Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
I agree there is a lethality problem, but I wouldn't use the crappy rumors to prove it. That just leaves you vulnerable to people saying, 'Aha, it didn't actually happen, so it isn't too lethal' later on.
I don't see it as a problem for a few reasons.
Firstly, I don't actually find this to be an issue in my games. We regularly get to turn 4 with about 40-50% of our armies left (my opponent usually moreso due to Necron shenanigans) and this is the first edition where conceding games early has been a genuine rarity. There were times in 5-7th (not so much 8th because Covid kind of screwed my play time) where I'd play for an hour then just pack up because I'd lost the game by turn 2, sometimes even turn 1. Thus far with 9th playing even with my CSM I've still managed 4 turn games on average with only losses but nothing like 70-10 or having lost half my army in the first turn.
Secondly, I try to get in at least one game a week but since everyone I game with is either working or studying, we don't have loads of time to go somewhere and play. Having a game take 2 hours rather than 4 but keeping the same points/power and maintaining the same feeling of 4 hours of gaming is a lot better for us.
I play 40k, 30k and AoS, and all these games take about roughly the same army size and all end at roughly the same time, with similar losses and often decided in the last few turns.
I dunno maybe it's just an issue for mathhammer and competitive gaming.
Gert wrote: I don't see it as a problem for a few reasons.
Firstly, I don't actually find this to be an issue in my games. We regularly get to turn 4 with about 40-50% of our armies left (my opponent usually moreso due to Necron shenanigans) and this is the first edition where conceding games early has been a genuine rarity. There were times in 5-7th (not so much 8th because Covid kind of screwed my play time) where I'd play for an hour then just pack up because I'd lost the game by turn 2, sometimes even turn 1. Thus far with 9th playing even with my CSM I've still managed 4 turn games on average with only losses but nothing like 70-10 or having lost half my army in the first turn.
Secondly, I try to get in at least one game a week but since everyone I game with is either working or studying, we don't have loads of time to go somewhere and play. Having a game take 2 hours rather than 4 but keeping the same points/power and maintaining the same feeling of 4 hours of gaming is a lot better for us.
I play 40k, 30k and AoS, and all these games take about roughly the same army size and all end at roughly the same time, with similar losses and often decided in the last few turns.
I dunno maybe it's just an issue for mathhammer and competitive gaming.
My last game I played against DG, purposefully took a casual ork list (with a mix of shooting+melee, an off-meta clan pick, and suboptimal units like Gunwagons, tankbustas and deff dreads) because I had not played vs DG before and did not know where this player landed in terms of competitiveness.
I had him essentially tabled top of 3. He brought some kind of list with like 60 of the little zombie schmuckerinos and I legitimately thought I was doing a goofy fun ork move by driving straight at them and opening fire on all of them, and then I'd cleared out a whole chunk of them with my anti-infantry shooting and got to blow up all their supporting characters with rokkits. Ended up killing like 500pts turn 1, 800pts turn 2 because he made that dumb newbie mistake of fielding 10-man squads of anything so all the rokkits I had were tripled in firepower, and then by his turn 3 he was down to about 4 terminator bodies on the table and one character hiding behind a building.
Probably because of invisibility and rerollable 2++ of 7th, 8th was marketed as "everything is more powerful" from the very launch. So I doubt the lethality problem will ever go away. Especially when it would have to be trimmed to below 30% single turn output in ideal conditions for games to actually last 6 turns. Compare this with discussion in "1800 pts removed in a single turn" thread, where some people expect armies to have closer to 60% output in ideal conditions - with 60% output there is no point playing IGOUGO game.
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
Well first, these are rumors, so ignore them.
Second, CWE are in a terrible spot, most of their units are literally unplayable if you want to win any games, so while it might look strong its more just getting equal to Marines. Remember a Falcon is suppose to be a large Heavy Anti-tank transport, it is their Razorback with a better Twin Las Cannons (Admech versions, GASP that is what Admech has....), so why wouldn't it be str 9 high D? Also the Dark lance and Bright lance has always been about the same, yes it is going to get the DL treatment as well.
Also Banshee's... WHO THE feth CARES THEY ARE 150% more damage, they deal zero damage now and are one of the worst units in CWE.
Fusion Guns are melta, why would they not get the Melta treatment? All imperium and some xenos already got the updated rules, why would you deny it to CWE and not everyone else?
This is not really power creep, this is equalizing the stats to eldar. Now.... could there also be power creep? yes there can be, but so far I don't see it, if anything i still think they are a bit weaker.
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
Well first, these are rumors, so ignore them.
Second, CWE are in a terrible spot, most of their units are literally unplayable if you want to win any games, so while it might look strong its more just getting equal to Marines. Remember a Falcon is suppose to be a large Heavy Anti-tank transport, it is their Razorback with a better Twin Las Cannons (Admech versions, GASP that is what Admech has....), so why wouldn't it be str 9 high D? Also the Dark lance and Bright lance has always been about the same, yes it is going to get the DL treatment as well.
Also Banshee's... WHO THE feth CARES THEY ARE 150% more damage, they deal zero damage now and are one of the worst units in CWE.
Fusion Guns are melta, why would they not get the Melta treatment? All imperium and some xenos already got the updated rules, why would you deny it to CWE and not everyone else?
This is not really power creep, this is equalizing the stats to eldar. Now.... could there also be power creep? yes there can be, but so far I don't see it, if anything i still think they are a bit weaker.
....Yes, I get it. The point of the thread is because I think people are more likely to hate CWE, so I'm pointing out that theyre getting the same thing literally every other codex has gotten because when every other codex has gotten it and i've gone "wtf this is so much fething damage" everyone has gone "YAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS QUEEN SLAY NOW THEY FINALLY FEEL LIKE SPAEEEECE MAREIIIIINESSSSSS"
Automatically Appended Next Post: About how many windrider bikes do people feel like you should need to instantly evaporate a guardsmen squad from 36"?
Splinter Cannon went to D2, but changed in other ways as well and no one uses it.
People have complained and complained and complained about how Banshees can't even kill marines when they're supposed to kill elites and not hordes. And now that they'll get to kill marines -- it's a problem.
And absolutely none of this matters if the points are appropriate.
....Yes, I get it. The point of the thread is because I think people are more likely to hate CWE, so I'm pointing out that theyre getting the same thing literally every other codex has gotten because when every other codex has gotten it and i've gone "wtf this is so much fething damage" everyone has gone "YAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS QUEEN SLAY NOW THEY FINALLY FEEL LIKE SPAEEEECE MAREIIIIINESSSSSS"
Automatically Appended Next Post: About how many windrider bikes do people feel like you should need to instantly evaporate a guardsmen squad from 36"?
4?
Does 4 feel good?
This entire problem stems (and always has) from the GW's idea that a wargame should be about killing things instead of being about achieving tactical/strategic goals where killing things comes only as a byproduct of trying to achieve said goals. If your wargame is focused solely on killing, then the only sales pitch you have to make an army feel better is "it now kills more stuff than ever".
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
Well first, these are rumors, so ignore them.
Second, CWE are in a terrible spot, most of their units are literally unplayable if you want to win any games, so while it might look strong its more just getting equal to Marines. Remember a Falcon is suppose to be a large Heavy Anti-tank transport, it is their Razorback with a better Twin Las Cannons (Admech versions, GASP that is what Admech has....), so why wouldn't it be str 9 high D? Also the Dark lance and Bright lance has always been about the same, yes it is going to get the DL treatment as well.
Also Banshee's... WHO THE feth CARES THEY ARE 150% more damage, they deal zero damage now and are one of the worst units in CWE.
Fusion Guns are melta, why would they not get the Melta treatment? All imperium and some xenos already got the updated rules, why would you deny it to CWE and not everyone else?
This is not really power creep, this is equalizing the stats to eldar. Now.... could there also be power creep? yes there can be, but so far I don't see it, if anything i still think they are a bit weaker.
....Yes, I get it. The point of the thread is because I think people are more likely to hate CWE, so I'm pointing out that theyre getting the same thing literally every other codex has gotten because when every other codex has gotten it and i've gone "wtf this is so much fething damage" everyone has gone "YAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS QUEEN SLAY NOW THEY FINALLY FEEL LIKE SPAEEEECE MAREIIIIINESSSSSS"
But you are saying it in a misleading way, they are not multiplying damage, they are equalizing it.
If anyone thinks them getting new melta rule is power creep from marines then they are delusional and biased towards CWE, meaning this topic makes them more mad.
Now onto your part 2, its too late for that. 9th books are out and we see how it will go. maybe in 10th edition. There however could be a stratagem rebalancing in a Chapter Approve which I am hoping for.
Daedalus81 wrote: Splinter Cannon went to D2, but changed in other ways as well and no one uses it.
People have complained and complained and complained about how Banshees can't even kill marines when they're supposed to kill elites and not hordes. And now that they'll get to kill marines -- it's a problem.
And absolutely none of this matters if the points are appropriate.
It actually does matter if the points are appropriate. Because what happens if you take
say
a falcon, as it is right now. And you boost its damage by the ~30% that theyre going to, and then you bump the points a little bit like say 10%...and then eldar sit at around 60% for a month or two spamming whatever strong thing got the biggest damage boosts...so then it goes up another 10% points...
and the defenses stay exactly the same.
What happens is that everything continues to feel more and more and more and more like glass. My damage went up, your damage went up, our defenses both stayed the same, and both our points values got bumped. Oh look! Now we one-shot each other! How fun!
My last game I played against DG, purposefully took a casual ork list (with a mix of shooting+melee, an off-meta clan pick, and suboptimal units like Gunwagons, tankbustas and deff dreads) because I had not played vs DG before and did not know where this player landed in terms of competitiveness.
I had him essentially tabled top of 3. He brought some kind of list with like 60 of the little zombie schmuckerinos and I legitimately thought I was doing a goofy fun ork move by driving straight at them and opening fire on all of them, and then I'd cleared out a whole chunk of them with my anti-infantry shooting and got to blow up all their supporting characters with rokkits. Ended up killing like 500pts turn 1, 800pts turn 2 because he made that dumb newbie mistake of fielding 10-man squads of anything so all the rokkits I had were tripled in firepower, and then by his turn 3 he was down to about 4 terminator bodies on the table and one character hiding behind a building.
And I've had 20 games where nothing like that has happened ever. I don't see us agreeing at all so let's just leave it here.
Premise: I believe that those Eldar leaks are accurate, or at least that they are indicative of the playtested Eldar rules (who knows if the playtest results end up changing some of them).
I am just curious to see the reaction of the community, not only if those leaks are true but also in the case the upcoming Tau codex ends up showing similar levels of power creep. Tau have been struggling even more than Eldar during 9th, so one can only expect a huge buff with the upcoming codex. And while we have some Eldar leaks, we have literally none of Tau (apart from two warcom articles).
I know a lot of players hate Eldar but I also know that a lot more hate Tau.
I also know that I like drinking tears, the more salty the better
Eldar are one of the factions where being paper thin but punch like a nuke is appropriate. I don't think anyone reasonably expects eldar not to have a jump in damage, as other say it's just this edition and how things are now.
I enjoy that by the time we get to the end of this cycle, marines defensive stats will actually be too low to justify their point costs.
Lethality has indeed increased, but durability did too.
We have had a wide spread of -1 hit, -1 damage, can't reroll, fail on 3-, increase in armor values...
Invul saves on 3+ and 4+ have been cut for the most part, but instead the ones on 5+ have increased.
Even with all the buffs to Melta for example, the amount of them required to take down a Dreadnaught hasn't really changed compared to 5th.
Proof of that is that the current competitive builds are durability based. If the game had followed a pure lethality increase without equivalent increases to durability, current lists would all firepower and mobility (i.e. pre-dataslate meta).
Daedalus81 wrote: Splinter Cannon went to D2, but changed in other ways as well and no one uses it.
People have complained and complained and complained about how Banshees can't even kill marines when they're supposed to kill elites and not hordes. And now that they'll get to kill marines -- it's a problem.
And absolutely none of this matters if the points are appropriate.
And as a final postscript (and I know I'm not the first to say it in this thread), but none of this matters period because these rumors are le jank. I usually like the rabblerousing Scotsman threads but this one is pretty suspect (and to be clear, you're exactly right about Banshees.)
Lethality has indeed increased, but durability did too.
We have had a wide spread of -1 hit, -1 damage, can't reroll, fail on 3-, increase in armor values...
Invul saves on 3+ and 4+ have been cut for the most part, but instead the ones on 5+ have increased.
Even with all the buffs to Melta for example, the amount of them required to take down a Dreadnaught hasn't really changed compared to 5th.
Proof of that is that the current competitive builds are durability based. If the game had followed a pure lethality increase without equivalent increases to durability, current lists would all firepower and mobility (i.e. pre-dataslate meta).
Bar some notable exemptions, they do? The issue with dark eldar pumping out all that damage was compounded by fast, cheap, durable raiders to put them in. Admech pouring buckets of lascannons and radium shots is a problem, compounded by the ridiculous durability piled ontop of the infantry and the biggest offenders with Admech were the chickens & planes, which was more about their speed and output. Orks brief time in the sun? Fast moving buggies, planes and out of los fire.
I'm not going to say the sky is falling until the book has been out for a few weeks and folks have had a chance to play games with and against it. Rumours are just that, and all taken without context.
Admech issue was actually 50/50 durability/lethality. Those infantry blobs were almost impossible to kill. Their planes too were considered an issue for the -1 damage, not only for their firepower.
Current Drukhari builds are coven based, which are much more durable than killy.
Necron competitive builds are durability based.
Ork buggy lists were considered OP due to Ramshackle coupled with the firepower of the freebooterz.
Grey Knights spam DK, which are definitely a durable unit and use durability based tactics.
IK Dnaught spam lists are durability based.
Custodes Dnaught spam lists are durability based.
Probably the only competitive lists right now that don't care about surviving are sisters and Tyranids, which live by trading.
Sure, all those previous lists also pack quite a punch, but all of them clearly invest in durability.
Tiberias wrote: Power creep won't stop until 10th ed and maybe it won't even stop there if GW refuses to learn.
