Ultimately that's why I like the Champion system.

A good Champion will measure the wind of opinion and steer his list in the best direction.

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They clearly would, and even more clearly as 15cm move troops that can only function in assault should do it every time, being on the ground in rhinos is just wasting them.

Having a formation size of 9 actually brings in some balance as you can cost them as an 8 strong unit to ensure a fair air assault cost and give them a boost as mechanised troops which marines need.

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Fair enough chaps, v0.2.2 will be up later today, I fully expect people complaining about the changes which have been delivered, and so the cycle of bashing our heads against the wall continues .....

TRC. The idea of having to ditch a stand to air assault is at least a downside, I still think everyone will pay the penalty and do it anyway.  In fairness every marine list that I see played is an air assault list, usually with one formation of Devastators (typically with the Supreme commander, and maybe some whirlwinds too) parked on the ground. I'm not saying that that isn't wrong but it seems to be the most effective way of using marines in the game, and people will gravitate towards it.

So your challenge is to make something which doesn't just play like that. Making an air assault list is a doddle. Making one that isn't is a challenge. Its quite do-able, check out the salamanders list for examples, though that is quite heavy handed. With the stats space wolves have (guns, ha!) they are even more an air assault list. So make them more than one dimensional, or simply a different points to hit ratio when air assaulting from black templars or codex marines.

The advantages of a 9 strong in theory mainstay formation (taking a look at 'normal marine lists the warhound is a mainstay, not tacticals) is that it highlights the somewhat disorganised nature of the spacewolves (it seems we aren't having pack attrition fit our thunderhawk capacity head space wolf sir! Grrr!) and gives a boost to ground based forces (extra stand, extra rhino transport space). Also using a wolf guard stand for it allows a ranged shot and commander, ensuring the army has the ability to construct very large combined assaults.

Edit - something else about developing lists online is its amusing to see list designers encountering the same problems as others and then slowly work out the solutions for themselves

Oh and I don't know if its helpful or not, but here is a rumour list of what is in their new codex.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/po ... 56607.page

Its in 40k speak, which I can only partially translate

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If using E-Bay use this link to support Tac Com!
'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x

Fair enough, the bigger formations might actually stand a chance on
the ground, but 9 will be the absolute upper limit any upgrades will then be replacements....



I've only seen one marine list (including at Tournaments) with more than 2 Warhounds actually used, conversely most lists I see have a couple of Tactical formations.

Personally I think Taccomms development model isn't that great, but it's what we have to work with I suppose.

Theres only 3 models that I know of.
All closed doors, then result sprung on public (the 40k model?)
No name for this one, but its the one Epic originally followed when the EpicA basics were being thrashed out. In essence the developer comes up with the idea. Then people test, with limited interaction between them, sending results and thoughts back to the developer.
Then the open one, which is what Tac Coms is and what EpicA testing become pre launch.
They all have upsides and downsides.
The tac-com model is good for brainstorming. It used to be good for getting people to test things, but the number of testers has dwindled away. For doing something from scratch I think its the best way as you get a lot of ideas very quickly and normally the sillyist things removed early on (ironically not if the chap in charge is very strong willed, then you end up with stupid stuff hanging around a lot longer).
The second way is I think best for refinements or from when the developer has a clear idea that seems to be working.
The first way depends on how good a team you have and how much time you have. So can be bad and can be good, though wargames wise tends to allow one or two abuses the creators simply never envisaged.

Using the handy EpicUK tourny records I just looked at a dozen marine lists from this year. Every single one has 0-1 tactical formation and 2 warhounds/1 reaver/1 reaver and 0-2 warhounds. Not  single list has more tacticals than titans and none even has a 1 to 1 ratio.

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If using E-Bay use this link to support Tac Com!
'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x

What about this list from London 2009
This has a 1-1 ratio of Tacticals and Titans


1) Thunderhawk
2) Thunderhawk
3) Terminators + Librarian          
4) Tacticals + Hunter + Supreme Commander
5) Tacticals + Chaplain
6) Devastators + Hunter
7) Land Speeders
Scouts
9)  Warhound
10) Warhound
11) Thunderbolts

Agreed, the forum is great for brainstorming, but it seems that no one is open to comprimise.....

As somewhat of an outsider I think that the way that the development is handled has caused the testers to drift away (and either not bother, write their own lists out of sight so to speak or write a competing and contradictory list), there seems to be quite a lot of people with large egos who simply shout down any ideas that they don't agree with, the sad thing is that other people support them in spite of the evidence that the model simply isn't delivering finished lists.

The lack of a preponderance of warhounds is certainly my experience, clearly I have avoided those players at the tournaments I have been to so far

Anyway, I'd best get back to updating the list.

I'm very open to compromise

An interesting diversion is to note that according to the background, the majority of Marine armies should be composed mostly of Tactical Marine formations, so each Marine army should contain 3-4 Tactical formations.

That 0-1 is the typical range would imply that the formation type is too expensive, or not good enough (or that there are other options that are too cheap, or good, or efficient), to see usage levels in tournaments that match the background depictions.

You could assume that they (tournament players) are all building their lists along particular non-codex lines (such as Devestator-heavy, Assault-heavy, 1st Company-heavy, etc) for theme reasons, but I think it's more likely that taking a Codex Marine list that matches the background is just not as powerful as taking Assaults-and-Thunderhawks-and-Warhounds lists, and that tournament players are avoiding taking background-matching lists for that reason.

