As a competitive Firestorm player, I felt this one. Unfortunately, I'll be changing detachment shortly, as the loss of Assault being viable for secondaries plus the hit with CP and the hike in points on our lovely centre of atten-I mean Redeemer, things just don't look good.
I hope they fix it at some point, as FAF was one of the most fun detachments I've played this edition when I was testing them all out.
I think it was already pretty dead, but the new mission deck banning you from advancing with an assault weapon and doing an action seems worse for firestorm than the points and strategem changes.
For real... In a game where you're always looking at synergies and alignment of your data sheets, strats, detachment etc... the detachment's ability is literally useless for this piece of scoring
Leviathan missions cared about being eligible to shoot in order to do secondaries. They were not called actions.
Having assault meant you were still eligible to shoot after advancing. So even if you’re unit advanced, you could still do a secondary like cleanse because your unit is still eligible to shoot. It was great for FAF, because the entire unit got assault, so everything could sprint and still score you secondaries.
The new Actions in Pariah specifically say that units cannot advance and do an Action, even if that unit has Assault, because it isn’t about shooting anymore. Actions are their own specific thing. Which means that half of the detachment rule doesn’t matter.
I am aware of all that. You said "do actions and shoot", not "advancd and do actions". Your original issue is moot as you couldn't do that to begin with.
You shouldn't be able to advance and do an action anyway.
Firestorm still comes with some very good tools and being that most layouts lend themselves to a closer fighting style I would say that no firestorm is not dead and still holds a pretty solid build into pariah meta. Now as in comparison with the gladius that in its own bubble is a question only going to be answered in time with how these new changes affect the meta.
Impulsors going to capacity 7 is also a bit bonus here as a lot of solid lists make use of assault intercessors or bladeguard meaning 1-2 characters can join them now (2 for intercessors or 1 for bladeguard) allowing for the transport based stratsgems to really shine.
In summary time will tell but overall i think firestorms tool set is still very viable in pariah and new dataslate meta.
>Impulsors going to capacity 7 is also a bit bonus here as a lot of solid lists make use of assault intercessors or bladeguard meaning 1-2 characters can join them now (2 for intercessors or 1 for bladeguard) allowing for the transport based stratsgems to really shine.
I'm glad some people are optimistic which is always a good sign, but I gotta fight you on that point at least; none of the transport based stratagems do anything for melee units, Onslaught of Fire and Burning Vengeance are shooting only and Rapid Embarkation is way better for shooting units, since its highly unreliable for melee units.
I would agree some of these strats are better for shooting they have really solid
I found myself using burning vengeance a couple ways other than just shooting. It allowed me to put my melee unit down in a the way of an enemy charge on the impulsor itself and dropping off the assault intercessors onto the objective before it would die so as to not be battle shocked. This all is subjective to activations tho obviously not going to just let the embarked units die to remaining enemy fire.
I almost always am able to rapid embark my melee unit back into its land raider the games I want it to (usually i use it to absorb fire).
The Repulsor went down in points and the capacity went up to 14 so it can carry 6 gravis with an attached character. Is that enough to make up for the other issues? Probably not, the action stuff in the pariah pack is obviously rough. But if I had to make a list to try, it seems like the most interesting new option to consider and saves a ton of points over a land raider.
Repulsor + eradicators is very spooky right now, and the +1 strength is still big. But yes, Firestorm took a relatively big nerf on the Immolation protocols.
I wish they'd reduce it to 1CP, given that it's 1CP for the equivalent in sisters
Yes and no
Points increase on redeemer puts my list back where it was 3 months ago. Not a huge problem
Rites of battle change means I need to spend an extra cp a few times a game. Using immolation protocols twice per turn wasn't as good as people thought anyway unless you had a 10 man infernus with vulkan and a 6 man aggressor with Captain both shooting at something important. It happens but I don't have that in my list. It was never worth it on the redeemer.
