Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.
??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?
I hoped for a little more caution. I'm willing to give leeway for covid and the pace of releases, but this is potentially as bad as GK back so many years ago. 9th started off quite sane.
But at Adepticon - removing mirror matches and any Harlie player that opted to use Starweavers over Voidweavers the win rate is....96%.
Funny thing is, the same people saying this is "the most imbalanced edition ever" were the same ones saying this was the "Best edition ever" last year, or more to the point, dog piling people who were saying that 9th sucked and it was imbalanced, LAST YEAR. Remember the whole dust up over Eliminators, or Ad-Mech Cogni-weapons? Before any of this "ignores invulns crap" there were 100pt units that could take down knights. There were infantry units that could one shot a LoW. There were units that straight up had special rules (that broke the game) like Combat Transports, that could advance then deploy.
This isn't something that's been OMG the CUSTARDS ARE TOO POWERFUL...This edition has been doodoo since launch.
Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.
??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?
I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.
I still give that award to 7th, but you can argue it podiums for sure.
I can't argue 7th as imbalanced due to the fact formations allowed anyone to take anything from any army basically. Riptide was a broken unit but anyone was able to take them in some capacity.
Kind of a weird take. No one promised perfect balance, but we weren't led to believe that they would position things this out of whack.
??
Really? Your not new to this game & yet given the past, you didn't expect the present?
I hoped for a little more caution. I'm willing to give leeway for covid and the pace of releases, but this is potentially as bad as GK back so many years ago. 9th started off quite sane.
But at Adepticon - removing mirror matches and any Harlie player that opted to use Starweavers over Voidweavers the win rate is....96%.
Ok, I'm not one for sudden reactions, but if that's true, then gw needs to do some serious "balancing" where Harlequins are concerned. But we can't forget about the codexes that got this thread started in the first place: Custodes and Tau need a serious look as well.
Question Daed: What percentage of the top placings were made up of those three factions? Anyone else place highly? DE perhaps?
I would love to see someone who has the raw data do a flat file and do all sorts of spread sheets to broken units selling more, vs speed at which GW can actually alter the rules to make them less borked.
A Good example to put this all to bed is the release of the "broken" DE. All the units that were broken couldn't have driven up sales, because there were no units to actually sell.
Unless we are counting the 3rd party market, you can't say GW made DE broken to sell units, because they didn't. You can say it about Space Marines and Paint though. GW releases new rules for Primaris and they are horribly broken, but their units are already on the shelves, as is their paint.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Funny thing is, the same people saying this is "the most imbalanced edition ever" were the same ones saying this was the "Best edition ever" last year, or more to the point, dog piling people who were saying that 9th sucked and it was imbalanced, LAST YEAR. Remember the whole dust up over Eliminators, or Ad-Mech Cogni-weapons? Before any of this "ignores invulns crap" there were 100pt units that could take down knights. There were infantry units that could one shot a LoW. There were units that straight up had special rules (that broke the game) like Combat Transports, that could advance then deploy.
This isn't something that's been OMG the CUSTARDS ARE TOO POWERFUL...This edition has been doodoo since launch.
Question Daed: What percentage of the top placings were made up of those three factions? Anyone else place highly? DE perhaps?
Looks like top 10 on BS was as below. Of course that terrain might make for some weird results, so who knows. Also I think they're still doing game 8 for the top 4 right now so no official results that I can pull yet. Another weird thing is top cut after only four rounds.
Harlies
Tau
UM
Necrons
Custodes
Custodes
Aeldari
Tau
Tau
Harlies
Daedalus81 wrote: Looks like top 10 on BS was as below. Of course that terrain might make for some weird results, so who knows. Also I think they're still doing game 8 for the top 4 right now so no official results that I can pull yet. Another weird thing is top cut after only four rounds.
Harlies
Tau
UM
Necrons
Custodes
Custodes
Aeldari
Tau
Tau
Harlies
So, 8 out of the top 10 are from the 3 most recent codexes. That....doesn't look good, weird idiosyncrasies or not. If gw let this go on as long as they did Dark Eldar (and we don't even know if they're "fixed" yet, or just being pushed down by the new books), then we're headed straight for another trainwreck like late 5th edition or 7th.
If someone wants to check if an army was fixed it is good to check their win rates vs mid tier armies. If an army has some crazy60%+ avarge win rates vs marines, and only loses to armies with 90% win rate, then it ain't fixed.
We got an example of it with DE, where after the ad mecha and ork nerf, they suddenly got catapulted back to the top.
Also it is ironic to see harlis beat out DEs, considering it was DEs that dethroned them after getting their new book.
At this point I’m disillusioned with the state of the game. We went from balanced books at the start of 9th (where you could see them try to taper the power of things in many ways) to a mix of OP and fine books (drukhari started this), to now just pure powercreep. You could argue that drukhari and/or admec where too good due to design failure, but recent books power isn’t that. I, and many others, could tell Harlequins where going to be OP at a glance. I played DE in the past, but never any other space elves. I can tell you Tyranids are going to OP. Honestly, none of these factions are really OP, they just exist in a different game than books released before 2022. I play custodes, who went from a mid-tier army pre-book, to a meta-defining one, and back to a mid-tier book in 2 months. Mid-tier in the fact that I expect we almost never be able to beat competitive hariquins (and I expect Tyranids as well), but still good enough to stomp all pre-2022 armies.
This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models. Any other “E-sport” type game would never allow a 70% winrate faction/character/thing exist for more than a month. The last 3 book releases have exceeded this % despite other 2 existing.
Salt donkey wrote: Any other “E-sport” type game would never allow a 70% winrate faction/character/thing exist for more than a month. The last 3 book releases have exceeded this % despite other 2 existing.
40k is not and has never been that. 9th was ruined the moment the first 9th edition points update was released.
Tyel wrote: I think 120 would be pushing it for a starweaver. Its only got 6 wounds.
But also 4++ and -1 to hit if I'm not wrong. The razorback has 10 wounds and +1sv but neither of those additional saves, and against anti tank T5 and T7 are exactly the same. It really can't be less than 100.
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Ordana wrote: I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.
I think it's among the most balanced ones instead.
6th, 7th and even 8th (for a large portion of it at least) were all much more imbalanced.
So, 8 out of the top 10 are from the 3 most recent codexes. That....doesn't look good, weird idiosyncrasies or not.
Typically armies with a new codexes get better results that they deserve though. They're new, people don't know them really well (you know the infamous "gotcha moments" that many posters hate here) and most importantly people haven't tailor their lists against them yet. A new codex, assuming it's not really bland, always shakes up the meta but eventually things settle down unless the new codex really is OP. Most of the times it isn't.
Were there many armies in history that ended up with 98% win rates pre 8th ed? Because even if harlis dropped 20%. They would stil be at 78% which is broken as heck. a 78% win rate when playing an army with a 50% win rate, means you practically don't have to play the game to know which army will win.
I don't know about "worst ever" - because the CWE book has effectively been in the competitive space for only a few weeks, and GW could (whether they will or not) do a "we screwed up hard, here's an instant nerf" FAQ. Especially on the back of Adepticon. The weeks on Custodes and Tau are however growing long, and there's no indication GW think this is an issue.
But really - its just points.
Much like DE. The issue wasn't really the rules (silly Succubi combos and mass DT liquifiers aside perhaps). It was that almost every datasheet was obviously undercosted relative to 40k's average. If everything (and I mean everything) in the book had been 10-20% more points there wouldn't have been half the issues. In classic GW style, they have eventually got half way there, after kicking and screaming for 9 months.
I.E. Wyches at 12 points - rather than 10. Incubi at 18 rather than 16. A Dark Lance raider at 105 rather than the laughable 85 it was on release. Talos should never have gone down 10 points - worrying about internal balance on the most broken book in the game is *crazy*. Grots shouldn't have gone down 5 either for the same reason. The Court of the Archon and Wracks should have both got a point or 2 more per model etc.
By contrast, and I know some people may disagree with me, but I remember thinking the DG codex was a thing of exceptional design. It had clear competitive builds for crunch players. It had however enough power so casual "just grab what I've got" players weren't going to just get crushed against people of relatively similar skill/interest levels doing the same. And it had plenty of fluffy options for people to use their imagination on. But now its been crept to hell (and needed to be nerfed, for reasons.)
Oh well. And yes - if the Tyranid book leak is accurate, things are just continuing. Roll on 25 point Tyranid Warriors. That seems fair and playtested.
Oh well. And yes - if the Tyranid book leak is accurate, things are just continuing. Roll on 25 point Tyranid Warriors. That seems fair and playtested.
Seems like it's not the warriors that you should be afraid of though.
Tyel wrote: I think 120 would be pushing it for a starweaver. Its only got 6 wounds.
But also 4++ and -1 to hit if I'm not wrong. The razorback has 10 wounds and +1sv but neither of those additional saves, and against anti tank T5 and T7 are exactly the same. It really can't be less than 100.
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Ordana wrote: I think you can certainly argue that 9th is the most imbalanced edition 40k may have ever had.
I think it's among the most balanced ones instead.
6th, 7th and even 8th (for a large portion of it at least) were all much more imbalanced.
So, 8 out of the top 10 are from the 3 most recent codexes. That....doesn't look good, weird idiosyncrasies or not.
