https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/lBLlqvrttJVgyfhC.pdf

No article yet but the PDF is up. There may be some additional FAQ changes to come later.

Highlights:

General buff to all power armour units

All indirect fire weapons get nerfed

All bodyguard rules get nerfed

Some Custodes strats become one use per game and are limited to INFANTRY

Voidweavers are up to 130pts

Broadsides lose CORE

I am pretty happy with the changes, especially changing Favour of Cegorach, and Mirror Archetect for harlequins, those were two very abusive abilities.

The Warhammer 40,000 Balance Dataslate – Find Out What Changes Are in Store for Your Favourite Army - WarCom

Every Heretic Astartes unit reduces AP by 1? Unholy crap. Armour of Contempt? I prefer Armoured Ceramite.

I'm not sure it's enough to help Guard, but it's a start...

Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

This is precisely why 3rd-7th had the all-or-nothing AP system, 'cause they handed out -1 save mods to everything and his dog, and it made power armour basically worthless; Marines, with their vaunted 3+ saves, almost never took 3+ saves. So here we are again.

There aren't enough palms or faces in the world for this...

I know power armor could need a little bit help. But it would be better to lower the output in general. We have such ridiculous high damage partially because space marines went to 2 wounds and a lot of weapons became better to compansate a little bit. Now ignoring the ap boost of these changed weapon profiles makes space marines tougher but startes the cycle again. With weapons becomming even more deadlier...

Could have given Orks a bit of a boost, but instead Guard autowound everything on 6's for some inane reason. Sad to see my FSE losing 3" of their ability as well.

Sninsch wrote:
I know power armor could need a little bit help. But it would be better to lower the output in general. We have such ridiculous high damage partially because space marines went to 2 wounds and a lot of weapons became better to compansate a little bit. Now ignoring the ap boost of these changed weapon profiles makes space marines tougher but startes the cycle again. With weapons becomming even more deadlier...

The -1AP should have been there from the bloody start. It was such an easy mechanic to add and opens up space, finally, for other armies to also expand into 3+ saves but minus the modifier.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

But only for Power Armour.

No other factions rely on their armour saves, right?

Now Lasguns auto-wound Land Raiders and Knights on a 6.

Sure. That makes sense.

And I love the change to Indirect Fire.

1. You must have LOS to a target to fire.
2. Indirect Fire Weapons can ignore this rule.
3. But units firing Indirect Fire at -1BS.
4. And things getting hit by Indirect Fire at +1 Armour Save.
5. Unless your Guard in which case forget points 3 and 4.

Witnessing bloat in action is fun.

 vipoid wrote:
But only for Power Armour.

No other factions rely on their armour saves, right?

Not really the point I was getting at.

 vipoid wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

But only for Power Armour.

No other factions rely on their armour saves, right?

Power, termi, vehicle

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Not really the point I was getting at.

Oh I know, it just seems like classic GW.

"Don't worry, we'll fix the problem of lethality-escalation and special rules bloat by adding some more special rules that will blunt some of the most recent damage escalation, except that only to certain factions will benefit from it . . ."

I'm reposting this here as well, because hot damn this is too much fun!

Hi everyone!

I'm Guardsmen Johannsen. I have a Lasgun. I feel pretty confident that the God-Emperor of Mankind is behind me, willing me to greater and greater acts of heroism and bravery.

Hello there, Traitors Warlord Titan of a Legion long since lost to the Emperor's Grace. You sure are a big scary robot. But, I rolled a 6, so I auto-wound you.

Why, good day, blue-skinned Tau. Your Manta is a majestic feat of technology - for a xenos that is - and I have seen them glow as they enter the atmosphere at super-high speeds, dog fighting with all manner of aerial foes. But I have a Lasgun, and a natural 6, so I guess that counts for nothing.

Hey Eldar! Your Phantom Titans sure look like works of art, and they move like real people. They blur as they move gracefully, and Wraithbone has been, to my experience, an unknowable dark art capable of turning aside almost anything. But I rolled a 6, so feth you!

Autowound =/= Ignores Saves

Anyways, that plus the "all upgrades are rolled into the points costs" basically confirms that they're going to keep Guard as dumpsterfire GSC Lite statlines.

And? So? But? Therefore?

 vipoid wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

But only for Power Armour.

No other factions rely on their armour saves, right?

Well, it just says Astartes/Heretic Astartes.

Which makes me wonder about Scouts.

The IG is currently utter dogshit, even worse than CSM. Autowound on 6s to hit is idiotic, but it's a bandaid until the army get its Codex. Same goes for IG being able to ignore the new Indirect Fire Weapons rules (this new rule would have completely killed the army).

Yes, it's ugly. But it is hopefully only temporary.

This is precisely why 3rd-7th had the all-or-nothing AP system, 'cause they handed out -1 save mods to everything and his dog, and it made power armour basically worthless; Marines, with their vaunted 3+ saves, almost never took 3+ saves. So here we are again.

The all-or-nothing system is also not good. It emphasized the importance of AP3 weapons because of how popular SM are and high RoF with high strength weapons to simply force saves until you would fail them (that's why autocanons were considered superior to heavy bolters when dealing with T4 3+ save units).

The best system would be the current one but with more granularity and switching to D10. Alas, since we are stuck with D6, we will have to make do with special rules.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

But only for Power Armour.

No other factions rely on their armour saves, right?

Well, it just says Astartes/Heretic Astartes.

Which makes me wonder about Scouts.

It’s going to take a lot more then ignoring a point of AP to help scouts.

 Nevelon wrote:


It’s going to take a lot more then ignoring a point of AP to help scouts.

Ignoring two points of AP?

I'm just happy that GW is listening to the community and trying to balance the game more. That is a -much- healthier place to be than ignoring the community because of all the name calling. Sure, there are things that I would do differently, but its a very complex game and mistakes will happen.

What will not help is to take all their work and just crap on it because of a disagreement. "I think this might work better" is received way better than "you're stupid."

I'm happy to see Bodyguard go away for the most part. It was an abusive rule that invalidated snipers and just didn't make sense. I'm happy to see indirect being nerfed. As Selfcontrol pointed out, the Guard changes are to prop up a very bad codex until they get a new one.

Changes to Custodes and Harlequins seem reasonable and do not invalidate the codexes. I would have preferred to see a few more nerfs to Tau, but we'll see what the changes they have put in work and go from there.

Power Armor being stronger is a welcome change. I am looking forward to seeing these guys back on the table from time to time. Are Death Guard and Thousand Sons 'Heretic Astartes?'

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:


It’s going to take a lot more then ignoring a point of AP to help scouts.

Ignoring two points of AP?

Honestly, I’m not sure if ignoring all AP and making their 4+ a 4++ would be enough to save them in their current state. But that’s a bit off topic for here. They need a total rework, not a balance pass.

If it was for balancing　sure but it's just for changing imbalance to get players buy new models

Regarding the Armour of contempt rule, it shows the 4. keyword so doesn't all units in with those keywords get the bonus? so tanks, Dreads etc?

What is the impression on Custodes and Harlequin changes? Will it limit their power?

I like most of these changes, and with them rolling the Knight changes into their respective books this seems like a way for GW to open beta test some options in the game which is good too.

Not sure how I feel about 60 point Infantry Squads with free upgrades for Guard, but then again I'm not sure that letting them take special weapons for free actually fixes them.

tneva82 wrote:
If it was for balancing　sure but it's just for changing imbalance to get players buy new models

Lol does it even do that, that much? I don't foresee people scrambling to pick up Chaos Space Marines or Guard, especially not selling their Harlequins or Tau to do so.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm reposting this here as well, because hot damn this is too much fun!

Hi everyone!

I'm Guardsmen Johannsen. I have a Lasgun. I feel pretty confident that the God-Emperor of Mankind is behind me, willing me to greater and greater acts of heroism and bravery.

Hello there, Traitors Warlord Titan of a Legion long since lost to the Emperor's Grace. You sure are a big scary robot. But, I rolled a 6, so I auto-wound you.

Why, good day, blue-skinned Tau. Your Manta is a majestic feat of technology - for a xenos that is - and I have seen them glow as they enter the atmosphere at super-high speeds, dog fighting with all manner of aerial foes. But I have a Lasgun, and a natural 6, so I guess that counts for nothing.

Hey Eldar! Your Phantom Titans sure look like works of art, and they move like real people. They blur as they move gracefully, and Wraithbone has been, to my experience, an unknowable dark art capable of turning aside almost anything. But I rolled a 6, so feth you!

Yeah but it's a game and Titans being present in the game in the first place is effectively nonsensical and completely collapses balance, so this being a feature doesn't bother me - because you simply cannot simulate those vehicles in 40k in a serious manner.

