Losing faith in your army?

[English_Gamer]

Hi, well this has probably come up before but I've been collecting Tyranids for a while now and since looking at the new rules for the Wulfen I've actually started questioning the effectiveness of the Tyranids in the game,

I've got around 5000 points of an army with a lot of varied units and monsters and have built it up using a few formations and do enjoy some of the larger games, but whilst the army certainly looks good and can read well in their own book once it gets onto the table the threat of the army seems to vanish.
A lot of this seems to be that even though the bigger things have a reasonable toughness of 6, there's so much out there with equipment which makes a lot of the things in the army look quite sad. Losing a Tervigon in a single turn of shooting to Thousand Sons was quite sad.

Seeing how GW decided it was a good idea to reduce the effectiveness of a lot of things from the 5th to 6th edition book as well as reducing the impact of smash attacks is there a hope that they might actually undo this and make the army more of a threat that the background makes them out to be?

[Captain Bubonicus]

I hear ya, man. At least things are getting a bit better for the 'nids with the re-introduction of the Tyrranocite "spod." Those Tyranid dataslates that came out a year or so ago had some neat tricks available for genestealers, too.

[Cactus]

I feel your pain.

I don't think GW's plan is to reduce the effectiveness of an army though. I think it's a case of creating an arms race and/or codex creep and unfortunately 'Nids have been lapped. They will rebound.

[Mr.Pickelz]

I feel similar with my Orks. If I were to take a "tourny list" to a battle, there are just too many counters to any shenanigans that my Orks can or would do that it becomes an exercise in pulling models off the table. quite dis-heartening indeed. And now that Forgeworld has dropped the pdf for the Dread Mob list and Zhadsnark from IA:8, it's just a waiting game to see what ultimately happens to my favorite faction.

[Kristopholes]

It's only right that I reply as a Chaos player since Tyranids and Orks have made an appearance. It really didn't bother me that CSM was getting left behind until I allowed myself to be falsely led into the hopes that CSM were getting new stuff soon... nope, just AoS. The amount of old models, ineffective units and lack of any real formations is disheartening to say the least. Not to say its not impossible to win with CSM and we kinda got something with the Khorne Daemonkin but that was mostly taking pre-existing units and making them work together in new ways.

[Charon]

The problem is not that some armies are weaker than others but the gap that exists between strong armies (Space Marines, Eldar, Tau, Necrons,..) and weaker armies (CSM, DE, Orcs,..). Because even if the player of a strong army is not trying to WAAC, you are basically fighting an uphill battle as your models are expensive (pointwise), without special rules and formations while he basically brings along better models for less points.
Some armies also add stupid weapon rules on top of it (grav, D)

[AAMinistry]

I'm a BA player here and I am feeling a similar sting from the creep. While I am in no way saying BAs have it nearly as bad as CSM/Nids/etc, I do feel increasingly left behind by each new update. Sure, I *could* take a drop pod melta army and have a good pop at most armies, but I don't think it's right that an army has only one real effective way of working, or worse, no effective way. What if I want to take some Death Company, a Land Raider, maybe some bikes? If I do I tend to get rinsed by most opponents. How does a CC focused army hope to stand in front of, say, Eldar with all scat bikes and D? It ain't gonna happen. Sorry, I have started moaning *yet again* about this (it's the one thing that annoys me more than codex creep, and it's me moaning about codex creep lol).

It just feels to me like each new 40K release in some way attempts to paper over a crack that a previous release introduced. Worse still some armies aren't even getting that much. It's getting frustrating.

[Da Gargoyle]

I just put up a post describing my first foray back into Orks. It was a GW promotions day for the new kits, and was nearly a disaster until my bog standard Ghaz & Mega Nobz carved their way through 800 points of nids. But I lost the same number of points with rokkits, mega blastas and big shootas bouncing of Tau like hail stones. Apparently you got to shoot the Ghost Keel 1st, the one with a 2+ save for everything.

But I do have a question, can't the tunnelers, Mawlocks and the like, cause grief to the enemy? Flyrants & goyles on high and locks and gribblies from below. Does this not work?

[StraightSilver]

Yeah I also know what you mean.

I seem to pretty much exclusively play my Space Marines at the moment whilst my Astra Militarum (or Imperial Guard to me....) and Dark Eldar sit gathering dust and have done since their last Codex came out.

It's not that I am a WAAC player, it's just that I only get to play about once a month and want to have a fun game that I at least stand a chance of winning....

What bugs me the most about the current trend is that you can have a build that is fluffy and works in one edition (my Dark Eldar are a Wych Cult army) but then gets nerfed when new models come out (I don't want a Haemonculous coven...).

And IG/AM just seem way too overcosted for what they are now (some of the special characters got nerfed but got a points increase).

But having said that there are things in my Space marine Codex that are just either too good or massively undercosted. Devastator Centurions and Storm Talons I'm looking at you....