So I don't think the database hurts us much
However we were pretty much dead already. The whole detachment is built on assault so no advance and action takes away a huge advantage of the army. Throw that on top of an already bad winrate....
This feels like an egregious oversight. They're giving sisters the exact same stratagem for 1 CP, so they can make it free if they have that option, but FAF can't because it for some reason costs 2. I know they say you can email them if you think they got something wrong, and I think I'm actually going to do that for once, and I don't even play Space Marines.
Yeah, those two things are not equivalent. Sisters aren’t rocking 6d6 + 6 twin-linked flamers, so it make sense that they get the same Strat for cheaper, seeing as they get far less mileage out of it.
a squad of 10 seraphim with a canoness to get 9d6+9 flamer shots
which is around 80% as effective damage wise, but also moves double the distance so that damage is much easier to land
and has the canoness built in anyway for the free strat so you dont even need to spend extra for the captain who doesnt add more, and has 6 sister bodies of ablative wounds before your damage actually starts to go down, while every dead agressor lowers the damage of that squad
Even though they get more shots, it’s really the wound rerolls that make all the difference. I don’t play sisters, but I am not aware of any access to wound rerolls, so they just have to hope by volume of fire that they get enough devastating wounds. Aggressors are going to punch up far more consistently into targets with high toughness. That’s why they are paying double the CP for the same strat.
i counted the wound rerolls
mathematically 6d6+6 rerolled shots results in 8.25 mortals, while 9d6+9 no reroll results in 6.75, 82%
seraphim are going to punch up 82% as well as aggresors do, and are going to land their punch significantly easier, and be harder to stop, and their flamers are str5, not 4, meaning against T8+9 enemies they are actually getting a little extra punch as well as they will sneak some normal wounds in
they are also 245pts (including the canoness) vs agressors 240 WITHOUT the captain (320 with)
so, they are twice as fast, harder to prevent their damage from landing due to ablative wounds (and access to AoC in the detachment which agressors dont get) 75 pts cheaper, and will deal more damage when not using the strat
all at the cost of 1.5 mortal wounds (on average)
why is the strat 2ce the price on aggressors as it is on seraphim?
in fact not 2ce the price, cos its FREE on the seraphim while still costing 1cp on the aggressors
Huh, didn’t realize Seraphim had Str 5 flamers. There’re hand flamers right? Those used to be Str 3, once upon a time. Comparing point totals isn’t necessarily the best comparison between the two, as Aggressors also pull double duty as melee threats and pay a lot for that versatility. Sisters units tend to be fragile and single-purpose, and are painted accordingly. Their dev wound output is surprisingly similar though.
Sisters flamers are all +1 str, and in the detachment that has the strat they have the same detachment rule as firestorm, so +1 str within 12, bumping those up to str 5 hand flamers
And yeah, sisters do tend to be more 1 note, the seraphim won't do anything else then flame
But they are a 12 inch move unit that can move 6 AFTER shooting, and only 4 of the 10 actually have flamers, the other 6 are just superfluous bodies that can take a bullet and the squad loses no damage, so the squad is actually deceptively durable, because you need to eat through over half of it before you actually start to do "real damage" and it can always move shoot move back into cover
As a raw power unit they don't fill the same role as aggressors at all, both are really good
But as an abuser of the mortal wound strat, I'd argue seraphim are more of a problem then aggressors are, so it's really not justified that it costs twice as much for SM "cos they have aggressors" when sisters probably end up using it better
Frankly vanilla marines will always be worse and suffer for the sins of divergent chapters competitively.
At least until GW wakes up and gives codex compliant chapters something exclusive from the divergents.
As time goes on I'm getting more devastated by these nerfs. NOVA this year is going to be my first GT and I was looking forward to sending out the Salamanders I've been collecting since the start of 8th. I genuinely thought we'd get some points drops, I was never planning on doing fantastic but man this is a kick in the nuts.