 Fwlshadowalker wrote:
Regarding the Armour of contempt rule, it shows the 4. keyword so doesn't all units in with those keywords get the bonus? so tanks, Dreads etc?

What is the impression on Custodes and Harlequin changes? Will it limit their power?

Yup. Tanks, dreads, planes, Daemon engines.....

Edit: And Cultists! At least CSM Cultists. They still have the HERETIC ASTARTES keyword.

Could someone explain the changes to the bodyguard rule? As far as I can make out it now means you can now target the character if they're the closest, even if they have a bodyguard?

 Valkyrie wrote:
Could someone explain the changes to the bodyguard rule? As far as I can make out it now means you can now target the character if they're the closest, even if they have a bodyguard?

And snipers can shoot them, yes.

Nice that they threw a bone to Salamanders for handing out their ignore AP1 bit. Do other armies have a similar mechanic on a subfaction that got ignored a/o will work oddly with the new rule?

I'm an IG players, and looking at the new rule I'm going all OMG Emperor protect those in front of a horde list.

M.

Edit: A infantry squad with all bells and whistles was 90pts (Power weapon, plasma pistol, LasCan, melta, vox) now it's 60pts.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:


It’s going to take a lot more then ignoring a point of AP to help scouts.

Ignoring two points of AP?

Honestly, I’m not sure if ignoring all AP and making their 4+ a 4++ would be enough to save them in their current state. But that’s a bit off topic for here. They need a total rework, not a balance pass.

Didn't stop them from making a change on infantry squads, lol.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:


It’s going to take a lot more then ignoring a point of AP to help scouts.

Ignoring two points of AP?

Honestly, I’m not sure if ignoring all AP and making their 4+ a 4++ would be enough to save them in their current state. But that’s a bit off topic for here. They need a total rework, not a balance pass.

Didn't stop them from making a change on infantry squads, lol.

It’s been multiple editions since I’ve seen a guard army on the table, and haven’t been following their rules. The impression I have though is that they are in a bad place right now. I see all the call outs to them in this balance sheet as both an admission of that, and a sign that they are not going to get a codex anytime soon. So they get a handful of buffs as a hold you over, to keep the guardsmen from selling their armies and quitting 40k. Might not be enough to fix their problems, but keep them soldiering on in the face of massive codex creep.

Just curious about what the Starweaver and Voidweaver points were previously. I've yet to get that codex...

I think the changes to the guard could be enough to see a Guard list actually win something.

Each imperial guard squad has all of its updates free is huge. I now would spend 50 more points on the basic squads (for my brigade), but now save 360 points potentially on equipment.

This is the largest increase in lethality that the guard has seen in forever.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm reposting this here as well, because hot damn this is too much fun!

Hi everyone!

I'm Guardsmen Johannsen. I have a Lasgun. I feel pretty confident that the God-Emperor of Mankind is behind me, willing me to greater and greater acts of heroism and bravery.

Hello there, Traitors Warlord Titan of a Legion long since lost to the Emperor's Grace. You sure are a big scary robot. But, I rolled a 6, so I auto-wound you.

Why, good day, blue-skinned Tau. Your Manta is a majestic feat of technology - for a xenos that is - and I have seen them glow as they enter the atmosphere at super-high speeds, dog fighting with all manner of aerial foes. But I have a Lasgun, and a natural 6, so I guess that counts for nothing.

Hey Eldar! Your Phantom Titans sure look like works of art, and they move like real people. They blur as they move gracefully, and Wraithbone has been, to my experience, an unknowable dark art capable of turning aside almost anything. But I rolled a 6, so feth you!

I was confused by this at first as I'd missed the 'ranged attacks auto-wound on 6s to hit' rule.

Lasguns go pew, I guess.

SamusDrake wrote:
Just curious about what the Starweaver and Voidweaver points were previously. I've yet to get that codex...

80 and 90 respectively

SamusDrake wrote:
Just curious about what the Starweaver and Voidweaver points were previously. I've yet to get that codex...

Starweavers were 80pts, now +15pts
Voidweavers were 90pts, now +40pts

That's an increase of around 400pts on most of the recent Harlequin spam lists.

Cheers.

I'm guessing that the voidweaver will increase to 6 power in the next update.

Heck, the new "Hammer of the Emperor Rule" also applies to vehicles. That is a big improvement for multilasers.

For every weapon really. I think we are going to see Las/Plas guard squads coming back.

 Nevelon wrote:
Nice that they threw a bone to Salamanders for handing out their ignore AP1 bit. Do other armies have a similar mechanic on a subfaction that got ignored a/o will work oddly with the new rule?

It is not their ignore AP, as theirs only worked for AP-1, this works for all an every AP thrown at them. But yes they lost their chapter Tactic to my impression. Or it works strange. As their trait says to ignore AP-1, with the new rule AP-2 becomes AP-1, same for other rules which afaik state to ignore AP -1 or -2.
Or is that meant with the third bullet point?

This is a pretty sweeping set of changes, that is going to have a huge effect on the meta. I like the Armor of Contempt changes a lot.

Custodes got hit pretty hard. They'll need to reverse some of the changes here if they up the points. Auspice going to once per game is pretty brutal.

. I do feel Tau got off pretty light here, but we'll see how it goes in practice.

Not going to matter much if Crusher is still allowed when Nids release on Saturday.

bmsattler wrote:

...Power Armor being stronger is a welcome change. I am looking forward to seeing these guys back on the table from time to time. Are Death Guard and Thousand Sons 'Heretic Astartes?'

No. They are Bubonic Astartes and Arcana Astartes respectively.

 DreadfullyHopeful wrote:

bmsattler wrote:

...Power Armor being stronger is a welcome change. I am looking forward to seeing these guys back on the table from time to time. Are Death Guard and Thousand Sons 'Heretic Astartes?'

No. They are Bubonic Astartes and Arcana Astartes respectively.

They are also Heretic Astartes in addition to those things.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm reposting this here as well, because hot damn this is too much fun!

[i]Hi everyone!

I'm Guardsmen Johannsen. I have a Lasgun. I feel pretty confident that the God-Emperor of Mankind is behind me, willing me to greater and greater acts of heroism and bravery. [...]But I rolled a 6, so feth you!

I haven't had enough coffee to be sure, but am I right that now, per shot, a guardsman with a lasgun is twice as capable of wounding a vehicle (high toughness etc.) as a marine with a bolter?

I'm looking at my 100 infantrymen in packed tight formation: *Maniacal laughter*

Honestly though, GW has clearly reached a point where they have feth all run out ideas for the Guard and pump it up in a way that are both silly and sad for me. For me this proves that we will not see a Guard Dex before 2023 and if not it will be a horrible broken mess like the rules of that balancing fix. Sorry I'm out for now, I'll play one page rules, Killteam and focus on painting the shame away until they get their feth together.

And to be honest, the Hammer of the Emperor rule isn't even the worst offender. But that 60 points per squad and all upgrades for free completely undermines the modular arms approach. If you start buying HWTs and start building all sorts of specially equiped Sergeants/Vox Soldiers/Weapon Specialists, I'd like to remind you of the time Guardssquads had access to Power Axes/Maces and how that went.

These balance dataslates are starting to make my head hurt, and days like today where I'm happy I'm a filthy casual.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Now Lasguns auto-wound Land Raiders and Knights on a 6.

Sure. That makes sense.

Yes, it makes sense, because it both gives much needed boost to pure IG and has big opportunity cost in giving up ability to munchkin cherrypick best trait for every single unit. Hell, I would bet WAACers will call this laughably weak and will continue to stack cheese instead.

And big whoopeedoo, one IG squad will do less than a single extra wound thanks to this which will get promptly saved by these big units. Oh no, such power, much wow!

tneva82 wrote:
sure but it's just for changing imbalance to get players buy new models

0/10 bait, but OK, I will bite. What models exactly according to yet another wrong conspiracy theory GW wants to push with this change?

 Irbis wrote:
0/10 bait, but OK, I will bite. What models exactly according to yet another wrong conspiracy theory GW wants to push with this change?

Clearly it's the plastic Catachans they're trying to push. /s

 GiToRaZor wrote:

And to be honest, the Hammer of the Emperor rule isn't even the worst offender. But that 60 points per squad and all upgrades for free completely undermines the modular arms approach. If you start buying HWTs and start building all sorts of specially equiped Sergeants/Vox Soldiers/Weapon Specialists, I'd like to remind you of the time Guardssquads had access to Power Axes/Maces and how that went.

