If we get a 6th Edition Codex...

You forgot the [sarcasm] tags again. Naughty Thor!

No tags needed. :-P Be sarcastic all you will, I still like the Dais. :-P It works for me and as long as it continues to do so, I will like it. :-)

We are unquestionably a little overpriced compared to SM and a lot of other codices. They got price drops in 6th and so will we (presuming we get a book). But I don't think we're too badly off. Its not as simple as "Look at all that phat loot they get on their guys for how little!" Right or wrong, the rest of the codex does matter, every codex will have areas where its capabilities are undercosted or overcosted to create difference, and there's lots of tiny things to consider. Like the vast number of weapons that simply kill Marines with a click of the fingers despite all the expense. Or the fact Librarians' psychic powers take a leadership test to activate and may kill them.

Warriors will probably end up 8 points and I'll be happy with that. Its fair. Marines might get an awful lot more on paper for only 6 points more but I'm happy for my Warriors to spend all their time hiding rather than someone and more points to spend on Reaver jetbikes.

I would agree that a bit more hammer capability would be nice. Right now, we're not glass hammer, we're a glass sandblaster... if we survive long enough, we'll surely erode an enemy, but it's not that easy to survive! Not so sure on people asking for psychological weapons. Fluffy? Yes. Effective? Uhm...

p.s. I am amazed that the Dais works for you as it looks incredibly underwhelming on paper to me.

@Aurynn

I do not dispute in the least that it works for you.
I only dispute that it was given an appropriate point cost/rules for what it is.

aurynn wrote:

Be sarcastic all you will, I still like the Dais. :-P It works for me and as long it continues to do so, I will like it. :-)

That's fair enough.

However, "it works for me" is not an objective argument as to why the Dais is in any way good.   

wanderingblade wrote:

Warriors will probably end up 8 points and I'll be happy with that. Its fair. Marines might get an awful lot more on paper for only 6 points more but I'm happy for my Warriors to spend all their time hiding rather than someone and more points to spend on Reaver jetbikes.

That would indeed seem reasonable.

Out of interest, what would you like to see happen to wyches?

wanderingblade wrote:

I would agree that a bit more hammer capability would be nice. Right now, we're not glass hammer, we're a glass sandblaster... if we survive long enough, we'll surely erode an enemy, but it's not that easy to survive!

That would indeed be nice.

wanderingblade wrote:

Not so sure on people asking for psychological weapons. Fluffy? Yes. Effective? Uhm...

Agreed.

I really hope our next codex isn't written by one of the delusional GW writers who thinks Fear is a worthwhile rule.

Fear is a worthwhile rule.

Except that 75% of the game ignores it.

I'm really not sure, not least because I don't use them very often. They will get a points decrease but I don't see that changing anything about how they currently are. The reality is its an ugly edition for close combat and that will always make using Wyches tricky - particularly as one of their primary uses is charging enemy close combat hammers and engaging them in gladiatorial duels/tarpitting them. There ain't so many of those around. Also, any boost to vehicle survivability would be a boost to them.

So... I dunno. I probably wouldn't be overly mad if they just got a points decrease. But it'd be nice to see them as more of a capable combat unit.

edit: The main issue with Wyches I see is their position on tabletop use vs the fluff. They are a decent tabletop unit in my experience but only as small suicide squads. A large squad in its pomp would be great but is simply too fragile for cost and too obvious a target. But that is true for an awful lot of units in the game.

The Shredder wrote:

However, "it works for me" is not an objective argument as to why the Dais is in any way good.   

Of course it is not. ;-) But I dont want to flood this thread that should be about something else. :-) We may end up finding that our metas are so different that the whole argument is pointless. In addition I dont call myself experienced in any meaning of the word concerning W40K. And lastly I tend to love units that are otherwise shunned. All this influences my general opinion. Noone here (the guys I play with) has ever seen the Dais on board and it scares the crap out of most. Save for ppl fielding 3 hornets and serpent spam and WKs, who I dont care to play against. So its worth its points to me.