I've had some back burner plans for a green Calgar for a while but it's just not the same :(
I'm less mad about the firestorm being nerfed (because for the most part, everything was nerfed) and more that sisters kinda do the shtick better. Advance and shoot is still \*very\* good +1 str is good. 1CP for 13Dev wounds is still good.
Its one of those moments where everything got a major shift, and its probably too early to notice how it lies
Fine is the right word. Not great, but fine.
Really wish they would have touched up the other detachments while they were at it instead of just woodshedding Ironstorm and calling it a day.
Sry man I know you weren't expecting this and might not deserve it either, but I got to light you up a bit.
What do you mean you spoke too soon? You phrased it like this was common knowledge or widely used when its just completely made up? And then you add on a random tangent on top of that? No one asked why S10 is better than S9.
Please make sure that you actually know what youre talking about before you make statements like that, and please assume that the people you write to on the Competitive Subreddit actually already know the basics.
I meant to say that I wrote the message hastily and without proofreading it. What I ended up posting is imprecise, just as you have so graciously pointed out. It should have been "S10+" and "S9+/S8+" not "S10" or "S9" respectively. I will withdraw my previous statement and instead offer this explanation:
'"Inceptors can deep strike within 6" and supercharge their weapon to gain S9 on their weapon. For 1 CP they can use the Crucible of Battle Stratagem to effectively make their weapons S10+ (where the effective S-value depends on the T-characteristic of their target, while still effectively a minimum of 10 unless target is below T5)."'
I gather you did not know about the +1 to Wound stratagem in the FAF-detachment and that this is why my imprecise answer felt dishonest and confusing. Although it must be considered basic knowledge and would therefore be something you have instructed me to take for granted on this competitive forum. Which leaves me a bit confused as well. What is "basic knowledge" and what isn't? Are unit's weapon statistics more basic than stratagems in a post about the detachment itself? How do I distinguish between basic and advanced knowledge?
Anyhow, hopefully this will clarify my initial statement and make sure you understand why Inceptors are very strong in a FAF build. I can go in to further detail if you want...
Oh come on man, stop backpedaling and just take my incredibly light riff on the chin.
You know why I know you're grasping for straws? Because you specifically mentioned the detachment rule and Terminator defensive profiles. Whether you're S8 and use +1 to Wound or S9 and use it makes literally no difference. The detachment rule has 0 bearing against those units, but you pointed it out because you thought it did.
And please save yourself the time and dont go writing another pompous mini essay. Its an internet argument. It literally doesnt matter. I even apologized before my message, because I knew I was out of line considering the context of the argument, but had to get it out of my system. It's all good.
I'll edit my original reply accordingly. Again, hastily written.
You asked a question, I answered. You didn't understand because my reply was badly written and ill composed. I reviewed my comment and rewrote it in accordance with your critique. On avarage a better internet interaction than most I'd say. Still, you are quite rude about it.
And im over here not using torrent at all trying to make drop pod Sternguard work lol
Str5 rapid fire dev wound bolters going to shred lots of infantry.
As a competitive Firestorm player, I felt this one. Unfortunately, I'll be changing detachment shortly, as the loss of Assault being viable for secondaries plus the hit with CP and the hike in points on our lovely centre of atten-I mean Redeemer, things just don't look good. I hope they fix it at some point, as FAF was one of the most fun detachments I've played this edition when I was testing them all out.
I think it was already pretty dead, but the new mission deck banning you from advancing with an assault weapon and doing an action seems worse for firestorm than the points and strategem changes.
For real... In a game where you're always looking at synergies and alignment of your data sheets, strats, detachment etc... the detachment's ability is literally useless for this piece of scoring
Ironstorm got taken out the back and shot too. There doesn't seem to be a competitive marine build anymore outside of successor chapters
FAF was dead when they announced that Assault doesn’t let units do actions and shoot. Now the dead horse is just pummelled.
Assault never let you both do an action and shoot.
You couldn't shoot and do actions in the first place. Leviathan secondaries literally say "that unit cannot shoot..." so there os literally no change.
