Evil and Chaos wrote:
Simulated Knave wrote:
As Dave said, a lot of the battles are posted. Has anyone taken a look?
I said above that I'd looked at his reports and found it remarkable how most of the time when genestealers were mentioned they ended up broken, or breaking from casualties sustained during an engagement, even in the games of a player who thinks they're overpowered.
So in order to be overpowered they should rarely be broken? On average, they still win or do incredible damage even when they break afterwards, and are easy to rally. My problem with GS having two first strike attacks for each base is that they remain combat effective long after they should be. Should a 3-base formation really be a viable option to try and take down an IG infantry company? Or a scout titan for that matter? (really not that extreme when you think of it... in my example above 7 attacks w/1 of them MW against 5+ RA 3 DC) I doubt genestealers are meant to go marauding from engagement to engagement, taking down fm's that are much larger than they are.
I don't think the comparison with rough riders holds up very well. In the 'nid army, GS are another formidable CC fm, while rough riders are outliers in that regard. Further, the first strike of the latter only applies to one attack, while all the GS attacks are applied up front - you're not going to lose any attacks from a GS because the first one was successful. The better initiative has already been mentioned.
The ability of players to get GS into combat is frankly immaterial to their actual cc stats. Let's say that we all agree that they're underpowered and add a third attack, so its 3@cc 4+ or some such. How will that help them to get into an engagement? They're still getting hunted down, barraged, and "never" getting close enough to use those stats, despite infiltrate, scout, and garrisoning. Conversely, how does losing one of those attacks hurt them? They still "never" get into an engagement.
I think the whole meta game thing is a red herring; I've used GS in engagements before and have them used against me, and there are other examples from batreps. It IS possible, and when considered as part of a larger army, GS do their job by forcing the opponent to make choices and punishing him when he makes the wrong one (ignoring them) or fails to take them down. Yes, even with the reduced stats. And all the while you're trying to avoid/kill/prepare for the genestealers, something else like lictors or trygons or other gribbly nasty is coming to get you anyway.
