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The state of the game


Ishagu

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Threads like these may annoy people who roll their eyes and think "Ugh, another Space Marines are weak thread", but the truth is that these threads are necessary. Each thread like this is a voice from the community. It's feedback on the current state of the game, and it's feedback from one of the largest player bases in 40k - the Space Marine players. (That being said, even if it was from the smallest player base in 40k it would still be valid.)

 

These threads should keep being made until GW addresses the balance problems that we as the community see. This is the most healthy way of doing things: You give feedback and the developer listens to your feedback and makes a smart decision. The more often the same piece of feedback keeps being brought up, the more likely it is that it will reach GW's ears. People gave negative feedback about unkillable deathstars with rerollable invuln saves, and GW addressed the issue. But it took a lot of feedback over a very long amount of time.

 

Bang that drum bruh ... bang it hard .

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I never thought of how tough it must be for Tau in the competitive scenes since they have zero allies. It explained why they are so powerful and self sufficient compared to some other dexes.

 

Orks on the other hand don’t have that luxury I suppose :D.

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I never thought of how tough it must be for Tau in the competitive scenes since they have zero allies. It explained why they are so powerful and self sufficient compared to some other dexes.

 

Orks on the other hand don’t have that luxury I suppose :D.

Well this isn't entirely the case. For example, solo Knight lists perform well without any allies, as do Dark Eldar and Eldar. These are factions that can ally but have books good enough to perform by themselves, just as the Tau do.

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I'm glad you've came to the same conclusion as myself and others regarding Knights being able to compete solo without allies and CP farms. ;)

 

Overall this data shows exactly what most of us experience. Shooting is trumping close combat for the most part, though there are still some oddities out there.

 

A main game change that would have great effect is area terrain blocking line of sight again.

 

Another change that won't happen is a change in the missions mechanic. More that split forces to break up clumping and gun lines and encourage and bolster forces that are quick moving would be great.

 

Unfortunately there is only one such mission and when I spoke to gamers in tournaments they complain about that mission because it hurts their list - all their lists were gun lines and clumping cheese balls!

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Clumped gunlines aren't dominating? They are unable to score objectives - it's why Ultras with Guilliman are winning significantly less than half of their games.

Knight can perform well solo, as I said, but they perform much better with a CP farm. You're not winning the toughest match-ups without spending 8CP a turn, every turn lol

 

Its mobile firepower and psychic powers that make a big splash. Close combat is not actually under-performing - there are generally less CC units in 40k than ranged ones. If you listen to the podcast they actually talk about how well Khorne Daemons perform.

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This one is more about the whole game in general, not just Astartes.

We had a lot of discussion on the Astartes forum about how to fix the codex, but a lot of people suggested minor tweaks that would have almost no impact. I made the topic there to illustrate exacty how far the Marines have fallen and that drastic change is needed.

 

Here, we can look at the game as a whole. Interesting to note that Thousand Sons are the best performing Chaos faction, that Tau do so well solo, that Eldar really is Easy IWIN mode.

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If you want to fix Astartes (both Loyalist and Chaos) then you'll need to petition GW for a new Edition. There's too much working against what's supposed to be a tough but elite unit in 8th Edition. There's a lot working against anything that's not cheap horde infantry, actually. That's pretty much what 8th Edition is, the Horde Edition. GW has made it fairly obvious this is the direction they wanted to go, what with pricing vehicles mostly out of the game, crippling FW options, and allowing even Lasguns to take down Land Raiders if fielded en masse. 

 

And yeah, CC is kind of gimped too. It's just not effect anymore except maybe with (surprise!) cheap horde infantry. 

 

I'm not saying I don't enjoy this edition, I've had a lot of fun with it but I would be lying if I said it's the best rule set I've played 40K with.

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I don't think massive changes are needed to help the game find some balance.

 

Perhaps not but when you start trying to tweak Marines, for instance, you could run into some weird issues. We know simply decreasing their cost isn't the answer since you'd still just be making them into a high priced horde army. A simple second wound doesn't seem to do the trick, just look at Primaris. I think one of the biggest issues comes from using the D6 system. You just can't get the variety that the game really needs on a D6 stat system. 

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My group made trees/forests block LoS after 3 games. We also tend to play with 30-50% terrain and maelstrom missions so we don’t see as much static gun lines as I see here at B&C.