Until then power creep should continue, otherwise the factions who haven't received their codex yet would be at a disadvantage.
Craftworlds, especially aspect warriors, deserve a significant bump in power, so I don't see the issue here.
Establishing a set of weapons and unit profiles isn't power creep.
Something getting D2 isn't relevant to W1 or to a lesser extent W3 models.
Again we had people absolutely trashing on D6 damage weapons and we get D3+3 as the quintessential anti-tank profile. This is what people wanted! People can split hairs and say it should have been 2D3, but we're talking about one damage on average, which still has to pass hit, wound, and save ( if any ) before it is applied.
The perception of D3+3 is skewed, because people on the receiving see numbers they don't like more often, but consider the impact of break points -- like a D2 weapon hitting a W3 model the D3+3 profile has vulnerabilities -- namely the Redemptor.
Three DL will kill a Predator 20% of the time. Redemptor? 3.1% Contemptor? 8.8% Iron Hands Redemptor? 0.7%
Best outcome for DL to kill a Redemptor : 5 + 5 + 3
Worst outcome : 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3
Best outcome for a DL to kill a Predator : 6 + 5/6
Worst outcome : 4 + 4 + 4
Adding a single wound to Predators takes from them a 1 in 3 chance of death to 1 in 6 ( which Gladiators got on top of T8 ).
Tiberias wrote: Power creep won't stop until 10th ed and maybe it won't even stop there if GW refuses to learn.
Until then power creep should continue, otherwise the factions who haven't received their codex yet would be at a disadvantage.
Craftworlds, especially aspect warriors, deserve a significant bump in power, so I don't see the issue here.
Establishing a set of weapons and unit profiles isn't power creep.
Something getting D2 isn't relevant to W1 or to a lesser extent W3 models.
Again we had people absolutely trashing on D6 damage weapons and we get D3+3 as the quintessential anti-tank profile. This is what people wanted! People can split hairs and say it should have been 2D3, but we're talking about one damage on average, which still has to pass hit, wound, and save ( if any ) before it is applied.
The perception of D3+3 is skewed, because people on the receiving see numbers they don't like more often, but consider the impact of break points -- like a D2 weapon hitting a W3 model the D3+3 profile has vulnerabilities -- namely the Redemptor.
Three DL will kill a Predator 20% of the time. Redemptor? 3.1% Contemptor? 8.8% Iron Hands Redemptor? 0.7%
Best outcome for DL to kill a Redemptor : 5 + 5 + 3
Worst outcome : 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3
Best outcome for a DL to kill a Predator : 6 + 5/6
Worst outcome : 4 + 4 + 4
Adding a single wound to Predators takes from them a 1 in 3 chance of death to 1 in 6 ( which Gladiators got on top of T8 ).
Maybe I should have been more specific. I don't consider Craftworlds getting up to speed to other 9th Ed codices power creep, but rather a necessary update. Otherwise eldar would be treated unfairly compared to admech. It does not make sense to stop that train midway through an edition.
9th Ed codices in general received some massive power creep compared to 8th. The massive proliferation of high AP across all factions and even most units within those factions lead to the extreme proliferation of invuln saves and - 1 dmg rules, which is bad game design. It's an arms race that inevtiably leads to a hard reset.
With how GWs unit and weapon stats work, they need to be careful how they distribute those across all factions. "if everyone is super special, no one is" look at necrons for example. Their troops having better AP made sense within their lore and made them somewhat unique in previous editions. Now everybody has it.
The stats alone don't look outrageous. Problems usually arise from stratagems, traits and powers on top. CC is more killy imo, since it happens in both turns and ignores cover.
In round 1 in our games there's usually not much going in aside movement because you hardly see enemy units and the ones' you see are in cover and/ or can only be seen by few units.
It's confirmed from leaked boardroom conversations and validated through action that GW intentionally sabotages the game via codex creep. They intentionally blow it up to sell us a new edition. This is baked into their sales model and it will not change until it's required to change. No edition will ever truly be 'good'. GW means it to be this way to perpetuate sales. If they actually released a 'good' edition then there wouldn't ever be a need to update it and if they were to update it they risk losing huge swaths of players.
As gakky as this all may sound, it's necessary. It keeps the game from becoming stale and keeps the long term players engaged. Like imperial citizens we cling to hope. Hope that the next edition will be truly good, but it's a fools hope.
Tiberias wrote: 9th Ed codices in general received some massive power creep compared to 8th. The massive proliferation of high AP across all factions and even most units within those factions lead to the extreme proliferation of invuln saves and - 1 dmg rules, which is bad game design. It's an arms race that inevtiably leads to a hard reset.
There isn't a proliferation of AP. Most everything is the same AP with a very few minor exceptions. Did you mean to say damage?
I don't think one begot the other. This was the roadmap to begin with. Having armies with across the board -1D / perm transhuman / invulnerables and so on makes it so no one weapon is the answer, which should breed lists with a lot more variety.
You still see Wazboms poking out, because they get more "super lascannon" shots ( on average ) than nearly 4 las chickens and hit on the same BS most of the time. Pre-nerf you didn't see a lot of las chickens. The Admech flyers were scary, but the density of lascannons was way lower. It was the other supporting rules on top of maneuverability.
Tiberias wrote: 9th Ed codices in general received some massive power creep compared to 8th. The massive proliferation of high AP across all factions and even most units within those factions lead to the extreme proliferation of invuln saves and - 1 dmg rules, which is bad game design. It's an arms race that inevtiably leads to a hard reset.
There isn't a proliferation of AP. Most everything is the same AP with a very few minor exceptions. Did you mean to say damage?
I don't think one begot the other. This was the roadmap to begin with. Having armies with across the board -1D / perm transhuman / invulnerables and so on makes it so no one weapon is the answer, which should breed lists with a lot more variety.
You still see Wazboms poking out, because they get more "super lascannon" shots ( on average ) than nearly 4 las chickens and hit on the same BS most of the time. Pre-nerf you didn't see a lot of las chickens. The Admech flyers were scary, but the density of lascannons was way lower. It was the other supporting rules on top of maneuverability.
I meant AP. But I did not mean that one faction nowadays has necessarily better or worse AP. My point is rather that with how GWs armor save system works, you can't hand out high ap weapons with a bazillion shots across all factions and expect armor saves to matter in any meaningful way without also having to hand out invulns like candy.
Even with all the buffs to Melta for example, the amount of them required to take down a Dreadnaught hasn't really changed compared to 5th.
Yeah, right, why in 5th edition (IIRC) you had to do the following with a multi-melta to kill a dread, assuming melta range:
-hit on 3s
-rerolling pen on 5s (55% chance)
-destroy on 4+
Meaning you needed 6 multi-meltas to kill a dreadnought on average.
And now, you need
2 shots hit on 3s
wound on 3s
no save
4.5 damage
Which works out to...two multi-meltas.
with no rerolls, or bonuses.
Basically the same!!!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
vipoid wrote: I don't mind most of this but it is kinda depressing that Shuriken weapons are just outright better than Splinter weapons.
...Why.
I thought that was literally the distinction between them - splinter weapons are less effective, because theyre not trying to kill the target as efficiently and cleanly as possible, theyre trying to make it messy and painful.
In-game, the trade off being that drukhari kabalites have cheap open-topped transport options so they can fight from the safety of their transports while guardians have to either sprint around using the signature Eldar rules or ride in extremely pricy but defensively tough wave serpents.
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
In a realm of 2W Marines everything up there is appropriate. Y'all made the bed with "Marines should be 2W!" Now you get to lie in it.
Lascannons should also be 3+D3
Yes the game is too lethal, and everything should be toned back down. But in the paradigm we're in, everything listed is welcome.
I thought that was literally the distinction between them - splinter weapons are less effective, because theyre not trying to kill the target as efficiently and cleanly as possible, theyre trying to make it messy and painful.
I mean, if Splinter weapons were less effective at killing targets but instead debilitated them in some way then that would be fine.
The issue is that Splinter weapons just suck because any fluff effect from poisoning targets, incapacitating targets, inflicting unimaginable agony to targets etc. isn't represented in any way by the game rules.
It's like saying "Army X's weapons aren't as effective as Army Y's weapons because they instead inflict lots of morale penalties" in a game that doesn't have a morale system.
In-game, the trade off being that drukhari kabalites have cheap open-topped transport options so they can fight from the safety of their transports while guardians have to either sprint around using the signature Eldar rules or ride in extremely pricy but defensively tough wave serpents.
Which winds up being pointless because firing worthless, garbage weapons from the safety of a transport doesn't change the fact that those weapons are worthless garbage.
vipoid wrote: I don't mind most of this but it is kinda depressing that Shuriken weapons are just outright better than Splinter weapons.
...Why.
I thought that was literally the distinction between them - splinter weapons are less effective, because theyre not trying to kill the target as efficiently and cleanly as possible, theyre trying to make it messy and painful.
In-game, the trade off being that drukhari kabalites have cheap open-topped transport options so they can fight from the safety of their transports while guardians have to either sprint around using the signature Eldar rules or ride in extremely pricy but defensively tough wave serpents.
And that is why you don't see kabals on the table, splinter is bad. Cool I am safe in a Venom... ok but the 4 Splinter weapons will deal almost zero damage.
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
In a realm of 2W Marines everything up there is appropriate. Y'all made the bed with "Marines should be 2W!" Now you get to lie in it.
Lascannons should also be 3+D3
Yes the game is too lethal, and everything should be toned back down. But in the paradigm we're in, everything listed is welcome.
in what bizarre, warped reality do you live that you think increasing a space marine in wounds from W1 to W2 warrants anti-tank weapons increasing in damage from D6 to D3+3?
If every tank in the game was going to increase in defensive capabilities - if, say, the VEHICLE and MONSTROUS CREATURE keyword conveyed a -1 damage effect - then 3+D3 and D6+2 meltas would make 100% perfect sense. And it would fit in to the paradigm of making elites/MEQs W2: that way you could have D2 anti-elite weaponry like heavy bolters, shuriken cannons, plasma etc, and it wouldnt work just as well versus vehicles, you'd have to bring dedicated AT weapons to hunt tanks.
Also, why is increasing the rate of fire of anti-GEQ models necessary then?
You're literally just positing a slippery slope fallacy here - "well we increased the durability of one unit type, so therefore, we have to increase the damage of everything! statlines are sacred! if you change one, you have to change all of them, duh!"
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
In a realm of 2W Marines everything up there is appropriate. Y'all made the bed with "Marines should be 2W!" Now you get to lie in it.
Lascannons should also be 3+D3
Yes the game is too lethal, and everything should be toned back down. But in the paradigm we're in, everything listed is welcome.
in what bizarre, warped reality do you live that you think increasing a space marine in wounds from W1 to W2 warrants anti-tank weapons increasing in damage from D6 to D3+3?
If every tank in the game was going to increase in defensive capabilities - if, say, the VEHICLE and MONSTROUS CREATURE keyword conveyed a -1 damage effect - then 3+D3 and D6+2 meltas would make 100% perfect sense. And it would fit in to the paradigm of making elites/MEQs W2: that way you could have D2 anti-elite weaponry like heavy bolters, shuriken cannons, plasma etc, and it wouldnt work just as well versus vehicles, you'd have to bring dedicated AT weapons to hunt tanks.
Also, why is increasing the rate of fire of anti-GEQ models necessary then?
You're literally just positing a slippery slope fallacy here - "well we increased the durability of one unit type, so therefore, we have to increase the damage of everything! statlines are sacred! if you change one, you have to change all of them, duh!"
D6 to D3+3: When D6 is unreliable for anti-tank, why would a weapon that destroys thanks not kill a 2w marines in 1 hit? there is a chance with old rules it doesn't kill it, in every edition it always has, this is literally the 1st and only edition an AT weapon has a chance to not kill a Marine when the wound goes through. And doing only 1/12 of wounds to a 12 wound vehicle, that is not a good feeling when taking 20pts a SB's does the same thing but now is better vs everything else in the game.
The solution is to play a different game, an earlier edition, a houseruled edition e.g. Prohammer, or a houseruled current edition, e.g. larger tables or trading centimeters for inches, with lower points, without stratagems and gimmicks… I enjoyed 500pts on a 4x4 without cards and without cp and so on.
Daedalus81 wrote: Splinter Cannon went to D2, but changed in other ways as well and no one uses it.
People have complained and complained and complained about how Banshees can't even kill marines when they're supposed to kill elites and not hordes. And now that they'll get to kill marines -- it's a problem.
And absolutely none of this matters if the points are appropriate.
And as a final postscript (and I know I'm not the first to say it in this thread), but none of this matters period because these rumors are le jank. I usually like the rabblerousing Scotsman threads but this one is pretty suspect (and to be clear, you're exactly right about Banshees.)
Yeah, right, why in 5th edition (IIRC) you had to do the following with a multi-melta to kill a dread, assuming melta range:
-hit on 3s
-rerolling pen on 5s (55% chance)
-destroy on 4+
Meaning you needed 6 multi-meltas to kill a dreadnought on average.
And now, you need
2 shots hit on 3s
wound on 3s
no save
4.5 damage
Which works out to...two multi-meltas.
with no rerolls, or bonuses.
Basically the same!!!
It's pretty hard to get into half range, but melta was 2D6 pen in half range instead of reroll. Glances also matter, because they're only at -1 ( with the +1 offset ) so any 6s still kill. On top of that stripping and/or immobilizing can make a dreadnought pretty useless. Those factors put it much closer to 3 rather than 6.
At full range you have .333 pen and .167 glance for a 20% chance to kill it -- ignoring immobilize and weapon destroyed results. Two MM now at long range have 13.6% chance - so a fair bit less than the previous outcome ( down from 44% when they're in half range ).
I view the performance of MM in half range a great thing -- people want ranges and movement to matter...well...
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
In a realm of 2W Marines everything up there is appropriate. Y'all made the bed with "Marines should be 2W!" Now you get to lie in it.