So what I'm trying to say is that don't assume that the Codex list is perfect, when drawing comparisons.  

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Well i missed one then

Bugger just lost the post. Anyway i was being pedantic and going through each list to see. In Full scale assault there were 7 codex lists with tacticals and 3 had parity and 1 had more. But they didn't do that well. Of the rest of the tourneys in 2009 all seem (before I got to the last two) to have more titans than tacticals.

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If using E-Bay use this link to support Tac Com!
'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x

There have been several drifts away of playtesters. The one I most clearly remember was the chaos list being playtested. Despite several flaws being obvious to some there was no move to change them and instead very idiotic calls for playtesting them (some stuff you can't playtest because its too bloody obvious) and it caused a bunch of chaps in London and the south east to pack Epic in. They had quote enjoyed the promise of an open development system and they saw both the lack of movement and the way the communication was handled as pretty poor. Most started playing blitzkrieg commander I think (twas a shame, would have club nights with nearly every table full of Epic).



Lucky you

Its worth looking over what the top 6 positions or so of lists use on the Epic UK site. As Ben points out it does in some way show where the 'competitive' balance lies and what units and play styles are favoured. It differs a lot to what people would field at a club (where odd ideas and themed lists crop up) as many players par down their lists to lean mean killing machines.

And as for compromise its happened a few times

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If using E-Bay use this link to support Tac Com!
'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x

I didn't know that, but it makes some of the recent developments that I've been watching even more baffling, in the face of stopping a whole club playing epic as a reaction to previous issues...

Anyway, back to the Space Wolves  

v 0.2.2 (in the first post)

I've mulled over all that has been said, and come up with a very small list of tweaks that I think might help

The Grey Hunters:- I've taken TRC's comments and upped the formation size to 9, too big to Thunderhawk In order to round the points and emphasise the 'Warbands' notion, they also get a Hero upgrade as part of their base cost.

The Long Fangs:- Are now a replacement (rather than an addition) upgrade, owing to the larger size of the Grey Hunters, I've made them 1-3 (again, the flexibility is intended to represent the disorganised nature of the chapter).

Lastly, I wanted to get Chroma's ideas in somehow so I've introduced a 'Wolf Guard' upgrade for the Blood Claws and Grey Hunters, again this is a replacement (with a Terminator Stand) of one of the units. Put it in the Blood Claw Formation and you're drop podding or walking though.

I've left the Wolf Scouts alone for now, as I want to avoid any extra special rules if I can

So now they Grey Hunters can either use Transports or Drop Pod (or Landing Craft I guess)

The Wolf Guard look like a good Thunderhawk load-out still, but I rather think that they should.

The Blood Claws are still quite flexible

and the intention has always been that the Thunderwolves can't be transported anyway (like the red headed stepchildren they are).

I've been to several Epic UK Tournaments and I've taken Space Marines to some of them, I've never taken warhounds (I don't own any). Seems your blanket statements should be stated as unresearched opinion, not researched fact.

That said, Warhounds, even if just 1, are common in Marine lists.

This IMO doesn't mean Space Marines in background/design are intended to always have a Titan Legion on beck and call- it is IMO a failing of the SM Army List that they are no brainers.
The Titans/Aircraft should be a nice addition, sometimes useful, but there should be other army specific options that can do there role as well (Tank Co/Shadow swords in IG for example).

Thud thud thud.

It was an off hand and actually true statement about the majority of marine tournament armies. It was hoping to highlight what actually ends up in a marine army and something to bear in mind when doing others if you don't want the same result. Yes by all means some don't have this. They also don't seem to appear in the top positions.

Here is the very easy way to check the 'research' for 2009. Though bear in mind I couldn't go to any this year sadly, so based my observations on 2008 when I could go to a few.

Full Scale Assault 2009
1st http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p3fsa09.html 1 tactical/2 warhounds
3rd http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p2fsa09.html 1 tactical/2 warhounds
7th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p48fsa09.html Warlord
8th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p50fsa09.html 2 tactical/2 warhound
10th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p1fsa09.html tactical
11th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p40fsa09.html tactical/reaver
12th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p53fsa09.html 2 tactical/1 reaver
18th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p41fsa09.html 0

Open War 11
1st http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p3ow11.html 1 tactical/2 warhounds
8th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p62ow11.html 2 warhounds

WPS Club Challenge 2009
2nd http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p6wpscc09.html  1 tactical/2 warhounds
4th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionshi ... scc09.html 1 Reaver
8th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionshi ... scc09.html 1 tactical/2 warhounds
15th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionshi ... scc09.html 4 warhounds? Maybe 2

Britcon 2009
1st http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p5brit09.html 1 tactical/2 warhounds
2nd http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p48brit09.html 1 tactical/2 warhounds/1 reaver
9th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p52brit09.html 2 tactical

Into The Breach 2009
6th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p63itb09.html 1 warhound/1 Reaver
10th http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/p48itb09.html 1 warhound/1 Reaver

(The scores being 29 titans vs 15 tactical or 13 more/3 even/3 less)

The upshot of all this. If you don't want grey hunters to suffer the same fate be clever.

One way of doing so of course if use a core/support system (for every grey hunter pack get 3 other formations say). Other ways revolve around making them more attractive than warhounds.

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If using E-Bay use this link to support Tac Com!
'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x