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Post by No One on Jan 22, 2020 12:28:15 GMT
Killing objectives is more common and easier (as opposed to nearly nonexistent in ca2019) Depending on exact format, this is wrong. Maelstrom you can definitely do this: my deck had...8/19 objective cards (3 secures, 3 defends, random objective, and hold 3), without taking potentially unscorable cards like BGH. The rest were kill cards or other stuff (e.g. area denial, master the warp). Part of this was due to the fact that I could use Codex cards, which isn't allowed for ETC: that gave me another 3 kill cards. So straight maelstrom, it's sort of in a similar position to ITC where you can build for killing or holding, but you're going to be in a difficult position if you can't do a bit of the other. Unlike ITC, there's still an emphasis on being able to hold any objective: ITC you can just get hold from the close objective. Maelstrom, you have limited control over that. The thing is, EW has almost no kill VP at all (I think there's 2.5 out of the entire set. And one of those is the generic KP mission). So mixing maelstrom and EW skews it towards holding, even with addition of KP on top as is fairly standard for ETC-esc. ETC itself is adding quite a weighting on end game though (for some reason), so killing stuff becomes a viable win con if you can then score T5/6 off of that. |
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Post by mattblowers on Jan 22, 2020 12:35:36 GMT
Yeah, I hope that for 1000 participants the first like 100 places will belong to Space Marines. And you made the fair point. People tend to forget that somebody is a good player, when his army gets incredibly buffed. Nobody likes to admit, that his opponent is just a lot better player and now it is hilariously easy to just blame the opponent army for being overpowered. And it is frustrating for both players. The one playing against the Marines consider himself somewhat cheated for having a subpar army and therefore not having equal chance for winning, and the other one, the Marines player feels frustrated because he will never be praised for his skill. This is 100% the fault of GW. It always happens when a game gets wildly imbalanced. A good player with a mediocre army isn't going to win a major (neither is a poor player with a good army). A good player with a great army isn't going to get credit. That being said, CA2019 did next to nothing to balance the game. The only thing that has brought some light of hope is the PA books. It's going to be a long SM winter where the best we can hope for is something more broken then SM sneaking through. Otherwise it will be a continuation of what we already know. Now I'm hearing a lot of people wishing for a new edition this summer. It's a shame for an edition to be completely and seemingly irreparably broken by one (please do not swear) up codex. |
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Post by mattblowers on Jan 22, 2020 12:52:19 GMT
Killing objectives is more common and easier (as opposed to nearly nonexistent in ca2019) Depending on exact format, this is wrong. Maelstrom you can definitely do this: my deck had...8/19 objective cards (3 secures, 3 defends, random objective, and hold 3), without taking potentially unscorable cards like BGH. The rest were kill cards or other stuff (e.g. area denial, master the warp). Part of this was due to the fact that I could use Codex cards, which isn't allowed for ETC: that gave me another 3 kill cards. So straight maelstrom, it's sort of in a similar position to ITC where you can build for killing or holding, but you're going to be in a difficult position if you can't do a bit of the other. Unlike ITC, there's still an emphasis on being able to hold any objective: ITC you can just get hold from the close objective. Maelstrom, you have limited control over that. The thing is, EW has almost no kill VP at all (I think there's 2.5 out of the entire set. And one of those is the generic KP mission). So mixing maelstrom and EW skews it towards holding, even with addition of KP on top as is fairly standard for ETC-esc. ETC itself is adding quite a weighting on end game though (for some reason), so killing stuff becomes a viable win con if you can then score T5/6 off of that. The thing I'm seeing is that the game is too killy at the moment. Shooting especially. They tried to balance SM with bolter drill rules. Then they came out with the ridiculous SM codex and suddenly all the shooty buffs and points drops meant the army is suddenly 2-3 more deadly than it was. AP -3 Botlers with D 3? What crack smoking waterheaded neanderthal looked at that and thought "Yeah, that should be OK?" It's buffs stacked on buffs with tactics to boot and that's before strategems kick in. That was what made Ynarri bad for the game: they essentially got too many buffs that were CP free. Demonstration: when the Imperial Knights codex dropped everyone was impressed with the Helverins. 4D3 shots that hit on 3s with S7 AP-1, and here's the kicker, 3 damage flat. The problem was the castellan was so much more efficient for the points that nobody played them. Fast forward 18 months until GW finally fixed the castellan (or SM dropped, take your pick) and now nobody takes the helverin because it doesn't do enough damage or resilient enough. Think about that. The objective game is weak not because playing objectives is bad but because the game has become too killy to win that way. You can rarely ever score "Defend X objective" now. Winning on objectives has always been my favorite way to play the game. You could build an army that played keep away and still win on points. Not anymore. |