Frankly, I'm of the opinion that HWTs are going away from Infantry Squads. DKoK have yet to see them and the Cadian repack did not include a HWT.

Generally prefer AP resist to Invul as a mechanic.

The power armour thing seems like a tacit admission that handing out extra AP all over the shop was a blunder, but the toothpaste's out of the tube now so we get more convoluted exceptions to the standard rules piled on top of them.

The Guard auto-wound thing's just lazy, gamey and incredibly immersion-breaking – up there with "no second wound for Chaos Marines just because" on that front. Hate it.

 Fwlshadowalker wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Nice that they threw a bone to Salamanders for handing out their ignore AP1 bit. Do other armies have a similar mechanic on a subfaction that got ignored a/o will work oddly with the new rule?

It is not their ignore AP, as theirs only worked for AP-1, this works for all an every AP thrown at them. But yes they lost their chapter Tactic to my impression. Or it works strange. As their trait says to ignore AP-1, with the new rule AP-2 becomes AP-1, same for other rules which afaik state to ignore AP -1 or -2.
Or is that meant with the third bullet point?

The SM (and Sisters) sections points out that Sallies and Valorous heart swap their (-1 Ap counts as 0 AP) rule for 'attackers can't re-roll wound rolls'


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nazrak wrote:
The power armour thing seems like a tacit admission that handing out extra AP all over the shop was a blunder, but the toothpaste's out of the tube now so we get more convoluted exceptions to the standard rules piled on top of them.

Its quietly walking AP back to 3rd-7th edition. Low AP weapons matter against GEQ and Orks, but have no effect on Space marines. That it also affects higher AP is a little crazy, but hey, what's one more accounting step in this muddle of a game?
(As an aside, I feel bad for Howling Banshees again. This is functionally a stealth nerf for their primary job)


I'm more amused that they just ad hoc wrote two USRs (Bodyguard and Indirect Fire), to combat really specific problems.

The cracks in 9th edition are _really_ showing.

Does my ap0 ork lobba give people +1 to save now?

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Does my ap0 ork lobba give people +1 to save now?

Yep.

 Rihgu wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Does my ap0 ork lobba give people +1 to save now?

Yep.

Please read the actual rules of 40k. "When reducing an AP characteristic, add the appropriate amount to the characteristic, to a maximum of 0. For example: reducing an AP of -1 by 1 would result in an AP of 0; reducing an AP of 0 by 1 would result in an AP of 0."

 Nevelon wrote:
Nice that they threw a bone to Salamanders for handing out their ignore AP1 bit. Do other armies have a similar mechanic on a subfaction that got ignored a/o will work oddly with the new rule?

Yeah, Order of the Valorous Heart would reduce ap -1 and -2 by one point, that's been replaced by a 'can't re-roll to wound'.

Amusingly, the Minoris Order ability that reduces ap -1 to ap 0 was left unchanged.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Does my ap0 ork lobba give people +1 to save now?

Yep.

Please read the actual rules of 40k. "When reducing an AP characteristic, add the appropriate amount to the characteristic, to a maximum of 0. For example: reducing an AP of -1 by 1 would result in an AP of 0; reducing an AP of 0 by 1 would result in an AP of 0."

Read the actual rules of the indirect fire rule, which modify the armor save of the target, not the armor modifier of the attack.

 Rihgu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Does my ap0 ork lobba give people +1 to save now?

Yep.

Please read the actual rules of 40k. "When reducing an AP characteristic, add the appropriate amount to the characteristic, to a maximum of 0. For example: reducing an AP of -1 by 1 would result in an AP of 0; reducing an AP of 0 by 1 would result in an AP of 0."

Read the actual rules of the indirect fire rule, which modify the armor save of the target, not the armor modifier of the attack.

I just woke up and misread what he was asking, whoops, my bad.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Does my ap0 ork lobba give people +1 to save now?

Yep.

Please read the actual rules of 40k. "When reducing an AP characteristic, add the appropriate amount to the characteristic, to a maximum of 0. For example: reducing an AP of -1 by 1 would result in an AP of 0; reducing an AP of 0 by 1 would result in an AP of 0."

Read the actual rules of the indirect fire rule, which modify the armor save of the target, not the armor modifier of the attack.

I just woke up and misread what he was asking, whoops, my bad.

To be honest, I did the same thing. (You can see the edit to my post, where at first I answered the exact same thing you did )

 Irbis wrote:
And big whoopeedoo, one IG squad will do less than a single extra wound thanks to this which will get promptly saved by these big units. Oh no, such power, much wow!

So what you're saying, Irby, is that you're ok with Guardsmen auto-wounding Titans on 6's?

You don't see any conceptual issues with that, whatsoever?

Armor of Contempt only excludes Storm Shields, Relic Shields, Combat Shields, Force Shielding or Sacresant Shield, or under the effects of any ability that reduces or worsens the AP of an attack, so this means, it stacks with All Is Dust, effectively meaning they reduce AP by 2 against any D1 weapon... which is a lot with the TSons strat to reduce incoming damage on attacks by 1

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
And big whoopeedoo, one IG squad will do less than a single extra wound thanks to this which will get promptly saved by these big units. Oh no, such power, much wow!

So what you're saying, Irby, is that you're ok with Guardsmen auto-wounding Titans on 6's?

You don't see any conceptual issues with that, whatsoever?

If you're playing against a titan then the odds are you're in a super casual environment already, so I don't begrudge guardsmen being able to employ superior marksmanship or sheer dumb luck to hit something vulnerable, allowing them to bypass a titan's stupidly good toughness and being forced to use its stupidly good saves or risk losing one of its stupidly numerous wounds.

 Irbis wrote:
And big whoopeedoo, one IG squad will do less than a single extra wound thanks to this which will get promptly saved by these big units. Oh no, such power, much wow!

Even if you take a special and heavy weapon, 7 lasguns will still put out 14 or 28 shots with FRFSRF and/or being in rapid fire range. So that's 2.3 or 4.6 auto-wounds just from lasguns, regardless of whether you're shooting grots or Titans.

The way I justify it in my head is the weight of fire having a higher probability of hitting a weak spot, or multiple shots oversaturating the thermal limit of a given material. Imperfect, but it works.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Armor of Contempt only excludes Storm Shields, Relic Shields, Combat Shields, Force Shielding or Sacresant Shield, or under the effects of any ability that reduces or worsens the AP of an attack, so this means, it stacks with All Is Dust, effectively meaning they reduce AP by 2 against any D1 weapon... which is a lot with the TSons strat to reduce incoming damage on attacks by 1

I don't see a problem with that. They were reducing it by one anyway. This just keeps all the power armour in line. There are of course the subfactions that give various cover types at range, they are also "effectively" reducing the power of incoming attacks to a greater extent than previously and death guard are getting it on top of -1 damage too.

What it does mean for Tsons is that they get less use out of their invuln. Similar to regular terminators with a 5+, they never use their invuln either, unless you're shooting them with melta. Now with these new rules a terminator will need to be hit with a -5 AP weapon (or -6 whilst in cover) to force them to their invuln save.

I think that if they want to reduce lethality across the game (which I think is something a lot players want too), then the next balance data slate would be better providing an updated and complete list of all weapons in the game with entirely new profiles.

Lethality is something they should have been looking at from the start of the edition when they did a big slew of playtesting. Now the only way to address it properly is to look at everything in one go.

Man, the Salamander chapter tactic change coupled with Armor of Contempt is pretty nice. They are going to be tough as nails.

The fact that AoC affects pretty much every unit (not just infantry) is a big deal that might ACTUALLY shake up the meta.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the math while I'm at work but it seems pretty huge -- way bigger than I believe a lot are thinking.

I guess my imperial guard infantry squads with plasma, lascannon, bolter went down in points a fair bit, that's kinda nice. 78 to 60 points I think?

 Captain Joystick wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
And big whoopeedoo, one IG squad will do less than a single extra wound thanks to this which will get promptly saved by these big units. Oh no, such power, much wow!

So what you're saying, Irby, is that you're ok with Guardsmen auto-wounding Titans on 6's?

You don't see any conceptual issues with that, whatsoever?

If you're playing against a titan then the odds are you're in a super casual environment already, so I don't begrudge guardsmen being able to employ superior marksmanship or sheer dumb luck to hit something vulnerable, allowing them to bypass a titan's stupidly good toughness and being forced to use its stupidly good saves or risk losing one of its stupidly numerous wounds.

That point sure flew over your head there...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

This is precisely why 3rd-7th had the all-or-nothing AP system, 'cause they handed out -1 save mods to everything and his dog, and it made power armour basically worthless; Marines, with their vaunted 3+ saves, almost never took 3+ saves. So here we are again.

