It is impossible to balance 40K

[Path Walker]

Sometimes I play Test Match 40k, 5 days of play (with breaks for Tea of course) in a series of 6 matches. It's the only real way to experience the game as it should be played.

[grimmas]

Sometimes I play Test Match 40k, 5 days of play (with breaks for Tea of course) in a series of 6 matches. It's the only real way to experience the game as it should be played.

Nice.

[Charon]

At the moment, it's really hard for the vehicle hunting elements of the army to hurt heavily armoured vehicles due to hull point mechanics; the assault elements of the army struggle to make it into assault; and there is not a single anti-air element in the army.

Agreed. You have basically a single anti Tank/Gmc weapon that is worse than a LasCannon for everything below AV14 AND has a shorter range.
The ability to get into melee is fine. Eating overwatch and doing damage however is not. The lack of anti-air and LoW is also embarassing.

Being a synergy-based glass cannon is fine. Having armour made of tissue paper and vehicles that are antimatter engines strapped to kites is fine. DE just need some way of returning to being a fast, manoeuvrable, hard hitting army. Give us a way to deepstrike a webway portal that our assault units can charge out of, or give wyches some ability to blunt overwatch so they can get into combat. Let our very expensive dark lances one shot light tanks again, and let massed dark lance or other anti-vehicle weaponry take down or properly cripple a landraider if we're willing to toss a few units at it. (Because at the moment my best option for killing vehicles is throw a talos at it in close combat, instead of actually using my anti-vehicle weaponry, and there is something wrong with that.) Stop making GC immune to poison, because massed poison is our only way of getting past the high toughness and high armour units. Give us something with skyfire or a flyer that can actually hit a hellturkey. Stop making craftworld eldar faster and more manoeuvrable than us, that's our hat!

Again agreed.
We are SLOWER than eldar (who have battle trance on troops in addition to fast antigrav vehicles), less resilent (AV12 and 3+ armor for a lot of Eldar units) AND have less firepower (Scatterlaser, Fusion gun, Distort,...) and all this while we also lack psykers.
We are basically a synergy based fast hard hitting army that lacks speed, punch and synergies. Hell even if you try to put a Succubus into a unit of Bloodbrides on a Raider they actually LOSE the ability to carry special weapons. Great synergy right here.
Now even Space MArines may assault after Deepstriking, while the cunning Dark Eldar archon cant even plan his raid to take place at nightime. Or another great synergy... our Nightfields give stealth so we don't even get a bonus from nightfighting while an imperial guard camo net actually stacks with night fight.

And if you could convince more players that terrain is not an optional bonus and the game writers that everyone else doesn't need anti-cover on all their big weapons that would be nice too.

We do play quite terrain heavy (thats 2 or 3 pieces per 1/6 of the table and at least 4 LoS blockers) but it does not make a difference. Raiders are too big to hide on most tables, ignore cover exists in masses and post problematic units (superheavy/GMC) do not care about terrain at all while beeing as mobile as we are. Add to that that our dedicated melee units do have a high initiative but no grenades (and no unit that causes pinning) and our transports can die in difficult terrain and you come to the conclusion that more terrain is not always better.

[Path Walker]

2-3 pieces a quarter isn't terrain heavy. That illustrates why its a problem, using a minimum amount of terrain and thinking that represents a terrain heavy board.

Terrain hurts GMCs and Super Heavies by making it impossible to place them everywhere they might want to be, making sure there are few spaces available for a GMC sized base or model to go. meaning they're limited and not able to hop accross the board on a whim.

The idea should be to create interesting tactical choices, as well as a narrative, allowing free reign for shooting armies and GMCs to go where they please will skew the game in their favour. Narratively you have to look at the board and what it is representing, most conflicts will not happen in a sparsely populated suburb with one or two ruined buildings every 100 feet or so. It looks better and makes the game more interesting if its not always possible to see everything.

Its also good to change this out too, make it so that not every table you play on is the same density, so will be packed and hard to move around others freer, this, along with using all the missions if you want to randomly select, means its very hard to have a perfect army for the expected situations.

Tournaments tend to play a uniform density of terrain and publish missions before hand, meaning that you can write your army to the tournament and expected opponent. With a wide variety of terrain and missions that constantly generate surprise objectives that you have to cover as an eventuality, you encourage people to go for more balanced armies, why risk taking a unit that might be situationally useless in a game because you don't even have space to deploy it?

