No, No and No.
(Do not raise the cost, remove transport or remove the upgrades)

And again, why are we even considering this? SM Scouts are not a broken formation in any sense, especially since the drop pod abuse has been prevented! Please stop these frustrating and 'pointless' debates.

- - - - - -
To the LSS, while a neat model and idea, what does this bring to the game, list or formation? Yes it may be more 'fluffy' but it really has too many downsides. As a House varient etc perhaps, but not really necessary to the core list.

So just so we're clear Ginger, you want absolutely no changes to the Marine list...?

Not entirely sure either are needed. But if people want to test at 175 in a marine popcorn list go for it. I'd aim for 20 activations if anyone does want to test this approach for marines.

No idea if any marine popcorn test have been run?

I am really not sure that any are *absolutely* necessary. As I have said repeatedly, I think much of the perceived fault lies in strategies and tactics used by SM players and their opponents rather than the list per se (eg the recent debate on ZoC to counter airborne assaults).

However, *if* we want to re-examine the list, I would try to find objective ways of identifying problems with the list. Two spring to mind:-

• Min-maxing suspected formations in the list. For example, popcorning Scouts, Thawks, or Land-speeders; or 'banning' warhounds.
  The main problem with this approach is in keeping all other factors as unchanged as possible; so the same terrain, the same enemy lists, played by the same group of people with a consistent understanding of the rules etc.
  
  
• Carrying out a proper statistical analysis of the UK championship results and lists (and comparing them with the original database if that still exists).
  While the 'other factors' are as consistent as you are likely to find anywhere else, it may be very difficult to draw sufficiently objective results from the current data with respect to the performance of individual formations.

However there are many reasons not to make changes to the SM list, and very few in favour of such changes. With the possible exception of Vindicators, I would suggest that 'fiddling' with the current costings risks wrecking the internal balance for little gain and considerable effort. And changing the way Warhounds are fielded would be the only other consideration IMHO, as this balances the units within the formation and list in a way that has little impact elsewhere (I believe the same should be done for Ferals in the Chaos lists)

So effectively removing one of the most commonly taken units has no effect on balance, while changing the cost of a few rarely-taken units by 25 points will wreck the list?

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Can you say for certain that changing things won't make things better though? If at the end of the day, people start to see/use different unit types on the table at tournies and perhaps even win with them, isn't that a good thing? If we leave things as they are that won't ever occur. We'll have the same arguments for ever.

The only SM formations that haven't finished in the top 3 in an EUk tourney in the last year are land raiders, predator destructors and assault marines.

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Land speeders have been tested. Also scouts back when they could drop pod.

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Storms: I would be okay with adding Storms. I don't think it's strictly necessary, but it's one of the few retrofit changes I could live with.

Price: I think the ubiquitous nature of the scouts in the EUK lists has a lot to do with the high-activation metagame common at UK tournaments, rather than an imbalance in how effective they are for the points.

Razorbacks/Rhinos: I'd be inclined to leave them as-is, just to keep tinkering to a minimum.

Sniper: I'm good with the 50 point/entire formation upgrade. Most of the SM variant lists have taken on something of that nature.

No opinion on the Storms, if I want to use them I'll use RG if they're not adopted. If they are, I would leave their transports as is, merely so lists are not invalidated by removing Rhinos/RBacks. Same goes for the Sniper upgrade (as a compromise how about 25 for 1 and 50 for all 4 units).

On their price, I'd be willing to test them at 175 but I don't think it'll make much of a difference. Scouts are commonly taken because of what they provide the army, not because they're a great deal points-wise. Having 25-50 points less in a 3k game is probably going to mean people won't take some small upgrade which the variance of the dice can usually handle.

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To which I would ask 'how would we go about measuring "better"'.

In the UK we already do see most of the units and formations used in tournaments, but not perhaps to quite the degree desired by the proponents of change. The notable exception is the Vindicator, which I cannot remember ever being used either as an upgrade or a formation in its own right – but I would equally have to ask, “so what”?

Indeed, just how "unbalanced" is the list?

