jimmyzimms wrote:
Incidentally, I need some help getting some testing on my new tank, Steve/Kyuss. It's a Land Raider with 12TK(1) attacks. Don't worry though, we'll balance it with the costs and the formation size [sarcasm]
Cheers
good job you used the sarcasm tags..... I was taking it seriously and turning the most brilliant shade of purple.....
@Vaaish
I literally don't have the energy to continue this battle of words with you, it's the weekend, I have beer in the fridge and I think it's time to let go
just a final thing, my point was never about how uber the avenger fighter was, statistically it's probably okay, I have little interest in the skitaari list which is why I hadn't gotten involved or seen the plane, I may be wrong here but I don't expect you're in the loop about every development in every list either, I'm sorry it's taken till now for me to flag it up, but my first introduction to the AMB was via the dark angels list which I do have a passing interest in
my argument in brief is that the air game in particular is tricky to balance, it's also not really intended to be the main focus of E:A (hence the "that'll do" nature of the aircraft in the rulebook lists) the rules in some places are kinda clunky and poorly written and could probably do with a revamp... but that's a different discussion
Aircraft can be very potent in numbers, anyone who has faced the ork 'flying circus' list will know this, as well as being powerful, against many standard list builds, potent (or even not-so-potent) aircraft can be game winning by themselves, and it can be demoralising for an opponent who hasn't stocked up on AA and then is very quickly rendered helpless and gets fed up
I think we need to think very carefully when introducing new weapons to the air game, as it tends to be an area where precedents get set easily and it's very difficult to "put the toothpaste back in the tube" as it were, once a weapon becomes accepted/approved
We all accept (I think) that GW generally increases the power of its units as they are released to make them attractive to their core market, if we keep faithfully translating those new stats into epic, we're going down that same route of power/codex creep, whether it's translating the stats from 40k or
accepting the fluff from 40k.... sure the plane has half a vulcan on it but so what? it's the GW "never think anything through" approach and we really don't have to bind ourselves to that, use it as a basis (eg. "it's got a rapid firing anti infantry gun on it, vulcan is a bit much for a fighter, typical silly GW... let's think about how to represent it without pushing it too far")
However as we've been cut adrift by GW, we aren't
bound to follow their rules, and we can (and frequently should) throw our hands up in the air and say "hey this is ridiculous! we need to tone it down for epic"
not everyone loves or hates every new unit or model GW releases so there is no firm guidance on what to include and what to leave out, my concern is that having an aircraft weapon with 2xAP3+/AT5+ shots will open the door further in future, the next big thing GW releases may have two or more.... then we get to the point where if we want to balance it through points alone, it ends up costing half the army, and in isolation, it's still super nasty and not particularly fun to face... if we keep going down that route, surely we'll eventually just end up with armies that are just a bunch of very expensive, very powerful units.... basically everything will just be titans.... and I think the game will suffer as a result
I've offered plenty of real world examples and suggestions as how a nerf (or boost depending on the weapon) could be implemented and justified, these have all been ignored and from my POV with no
real reason other than 'This is the gospel as written by GW, so shall it ever be'
I don't want to argue about the AC-not-listening-to-the-majority thing because in my
personal opinion and experience, taking that level of firm approach is just a way to put playtesters off, and an AC without enthusiastic playtesters is not gonna get a list approved on his own, however hard he pushes
best of luck to you, I think AoC may have seen the light and dumped the AMB so it's a non-issue for me