Intruiging thread.
On the 'fluff' front, those wargame rules (historical or sci-fi) that provide lists of available units almost invariably fall foul of the comparrison between the total number ever built or available, and the number used in a given battle / campaign, or available for a particular type of strategy. In the particular case of Epic, these figures are further confused by the commercial and somewhat haphazard GW development of the '40K universe' and the various editions of the rules. These factors can produce wild differences in the numbers of units or formations available, especially where the formation or unit is irregularly deployed.
As a consequence, IMHO this style of debate can really only be used to identify the existance of a given unit, the general time-period or theatre that it operated in, and a rough guide to its appearance (ie whether it is a main component, core or backbone; irregularly fielded; or rare).
An example of this might be the Heinkel 111z glider tug (two He 111 a/c welded together) that existed in the European, Russian and middle-eastern theatres but was very rarely used. In E:A, we have seen the development of Land Raider variants, Leman Russ variants etc in various 'alternative' army lists (that represent theatres) and various mechanics to promote or restrict their use.
Putting 'fluff' to one side, the premis behind the thread is that "armour is ineffective", and so "is rarely taken". This has then compared different races and slowly focused on the "inneffectiveness" of Marine armour, and then down to what is being done elsewhere to rectify the apparent deficiencies. Evidently play-styles have a significant effect, and people will tend to use armies that work best for their personal strategies. Also while certain strategies are easier to play than others, getting a 'hard' strategy to work well may be more rewarding to some folks.
Guys, I may well be wrong here (and please forgive me for derailing the thread slightly), but IMHO this debate is actually about the 'balance' of armour:- in the game; between various lists; and within a given list. I would further suggest that a lot/most of the assertions are quite subjective, purely because of the nature of the scattered community and the impact that has on the games people play, quite apart from personal playing styles etc.
The easy answer is to suggest that armour generally works OK provided you use the right formation in the right way under the given circumstances. Inevitably the game goes through phases where a particular formation and tactic is ascendant until another counter is developed. So does that make the formation, unit or tactic 'unbalanced'??
For example, my personal beef has always been that the Leman Russ is overpowered both because of the large formation size and the the way the RA rule mechanic works. My concern is that every time an AV is considered, there is the inevitable comparison with the Leman Russ together with comments why the AV is so inferior; and I scream (mentally) that this is partly because the Leman Russ is OTT. (And this is one reason why I want to adopt the 'variable armour' rule in order to tone it down slightly). However, people have developed tactics to defeat Leman Russ formations, the large cost has inhibiting effects and indeed as Rug points out, some people play without them altogether. So is it
actually 'unbalanced' or not??
This is a very long-winded way of saying that IMHO we actually need some
objective way of determining whether a formation or unit is "ineffective" or 'unbalanced' (and I might add that I don't have a magic answer for this). Part of the reason why I suggested the UK Championship for the tournaments was to provide some statistical analysis on the way the different army lists performed. Can anyone suggest a way of going one step further to provide statistical evidence of the effectiveness of a formation or unit against various enemies and situations?
