I'm really not keen on the idea of fearless Dreads or characters, it's too big a change and ATSKNF is enough.

Chaplains are blatently the best character upgrade and seen the most while the Captain is the poorest choice and rarely seen (which is a shame - marines should have a captain every hundred marines, so 1-2 in every 3k army).

Chaplains could cost 60 points and Captains 40. Suddenly all the choices would be pretty balanced with each other.

edited to add: Dreadnought and/or Vindicator upgrades could potentially be made 40 too. It would be slightly harder to add up a list, but other lists have 5, 10, 15, ect point upgrades and the extra granularity would be worth it.

This would also be a good fix.

is there any evidence to suggest that chaplains are overpowered and in need of a price hike, or is it more the case that the other character choices are less useful and should be reduced?

I agree that dreads and vindicator upgrades could be cheaper, to keep the 25 point structure, I reckon 1 for 50, 2 for 75 is a decent starting point

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They are certainly more popular than the other characters - from the EUK database of Codex army lists, I find:

137 Chaplains
23 Librarians
12 Captains
126 Supreme Commanders

I think there is good evidence that they are not balanced against each other, at least.

IMO further changes to Codex SM, Steel Legion and Ghazghkull Orks are unnecessary and the focus should be on variant lists. Some options may be sub-par or taken less but I don't think there is anything left that is a definite auto-include or a definite never considered unit so just declare them as good as they can be and direct attention elsewhere.

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How then to explain the differences in structure and pricing between the EpicUK and NetEA lists? Would have thought given no different units the two lists could converge...

On captains an option is to make tacticals 300 points but give the army a free captain, so the cost is absorbed in that unit. Rational being this is roughly a company sized force so you would always have your commander with it, rather than the horde of chaplains...

Note the SC would have to become a 100 point stand alone upgrade rather than 50 point commander upgrade...

If we are to avoid one form of creep over everything else I think it's Fearless creep.

Fearless is such a good ability and it has started to appear on more and more units over the years.

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Did you disagree with the EpicUK changes to the SL and SM lists then? Would have thought that if EpicUK can make some minor tweaks then NetEA can too. Baneblade, I'm looking at you

Dobbsy I think the best thing to do is to forget anything that isn't a minor tweak, update the list with those and call it done until next year. Don't faff around anything that needs "playtests", there is no need to do that for typhoons and sniper, just include them. Testing fearless characters is only going to direct attention away from where it is most needed.

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These are pretty much my thoughts as well.

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Well isn't that already the case?

I'd rather see the Captain drop in price (or better yet change the Commander rule so it's more useful) then to be auto included. Otherwise the Tacticals will get less attractive. I'm also against making things cost 40 or 60 points. Everything else in the list is even 25:s so why not stick to that? 40 points is basically 50 unless you take three...

Fair. Just a thought though, most of the stuff above won't really make any difference in the end but it will make some of the players happy. Take the sniper upgrade or the commander for example, I doubt the marines will win more games with a cheaper Commander/sniper but it will feel better for the player. Why not weight that in also?
Besides that I agree that none of these lists should be altered with much.

Different development processes, EUK could test and implement the small changes to the list in their single metagame in a scheduled review process. Revisiting and making small changes to a NetEA list is only going to take away focus from getting variant lists to Approved. The speed of development has been a big topic recently so IMO address significant issues with already approved lists but otherwise look forward and push on with developmental and experimental lists. I don't see any problems here that could be labelled significant.

300 points for tacticals with a Captain will just mean less tacticals, most players want a SC and the usual home for that is a tactical BTS. Now you're looking at 400 with a SC which negates the change of tacticals to 275 by Dobbsy.

Change Chaplains to 60 and you're effectively changing them to 100 for a Chaplain and dreadnought (or whatever becomes 40pts )

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I get what you're saying but I don't see how avoiding changing the things that already were changed by EpicUK speeds up development - that seems counter intuitive. Surely it is the lack of change that is the problem. The list is already approved so what's the problem in making changes that have barely any consequence? No playtests are diverted from elsewhere so I don't see how it affects variant list development at all.

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Those changes still need to be tested in other metagames, plus a lot of the changes suggested here are a good deal more significant

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Agreed.

On current trends, I'm concerned that if every army starts including more and more MW and RA, the balance will start tilting further and the Codex list will be left behind the curve. If that's true we may need to address it. It's already a tough list to win with - top players exempted.

Well I would have thought as a base line is it possible to merge the Net and Uk lists - are they the ones with the fewest differences? I can only dream of an Epic where the 'big' lists at least match up around the world.

(Not to mention many of the small tweaks like vindies taking vindies, sniper being a formation wide upgrade etc are good ones in terms of internal list balancing - before you go in for big changes like playing with commanders, at least approve/try the small stuff.)