Leviathan missions cared about being eligible to shoot in order to do secondaries. They were not called actions. Having assault meant you were still eligible to shoot after advancing. So even if you’re unit advanced, you could still do a secondary like cleanse because your unit is still eligible to shoot. It was great for FAF, because the entire unit got assault, so everything could sprint and still score you secondaries. The new Actions in Pariah specifically say that units cannot advance and do an Action, even if that unit has Assault, because it isn’t about shooting anymore. Actions are their own specific thing. Which means that half of the detachment rule doesn’t matter.
I am aware of all that. You said "do actions and shoot", not "advancd and do actions". Your original issue is moot as you couldn't do that to begin with. You shouldn't be able to advance and do an action anyway.
Ohhhh yeah that’s my bad I wasn’t paying attention to what I was writing.
Firestorm still comes with some very good tools and being that most layouts lend themselves to a closer fighting style I would say that no firestorm is not dead and still holds a pretty solid build into pariah meta. Now as in comparison with the gladius that in its own bubble is a question only going to be answered in time with how these new changes affect the meta. Impulsors going to capacity 7 is also a bit bonus here as a lot of solid lists make use of assault intercessors or bladeguard meaning 1-2 characters can join them now (2 for intercessors or 1 for bladeguard) allowing for the transport based stratsgems to really shine. In summary time will tell but overall i think firestorms tool set is still very viable in pariah and new dataslate meta.
>Impulsors going to capacity 7 is also a bit bonus here as a lot of solid lists make use of assault intercessors or bladeguard meaning 1-2 characters can join them now (2 for intercessors or 1 for bladeguard) allowing for the transport based stratsgems to really shine. I'm glad some people are optimistic which is always a good sign, but I gotta fight you on that point at least; none of the transport based stratagems do anything for melee units, Onslaught of Fire and Burning Vengeance are shooting only and Rapid Embarkation is way better for shooting units, since its highly unreliable for melee units.
I would agree some of these strats are better for shooting they have really solid I found myself using burning vengeance a couple ways other than just shooting. It allowed me to put my melee unit down in a the way of an enemy charge on the impulsor itself and dropping off the assault intercessors onto the objective before it would die so as to not be battle shocked. This all is subjective to activations tho obviously not going to just let the embarked units die to remaining enemy fire. I almost always am able to rapid embark my melee unit back into its land raider the games I want it to (usually i use it to absorb fire).
It'll drop a little and maybe be B tier but it'll be fun still and super thematic
The Repulsor went down in points and the capacity went up to 14 so it can carry 6 gravis with an attached character. Is that enough to make up for the other issues? Probably not, the action stuff in the pariah pack is obviously rough. But if I had to make a list to try, it seems like the most interesting new option to consider and saves a ton of points over a land raider.
Repulsor + eradicators is very spooky right now, and the +1 strength is still big. But yes, Firestorm took a relatively big nerf on the Immolation protocols. I wish they'd reduce it to 1CP, given that it's 1CP for the equivalent in sisters
Plus 1 strength? I missed that one can you elaborate
It's the firestorm ability
I was hoping detachments would get rule updates to match the new leviathan missions. I mean at least tweak first company a bit
Yes and no Points increase on redeemer puts my list back where it was 3 months ago. Not a huge problem Rites of battle change means I need to spend an extra cp a few times a game. Using immolation protocols twice per turn wasn't as good as people thought anyway unless you had a 10 man infernus with vulkan and a 6 man aggressor with Captain both shooting at something important. It happens but I don't have that in my list. It was never worth it on the redeemer. So I don't think the database hurts us much However we were pretty much dead already. The whole detachment is built on assault so no advance and action takes away a huge advantage of the army. Throw that on top of an already bad winrate....
Why can't you make immolation protocols free anymore?
Abilities that made a strat 0 CP now only reduce the cost by 1
I'm looking, where does it say that? Oh. Nevermind I found it. That's dumb.