There aren't enough palms or faces in the world for this...

Omg, right? But even then, only for Power Armor. Necrons, Eldar or any other faction with 3+ personal armor can suck it, I guess?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and the Lasguns autowound on 6's. That's incredibl(ly dumb).

This belies some pretty fundamental problems with design+execution here.

 Captain Joystick wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
And big whoopeedoo, one IG squad will do less than a single extra wound thanks to this which will get promptly saved by these big units. Oh no, such power, much wow!

So what you're saying, Irby, is that you're ok with Guardsmen auto-wounding Titans on 6's?

You don't see any conceptual issues with that, whatsoever?

If you're playing against a titan then the odds are you're in a super casual environment already, so I don't begrudge guardsmen being able to employ superior marksmanship or sheer dumb luck to hit something vulnerable, allowing them to bypass a titan's stupidly good toughness and being forced to use its stupidly good saves or risk losing one of its stupidly numerous wounds.

Seeing titan auto loses game already is it too much　to ask for it to be at least durable?

Seeing those changes, it becomes pretty obvious that codex writers are free to write what they will, and the rules supervisor, whoever that is, only intervenes for the dataslate, which creates this ridiculous situation where GW seems to be solving problems after the fact, that could have been avoided when the codex was written.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

This is precisely why 3rd-7th had the all-or-nothing AP system, 'cause they handed out -1 save mods to everything and his dog, and it made power armour basically worthless; Marines, with their vaunted 3+ saves, almost never took 3+ saves. So here we are again.

There aren't enough palms or faces in the world for this...

Omg, right? But even then, only for Power Armor. Necrons, Eldar or any other faction with 3+ personal armor can suck it, I guess?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and the Lasguns autowound on 6's. That's incredibl(ly dumb).

This belies some pretty fundamental problems with design+execution here.

Yeah, I agree. Lasguns and frankly everything in the imperial guard army getting auto wound on 6s whilst at the same time they make the admech pay an arm and a leg for their troops that do this and the they're still boosting the costs of the strat that makes it better (whilst reducing its power) really sucks.

I think they just need to limit admech to 10 man squads and be done with it. Then I can go back to playing the codex as it was written.

No idea what they should do with guard (but not this!) Hopefully they had some better ideas whilst writing the codex and this nonsense doesn't stick.

The Black Adder wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

This is precisely why 3rd-7th had the all-or-nothing AP system, 'cause they handed out -1 save mods to everything and his dog, and it made power armour basically worthless; Marines, with their vaunted 3+ saves, almost never took 3+ saves. So here we are again.

There aren't enough palms or faces in the world for this...

Omg, right? But even then, only for Power Armor. Necrons, Eldar or any other faction with 3+ personal armor can suck it, I guess?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and the Lasguns autowound on 6's. That's incredibl(ly dumb).

This belies some pretty fundamental problems with design+execution here.

Yeah, I agree. Lasguns and frankly everything in the imperial guard army getting auto wound on 6s whilst at the same time they make the admech pay an arm and a leg for their troops that do this and the they're still boosting the costs of the strat that makes it better (whilst reducing its power) really sucks.

I think they just need to limit admech to 10 man squads and be done with it. Then I can go back to playing the codex as it was written.

No idea what they should do with guard (but not this!) Hopefully they had some better ideas whilst writing the codex and this nonsense doesn't stick.

You're not being serious are you? I play admech and their guns are way better, shoot at better BS/range, and their troops are pretty cheap. Guardsmen were straight trash compared to Skitarii even without stratagems or buffs of any kind.

Ever since the start of 8th there's a subset of people who just can't let the whole "lasguns can wound anything" thing go. In actual games it's just a non-issue. Every rule set has abstractions and weaknesses, and this just happens to be a small and very inconsequential weakness.

 Grimtuff wrote:
That point sure flew over your head there...

Maybe it did? If they're only sarcastically saying guard have been unfairly and egregiously buffed from bottom feeders to a slightly different tier of bottom feeders then I've clearly misread and overreacted.

 Captain Joystick wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Nice that they threw a bone to Salamanders for handing out their ignore AP1 bit. Do other armies have a similar mechanic on a subfaction that got ignored a/o will work oddly with the new rule?

Yeah, Order of the Valorous Heart would reduce ap -1 and -2 by one point, that's been replaced by a 'can't re-roll to wound'.

Amusingly, the Minoris Order ability that reduces ap -1 to ap 0 was left unchanged.

Which might actually become the single best order conviction in the army now, tbh. Making up for yet another balance slate nerf seems to be the name of the game for Sisters of Battle Listbuilding these days.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
And big whoopeedoo, one IG squad will do less than a single extra wound thanks to this which will get promptly saved by these big units. Oh no, such power, much wow!

So what you're saying, Irby, is that you're ok with Guardsmen auto-wounding Titans on 6's?

You don't see any conceptual issues with that, whatsoever?

To flip it around: ever played against a Titan? Like, ever? Is it worth devoting Internet inches to this hypothetical Titan appearing in so many normal adhoc 40K games?

Taking the edge case that won't even come up as the arbiter of awful seems like mountains/molehills.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
To flip it around: ever played against a Titan? Like, ever?

You seem to be missing the larger point. This rule is a problem on a fundamental level.

To quote catbarf: "... there is no place for highly abstract 'game-y' mechanics, and certainly not for inconsistent application such that the most basic infantry in the game can auto-wound anything in the game on a 6 but elite special forces operators can't because reasons."

Titans represent the absolute extreme of the example, but the rule itself presents problems on its base conceptual level, be it Land Raiders or Hive Tyrants or whatever.

Sigh.... Did they not consider at all how this would effect Chaos Daemons, especially the lesser daemons? They should have been exempted from "armor of contempt", easily justified for Warp monsters.

Gleefully rubs hands together as I look at my piles of PA Grey Knights.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
To flip it around: ever played against a Titan? Like, ever?

You seem to be missing the larger point. This rule is a problem on a fundamental level.

To quote catbarf: "... there is no place for highly abstract 'game-y' mechanics, and certainly not for inconsistent application such that the most basic infantry in the game can auto-wound anything in the game on a 6 but elite special forces operators can't because reasons."

Titans represent the absolute extreme of the example, but the rule itself presents problems on its base conceptual level, be it Land Raiders or Hive Tyrants or whatever.

I missed nothing. Just demonstrating that hyperbole often undermines an argument, not underlines.

Quick Mathhammwr. The 9 lasguns from a squad of Cadian Guardsmen with full rerolls to hit plus First Rank Second Rank pump out 36 shots at half range. That kills… 2 Intercessors in the open. One if the Intercessors are in cover. It’s not utterly game-breaking, though on occasion could be strong.

 Rihgu wrote:

 DreadfullyHopeful wrote:

bmsattler wrote:

...Power Armor being stronger is a welcome change. I am looking forward to seeing these guys back on the table from time to time. Are Death Guard and Thousand Sons 'Heretic Astartes?'

No. They are Bubonic Astartes and Arcana Astartes respectively.

They are also Heretic Astartes in addition to those things.

I stand corrected. Thanks !

With every new codex or balance FAQ, the more I feel the system needs to switch to D8 or D10. There's far too much squashed into the D6 roll, that they keep adding odd rules to try and make things different

I think the changes to Indirect fire are good and the changes to the Bodyguard rule are good (if long overdue). Not sure they have really fixed Tau or Quins (quins can just switch out to bikes now which also had about a 70% win rate at adepticon) but i guess we will see.

Not sure what they were thinking with some of the Custodes changes. Custodes needed points adjustments not having their defensive strats nerfed into oblivion.

Quasistellar wrote:

The Black Adder wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Armour of Contempt aka "Oh God we handed out too many -1APs to things... umm... here's a patch!"

This is precisely why 3rd-7th had the all-or-nothing AP system, 'cause they handed out -1 save mods to everything and his dog, and it made power armour basically worthless; Marines, with their vaunted 3+ saves, almost never took 3+ saves. So here we are again.

There aren't enough palms or faces in the world for this...

Omg, right? But even then, only for Power Armor. Necrons, Eldar or any other faction with 3+ personal armor can suck it, I guess?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and the Lasguns autowound on 6's. That's incredibl(ly dumb).

This belies some pretty fundamental problems with design+execution here.

Yeah, I agree. Lasguns and frankly everything in the imperial guard army getting auto wound on 6s whilst at the same time they make the admech pay an arm and a leg for their troops that do this and the they're still boosting the costs of the strat that makes it better (whilst reducing its power) really sucks.

I think they just need to limit admech to 10 man squads and be done with it. Then I can go back to playing the codex as it was written.