Warning – Rant “on”

The “Issues”

At the moment there seems to be three current themes to the debate;
1. That the list is only 'competitive' with a fairly limited set of formations
   
2. That certain formations are significantly overused or underused, suggesting that they are overpowered or underpowered to some extent,
3. That the lists, formations or units are not 'fluffy'; they do not represent well what is desired of the general "Space Marine" army (as opposed specific chapters etc), and which may indeed not 'operate' in the desired manner)

The themes are obviously related, not least because most people play 3K 'tournament' games that specifically include the tournament objectives. Playing under these conditions tends to skew the lists actually used in a particular direction. For example, the player must consider whether his strategy will include an attempt to obtain the BTS goal or not and if so, how will he go about destroying opposing titans? The SM list per se has no TK and very limited MW capability. Among the best tools available in the list are Imperial titan allies - which is why they figure so prominently in current lists to allow the marine player the option of going for the BTS goal. If we played to a different set of objectives, or had different weapons and units available, then potentially the army composition would be radically different.

Indeed you might well argue that the Marines are all about selecting the right tactics and tools for the particular task in hand – and in that respect the list works very well at providing the player with the relevant options.

Measuring “improvement”

IMHO the biggest issue is how to define and then measure the various issues objectively. To the various claims raised on ‘competitiveness’, ‘overuse’’ or ‘fluffyness’; yes I am sure that it may be possible to improve the list, but this begs the question “can we quantify just how balanced the list is now (or indeed any other list for that matter)?” Put another way, when do we stop tinkering?

We are currently defining “competitiveness” through the tournament setting; which army gained the most objectives etc. However games can be won or lost simply through poor placement of the Blitz and T&H objectives, without any reference to the armies in use. So you have to ask whether the measure is appropriate, and while we probably agree that it is usable, we still have to accept that it has a degree of uncertainty attached. This is one of the reasons why the EPIC UK championship statistics are so frequently quoted. While they may not reflect the way that everyone plays, they are the most consistent and detailed measure available. However, measuring "fluffyness" is much harder, and more akin to judging what is art.

A question of “Balance”

Another aspect is balancing effectiveness and fluffiness in the eyes of the community. This is wrapped up in the intended design behind a given unit or formation, and the army design as a whole. Using the Vindi as a trite example, it currently has a highly specialised role; bunker busting. If we were to give it a "Super, Long-range, Uprated Gun" (SLUG) , it would undoubtedly be more attractive - but no longer a "Vindi". The same is true for the entire list, and is ultimately why the most 'competitive' lists include a reasonable mixture of most formations and unit types. .

Equally the player interaction (strategy and tactics etc) have a considerable impact on the views presented. This was one of the problems that ultimately caused Sotec to develop the changes to the Eldar list largely in private with his own gaming group. Whilst there was excessive debate for several years, many (perhaps most) of the main contributors to the debate did not have the same paradigms and environment; there were major differences in just about every conceivable part, whether it be using non-standard table, terrain, opposing armies, unit statistics etc which were further compounded by different rule interpretations and player experience. Indeed we still see this in current debates throughout the forums.

Education, ignorance and luck

Finally, yes we can re-jig formation ratios or increase or decrease costs to try to encourage the use of particular formations over others, but that does not tell people the tactics to adopt for particular formations to work ‘best’, nor does it help understand how to use the list as a whole, or the best strategies to adopt to defeat the various other races. Consequently IMHO we would still receive these comments even if the list were perfectly balanced.

And even then, we would not be able to cancel out ‘luck’ or the cry of “stupid game” that is known to echo around the tournaments.

The way forward?

While I respect the fact that debate is being encouraged, it really needs a little more structure and focus. Rather than the current frustrating free-for-all, we need to understand the intended objectives, measures, perhaps a time-frame (though these are notoriously difficult to achieve) and tentative list of areas that we might focus on in order to improve the list (and I do not consider this to be a list of formations, rather intended effects that we want to achieve). Basically we need to know your intended process for improving the list.

The first step is probably to list all the current gripes and then, in conjunction with the ERC, to decide which to focus on.
Next you should tell the community your decisions, the definition of the intended result and if appropriate, the stages to achieve that result.

If you agree with my contention that the list is pretty well balanced, then we should probably be taking small focused steps towards achieving these goals, and only larger changes where unavoidable (like the adoption of the 1/3 rule, which thankfully you have currently ruled out). I am sure that Neal and the others can provide guidance, but this really needs a firmer grip if we are to make any progress at all.

