I have played against a red corsairs list which incorporated many of the changes suggested for this list. I cannot play against this list since the only person I can regularly play against with a chaos army refuses to use this list due to it being overpowered.

Can I ask if you have ever sat down and used Neal's suggested formula to work out aproximate costs for the formations before?

Or worked out the actual percentage cost different for those units that do match up to the codex marines list?

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

It might be if you weren't going around accusing people of being intransigent, not wanting to change the list, thinking it was fine as it was and then going on to talk about the entire list being underpriced.

You really don't build any credibility that way. And why should I pay any attention to you when you treat my responses in the manner you do?

People aren't obliged to pay any attention to you unless you build up trust and respect on their part.

Do you think that the way you are currently approaching this is the way to do that?

I don't think that the CSM list is underpriced in general.

Are there some formations that might need to be tweaked? Perhaps but telling me that the Raptors are cheaper than Assault Marines isn't going to provide me with any details to help me determine if they are, in terms of the CSM army list, cheaper than they need to be.

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

The Red Corsairs list isn't the CSM list though. Its like making comments about the Marine list based on playing the Scions of Iron.

I cannot play against this list since the only person I can regularly play against with a chaos army refuses to use this list due to it being overpowered.

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

Look, let's take a step back here, the personal accusations aren't helping anyone.

Do you not agree that it makes sense to compare the costs to those of similar units in other lists?

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I'm with zombocom and Hena here that in Raptor and Chosen formation the lord should be taken into account into pricing so that it does not become more expensive the more units you take.

For ATSKNF being worth 15%... I think Neal is a bit underestimating its cost here - I would go more like 30% in most cases. Maybe I have faced too many popcorn armies, but I would take 4 ATSKNF units any day over 5 non-ATSKNF units. 4 to 6 starts to be more 'which one to take' consideration.

For my tests with (certain) proposed changes, i.e. obliterator cost, DP MW and raptor cost changes, the list does not seem that bad - however, I have not tested massed up ferals nor daemons.

Ok, so I guess you don't.

As you obviously do have respect for Neal's work in this area, would you not be interested in seeing a table that shows the current percentage difference in points compared to Neal's ideal?

I feel it would be a useful tool, even if the aim isn't to aim for Neal's number.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I think I've already pointed out on several occasions that I don't think its valid.

At this point the list needs less numerical analysis and more testing to tell us where our issues are.

Once we have an idea of what to look for then we can start to use some numerical tools but prior to that its not a very fruitful. It lacks focus.

Army lists that don't get playtested in actual games and only have number crunching and theoryhammer applied to them turn out very badly.

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

And a comedy bit of averaging tells me the list is 11% underpriced

A joke, to be sure, but that does actually feel about right to me...

I currently don't feel that testing will help locate specific issues with the list, because I feel the list as a whole is underpriced, and testing a few small changes won't help to spot that.

I suspect 3000 points of marines vs 2700 points of chaos would be a fair fight atm.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

But besides the unit costs, I have plenty of other issues with the list.

There are a lot of newly invented units in the list, and a lot of background-correct units not included. I'm speaking of course mainly about the war engines and aircraft.

This is the only official Chaos Marine list, and likely to remain that way. Shouldn't it reflect the chaos background better? All the other official lists (barring the equally affected LaTD) have very few invented units and stick at tight as possible to current GW fluff. Why should chaos marines be different?

New players moving from 40k should be able to recognise the chaos marine list when compared to its 40k equivilent. They should be greeted by a familiar array of units, not a series of made-up ones when perfectly good alternatives are left out.

For example, the Decimator is included when there is a viable alternative in the official Plague Reaper, which could even have similar stats. The Feral titan could also be replaced with the more official Chaos Warhound.

The aircraft are the most obvious change in this area. Though I believe the names do come from BFG, and so are official, we actually have models for three chaos planes, and given that models are in such short supply it seems foolish to not include them in the list.

I understand that many of these official vehicles are relatively new, and postdate the release of this list, but why should that be a barrier to including them?

Surely we should try to match the 40k universe more closely wherever possible?

Also, I feel the number and length of the special rules is perhaps excessive. Jervis has been very clear in wanting as few special rules as possible, so it seem sensible to cut them back where feasible.

The variable initiative/hated formations rule seems the most obvious candidate for the chop. This rule rarely comes up in game, encourages more limited army selection, no longer matches the 40k background and is usually forgotten ingame anyway. It seems high time to do away with it and just admit that the Chaos Marines have 1+ initiative.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Yeah they are.  

Its part of the cost of the formation... it isn't "free". It was originally calculated as part of the formation cost and the fact that it doesn't have a separate point entry does not mean that the cost hasn't been included or that thought hasn't been given to the Warlord in the formation.

Why do people assume that someone we just tacked on the Warlord character just because there isn't an price entry for the character.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

The Tournie stats are here
UK Tourney

However they are just bald stats. The WE Horde hasn't really been used by CSM as much as Space Marines in tournies (possibly as a consequence of the sportsmanship system) and a couple of extremely good players have used Chaos a few times.

Lastly, the formations absolutely should include the cost of the character (for variable size formations this means paying a premium for larger formations, which is absolutely as it should be).

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I think the obvious stuff that number crunching and comparison shows is useful when planning/discussing. Air is a case in point. There is limited interaction with the ground (if transports are discounted) forces. The only factors pretty much is if they have an ability the ground pounders lack and what is the friendly flak umbrella radius they can operate under (both of which boosts them I reckon). Making cross army comparisons here perhaps more valid. Stuff like comparing a Raptor formation with a Shadowsword however isn't that easy

And finally, cost it higher than you think its worth. Always easier to get fans to agree points going down. Seems easier to get blood out of a stone than to get points to go up/abilities to go down!

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'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

Nice.

I´m with rpr here and would rate the value of ATSKNF higher, SM take a lot more firepower to break than CSM, and the ability especially of loyalist armour to keep firing with a pile of BM is incomparable. (Tanks are, of course, overpriced in both lists and rarely taken, but I have a ton of them and just love to roll out my Land Raiders).

I would refrain from a direct comparison of Devastators and Havocs due to the way the are organized, Devs in a formation of their own and Havocs as an upgrade, rarely taken since it cuts BL activations further.

Arguably Terminators/Chosen benefit the most from ATSKNF, I attribute at least 70% of my killed Chosen to hackdown hits in broken formations, were SM Termies would have just shrugged the fire off, being unbroken or ignoring the shot-at BM.

TRC makes a good point by suggesting cutting formation costs by -25 points and adding a Chaos Lord upgrade at +25. (Something similiar would be nice to see in IG lists as well, as in the Ork and Eldar lists).

Not playing the list but going on as to how it is doubleplus bad is of course not very constructive.

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For the record, the way I recall the %-proportion discussion was that the numbers in the list ranged from something like 65% to about 90% and that the units which most people seemed to think were okay were all in the 75-85% range.  That's far from a universal, but the things people tend not to take were on the high end and the things people tended to load up on were less.

The formations that really screwed with the proportion of costs are the minimal sized CSM formations because the per-unit benefit of the built-in character is larger.  So, we've seen lists maxing out 4-unit Chosen and Raptor formations to get the cheapest built-in characters.  Those come out in the 65-70% cost range versus comparable SM units while the larger formations come in 70-75% (closer to 75%).

As Lord_I and others amply described above, the effectiveness of TSKNF varies based on formation size and available options can make a difference as well.  I definitely wouldn't advocate a flat % target.  It is only a rough guideline to identify formations that are outliers for closer examination.

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Neal