Lets just drop it. I would like the Dais to stay in our book. If it gets cheaper, then yay! If not then fine by me. :-) It is in no-way the most important thing in our codex that needs a fix and I would rather talk about the more important stuff. :-D

Liiike... Wyches! :-) We all know they tend to die in throngs on shoting and vehicle explosion. IF they were able to assault from reserves or at least from WWP... Unit that arrives in the assault with half of their original models (or less) and dont cost 4 pts seems like a costly endeavour. HWG assault sacrifical unit is fine, but it should have fair chance of dying AFTER they blow things up, not before. Their big problem as vehicle killers is that they are Turn 2 target priority. Not Turn 1. Which means that noone will shoot their paper bawxses in T1, adding nothing to target saturation. And... they are troop and sentenced to death, which is not good.

wanderingblade wrote:

The reality is its an ugly edition for close combat and that will always make using Wyches tricky

This is the core of the Wych issue - they were not bad in 5th edition. They weren't as good as they had been under the previous dex, but they were certainly better than they are now, and since there was no codex change it's clearly the edition change.

I suppose my solution would be to just give them the 4++ inherent and not restrict it to combat. That would increase their survivability immensely and allow them to serve the purpose of tarpit that they seem clearly designed for.

I suppose you could also reinvent them from the ground up to make them more killy. I'd admit that I wouldn't be against a bit of Lelith treatment wherein their strikes ignore armor or are rending or something, just to give them a bit of bite in the assault again.

I'll admit, with the concept of DE, I'd actually prefer to see their damage output buffed as opposed to their defensive capability.

If the Eldar codex is anything to go by, I wouldn't expect Warriors to get any cheaper. Note that guardians got significantly better to justify a higher price tag, rather than getting a price drop to a reasonable level based on their old stats. I suspect that this represents the designer's view that Eldar, a dying race, should not be about spamming hordes of cheap dudes. Personally, I expect the same philosophy to apply to us; although it has to be said that GW and consistency are not exactly on a first name basis

Thor, I'm with you, I'd much rather see a buff to damage dealing than resilience. I'd hate to see 'fragile' dropped from 'fast and fragile', but as I think you've said elsewhere, it would be nice to feel one's glass hammer is actually a hammer.

I can't see us getting any widespread move-shoot-move like the craftworldets, but maybe there are some other options? Bring back scaling nets? Allow disembarking after moving 12"? Allow re-embarking in the shooting phase before or after a flat out move? With the current split phase vehicle movement, there are plenty of options for mobility buffs that could partially or wholly mitigate the 'explodes, all dead' phenomenon without any direct toughness or save buffs, and be great fun into the bargain. Here's hoping

Oh that disembark after 12'' sounds really nice. I would not want the run-shoot or shoot-run either. As for the wyches... I would allow them the 4+ against vehicle explodes. They dodge right? They hang about the hull anyway right? So dodge save yes, maybe with a rule that the unit has to be placed D6'' behind the crater. But maybe I am running too wild. Anyway they are going to be shot to pieces after they jump off. :-D

Creeping Darkness wrote:

If the Eldar codex is anything to go by, I wouldn't expect Warriors to get any cheaper. Note that guardians got significantly better to justify a higher price tag, rather than getting a price drop to a reasonable level based on their old stats. I suspect that this represents the designer's view that Eldar, a dying race, should not be about spamming hordes of cheap dudes. Personally, I expect the same philosophy to apply to us; although it has to be said that GW and consistency are not  exactly on a first name basis

They were lifted to a Kabalite statline. That's the new Eldar baseline. I'd say we're highly unlikely to see a raise in the Kabalite statline as there are a very limited number of Eldar units with statlines better than that.

Same statline. Roughly equivalent guns. Roughly equivalent special rules. I'd say we lose out a little on both actually but whatevs. Logical price? The same.

Then again, GW and logic don't always send each other Christmas cards either.

Erm... and then the author remembered that Guardians and Kabalites cost the same. Ok, no points drop, but we need a little sugar to keep in line with the general rise in power elsewhere. No clues as to what that is. Although - it makes sense the Kabals commit more guys than the Craftworlds. We've got cloning and resurrection after all!

Maybe HWG option for Kabalites? They are the soldiers after all...

I would be happy to get a new dex if I knew Phil was writing it since he is the only writer I feel really writes the xenos races well. I am a little concerned that the latest dex is written by "Legion of Doom!" sorry, "The Design Team!" or whatever they called them in the cover page. If they follow the same trend of writing the books together then I looks like old Matt & Crude Co. are getting their hands on our book eventually. Even if it is moderated by the input of saner heads on the team it's still concerning.

Was the Nid dex a badly written or designed dex though?

Thor665 wrote:

Was the Nid dex a badly written or designed dex though?