Typically armies with a new codexes get better results that they deserve though. They're new, people don't know them really well (you know the infamous "gotcha moments" that many posters hate here) and most importantly people haven't tailor their lists against them yet. A new codex, assuming it's not really bland, always shakes up the meta but eventually things settle down unless the new codex really is OP. Most of the times it isn't.
please provide evidence of 6,7 or 8th edition armies with an 80 to 96% winrate.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Funny thing is, the same people saying this is "the most imbalanced edition ever" were the same ones saying this was the "Best edition ever" last year, or more to the point, dog piling people who were saying that 9th sucked and it was imbalanced, LAST YEAR. Remember the whole dust up over Eliminators, or Ad-Mech Cogni-weapons? Before any of this "ignores invulns crap" there were 100pt units that could take down knights. There were infantry units that could one shot a LoW. There were units that straight up had special rules (that broke the game) like Combat Transports, that could advance then deploy.
This isn't something that's been OMG the CUSTARDS ARE TOO POWERFUL...This edition has been doodoo since launch.
Question Daed: What percentage of the top placings were made up of those three factions? Anyone else place highly? DE perhaps?
Looks like top 10 on BS was as below. Of course that terrain might make for some weird results, so who knows. Also I think they're still doing game 8 for the top 4 right now so no official results that I can pull yet. Another weird thing is top cut after only four rounds.
Harlies
Tau
UM
Necrons
Custodes
Custodes
Aeldari
Tau
Tau
Harlies
note, Adepticon ran the singles event on Thursday Friday. 4 rounds each. and Saturday Sunday is the team event.
It was a cut to top 16 after 4 games on Thursday and the ro16-finals were played Friday.
Top 16 was 4 Tau, 3 Harlequins, 2 Necrons, 2 CWE, 2 CWE+harlequins, 2 Custodes and 1 Ultramarine.
top 8 was 1 Tau, 1 Necron, 3 Harlequins and either 2 CWE and 1 CWE + Harlequin or the other way around, not 100% sure.
Top 4 was 1 Tau, 3 Harlequins.
finals was 2 Harlequins.
I'd also be very surprised if we see any changes before the May version of the balance patch - given they're going to need to think about what, if anything, they want to change on the back of those results, get some form of playtester feedback (ideally), and get the file updated.
please provide evidence of 6,7 or 8th edition armies with an 80 to 96% winrate.
Don't need to. How long do those win rate last? Months? Weeks? Definitely not years.
In older editions we had OP stuff dominating for whole years without touching a single thing in the list. 98% win rate for a couple of tournaments (if not a single tournament) means such list doesn't exist for the real life players. In 9th meta is constantly shuffled and even the factions that remains OP (see drukhari) have to change their lists pretty much significantly if they want to stay so.
In 7th eldar, tau and SM pretty much had 100% against the majority of the other factions, for years and using the very same lists. It never happened and can't happen in 9th. In 8th we had index vs codex for half edition which was much more imbalanced than 8th codex vs 9th codex.
Pickled_egg wrote: The game is so broken right now since the launch of Custodes, CWE, Quins and T'au I don't even know where to start.
I played a GT test game earlier using an Ork board pressure list, Some Trukks because there is too much indirect fire, triple warboss mostly durability buffs, Some Stormboyz & Kommando's for secondaries into a CWE match. His list not even particularly tuned. It didn't even feel like we were playing the same game system.
It's just laughable the disparity level between the codexes. Strands of Fate and Luck of the Laughing god are two of the most straight up busted, ill thought out. dumb army wide rules I can ever remember.
T'au are just as oppressive with unkillable crisis suit bombs and ridiculous amounts of indirect fire.
Basically armies that you cannot meaningfully interact with.
I could have had another 500 points in my list and it still wouldn't have been a battle.
As people have already pointed out, some of the points costs are laughable. A farseer at 90 points vs. an Ork Weirdboy at 70. Starweavers at 80 vs Trukks at 70.
The game is utterly broken.
I don't even know where to start to balance these new codexes to bring the older codexes remotely onto an even footing.
It makes the bevvy of Ork nerfs look even more ridiculous, When they made all those ork nerfs theGW rules writers were armed with all of the information and knew that the Asuryani & T'au codexes were about to land, and the power levels of those books and they still went ahead and nerfed Orks (a codex with terrible internal balance that was surviving off 1-2 power builds into the dirt)
Just boggles the mind.
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Sasori wrote: I suspect we are going to see Starweavers go up 5 PPM and Voidweavers 10 PPM, with a possible +5 points to the prism cannon.
Just so I understand your point, is the game broken because you can't beat the new factions with your Ork lists, or is it broken because they are too powerful? Because that is two very different statements.
One you are advocating for Orks to be as strong as the current meta, which is funny, because they are doing fine currently. Let's not make orks out to be Guard or Daemons.
I admit fully that the current meta has so far eclipsed the older factions as to be literally a joke. But that is not even a point. You are just screaming the game is unbalanced. No one ever promised anyone a balanced game. Ever. They claim they make efforts to "increase" balance, but never achieve complete balance. Because that would be chess, and even that is inherently unbalanced because of who goes first.
Point cost is not the way to balance this game. It's the way to ruin it. Just make all weapons USR, Bolters are Bolters, Melta are Melta, Melee is Melee. Going back to the AV system. Look at the way OPR does it. FAR more balanced, but you have no standout pieces. Everything is roughly similar, compared to 40k.
You misunderstood my point.
I used Orks as an example as that's the faction I testing for GT but my point can be equally applied to any of the earlier Codex releases that aren't part of the latest wave to hit.
Those books simply do not stand up on any level to T'au, CWE, Harlequins or even Custodes, and the fully spoiled Tyranid codex looks to be on a similar power level though probably not as abusive as Codex Asuryani.
I think its obvious to anyone who plays the game even semi competitively that the new wave of codexes are broken from a balance perspective. So broken in fact that I don't even see an easy fix. With Drukhari when they eventually increased points on the problem units and nerfed thicc City the codex came back to something at least bearable and while still a very powerful codex the earlier codexes can at least have a game into Drukhari now.
You can't even have a game against Aeldari/Quins or T'au right now with those earlier codexes, they are just so much more powerful on every level.
So, This isn't about me being butthurt about losing a game with Orks as you suggest.
And your argument that the game has never been balanced and isn't intended to be balanced so therefore we just suck it up....wow....just wow....
We shouldn't strive for equality because things have never been equal. What a great take.
Salt donkey wrote: This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.
No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.
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Dysartes wrote: I'd also be very surprised if we see any changes before the May version of the balance patch - given they're going to need to think about what, if anything, they want to change on the back of those results, get some form of playtester feedback (ideally), and get the file updated.
Yea anything in a dataslate is going to be a heavy handed mess ( if anything at all ) like 0-1 Voidweavers, because they won't adjust points.
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Karol wrote: Were there many armies in history that ended up with 98% win rates pre 8th ed? Because even if harlis dropped 20%. They would stil be at 78% which is broken as heck. a 78% win rate when playing an army with a 50% win rate, means you practically don't have to play the game to know which army will win.
The terrain didn't help. I wouldn't draw ultimate conclusions about Adepticon and Harlies even if they are busted as all get out. Not that it really matters at this point.
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Ordana wrote: note, Adepticon ran the singles event on Thursday Friday. 4 rounds each. and Saturday Sunday is the team event.
It was a cut to top 16 after 4 games on Thursday and the ro16-finals were played Friday.
Top 16 was 4 Tau, 3 Harlequins, 2 Necrons, 2 CWE, 2 CWE+harlequins, 2 Custodes and 1 Ultramarine.
top 8 was 1 Tau, 1 Necron, 3 Harlequins and either 2 CWE and 1 CWE + Harlequin or the other way around, not 100% sure.
Top 4 was 1 Tau, 3 Harlequins.
finals was 2 Harlequins.
Salt donkey wrote: This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.
No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.
Of course they have a system to handle things getting better stats/abilities. It's called: Playtesting them and then giving them appropriate points costs. How can they justify a Starweaver costing the same as a Rhino? And a Voidweaver only 10 PPM more? I fear they've abandoned whatever system they previously used to determine unit prices, and are simply allowing the codex writers to price units however they want to.
Is there a slight possability this is part of a badly ham fisted attempt to get more people to use Power level? For instance, if this whole time GW is completely ruiniung the points balance, has anyone asked if the PL balance is any good/better? What would happen if GW started making PL the competitive standard? Obviously highly customizable units like Space Marines would be broken, but that's a quick CA, but things like Custodes and Knights, or even Harlequins would suddenly drop off the top slots, because they don't have a ton of variation, correct?
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Is there a slight possability this is part of a badly ham fisted attempt to get more people to use Power level? For instance, if this whole time GW is completely ruiniung the points balance, has anyone asked if the PL balance is any good/better? What would happen if GW started making PL the competitive standard? Obviously highly customizable units like Space Marines would be broken, but that's a quick CA, but things like Custodes and Knights, or even Harlequins would suddenly drop off the top slots, because they don't have a ton of variation, correct?