No idea what they should do with guard (but not this!) Hopefully they had some better ideas whilst writing the codex and this nonsense doesn't stick.

You're not being serious are you? I play admech and their guns are way better, shoot at better BS/range, and their troops are pretty cheap. Guardsmen were straight trash compared to Skitarii even without stratagems or buffs of any kind.

Ever since the start of 8th there's a subset of people who just can't let the whole "lasguns can wound anything" thing go. In actual games it's just a non-issue. Every rule set has abstractions and weaknesses, and this just happens to be a small and very inconsequential weakness.

I didn't (and still don't) particularly care that lasguns could wound everything on 6s to wound. However the new rule is everything in a guard army automatically wounds on a 6 to hit. I wasn't trying to make some sort of crap meme post, I was being serious.

Standard vanguard troops have 3 shots strength 3, with no AP at 18", with the ability to auto wound on 6s to hit thanks to some crazy weapons that gradually poison the user. It doesn't apply to their special weapons and they don't get heavy weapons.

Following some rather nasty win rates GW chose to increase the power level of vanguard by 50% and to limit the tools they could use to increase the auto wound mechanic. Now they've extended that same mechanic to every shot from an entire army.

Is it broken and OP? I don't know, I've not tried it yet, but it feels bad from my perspective as an admech player and it is clearly just a sweeping mechanical patch instead of something thought through and justified by the background.

 Predaking wrote:
With every new codex or balance FAQ, the more I feel the system needs to switch to D8 or D10. There's far too much squashed into the D6 roll, that they keep adding odd rules to try and make things different

This. There are only so many numbers in a d6. Custodes for example skip the first step with their 2+, their Strats can make a joke out of the toughness during the to wound roll, and they carry enough high AP weapons to null armor saves of 3+. So we are left with a how many wounds does the target have.

If 40K is going to keep going this way, GW better change to d8s next Ed.

M.

Conceptually, I can see this is the reason the Imperium uses lasguns. Cheap, reliable, point and shoot and still a lethal laser if you hit a place not armoured against lasers.

Full auto lasguns fired on mass with no recoil will hit *something*, and perhaps do enough damage to cause a problem.

They'll switch to another dice type in 10th just so the whales buy a $35 dice set with 3x d10s because it has their army logo on it.

The Black Adder wrote:

I didn't (and still don't) particularly care that lasguns could wound everything on 6s to wound. However the new rule is everything in a guard army automatically wounds on a 6 to hit. I wasn't trying to make some sort of crap meme post, I was being serious.

Standard vanguard troops have 3 shots strength 3, with no AP at 18", with the ability to auto wound on 6s to hit thanks to some crazy weapons that gradually poison the user. It doesn't apply to their special weapons and they don't get heavy weapons.

Oh please.

Following some rather nasty win rates GW chose to increase the power level of vanguard by 50% and to limit the tools they could use to increase the auto wound mechanic. Now they've extended that same mechanic to every shot from an entire army.

And prior to that, despite people LITERALLY TELLING THEM IT WOULD BE A PROBLEM, they doubled the unit size and decreased the amount of specialization that a squad could factor in for both Rangers and Vanguard.

Is it broken and OP? I don't know, I've not tried it yet, but it feels bad from my perspective as an admech player and it is clearly just a sweeping mechanical patch instead of something thought through and justified by the background.

Frankly, Vanguard were broken since the start. It's just that you did not see them as much.

I say this as an AdMech and a Guard player. AdMech have been crapped on since some chucklehead got the bright idea to roll both books into one without actually considering how things should work. They've been crapped on since they gutted the flavor of the Skitarii and seemingly are attempting to do nothing but bring the Mechanicum into 40k proper.

Rangers lost their "elite, implacable hunters" vibe in favor of just being a big block of pewpew. Vanguard lost their weird "we're gonna poison the landscape" vibe for being...a big block of pewpew as well.

The army's been flanderized as part of its whole "bring them together" nonsense. It sucks, but ya might want to not complain about it here.

 Kanluwen wrote:
AdMech have been crapped on since some chucklehead got the bright idea to roll both books into one without actually considering how things should work. They've been crapped on since they gutted the flavor of the Skitarii and seemingly are attempting to do nothing but bring the Mechanicum into 40k proper.

According to James Hewitt (who was in the 40k studio at the time) the line was designed as a single book that was split in half because of White Dwarf release cycles at the time and stupid company policies involving how releases could work.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
AdMech have been crapped on since some chucklehead got the bright idea to roll both books into one without actually considering how things should work. They've been crapped on since they gutted the flavor of the Skitarii and seemingly are attempting to do nothing but bring the Mechanicum into 40k proper.

According to James Hewitt (who was in the 40k studio at the time) the line was designed as a single book that was split in half because of White Dwarf release cycles at the time and stupid company policies involving how releases could work.

Kan knows this already, he just refuses to accept it because he liked one of the half-Codices more than the other and can't accept that the AdMech were always meant to be one army.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
AdMech have been crapped on since some chucklehead got the bright idea to roll both books into one without actually considering how things should work. They've been crapped on since they gutted the flavor of the Skitarii and seemingly are attempting to do nothing but bring the Mechanicum into 40k proper.

According to James Hewitt (who was in the 40k studio at the time) the line was designed as a single book that was split in half because of White Dwarf release cycles at the time and stupid company policies involving how releases could work.

Kan knows this already, he just refuses to accept it because he liked one of the half-Codices more than the other and can't accept that the AdMech were always meant to be one army.

I mean it doesn't help that it was a really dumb thing to split the army that way just because of the magazine, but Kirby's GW was an increasingly worse time period.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
AdMech have been crapped on since some chucklehead got the bright idea to roll both books into one without actually considering how things should work. They've been crapped on since they gutted the flavor of the Skitarii and seemingly are attempting to do nothing but bring the Mechanicum into 40k proper.

According to James Hewitt (who was in the 40k studio at the time) the line was designed as a single book that was split in half because of White Dwarf release cycles at the time and stupid company policies involving how releases could work.

Which is fine, but it has literally nothing to do with how poorly meshed the armies have been since actually being put together.

It goes to show that they were better separately.

Oh I completely agree, but the constant refusal to even believe that AdMech were meant to be one single army is just one of many things that drives him mad (just ask him about Lasgun sergeants!) so, were I you, I wouldn't expect a positive response to your comments. Just more denials.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
AdMech have been crapped on since some chucklehead got the bright idea to roll both books into one without actually considering how things should work. They've been crapped on since they gutted the flavor of the Skitarii and seemingly are attempting to do nothing but bring the Mechanicum into 40k proper.

According to James Hewitt (who was in the 40k studio at the time) the line was designed as a single book that was split in half because of White Dwarf release cycles at the time and stupid company policies involving how releases could work.

There's a lot of other fantastic anecdotes in that interview that will explain everything wrong with GW

So there is a normal waterfall of criticisms, complaints, and outright bitching that accompanies even the best balance updates. But this is quite clearly something else entirely.

Serious question; do you all think this update even a net positive, or does it do more harm than good?

Toofast wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
AdMech have been crapped on since some chucklehead got the bright idea to roll both books into one without actually considering how things should work. They've been crapped on since they gutted the flavor of the Skitarii and seemingly are attempting to do nothing but bring the Mechanicum into 40k proper.

According to James Hewitt (who was in the 40k studio at the time) the line was designed as a single book that was split in half because of White Dwarf release cycles at the time and stupid company policies involving how releases could work.

There's a lot of other fantastic anecdotes in that interview that will explain everything wrong with GW

More what was wrong with them at the time. The management shook up a lot when Kirby left.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So there is a normal waterfall of criticisms, complaints, and outright bitching that accompanies even the best balance updates. But this is quite clearly something else entirely.

Serious question; do you all think this update even a net positive, or does it do more harm than good?

Generally more good than bad.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
To quote catbarf: "... there is no place for highly abstract 'game-y' mechanics, and certainly not for inconsistent application such that the most basic infantry in the game can auto-wound anything in the game on a 6 but elite special forces operators can't because reasons."

This is where you draw the line? Seriously?

Let's see, you can give Tau squad a set of camping knives. Suddenly, better bond than a tactical squad of marines who served together for three centuries! Or, the IG order to withdraw and fire. Ultramarines can do it too, at -1 to fire. Apparently SM captain is a mook with no command skills next to 19 year old IG ensign genius ordering his superior, more disciplined troops to execute a superior version of the maneuver. Tau sarge giving his troops speech on how to gun the enemies to help your buddy is vastly more motivating than the same done by SM lieutenant, who just can't bring himself to tell his troops to help the next squad over with their overwatch. It would be unsporting, innit? Eldar troops can fire extra hard by pressing trigger twice. Alas, mankind can't replicate this awesome stratagem. Nor can they grasp ork concept of swinging a knife really hard for extra AP. Then... [etc etc for the next 200 lines]

If we look at what simple things the mooks of other races can do, and SM can't, then SM are surely the least capable force in the game

Looks like terminators are back on the menu for Death Guard.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So there is a normal waterfall of criticisms, complaints, and outright bitching that accompanies even the best balance updates. But this is quite clearly something else entirely.