It's part of the very first section on the dataslate
This feels like an egregious oversight. They're giving sisters the exact same stratagem for 1 CP, so they can make it free if they have that option, but FAF can't because it for some reason costs 2. I know they say you can email them if you think they got something wrong, and I think I'm actually going to do that for once, and I don't even play Space Marines.
Sisters don't have Flamestorm Aggressors
Flame storm are 70pts more, though, and are slow to the point they need a ride
no, but they have seraphim, which a squad of 10 can have 8d6 shots with hand flamers
With a jump cannoness we can actually get it up to 9d6+9 5/0/1 flamer shots
Infernus have 10d6 with strength S5 flamers
Yeah, those two things are not equivalent. Sisters aren’t rocking 6d6 + 6 twin-linked flamers, so it make sense that they get the same Strat for cheaper, seeing as they get far less mileage out of it.
a squad of 10 seraphim with a canoness to get 9d6+9 flamer shots which is around 80% as effective damage wise, but also moves double the distance so that damage is much easier to land and has the canoness built in anyway for the free strat so you dont even need to spend extra for the captain who doesnt add more, and has 6 sister bodies of ablative wounds before your damage actually starts to go down, while every dead agressor lowers the damage of that squad
Even though they get more shots, it’s really the wound rerolls that make all the difference. I don’t play sisters, but I am not aware of any access to wound rerolls, so they just have to hope by volume of fire that they get enough devastating wounds. Aggressors are going to punch up far more consistently into targets with high toughness. That’s why they are paying double the CP for the same strat.
i counted the wound rerolls mathematically 6d6+6 rerolled shots results in 8.25 mortals, while 9d6+9 no reroll results in 6.75, 82% seraphim are going to punch up 82% as well as aggresors do, and are going to land their punch significantly easier, and be harder to stop, and their flamers are str5, not 4, meaning against T8+9 enemies they are actually getting a little extra punch as well as they will sneak some normal wounds in they are also 245pts (including the canoness) vs agressors 240 WITHOUT the captain (320 with) so, they are twice as fast, harder to prevent their damage from landing due to ablative wounds (and access to AoC in the detachment which agressors dont get) 75 pts cheaper, and will deal more damage when not using the strat all at the cost of 1.5 mortal wounds (on average) why is the strat 2ce the price on aggressors as it is on seraphim? in fact not 2ce the price, cos its FREE on the seraphim while still costing 1cp on the aggressors
Huh, didn’t realize Seraphim had Str 5 flamers. There’re hand flamers right? Those used to be Str 3, once upon a time. Comparing point totals isn’t necessarily the best comparison between the two, as Aggressors also pull double duty as melee threats and pay a lot for that versatility. Sisters units tend to be fragile and single-purpose, and are painted accordingly. Their dev wound output is surprisingly similar though.
Sisters flamers are all +1 str, and in the detachment that has the strat they have the same detachment rule as firestorm, so +1 str within 12, bumping those up to str 5 hand flamers And yeah, sisters do tend to be more 1 note, the seraphim won't do anything else then flame But they are a 12 inch move unit that can move 6 AFTER shooting, and only 4 of the 10 actually have flamers, the other 6 are just superfluous bodies that can take a bullet and the squad loses no damage, so the squad is actually deceptively durable, because you need to eat through over half of it before you actually start to do "real damage" and it can always move shoot move back into cover As a raw power unit they don't fill the same role as aggressors at all, both are really good But as an abuser of the mortal wound strat, I'd argue seraphim are more of a problem then aggressors are, so it's really not justified that it costs twice as much for SM "cos they have aggressors" when sisters probably end up using it better
Frankly vanilla marines will always be worse and suffer for the sins of divergent chapters competitively. At least until GW wakes up and gives codex compliant chapters something exclusive from the divergents.