Of course they have a system to handle things getting better stats/abilities. It's called: Playtesting them and then giving them appropriate points costs. How can they justify a Starweaver costing the same as a Rhino? And a Voidweaver only 10 PPM more? I fear they've abandoned whatever system they previously used to determine unit prices, and are simply allowing the codex writers to price units however they want to.
okey. So you have an eldar list and a design team that writes rules by feeling how the army should be, and for some faction they just copy past stuff. You have a playtest team which includes top tournament players, and some said narrative players. Narrative players will tell you nothing how the rules impact the game, because they live in a world of agree with opponent, build wierd lists etc. The tournament players will the harlis, test them vs the best of other stuff they are testing, and will come to the conclusion that they are very good, but beatable with other top tier lists. They may even get exited about stuff, as it seems GW doesn't show them all the rules units get. DE famously were being playing liquires and dark lances with old style rules as far as the weapon damage goes. They don't really get the data, and I don't think they can reliably get it, from the legions of people who play the game at stores, start the game etc. A narrative tester will not care what the optimal load out for an army works, the event player will see nothing bad in the fact that an army may consists of 5x one type of unit and 30x of another.
At the size the game is right now they can't really balance it. Army are so killy that if they get the drop on someone turn one, the other player starts their turn 1 or 2 with 2/3 or less of an army. They could fix, although it doesn't mean they would, if the game was 25-30 infantry models and max 3 bigger models. But that isn't their army sell model.
Harlequins running roughshot over everyone, including CWE, unnerfed Tau and buffed Custodes kinda makes it hard for me to accept that the these codexes were balanced against eachother in test.
And before harlies it was Tau beating everything else. And before that it was Custodes, and before that it was Orks, and before that...
Most new codexes roflstomping everything that came before, even without changes just tells me that GW designers are in an uncontrolled arms race to the moon with themselves with absolutely no oversight or guidance.
So would it be easier to bring everything else UP? rather than nerf down?
Primaris Snipers now pass invulns on wound rolls of 4+. Eliminators now do MWs to vehicles.
Ork boys now get +1 strength per 10 models in a unit. Gretchin now ignore invuln saves.
Adeptus Mechanicus MAgos' can now heal knights and vehicles for 3d3 wounds per turn that they are within 6" of them. Sisters of Battle now get an extra 5 Miracle dice flat, across the board.
Salt donkey wrote: This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.
No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.
Of course they have a system to handle things getting better stats/abilities. It's called: Playtesting them and then giving them appropriate points costs. How can they justify a Starweaver costing the same as a Rhino? And a Voidweaver only 10 PPM more? I fear they've abandoned whatever system they previously used to determine unit prices, and are simply allowing the codex writers to price units however they want to.
Yea, but they're clearly not doing that. They just don't have the process or the people to make it work under this release timeline.
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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: So would it be easier to bring everything else UP? rather than nerf down?
Primaris Snipers now pass invulns on wound rolls of 4+. Eliminators now do MWs to vehicles.
Ork boys now get +1 strength per 10 models in a unit. Gretchin now ignore invuln saves.
Adeptus Mechanicus MAgos' can now heal knights and vehicles for 3d3 wounds per turn that they are within 6" of them. Sisters of Battle now get an extra 5 Miracle dice flat, across the board.
/s (For those who take this too seriously.)
To answer the question seriously - reducing points for other armies would be bad, however, increasing points too much for Tau/Custodes/Nids/Elves would cause them to be unstable as glass cannons. The solution needs both points and rules changes, but to have to do so much just after books came out is just utter chaos.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Is there a slight possability this is part of a badly ham fisted attempt to get more people to use Power level? For instance, if this whole time GW is completely ruiniung the points balance, has anyone asked if the PL balance is any good/better? What would happen if GW started making PL the competitive standard? Obviously highly customizable units like Space Marines would be broken, but that's a quick CA, but things like Custodes and Knights, or even Harlequins would suddenly drop off the top slots, because they don't have a ton of variation, correct?
PL just has different problems than points do, it still needs to be balanced. The biggest difference to a game using points is that everyone has those little silly upgrades which you would never bother to pay a single point for.
The customization issue is mostly something that people keep parroting who have never really played any significant number of games using PL. There are too few units which can truly exploit it or even exploit it to a level of regular top competitive units. No matter how many upgrades you slap onto nobz or vanguard veterans, they still aren't going to be as good as spending the same amount of PL units that are actually competitive.
It's also worth noting that PL isn't "free upgrades". Worst case, it's upgrades at 50% off since it is calculated by adding the costs of the base unit to the cost of the most expensive configuration and dividing it by 40.
Salt donkey wrote: This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.
No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.
Of course they have a system to handle things getting better stats/abilities. It's called: Playtesting them and then giving them appropriate points costs. How can they justify a Starweaver costing the same as a Rhino? And a Voidweaver only 10 PPM more? I fear they've abandoned whatever system they previously used to determine unit prices, and are simply allowing the codex writers to price units however they want to.
Yea, but they're clearly not doing that. They just don't have the process or the people to make it work under this release timeline.
They could, they just don't want to spend the resources or risk the army books leaking.
we should be honest, 9th did start out in a good place.
Both Codex SM and Codex necrons did not break anything. Codex Death Guard and the space marine supplements (DW, SW, BA) did not make thigs worse either. Could say DA had a small issue with Deathwing, but it was totally overblown, mostly because of what came afterwards (and struggles a little more since you can only select one supplement secondary now).
Then came along drukhari and admech, these basically took the tier up a whole new level and we had problems with it. Tournaments were dominated by them.
Orks came out and had one build that was an issue, but the quickness and severity of the response was uncalled for IMHO, especially when they won't do that with other factions.
Sisters kinda took a step back from their 8th codex, but were still playable (albeit specific builds). They have been nerfed when probably didn't need to.
GK and TS looked decent out the gate but have since been rapidly overshadowed.
Now, we have Tau and Custodes that have taken the tier up again another level. Add to that harlequins and CWE (specific mechanics) and other codexes are just lacking terribly.
necrons have been given a nice boost recently, and I think marines need some serious points adjustments to be competitive, but I expect a new codex soon anyway.
It's like we're playing several different games. I think if you boost some necron/marine weapons to the now norm D3+3 stats, etc, we could have a decently balanced format with all books minus Tau, Custodes, CWE and Harlequins. Just let those 4 play in their own tournament, lol. Don't even want to know how busted Tyranids are going to be (I haven't checked full leaks)
I've had harlequins for ages, but it's more of a fun army for me (hey, I had 2 VWs when they were crap!), but seeing them completely emptied from my well stocked FLGS tells you everything you need to know.
It seems that the only way the game is fixed now is a 10th edition reset, which is exactly the MO of GW to make you feel like they are doing you a favour to balance the game. Well, not this guy, I'm done buying codexes after 9th.
l. Don't even want to know how busted Tyranids are going to be (I haven't checked full leaks)
They are going to punish harlequins and tau armies a lot. But you are right this just means that instead of 4 armies playing rock paper scissors, we are going to get 5. And everyone else sitting on the side with eyes wide open.
PL just has different problems than points do, it still needs to be balanced. The biggest difference to a game using points is that everyone has those little silly upgrades which you would never bother to pay a single point for.
The customization issue is mostly something that people keep parroting who have never really played any significant number of games using PL. There are too few units which can truly exploit it or even exploit it to a level of regular top competitive units. No matter how many upgrades you slap onto nobz or vanguard veterans, they still aren't going to be as good as spending the same amount of PL units that are actually competitive.
It's also worth noting that PL isn't "free upgrades". Worst case, it's upgrades at 50% off since it is calculated by adding the costs of the base unit to the cost of the most expensive configuration and dividing it by 40.
I think it is a problem, if how GW decided to price stuff in PL. If your GK infantry has an option to take heavy weapons, then in PL the unit costs in PL go up. But you never ever want to them, because they make your models actually worse at what they are suppose to do. Then there is armies like necron, which have no upgrades for their units, and armies with bucket loads of options, which under normal points were limited by specific upgrade cost. And the worse your army is the worse it becomes when your opponent gets buffed, on top of having the better army, especially when you are suddenly running a smaller army then before, because someone at GW decided that in deed a squad of 5 paladins is going to take 2 heavy weapons and max out on thunder hammers.
bullyboy wrote: we should be honest, 9th did start out in a good place.
Both Codex SM and Codex necrons did not break anything. Codex Death Guard and the space marine supplements (DW, SW, BA) did not make thigs worse either. Could say DA had a small issue with Deathwing, but it was totally overblown, mostly because of what came afterwards (and struggles a little more since you can only select one supplement secondary now).
Then came along drukhari and admech, these basically took the tier up a whole new level and we had problems with it. Tournaments were dominated by them.
Orks came out and had one build that was an issue, but the quickness and severity of the response was uncalled for IMHO, especially when they won't do that with other factions.
Sisters kinda took a step back from their 8th codex, but were still playable (albeit specific builds). They have been nerfed when probably didn't need to.
GK and TS looked decent out the gate but have since been rapidly overshadowed.
Now, we have Tau and Custodes that have taken the tier up again another level. Add to that harlequins and CWE (specific mechanics) and other codexes are just lacking terribly.
necrons have been given a nice boost recently, and I think marines need some serious points adjustments to be competitive, but I expect a new codex soon anyway.
It's like we're playing several different games. I think if you boost some necron/marine weapons to the now norm D3+3 stats, etc, we could have a decently balanced format with all books minus Tau, Custodes, CWE and Harlequins. Just let those 4 play in their own tournament, lol. Don't even want to know how busted Tyranids are going to be (I haven't checked full leaks)
I've had harlequins for ages, but it's more of a fun army for me (hey, I had 2 VWs when they were crap!), but seeing them completely emptied from my well stocked FLGS tells you everything you need to know.