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Post by gorsameth on Jan 22, 2020 18:19:58 GMT
Caledonian was CA2019, LVO is ITC. That makes a big difference in what is viable or not. CA is much more objective focused so you can pressure your opponent and score despite losing chunks of your army. In ITC killing is much more important and its hard to trade kills effectively against Marines. And yes at this point the best bet is probably hoping for soul crushing Marine dominance to try and force GW to do some heavy handed adjustments come May. Alex's list bleeds max secondaries as well - there isn't a nids/GSC list that doesn't bleed secondaries somewhere. His just bleeds it out early and then they stop scoring off additional kills, giving you a chance to catch up if you play it right. ITC actually has decent balance between the two - you can gear to do either, and there's drawbacks to both. Killing objectives is more common and easier (as opposed to nearly nonexistent in ca2019), but not the only strategy with engineers and recon having good play for map strats. Any strategy you can pull to avoid being tabled will basically help you in ITC too. But if you bring a static onboard gun line to the party, yes basically you will auto lose vs another gun line. Yes you can do both in the ITC but you don't have to, and that is IMO the issue. I want board control to matter because then units that are not the top of killing efficiency gain in power and you need to do more then spend 100% of your list on killing the opponent. Because ITC offers players the choice gunline can still chose to focus purely on being gunlines. They don't have to compromise their killing efficacy to win the game. For example you have CA style Tau lists with a bunch of Piranha's. It dilutes the killing power of the list compared to more common ITC lists because the missions force you to care about objectives on the board and sitting in a little deathball isn't enough. |
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Post by gorsameth on Jan 22, 2020 18:23:47 GMT
Depending on exact format, this is wrong. Maelstrom you can definitely do this: my deck had...8/19 objective cards (3 secures, 3 defends, random objective, and hold 3), without taking potentially unscorable cards like BGH. The rest were kill cards or other stuff (e.g. area denial, master the warp). Part of this was due to the fact that I could use Codex cards, which isn't allowed for ETC: that gave me another 3 kill cards. So straight maelstrom, it's sort of in a similar position to ITC where you can build for killing or holding, but you're going to be in a difficult position if you can't do a bit of the other. Unlike ITC, there's still an emphasis on being able to hold any objective: ITC you can just get hold from the close objective. Maelstrom, you have limited control over that. The thing is, EW has almost no kill VP at all (I think there's 2.5 out of the entire set. And one of those is the generic KP mission). So mixing maelstrom and EW skews it towards holding, even with addition of KP on top as is fairly standard for ETC-esc. ETC itself is adding quite a weighting on end game though (for some reason), so killing stuff becomes a viable win con if you can then score T5/6 off of that. The thing I'm seeing is that the game is too killy at the moment. Shooting especially. They tried to balance SM with bolter drill rules. Then they came out with the ridiculous SM codex and suddenly all the shooty buffs and points drops meant the army is suddenly 2-3 more deadly than it was. AP -3 Botlers with D 3? What crack smoking waterheaded neanderthal looked at that and thought "Yeah, that should be OK?" It's buffs stacked on buffs with tactics to boot and that's before strategems kick in. That was what made Ynarri bad for the game: they essentially got too many buffs that were CP free. Demonstration: when the Imperial Knights codex dropped everyone was impressed with the Helverins. 4D3 shots that hit on 3s with S7 AP-1, and here's the kicker, 3 damage flat. The problem was the castellan was so much more efficient for the points that nobody played them. Fast forward 18 months until GW finally fixed the castellan (or SM dropped, take your pick) and now nobody takes the helverin because it doesn't do enough damage or resilient enough. Think about that. The objective game is weak not because playing objectives is bad but because the game has become too killy to win that way. You can rarely ever score "Defend X objective" now. Winning on objectives has always been my favorite way to play the game. You could build an army that played keep away and still win on points. Not anymore. Which is why I hate the hope the community had for PA bringing everyone else to SM levels. We don't want to the game to played at the new SM level because the game is to lethal, it was already to lethal before the SM codex came along. That's also why we have all the deepstrike limitations, because the game is so lethal everyone wanted to hide off the table until they did their lethal thing. For the health of the game killing power needs to go down, not up. |
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Post by mattblowers on Jan 22, 2020 18:25:15 GMT