Serious question; do you all think this update even a net positive, or does it do more harm than good?

Net positive, though I think I would've liked to see a hard reduction in the number of Voidweavers that can be taken, combined with the point increase.

I'm glad that Imperial Guard got an exception for their ignores-line-of-sight weapons. My mortar heavy weapon teams have never killed anything, any worse and they would start bringing enemies back

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So there is a normal waterfall of criticisms, complaints, and outright bitching that accompanies even the best balance updates. But this is quite clearly something else entirely.

Serious question; do you all think this update even a net positive, or does it do more harm than good?

This Balance slate is a very large net positive overall. I think we're probably going to start seeing a much more diverse meta, and some armies we haven't seen for a while, like sisters and DG start popping up... as long as Crusher gets reigned in.

We'll also have to see if this was the right direction for the Harlequins.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Looks like terminators are back on the menu for Death Guard.

But don't Death Guard like maggoty bread?

Thanks for the responses so far everyone!

 Irbis wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
To quote catbarf: "... there is no place for highly abstract 'game-y' mechanics, and certainly not for inconsistent application such that the most basic infantry in the game can auto-wound anything in the game on a 6 but elite special forces operators can't because reasons."

This is where you draw the line? Seriously?

Let's see, you can give Tau squad a set of camping knives. Suddenly, better bond than a tactical squad of marines who served together for three centuries! Or, the IG order to withdraw and fire. Ultramarines can do it too, at -1 to fire. Apparently SM captain is a mook with no command skills next to 19 year old IG ensign genius ordering his superior, more disciplined troops to execute a superior version of the maneuver. Tau sarge giving his troops speech on how to gun the enemies to help your buddy is vastly more motivating than the same done by SM lieutenant, who just can't bring himself to tell his troops to help the next squad over with their overwatch. It would be unsporting, innit? Eldar troops can fire extra hard by pressing trigger twice. Alas, mankind can't replicate this awesome stratagem. Nor can they grasp ork concept of swinging a knife really hard for extra AP. Then... [etc etc for the next 200 lines]

If we look at what simple things the mooks of other races can do, and SM can't, then SM are surely the least capable force in the game

For one, no, it is not that one thing that draws the line. It is the straw that breaks the camel's back and quite frankly you know that.

Secondly, none of those things are nearly as bad. I can totally believe that random mortal scrubs form emotional attachments deeper and more readily than marines can. Marines aren't mortal anymore, they are detached from their humanity and that is a core pillar of the fiction. And yeah, I can believe that a guardsman is more able to dodge out of combat than a marine because that's how mass and inertia works. And so on. Seriously you went looking for examples of 40k being unrealistic and THAT is what you came up with?

I'd like to take this moment and thank today's sponsor, Raid Shadow Legends.

No seriously, I'd like to remind everyone that people don't have to explain their right or thought process on an opinion. The point of this forum is to have an opinion and it's ok if they are conflicting. If you find yourself wanting to challenge someone for a repeated argument you find silly, consider to take it to the open threads or consider blocking the person. But this is News and Rumours, please stick to three point communication. That is: Talk about the substance, not the person.

A little weird how armour of contempt makes marine combat doctrines do nothing for certain weapons now when facing certain factions.

Standard bolters, combat knives, auto bolt rifles, hurricane bolters... It's not a huge deal at all and they obviously still work against other factions, just that the blanket approach to amour of contempt has made some options non takes vs certain enemies, or well, not non takes, sure auto bolt rifles still will be taken, but they don't get a buff in tactical at all any more.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So there is a normal waterfall of criticisms, complaints, and outright bitching that accompanies even the best balance updates. But this is quite clearly something else entirely.

Serious question; do you all think this update even a net positive, or does it do more harm than good?

Net positive, though I think I would've liked to see a hard reduction in the number of Voidweavers that can be taken, combined with the point increase.

If 9 is still issue alter　stats or up points further. Don"t apply band aid limit to numbers　to op unit which doesn't fix op'ness.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Serious question; do you all think this update even a net positive, or does it do more harm than good?

I don't think it can be either. The whole update is far too funny, in my mind, for anything else.

They've just thrown rules at problems in the hope they will go away, problems that they themselves created. People complain about accessibility in 40k, and how it's better harder and harder to introduce new people with the endless multi-layered rules, and this "balance" dataslate just slathers a few more layers of rules on top of what we already have, and allows Guardsmen to auto-wound anything on a 6.

Can anyone who's been playing Guard for even a short time tell me with a straight face that yes, this seems like the kind of thing that Guard should have been always doing? That this is the logical endpoint of the struggles of Imperial Guard players? That this bonkers new rule strikes you as a nuanced and measured approach to rules design?

It's such a shift for the dumber that hardly anyone's even talking about the reason this dataslate was so needed in the first place - Voidweavers killing everything. That actually got fixed (or rather, an attempt at a fix was put in place - we'll need to see it in action to see if it worked), but it's a damned sideshow over Marines getting better power armour and Guardsmen squads being able to shoot the wings off Mortarion at 50 paces.

I guess I could lean towards the side of doing more harm than good specifically because of the change of points to a squad of Guardsmen. Removing points costs from all their upgrades/options reduces granularity, and essentially turns points into Power Level with extra digits. It's the second unit they've done this too, and I fear that going forward a squad will just be "X" points with free everything else, defeating the entire purpose of a points system. Whether you consider that a bad or a good thing depends on whether you are Kanluwen or not.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

They've just thrown rules at problems in the hope they will go away, problems that they themselves created

nothing special for GW and they usual solution, just change things by adding rules so that everyone has to adept the lists and until the last one gets that this does not improved balance but just shifted things around the next update or edition will do it again
but this time the patch is more entertaining and we see a shift in design (again)

before everything was turned into a stratagem, no matter if it made sense or not, and now the one thing that should be one becomes a Special Rule and we see the general return of USR's

so no matter how bad the balance was, it will be worse because even if there was playtesting before it won't match the new design, specially if the new books follow this (with special rules rather than stratagems)

PS: following the Mantic advertising for FireFight, they dropped the usual advertising with good written rules etc. but going back ~2 weeks all those stuff about better balanced and tested factions, games that are not decided in the list building step etc. you could get the feeling that they have already known what will happen (also by having the release a week after the balance update)

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So there is a normal waterfall of criticisms, complaints, and outright bitching that accompanies even the best balance updates. But this is quite clearly something else entirely.

Serious question; do you all think this update even a net positive, or does it do more harm than good?

I am honestly excited to pick up my Death Guard from the drawer and testing again. Even my sisters might have some fun now.

Harlequins have also been curbed a lot which does mean that insane WR will probably go down. Custodes seem to have had someone also pull their leash so they might be strong but not overwhelming anymore.

The big question is how Tau are going to be. The nerfs weren't that big and I know the people around me fear that Tau are going to dominate the meta still with Tyranids sharing their space. We will of course see, but that is the general mood around me.

CWE Eldar gets an improvement on shuriken we have begged for 3+ years.

1 month later. Makes their -1 ap improvement irrelevant...

yay....

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

They've just thrown rules at problems in the hope they will go away, problems that they themselves created. People complain about accessibility in 40k, and how it's better harder and harder to introduce new people with the endless multi-layered rules, and this "balance" dataslate just slathers a few more layers of rules on top of what we already have, and allows Guardsmen to auto-wound anything on a 6.

Can anyone who's been playing Guard for even a short time tell me with a straight face that yes, this seems like the kind of thing that Guard should have been always doing? That this is the logical endpoint of the struggles of Imperial Guard players? That this bonkers new rule strikes you as a nuanced and measured approach to rules design?

From what I've seen on Dakka in discussions on how to fix Guard? Yes, some people think auto-wounding on 6 was the correct way to take them, or at least take the lasgun.

Personally I have no idea how to fix the Guard. They need a rework from the ground up for sure.

Based on the Knights getting their rule rolled into their book it seems like the dataslates could be a kind of open beta for changes which could help a fair bit if it means they get some event data showing changes are too strong.