It seems that the only way the game is fixed now is a 10th edition reset, which is exactly the MO of GW to make you feel like they are doing you a favour to balance the game. Well, not this guy, I'm done buying codexes after 9th.
Ummmmm, 2 wound basic tacticals for 18 points per pop, with all the rediculous Bolter patterns, was totally not ok. Nor was the entire Eliminator debacle.
Also, you could easily argue that SM broke 9th by sheer weight of releases. "we have to push back everything, because we are still shipping our new primaris captain or Primaris Land Speeder, or Primaris X,Y, and Z." Because that happened for all of the first half of 9th.
Ummmmm, 2 wound basic tacticals for 18 points per pop, with all the rediculous Bolter patterns, was totally not ok. Nor was the entire Eliminator debacle.
Also, you could easily argue that SM broke 9th by sheer weight of releases. "we have to push back everything, because we are still shipping our new primaris captain or Primaris Land Speeder, or Primaris X,Y, and Z." Because that happened for all of the first half of 9th.
Marines, even when they were the only 9th codex were never a 70% win rate or higher. In 9th a large chunk of marine armies were under 50% win rate. And the releases thing seems bogus. Who has ever seen people use the primaris speeders, not predators or the ATV, when attack bikes exist? Out of the primaris characters the biker chaplain is used. Heavy intercessors were pushed back so far in to the edition, that by the time they were out, the game already made running them not valid. On the other hand something like ad mecha or DE codex made a ton of options valid, both for casual and tournament play.
Ordana wrote: Harlequins running roughshot over everyone, including CWE, unnerfed Tau and buffed Custodes kinda makes it hard for me to accept that the these codexes were balanced against eachother in test.
And before harlies it was Tau beating everything else. And before that it was Custodes, and before that it was Orks, and before that...
Most new codexes roflstomping everything that came before, even without changes just tells me that GW designers are in an uncontrolled arms race to the moon with themselves with absolutely no oversight or guidance.
Orkz had 1 build which in my opinion wasn't OP as much as it was people unwilling to change how they view/play against Orkz. A BUFFED Rukkatrukk averaged 3.5 hits a turn or 5 hits at 18' range at S5 AP-2 2dmg. It was 90pts for this thing btw.
The Harlequins ridiculous vehicle averages 2 shots at S12 -4AP 2D3 dmg at BS3 so it averages 1.3 hits a turn, it also gets 6 S6 -1 2dmg shots, so it averages 4 hits with that.
But yeah, orkz with a IDF buggy at 90pts was broken OP and totally ridiculous compared to this stuff.
Sasori wrote: I suspect we are going to see Starweavers go up 5 PPM and Voidweavers 10 PPM, with a possible +5 points to the prism cannon.
Flat out, if GW comes out and gives Starweavers a 5pt bump and Voids a 10pt bump i'll be furious. Those aforementioned squigbuggies took a 20pt nerf because top meta players were complaining. BTW at their height Orkz were still very much below a 70% win rate...I actually don't know if they even got to 65%. So hitting orkz with a plethora of nerfs across the board, including units that weren't even being taken but thing giving token nerfs to these units would be the cherry on top of how stupid GW is.
As far as using PL instead of pts. yeah no. You have units like a Tac Marine unit which could then take a Lascannon or a MM AND a melta AND a Combi-melta/PF on their sgt. That's something like 55-70pts of free stuff. What can my Boyz squad take? An overpriced PK and 1 guy can take a 10pt rokkit or a 5pt big shoota. Predators can take sponson weapons for free and a Pintle mount AND a HK missile. My Battlewagon can take....a Kill Kannon (overpriced at 5pts let alone the 10 it costs) and some big shootas. yeah no PL is even more broken than Points.
As far as using PL instead of pts. yeah no. You have units like a Tac Marine unit which could then take a Lascannon or a MM AND a melta AND a Combi-melta/PF on their sgt. That's something like 55-70pts of free stuff. What can my Boyz squad take? An overpriced PK and 1 guy can take a 10pt rokkit or a 5pt big shoota. Predators can take sponson weapons for free and a Pintle mount AND a HK missile. My Battlewagon can take....a Kill Kannon (overpriced at 5pts let alone the 10 it costs) and some big shootas. yeah no PL is even more broken than Points.
PL is only broken if you try to break it....the rule is "don't be a dick".
As far as using PL instead of pts. yeah no. You have units like a Tac Marine unit which could then take a Lascannon or a MM AND a melta AND a Combi-melta/PF on their sgt. That's something like 55-70pts of free stuff. What can my Boyz squad take? An overpriced PK and 1 guy can take a 10pt rokkit or a 5pt big shoota. Predators can take sponson weapons for free and a Pintle mount AND a HK missile. My Battlewagon can take....a Kill Kannon (overpriced at 5pts let alone the 10 it costs) and some big shootas. yeah no PL is even more broken than Points.
PL is only broken if you try to break it....the rule is "don't be a dick".
Why do people drone on about respecting the spirit of the rules? It happens in every system, setting and or universe. The problem with the "dont be a dick" is you never know where that line is. For some, it's just having a squad of dark reapers. For others, it's having a firstborn squad filled to the brim with heavy weapons.
And even worse, "dont be a dick" can be solved by using the more granular points.....
Anyway, let's not derail the thread with people who don't like numbers that reach above 9.
Pickled_egg wrote: To illustrate my point about the latest wave of codexes being a problem. Primarily Harlequins it has to be said.
Here is the top 16 from GT Manchester played this weekend 7 rounds so a large sample size.
Harlequins - 6
Harlequins souped into other Aeldari - 4
Crusher Stampede - 1
Custodes - 3
T'au - 2
They need to fix Harlequins yesterday
Really disappointing, I'm only just coming back to the 40k scene and it looks like it's been a literal clown fiesta.
Ummmmm, 2 wound basic tacticals for 18 points per pop, with all the rediculous Bolter patterns, was totally not ok. Nor was the entire Eliminator debacle.
Also, you could easily argue that SM broke 9th by sheer weight of releases. "we have to push back everything, because we are still shipping our new primaris captain or Primaris Land Speeder, or Primaris X,Y, and Z." Because that happened for all of the first half of 9th.
Marines, even when they were the only 9th codex were never a 70% win rate or higher.
What day was that? Codex SM & Codex Necron released the same day. (at least here in the USA)
Karol wrote: Who has ever seen people use the primaris speeders, not predators or the ATV, when attack bikes exist? Out of the primaris characters the biker chaplain is used. Heavy intercessors were pushed back so far in to the edition, that by the time they were out, the game already made running them not valid. On the other hand something like ad mecha or DE codex made a ton of options valid, both for casual and tournament play.
Raises hand to having seen Primaris Speeders (2 different, in 2 different armies, owned by different people. 1x BA, the other = ?), Predators, & several ATVs.
The only Primaris character I haven't seen played is the Judiciar.
Heavy Intercessors? {shrugs} There's a few squads of these being used locally as well.
As far as using PL instead of pts. yeah no. You have units like a Tac Marine unit which could then take a Lascannon or a MM AND a melta AND a Combi-melta/PF on their sgt. That's something like 55-70pts of free stuff. What can my Boyz squad take? An overpriced PK and 1 guy can take a 10pt rokkit or a 5pt big shoota. Predators can take sponson weapons for free and a Pintle mount AND a HK missile. My Battlewagon can take....a Kill Kannon (overpriced at 5pts let alone the 10 it costs) and some big shootas. yeah no PL is even more broken than Points.
PL is only broken if you try to break it....the rule is "don't be a dick".
That's honestly a weird reply to someone pointing out how lopsided PL is between units and between books. Some can't exploit it even if they wanted to, others have to magically 'know' where the line is.
Neither works for any sort of balance, let alone anyone's particular fetish for genitalia.
As far as using PL instead of pts. yeah no. You have units like a Tac Marine unit which could then take a Lascannon or a MM AND a melta AND a Combi-melta/PF on their sgt. That's something like 55-70pts of free stuff. What can my Boyz squad take? An overpriced PK and 1 guy can take a 10pt rokkit or a 5pt big shoota. Predators can take sponson weapons for free and a Pintle mount AND a HK missile. My Battlewagon can take....a Kill Kannon (overpriced at 5pts let alone the 10 it costs) and some big shootas. yeah no PL is even more broken than Points.
Hey, good news! Using PL you're ork options aren't over-priced anymore.
As far as using PL instead of pts. yeah no. You have units like a Tac Marine unit which could then take a Lascannon or a MM AND a melta AND a Combi-melta/PF on their sgt. That's something like 55-70pts of free stuff. What can my Boyz squad take? An overpriced PK and 1 guy can take a 10pt rokkit or a 5pt big shoota. Predators can take sponson weapons for free and a Pintle mount AND a HK missile. My Battlewagon can take....a Kill Kannon (overpriced at 5pts let alone the 10 it costs) and some big shootas. yeah no PL is even more broken than Points.
PL is only broken if you try to break it....the rule is "don't be a dick".
That's honestly a weird reply to someone pointing out how lopsided PL is between units and between books. Some can't exploit it even if they wanted to, others have to magically 'know' where the line is.