Lascannons should also be 3+D3
Yes the game is too lethal, and everything should be toned back down. But in the paradigm we're in, everything listed is welcome.
in what bizarre, warped reality do you live that you think increasing a space marine in wounds from W1 to W2 warrants anti-tank weapons increasing in damage from D6 to D3+3?
If every tank in the game was going to increase in defensive capabilities - if, say, the VEHICLE and MONSTROUS CREATURE keyword conveyed a -1 damage effect - then 3+D3 and D6+2 meltas would make 100% perfect sense. And it would fit in to the paradigm of making elites/MEQs W2: that way you could have D2 anti-elite weaponry like heavy bolters, shuriken cannons, plasma etc, and it wouldnt work just as well versus vehicles, you'd have to bring dedicated AT weapons to hunt tanks.
Also, why is increasing the rate of fire of anti-GEQ models necessary then?
You're literally just positing a slippery slope fallacy here - "well we increased the durability of one unit type, so therefore, we have to increase the damage of everything! statlines are sacred! if you change one, you have to change all of them, duh!"
1: As posted above, Marines don't auto-die to Lascannons anymore. Also the Multimelta is crazy good AT firepower right now. Other AT has been bumped to compensate.
2: You're arbitrarily categorizing a number of weapons as "anti-GEQ" while forgetting that Marines are actually the "default 40K profile" in practice because they're so popular. If you made Dire Avengers and Swooping Hawks strictly anti-GEQ units, they'd never be taken, because everybody knows they're gonna be fighting against Marines. Dire Avengers in particular should be reasonably competitive vs. Marines in firefights, as that's where they've typically been balanced towards.
3: If you want to further encourage specific weapons to engage tanks, bring back either the old AV system or the old to-Wound chart.
4: As for "slippery slope", it's either this or "feth YEAH SPEESH MAHREENS UBER ALLES!!!!!"
The rumours may be right may be wrong - but most of it rings true for a 9th codex update. It feels a bit over the top as a package - but would anyone really be surprised if CWE gonna CWE?
I think lethality is a problem. I don't think its surprising that Eldar, Tau, perhaps even GSC, should get the Dark Eldar and Orks treatment (amongst others). But it is turning the game into the worse dynamics of ITC tournaments of yore - where you'd expect everything to die in 3 turns because everyone's running a glasshammer list.
But yeah. I think the train is set at this point. This is going to be 9th edition. I imagine 10th is going to be a quasi-5th style evolution. Maybe Transports will get 20+ wounds and cost 30 points or something. So everyone can hide inside metal bawkses for the opening 2 turns.
the_scotsman wrote: Let's review some of the increases in damage from the craftworld eldar rumors:
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
So, they been doing this every faction, one at a time, but I know yall hate eldar, so maybe this will finally convince you there's a lethality problem in 40k. What are the best ways to salvage it? Old editions exist, obviously, and can easily be played, but is there a way to fix 9e and make the game not over in 2.5-3 turns?
In my eyes, ditching the stupid extra doctrine layer of army-wide rules and ditching or HEAVILY trimming down stratagems - ideally just to a few primarily defensive stratagems per faction - would be step 1. Step 2 would be a heavy rework of the cover system to bring back the option to have old, invuln-save style cover saves to combat the ABSURD creep in the armor piercing stat we've seen since index 8e. If we're not going to change the traits on any cover types, giving Defensible a trait where if you're targeted by a shooting attack you can Go to Ground for a 4++ invulnerable save, but a unit that used Go to Ground fights last in the fight phase. That, and opening up/universalizing Light Cover to all unit types and making claiming light cover the same as claiming Dense Cover might also help quite a bit.
In a realm of 2W Marines everything up there is appropriate. Y'all made the bed with "Marines should be 2W!" Now you get to lie in it.
Lascannons should also be 3+D3
Yes the game is too lethal, and everything should be toned back down. But in the paradigm we're in, everything listed is welcome.
in what bizarre, warped reality do you live that you think increasing a space marine in wounds from W1 to W2 warrants anti-tank weapons increasing in damage from D6 to D3+3?
If every tank in the game was going to increase in defensive capabilities - if, say, the VEHICLE and MONSTROUS CREATURE keyword conveyed a -1 damage effect - then 3+D3 and D6+2 meltas would make 100% perfect sense. And it would fit in to the paradigm of making elites/MEQs W2: that way you could have D2 anti-elite weaponry like heavy bolters, shuriken cannons, plasma etc, and it wouldnt work just as well versus vehicles, you'd have to bring dedicated AT weapons to hunt tanks.
Also, why is increasing the rate of fire of anti-GEQ models necessary then?
You're literally just positing a slippery slope fallacy here - "well we increased the durability of one unit type, so therefore, we have to increase the damage of everything! statlines are sacred! if you change one, you have to change all of them, duh!"
1: As posted above, Marines don't auto-die to Lascannons anymore. Also the Multimelta is crazy good AT firepower right now. Other AT has been bumped to compensate.
2: You're arbitrarily categorizing a number of weapons as "anti-GEQ" while forgetting that Marines are actually the "default 40K profile" in practice because they're so popular. If you made Dire Avengers and Swooping Hawks strictly anti-GEQ units, they'd never be taken, because everybody knows they're gonna be fighting against Marines. Dire Avengers in particular should be reasonably competitive vs. Marines in firefights, as that's where they've typically been balanced towards.
3: If you want to further encourage specific weapons to engage tanks, bring back either the old AV system or the old to-Wound chart.
4: As for "slippery slope", it's either this or "feth YEAH SPEESH MAHREENS UBER ALLES!!!!!"
1. You claim other AT has been buffed but confirm lascannons don't kill a Marine 1/6 of the time anyway more? Also I don't think the design choice was "make it in line with meltas", on the contrary they were trying to make melta relevant.
2. You are forgetting the "standard profile" in the design teams world is a base human, you can't also just bring lists whacking expensive d2 weapons in everywhere to kill Marines because one day you will encounter that geq horde.
3. The old AV system was consistently pants for a few reasons, mostly due to the damage resolution. The old to wound chart I do like, I think double S/T is too high a break point with the scale of stats we have now.
4. That isn't and won't be a problem in 9th, the restrictions are too heavy and its hardly like Marines are dominating the game in terms of power level and haven’t since the start of 9th for that matter.
1. Lascannons = staple AT weapons here. In this particular case though the reason Lascannons didnt get buffed along with the rest of them (Dark Lances etc.)is because GW probably wanted to push Meltas and because many Las mounts for Marunes come in quads, like the double Las-talon Primaris tank, Land Raiders and Devastator Squads.
2. It doesn't matter what the design teams think is the default profile when Marines are the most popular army, and everybody knows they'll be fighting marines.
3. :shrug:
4: Whether or not Marines are winning tourneys has little to do with it. The issue is efficacy of marine-opposing units on a unit to unit/model to model basis. Dire Avengers have traditionally been able to go toe-to-toe with Marines using roughly equivalent sized squads. A 24" Assault 3 AP -1 Catapult puts them back towards that realm again.
Dudeface wrote: 2. You are forgetting the "standard profile" in the design teams world is a base human, you can't also just bring lists whacking expensive d2 weapons in everywhere to kill Marines because one day you will encounter that geq horde.
The devs could tell us their baseline reference stat profile is a Knight and it wouldn't make an iota of difference. Players default to killing Marines because the MEQ profile is about half the armies in the game (outnumbering GEQ by raw faction count) and by far a majority of armies played.
Insectum7 wrote: 1. Lascannons = staple AT weapons here. In this particular case though the reason Lascannons didnt get buffed along with the rest of them (Dark Lances etc.)is because GW probably wanted to push Meltas and because many Las mounts for Marunes come in quads, like the double Las-talon Primaris tank, Land Raiders and Devastator Squads.
Yea, I get the sense that GW is saying the defacto marine AT is melta. The release of GK confirmed the future of the lascannon.
Sgt. Cortez wrote:The stats alone don't look outrageous. Problems usually arise from stratagems, traits and powers on top. CC is more killy imo, since it happens in both turns and ignores cover.
In round 1 in our games there's usually not much going in aside movement because you hardly see enemy units and the ones' you see are in cover and/ or can only be seen by few units.
I'd agree with that. The basic stats aren't that ridiculous, but start adding strategems, traits, psychic powers, character auras/targeted abilities, etc, and it starts to get ridiculous fast. Then consider that the fancy new terrain mechanics are a bit lacking, and we have problems. Seriously, somebody needs to get the designers a copy of the 4th edition terrain rules.
Insectum7 wrote:^Which gets awkward with CSMs, who don't have nearly the access to MMs that loyalists do.
Hellbrutes, Contemptors, Land Raider Achilles, and pintle mounts on a few LoWs. So all vehicles, and only one isn't fw. And people wonder why CSM players get cranky when they start talking about banning fw units. When it comes to a lot of things, it's all we've got.
Orlanth wrote: Codex creep sells models.
All other considerations secondary.
Game expendable.
Then why aren't all codexes creeped in equal measure?
Maybe because GW thought they had the same level of power creep when they released them. Or maybe because they want some factions (or even just specific units) to have more power creep than others.
And that is why you don't see kabals on the table, splinter is bad. Cool I am safe in a Venom... ok but the 4 Splinter weapons will deal almost zero damage.
I see kabals in venoms/raiders all the time. Even in the last goonhammer article about GT lists that placed high at events there were kabals in transports.
Insectum7 wrote:^Which gets awkward with CSMs, who don't have nearly the access to MMs that loyalists do.
Hellbrutes, Contemptors, Land Raider Achilles, and pintle mounts on a few LoWs. So all vehicles, and only one isn't fw. And people wonder why CSM players get cranky when they start talking about banning fw units. When it comes to a lot of things, it's all we've got.
Meanwhile I can put them on Servitors, lol. 2 Multimeltas in a unit of four Servitors for 60 points total.
Orlanth wrote: Codex creep sells models.
All other considerations secondary.
Game expendable.
Then why aren't all codexes creeped in equal measure?
Maybe because GW thought they had the same level of power creep when they released them. Or maybe because they want some factions (or even just specific units) to have more power creep than others.
And that is why you don't see kabals on the table, splinter is bad. Cool I am safe in a Venom... ok but the 4 Splinter weapons will deal almost zero damage.
I see kabals in venoms/raiders all the time. Even in the last goonhammer article about GT lists that placed high at events there were kabals in transports.
Kabals are taken not for damage, but are force to take 1 unit for RSR, the Venom is most likely their to be cheap for secondaries, keep kabals live with a character like a Succubus. No one takes 5 kabals for their poison, they take for a Blaster time to time but never for poison, the poison weapons are ignored when thinking about them. Time to time you will see Venom spam with kabals, but that works bc of the 10 Blasters, they are just 4 extra wounds for 1 guy.
Saying you saw a kabal unit or 2 is like saying you see Lictors in most Nids lists therefore its a good unit.
Listen, i like Kabal, i own literally over 200 of them (granted 40 are old 3rd), i have 10 Raiders and 8 Venoms. I like MSU kabal with Incubi, Archons, and splash in Wyches/Hellions/Suc. If anyone wants them to be good its me. But when 600pts can't kill a Rhino (Including Trueborn and BH rr's) there is a problem.
DE is good right now bc of other units, Characters, cheap over kill units like Incubi, and tough units like Coven, combine with super fast movements. Kabals have none of that.
Lictors are in fact really good. We see them pretty often actually, and for a good reason.
Units don't need to be killy in order to be good or bad, they simply need a role. They don't need to be spammable in huge numbers as proof of being good either. Just being cheap sometimes is the quality a unity needs in order to be good. Especially if it's combined with a special rule such as infiltrator positioning, deep strike or simply high M stat. Lictors have both a infiltrator/deep strike ability and high M.
50 points for 4 splinter weapons and a blaster are really cheap. You don't need to kill rhinos with them, just sit on objectives, score secondaries, deny enemy objectives, or mess enemies movements with such units. Incubi and wyches you want them to assault stuff, kabals act like a back up. Of course there are better units at the moment, but to claim that kabalite warriors aren't played is wrong.
One of the best units in the ork codex is kommandos. Just standard boyz with better save (only in cover) and infiltrator rule which can be taken in 5 man squads. They have no punch at all, but they are cheap enough to perform very well. You don't need to kill anything with them, just use them for screening/positioning purposes, score objectives, harass enemy units. Even if they won't deal a single wound they'd be great.
Orlanth wrote: Codex creep sells models.
All other considerations secondary.
Game expendable.
Then why aren't all codexes creeped in equal measure?
Maybe because GW thought they had the same level of power creep when they released them. Or maybe because they want some factions (or even just specific units) to have more power creep than others.
And that is why you don't see kabals on the table, splinter is bad. Cool I am safe in a Venom... ok but the 4 Splinter weapons will deal almost zero damage.
I see kabals in venoms/raiders all the time. Even in the last goonhammer article about GT lists that placed high at events there were kabals in transports.
Kabals are taken not for damage, but are force to take 1 unit for RSR, the Venom is most likely their to be cheap for secondaries, keep kabals live with a character like a Succubus. No one takes 5 kabals for their poison, they take for a Blaster time to time but never for poison, the poison weapons are ignored when thinking about them. Time to time you will see Venom spam with kabals, but that works bc of the 10 Blasters, they are just 4 extra wounds for 1 guy.
Saying you saw a kabal unit or 2 is like saying you see Lictors in most Nids lists therefore its a good unit.
Listen, i like Kabal, i own literally over 200 of them (granted 40 are old 3rd), i have 10 Raiders and 8 Venoms. I like MSU kabal with Incubi, Archons, and splash in Wyches/Hellions/Suc. If anyone wants them to be good its me. But when 600pts can't kill a Rhino (Including Trueborn and BH rr's) there is a problem.
DE is good right now bc of other units, Characters, cheap over kill units like Incubi, and tough units like Coven, combine with super fast movements. Kabals have none of that.
1) Assuming you've put the blaster & blast pistol in your squad, how are you failing to kill a rhino with 600pts & average rolls?
2) How are you figuring that kabals full of MSU squads in Venoms don't have access to super fast movement? The things move 16". What more do you want?
Orlanth wrote: Codex creep sells models. All other considerations secondary. Game expendable.