From the Battle reports I've seen beating Nids is a simple as killing the synapse creatures and watching them self destruct. The instinctive behavior table is much more punishing this edition than last (and there is a different one for each unit I understand. I'm guessing our good lord Kelly The Lord of Random Tables may have had some imput there ) With poison we are much better at killing them than most, but tau and eldar don't struggle with it either nor to SM or any dex with plenty of mid-high strength shooting.
additionally their mobility seems to have been reduced greatly with the exception of FMCs.
There are some good builds in there somewhere certainly.
Maybe this new system of writing Dexs will be fantastic, but when I look at the résumé of most of GW's design team, I'm left feeling unimpressed. Admittedly, this is very early so who knows?

I do not dispute that it is not an obvious power codex.
I do question if that makes it 'badly designed'

Nids have always had a problem with their synapse being shot out from under them. I would say the only current issue is that the radius of effect for synapse was shrunk...now, this has the benefit of having synapse ever matter, and the drawback of...well...synapse now can matter.

But that is a pretty big playstyle shift for them to adjust to. Also, clearly the old builds don't work at all, so they, like Daemons did, are going to need to puzzle out what the new builds are. When the new DE dex hit the shelves the old lists still worked fine, but it took us a while to puzzle out such mind-staggering stratagies as 'Baron+Beasts' Like, that honestly took us a few months to really get to grips with about how good it was. Now it is easily considered one of our most potent deathstars outside of allies.

I'm not ready to say the Nid dex is either badly designed or weak.
I honestly am unsure about how powerful it will or won't be (my gut tends to agree with you insomuch as I don't expect it to shake up the meta any...but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing). But I don't see anything screaming 'bad design' at me either.

When you say 'badly designed' do you mean 'competitively weak' or do you think it's just a flat out unplayable codex?

I never acutely said that the Nid dex was badly designed, just that I didn't like it much. There is a bit of a difference in this case and I never play competitively so that's not what I mean.
Since you have to keep everything in synapse or it eats itself (literally in some cases) the dex seems to want you to play as one massive wave of bugs all smashed together to get all those thirty model blobs into synapse range. This is of course very fluffy, but this, coupled with the lose of spores, means the army loses a lot of its tactical depth.
They also cut away a lot of things from the codex like the spores and their special genestealers. I'm afraid our WWP will go the same way.

P.S. In all honesty I agree with you Thor. I guess it's just a gut reaction  I love our codex a great deal and feel that Kelly could do a good job of improving it. I guess the thought of other people being involved makes me a bit wary for some reason...

Didnt Phill Kelly write the 6th Eldar? I would not want to end there. And albeit our 5th dex is good in many ways, it is not good in many others (see this thread, and I dont mean the things that took a hit with 6th). And Ward made 8th High Elves which is not bad. Certainly not bad in Ward's way.

And I am with Thor on this one. The dex is not bad. Its lazy work, it will take a while for the ppl to figure out what to do with it, but it will be a playable army on par with SM IMHO.

Posts merged (again). Please use the edit function rather than double posting. Thanks - Count Adhemar

As much as I hate to admit it Ward seems to have mellowed a but in his old age. Perhaps once they get a system down for writing jointly authored Codexs we will see an improvement in quality? there are still a number to go before they get to us after all.
Perhaps the sky isn't falling after all, though it is supposed to snow tomorrow and that's the next thing to it where I live lol.

Thor665 wrote:

I do not dispute that it is not an obvious power codex.
I do question if that makes it 'badly designed'

I think the bad design is a more general issue than purely the Nid codex. There seems to be a disconnect between what the designers think happens on the table and what actually happens on the table. The changes to assault in 6e clearly indicates that the designers thought assault was overpowered. How many tournaments were won in 5e with a heavily close combat based army? Most assault units in 6e codexes suffer from some issue which prevents them from being effective. Whether it's fragility (Banshees, Wyches), lack of delivery system (Banshees, Genestealers), general lack of effectiveness (Mandrakes), bizarre rules that are supposed to make them work but actually don't (Warp Talons) or just general crappy design (Mutilators). As a result of this you rarely see the majority of these units on the table.

I'd love to chat with Phil Kelly and just ask him how he thinks units like Banshees and Mandrakes work and then tell him the reality. I honestly think he doesn't know!

@Count Adhemar. Thanks. I will pay attention to it.

Count Adhemar wrote:

How many tournaments were won in 5e with a heavily close combat based army?