 

Of course none of us are playing Orks or Tau right now either. :)

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I will make a guess at explaining some of the data.

 

The data was taken from recent, large, tournament only. 

Given the perception of the state of the game, its fair to assume most "really good" player did not go with space marine (the codex). 

A lot of top tier player are currently playing eldar, which explain a bit of why their win rate is so high.

similarly, I assume space marine (of all kind) have a lot of dedicated player that play them without care for the top tables, more so than any other factions. 

I am sure space marine are as popular as ever, they are simply overlooked by competitive player in favor of what is perceived as a better faction.

Same goes for thousand sons as best performing chaos faction. They are taken by a lot of very good player as an ally to something else, just a few DP and other casters. I never heard them performing overly well as a main faction.

 

 

This does not makes excuse for any factions, but if every game was played by top players the discrepancy would not be as high as it is.

After all, even GT is a few very competitive individual and a lot of other looking for a good game!

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Not sure exactly where this data is coming from, so I'm curious - which "era" of 8th Ed is it coming from? All of them combined? There've been several rounds of major revisions to the game since its release, so I'm curious how much of this is clumping up wins from armies/builds/exploits that were later adjusted in Chapter Approved/FAQs, etc.

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First things: Melee is fine. While it isn't powerful in every single army, currently it does well by itself. Eldar can show you how good melee can be and tyranids will show you how it is really done with genestealers. Again people are having issues with 1st turn advantage which will always be an issue but as people are pointing out, simple changes to line of sight can and actually has helped me in my games. Yes yes, it is friendly games and thus I suppose those who are more strict may not like it but some changes me and my friend tried are:

 

Forest tiles block line of sight through it regardless of how it is presented however infantry inside of it can be seen and can see out of the tile they are on.

 

Ruin ground floor level blocks line of sight regardless of how it is presented on the mode EXCEPT in the instance of an intentional large hole (like a section of wall was blown out).

 

Those two changes added a new dynamic to how infantry moved around. Do they go into the forest for speed/get eyes on a target or keep it safe by going around it and using it to cover them. The same for ruins now, making the choice of going up higher does help keep you safer from charges but also there is now a game behind placing objectives up high: you would force your opponent to have units visible to you.

Those changes I found were interesting and added a layer of decision to playing and are that hard. To be honest, the idea of True Light of Sight was great on paper but when terrain starts getting ignored outright because of it, we need to add back some abstractions for the sake of balance and fun (and these are silly abstractions to learn...like 4ths size system).

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Once I've build all the terrain I've ordered I'm going to ask my group to use Cities of Death rules to be honest. For the most part they feel like they belong into the core terrain rules anyway. It's just a matter of weeks tho ... the Kromlech terrain takes ages to build. So many details! 

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One thing about SM versus other factions... look how far eldar have come since Phil Kelly wrote their codex three editions in a row... so many units now have 3+ basic armor save and their stock shuriken weapons rend. Same thing for Tryanids IMO. What SM really need is someone who really likes them to write the next codex.

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One thing about SM versus other factions... look how far eldar have come since Phil Kelly wrote their codex three editions in a row... so many units now have 3+ basic armor save and their stock shuriken weapons rend. Same thing for Tryanids IMO. What SM really need is someone who really likes them to write the next codex.

 

To be fair the Tyranid Codex went from bad to worse twice in a row under Cruddace before we got the good 8e Codex now. ^^

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True in that Cruddance did a 1/2 arsed job but he did create a lot of new units that are quite good now.

 

Another things that really bugs me is restrictions to purposely weaken SM - remember when a five man terminator squad could take two heavy weapons or when five man tactical squads could take a special and heavy weapon ? The power fist has also been stupidly nerfed IMO. I remember when those five man tactical squads were a true terror .

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It's all pretty recent. I believe it's about 8 events with 40+ players, all from after the Knights codex was released. So essentially from this summer. They mention the specifics on the podcast. No major rule changes have occured during the time the data was gathered. 

Not sure exactly where this data is coming from, so I'm curious - which "era" of 8th Ed is it coming from? All of them combined? There've been several rounds of major revisions to the game since its release, so I'm curious how much of this is clumping up wins from armies/builds/exploits that were later adjusted in Chapter Approved/FAQs, etc.

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