Then why aren't all codexes creeped in equal measure?
Maybe because GW thought they had the same level of power creep when they released them. Or maybe because they want some factions (or even just specific units) to have more power creep than others.
And that is why you don't see kabals on the table, splinter is bad. Cool I am safe in a Venom... ok but the 4 Splinter weapons will deal almost zero damage.
I see kabals in venoms/raiders all the time. Even in the last goonhammer article about GT lists that placed high at events there were kabals in transports.
Kabals are taken not for damage, but are force to take 1 unit for RSR, the Venom is most likely their to be cheap for secondaries, keep kabals live with a character like a Succubus. No one takes 5 kabals for their poison, they take for a Blaster time to time but never for poison, the poison weapons are ignored when thinking about them. Time to time you will see Venom spam with kabals, but that works bc of the 10 Blasters, they are just 4 extra wounds for 1 guy.
Saying you saw a kabal unit or 2 is like saying you see Lictors in most Nids lists therefore its a good unit.
Listen, i like Kabal, i own literally over 200 of them (granted 40 are old 3rd), i have 10 Raiders and 8 Venoms. I like MSU kabal with Incubi, Archons, and splash in Wyches/Hellions/Suc. If anyone wants them to be good its me. But when 600pts can't kill a Rhino (Including Trueborn and BH rr's) there is a problem.
DE is good right now bc of other units, Characters, cheap over kill units like Incubi, and tough units like Coven, combine with super fast movements. Kabals have none of that.
1) Assuming you've put the blaster & blast pistol in your squad, how are you failing to kill a rhino with 600pts & average rolls? 2) How are you figuring that kabals full of MSU squads in Venoms don't have access to super fast movement? The things move 16". What more do you want?
It takes 5 blasters in single units with BH for re-rolls to kill a Rhino. Thats 250pts of Kabals without their Transports... you are also kind of are force to take transport if you like it or not. 5 Blasters with BH re-roll a hit. Going to average to 1/2 on hits/wounds/damage: 4.5 Hits, 3 wounds, zero saves 3.5D, for 10.5D that is just enough to kill 1 if they didn't have an anything else protecting it, like -1 to hit from Tree's, or Sisters with an Invul, etc... If the unit is -1 to hit you need another Blaster to kill it, if they have an invul another 1 or 3 depending on 6+++/5+++. Vehicles with -1D are even worst.
Then you see the Ravager and it averages out to 8D........ for 130pts. Ravagers are good, IDK why DW -10pts to them.
Then you see the Ravager and it averages out to 8D........ for 130pts. Ravagers are good, IDK why DW -10pts to them.
They certainly are a bit underpriced along with other drukhari units, and that's the reason why kabals may seem so bad in comparison, but their offensive potential is the reason why they are heavy support and therefore limited by rule of 3. Troops shouldn't compete with specialists in killyness, let alone with vehicles.
Orlanth wrote: Codex creep sells models.
All other considerations secondary.
Game expendable.
Then why aren't all codexes creeped in equal measure?
Maybe because GW thought they had the same level of power creep when they released them. Or maybe because they want some factions (or even just specific units) to have more power creep than others.
And that is why you don't see kabals on the table, splinter is bad. Cool I am safe in a Venom... ok but the 4 Splinter weapons will deal almost zero damage.
I see kabals in venoms/raiders all the time. Even in the last goonhammer article about GT lists that placed high at events there were kabals in transports.
Kabals are taken not for damage, but are force to take 1 unit for RSR, the Venom is most likely their to be cheap for secondaries, keep kabals live with a character like a Succubus. No one takes 5 kabals for their poison, they take for a Blaster time to time but never for poison, the poison weapons are ignored when thinking about them. Time to time you will see Venom spam with kabals, but that works bc of the 10 Blasters, they are just 4 extra wounds for 1 guy.
Saying you saw a kabal unit or 2 is like saying you see Lictors in most Nids lists therefore its a good unit.
Listen, i like Kabal, i own literally over 200 of them (granted 40 are old 3rd), i have 10 Raiders and 8 Venoms. I like MSU kabal with Incubi, Archons, and splash in Wyches/Hellions/Suc. If anyone wants them to be good its me. But when 600pts can't kill a Rhino (Including Trueborn and BH rr's) there is a problem.
DE is good right now bc of other units, Characters, cheap over kill units like Incubi, and tough units like Coven, combine with super fast movements. Kabals have none of that.
1) Assuming you've put the blaster & blast pistol in your squad, how are you failing to kill a rhino with 600pts & average rolls?
2) How are you figuring that kabals full of MSU squads in Venoms don't have access to super fast movement? The things move 16". What more do you want?
It takes 5 blasters in single units with BH for re-rolls to kill a Rhino. Thats 250pts of Kabals without their Transports... you are also kind of are force to take transport if you like it or not.
5 Blasters with BH re-roll a hit. Going to average to 1/2 on hits/wounds/damage: 4.5 Hits, 3 wounds, zero saves 3.5D, for 10.5D that is just enough to kill 1 if they didn't have an anything else protecting it, like -1 to hit from Tree's, or Sisters with an Invul, etc... If the unit is -1 to hit you need another Blaster to kill it, if they have an invul another 1 or 3 depending on 6+++/5+++. Vehicles with -1D are even worst.
Then you see the Ravager and it averages out to 8D........ for 130pts. Ravagers are good, IDK why DW -10pts to them.
That's shocking - a dedicated anti-tank platform is better vs tanks than MSU units toting someAT capability. Kinda like a hammer being better at pounding nails than a screwdriver is. Who'd have thought....
But if we're just rolling dice against a rhino in a vacuum & inserting whatever assumptions why aren't you rolling for the blast pistol, all the splitter weapons, and considering assault? That stuff adds up you know. And there's 5 or 6 units + their venoms in this rhino killing party....
That rhino dies in 1 turn.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, right, why in 5th edition (IIRC) you had to do the following with a multi-melta to kill a dread, assuming melta range:
-hit on 3s
-rerolling pen on 5s (55% chance)
-destroy on 4+
Meaning you needed 6 multi-meltas to kill a dreadnought on average.
You what?
First, that was not rerolling pens. That was 2d6, amounting to average of 15 roll. 16 if the unit got easily cheesiable tank hunter. Name one dread that wouldn't be instantly penned by that. Second, Who says destroy? Wrecked killed it just as well. Immobilized? Melee dread pretty much killed for all intents and purposes. Weapon blown up? Ditto, most dread have 1 expensive gun, counts as kill too. Two glances? Dead. Hell, even stunned result, trivial to get, was pretty much kill for one turn. There is a reason very few people took walkers for multiple editions, not that people with rose glasses on who apparently completely forgot how crap the AV system (and vehicle rules in general, especially compared to MCs) were can tell you that.
And I like how people say heavy bolters and such are good vehicle killers now. Hello? Forgot 6th and 7th? Where rapid fire was king and no one ever took any AT? Scatbikes? Devs with HBs and tank hunter? Mass grav? Mass asscans? Two glances making 90% of vehicles instantly dead? Every time someone says USRs and AV were good I wonder what game they were playing, because it sure as hell wasn't 40K
Amishprn86 wrote: this is literally the 1st and only edition an AT weapon has a chance to not kill a Marine when the wound goes through
Already forgot how the HQs with eternal warrior were the most popular ones? Especially when they could join squads and magnet all AT shots to their chest, making their units immune to dozens of AT shots (if not close to 150+ if the model in question also had 3++ and FNP)? Especially the stupidly written books like BT or SW where eternal warrior was a cheap upgrade you could slap on any character (regular SM at least had EW locked behind expensive HQs) making deathstar brick units impossible to kill with your whole army in less than 12 turns (and then there was invisibility and biomancy stacking making it impossible to kill in less than 360+ turns, I math hammered it once out of curiosity)?
Again, I have no idea what game you were playing, because anyone praising AV or USR either was in meta softer than a marshmallow or never played the game seriously because they could be abused vastly harder than anything in 9th edition, damage inflation excepted.
Amishprn86 wrote: this is literally the 1st and only edition an AT weapon has a chance to not kill a Marine when the wound goes through
Already forgot how the HQs with eternal warrior were the most popular ones? Especially when they could join squads and magnet all AT shots to their chest, making their units immune to dozens of AT shots (if not close to 150+ if the model in question also had 3++ and FNP)? Especially the stupidly written books like BT or SW where eternal warrior was a cheap upgrade you could slap on any character (regular SM at least had EW locked behind expensive HQs) making deathstar brick units impossible to kill with your whole army in less than 12 turns (and then there was invisibility and biomancy stacking making it impossible to kill in less than 360+ turns, I math hammered it once out of curiosity)?
I assume Amishprn86 meant regular Marines? Not the HQs with EW, bikes, invulnerable and other such protections.
Blackie wrote: Maybe because GW thought they had the same level of power creep when they released them. Or maybe because they want some factions (or even just specific units) to have more power creep than others.
How is that even a rational approach? "They only do it some of the because reasons!" If they thought they had the same level of creep doesn't that imply they're not intending creep and instead changing the way the game plays?
Why would they limit the sale of AIRCRAFT and buggies at the height of their popularity?
Blackie wrote: Maybe because GW thought they had the same level of power creep when they released them. Or maybe because they want some factions (or even just specific units) to have more power creep than others.
How is that even a rational approach? "They only do it some of the because reasons!" If they thought they had the same level of creep doesn't that imply they're not intending creep and instead changing the way the game plays?
Why would they limit the sale of AIRCRAFT and buggies at the height of their popularity?
Because they've been "changing the way the game plays" at random with every Codex release since late 5e. Ten years and four editions haven't given me any indication that they have any goal in mind other than tweaking things at random and occasionally panic-reacting if enough people complain about one thing. I don't think GW intends power creep any more than they intend anything else they do, I think they a) don't test things enough, b) don't let people who play the game within a mile and a half of the writing process, c) let the Primaris/Stormcast-fetishists in the sculpting team dictate how the rules work (but since they're sculptors they fail as often as they succeed in making their favorite faction overpowered), and d) make every single rules change in a vacuum with only the vaguest idea of what anything else does. Power creep happens by accident, and only because someone on the marketing department got it into their heads around ten years ago that buffs are more popular than nerfs, so every release since then has been an attempt to give buffs to everything, only because they have no clue how their game works whether any of it's actually an improvement is pretty random.
If they think the meta has settled down then it's time to shake things up. If they think most of the playerbase already have enough of X unit, then that unit will not get any power creep. Aircraft and ork buggies became so predominant that invalidating collections for those who already bought them in bulk was an efficient way to push players to buy something else. At the same time units like aircraft or ork buggies are still very good for those who start the army and don't have the models yet.
Same for whole codexes that aren't extremely popular, at some point it may be the time to enhance those faction and sell more of their kits.
It's not "reasons", it's profit. Sometimes, considering the infinite amount of variables and options, cheesy combos might not be intended though and totally happen by accident, or negligence/incompetence when they underestimate the effect of the rules they write.
It makes perfect sense and I've accepted it a long time ago, we'll never get a RAW perfectly balanced game and I'm fine with that.
I don't think there's much evidence for this idea GW buffs and nerfs things in order to sell this grey plastic over that grey plastic. I think they just try to buff the weak units and nerf the ones which are too good. This is ultimately how most games would try to balance themselves.
For example, with the exception of say Incubi, the DE range is getting quite old. And therefore, by comparison to newer ranges, relatively cheap. So what's the mentality in making this the most powerful faction for the last 9 or so months? Why would GW want to sell £22~ Wrack of Wych Kits over say £31.50 Flayed One kits for instance?
Did they decide they had say too many Marine Dreadnoughts in stock, so needed to buff them? Did they sell too many Marine Tanks (not Razorbacks) at some point in the distant past, so they've generally been a bit rubbish?
I think the only difference is that in times past they didn't even pretend to balance the game - and now they are vaguely listening to feedback. But its still a lot slower than some people would like.
Tyel wrote: I don't think there's much evidence for this idea GW buffs and nerfs things in order to sell this grey plastic over that grey plastic. I think they just try to buff the weak units and nerf the ones which are too good. This is ultimately how most games would try to balance themselves.
For example, with the exception of say Incubi, the DE range is getting quite old. And therefore, by comparison to newer ranges, relatively cheap. So what's the mentality in making this the most powerful faction for the last 9 or so months? Why would GW want to sell £22~ Wrack of Wych Kits over say £31.50 Flayed One kits for instance?
Did they decide they had say too many Marine Dreadnoughts in stock, so needed to buff them? Did they sell too many Marine Tanks (not Razorbacks) at some point in the distant past, so they've generally been a bit rubbish?
I think the only difference is that in times past they didn't even pretend to balance the game - and now they are vaguely listening to feedback. But its still a lot slower than some people would like.
Wracks, grotesques and court of the archon are among the most expensive units in the entire catalogue in terms of money. Always consider how many points the kit is worth. 5 wracks are just 40 points, court of the archon models or even grots are relatively cheap as standalone figures but the player needs a bunch of them to make a basic squad so the cost of just a min squad is pretty high in money even if it's pretty low in points. If units are cheap points wise the player needs more kits, hence that faction isn't cheaper than some of those which have newer ranges. Also, most of the older stuff is now exclusive of the GW online store which means only available at full price, while newer stuff can easily be bought at 25%-30% discounts.
SM for example are still among the cheapest factions in the game, even without relying on starters.
Amishprn86 wrote: this is literally the 1st and only edition an AT weapon has a chance to not kill a Marine when the wound goes through
Already forgot how the HQs with eternal warrior were the most popular ones? Especially when they could join squads and magnet all AT shots to their chest, making their units immune to dozens of AT shots (if not close to 150+ if the model in question also had 3++ and FNP)? Especially the stupidly written books like BT or SW where eternal warrior was a cheap upgrade you could slap on any character (regular SM at least had EW locked behind expensive HQs) making deathstar brick units impossible to kill with your whole army in less than 12 turns (and then there was invisibility and biomancy stacking making it impossible to kill in less than 360+ turns, I math hammered it once out of curiosity)?