"My three pennies worth" to adopt Honda's quote

Last time I checked Dobbsy was SM army champion and setting the priorities not Ginger…

Perhaps the long 'rant' post may have been better placed in the The 'new' Adeptus Astartes and you thread since it has nothing specifically to do with Storms? May be worth a mod moving the post and my reply there to help keep discussions more structured and on-topic?

To respond to a few bits:

Much of your comments apply to internet playtesting generally and are obvious. There are both pluses and minuses of development across the internet and I’m sure we’re aware of them. Despite the downsides of the system a lot of excellent lists have been produced and improved through this method. Personally I read and compare both and though I choose to use a few Epic-UK lists, for the most part I consider the Net-EA versions to be superior.

One of the goals of rebalancing a list is obviously to tweak under-performing and under-used units. I’m bemused that you're even questioning this or ranting against it happening. Rebalancing such units encourages more variety of competitively viable lists, which can make the army more interesting to play with and against. It's also better for players owning those models to have a good opportunity to use them rather than them being rarely/not used.

It is a significant failure of the list that those options are relied on. The SM and Adeptus Mechanicus Titan Legions are separate organisations, both fiercely independent and with their own interests. Titans are also rare and not commonly available for SM battles whether the SM would like them to be or not. Sometimes Space Marines may be lucky to have Titan support for a particular battle, but often times there won’t be Titans within thousands of light years of the planet they are fighting on. No one is suggesting removing allies from the list, but they shouldn’t be such ‘must have’ choices and the list should be able to function nearly as well without them. The potential points cost raise to 300 in addition to the worse critical could help matters a bit and I do have a left field suggestion that could help the list rely less on allies, but I'll write and post that up another day as I've spent a lot of time here again today when I have loads to get done.

Obviously a variety of factors not related to the particular list effect whether a game is won or lost. The more game feedback is looked at the more such things should average out however. When playtesting it can be possible to gauge the effectiveness of units in the game regardless of whether the game is lost or won. A lot can be judged just through list building and what choices people take, along with whether a change causes than unit to be chosen less or more over time.

With Scouts at 175 it would be impossible to get 20 activations, the maximum would be 17 or so. I’m also not convinced that testing such an extreme list would be the best use of playtesting time for us as most lists take 1-3 Scout formations. Testing spam lists is of most relevance when the possibility of decreasing a units costs is contentious, rather than when possibly increasing a unit, which has been that cost without (to my knowledge) lists with very high numbers of the formations being used/problematic.

To add/expand upon another good reason for including the Storm is to better fit in with current 40k. Realistically, for every one active Epic player in the world there are probably hundred(s) of active 40k players of Space Marines alone. If we want to keep Epic alive and healthy in the long term attracting cross-over players is a relevant goal.

W40k SM players looking at the list for the first time will notice some differences. Missing units like Thunderfires, Sternguard, Tech Marine, etc might be a bit of a downer, particularly if they’re a unit they like using and including in their 40k army. Ultimately it’s not that big a deal if some things are missing though so long most units are there and I’m certainly not suggesting we add any other newer 40k units to the main list at all. The situation is worse with Scouts though as it’s not just that they are missing their proper Storm transports in Epic, but here to get around they are driving Rhinos and Razorbacks and some could find this stupid / wrong / off-putting.

Appologies - I did get rather carried away, and many of the comments are more appropriate in the other thread.

I will reply to your other comments there.

On Storms, it is an interesting concept that may have some merit, though I am very unsure of the costing. However it sounds as though you want to mandate the use of Storms as the only form of transport and I don't think that would work in practice. You can do much better with a set of Devastators for 250 points. Indeed, as there are better formations point-for-point at 225 (Assault Marines + Chaplian) and 200 (Land Speeders), I cannot see people using scouts above 175 for the formation including all upgrades.

Equally, I am very unsure about trying to calculate the cost of 'naked' Scouts - at 125 without Rhinos they come dangerously close to spamable:- 24 such formations does not need special weaponry to kill enemy formations. By surrounding enemy with ZoCs they can inhibit movement and by breaking formations with BMs they can destroy them by ensuring there is nowhere for the enemy to withdraw to.

On the number of scout formations used per army, it seems that 1-2 is the norm, again hardly game-breaking as you say. All this suggests is that the Marine list works best with a mixture of all the various formation types as their roles complement each other.