So there is a huge disparity between armies and I feel really sorry for those armies that have either been neglected or simply hit with the nerf bat. Tyranids especially got hit hard. I can't help but think GW are a bit Xenophobic....

And Orks and CSM are also suffering right now.

I had hoped that formations would resolve a lot of these issues but the ones released for Am / IG would require me to build and paint 50 - 100 more guardsmen which I'm not prepared to do.

And it's the same for armies like 'Nids - they got a load of fab new Monstrous Creatures and kits - and then Graviton came out....

So I agree it is an arms race, and I do end up just not playing armies until eventually I can play them again.

[Defenestratus]

I've kind of got the reverse thing going on. I've been an Eldar player since they practically were invented as a faction and now I get all kinds of nasty stares and snide comments about how I must be a power gaming d-bag if I play Eldar.

In fact I'm surprised the BoLS naughty-language filters haven't scrubbed the word "Eldar" from the allowable vocabulary yet (since it seems everything else has been).

So I'm losing faith in my army because it seems the internet has turned against it. It seems that there's this permeating belief that if your opponent plays Eldar, you're going to automatically lose (Mind you I've lost more games with my new Eldar than won - so it's clearly not the case). This has led me to lose faith in the player base, and I'd rather just not play than subject myself to this form of artificial discrimination.

I also have a BAGK force that I dabble in, but they're really only there for when I get bored with painting Eldar. I use them about once or twice a year.

[StraightSilver]

I've kind of got the reverse thing going on. I've been an Eldar player since they practically were invented as a faction and now I get all kinds of nasty stares and snide comments about how I must be a power gaming d-bag if I play Eldar.

In fact I'm surprised the BoLS naughty-language filters haven't scrubbed the word "Eldar" from the allowable vocabulary yet (since it seems everything else has been).

So I'm losing faith in my army because it seems the internet has turned against it. It seems that there's this permeating belief that if your opponent plays Eldar, you're going to automatically lose (Mind you I've lost more games with my new Eldar than won - so it's clearly not the case). This has led me to lose faith in the player base, and I'd rather just not play than subject myself to this form of artificial discrimination.

I also have a BAGK force that I dabble in, but they're really only there for when I get bored with painting Eldar. I use them about once or twice a year.

My mate has the exact same problem with his Necrons, he's been playing them for ages but now gets groans whenever he brings them out. I must admit I'm not a fan of them either but then again I never have been, I don't think Necrons have changed much since they first arrived.

Eldar on the other hand I actually really enjoying playing against if I'm using my Marines as they do give me a run for my money - I have about a 50/50 win/lose rate against them which I think is as it should be.

But actually I think you hit the nail on the head when you mention player base - I think the attitude of the players makes a big difference. Once I told my mate I didn't mind playing against his 'Crons but didn't really enjoy it he changed his list and now we have much better games.

[Erik Setzer]

Heck, I'm not even sure what army to play Saturday. It's been a while since I've been able to play a game, and I'm trying to decide what I want to play. Orks are my main love, but packing up all that stuff just to have another game where I feel like I'm throwing a tub of pudding at a brick wall just seems like it'd be super-depressing. Space Wolves are possible, though I don't have a lot of their new toys (flyers, newer Dreads, and my Wulfen conversion attempts are still going). Maybe Daemonkin... at least it's straightforward. Iron Warriors are still CSMs, and I haven't yet gotten them a Heldrake, which seems like the best unit for Chaos (actually, need one or two of those, plus the ground assault guys).

I've got an idea for an army that might be fun for me to play... but it would take a good bit of cash, which I clearly don't have right now. (Tau suit-based army. First would need the codex and Farsight supplement, then a bunch of suits. Probably would be $700-$800 for a 2000 point force with rules. Yikes.)

Heck, a lot of my armies need to buy newer models to be able to compete better. I have no Wave Serpents or Wraithknights for Eldar, no Heldrakes or X-fiends for CSM, no flyers or new Dreads for Space Wolves. I think my Orks would need more Boyz to even be allowed to use the mega-formation, and one of the varieties would require getting a Gorkanaut. Space Marines, I need more transports, because I can build a company of Marines, but then the free transports would be moot as I don't have the models. It just goes on and on. To even bring my existing armies to a less-crushable state would require a solid chunk of money, and with some of them (Orks and CSM especially) that's no guarantee that they'd be in shape to have a decent shot most of the time. It's likely I could just sink that into a new army that'd do better.

Or, you know... sink that money into other games, whether other miniatures games or video games, where I'd feel less like I'm fighting a losing battle against money.

[Morgrim]

I've stopped playing 40k because my army is Dark Eldar, with units I can't even optimize well, and I can't afford a new 40k army at this point. I'm hoping they'll improve at some point so I can play again. Otherwise I may dabble in some kroot eventually and just use them as counts-as-something if GW doesn't come up with a decent kroot mercenary codex one day.