I assume Amishprn86 meant regular Marines? Not the HQs with EW, bikes, invulnerable and other such protections.
Dire Avengers: going to 3 shots S4 AP-1 24" range (50% increase +6" range increase)
wraithcannon: D3+3 damage 18" range (30% damage increase +6" range increase)
D-Scythe: D6 shots 12" range wound rolls of a 6 deal a MW (30% damage increase 4" range increase)
Shuriken Cannon: now 2 damage (100% damage increase vs W2+)
Howling Banshee: now 3A, D2 on the charge (150% damage increase vs W2+ on the charge)
Scatter laser: now 6 shots (50% damage increase)
Pulsar+Bright Lance: Now D3+3 (30% damage increase)
Fusion Gun: now D6+2 in melta range (30% damage increase)
Swooping Hawk: now 5 shots S4 autowound on a 6 to hit (60% damage increase vs preferred GEQ target)
A typical example of codex creep.
This the grace of the late birth.
I'm happy with it as it allows me to field my tanks with scatter lasers again.
Longer range than shuriken cannons and more dakka.
Pancakey wrote: This trajectory will not stop until the game is completely reset again.
You're probably right.
As a CSM player I don't even want a codex, I want 10th edition...
Wait patiently, you'll get your wish along about summer 2024.
They said a few years in the survey. It could be as early as winter 2023 XD actually I would totally settle for a rebalanced version with an optional “official” game mode with basically rules that would be 9th equivalent of 8th edition indices. And semi annual balance patches so they can hopefully more subtly shift balance in the favor of different units without absolutely busting them.. a man can dream.
Pancakey wrote: This trajectory will not stop until the game is completely reset again.
You're probably right.
As a CSM player I don't even want a codex, I want 10th edition...
Wait patiently, you'll get your wish along about summer 2024.
That's aos4. He gets wish year earlier.
No, my crystal ball says '24 for 40k.
1) They won't get all the remaining Codices (and possibly SM supplements - Salamanders etc) out by the end of '22.
2) If they release anything actually "new" - say World Eaters.
3) Expect further delays in '22 due to Covid/shipping/manufacturing.
So some stuff is being shoved onto the 2023 calendar & stretched over about a 6-9 month period.
Fill in the remaining months until summer 2024 with Pyschic Awakening style filler materiel.
They won’t let petty things like psychic awakening supplements to get in the way of a new edition. And it’s not like they haven’t abruptly ended an edition after dropping a codex...
Just as an aside, I'm not sure why people think GW has to get all the 'dexes out before swapping editions.
They haven't in the past except for 8th and 3rd, both game reset editions.
They'll merrily trundle along, leaving armies unupdated for years at a time.
- someone who's opinion on 9th is roundly dismissed because "you can't compare 8th edition codexes to 9th edition codexes" and also who only has 8th edition codexes for all his armies.
Yep, I also believe that releasing 20+ codexes in just 3 years, which is a whole edition's lifespan, is pure madness. Especially if new editions aren't really that different in terms of chore mechanics; 8th and 9th for example don't differ significantly and most of 8th codexes work perfectly well in 9th.
Those that don't work in 9th belong to armies that were bland even in the previous edition, they might not need an update because the edition changed but because their codex was bland in the first place.
Blackie wrote: Exactly. GW's goal is to sell more models.
If they think the meta has settled down then it's time to shake things up. If they think most of the playerbase already have enough of X unit, then that unit will not get any power creep. Aircraft and ork buggies became so predominant that invalidating collections for those who already bought them in bulk was an efficient way to push players to buy something else. At the same time units like aircraft or ork buggies are still very good for those who start the army and don't have the models yet.
Same for whole codexes that aren't extremely popular, at some point it may be the time to enhance those faction and sell more of their kits.
It's not "reasons", it's profit. Sometimes, considering the infinite amount of variables and options, cheesy combos might not be intended though and totally happen by accident, or negligence/incompetence when they underestimate the effect of the rules they write.
It makes perfect sense and I've accepted it a long time ago, we'll never get a RAW perfectly balanced game and I'm fine with that.
You're using a form of survivorship bias and ignoring all evidence to the contrary to make your point and then post-hoc rationalizing changes as if things didn't need changes. The stupid thing GW did was alter points down for DE for unused units before they allowed nerfs in the remaining book to settle in.
You'll sit here and claim they wanted to see grots and wracks meanwhile the play percentage for Admech completely fell off a cliff. How does it make sense for them to disincentivize Admech entirely?
You're using a form of survivorship bias and ignoring all evidence to the contrary to make your point and then post-hoc rationalizing changes as if things didn't need changes. The stupid thing GW did was alter points down for DE for unused units before they allowed nerfs in the remaining book to settle in.
You'll sit here and claim they wanted to see grots and wracks meanwhile the play percentage for Admech completely fell off a cliff. How does it make sense for them to disincentivize Admech entirely?
Because they unintentionally over nerfed those ad mech maybe? I talked about the company's strategy and I believe in what I said. But I'm also aware that balancing things in order to achieve the desired goals can be extremely difficult for something as wide as 40k and we all know that GW don't really play test a lot.
I can clearly see a pattern in GW's "fixes", but I'm also aware that a lot of the things they do end up with unexpected (for them) results. You should be able to see units that are intentionally pushed to increase sales like ork squigbuggies (trash before the new codex, OP after the release of the book) o unintentional cheesy combos such as liq guns spam in early 9th for DT drukhari. Other things are harder to define.
So applying this logic, what should we expect from the new Tau Codex? Riptides and Drones to be C tier, massed Kroot (can you even get these from GW any more?) up at S?
Tyel wrote: So applying this logic, what should we expect from the new Tau Codex? Riptides and Drones to be C tier, massed Kroot (can you even get these from GW any more?) up at S?
No idea, it's all down to what GW thinks it will sell more. And their actual ability to write rules that reflect their expectations .
Maybe firewarriors, piranhas and devilfishes as the bulk of the army. But of course things will be shaken up somehow, it happened to all the previously released codexes.
The new Chaos Space Marine codex will allow you to roll to hit and wound your opponent (every codex comes with a loaded handgun and a guide on how to Mozambique Drill), taking damage creep to a whole new level.
You're using a form of survivorship bias and ignoring all evidence to the contrary to make your point and then post-hoc rationalizing changes as if things didn't need changes. The stupid thing GW did was alter points down for DE for unused units before they allowed nerfs in the remaining book to settle in.
You'll sit here and claim they wanted to see grots and wracks meanwhile the play percentage for Admech completely fell off a cliff. How does it make sense for them to disincentivize Admech entirely?
Because they unintentionally over nerfed those ad mech maybe? I talked about the company's strategy and I believe in what I said. But I'm also aware that balancing things in order to achieve the desired goals can be extremely difficult for something as wide as 40k and we all know that GW don't really play test a lot.
I can clearly see a pattern in GW's "fixes", but I'm also aware that a lot of the things they do end up with unexpected (for them) results. You should be able to see units that are intentionally pushed to increase sales like ork squigbuggies (trash before the new codex, OP after the release of the book) o unintentional cheesy combos such as liq guns spam in early 9th for DT drukhari. Other things are harder to define.
They're harder to define, because there is no strategy. You're just cherry picking the winners and showing those as proof.
If they were pushing liquifiers then why did they nerf them within a month? If people rushed out and bought a ton of grots/wracks for the liquifiers then why would GW push grots and wracks again when people should likely have lots of them? Why is GW's strategy revolving around a singular trait for covens?
Were grots worthwhile before at 40 points?
Cronos went up 5 points, but they are getting used more.
Ravagers went down 10, but are they getting used as much as Cronos?
Your whole perception of what "GW is trying to sell" is predicated on what a handful of top players decided to take to tournaments and did well with and then everyone hitched their thoughts to that horse.
What did Siegler's Thicc City cost before the dataslate? 2025. Twenty five points - or 1.25% - is your tipping point for GW pushing models.
This entire time he could have run that exact list with just one fewer unit of wracks. The rules didn't change. This list was available the entire time.
What this forum and 40K players in general fail to recognize time and time again is how complicated the game is and that it isn't solved simply because certain lists played by good players float to the top. This forum trashed on Cronos when the book came out and they take a 5 point INCREASE and now they're great? The Talos went down 10 and that isn't the favored model -- and they share a god damn dual kit.
GW is pushing sales on a dual kit when one model went up in points and the other went down. Come on. And that kit is sold out in the US so...great preparation from GW to maximize sales, right?
You're using a form of survivorship bias and ignoring all evidence to the contrary to make your point and then post-hoc rationalizing changes as if things didn't need changes. The stupid thing GW did was alter points down for DE for unused units before they allowed nerfs in the remaining book to settle in.
You'll sit here and claim they wanted to see grots and wracks meanwhile the play percentage for Admech completely fell off a cliff. How does it make sense for them to disincentivize Admech entirely?
Because they unintentionally over nerfed those ad mech maybe? I talked about the company's strategy and I believe in what I said. But I'm also aware that balancing things in order to achieve the desired goals can be extremely difficult for something as wide as 40k and we all know that GW don't really play test a lot.
I can clearly see a pattern in GW's "fixes", but I'm also aware that a lot of the things they do end up with unexpected (for them) results. You should be able to see units that are intentionally pushed to increase sales like ork squigbuggies (trash before the new codex, OP after the release of the book) o unintentional cheesy combos such as liq guns spam in early 9th for DT drukhari. Other things are harder to define.
They're harder to define, because there is no strategy. You're just cherry picking the winners and showing those as proof.
If they were pushing liquifiers then why did they nerf them within a month? If people rushed out and bought a ton of grots/wracks for the liquifiers then why would GW push grots and wracks again when people should likely have lots of them? Why is GW's strategy revolving around a singular trait for covens?
Were grots worthwhile before at 40 points?
Cronos went up 5 points, but they are getting used more.
Ravagers went down 10, but are they getting used as much as Cronos?
Your whole perception of what "GW is trying to sell" is predicated on what a handful of top players decided to take to tournaments and did well with and then everyone hitched their thoughts to that horse.
What did Siegler's Thicc City cost before the dataslate? 2025. Twenty five points - or 1.25% - is your tipping point for GW pushing models.
This entire time he could have run that exact list with just one fewer unit of wracks. The rules didn't change. This list was available the entire time.
What this forum and 40K players in general fail to recognize time and time again is how complicated the game is and that it isn't solved simply because certain lists played by good players float to the top. This forum trashed on Cronos when the book came out and they take a 5 point INCREASE and now they're great? The Talos went down 10 and that isn't the favored model -- and they share a god damn dual kit.
GW is pushing sales on a dual kit when one model went up in points and the other went down. Come on. And that kit is sold out in the US so...great preparation from GW to maximize sales, right?
Exalted, great points all around. Never forget Hanlon's razor, people. I'm not trying to bash GW, just saying there really is no evidence for malice on their part here.
After reading all the Eldar rumors i could find on reddit and various forums... I think they will be competitive with most the space marine books in power level but Admech will throttle them still. Drukari will still be the better elves, it seems liek a decent power increase though to make them catch up to par and maybe into the upper third of books
To be annoying - I agree with the principles behind Daedalus's argument - but would critique the point about the Cronos. People said it looked okay on the book first being leaked - and it promptly went to incredible in about 48 hours when people put 2 and 2 together with DT. We then had about a week of debate on whether mass DT was a meme build that couldn't work (because it hadn't worked previously) - but results rather settled the matter. DT would subsequently be nerfed in a way that didn't impact its interaction with Cronos.
Equally however I'd exaggerate the points made about the Talos. There was a period when the Talos was seen (dubiously imo, but still) as one of the weaker DE units. Then, as the meta shifted over the six months, it started creeping into lists that were performing very well. And then it got a 10 point reduction presumably because the community's perception when this stuff was first being drafted was negative. As a result they are great now. But they were probably *quite good* before. Its just other stuff was even better - but as you say, that's partly a meta function of "what are the top players playing".
Spoletta wrote: That's just one side of the coin.
Lethality has indeed increased, but durability did too.
We have had a wide spread of -1 hit, -1 damage, can't reroll, fail on 3-, increase in armor values...
Invul saves on 3+ and 4+ have been cut for the most part, but instead the ones on 5+ have increased.
Even with all the buffs to Melta for example, the amount of them required to take down a Dreadnaught hasn't really changed compared to 5th.
Proof of that is that the current competitive builds are durability based. If the game had followed a pure lethality increase without equivalent increases to durability, current lists would all firepower and mobility (i.e. pre-dataslate meta).
Lethality vs Durability: Most factions have gotten massive lethality increases. Durability wise...not so much. Yes there is widespread -1 to hit and -1dmg now not to mention the transhuman you allude to, but in reality they aren't as widespread.
Case and point, Melta literally gained 2dmg across the board, GW created a unit that not only uses ONLY melta weapons but then created a SUPER melta weapon that increased its dmg by 4! AND then they allowed it to fire twice. -1dmg isn't going to do a whole lot in the face of D6+4dmg
I always do this, but going back to Orkz, we got Ramshackle as our "durability" boost, and as I mentioned already, I can literally count on one hand how many times Ramshackle has been used in my army. My opponents are either packing S8+ or they just save their multi-dmg low S weapons for other targets. Snakebites got a version of Transhuman and it was hilarious with how much people complained about it. S7 and below can't wound snakebites except on a 4+. Sounds great until you realize all orkz are already T5 so it only impacted S6 and S7 weapons, not exactly a big portion of the game right now. What about Durability loss? Well for starters, the KFF went from a 5++ to a 6++, they also nerfed the KFF itself by drastically raising its price (50%). They also removed morale rules for the army so we lose significantly more to attrition and morale then ever before. I had forgotten, they also stripped the 6+ FNP from snakebites and made the Painboy even more expensive not to mention limiting who can heal what.
