Flocks still worth it?

I think we should still bring one unit of birds for smite. That's what they are good for.

Warriors are great tho. Posion helped me ruin tzeentch demons and a wraith knight

Ikol wrote:

10 Points would have been good (looking at Conscripts, Horrors, Ork Boys and Neophyte Hybrids for comparison).

I think someone else mentioned this number earlier?

While in comparison to brimstone horrors I agree (but those also need a price increase)
The conscripts possibly as well, remember consider 10 points for a flock means we have more wounds, and twice as much attacks (ofset by the gun), and are much faster (also ofset by the gun). Both (less mobile) but still roadblocks

With ork boys I think they are much harder to compare, since orks are much thougher, per point less then half the wounds, fight much better, have weapon options and are much slower (flocks move nearly 2.5 times as fast). Better to compare it with a gretchen in that case (which has fewer wounds and fewer attacks, and is less mobile but has a simple gun).

Have to agree with imeaver, it isn't that everything can hurt everything is bad simply that they hadn't priced things accordingly for the resultant meta.

A take all comers selection should be more expensive than a specialised unit, as even though it might have a similar damage output per round it will have turns where it isn't being used for what it was designed.
And this is where gw so often (and in the case of conscripts) goes wrong.
Conscripts do a ton of damage and are near impossible to kill if you brought a balanced list however the damage they dish out is strong against almost all opponents (not even discussing their objective holding capabilities).

Think of this if specialised units were cheaper than take all comers units then using multiple units would be promoted, and we'd get less spamming.

Well that and some other minor things.
Like you get nice buffs as an IG that work for each unit, but all unit sizes are max 10 guys, except the conscripts. Now would you rather need 2-3 characters for 2*50 guys of 2-3 for every 2*10 guys?

The problem GW faces is they made every unit appealing to the average player, thus the points were balanced around what the average and or new player would consider to use in an army, having an average number of units or wanting to try every unit in the army so not buying more then 3 or each type of unit and not necessarily maxing out unit size but taking the minimum to average size of each unit. While the play testers tested at what a competitive player would do for the game, someone who already has an established army and can go out and bolster their forces with what they found to be the "broken" units or the best for maximizing damage and minimizing luck. While GW was warned that some of their choices would lead in this direction they chose to ignore them and press on, or make minor changes but not big enough to effect the overall outcome. However the tournament players were the ones that scoured the indexes and found these thing the average/new player wouldn't see immediately, and brought it to the surface by bringing a huge amount of these type of spammy lists to tournaments and doing incredibly well with them, this pushes the average and new player to look at them and want to play those lists because they win.

If I read and remember correctly Teenageangst was one of the first to point out how rediculous the Razorwing flocks spam could be, he's expressed himself as a competitive tournament player and others after looking at it and seeing what other tournament players came up with (most of which agreed with Angst on the amount of worth just spamming these flocks could be) in contrast most of the casual players, including myself, saw Razorwing flocks and thought "I can finally take the few I have and not watch them straight up die to templates, or get doubled out by the spammed Str 6 weapons of 7th Ed." Didn't once think about buying more until it was pointed out just how rediculous spamming them could be.

But this stems from a decision that GW made that is a huge factor in the differences from 7th to 8th edition ... And that is that everything can hurt everything now. This decision came about as a product of some of the biggest complaints about 7th, some units completely invalidating tons of other units. The best example I can make (as it happened to me a lot) was IK ... Yes I know spam the board with dark lance ravagers, blasterborn, and raiders with blaster/DL but at best 1 could fit 3 units of Trueborn with blasters, 3 ravagers, maybe a unit or two of scourge with haywire blasters. And the rest troops and HQ. If I didn't get turn 1 I would lose all three ravagers and possibly one of the blasterborn units. If I did get first I was lucky to fully kill one of the knights standing on the other side of the board before losing the ravagers. But once I lost what little anti tank I had my army could do absolutely nothing in retaliation aside from try to stay alive to outscore my opponent in terms of Maelstrom points but the games became increasingly less fun when my turns were reduced to move, fire 1-3 dark lances ... High probability of not doing any actual damage... Then ending my turn as by that point 90% of the army stared twiddling their thumbs hoping to make it back to Commorragh in one piece and not have to wake up in a haemunculous torture chamber ... As those were pricy to wake up in... Now, while it isn't the best thing in he world to do, they can at least point their guns at the IK and hope to hit the right spot causing it to degrade in effectiveness and giving me something to do other than sit there doing a whole lotta nothin. It was also supposed make units that have never been touched a bit more appealing as there is a level of overall effectiveness that any unit brings to the army so choices that used to happen like "do I want to bring this unit that I really like but isnt effective (hellions, mandrakes) or do I want to bring another unit of blasterborn simply because there is never enough dark light in a DE list." But instead it led to min maxing in that any unit that is minimal points needs to be maxed out in number taken.

Sorry I know it's a long one, but if you made it here ... Thanks for reading the post and at least giving my view a little thought, agree with it or not.

I agree with most of that but I don't think points for the unit is the end all be all and some theory about what average players see and comp players see. The problem when you step away imo is the FOC. The detachments themselves are what are allowing insanity spam and abuse. They kept pushing "play what you want!" And thematical army builds as a sales point which is fine for open play, but not matched. When there's so much freedom and essentially no law on what we can and can't bring competitively of course it's going to be the wild west. Giving the testers the benefit of the doubt they probably told GW this. I recall only recently FLG podcast they boys were saying in testing they knew Tau commander spam was going to be a thing. I give the testers the doubt because if I were trying to sell a friend on the game and they were like "I wanna make a army of all winged and flying Tyranids because I imagine that would look awesome" and I respond "you can do that!" They're far more likely to buy into the hobby. My opinion is matched play should of been designed much stricter, then worry about points instead of all these spam variables.

Now that I like.
Make matched play be based around a rule where you can have force organization in a way that forces different units. Make all of them brigade detachment like, even the smaller ones. Now you can either need an HQ and 1 type of unit plus something else if you want to. Instead make it like the brigade where you need something of everything but with a focus on 1
Something like:
HQ1-2
Troop 1-3
Elite 1-2
Fast 1-4 (an excample, you might also have this at the troop/elite/heavy variants)
Heavy 1-2
Flyer 0-1

I still take 2x3 units, they are great against 1st turn charges and for fast blockers and units to tie up.

They are still 3.5 points a wound I think if my math is correct. That's still great for reasons amish indicates.

That is the same as a kabalite with a t3 5+ 6++ and a gun

|Meavar wrote:

That is the same as a kabalite with a t3 5+ 6++ and a gun

Warriors are 7pts for 1w, 14's of warriors is 2w were flocks are 4wounds. Yes warriors are 5+/6+++ but warriors dont move 12" with fly that basically ignores terrain.

They are Dbl the wounds and Movement, that is what i need, i dont need them to have a gun.

But thats up to you if you still like them or not.