Neither works for any sort of balance, let alone anyone's particular fetish for genitalia.
It's really kinda funny that players who want every advantage will seek out every advantage. PL hasn't been a problem with unbalancedness in all the games I've played with it. It's almost like who you play with is just as important as what type of game you're playing...
There is a line and it's different for everyone, the trick is to find those that like the same things. If you are not willing to put in the work to find them, you reap what you sow.
Tourney type feth you lists are NOT the only game(type) in town.
bullyboy wrote: we should be honest, 9th did start out in a good place.
You should be honest and admit it's been bad all along. There was a huge imbalance in CA20 between the best and worst factions. We were told that external and internal balance would be amazing for codexes in 9th, external balance between 9th ed codexes was good for 3 codexes, but because the bedrock of the edition was flawed the new codexes did not stack up evenly against existing codexes. Internal balance has been decent, but nothing to really write home about and it hasn't gotten a lot better since then. The gap between Reanimators and the Nightbringer and the gap between Custodes and Astra Militarum was huge for example, Drukhari was a whole new kettle of electric eels, 9th balance has not existed, burn that gak and let us have 10th.
The design hasn't been amazing either, faction secondaries break the main way to play 9th, Core is a failure, limiting power from pain and command protocols hasn't worked out, the most powerful SM army from last edition cannot even be played because GW writers are talentless hacks that don't want people to have fun with their minis and they just decided to gut the most powerful options instead of balancing them. The only thing you can praise 9th for is core rules and Crusade and most of the time most factions haven't had rules available to have the full Crusade experience because GW had to put the rules into codexes.
Ordana wrote: I think a big reason more people don't see the start of 9th as an issue is that many didn't even get to play it due to Covid.
I don't see how that can be the case, you didn't need to play it to understand it was garbage.
bullyboy wrote: we should be honest, 9th did start out in a good place.
You should be honest and admit it's been bad all along. There was a huge imbalance in CA20 between the best and worst factions. We were told that external and internal balance would be amazing for codexes in 9th, external balance between 9th ed codexes was good for 3 codexes, but because the bedrock of the edition was flawed the new codexes did not stack up evenly against existing codexes. Internal balance has been decent, but nothing to really write home about and it hasn't gotten a lot better since then. The gap between Reanimators and the Nightbringer and the gap between Custodes and Astra Militarum was huge for example, Drukhari was a whole new kettle of electric eels, 9th balance has not existed, burn that gak and let us have 10th.
Ok, you're not allowed to speak of balance anymore.....
And don't worry, you'll get 10th edition. Though I doubt you'll like it much.
Salt donkey wrote: This is a long way of saying GW has stopped caring about balance in order to push inventory/sell models.
No, they just don't have a system to handle these sweeping changes appropriately. I guarantee you these balancing issues put a huge freeze effect on lots of people. Far more will drop out rather than buy a different army.
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Dysartes wrote: I'd also be very surprised if we see any changes before the May version of the balance patch - given they're going to need to think about what, if anything, they want to change on the back of those results, get some form of playtester feedback (ideally), and get the file updated.
Yea anything in a dataslate is going to be a heavy handed mess ( if anything at all ) like 0-1 Voidweavers, because they won't adjust points.
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Karol wrote: Were there many armies in history that ended up with 98% win rates pre 8th ed? Because even if harlis dropped 20%. They would stil be at 78% which is broken as heck. a 78% win rate when playing an army with a 50% win rate, means you practically don't have to play the game to know which army will win.
The terrain didn't help. I wouldn't draw ultimate conclusions about Adepticon and Harlies even if they are busted as all get out. Not that it really matters at this point.
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Ordana wrote: note, Adepticon ran the singles event on Thursday Friday. 4 rounds each. and Saturday Sunday is the team event.
It was a cut to top 16 after 4 games on Thursday and the ro16-finals were played Friday.
Top 16 was 4 Tau, 3 Harlequins, 2 Necrons, 2 CWE, 2 CWE+harlequins, 2 Custodes and 1 Ultramarine.
top 8 was 1 Tau, 1 Necron, 3 Harlequins and either 2 CWE and 1 CWE + Harlequin or the other way around, not 100% sure.
Top 4 was 1 Tau, 3 Harlequins.
finals was 2 Harlequins.
Thanks - I appreciate the clarity.
I am speculating with this take, but I am pretty certain GW is never going to say “yeah we power up the rules for models we need to sell.” So in this case I need to speculate, and all the evidence points towards GW using rules to sell models. Here’s my evidence
1) New models are typically getting weaker rules than they have in the past (look at how viable the new CWE and sister stuff have been competitively, not great, but not trash either). This makes perfect sense as new models sell regardless of rules. You just need to make sure their rules don’t detract from sales.
2) All anecdote evidence points to better rules selling models. Everytime I go to my FLGS I feel pretty certain I can find plenty of good looking models with bad rules on the shelves. I, however, won’t ever see meta-defining units in stock. And I mean ever (no custodes stuff recently, no tau broadsides, crisis suits, etc, now no harlequins). Check your own FLGS or online sellers if you don’t believe me. This happens everywhere. People like winning and therefor will buy into the units and armies that win more.
3) Your counterpoint to this is basically “GW would be ignoring the long-term costs by engaging in this behavior. They would never be dumb enough to ignore the diminishing play-base that a unbalanced game causes.”
First off ,I disagree that enough people are leaving the game right now for GW to be at a net-negative in profits. You are assuming that A) enough people are leaving right now to make a significant impact on GW’s bottom line and B) that these losses will offset the gains they make by forcing meta-hoppers to buy more. Looking at mobile gaming (and really any micro-transaction games) most of their profits come from “Whales.” I.E, the 1% who drop $1000’s to $10,000’s on the game over months.
GW is operating on a similar principle. Who cares if collector Larry quits the game if he only spends $250 on the hobby a year if Spike Steve went from spending $1000 a year to $2000? Heck it may not even be that Larry will quite since he cares more about modeling and painting over the game anyway. It’s only a problem if people like Steve quite, and they won’t do that easily since they are already so invested into the game.
Where it will hurt GW is when the camals back does break and people like me start getting disenfranchised. I stopped playing in 6th-7th for reasons similar to ones now. I spent around $1000 a year on this hobby in 8th. I have spent closer to $500 a year in 9th, and will be reducing it to 0$ until they make the effort of caring about balance. But this happens slowly, and companies almost always don’t pay attention to it until it’s too late and they’re down more customers than they expected.
@salt donkey explain Drukhari Raiders, Stormspeeder Hammerstrikes, Land Speeder Typhoons, Intercessors, Scout Squads, Vanguard Veterans, Chaplain Dreadnoughts, Reiver Squads, Nightbringer, Canoptek Reanimator with your theory. You cannot. The dart board theory holds true every time.
What day was that? Codex SM & Codex Necron released the same day. (at least here in the USA)
Adepticon just had harlis end with a 98% win rate, when adjusted for mirror matchs. I don't think, I have seen win rates like that even in 8 man tournaments.
Raises hand to having seen Primaris Speeders (2 different, in 2 different armies, owned by different people. 1x BA, the other = ?), Predators, & several ATVs.
The only Primaris character I haven't seen played is the Judiciar.
Heavy Intercessors? {shrugs} There's a few squads of these being used locally as well.
You very well know what I ment. I play a GK army with no NDKs and no power armoured dudes. Making an argument that GK are not a 4-5 NDK, 30x interceptors would be disingenuous. The stuff isn't played because it has horrible rules. The tanks are brutaly over costed with bad rules. And the characters, again aside for the biker chaplain, are better run as their classic counter parts, who do happen to have access to stuff like bikes or jetpacks.
The first real update to marine armies, which was primaris focused were the BT. And even they got a dud in form of their sword brethern unit, which is just a worse version of blade guard or venguard veterans.
GW is operating on a similar principle. Who cares if collector Larry quits the game if he only spends $250 on the hobby a year if Spike Steve went from spending $1000 a year to $2000? Heck it may not even be that Larry will quite since he cares more about modeling and painting over the game anyway. It’s only a problem if people like Steve quite, and they won’t do that easily since they are already so invested into the game.
If there are 20 Larrys for every Spike Steve GW definitely cares. People like Steve instead can easily go with much cheaper recasts/3D printed models to keep chasing the flavour of the month. Once painted no one could notice the difference from an original model and a proper recast. Spike Steve doesn't care about original models or giving money to GW, he only wants to compete.
I don't think it's too farfetched to say that Spike *also* can get sick of of the burn and churn, even if they're more inclined to do it than others. Everyone has a limit, a GW is pushing it on a everyone.
Its very hard to argue with "GW nerf the good stuff and buff the bad stuff to sell models" - because "nerfing the good stuff and buffing the bad stuff" is also how you'd go about balancing a game.
I say this every time - but I see very little evidence GW benefit commercially from people chasing the meta - at least in terms of factions. Such players undoubtedly do exist, but in my view they are (usually) reasonably well informed, and so buy very little direct from GW, or even FLGS with 20-25% discounts. They instead harvest secondary markets like ebay etc - or buy up armies from players giving up the game at a much bigger discount.
GW do benefit from churning hype amongst the plastic addicts. Which is I feel why the codexes are not all released at once. I can't be alone in thinking "new book, new army?" for almost every release. At least for me that has nothing to do with it being competitively broken or not. The pile of shame must be fed.