I do want to address your Melta vs 5th edition dread. Its been a long time so please bear with me and correct me on any mistakes. I believe dreads were 12/12/10, meaning for a melta to wound a dread on the front or side required a 4 and to "penetrate" it took a 5. So assuming you are facing the front or sides (most likely) a Melta required a 4 to glance and a 5-6 to penetrate. So you had a 1/2 chance to do dmg of some kind, a 1/6th chance to glance/stun/ and a 1/3rd chance to penetrate. On the glance result, you add +1 due to AP-1 but -2 because glance, meaning a roll of a 6 had a chance to "wreck" the vehicle, a 5 immobilized, a 4 destroyed a weapon, 3 stunned and 2 is shaken while a 1 does nothing. On the penetration results its +1 for AP-1 and no subtractions so the vehicle was destroyed on a 5 or a 6, it was wrecked on a 4, immobilized on a 3, weapon destroyed on a 2 and stunned on a 1. Assuming a Marine is armed with the melta at BS3+ its 3 shots is 2 hits, 2 hits is 1 dmg results. Of those dmg results its 1/3rd glance and 2/3rd pen. The pen is destroying on a 4+ the glance on a 6, So 50% chance of destroying on a 66% chance, and the glance is 16.6% chance on a 33% chance. So total is 33%+5.5% so 38-39% chance to destroy a Dread.
All told thats 3 Melta shots = 38-39% chance to destroy a dread. To make it almost guaranteed would take 2.5x that so you are talking about 7.5 melta shots.
In 9th edition, 9 Melta shots is 6 hits, against a T7 Dread thats 4 wounds, no armor save thanks to -4AP and thats 4xD6-1 for 10dmg. that's 1 guaranteed dead dreadnought, and you've actually over killed it by 25% where as the OLD 5th edition dread is not guaranteed dead with 7.5 melta shots.
And of course, all of that isn't counting the fact that now at half range a Multi-Melta is D6+2 nor the fact that a MM is now 2 shots instead of 1, and of course that isn't factoring in the special rules/weapons like the D6+4 melta or the shoot twice marines.
Spoletta wrote: Ork buggy lists were considered OP due to Ramshackle coupled with the firepower of the freebooterz.
Sure, all those previous lists also pack quite a punch, but all of them clearly invest in durability.
This isn't strictly true. Ramshackle is one of the most heavily over-rated abilities in the game right now. I can literally count on 1 hand the number of times Ramshackle has mattered in all my games so far in 9th. No, Ork Buggies were COMPETITIVE not OP because when combined with freeboota they could reliably hit things.
Well first, these are rumors, so ignore them.
Second, CWE are in a terrible spot, most of their units are literally unplayable if you want to win any games, so while it might look strong its more just getting equal to Marines. Remember a Falcon is suppose to be a large Heavy Anti-tank transport, it is their Razorback with a better Twin Las Cannons (Admech versions, GASP that is what Admech has....), so why wouldn't it be str 9 high D? Also the Dark lance and Bright lance has always been about the same, yes it is going to get the DL treatment as well.
Also Banshee's... WHO THE feth CARES THEY ARE 150% more damage, they deal zero damage now and are one of the worst units in CWE.
Fusion Guns are melta, why would they not get the Melta treatment? All imperium and some xenos already got the updated rules, why would you deny it to CWE and not everyone else?
This is not really power creep, this is equalizing the stats to eldar. Now.... could there also be power creep? yes there can be, but so far I don't see it, if anything i still think they are a bit weaker.
As I already mentioned, the leaks so far in 9th have been almost 100% accurate, so unless you have some evidence which suggests this new batch is somehow inaccurate I am more inclined to believe they are true rather then the other way around.
Banshees atm are under powered but not by an appreciable amount, they are close to being competitive and a dmg increase puts them over the edge. An Ork is 9ppm right now, is significantly slower, worse BS, better S and T, same Wounds, same attacks, much worse leadership and much worse save. An Ork comes equipped with the equivalent of a chainsword and a pistol which is generally not even used in game because its so pathetic especially when you consider BS5+.
So, what does a banshee bring thats better? As mentioned 3' faster, it has inbuilt advance and charge, You add 3' to your charge rolls if you advance (Why wouldn't you?) You can't overwatch them, oh and remember that advance? Yeah that doesn't count, you can still shoot all your weapons at normal BS. Weapon wise, it gets a power sword that gives it +1 strength and -3AP and their pistols are just bolt pistols EXCEPT a wound roll of 6 gives you AP-3
durability vs Small arms.
12 bolter HITS against an Ork works out to 3.3dmg
12 Bolter HITS against Banshees works out to 4dmg So banshees are slightly less durable then T5 Ork boyz. Unless you include leadership in which case Banshees win hands down.
Dmg vs Marines
90pts of Ork boyz is 10 boyz, 30 attacks, 20 hits, 10 wounds and 5dmg
90pts of Banshees is 6 Banshees, 12 attacks, 8 hits, 4 wounds and 3.3dmg So banshees are slightly less deadly to Marines then Ork Boyz. Ready though?
New Banshees (pts unknown yet) works out to 18 attacks, 12 hits, 6 wounds and 10dmg on the charge vs Marines. Or another way to put that...twice as deadly as Ork boyz.
as far as melta, I already mentioned it but, Orkz never got the D3+3 treatment or D6+2, so why didn't we when everyone else got it?
You still see Wazboms poking out, because they get more "super lascannon" shots ( on average ) than nearly 4 las chickens and hit on the same BS most of the time. Pre-nerf you didn't see a lot of las chickens. The Admech flyers were scary, but the density of lascannons was way lower. It was the other supporting rules on top of maneuverability.
Wazbom with Tellyporta Mega Blastas is 190pts The TMB averaged 7 shots and 3.5 hits a turn at S9 -2AP D3+3dmg. If you were playing Freeboota and proc'd its special rule it went to 4.6 hits a turn. Pre-nerf the Chickens were 65pts I believe, you could take 3 for the about the same price, and if you used the units free doctrina rule it worked out to 6 shots and 5 hits (BS2 with doctrina). So Wazbom did almost the same if it got an army wide buff, the chickenwalkers did more with their own internal buffs and nothing else. And while the Wazbom has ramshackle and -1 to hit, the chickenwalkers had an invuln save, more wounds, better armor save and could take cover. So nope, Chickenwalkers were better hands down.
Nevelon wrote: Codex creep is bad, but the Eldar codex is a bit dated and could use a boost.
I’m taking those rumors/leaks with a LOT of salt. I’ll wait to get bent out of shape about them being busted until we get something more concrete.
So far, the leaks for 9th have been the most accurate ever. I had basically the entirety of the ork kultures leaked weeks before the codex came out. Yes skepticism is warranted, but not nearly as much as it used to be. Not to mention most of the buffs fall in line with what we have already seen so far in 9th.
Gert wrote: I don't see it as a problem for a few reasons.
Firstly, I don't actually find this to be an issue in my games. We regularly get to turn 4 with about 40-50% of our armies left (my opponent usually moreso due to Necron shenanigans) and this is the first edition where conceding games early has been a genuine rarity. There were times in 5-7th (not so much 8th because Covid kind of screwed my play time) where I'd play for an hour then just pack up because I'd lost the game by turn 2, sometimes even turn 1. Thus far with 9th playing even with my CSM I've still managed 4 turn games on average with only losses but nothing like 70-10 or having lost half my army in the first turn.
Secondly, I try to get in at least one game a week but since everyone I game with is either working or studying, we don't have loads of time to go somewhere and play. Having a game take 2 hours rather than 4 but keeping the same points/power and maintaining the same feeling of 4 hours of gaming is a lot better for us.
I play 40k, 30k and AoS, and all these games take about roughly the same army size and all end at roughly the same time, with similar losses and often decided in the last few turns.
I dunno maybe it's just an issue for mathhammer and competitive gaming.
You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.
And I've had 20 games where nothing like that has happened ever. I don't see us agreeing at all so let's just leave it here.
I play competitively, I've won a bunch of FLGS Tournaments in 9th, including a recent one which fell just shy of being a Grand Tournament by ITC standards (26 people instead of 28). I've played more games then I care to remember and I would wager that since the Ork codex came out I have won 70-80% of my games by turn 3 at the absolute latest.
My last tournament I won all 5 games by turn 2, 1 of those games my opponent conceded turn 1 after my alphork strike list took out basically 90% of his deployed forces, leaving him with a single character, and an infantry squad both of which were tied up in CC and would likely die on his turn. Yes he had 800pts in reserve, but they would have been functionally useless at that point since any hope of waiting to take objectives was gone.
Your friendly little group of players anecdotally playing with one another is not a good metric to judge the aforementioned statement by. The lethality in 9th has gone through the roof.
^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.
Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.
(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.
Tyel wrote: To be annoying - I agree with the principles behind Daedalus's argument - but would critique the point about the Cronos. People said it looked okay on the book first being leaked - and it promptly went to incredible in about 48 hours when people put 2 and 2 together with DT. We then had about a week of debate on whether mass DT was a meme build that couldn't work (because it hadn't worked previously) - but results rather settled the matter. DT would subsequently be nerfed in a way that didn't impact its interaction with Cronos.
Equally however I'd exaggerate the points made about the Talos. There was a period when the Talos was seen (dubiously imo, but still) as one of the weaker DE units. Then, as the meta shifted over the six months, it started creeping into lists that were performing very well. And then it got a 10 point reduction presumably because the community's perception when this stuff was first being drafted was negative. As a result they are great now. But they were probably *quite good* before. Its just other stuff was even better - but as you say, that's partly a meta function of "what are the top players playing".
You have the units switched a little -- Talos was the winner under Dark Tech. Cronos was never really considered then ( no liquifiers and no autohit weapons ). People were kind of scoffing at Cronos resurrecting cheapo troops and apparently we only just discovered that a Cronos can heal itself ( being slightly facetious ) and that coupled with 6++/5+++/-1D makes for very durable units when you can take 3 of them.
The dumb thing GW did was drop points on Talos and Ravagers before they let the other changes marinate, but some of the outrage might be too premature. This is this past weekend's top 5 performance:
So Semper you say the damage out put of ork boyz IS extremely low.... And present banshee do nearly half the damage agaisnt their preferred target (heavy infantry)...
And you say they are nearly competitive?
Banshee were used in 8th for how cheap , fast and able to deny overwatch. But overwatch in 9th isnt really relevant
Insectum7 wrote: ^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.
Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.
(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.
Most common opponent in 40k is Marines of one flavor or another. CSM are getting 2 wounds, All loyalist Marines have 2 wounds, Greyknights and custodes same thing. Not to mention the -3AP is incredibly good. But the other big buff Banshees are getting is going to 3 attacks base. Thats a 50% increase in dmg on its own. They went from 12 attacks to 18, even without the D2 thats 12 hits, 6 wounds and 5dmg which is what orkz are getting right now. I think Orkz need to be bumped up a bit but these buffs for Banshees are going to make them better then boyz in my opinion, especially the movement, they are effective 8+D6 movement since they suffer zero penalties for advancing.
Galas wrote: So Semper you say the damage out put of ork boyz IS extremely low.... And present banshee do nearly half the damage agaisnt their preferred target (heavy infantry)...
And you say they are nearly competitive?
Banshee were used in 8th for how cheap , fast and able to deny overwatch. But overwatch in 9th isnt really relevant
I'm saying in the context of 8th edition they were ok, not great but almost competitive. In 9th with the aforementioned buffs they will be competitive. And Overwatch is relevant in 9th, just depends on matchups, some factions right now give 5+ to hit on overwatch, but most importantly, Tau are getting their codex and they are the de-facto Overwatch faction.
Also, in the context of 9th they need a hefty increase in dmg to matter, and if this rumor turns out to be true they are getting a 50% increase in dmg AND on the charge they are getting a 150% increase in dmg, that is pretty damn good. And we still don't know what else there might be in the codex.
You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.
The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.
My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.
This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.
Those people dont come back. When the shop moved, the club organizers and I were concerned that going down from 9 40k tables to 7 would be a huge crimp in our ability to gather. Doesnt matter now, only 2-3 tables get used per week. It sucks to watch.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Insectum7 wrote: ^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.
Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.
(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.
I want to make an amendment to my initial post - Banshees may actually be getting less effective boosts than D2 on the charge.
The rumors are comign from playtest packets, which are different for different groups of people. One group is reporting a playtest version of banshees with 2d on the charge, the other is reporting +1 to wound on the charge, which would be a far lesser buff, BUT the effect of banshee masks is now "Fight Last" which would be a massive boon to their utility.
Still more than 1.5x the damage - the standard in 9e - but not 3x.
I do want to address your Melta vs 5th edition dread. Its been a long time so please bear with me and correct me on any mistakes. I believe dreads were 12/12/10, meaning for a melta to wound a dread on the front or side required a 4 and to "penetrate" it took a 5. So assuming you are facing the front or sides (most likely) a Melta required a 4 to glance and a 5-6 to penetrate. So you had a 1/2 chance to do dmg of some kind, a 1/6th chance to glance/stun/ and a 1/3rd chance to penetrate. On the glance result, you add +1 due to AP-1 but -2 because glance, meaning a roll of a 6 had a chance to "wreck" the vehicle, a 5 immobilized, a 4 destroyed a weapon, 3 stunned and 2 is shaken while a 1 does nothing. On the penetration results its +1 for AP-1 and no subtractions so the vehicle was destroyed on a 5 or a 6, it was wrecked on a 4, immobilized on a 3, weapon destroyed on a 2 and stunned on a 1. Assuming a Marine is armed with the melta at BS3+ its 3 shots is 2 hits, 2 hits is 1 dmg results. Of those dmg results its 1/3rd glance and 2/3rd pen. The pen is destroying on a 4+ the glance on a 6, So 50% chance of destroying on a 66% chance, and the glance is 16.6% chance on a 33% chance. So total is 33%+5.5% so 38-39% chance to destroy a Dread.
Higher then that. A walker dread basically counts immobilized as dead, destroyed a weapon often tends to be their main weapon so their often useless anyways, and being stunned every turn often counted easily enough towards ensuring that it was useless anyways.
Insectum7 wrote: ^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.
Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.
(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.
