else gets accused of cheating.
If you honestly think there's something wrong with my dice, you'll have to take it up with Chessex. Here you go:
http://www.chessex.com/Dice/Gemini/BlackRedgold.htm
http://www.chessex.com/Dice/Gemini/BlackBlue.htm
Scott got mad during our game because he's one of the few people who actually do understand the odds involved, and I made 3/4 Null Zone saves on a Daemon Prince. He's more than welcome to get mad about that, but it didn't affect the game at all, as I'd already forfeited that quarter--the entire point was to force him to send a Land Raider to come kill those Daemon Princes, weakening the quarter I actually wanted. The survival of the Prince was irrelevant, and I didn't even do anything with it on the final turn--so that would likely be an odd time to use my Cheater Dice Powers. But Scott was anticipating a draw on Primary and thought my Daemon Prince contesting that objective was going to be meaningful; it wasn't.
Other than that, the main thing he was mad about was the fact that there was a Tactical Squad there when my Princes landed, but they failed Ld9 to Shooting and ran off the board. That forced him to bring a whole separate Tactical Squad over to hold that objective which, again, he thought was going to decide the game. I'm not sure if my cheating ability extends to forcing Marine players to fail their Leadership tests, but if it did I'd probably start running the Changeling more often.
Any time you use different dice for one thing than another, people are going to suspect something.
ReplyDeleteI use multiple colors of dice to allow me to separate out different models in the same roll. I used to only use my white dice for leadership tests (because I can put them next to a model and not forget to take the test), but I got called on that once, so I make sure now to also roll my other colors for leadership tests during the game.
Except that I use the red dice for everything except things that require a bucket full of dice. Once again, that's common sense.
ReplyDeleteWhoever's floating the idea that I'm randomly switching the blue dice in and out is an idiot, and I'd be more than willing to say that to their face. Feel free to actually watch any of my games, in which I'll use the blue dice maybe twice--other than mixed Shooting, the only time they get used are when Seekers or Fiends make combat. Because those two things require between 36 and 55 dice if the units are at full strength, and I'm not rolling 12 dice 3-5 times.
Can't even wrap my head around that stupidity. So the idea is that I use loaded dice for 99% of my rolls, and then switch in normal dice every now and then for large rolls? Well, good thing my army is Fearless, otherwise I'd be running off the board with all my 5's and 6's all day--oh wait, my army does make some Ld tests, and they're infinitely more important than any other army's Ld tests.
Let me know when you find someone willing to say I switch to the blue dice to roll Fateweaver's test, otherwise I must be pretty suicidal with my most important model in this whole cheating thing.
Take a few weeks off of gaming to read MS cert books and look at all the fun stuff that I miss...
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side, the terror of my Scary Red Dice will give us a better running joke than Brightly Painted Marines for a while, at least.
ReplyDeleteI don't get how so many people can believe that so many other people know how to screw with large #'s of dice and make them roll different odds slightly more often in the perfect way to help their toy soldier success but also not obviously land on certain results more often.
ReplyDeleteDumb. Occam's Razor unapplied = absurd conspiracy theorists
We do have a marine player in our area who uses these obnoxiously large sized dice that roll 5s and 6s more than anything...
ReplyDeleteThere has even been a time where he's rolled like 10 dice with a 4+ and gotten all 5's 6's to wound, so I picked up his same dice to roll my saves and made every single 5+ save.....
I think I played him once at a south store tourney. It didn't help him win the game. :)
ReplyDeleteUsing your own local meta arguments while saying to others that their own local meta arguments are invalid is cheating. Not that local meta arguments are good on the first place.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, is more about army lists. Either you can't compete your you can't (there's a lot of can't right now =/). The whole "tiers" concept is rubbish.
I still don't get why people say that SM aren't as good as the other Marine variants when their advantages and disadvantages balance each other. And the models of DE that show up the most on competitive lists (Venoms, Wracks, Beastmasters) were released just recently.
Overall, this is a poor article of crying DOOM and trying to pass your local meta grievances as absolute statements. Come on dude, you are better than that.
@Gx1080
ReplyDeleteThe point of the article is that my gaming reality is not matching up with the competitive group-think on competitiveness. Part of my intent in writing it was to solicit others' experiences so that I can try and determine how wrong the group-think is, versus how wrong I am.
@sand:
ReplyDeleteHi, I don't live in the same region as you are so you might disregard this post. But to share my thoughts, don't you think that the terrain that you have there imbalances the game, low profile and insufficient number of terrain? Well at least wargamescon was better but still insufficient.
I live in the Philippines and been playing since 3rd ed. We do have 40++ (don't know the exact number) active players and still growing, not as big as yours though. Marines or imperial players here doesn't get an easy win button here because we do have a good, sufficient mix of blocking terrain and area terrain, which is good for xenos army, because as I think of it, xenos rely more on their environment and how they take the terrain to their advantage. I do think that it's why marines are more dominant in your area, wherein here, it's really a tough battle and unpredictable.
@everyone else:
I think sand is just collating other gaming experience with other groups if their is an imbalance and what not. And from our group's point of view, terrain really balances the game.
just my two cents. ♥♥♥
Our typical terrain setups around here are at least as dense as Adepticon. Most of the time, especially in pick-up games, it's quite a bit denser. If it was less dense, it would actually help me. :)
ReplyDeleteRionnay (who finally beat me with his bugs last night - yay!) had a few good ideas for how to deal with Thunderwolves without changing my list too much. I'll try them out the next time I see Spag.