This isn't to say that if you had a Harlequins army, but didn't have any voidweavers because previously they were terrible, you wouldn't now go out and buy a few. But that's fully within the resources of $250 a year "Collector Larry" rather than $2000 a year "Spike Steve".
Its why I found Knights so oppressive during their 9ish month reign of terror back in 2018/19. With discounts etc, lots of people could just cough up £70-80 to chuck one in their army. And as the weeks went by, at least where I played, more and more people with imperial/chaos armies did. Whereas if they'd had to throw down £500+ on a brand new army, very few would bother.
If GW made Voidweavers broken OP to make $$ then surely they would have made a ton more boxes in prep for the codex release right?
And yet the kit is sold out and everyone that wants to buy one from GW can't and so will get them from other sources that don't make GW any money.
The simply truth is that even if GW buffs units to make money, they are just as incompetent at doing that as they are if they are trying their best to make balanced books.
Ordana wrote: If GW made Voidweavers broken OP to make $$ then surely they would have made a ton more boxes in prep for the codex release right?
And yet the kit is sold out and everyone that wants to buy one from GW can't and so will get them from other sources that don't make GW any money.
The simply truth is that even if GW buffs units to make money, they are just as incompetent at doing that as they are if they are trying their best to make balanced books.
It is possible for GW to try and do something and still be incompetent at it.
For example, lets say they are trying to make a well balanced game. The current domination of Tau, Custodes and Harlequins shows that they are failing at that.
Lets say they try to make their new kits OP to generate sales. The many new kits which were mediocre to bad rules-wise shows that they are failing at that.
Because here's the thing. If you want to be able to make your new kits powerful and so sell based on that, without it being so over the top as to be blatantly obvious (10s in every stat, 400 shoots at BS2+ etc.), you need to understand how your game works on a deep mechanical level to purposely create that.
In short, when it comes to designing a game, GW is incompetent regardless of what their intentions are.
Nah. GW was focussed on Dark Reapers, Rangers, new Guardians, Eldar Avatar, new Shining Spears, Shroud Runners, etc..
They didn't give a second thought to the Harlequins (and Ynnari) rules they had written by the intern. Hence they got the lottery of super-OP or unplayable. Harlequins got lucky.
Basically the same when they put all their brainpower into the shiny new Sisters Paragon Warsuits and such (and Lelith, almost the only Dark Eldar model with a 9th-ed.-style command phase ability) and didn't bother checking the rest of the Drukhari Codex which was a low-priority, no-models release as well.
It is possible for GW to try and do something and still be incompetent at it.
For example, lets say they are trying to make a well balanced game. The current domination of Tau, Custodes and Harlequins shows that they are failing at that.
Lets say they try to make their new kits OP to generate sales. The many new kits which were mediocre to bad rules-wise shows that they are failing at that.
Maybe, if they were a fresh new company with a studio that has no expiriance , this could be explained that way. But they clearly are non of those things. So we have two options. Either GW defines the word "balance" way different then the player community does, or GW only says/claims to want balance, but in fact doesn't do it. Now if we had better contact with the studio, or the studio was telling more then smoke and mirrors, plus showing models already shown, it would be easier to deal with. But we don't , so we get to see something clearly OP, and then wonder for a few months if this was planned to be like that by GW or not. Or what did GW thinking while they skip the fixing of thing A, B or C.
Ordana wrote: If GW made Voidweavers broken OP to make $$ then surely they would have made a ton more boxes in prep for the codex release right?
And yet the kit is sold out and everyone that wants to buy one from GW can't and so will get them from other sources that don't make GW any money.
The simply truth is that even if GW buffs units to make money, they are just as incompetent at doing that as they are if they are trying their best to make balanced books.
Yea the money they leave on the table it crazy. A sane balance level would have people buying from all over.
GW can absolutely live without the whales. I'll likely still buy the CK army set, because...awesome models. It might take 6 months to a year before they see a table, if at all. I just want those things in my display case. Literally no rules will change my desire to own the models.
What if they can't make more ? Plus they can nerf them 3-6 months later after people bought them, and with the investment done, the people playing often will try to update the army to stay fun to play.
If GW had limitless capacity for production, then yeah, there would be losing money if they haven't sold an item to a willing customer. But if they sell all they can make, then they maxed out profit.
The only thing GW would want to do to their models is to make them bio degrade, same way all sports and tech ware is. Just imagine this, practicaly no secondary market, you have to rebuy the army if you want to play. And as a bonus you can call this some eco thing and get points for being a friendly company.
Karol wrote: But if they sell all they can make, then they maxed out profit.
They're not maxing out profit. If a single kit sells out then customers have ample avenues now to find alternatives. It's directly lost and unrecoverable sales.
Selling five thousand Voidweavers ( £130,000 ) is 0.004% of GW's monthly ( £29.4M ) revenue and I bet they had waaaaay less than that on shelves. All that stock at the FLGS ( over 50% of GW's business ) is already recorded as a sale to GWmonths and years ago. GW is going to get re-orders that will go unfilled for quite a while.
Karol wrote: What if they can't make more ? Plus they can nerf them 3-6 months later after people bought them, and with the investment done, the people playing often will try to update the army to stay fun to play.
If GW had limitless capacity for production, then yeah, there would be losing money if they haven't sold an item to a willing customer. But if they sell all they can make, then they maxed out profit.
The only thing GW would want to do to their models is to make them bio degrade, same way all sports and tech ware is. Just imagine this, practicaly no secondary market, you have to rebuy the army if you want to play. And as a bonus you can call this some eco thing and get points for being a friendly company.
but people aren't going to buy them 3-6 months from now because then everyone will be playing CSM or Daemons or Guard or whatever utterly busted codex they recently released. They probably aren't going to buy them next month if the internet is right about Tyranids.
The window to sell 9 voidweavers to power gamers jumping on the latest FOTM is very small with the current pace of releases.
What alternatives are there to buy voids? Even if someone does make recasts, it will take weeks, if not a few months, till someone gets proper designes and can produce enough resin models to make it worth selling. By then GW can just nerf the unit.
Karol wrote: What alternatives are there to buy voids? Even if someone does make recasts, it will take weeks, if not a few months, till someone gets proper designes and can produce enough resin models to make it worth selling. By then GW can just nerf the unit.
Voidweavers were released a long time ago, theyre not a new unit.
Recasters already produce them.
3D files already exist for them.
It is possible for GW to try and do something and still be incompetent at it.
For example, lets say they are trying to make a well balanced game. The current domination of Tau, Custodes and Harlequins shows that they are failing at that.
Lets say they try to make their new kits OP to generate sales. The many new kits which were mediocre to bad rules-wise shows that they are failing at that.
Because here's the thing. If you want to be able to make your new kits powerful and so sell based on that, without it being so over the top as to be blatantly obvious (10s in every stat, 400 shoots at BS2+ etc.), you need to understand how your game works on a deep mechanical level to purposely create that.
In short, when it comes to designing a game, GW is incompetent regardless of what their intentions are.
Their intent is, quote, "make the best fantasy miniatures and continue to do this forever" (for the benefit of their shareholders). All evidence points to them doing it better than any competitor on the market I could name. Thus it seems they are not incompetent at achieving their self-proclaimed goal and only appear "incompetent" to you because you imply goals (balance or short-term sale-spikes through OP rules) they don't actually pursue.
Pickled_egg wrote: To illustrate my point about the latest wave of codexes being a problem. Primarily Harlequins it has to be said.
Here is the top 16 from GT Manchester played this weekend 7 rounds so a large sample size.
Harlequins - 6
Harlequins souped into other Aeldari - 4
Crusher Stampede - 1
Custodes - 3
T'au - 2
They need to fix Harlequins yesterday
Really disappointing, I'm only just coming back to the 40k scene and it looks like it's been a literal clown fiesta.
The frustrating thing is I actually really enjoy the missions and think the competitive game is better than its ever been, they are looking at balance now more than I can ever remember and I've played since Rogue Trader. But this just serves to make it even more frustrating when something like Voidweaver comes along. It's just inexcusable, I'm simply not buying that anyone can be incompetent enough to think that a Voidweaver should be 90 points and you can take 9 of them, The community was all over how silly that was on release day so I'm supposed to believe that rules writers can't spot it? which leads to the only other conclusion which is that they want people to buy Voidweaver kits and then they will "hot fix" the points later like they did with Ork buggies. But that's even worse than incompetence.
If they want to sell kits I could tell them how to sell some kits by improving the internal balance in their books and improving (but not breaking) the dataslates and efficiency on half the units which currently don't see any play.
Voidweavers were released a long time ago, theyre not a new unit.
Recasters already produce them.
3D files already exist for them.
I know, to the extent that in my town they run out of resin to make them. Yes, the people want the models. And neither GW, nor them and the recasters can produce enough of them, fast enough. And it will not change till GW changes the rules. And we have a plathora of things that can happen here. It can be a tomorrow nerf, a wait till CA nerf or a DE/Inari style nerf that isn't a nerf, which will make people buy the unit for 6+ months. But all of this is a players problems. GW has as many units of the darn thing as they could produce, and they sold all of them.