All hail our new tyranid overlords and aeldari right behind them…

The fact Gw ignored these 2 factions show they still have no idea how to balance anything. We just go from 1 broken codex to the next… yea maybe aeldari wasn’t as broken as harlequins or even tau but they were still winning vs those codexes at an extremely high rate compared to every other codex.

gungo wrote:
All hail our new tyranid overlords and aeldari right behind them…

The fact Gw ignored these 2 factions show they still have no idea how to balance anything. We just go from 1 broken codex to the next… yea maybe aeldari wasn’t as broken as harlequins or even tau but they were still winning vs those codexes at an extremely high rate compared to every other codex.

They nerfed clowns, and Armour of Contempt nerfs Shuriken weapons against those armies who got buffed. Not every change has to be directly made to an army to affect that army.

YES! Power armor now are REAL Power Armor. Sorta.

Also happy for the many CORE keyword added to Necrons.

 Viridovix wrote:
YES! Power armor now are REAL Power Armor. Sorta.

Also happy for the many CORE keyword added to Necrons.

The Necron Core isn’t new, they added all those in the last patch. This simply includes all changes, not just the new ones.

 AduroT wrote:

 Viridovix wrote:
YES! Power armor now are REAL Power Armor. Sorta.

Also happy for the many CORE keyword added to Necrons.

The Necron Core isn’t new, they added all those in the last patch. This simply includes all changes, not just the new ones.

Well sans the Knights changes, but those got rolled into the Knights books.

 AduroT wrote:

 Viridovix wrote:
YES! Power armor now are REAL Power Armor. Sorta.

Also happy for the many CORE keyword added to Necrons.

The Necron Core isn’t new, they added all those in the last patch. This simply includes all changes, not just the new ones.

Ah I see. Completely missed!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Can anyone who's been playing Guard for even a short time tell me with a straight face that yes, this seems like the kind of thing that Guard should have been always doing? That this is the logical endpoint of the struggles of Imperial Guard players? That this bonkers new rule strikes you as a nuanced and measured approach to rules design?

Honestly it seems. . . kinda fluffy for guard to use volume of fire and faith in the emperor to occasionally find their mark.

Traditionally, there has been almost nothing in the game as pointless and demoralizing to use as basic Guardsmen. They cost money to buy and time to build and paint, and they routinely do feth-all on the battlefield, apart from sometimes contesting objectives. The whole reason Guard originally got the orders mechanic was to make their dogshit infantry statistically able to affect the outcomes of games you were usually forced by the FOC to take them. It's like if Orks had to field 2-6 mandatory Grot units without runtherds but with a Kannon or Lobba each

 ClockworkZion wrote:

gungo wrote:
All hail our new tyranid overlords and aeldari right behind them…

The fact Gw ignored these 2 factions show they still have no idea how to balance anything. We just go from 1 broken codex to the next… yea maybe aeldari wasn’t as broken as harlequins or even tau but they were still winning vs those codexes at an extremely high rate compared to every other codex.

They nerfed clowns, and Armour of Contempt nerfs Shuriken weapons against those armies who got buffed. Not every change has to be directly made to an army to affect that army.

They also nerfed the truly degenerate Eldar indirect fire builds. I really doubt Craftworlds will be sitting at the top of the meta. Probably more GSC level, which is fine.

Very interesting points and discussion.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

gungo wrote:
All hail our new tyranid overlords and aeldari right behind them…

The fact Gw ignored these 2 factions show they still have no idea how to balance anything. We just go from 1 broken codex to the next… yea maybe aeldari wasn’t as broken as harlequins or even tau but they were still winning vs those codexes at an extremely high rate compared to every other codex.

They nerfed clowns, and Armour of Contempt nerfs Shuriken weapons against those armies who got buffed. Not every change has to be directly made to an army to affect that army.

Armor of contempt won’t keep eldar from winning which they already were doing… it’s a bandaid to most power armor armies.. I think sisters might be legit A tier, but honestly what other power armor armies was even remotely legitimate that a boost to basic power armor units would make the army competitive? I mean those units mostly needed the help but that’s because the vast majority of them were just bad choices before.

Tyranids without a day 1 errata is busted and eldar is still overpowered… custodes are mostly done.. tau are good but has more counters now. My point still stands the meta is still busted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

gungo wrote:
All hail our new tyranid overlords and aeldari right behind them…

The fact Gw ignored these 2 factions show they still have no idea how to balance anything. We just go from 1 broken codex to the next… yea maybe aeldari wasn’t as broken as harlequins or even tau but they were still winning vs those codexes at an extremely high rate compared to every other codex.

They nerfed clowns, and Armour of Contempt nerfs Shuriken weapons against those armies who got buffed. Not every change has to be directly made to an army to affect that army.

They also nerfed the truly degenerate Eldar indirect fire builds. I really doubt Craftworlds will be sitting at the top of the meta. Probably more GSC level, which is fine.

Craftworld wont Tyranids will be but craftworld will still be right behind them.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/zNYDiBPKGflEhGZp.pdf

Revised dataslate uploaded today with obsec restored to Knights, and clarifications on Guard:

Hammer of the Emperor: If every <Regiment> unit in your army is drawn from the same regiment, then each time a <Regiment> model from your army makes a ranged attack, an unmodified hit roll of 6 automatically wounds the target. Note that units listed as Advisors and Auxilla (including Militarum Tempestus units) do not prevent other Astra Militarum units from your army from gaining this rule, but Advisors and Auxilla units (including Militarum Tempestus units) never benefit from this rule.’

And now they’ve eliminated mid supplement use too.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/XTEpZheWFGC2pWI3.pdf

Crusher, Levi dead.

Crusher is understandable. I don't like the precedent killing Levi sets. They should have just updated it via FAQ if that was the issue.

That does seem odd in the case of Leviathan, and unfair in the case of Scions not getting HotE.

"That book you got not long ago? Yeah, it's not legal for your army anymore. Sucks to be you I guess!"

It’s crazy those supplements (late october 2021) even the white dwarf (December 2021) are only a few months old…

We are at the point now where buying rules don’t even last 6months before they can be completely invalidated (not just faq/errata). That’s insane for a $55 book!


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Quasistellar wrote:
That does seem odd in the case of Leviathan, and unfair in the case of Scions not getting HotE.

Funny enough I think there was a play in there where a scion army would have been slightly competitive… now I don’t think there is a list that’s actually competitive for guards. The buff is strong but guardsmen are so easy to shift i don’t think it really matters.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"That book you got not long ago? Yeah, it's not legal for your army anymore. Sucks to be you I guess!"

White Knights will defend it via "just use it anyway!" and "What are you, a power gamer?"

On the one hand, they told us upfront that the warzones for this year would be temporary garbage publications.

It doesn't explain why they still went ahead and did them or why people bought them (except those two things basically answering each other), but hopefully this will deter people from chasing this junk.


on guard- well, at least scions don't turn it off for the rest of the army I guess. But... yeah, well. Don't like this patch approach anyway. I'm not putting guard on the table until the codex comes out.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"That book you got not long ago? Yeah, it's not legal for your army anymore. Sucks to be you I guess!"

White Knights will defend it via "just use it anyway!" and "What are you, a power gamer?"

Was there a sale on straw? Getting those strawmen set up early, I see!

It's called poisoning the well actually, but it doesn't make him wrong.

It’s not safe to drink from the Dakka well due to the salt content.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"That book you got not long ago? Yeah, it's not legal for your army anymore. Sucks to be you I guess!"

White Knights will defend it via "just use it anyway!" and "What are you, a power gamer?"

Don't forget "You already have lots of books !" and the ever popular "It's just toys !".

Sounds like for guardsmen, the more reasonable approach would have been “autowounds enemy INFANTRY on a hit roll of 6”.

And does this mean that the upgraded fleshborers don’t even get to use their spiffy AP -1 for a month before being nerfed?

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s not safe to drink from the Dakka well due to the salt content.

Great, it will preserve my meat and i'll still be here to bitch in one hundred years, when we reach 40th ed and the Primaris get their 10 000th relase.

Voss wrote:
On the one hand, they told us upfront that the warzones for this year would be temporary garbage publications.

It doesn't explain why they still went ahead and did them or why people bought them (except those two things basically answering each other), but hopefully this will deter people from chasing this junk.


on guard- well, at least scions don't turn it off for the rest of the army I guess. But... yeah, well. Don't like this patch approach anyway. I'm not putting guard on the table until the codex comes out.

I mean every tyranid player pretty much used (and had to use those supplements to be competitive).. if the event requires them to have the book (which after this nonsense I hope no event enforces that junk) then they had to get it to have a competitive army list.