[Charon]

Eldar on the other hand I actually really enjoying playing against if I'm using my Marines as they do give me a run for my money

Here we have the main point. You enjoy plaing a power codex with another power codex. That is fine. For the people who did not win the codex lottery like Cron, SM, Eldar and Tau this is just not enjoyable. No matter how "soft" you think your army composition is nearly everything in your codex is better and cheaper than in other codices with tons of formations on top.

[grimmas]

I don't think I've won against Eldar with my Guard since 3rd Ed came out. Always carnage though and extreme casualties are a must, if they happen to be the enemies that is merely a bonus.

[Captain Bubonicus]

I don't think I've won against Eldar with my Guard since 3rd Ed came out. Always carnage though and extreme casualties are a must, if they happen to be the enemies that is merely a bonus.

Amen! I don't have to win, but I insist on lots of carnage.

[Deacon Ix]

CSM and BA here since 2nd Ed...

My BA have actually been relegated to a box for the foreseeable future, I have played around with some builds which could make them fun but I have other armies I want to concentrate on first.

My CSM Word Bearers are my first love, the only reason I have kept them going is by allying them with Daemons and that BaC has come out so I now have a fairly large 30k army which can mostly be used in 40k.

Otherwise I am concentrating on my Eldar (which in my defence I picked up years ago but didn't feel good enough at painting to build).

On Nids - I have a Friend who has a huge Nid (7000+) army but it has also been boxed and put a shelf in favour of his Tau and Necron forces.

[Blackcloud6]

I'm losing faith in the game, not my armies. With the introduction of Lords of War and the many Formations from the supplements, I've seen too many unbalanced games because someone will bring something the other cannot beat. 7th Edition is a very unstable game system.

[annhwi]

As CSM were my first army I started to collect... I have to admit to some extreme disappointment that there has been little balance in the game when 7th ed. came out. As such, GW loses out on my funds as I am unwilling to purchase much for ANY of my armies until this is rectified. GW... a word of advice (assuming you even read forums like this) ... try updating ALL the codices at once when you bring out a new edition. (make the rules fair from the get go, and I imagine people will forgive a little time to make the quality minis you would need for new units and such) Admittedly, when 3rd ed. came out, I went Iron Warriors hard... (but not the same direction as most from what I hear. No 9 Oblit lists here.) I haven't seen CSM that competitive since that time. (1 unit does not make an army competitive... looking at you Heldrake)

So vanilla marines got a new codex... their faction codex and so on and so on... there is no reason the CSM factions cannot make a return either then. /end rant

[Da Gargoyle]

Back again, I just found out that you can now assault from Outflanking moves again. I assumed, (Silly me) that the no assault rule in Ed 6 rules had carried into Ed 7. This has got to mean that Gene Stealers can give the Nids an edge again. Though what it probably also means is you do need the larger points games to be competitive as the points cost of the units does not allow for effective low points armies. As an aside, my Scorpions are back in the picture for that flanking move.

Ya know? Stealers with rending claws lots of attacks, fleet and T4. Must check the codex to see whats what.

As for the dudes that hassle people over the army they use, I think they are missing the point, I mean who has not had a point in the game where their army was leathal? Isn't it interesting that the dudes who scowl at the Eldar will happily use their advantages to slaughter DE, Nids and even CSM because they can.

I admit the GW shop is where I play most of my games at the moment and there are limited armies, but there is a nids dude and he is using cover to the max to get close enough for assault while teasing the shooters with a big shiney target. He also deliberately does not kill off his enemy in his assault round so that he can't be shot on their turn. That means his enemy dies in their assault phase and he can roll up an enemy flank with glee.

In the mean time I will front with my Eldar, Vauls D-Cannon, Wraithseer, Jetlocks and all. Somebody will want to take me on which means I have the opportunity to make em laugh (While I slaughter them unmercifully).

[Captain Bubonicus]

Sorry, Gargoyle, but you still can't charge from Outflank. They still count as arriving from Reserves (p. 168), and under "Moving On From Reserve" (p. 136) it says units arriving from Reserves are not allowed to charge.

[Da Gargoyle]

Thanks Captain B. On the day I did not have my glasses and the lads around the table were stating you could because it did not say otherwise in the outflank rule. I knew Out flank was like coming on from reserve but just could not find it on the day and then was too impatient to read through later at home. To be honest I was kinda hoping they had been nice at GW for once. In truth they continue to operate at the level of the Imperium, you know the ones even Chaos think are creepy.

[Captain Bubonicus]

Have you seen some of the Leviathan formations, like the Manufactorum Genestealer one? I haven't played 'em yet, but I'd really like to make a 'Stealer and Cult-based army using those Genestealer formations. They're not game-breaking, but they look like you could really make an opponent sweat!