Personally, despite the state of the game right now, I am really hoping that Tempest of War (the new version of the old Malestrom of War pretty much) does something to improve the state of the game at least at the more "casual competitive" level. I know Malestrom of War had its problems in past editions, but it was always one of my favorite ways to play because the randomness of drawing objective cards incentivized more balanced lists (and now it should do that moreso since you can table your opponent and still lose on points).
I am not saying Tempest of War will completely fix the game, but I think Eternal War, as "balanced" as the missions are for competitive events, still rewards the most busted, OP faction or army in the game. When it comes to scoring random secondaries each turn you will want to bring a plethora of different unit types instead of just spamming three of the most efficient units in the army.
I am hoping that, at least at the casual level, Tempest of War is some kind of answer to some of the issues.
GFdoubles wrote: Personally, despite the state of the game right now, I am really hoping that Tempest of War (the new version of the old Malestrom of War pretty much) does something to improve the state of the game at least at the more "casual competitive" level. I know Malestrom of War had its problems in past editions, but it was always one of my favorite ways to play because the randomness of drawing objective cards incentivized more balanced lists (and now it should do that moreso since you can table your opponent and still lose on points).
I am not saying Tempest of War will completely fix the game, but I think Eternal War, as "balanced" as the missions are for competitive events, still rewards the most busted, OP faction or army in the game. When it comes to scoring random secondaries each turn you will want to bring a plethora of different unit types instead of just spamming three of the most efficient units in the army.
I am hoping that, at least at the casual level, Tempest of War is some kind of answer to some of the issues.
Yep, i'm banking hard on Tempest of War. I am soo fething bored with the ITC-style copy pasted missions we've had for matched play so far
People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Hecaton wrote: People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Like those horrifying GSC we see sweeping right alongside Custodes.
Hecaton wrote: People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Hecaton wrote: People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Drukhari, Thousand Sons, Craftworld Eldar.
Just because there's some randomness in a dataset doesn't mean you can't pull out a trend.
Hecaton wrote: People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Drukhari, Thousand Sons, Craftworld Eldar.
Just because there's some randomness in a dataset doesn't mean you can't pull out a trend.
So marines and necrons were unstoppable and Harlequins were trash at the beginning on 9th.
Black Templars...
Dark Angels...
Space Wolves...
Sisters, GK and GSC never broke the bank.
So I guess if your noise is like....half then maybe it's not noise.
Remember when people complained for five seconds about slow ass terminators with transhuman? Those were the days.
Hecaton wrote: People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Drukhari, Thousand Sons, Craftworld Eldar.
Just because there's some randomness in a dataset doesn't mean you can't pull out a trend.
So marines and necrons were unstoppable and Harlequins were trash at the beginning on 9th.
Black Templars...
Dark Angels...
Space Wolves...
Sisters, GK and GSC never broke the bank.
So I guess if your noise is like....half then maybe it's not noise.
Remember when people complained for five seconds about slow ass terminators with transhuman? Those were the days.
Just a note about Sisters here as one of their playerbase, the codex did do pretty well when it first dropped. As you say, it never broke the game or could be considered OP by any means but I believe there was at least one GT that it topped a few weeks after it came out. Not saying that every army's book has in fact been busted since the start of 9th, but even a faction like Sisters that was widely considered to be "sidegraded" at best by the new book did perform well immediately after release.
I think there is a point to be made that, at least relative to the time of release, every book has made the faction better in some way and should the players find that powerful combo that exists, whether it is busted or not, then the army will find success for at least some amount of time. This in no way excuses what has occurred with Dark Eldar, Admech, Custodes, Tau, Eldar, and Harlequins but GK and Orks were pretty insane when they first came out too, and Orks even needed a targeted nerf to "help the game as a whole."
The trend, if nothing else, is that every army is definitely getting better in some way with their book (even if it is a sidegrade at best like the Sisters pretty much got) but some factions are just busted upon release and then need some kind of nerf so that way the A and B tier armies can have a chance against them.
Hecaton wrote: People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Drukhari, Thousand Sons, Craftworld Eldar.
Just because there's some randomness in a dataset doesn't mean you can't pull out a trend.
So marines and necrons were unstoppable and Harlequins were trash at the beginning on 9th.
Black Templars...
Dark Angels...
Space Wolves...
Sisters, GK and GSC never broke the bank.
So I guess if your noise is like....half then maybe it's not noise.
Remember when people complained for five seconds about slow ass terminators with transhuman? Those were the days.
Since codexes started dropping for 9th, the most powerful codexes were typically the most recent. Obviously there are exceptions, the trend is not perfectly true, but it's there.
vict0988 wrote: @salt donkey explain Drukhari Raiders, Stormspeeder Hammerstrikes, Land Speeder Typhoons, Intercessors, Scout Squads, Vanguard Veterans, Chaplain Dreadnoughts, Reiver Squads, Nightbringer, Canoptek Reanimator with your theory. You cannot. The dart board theory holds true every time.
Raiders: sold less than venoms throughout their lifespan so GW needed to to unload inventory, stormspeeders are a new model so they don’t need good rules (going to shorten this to “new model”) I don’t recall typhoons being good or bad, intercessor started out with fine rules when they where new, got OP rules when GW needed to unload inventory, and got worse rules once that was done, scout squads similar good than bad, vanguard vets same boat, chaplain dreads where a mistake due to being FW, Reiver’s likely sold enough due to their design, nightbringer needed to be cleared out, reanimator was a new model in a bundle that sold out immediately. No reason it needed good rules.
So 1- maybe 2 of your examples hold up. Try harder next time
How do you explain GW selling out of units they are going to push and not stacking up stock because they know they'll sell like hotcakes when they buff the rules?
Why doesn't GW want to sell Obelisks, Praetorions, Khymerae, Mandrakes or Beastmasters or tonnes of other old kits that have never been good? Why only Intercessors and Raiders? Why wouldn't FW request units be buffed just like GW does when they need to sell out kits, why is it random?
Your explanations are just assumptions with no data to back them up. I could tell you that Reivers have sold no more than 10 sets worldwide and you would be unable to refute me and unable to explain why GW haven't pushed their rules yet. Please excuse me if you run a store or know someone who does and have talked with them about the number of various kits they have sold.
I could post a number of OP new models as a counter-point to the useless ones I mentioned, why are GW making some new kits useless and some OP? Try to look to refute your own assumptions instead of confirming them.
Daedalus81 wrote: It's pretty normal for a new book to do well after release before people adjust for it. TS topped some tournaments as well and got a lot of attention.
You might have more data to back this up - but I think there's an issue that "good players" often try out new books.
And while codex imbalance is important, good players will still tend to win games.
Its a bit like there was a flurry of professionals saying they were going to run GSC. I highly doubt that's a thing any more. You don't want to go to a tournament you have the ability to do well in but find your list is clearly second best.
I mean this is sort of the issue really. DE/Ad Mech clearly ruled the roost in mid 2021. But they weren't winning every tournament on earth. You could play the mission and things were close enough to have a shot. I feel Ad Mech was very reliant on flyer spam that wasn't a common thing to own given they were £65 a go.
People always jump on exaggerations - but the gap now feels larger. The above were the Decurion Necrons of 7th edition.
And now we've hit on Custodes/Tau/Eldar/Harlequins, as the Eldar/Tau/Space Marines of that edition. Head and shoulders above the previous books, to the point where statistically the odds are just incredibly hard skewed against you.
And I think the concern is GW will already be looking at 10th edition - and may just write this year off as an experiment.
The difference is that GW now nerfs pretty hard stuff that deserved to be nerfed, unlike 7th edition. So yeah, those new factions might be top tiers now, but for how long?
Only drukhari stayed top tiers for long, and that's because their whole codex was strong. They had to adapt pretty hard to nerfs and FAQs just like anyone else. Are the tau and aeldari codexes also that strong, with lots of overpowerforming units? Harlies and custodes are easy to fix since they their roster isn't wide. A few nerfs/points hikes will put them in line, it's not like they can really change the lists' archetypes they bring to the table.
Also I need debunk a big assumption a lot of you are making. In my theory GW is not using OP rules to sell new models. Quite the opposite in fact. GW is incentivized not make new models rules OP. This is because
A) GW has too little production capacity to flood the market with new models.
B) New models sell well regardless of rules. This is a known reality within realtor space. New product always sells well, sometimes to a factor of 10x similar old product.
C) GW can buff rules at a later date if they aren’t strong enough to sell what they initially want (we saw this space marine 2.0 and ork buggiez)
Once you realize this, everything else fits into place. Rather than buffing new models rules, what GW wants to do is sell product that isn’t new and rotting away in inventory. My guess is GW looks at their inventory, notes what’s best to sell (i’e what they want to get rid of), and then tells their designers to buff these units/armies enough to unload it all quickly.
And you see this time and time again. What was good in prior editions? Venoms, Riptides, custodes FW. What wasn’t sold due to these being stronger options? Raiders, crisis suits, custodes plastics. Oh would you look at that! All the prior units got needed while the latter got buffed. Tyranid warriors are another example of this. Awful in 8th, great in 9th. I could on and on with this (Deathshroud terminators getting buffed, wracks getting buffed, wyches getting buffed, rangers getting buffed, dakkabots getting nerfed, devour flyrants no longer existing, etc, etc. From a business perspective it makes perfect sense, GW has just done a worse job keeping these buffs and nerfs in check
Salt donkey wrote: And you see this time and time again. What was good in prior editions?