Still doesn’t make it any less crazy that Gw releases a $55 book of rules that expires in 5 months at least white dwarf only costs $4-5.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"That book you got not long ago? Yeah, it's not legal for your army anymore. Sucks to be you I guess!"

White Knights will defend it via "just use it anyway!" and "What are you, a power gamer?"

Even the white knights aren't defending this one.

I dunno, reddit seems really happy.

so this is what "stay positive towards the game" means

but at least Reddit is happy

Pretty much everyone that isn't playing Tyranids is happy about it, because new Codex with Leviathan and Crusher Stampede rules would have been pretty much bs.

Still does feel bad for us Tyranid players.

Nids with those 2 supplements and everything else getting nerfed would've had 80% win rate.

gungo wrote:

Still doesn’t make it any less crazy that Gw releases a $55 book of rules that expires in 5 months at least white dwarf only costs $4-5.

GW have producing mixed content books like these for years. Some people do actually buy them for the fluff & artwork content (which isn't bad), some buy them for the interesting rules, some for both. However in previous editions rules in ephemeral books like these weren't really part of the main 40k game. They tended to be targeted at narrative campaigns or under the Apocalypse brand, so the rules content and longevity didn't matter too much. Everything was intended for a casual game environment where those rules could be kept 'viable' for longer*.

I believe the root issue is that GW are still doing these books with matched play rules content at the same time as making an active effort at game balance. Both actions are not compatible. If they're going to produce one-off supplements like this they need to go back to making them for narrative / Crusade style content only. If GW's goal is to write temporary rules to keep a faction viable in matched play, those rules should either be a free download or part of a product with a longer shelf life.

*let's not forget the 6E Iyanden Apocalypse book, which had several rules broken by 7E releasing a week later

Toofast wrote:
Nids with those 2 supplements and everything else getting nerfed would've had 80% win rate.

They're still probably gonna have like a 70% of something. Y'know what they say, life, uh, finds a way.

Why are people surprised that a 5 month old book already got taken behind the shed, afterall its still the same GW that did this to traitor legions supplement in 7th.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Why are people surprised that a 5 month old book already got taken behind the shed, afterall its still the same GW that did this to traitor legions supplement in 7th.

Because I keep being told "Kirby and his team aren't there any more, things are DIFFERENT". I'm not sure how they're different, balance is still atrocious and $50+ books are still being invalidated 6 months after release. They have a "community" website now, but it's just ads for their upcoming releases. They have an app for rules now, but you have to pay for a subscription, pay for a physical book to get the rules digitally, and it has more errors than a free app that was abandoned by its developer a year ago. Prices are still going up faster than the rate of inflation. The website created by Kirby's wife still can't distinguish between temporarily out of stock and never coming back. Someone tell me what has changed so drastically since Kirby left.

Toofast wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Why are people surprised that a 5 month old book already got taken behind the shed, afterall its still the same GW that did this to traitor legions supplement in 7th.

Because I keep being told "Kirby and his team aren't there any more, things are DIFFERENT". I'm not sure how they're different, balance is still atrocious and $50+ books are still being invalidated 6 months after release. They have a "community" website now, but it's just ads for their upcoming releases. They have an app for rules now, but you have to pay for a subscription, pay for a physical book to get the rules digitally, and it has more errors than a free app that was abandoned by its developer a year ago. Prices are still going up faster than the rate of inflation. The website created by Kirby's wife still can't distinguish between temporarily out of stock and never coming back. Someone tell me what has changed so drastically since Kirby left.

Well they added a Facebook management intern, forced FW rules inhouse much to the detriment of anyone owning FW models, killed off 3 whole armies with legends and some pretty important units and adopted even more "live-service-game" strategies, oh and they hiked prices again and attempt cult-marketing strategies like Apple and consorts and paywall balance updates.

but fundamentally not much, maybee they gotten worse from a customer perspective even arguably.

Toofast wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Why are people surprised that a 5 month old book already got taken behind the shed, afterall its still the same GW that did this to traitor legions supplement in 7th.

Because I keep being told "Kirby and his team aren't there any more, things are DIFFERENT". I'm not sure how they're different, balance is still atrocious and $50+ books are still being invalidated 6 months after release. They have a "community" website now, but it's just ads for their upcoming releases. They have an app for rules now, but you have to pay for a subscription, pay for a physical book to get the rules digitally, and it has more errors than a free app that was abandoned by its developer a year ago. Prices are still going up faster than the rate of inflation. The website created by Kirby's wife still can't distinguish between temporarily out of stock and never coming back. Someone tell me what has changed so drastically since Kirby left.

Marketing.

Kirby's GW is infamously attributed to never doing any market research, which is one of the fastest ways to die as a company, and GW these days seems to at least try to understand their market (still does stupid decisions based on that understanding).

And also the balance updates, which while badly done are still preferable to being stuck with a static meta for entire years (which btw wasn't particularly more balanced that the mess we have now). I mean, I would have been very happy if the 5th ed Tyranid codex had been invalidated 3 months after its release because that codex sucked... and the same goes for the 6th one.

Also throw in release schedule, GW's updating all armies in an edition cycle was pretty much a pipe dream before 7th.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"That book you got not long ago? Yeah, it's not legal for your army anymore. Sucks to be you I guess!"

The writing was on the wall with GW discontinuing the supplements a month back or so.

 Eldarsif wrote:
The writing was on the wall with GW discontinuing the supplements a month back or so.

And? So? But? Therefore?

Does that make it not a problem? Does that make them less scummy somehow for doing it?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
The writing was on the wall with GW discontinuing the supplements a month back or so.

And? So? But? Therefore?

Does that make it not a problem? Does that make them less scummy somehow for doing it?

this.

If the product is so shoddy that it needs to be invalidated 5 months down the line, then i feel the asking price is not worth it and or the product was a mere cashgrab.

Further, and whilest i agree the balance updates are theorethically a nice thing, practically they are locked behind a paywall and further seem to be overly corrective due to the faction testing and playtesting in general seemingly being a lackluster process in regards to balance.

Basically they are a mere bandaid for the fact, that the complete product isn't tested before release (e.g. Codices being not tested against one another) and further released staggered, which in turn makes the balance patches as already stated a mere bandaid.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Why are people surprised that a 5 month old book already got taken behind the shed, afterall its still the same GW that did this to traitor legions supplement in 7th.

Well before they haven't been invalidating even parts of supplement that got new version without part. The old parts that were removed were still legal as per GW...

tneva82 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Why are people surprised that a 5 month old book already got taken behind the shed, afterall its still the same GW that did this to traitor legions supplement in 7th.

Well before they haven't been invalidating even parts of supplement that got new version without part. The old parts that were removed were still legal as per GW...

Again though GW isn't good at providing a stable working ruleset at all, and they are seemingly going into live-service type systems which are even worse internally so what did people expect, that gw would do better?

They can't get their good ideas right, so what were the chances of them getting their bad ones to work?

Have we waited long enough to see that supplements are a bad[ly implemented] idea yet? Or should we wait longer?

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s not safe to drink from the Dakka well due to the salt content.

Oh, come on! That well was fine! The salt content was 10% less than a lethal dose!

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Have we waited long enough to see that supplements are a bad[ly implemented] idea yet? Or should we wait longer?

Doesn't matter. GW will still keep releasing them and tournament try hard's will keep buying them to pretend they are playing competive game.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Have we waited long enough to see that supplements are a bad[ly implemented] idea yet? Or should we wait longer?

I stand by that they should have been narrative only books with campaign missions, discussions of the forces and other related stuff instead of matched play.

Like they *can* work, but as part of matched play with the intent for use in tournaments they just cause problems.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Have we waited long enough to see that supplements are a bad[ly implemented] idea yet? Or should we wait longer?

We're about a year out from 10th, so now you can look forward to "the biggest shakeup of the galaxy since the 13th Black Crusade and Psychic Awakening(tm)" supplements.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Have we waited long enough to see that supplements are a bad[ly implemented] idea yet? Or should we wait longer?

I stand by that they should have been narrative only books with campaign missions, discussions of the forces and other related stuff instead of matched play.

Like they *can* work, but as part of matched play with the intent for use in tournaments they just cause problems.

The Vigilus books in 8th weren't too terrible I thought. They felt a decent mix of fluff (nothing on FW's stuff but it was an attempt), new units, scenarios and matched play rules. The Renegade Chapters getting dedicated sub-faction rules in Ablaze was the kind of thing I'd rather see than Armies of Renown.

The argument could easily be made that the Specialist Detachments or whatever they were called were a form of bloat, but since we didn't really see many of those supplements until Psychic Awakening began vomiting stuff out left and right, they weren't completely suffocating the way 9th was seemingly designed to be the codex creep/churn edition.