Thursday 25 November 2010

Uncompetetive codexes

Something that we hear a lot of moaning about as wolf players with an apparently cheesy codex.

'My codex is ancient so I haven't got a chance against you'. Its such a silly statement to make, it absolves you and your opponent of any tactical skill that the game requires.

Does it really matter that codex's are perceived to be weak? There are certainly a number of different types of players, we know that, its been analysed time and again but personally I would never think of a player who still plays an army such as Necrons to be one of those serious tournament players who's goal is getting a win and nothing else. So why do we hear these continual debates about codex creep and over powered codecies.

I'll use Necrons as an example. Its certainly an army I have thought about getting. When I first got into 40k and saw them I thought they looked like bad terminator knock offs but once you read the fluff and realise what they are about you understand that they are a very cool army but certainly not an ultra competitive army. I would play them now because I love the idea of having my models get shot to pieces and get back up never once would their competitive nature fuel my decision making and I am sure its like that with the majority of necrons so why the moaning? Why do I have to listen to people moan about my codex all the time?

Should it be down to GW to have more consistency between codicies? Is it that difficult and someone else will have to answer this for me to put every models stats into an equation and come out with a value to distinguish how good he is? From that you get a mean value for troops for one codex and when the next codex comes along they should be comparable to that base figure?

Is that really asking too much? Should we expect a company who's main goal is to make a profit by selling codicies and models to not want to create that next super model in order to sell more?

Its a question I leave open to you. I love the challenge of a new codex but for me the back ground will always be far more important than the statline of a troop.

9 comments:

  1. Codexes or codecies anyone know which should be used?

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  2. Well I would say that a good army does not equal a good gamer. I know people who are using SW and are absolute rubbish at competitive play and other people like my friend Talos who is using Necrons and doing very very well. So it is mostly down to the player and not the army.

    Now a newer army can give an edge to a good player over one who playes an older army but that is irrelevant I think. As you said, turning up to a tournament with a pure daemonhunters list and expect to win it is a bit far fetched.

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  3. Codices is what you're after.

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  4. I believe all-in-all that GW has done a good job keeping things level. I mean, you can't expect the Necron codex to compete with the Space Wolves codex being that it's written for 3rd edition, but that's the only reason they have a hard time competing. Now, I'm not saying all the 5th codices are 100% on par with one another but no one codex is way ahead of another either, in my opinion.

    As for actual army balance, it's not black and white. Your idea for getting a value on a troop unit, for example, what does that accomplish? By that I mean one army may inherently have weaker troops by design but stronger elites to balance it out. Hell, even trying to find a value on a single unit in a codex as a means of seeing how good they are would be damn near impossible. It's one thing to look at stats and cost effectiveness but then you have to try and account for how players will use them in an army, make use of any special rules, etc. It's all about how the army comes together and plays as a whole, the sum of the parts, that's where balancing is done.

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  5. Not sure but if you consider that the word "codex" is derived from the greek word "κώδιξ" which plural is "κώδικες" then "codices" sounds more like it.

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  6. Codices is the actual correct one IIRC, but GW uses codexes, so a lot of 40K-talk uses that GW-ism.

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  7. I do find it funny that you don't hear these type of posts from folks like radical Daemonhunters (without allies) players. It always seems to be (these days) the SW, IG, and BA players. ;-)

    I do believe there's some element of some books getting better. Part of it is basic rules changes - with mech getting better, the books that can do mech well get better. With price drops (50pt rhinos->35pts, about 90pt chimeras->55, cheaper grey hunters, etc.) among things that are already good it makes them even better. How people play and scenarios matter too - Necrons that can focus on just doing a little damage and playing keep away and WBB can do better in a VP world than in holding stationary objectives or when they need to finish off units for KP, and with games going 7 turns sometimes it can be easier to have that extra time to go for a phase out. Terrain can favor army builds, etc.

    Player is very important, but I don't think that you can ignore codex differences altogether.

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  8. I don't know why but I always assumed it was derived from Latin...

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  9. Oooops, you are right! I guess it was my knee-jerk reaction because we use the same word in Greek so I assumed the English word would be derived by it. But both are derived from the Latin word codex (Latin for block of wood, book; plural codices). Ten seconds on google could have saved me from this embarrassment!

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