Most common opponent in 40k is Marines of one flavor or another. CSM are getting 2 wounds, All loyalist Marines have 2 wounds, Greyknights and custodes same thing. Not to mention the -3AP is incredibly good. But the other big buff Banshees are getting is going to 3 attacks base. Thats a 50% increase in dmg on its own. They went from 12 attacks to 18, even without the D2 thats 12 hits, 6 wounds and 5dmg which is what orkz are getting right now. I think Orkz need to be bumped up a bit but these buffs for Banshees are going to make them better then boyz in my opinion, especially the movement, they are effective 8+D6 movement since they suffer zero penalties for advancing.
Well, in my view Banshees have been doing sub-par damage for multiple editions now. Imo they're starting from way behind.
@Scotsman: It will be pretty disappointing if Banshees receive less buffing than initially thought.
You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.
The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.
My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.
This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.
Those people dont come back. When the shop moved, the club organizers and I were concerned that going down from 9 40k tables to 7 would be a huge crimp in our ability to gather. Doesnt matter now, only 2-3 tables get used per week. It sucks to watch.
You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.
The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.
My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.
And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.
the_scotsman wrote: This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.
1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....
2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.
You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.
The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.
My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.
And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.
You don't know this and are just insinuating it. It could have been a situation where it was the only available targets (rokkitz are 24' range) and trust me, Shoota boyz are the most sub-optimal of sub-optimal. Think about how bad boyz are right now, Shoota boyz make choppa boyz look like gods of war by comparison. 30 shoota boyz (270pts) ALL in dakka range (9 inches or less) get 90 shots, 30 hits, 15 wounds and a grand whopping total of 5dmg vs Marines, or 2.5 dead Marines. So a predominately shooting unit under optimal conditions at 270pts killed 50pts of Marines. Tell me that sounds competitive and I'll gladly call you a fething liar
the_scotsman wrote: This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.
1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....
2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.
1) I can actually answer this one because I'm fairly active in my FLGS and was the same in a few others during my long travels around the country. Because usually the have set aside 4-5 hours to play a nice long game of 40k. Calling it quits at the 2-2.5 hour mark means that by the time they've secured another game, even against the same opponent, they don't have enough time left to play another game to completion, and leaving a game at turn 2-3 undecided is annoying to say the least. I mean hell, the FLGS 3 round tournaments we host here for ITC start at 10AM (About 1 hour of setup) and go to 7PM (Awards) usually. 2 hour rounds, 15 minute break in between with a 30 minute lunch break after the first game.
2) I have yet to see an Ork player EVER steam roll a newbie on purpose. I mean...its literally a meme/stereotype ork players have. In friendly environments and hell, even tournament play we tend to win the Sportsmanship award and the "Fun to play against" awards. Sometimes the dice roll hot and you can't stop a blowout. I remember where i purposefully fired all my lootas in 8th into a Landraider my opponent brought because it was the worst target available to them and I didn't want to ruin this kid's (about 16-18) day, especially since it was his first game ever. Whoops dice gods rolled hot and 15 lootas put out 45 shots and got 30 hits somehow which caused the landraider to explode instantly. No strats used, no external buffs, no Freeboota kulture nothing. Luckily that player stuck around and is really good now, sadly he also has a mental block against Lootas and thinks they are the most broken unit in the game
Shoota Boyz are obviously dreadful - although the numbers look a bit better if you factor in a successful charge and assault phase. But yeah. The softest Ork list I can imagine is probably 180ish Shoota Boyz and some HQs.
Really I think part of the issue of balancing the game - which is a good thing - is that its harder to write an explicitly softer list with the 9th edition codexes. I mean there's a step up to "winning a GT meta list" - but for playing someone relatively new, what would you take with various factions?
Barring idk, massed Foot Wyches I don't think I could make a "soft" DE list. Obviously a lot easier with Tau at the moment - but I suspect that will be changed very soon. Similar with CWE.
the_scotsman wrote: Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.
As much as I hate the so-called "morale" rules in 9th, the first thing I'd change is the stupid threshold for what constitutes a horde and what doesn't. 11+, and nothing below that. 6-10 is so stupid. Frustrating beyond all belief.
the_scotsman wrote: This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.
There's only one Battle Report YT channel I watch where I actually watch the Battle Reports - Priority Orders Discarded by fellow Dakkanaut Twilight Pathways - and his most recent report is Orks v Necrons. Neither list is optimised for the competitive scene in real any way, and whilst there are certainly some good units on both sides, these are far from tournament lists.
Game doesn't get to turn 3.
And then I see GW increasing the lethality of Tau suit weapons, including another thing that feths units of 6+ models over again.
If they were pushing liquifiers then why did they nerf them within a month? If people rushed out and bought a ton of grots/wracks for the liquifiers then why would GW push grots and wracks again when people should likely have lots of them? Why is GW's strategy revolving around a singular trait for covens?
No, I've said that the whole liq thing was clearly a mistake, there wasn't the intent to push it and in fact it was corrected as soon as possible. Some cheese is intended, some happens by accident. Wracks didn't need it to be pushed, in fact we still see lots of wracks.
Were grots worthwhile before at 40 points?
Cronos went up 5 points, but they are getting used more.
Ravagers went down 10, but are they getting used as much as Cronos?
They all are used much than before. +5 points on a 70ppm model is completely irrelevant.
GW is pushing sales on a dual kit when one model went up in points and the other went down. Come on. And that kit is sold out in the US so...great preparation from GW to maximize sales, right?
Exactly. They sold every kit they had in stock. Job's done Now people can concentrate on Christmas boxes or whatever the new releases are.
They're both excellent units. One went down because it was considered too expensive, the cheaper one in fact became a bit more expensive. Originally on the codex there was a 40ppm gap between the two units, which was too wide. Now, how much is the gap between cronos and talos in terms of points?
Overall, don't you think that the ultimate goal of GW is to sold more stuff? They can't sold what people already has. So they enhance units that they think most of the players don't own in large numbers, then nerf those in order to convince (or sometimes force, see ork players) those guys to buy something else. Sometimes the pattern is extremely clear, sometime it isn't. But the ultimate goal isn't to make a better or more balanced game.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Tyel wrote: To be annoying - I agree with the principles behind Daedalus's argument - but would critique the point about the Cronos. People said it looked okay on the book first being leaked - and it promptly went to incredible in about 48 hours when people put 2 and 2 together with DT. We then had about a week of debate on whether mass DT was a meme build that couldn't work (because it hadn't worked previously) - but results rather settled the matter. DT would subsequently be nerfed in a way that didn't impact its interaction with Cronos.
Equally however I'd exaggerate the points made about the Talos. There was a period when the Talos was seen (dubiously imo, but still) as one of the weaker DE units. Then, as the meta shifted over the six months, it started creeping into lists that were performing very well. And then it got a 10 point reduction presumably because the community's perception when this stuff was first being drafted was negative. As a result they are great now. But they were probably *quite good* before. Its just other stuff was even better - but as you say, that's partly a meta function of "what are the top players playing".
I think you nailed it. Most of the drukhari units that weren't used much at events weren't bad, simply other things that compete with them were massively OP. Units like ravagers or cronos were (very) good since day one, regardless of what lists top players were fielding. Court of the archon was considered useless, now we see it pretty often and nothing significantly has changed in the meantime. Not for them, not for pretty much the whole drukhari roster.
Suffering from internal competition doesn't mean sucking, a lot of people can't (or are not willing to) spam the most powerful unit of the moment and most of the tournament lists aren't exactly what the average player actually sees in his/her own meta.
Tyel wrote: Shoota Boyz are obviously dreadful - although the numbers look a bit better if you factor in a successful charge and assault phase. But yeah. The softest Ork list I can imagine is probably 180ish Shoota Boyz and some HQs.
Really I think part of the issue of balancing the game - which is a good thing - is that its harder to write an explicitly softer list with the 9th edition codexes. I mean there's a step up to "winning a GT meta list" - but for playing someone relatively new, what would you take with various factions?
Barring idk, massed Foot Wyches I don't think I could make a "soft" DE list. Obviously a lot easier with Tau at the moment - but I suspect that will be changed very soon. Similar with CWE.
Necrons maybe.
honestly, 180 shoota boys in msu with warboss/ Mekboss and dok support might very well turn from meme to surprisingly annoying for some lists to deal with.
I'd even skip freebota for bad moons.
(180 boys are probably bit much but 150 might work better.)
You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.
The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.
My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.
And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.
the_scotsman wrote: This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.
1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....
2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.
40k is the only game I've ever seen where people think "just play worse" is a legitimate defence in favor of the game.
Also
1) I doubt they have time, since setting up the game alone takes about half an hour usually and the first turns are also about an hour for each player.
2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.
Playing worse and bringing sub-optimal lists are completely different things though. The former in my opinion is unacceptable, the newbie won't learn anything or she/he'll learn how to play way too slowly. People have to learn from their mistakes in order to master the game, next time that guy won't field large squads of elites oriented models anymore. Someone could have told the newbie before but this way the newbie understands why. It took me like 20ish games back in 3rd, as a kid, in order to fully understand how my army had to be played, and I lost the vast majority of those games. Now with internet things are indeed much faster but still a few games just to experience the weaknesses and the strenghts of the armies are necessary.
The latter sometimes is just a consequence of real life armies, most people can't or don't want to chase the flavour of the month, even if they are into the hobby since decades. Units that are never taken at GT could easily be pretty common in casual games. And sometimes there's nothing someone can do to improve their lists outside buying new stuff which might not be an option.
The Scotsman mentioned boomdakkas or dreads, tankbustas and wagons but none of those units are bad, let alone trash. They're all sub-optinal in the sense that there are better options available in the codex for their role but they're still quite good units, not really that far from the units that outperform them. And optimizing a list (by choosing the best equipments and sizes for the units, synergies between the units, etc...) that involves a few or even a good number of those units might still provide a pretty good list overall. If he had played a non optimized list with those units he wouldn't have crushed the opponent. Try large ork squads for example, sub-optimal gear and/or units with no synergies. A veteran player using an optimized list, not even that far from competitive ones, should definitely stomp a newbie with little effort. There's no edition of 40k in which that wasn't true.
So toning up and down the lists, for those who can, in order to play a more balanced and fun game sounds reasonable. And good players should be able to get great results even with sub-optimal lists against newbies.
You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.
The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.
My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.
And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.
the_scotsman wrote: This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.
1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....
2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.
...It's kind of difficult to express to you how I literally could not do that.
My opponent brought a list where he had like 60 of the zombie duders, a half dozen or so support characters, and then 3x10 plague marine squads and 1x10 terminator squad. I had never played DG before in 9e, and didnt know what to expect. My opponent set up the zombies in a big screen on the board and deep struck everything else besides 1 plague marine squad, and then used a stratagem that meant I couldnt target the marines, so my top of 1 zombies were the only available target. I charged in at them and declared speedwaagh, thinking I WAS playing suboptimally. I just flung orks at what looked like this super well supported screen line...and then they all evaporated. Like one squad of 10 warbikes took out 1/3 of them with just the first shooting attack of my army. By the time I got to the units that had rokkits, I was actually choosing between shooting them into the support characters and shooting them into the plague marines that had used the stratagem, and I DID choose to shoot them into the support characters to keep the plague marines on the board.
There's "just play suboptimally" and the level of "Literally do not shoot 3-4 of your units at something."
And laughably thinking back I actually DID DO THAT TOO. I had a unit of Stormboyz in reserve that I never even brought in.
The power curve of armies is so fething bonkers right now (on a competitive level ranging from 30% wr to 65% wr at any given time) and in what are supposed to be 'casual' games the spread is even more insane. The precision with which you have to nail the target of how tough of a list to bring to get a balanced game means you can basically only succeed if you know what your opponent's list is, know all of its capabilites, and very carefully tailor your list to match it, which as I end up playing more casually and more occasionally I just can't do.
The Scotsman mentioned boomdakkas or dreads, tankbustas and wagons but none of those units are bad, let alone trash. They're all sub-optinal in the sense that there are better options available in the codex for their role but they're still quite good units, not really that far from the units that outperform them. And optimizing a list (by choosing the best equipments and sizes for the units, synergies between the units, etc...) that involves a few or even a good number of those units might still provide a pretty good list overall. If he had played a non optimized list with those units he wouldn't have crushed the opponent. Try large ork squads for example, sub-optimal gear and/or units with no synergies. A veteran player using an optimized list, not even that far from competitive ones, should definitely stomp a newbie with little effort. There's no edition of 40k in which that wasn't true.
So toning up and down the lists, for those who can, in order to play a more balanced and fun game sounds reasonable. And good players should be able to get great results even with sub-optimal lists against newbies.
Yeah youd have to do something like make half of the units in the list melee oriented and half of the units in the list shooting oriented to purposefully dilute the power of the new army-wide Waaagh rule to make those units really suboptimal huh.
40k is the only game I've ever seen where people think "just play worse" is a legitimate defence in favor of the game.
Also
1) I doubt they have time, since setting up the game alone takes about half an hour usually and the first turns are also about an hour for each player.
2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.
Yeah, also, sometimes YOURE NOT PLAYING as well. A game shop near my house just started carrying warhammer and I agreed to run some tutorial games with loaner minis to help get them going, and when two complete newbies play against each other, this causes them to have gak games as well. Its a one-step process to ensure that any new player has a bad time:
1) Give them one big-ish impressive looking tank, like a leman russ or a predator or something
2) there is no step 2, that will guarantee that at some point during the game that tank will get instantly exploded by something stupid, and that player will go "awwww....." and their opponetn will go "what? I just killed it?"
Sim-Life wrote: 2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.
This. In our last campaign round one of our veterans played is newly acquired TS for the first time ever, in a scenario not favoring him, with the simplest list you could think: Sorcerer, Rubrics, Terminators, Cultists. He accidentally tabled his pretty experienced dark angel opponent in turn 2.
Sim-Life wrote: 2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.
This. In our last campaign round one of our veterans played is newly acquired TS for the first time ever, in a scenario not favoring him, with the simplest list you could think: Sorcerer, Rubrics, Terminators, Cultists. He accidentally tabled his pretty experienced dark angel opponent in turn 2.
Sim-Life wrote: 2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.