These are the games I want to play, they're interesting and tell a story, the same old 6-8 ruins and a tower in the centre playing the missions we've had since 5th edition is boring and isn't the direction the game is heading and why people using that mentality are seeing it as increasingly unbalanced.

This is also the best way to let the best generals show themselves, a plan shouldn't survive contact with the enemy, showing the ability and foresight, to be adaptable makes the game more about who is the better player, yes you might not get tournaments where there at people going 8-0 with wins but the best players will be those able to adapt to misfortune and take full advantage of a lucky break so over all will still win the majority of the matches, yes some "lesser" players might win the odd tournament but that's not really a bad thing, it encourages tournament attendance amongst those who might avoid it for fear of humiliation knowing that it'll be closer and with a bit of luck they could come out on top.

[Mr Mystery]

Path - try to be more constructive dude. Please?

If I recall correctly, the old recommendation (5th Ed, I think?) was to have roughly 25% of the table covered by terrain. On Portent somebody demoed this in 'real world physics'. Shot of a 6'x4' board with all the terrain accumulated in one corner, and then the same terrain distributed about the board in a fairly haphazard manner.

It was far, far more than you might think.

2/3 pieces will depend on their size. I've seen opponents try to claim each 6" section of wall as one piece of terrain each. Equally daft would be 2-3 Bastions of course - they're bulky and LoS blocking, but so dull when fielded enmasse.

Sod it. I'm going to go start a new thread about board population. I shall post it as soon as I've thought up a suitably witty title.

[Path Walker]

Path - try to be more constructive dude. Please?

If I recall correctly, the old recommendation (5th Ed, I think?) was to have roughly 25% of the table covered by terrain. On Portent somebody demoed this in 'real world physics'. Shot of a 6'x4' board with all the terrain accumulated in one corner, and then the same terrain distributed about the board in a fairly haphazard manner.

It was far, far more than you might think.

2/3 pieces will depend on their size. I've seen opponents try to claim each 6" section of wall as one piece of terrain each. Equally daft would be 2-3 Bastions of course - they're bulky and LoS blocking, but so dull when fielded enmasse.

Sod it. I'm going to go start a new thread about board population. I shall post it as soon as I've thought up a suitably witty title.

Added to my reasoning to try and say why I don't think 2-3 pieces is "terrain dense" and what can be done and why its a good thing.

[Havik110]

The point is, a few people might complain about balance, you've seen here that someone is saying Dark Eldar are useless because you can't use them like Space Marines, but most players want their armies to be different and play in interesting ways.

Thats the thing, there is a major issue with playing DE vs Marines. Marines have armor and DE dont...what DE does have is speed, and in this game, in this edition and 6th SPEED DOES JACK S#1T.

I once again put forward that in most games today there is more shooting or the possibility for more shooting in 1 turn than an entire game of 5th back. how does that affect DE, well a raider has 3 HP and armor 10. That used to mean that in 5th back, that even bolt pistols could kill you, because back in the day, you kept 18 and a 1/2 inches back, and then moved 12, got out 2, and assaulted 6, meaning you didnt worry about bolters. you used your maneuverability and speed as your weapon and then applied force to a flank or a unity alone. Realize when i say I assaulted, i assaulted 10 marines or 5 terminators with 20 wyches mostly to get 2 agonizers into them. (Off topic rambling (wont even go into how useless agonisers are now) back in the day, wyches had wych weapons that removed your extra cc weapon attack so i had some defense and it lowered your WS in 1/2 which really only affected characters and low WS units))

now at 24 inches marines have 10 shots on my raider, that hit the raider with the same frequency that they would hit a stationary landraider (think about that, they hit the fastest vehicle in the game outside of jetbikes, just as easily as a battle tank that hasn't moved). Well I may get a 5 up cover save or a 4+ if I have night shields (dont even get me started on the nurf to night shields) but that is still the easiest main transport int he game to kill.

once again this would be fine in 5th and back but in 6th and 7th it is a major flaw. it would be great for 4th but it sucks in 7th...