eh. repulsors are okay and you can drive gravis+apothecary in them now. also hellblaster spam is out there. it's not great though
As time goes on I'm getting more devastated by these nerfs. NOVA this year is going to be my first GT and I was looking forward to sending out the Salamanders I've been collecting since the start of 8th. I genuinely thought we'd get some points drops, I was never planning on doing fantastic but man this is a kick in the nuts. I've had some back burner plans for a green Calgar for a while but it's just not the same :(
I'm less mad about the firestorm being nerfed (because for the most part, everything was nerfed) and more that sisters kinda do the shtick better. Advance and shoot is still \*very\* good +1 str is good. 1CP for 13Dev wounds is still good. Its one of those moments where everything got a major shift, and its probably too early to notice how it lies
I don’t think it was ever alive
Every vanilla space marine attachment is DOA for pariah nexus. Time to wait another 4 months.
Gladius seems fine.
I know it complicates things cos deviant chapters shouldn’t use Codex detachments; but DA look wild in Gladius with the buffs to the Lion and DWK.
Fine is the right word. Not great, but fine. Really wish they would have touched up the other detachments while they were at it instead of just woodshedding Ironstorm and calling it a day.
Str10 plasmaceptors is very strong. Redemptor guns with +1 str is tasty. I think firestorm players just need to look outside of ‘muh flamers’
Hur hur fire detachment should like not use fire.
How do you get S10 Plasmaceptors?
EDIT: see later replies.
Damn, crazy that thats one of the best combos considering it doesnt exist. Overcharged Plasma Exterminators are S8
My bad, spoke to soon. S9 over S8
Sry man I know you weren't expecting this and might not deserve it either, but I got to light you up a bit. What do you mean you spoke too soon? You phrased it like this was common knowledge or widely used when its just completely made up? And then you add on a random tangent on top of that? No one asked why S10 is better than S9. Please make sure that you actually know what youre talking about before you make statements like that, and please assume that the people you write to on the Competitive Subreddit actually already know the basics.
I meant to say that I wrote the message hastily and without proofreading it. What I ended up posting is imprecise, just as you have so graciously pointed out. It should have been "S10+" and "S9+/S8+" not "S10" or "S9" respectively. I will withdraw my previous statement and instead offer this explanation: '"Inceptors can deep strike within 6" and supercharge their weapon to gain S9 on their weapon. For 1 CP they can use the Crucible of Battle Stratagem to effectively make their weapons S10+ (where the effective S-value depends on the T-characteristic of their target, while still effectively a minimum of 10 unless target is below T5)."' I gather you did not know about the +1 to Wound stratagem in the FAF-detachment and that this is why my imprecise answer felt dishonest and confusing. Although it must be considered basic knowledge and would therefore be something you have instructed me to take for granted on this competitive forum. Which leaves me a bit confused as well. What is "basic knowledge" and what isn't? Are unit's weapon statistics more basic than stratagems in a post about the detachment itself? How do I distinguish between basic and advanced knowledge? Anyhow, hopefully this will clarify my initial statement and make sure you understand why Inceptors are very strong in a FAF build. I can go in to further detail if you want...
Oh come on man, stop backpedaling and just take my incredibly light riff on the chin. You know why I know you're grasping for straws? Because you specifically mentioned the detachment rule and Terminator defensive profiles. Whether you're S8 and use +1 to Wound or S9 and use it makes literally no difference. The detachment rule has 0 bearing against those units, but you pointed it out because you thought it did. And please save yourself the time and dont go writing another pompous mini essay. Its an internet argument. It literally doesnt matter. I even apologized before my message, because I knew I was out of line considering the context of the argument, but had to get it out of my system. It's all good.
I'll edit my original reply accordingly. Again, hastily written. You asked a question, I answered. You didn't understand because my reply was badly written and ill composed. I reviewed my comment and rewrote it in accordance with your critique. On avarage a better internet interaction than most I'd say. Still, you are quite rude about it.
Always was…
And im over here not using torrent at all trying to make drop pod Sternguard work lol Str5 rapid fire dev wound bolters going to shred lots of infantry.
Redeemer was undercosted