Alex's list bleeds max secondaries as well - there isn't a nids/GSC list that doesn't bleed secondaries somewhere. His just bleeds it out early and then they stop scoring off additional kills, giving you a chance to catch up if you play it right. ITC actually has decent balance between the two - you can gear to do either, and there's drawbacks to both. Killing objectives is more common and easier (as opposed to nearly nonexistent in ca2019), but not the only strategy with engineers and recon having good play for map strats. Any strategy you can pull to avoid being tabled will basically help you in ITC too. But if you bring a static onboard gun line to the party, yes basically you will auto lose vs another gun line. Yes you can do both in the ITC but you don't have to, and that is IMO the issue. I want board control to matter because then units that are not the top of killing efficiency gain in power and you need to do more then spend 100% of your list on killing the opponent. Because ITC offers players the choice gunline can still chose to focus purely on being gunlines. They don't have to compromise their killing efficacy to win the game. For example you have CA style Tau lists with a bunch of Piranha's. It dilutes the killing power of the list compared to more common ITC lists because the missions force you to care about objectives on the board and sitting in a little deathball isn't enough. How is that you think you don't have to have board control to win in ITC? You lose hold more every turn (and the bonus) if you don't have board control. That means you lose by default unless you kill more everyturn. You can't simply not do either one and win very many of your games. |
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Post by kazetanade on Jan 22, 2020 20:30:19 GMT
I will also like to point out Sieglers tau list which is the cookie cutter of every tau list in the ITC wins off board control, not kill pressure. You bring Pirahnas in etc likely because infantry presence is still huge in that list meta, but I don't claim to know for sure (or if its even still part of the main tau meta in etc).
Only bad players win by castling and shooting.
The complaining is not too different from how it was with Knights, and honestly Ynnari was almost as bad as that. Marines need adapting to but they don't ignore as many core rules as those two previous armies. We dealt with those, we can deal with this. The counter marine armies are what are going to be hard to handle.
Ref helverins, people don't take them because their damage profile is bad for current meta. With 2+sv 4W or 2W everywhere, or T8 2+sv 16W, helverins profile is inefficient in getting things done. T7 spam is the way forward in light of the meta I think, so expect them to make return in the longer game.
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Post by xtztxtxz on Jan 22, 2020 21:19:41 GMT
What combo / supplement produces that? |
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Post by killercroc on Jan 22, 2020 21:25:29 GMT
I'm guessing it's a typo as the only D3 bolter is the M-C ones on characters But AP -3 D2 on stalkers. Who knows, there may be some strat to up their damage but nothing like that sounds familiar.
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Post by No One on Jan 22, 2020 23:33:13 GMT
Fists stalkers in dev shooting a vehicle.
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Post by mattblowers on Jan 23, 2020 13:05:25 GMT
What combo / supplement produces that? Stalker is AP-3 with 2 Damage in IH with one of the protocols, it gets to 3 damage with something, I'm not quite sure, Nanavati talked about it in his last Art of War podcast. I might be mixing it with IF. Space Marines get so many buffs I simply pucker my butt hole and wait to see what I have left after they finish their turn. Fists stalkers in dev shooting a vehicle. That's the one. |
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Post by 1b2a on Jan 23, 2020 13:51:07 GMT
Yes you can do both in the ITC but you don't have to, and that is IMO the issue. I want board control to matter because then units that are not the top of killing efficiency gain in power and you need to do more then spend 100% of your list on killing the opponent. Because ITC offers players the choice gunline can still chose to focus purely on being gunlines. They don't have to compromise their killing efficacy to win the game. For example you have CA style Tau lists with a bunch of Piranha's. It dilutes the killing power of the list compared to more common ITC lists because the missions force you to care about objectives on the board and sitting in a little deathball isn't enough. How is that you think you don't have to have board control to win in ITC? You lose hold more every turn (and the bonus) if you don't have board control. That means you lose by default unless you kill more everyturn. You can't simply not do either one and win very many of your games. Because in most cases you will have 1 objective, without moving. They have scouts, ignore LOS thunderfire to sit, etc. So if you just sit and castle you're getting 3/4 primaries a turn (except hold more). Meanwhile the army that goes for hold more is exposed and will die from an army that can table a turn. |
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Post by xtztxtxz on Jan 23, 2020 13:51:33 GMT
Ah stalker bolters. I was worried there was some crazy combo which produced that output with rapid fire.
At least the extra damage doesn't trigger on Monsters I guess!
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Post by 1b2a on Jan 23, 2020 13:53:11 GMT
Fists stalkers in dev shooting a vehicle. whats the range on those? Who holds stalker bolters? |
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Post by mattblowers on Jan 23, 2020 13:58:46 GMT
Fists stalkers in dev shooting a vehicle. whats the range on those? Who holds stalker bolters? 30" or 36", I can't remember which. They are held by intercessors (primaris troops). |
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