This. In our last campaign round one of our veterans played is newly acquired TS for the first time ever, in a scenario not favoring him, with the simplest list you could think: Sorcerer, Rubrics, Terminators, Cultists. He accidentally tabled his pretty experienced dark angel opponent in turn 2.
yiikes, why preciscly did it swing so brutally?
A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.
A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.
basically the usual high swing psy and stratagem damage fuelling...
A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.
basically the usual high swing psy and stratagem damage fuelling...
yeah..
DA can use WotDA to force Scarabs into Unwavering Phalanx. If it's a 6+ model unit ( it should be 10 to get the most out of those strats ) you'll bleed the TS player faster than you bleed yourself, which means fewer buffs for those Scarabs. Alternatively you using it when shooting Rubrics and force them to eat it. It would be crucial to protect the helblasters so they have an opportunity to trade.
As with most games if a player lost and thinks they didn't do anything wrong they should reflect a little more.
A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.
basically the usual high swing psy and stratagem damage fuelling...
yeah..
DA can use WotDA to force Scarabs into Unwavering Phalanx. If it's a 6+ model unit ( it should be 10 to get the most out of those strats ) you'll bleed the TS player faster than you bleed yourself, which means fewer buffs for those Scarabs. Alternatively you using it when shooting Rubrics and force them to eat it. It would be crucial to protect the helblasters so they have an opportunity to trade.
As with most games if a player lost and thinks they didn't do anything wrong they should reflect a little more.
Hey i've got a secret for you
>.>
<.<
A player can know exactly what they did wrong in a game, and it can still result in a stupid, frustrating experience.
The DG opponent that I played against post-game understood exactly what he did wrong - he should have started all his terminators/death guard marines on the table, behind the copious obscuring terrain, and just rolled all his zomboids onto the objectives. I had to get within 9" or melee of the zombos to properly wipe them out, and if I had done so, it would have been easy for the DG to just kool aid man thru the wall of the ruin and table me instead of me tabling him. All my bikers, trukk boyz, kommandos etc had to be right up on top of the zombos to hurt them. easy melee range for all the DG squads.
.............that doesnt change the fact that our armies being perfectly capable of tabling one another in a couple of turns is dogshit game design.
They all are used much than before. +5 points on a 70ppm model is completely irrelevant.
And yet the Cronos is the unit "nerfed" and is used more than the Talos who took a 10 point drop. If +5 is irrelevant than likely so is -10.
Exactly. They sold every kit they had in stock. Job's done Now people can concentrate on Christmas boxes or whatever the new releases are.
The total quantity they would have available is absolutely irrelevant to their total sales.
£29M a month average revenue. Selling 1,000 Cronos/Talos kits represents 0.1% of their revenue for that MONTH. That's more enough to give 6 Cronos and 4 Talos to every single Drukhari player in the ITC who has played four events.
You know what? There's 954 Drukhari players ranked globally ( over 600 have not played more than one large event ). Let's get them all 10 kits. That's £310,050 or 1% of sales for the month ( far less during holiday sales season if we're being honest ) if all those players decide to do that and we ignore what they currently own, the secondary market, and 3d prints.
It's absolutely preposterous that they even need to bother to force a particular kit to sell.
And you know what's more? DE players aren't uniformly going Cronos/Talos. You only think they are, because your expectation that the buffed units were there to make sales. Yet Nayden just won with Wyches, Incubi, Raiders, and two individual Cronos -- you know -- the nerfed model. The DE who went 4-1 at Sunken City GT? No Cronos, Talos, or Grots and 10 Wracks.
If anything DE list just became more diverse instead of the same tired lists they had before.
Overall, don't you think that the ultimate goal of GW is to sold more stuff? They can't sold what people already has. So they enhance units that they think most of the players don't own in large numbers, then nerf those in order to convince (or sometimes force, see ork players) those guys to buy something else. Sometimes the pattern is extremely clear, sometime it isn't. But the ultimate goal isn't to make a better or more balanced game.
There's the source of your hang up. You don't like what they did to Orks, which is literally counter to your logic - they completely removed the desire for people to buy more than a handful of buggies and flyers and you still think this plays into their hands to sell more.
Their goal is to sell more by continuously making more stuff and keeping people engaged. The more people talk about Warhammer the more get involved. It's as simple as that.
Kastelan Robots dropped 10 points, but we're not talking about a surge of Admech Robot lists. If GW's strategy relies on someone winning a tournament with said units then it's going to take a hell of a lot more than 5 or 10 points and a single faction trait to force that outcome.
There's the source of your hang up. You don't like what they did to Orks, which is literally counter to your logic - they completely removed the desire for people to buy more than a handful of buggies and flyers and you still think this plays into their hands to sell more.
My logic is: "we invalidate buggy spam so ork players who already had tons of buggies now need more stuff since their lists are illegal. Time to get the super expensive kill rigs, the squig riders and the squigboss now. At the same time we didn't invalidate the ork buggies, just the spam of them; in fact they're still very competitive, so players who don't have tons of them are still buying those buggies. Same with planes, and mek gunz before them".
Their goal is to sell more by continuously making more stuff and keeping people engaged. The more people talk about Warhammer the more get involved. It's as simple as that.
Naaa, lots of the armies don't have new kits in ages, or maybe they get just one or two kits in 5+ years. GW simply need to change the rules after a while to shake things up, and push people buying more. When the greentide becomes the most common and most effective archetype to field the army then it's time to nerf all the synergies that makes it good and push for other archetypes. That's exactly what happened.
Ork buggies were terrible or mediocre when they were released but awesome models that a lot of players wanted anyway. At some point they wanted also the competitive players to get them, so they boosted them. At first 2-3 of them, then progressively the other 2-3. Only one among the five kinds of buggies always stayed good (or bad), the jack of trades one of course.
They did the same with primaris. At first they just relied on the hype which was enough to sell enough models. At some point they needed to boost sales and they made them much better in terms of rules. So they kept selling.
It's not new kits that sell stuff in droves, it's new rules. Always. Unless maybe it's SM stuff. Make the Stompa, a pretty old model, utterly OP: it will be sold out soon. Release a new stompa model keeping the current rules: only a few dudes will buy it.
You know what? There's 954 Drukhari players ranked globally ( over 600 have not played more than one large event ). Let's get them all 10 kits. That's £310,050 or 1% of sales for the month ( far less during holiday sales season if we're being honest ) if all those players decide to do that and we ignore what they currently own, the secondary market, and 3d prints.
There's much more than a thousand drukhari players in the world . I was one and never been ranked somewhere.
If anything DE list just became more diverse instead of the same tired lists they had before.
That's exactly my point. They shake things up by changing the rules in order to convince players to field units that before the new rules you didn't see that often. They do that in order to avoid players settling down with one list for long.
I do want to address your Melta vs 5th edition dread. Its been a long time so please bear with me and correct me on any mistakes. I believe dreads were 12/12/10, meaning for a melta to wound a dread on the front or side required a 4 and to "penetrate" it took a 5. So assuming you are facing the front or sides (most likely) a Melta required a 4 to glance and a 5-6 to penetrate. So you had a 1/2 chance to do dmg of some kind, a 1/6th chance to glance/stun/ and a 1/3rd chance to penetrate. On the glance result, you add +1 due to AP-1 but -2 because glance, meaning a roll of a 6 had a chance to "wreck" the vehicle, a 5 immobilized, a 4 destroyed a weapon, 3 stunned and 2 is shaken while a 1 does nothing. On the penetration results its +1 for AP-1 and no subtractions so the vehicle was destroyed on a 5 or a 6, it was wrecked on a 4, immobilized on a 3, weapon destroyed on a 2 and stunned on a 1. Assuming a Marine is armed with the melta at BS3+ its 3 shots is 2 hits, 2 hits is 1 dmg results. Of those dmg results its 1/3rd glance and 2/3rd pen. The pen is destroying on a 4+ the glance on a 6, So 50% chance of destroying on a 66% chance, and the glance is 16.6% chance on a 33% chance. So total is 33%+5.5% so 38-39% chance to destroy a Dread.
All told thats 3 Melta shots = 38-39% chance to destroy a dread. To make it almost guaranteed would take 2.5x that so you are talking about 7.5 melta shots.
In 9th edition, 9 Melta shots is 6 hits, against a T7 Dread thats 4 wounds, no armor save thanks to -4AP and thats 4xD6-1 for 10dmg. that's 1 guaranteed dead dreadnought, and you've actually over killed it by 25% where as the OLD 5th edition dread is not guaranteed dead with 7.5 melta shots.
And of course, all of that isn't counting the fact that now at half range a Multi-Melta is D6+2 nor the fact that a MM is now 2 shots instead of 1, and of course that isn't factoring in the special rules/weapons like the D6+4 melta or the shoot twice marines.
You did a very strange analysis, with chances on one side and averages on the other.
Let's use some actually comparable numbers.
1 MM shot in 5th edition at long range has 12.4% chances to wreck a Dnaught.
The equivalent 2 MM shots in 9th edition have a 3.2% chance to do the same.
2 MM shots in 5th edition have a 23.2% chance.
The equivalent 4MM shots in 9th edition have a 19.5% chance.
3MM shots in 5th edition have a 32.76% chance.
6MM shots in 9th edition have a 43.5% chance.
Increasing the MM, the gap increases.
As can be seen, the MM in 5th edition has the advantage when 1 or 2 MM are shooting, while 9th edition has better results when 3 or more MM are shooting at the Dnaught.
Let's go in short range.
One MM shot in 5th edition has a 30% chance to wreck the target.
2 MM shots in 9th edition have a 14.4% chance.
2 MM shots in 5th edition have a 51.2% chance.
4 MM shots in 9th edition have a 49% chance.
From 3 or more MM shooting, the 9th edition ones are better.
So it follows kind of the same trend as the long range one.
One important distinction to make though, is that if the 9th edition weapons fail to kill the target, there is no result obtained.
5th edition MM will at the very least disable the target for a turn, even in case they fail at destroying it.
honestly, 180 shoota boys in msu with warboss/ Mekboss and dok support might very well turn from meme to surprisingly annoying for some lists to deal with.
I'd even skip freebota for bad moons.
(180 boys are probably bit much but 150 might work better.)
Couldn't disagree more. Lets put that in perspective. 180 shoota boys in MSU is 18 Mobz. You would need 3 battalions to bring that many Also, thats without upgrades 1,620pts so you only have 380pts left over for upgrades and those warboss/mekboss dok support. Just 3 warbosses eat up 270pts, A useless Big Mek with KFF is going to run you 85pts, so not saving much, and a single painboy is 70pts.
180 shoota boyz at normal range get 360 shots, 120 hits, 60 wounds and 20dmg. So 1,620pts of ork kills 10 Marines, or 200pts. Not exactly intimidating. And even in MSU they are still vulnerable to morale, just not as much. But what is worse, in CC....they are S4 2 attacks no AP. thats 360 attacks, 240 hits, 120 wounds and 40dmg vs a Marine unit, or 20 dead Marines or another way to look at that is 400pts of dead Marine. Sounds good but its less then a 25% return in their "best" phase.
Honestly, no serious list would have a problem dealing with this army. Its incredibly slow, it lacks ranged firepower, and isn't very good in CC. The characters are ok, but they don't really buff the boyz to be "durable". At best they have a 6+ Invuln and a 6+ FNP which changes the math from 5.4 bolter shots to kill an Ork boy (5.4 shots, 3.6 hits, 1.2 wounds 1dmg) to about 6.5 shots. 6.5 shots = 4.33 hits, 1.44 wounds vs 6+ invuln = 1.2 failed saves vs 6+FNP = 1 dead boyz. That really isn't worth the Minimum 155pt investment (bigmek +Painboy)
I think 100 Marines with a Lt and Captain would counter it pretty easily.
200 Bolters with Captain and Lt. Kill 51 Orks. Assaulting them doubles the kills. It doesn't look good.
Personal favorite for me is vs. 80 Tyranid Warriors with Deathspitters though. Each Warrior averages an Ork kill with shooting when Primed up. 80 dead Orks a turn. In CC, they almost average another kill each with scything talons, for 63 kills.
honestly, 180 shoota boys in msu with warboss/ Mekboss and dok support might very well turn from meme to surprisingly annoying for some lists to deal with.
I'd even skip freebota for bad moons.
(180 boys are probably bit much but 150 might work better.)
Couldn't disagree more. Lets put that in perspective. 180 shoota boys in MSU is 18 Mobz. You would need 3 battalions to bring that many Also, thats without upgrades 1,620pts so you only have 380pts left over for upgrades and those warboss/mekboss dok support. Just 3 warbosses eat up 270pts, A useless Big Mek with KFF is going to run you 85pts, so not saving much, and a single painboy is 70pts.
180 shoota boyz at normal range get 360 shots, 120 hits, 60 wounds and 20dmg. So 1,620pts of ork kills 10 Marines, or 200pts. Not exactly intimidating. And even in MSU they are still vulnerable to morale, just not as much. But what is worse, in CC....they are S4 2 attacks no AP. thats 360 attacks, 240 hits, 120 wounds and 40dmg vs a Marine unit, or 20 dead Marines or another way to look at that is 400pts of dead Marine. Sounds good but its less then a 25% return in their "best" phase.
Honestly, no serious list would have a problem dealing with this army. Its incredibly slow, it lacks ranged firepower, and isn't very good in CC. The characters are ok, but they don't really buff the boyz to be "durable". At best they have a 6+ Invuln and a 6+ FNP which changes the math from 5.4 bolter shots to kill an Ork boy (5.4 shots, 3.6 hits, 1.2 wounds 1dmg) to about 6.5 shots. 6.5 shots = 4.33 hits, 1.44 wounds vs 6+ invuln = 1.2 failed saves vs 6+FNP = 1 dead boyz. That really isn't worth the Minimum 155pt investment (bigmek +Painboy)
Agree here. I run lists like this regularly to introduce people to the game, and it's essentially a free win even for the most inexperienced players.
Shoota boyz are hit especially hard, because rank&file weaponry without AP like shootas or bolters is essentially worthless in the current game unless you can pile buffs on them.
. I was one and never been ranked somewhere.