I didn't actually play 5th, but weren't blood angels and grey knights considered the strongest armies and aren't they both very centered around melee? I know space wolves were considered strong but I have been informed they were/are more of a 'shooty army' than back in 3rd.

I think this also has 'historical reasons' as assault feels alot weaker than it did back in 3rd (the last time I actually played) which in turn was weaker than 2nd. I mean there was a time in 3rd when space wolves were (one of) the strongest armies because they rushed rhinos over to your side, disembarked AND assaulted turn 1. I think this was fixed by a 'mini-update' but I think I had stopped playing by then. However... grey hunters still beat all of our melee troops (apart from incubi) point-per-point in most 'normal' situations.

Speaking of 2nd, a rule I'd like to see return is the armour save modifier, i.e. a weapon worsens an armour save by say -1 (3+ turns into 4+ etc.), or the 'choppa'-rule (can't remember its real name), i.e. an armour save taken against said weapon can never be better than a set value, for ork nobs and berserkers it was 4+. I'd love to see all splinter weapons getting a 'Corrosive Toxin' (corrosive might be the wrong word, but I'm sure a native english speaker can think of a better name) rule akin to the 'choppa'-rule, would help ruining expensive units day which even now feels abit like a DE 'niche'. It'd certainly put the 'cannon' very firmly back into the 'glass-cannon' nature of DE, and would certainly fit in with all the lance weaponry we already have. Also why aren't splinter rifles 24" assault 2?!

Something that seems like a running theme for newer codice are point reductions, and I've got to admit I hate paying 12ppm for wyches when tactical marines are 14 or 9 for warriors when fire warriors are 9. Also every single named character, apart from Baron, in the codex seems to me to cost about 15% more than they should. It'd be nice to have another BS on our elite shooting units (trueborn, scourges etc.), but knowing GW that wont happen as long as marines are BS4.

I love Vect in the fluff, but on tabletop I'd like to see more justification for his status as 'one of the most intelligent and devious characters in 40k' with some (more) special rules for deployment or handing out certain USR... also why can Imotekh keep nightfighting going 'forever' when the most devious character can't think of attacking during night. Also ap2.

Speaking of Archons, I'd like to see them becoming abit more... dangerous, either by letting them chew through more fodder (not sure how that could be done without destroying their statline) or making them really scary in challanges and turning them into 'melee-character-assassins'. A simple change to Huskblade to allow it to bypass eternal warrior, i.e. instead of causing instant death it has a rule which causes models who take an unsaved wound from the huskblade are 'removed from play', would certainly help... but seeing as this kind of rule seems to have disappeared from 6th codice I don't see that happen. Haemonculi for 50points when my friend pays 65 for a librarian/sorcerer doesn't sit quite right with me either.

I'm very happy with the codex as it is though...

tl;dr ophra point reductions!

TotingTenderToes wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

How many tournaments were won in 5e with a heavily close combat based army?

I didn't actually play 5th, but weren't blood angels and grey knights considered the strongest armies and aren't they both very centered around melee? I know space wolves were considered strong but I have been informed they were/are more of a 'shooty army' than back in 3rd.

Blood Angels were never really a top tier codex in 5e. They were (very) briefly thought to be OP when the codex was first released but that quickly died down and they were pretty average after that. Not bad but not brilliant.

Grey Knights were very much a shooting army, based on high volumes of mid-range firepower from psycannons and stormbolters, backed up by longer range Psyfleman Dreads. They were no slouches in assault but it was very much shooting that made them the top codex towards the end of 5e.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Blood Angels were never really a top tier codex in 5e. ... Not bad but not brilliant.

Grey Knights were very much a shooting army, ... it was very much shooting that made them the top codex towards the end of 5e.

Ah, fair enough, looking quickly through the greyknight codex make them look like an assault-y army, but first impressions can definitly be wrong!

Regardless I think my basic point stands, assault has been getting weaker every edition and I think GW are reluctant to buff assault to avoid the cluster-fudge that was 3rd (and to a lesser extent 2nd, remember power fist terminators?!) assault. Disregarding the completely broken 'artillary ironhand' (or are the iron warrior the traitors?) lists in 3rd the top armies were very melee heavy, and shooting was generally inferior to assault.

I might be confusing 2nd and 3rd edition tactics, it was a really long time ago, but I'm completely certain powerfist terminators destroying everything was 2nd!