So our speed gives us a cover save of 4+ sometimes on armor 10 in an edition where MOST THINGS CAN HIT IT DUE TO THE CHANGE OF RAPID FIRE. 1 lost lance screws us over, and we lose them like crazy now...

Hint for Dark Eldar, you shouldn't be visible to your opponent on their turn, either you're not moving enough or there isn't enough terrain on the table. Tournaments hardly ever have enough terrain.[/I]

and if a raider had an eldar jetbike move were it could move shoot and move this would be great, but the simple fact is that if i come out to shoot, and dont kill my raider is done next turn vs an ig tank that can sit on the back line for an entire game and not worry because it doesnt have to move for cover and/or it can shoot without los...

One again if a bolter can kill us and they used to only be able to kill us from 12 but now can kill us from 24 and GW has never compensated for that, its GWs lack of game design that is the problem here...

[Path Walker]

Its not the easiest transport to kill in the game. The Ork Trukk holds that distinction in my opinion being entirely Av10, Open topped and no feasible way of getting a cover save for it (besides a Big Mek with KFF which costs twice what the Trukk does) and no Jink.

The cover save provided by Jink is what represents that a Raider is harder to hit than a Land Raider, plus its extra speed making it easier to move behind terrain to remove Line of Sight to it.

I'll reiterate, have you tried using more terrain in your games? What aren't you in a position where you can avoid being seen by marines 24" away?

Tactical Marines are a threat to a Raider, but I think you're overstating the damage 10 Marines can do to you at 24" are doing 0.74 HP a turn (assuming a Jink with no other modifers to the 5+ cover save). The maths there is based on Dice Tools from Battlescribe, its nearly hometime on a Friday and I've been in meetings all day so I've not checked it to be honest, looks about right though.

Yes, they could get lucky and wittle away the Raider while you're 24" away in one turn, but they're far more likely to do just one HP of damage, leaving you within potential charge range (granted if you're exactly 24" away, then you'd need a damn good charge even with Fleet, but if you're 18" say, you're making it pretty easily most of the time)

You don't need to "Move Shoot Move" you play with a little more cunning, you set up traps, you lead the enemy into ambushes, in fact, play like the Dark Eldar. You aren't out in the open, you're hiding, moving, avoiding until the time is right.

Craftworld Eldar is Easy Mode Eldar. You have move so you can't be shot at and let them try and get to you, you pop out and charge from around a corner (as your transports are open topped) from where they couldn't see you, while another has popped behind them to wittle the numbers down from the rear. These are all things only really possible with more terrain to hide you, the table should be more than just an open barren plane of existence, basing your maths on the idea that its one Raider vs One Tactical Squad (which most mathshammer relies on) not taking in to account the thousands of variables that can move things in your favour.

Consider your terrain, if you're finding the problems you describe are happening to you in a game, then try using more of it, no opponent would realistically argue with wanting more terrain on a table, no decent opponent anyway.

Remember the old wargamers motto; "the more terrain, the better the game"

[Andrew Thomas]

Agonizers are the best Close Combat Weapon that you can take in quantity, especially on Beastmasters.

Also, Jink starts at 4+, up to 3+ with Nightshields.

Lastly, just about everything that can shoot well has Deep Strike. Use it.

[Havik110]

You don't need to "Move Shoot Move" you play with a little more cunning, you set up traps, you lead the enemy into ambushes, in fact, play like the Dark Eldar. You aren't out in the open, you're hiding, moving, avoiding until the time is right.

basing your maths on the idea that its one Raider vs One Tactical Squad

I just said, i have always put 2 squads into even tac squads...ive been playing DE since 4th (started in 2004) and 6th and 7th suck compared to 4th and 5th for them.

Agonizers are the best Close Combat Weapon that you can take in quantity, especially on Beastmasters.

Also, Jink starts at 4+, up to 3+ with Nightshields.

Lastly, just about everything that can shoot well has Deep Strike. Use it.

1. be nice if our vets could take as many aw we want like marine vets huh?

2. and then your shooting vehicle does Nothing (ravager, venom)...I would prefer modifiers to hit to saves, make speed a real defense....oh it went flat out, is not a tank, and is so far away from you, hit it on 6s...

3. if we had the guidance systems pods had that might work well...

4. Put assaulting out of them back to 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition rules. MOve 12, pop out 2, assault...moving 6 is for the slower races...