BOLS Battle Report - June 2, 2011

Hey,

So I watched the latest batrep on BOLS (Timbo mentioned it last night) and I honestly almost puked...for those of you wondering what can go wrong with 40k take 10 minutes and go watch the SW vs DE batrep. It does a great job of showing what's wrong with 5th edition and also shows how cheesy people can be.

P.S. I assume Matt Kerr loved it

What was the comment? Ah yes, along the lines of "A Space Wolf list that plays nothing like the fluff, never moves, and his players says it's stratagy?"

The main problem w/ 5th is two-fold. On one hand they made transport vehicles cheaper (particularly Chimera and Rhino/RB) and on the other hand they made them much more resilient by the nerf in the Vehicle Damage table. Has anyone playtest making Pens +1 and Glances -1 on the table? This basically goes back to the old damage table.

I'd also love to see a change in the FOC, where you are not limited by # of choices but by percentage of points (along the lines of Troops must be 33%+ of your total points,E, FA, and HS cannot be more than 25% each. HQ's no more than 20%. DT no more than 15%.) I'm kinda throwing numbers out there, but it's a place to start.

Where's the fun in an army that barely moves? I laughed at the comment of the SW player about his 'strategy'. At least his army looked nice.....

Same reason I gave up on playing my mech guard. Booooring!

I think they were playing 2000 points, and the DE guy had over 400 points tied up in Vect and Leilith. That's not gonna get 'er done. Take the Baron and some cheap haemonculi and he could have had 3 extra units on the table. I'm sure that SW guy is the most popular opponent at his LGS, but he's just building the best list he can. He didn't write the freakin' codex. The game was kinda sickening to watch despite the nicely-painted armies.

@Roland I think they will be looking at a move to fantasy-style comp where you get a percentage of your points to spend in the different areas, but that will not address the power balance. Space Wolves and Blood Angels are king (and prince I guess?) because their troops don't suck. They can get multiple special weapons in troops choices, and have troops that can fight a bit in HtH. Necrons are Necrons because their troops are a liability. Forcing Space Wolves to take a lot of troops will not handicap them to any degree, they have to make the troops for the other races more competitive.

Is the problem with 5th that every new codex has powerful builds and units in it? Oh and 5th finally got the transport thing right. The idea that they would drive all the way to the battle in their transports and then jump out to walk the last 10 miles seems stupid to me.

Driving anywhere seems really really stupid... I mean YOU CAN =I=censor=I= TELEPORT!!! so yeah transports are for gays.

I'd like a terminator army that can 'blink' around the table... or at least a race that is technologically advanced enough to actually have technology that isn't just marginally better than earth 2011. I'm ok with the fact that humans are one of the least human races in 40k, I mean really? a race that has historically relied on technology to conquer everything from cold weather to mother =I=censor=I= godzilla all of a sudden decides to not invent anything new for 15,000 years because they're scared of it? I'd be way more scared of orks eating my brains then my toaster rebelling against me.

So Tau are the most human like race of all the races, but their technology (aside for plasma and laser weapons, which are just par for the course in sci fi) isn't much more advanced then current day tech, they paratroop, they ride around in tanks and they get in formation and shoot at dudes, basically what we do now. They do it with more style cuz grav tanks are rad despite being proven to be absolutely garbage by physics. (bunch of asshole physicists!)

So I obviously don't have a point so I stopped that rant.

Now for my next one that is slightly more relevant. =I=censor=I= BLOOD ANGELS! My codex marine drop pod army is 200 points cheaper using the blood angel codex AND it's slightly better, WTF, I could have my exact list AND throw in some more killy =I=censor=I=... why even have a codex space marines? what was the point? everything in it is more expensive and worse than space wolves and blood angels just seems like a rather large waste of everyones time. Like this codex is if you want to paint your marines blue, and it sucks, but you get to be blue. This codex is AMAZING but you have to paint your guys pale blue so kind of a tough call. And this codex is REALLY =I=censor=I= GOOD and you get to paint your guys red so it might be the logical answer in this multiple choice test. Now if you want to paint your guys any color you want you should pick the blue codex because it's weak as balls and no one will complain about it. Honestly shouldn't plain jane marines get some added benefit to not being as cool as the other codex's that immediately followed it? Maybe cheaper points cost? or better shooting? or the option to pay for more upgrades to build a more unique force or ... anything really to make people actually play that codex, because if my marines are purple, I don't fit the color requirements for any of these codex's why wouldn't I just choose space wolves or blood angels?

cmon necrons, I hope robin cruddace writes your dex so tomb spiders can be WS 10 S10 T10 W7 A10 and a 2+ invul deep striking, eternal warrior with feel no pain, we'll be back, assault out of deep strike and a chest mounted demolisher cannon....

I agree Tom, the marine codexes have suffered from a very noticable creep. Blood Angels were significantly better than vanilla marines, then SW were significantly better than Blood Angels. Grey Knights also seem right up in the SW range. They released a balanced codex (Dark Eldar) and everyone bitched and moaned about it. So I guess Games Workshop is giving people what they want, but not what the game needs. The creep is good for sales, but bad for the game. I hear the vanilla codex is slated for a redo for 6th Edition, but there are a lot of books that need a revamp before marines do. Will they get done CSM, Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Sisters, and possibly Daemons and Templars before 6th Edition comes out? Not bloody likely.

depends if 6th edition actually comes out next year. I'd rather see more codexs updated then outdating the current ones further.

Am I the only one who thinks codexes rolling out 2-3 over a 5 yr period is a HUGE part of the issue?

+1 to that

Oh and combat tactics ftw Tom, FTW! If you're gonna play vanilla you gotta learn all the chincy techniques

Matt, Combat tactics was super fun and probably won me 2 games however I lost them because I started using vulcan hestan and haven't missed a melta shot in my last 6 games with him, and I have 16 melta's in my list. So yeah, I feel it was worth the trade off, otherwise I might end up being one of those sad sack space marine players that complains about his dice... *cough*