Wraithknights Riptides were OP in 6th... and 7th. Riptides were OP in 8th as well.
Lokhust Destroyers were OP in 7th and 8th, they had a 6 month break where they were bad, is that enough to fit into your narrative of shifting between good and bad?
Hive Tyrants were OP in 6th, 7th and 8th.
Plagueburst Crawlers were OP in 8th and 9th.
Dreadknights were OP in 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th.
If you assume that GW are badly trying to assign fair pts costs then this number of recurring OP units and OP units with new models and UP units continuing to be UP and UP units with new models makes perfect sense.
Karol wrote: What if they can't make more ? Plus they can nerf them 3-6 months later after people bought them, and with the investment done, the people playing often will try to update the army to stay fun to play.
If GW had limitless capacity for production, then yeah, there would be losing money if they haven't sold an item to a willing customer. But if they sell all they can make, then they maxed out profit.
The only thing GW would want to do to their models is to make them bio degrade, same way all sports and tech ware is. Just imagine this, practicaly no secondary market, you have to rebuy the army if you want to play. And as a bonus you can call this some eco thing and get points for being a friendly company.
but people aren't going to buy them 3-6 months from now because then everyone will be playing CSM or Daemons or Guard or whatever utterly busted codex they recently released. They probably aren't going to buy them next month if the internet is right about Tyranids.
The window to sell 9 voidweavers to power gamers jumping on the latest FOTM is very small with the current pace of releases.
So they sell 9 voidweavers now, something else short time later. Excelent. Targeting the try hard whales is good for gw's pocketline.
I don't think GW care what grey plastic they shift.
Ork Buggies is the classic one. Yes, the Squigbuggy went from being a joke to one of the best things in the book.
So you can maybe believe that GW printed a hundred thousand of these, and they've just been clogging up warehouses for 3 years while, as part of a master plan, GW prepared to unleash them upon the earth.
....and then tricksy GW sold them all in about 6 weeks. Which is why they promptly nerfed them into oblivion. Going so far as to bring in bespoke rules that don't apply to 99% of other units such that no Ork player should really own more than 3. Bwahahahaha.
But even if we leave that aside - there's still the problem of other buggies. When for example did GW get rid of their massive stockpile of Boomdakka Snazzwagons? Or is that earmarked for the 10th edition Ork Codex, coming in 2025?
I think its a lot easier to believe GW just write rules with two clashing ideas. The first is the rule of cool as according to the writer. If they like a unit, they want it to "feel" powerful on the table. That usually means just making it better than other things. The second however is a vague knowledge from the community of "this sucks, make it better" or "this is obnoxious to play against, make it worse". Which yes, is why terrible units tend to get buffs, and things which were dominating the game are sometimes (but not always) nerfed.
Salt donkey wrote: And you see this time and time again. What was good in prior editions?
Wraithknights Riptides were OP in 6th... and 7th. Riptides were OP in 8th as well.
Lokhust Destroyers were OP in 7th and 8th, they had a 6 month break where they were bad, is that enough to fit into your narrative of shifting between good and bad?
Hive Tyrants were OP in 6th, 7th and 8th.
Plagueburst Crawlers were OP in 8th and 9th.
Dreadknights were OP in 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th.
If you assume that GW are badly trying to assign fair pts costs then this number of recurring OP units and OP units with new models and UP units continuing to be UP and UP units with new models makes perfect sense.
First off I’m arguing that GW is intending to use rules to sell unwanted inventory. That doesn’t mean I’m arguing they are perfect at it. Also none of what you said contradicts the idea that GW may have needed to sell a lot these units for a long period of time, That said in regards to addressing your points.
Can’t comment on 7th Ed as well since I didn’t play then, but…
6th and 7th where practically the same, so Wraithknights dominated 1 edition and then got nerfed to oblivion the next. Which just reinforces my point.
Riptides where great for 2 editions, but they are also not good now. Maybe GW just overproduced them at that start?
Lokhust destroyers where good in a weak army during 8th. So I doubt they sold too many then
Different versions of hive Tyrants have been OP. Also they moved from a metal kit to a plastic one during this period as well (and Once again I remember them being a strong unit in a weak book during 7th)
PBC where strong in both editions, but A) fell off towards the middle/end of 8th B) had the plague-spitter version get replaced with entropy cannon version from 8th to 9th (and that kit is hard to magnetize) and C) existed in weaker army for both editions.
Dreadknights are universally considered horrible models (so they need good rules to sell). Also while there have been points in each edition where they are strong, it never lasts that long in any edition.
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Tyel wrote: I don't think GW care what grey plastic they shift.
Ork Buggies is the classic one. Yes, the Squigbuggy went from being a joke to one of the best things in the book.
So you can maybe believe that GW printed a hundred thousand of these, and they've just been clogging up warehouses for 3 years while, as part of a master plan, GW prepared to unleash them upon the earth.
....and then tricksy GW sold them all in about 6 weeks. Which is why they promptly nerfed them into oblivion. Going so far as to bring in bespoke rules that don't apply to 99% of other units such that no Ork player should really own more than 3. Bwahahahaha.
But even if we leave that aside - there's still the problem of other buggies. When for example did GW get rid of their massive stockpile of Boomdakka Snazzwagons? Or is that earmarked for the 10th edition Ork Codex, coming in 2025?
I think its a lot easier to believe GW just write rules with two clashing ideas. The first is the rule of cool as according to the writer. If they like a unit, they want it to "feel" powerful on the table. That usually means just making it better than other things. The second however is a vague knowledge from the community of "this sucks, make it better" or "this is obnoxious to play against, make it worse". Which yes, is why terrible units tend to get buffs, and things which were dominating the game are sometimes (but not always) nerfed.
To your first part, while worded cynically, sounds absolutely believable. More likely they sold less than an ideal amount of buggies at first (so not clogging it the warehouse, but more than they wanted to have left over), waited 2 years to release the new book, and then promptly sold out of squig buggy in around a month of half when they where clearly OP. Based on what I’ve seen this looks like a very reasonable theory.
As for your second point. Sure some other units got hit in the crossfire, but these units still had time to sell, The boomdakka snazzwagon, for example likely sold more when the buggies where first released, as it looked better and played better than its Squig counterpart.
Regardless of your beliefs there's enough negative energy in the community ( reddit and facebook included ) that new players are really going to be put off. Continued floundering will only damage GW's future business and that's exactly what happened in 7th when the company faltered.
GW has encountered unprecedented growth with the advent of 8th ( and specialist games ). People didn't run back, because of busted units and GW has a lot to lose in destroying that momentum.
Daedalus81 wrote: Regardless of your beliefs there's enough negative energy in the community ( reddit and facebook included ) that new players are really going to be put off. Continued floundering will only damage GW's future business and that's exactly what happened in 7th when the company faltered.
I would rather new player be warned about how the game works before they invest 1000$ in to it and find out that it is something different, then what the advertisments say. And if this means they have to be told about the negatives too, then so be it.
Framed that way, those numbers look like a bubble that will pop naturally, regardless of how the company behaves.
Nothing really stands out for me from any of those years, they're just riding an abberant wave and will drop back down to around ~130 sooner or later.
If GW , and this ment as a joke or rather something I couldn't find in my english dictionary, based their sells policy on how the games looks now. Then it seems they finaly noticed that their core gamer, is no longer a 13-14 year old, but rather a 35+ dude with a much bigger income. And that customer is both willing and able to chase the meta much further then any teen new player could. Same with branching out in to other games or factions. Assuming the avarge player is not picking up GW games as a form of self flagglation, but to have fun. It could be resonable to exepect from GW to make those 35y olds buy more stuff, more often. And because GW games are old, they have a steady flow of fresh 30+ years olds, with good income, returning to the game to see how it is. Only while a 13y olds looking at the game can mean a squad or a patrol box, the better income older player starts with a lot more. Just because he can afford it, specially for new stuff that didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago.
Voss wrote: Framed that way, those numbers look like a bubble that will pop naturally, regardless of how the company behaves.
Nothing really stands out for me from any of those years, they're just riding an abberant wave and will drop back down to around ~130 sooner or later.
You can absolutely see where 8th was released. If nothing stands out I would like to have some of what you're having.
Those 9 years prior? They were stagnant. If you account for inflation they were losing money. 110M in 2008 dollars is 134M in 2016 dollars, but they made 118M. Dropping down to 130M would absolutely destroy the company....considering their costs are now 218M.
The only aberrant wave is the COVID profits you see in the 2021 numbers.
If GW , and this ment as a joke or rather something I couldn't find in my english dictionary, based their sells policy on how the games looks now. Then it seems they finaly noticed that their core gamer, is no longer a 13-14 year old, but rather a 35+ dude with a much bigger income. And that customer is both willing and able to chase the meta much further then any teen new player could. Same with branching out in to other games or factions. Assuming the avarge player is not picking up GW games as a form of self flagglation, but to have fun. It could be resonable to exepect from GW to make those 35y olds buy more stuff, more often. And because GW games are old, they have a steady flow of fresh 30+ years olds, with good income, returning to the game to see how it is. Only while a 13y olds looking at the game can mean a squad or a patrol box, the better income older player starts with a lot more. Just because he can afford it, specially for new stuff that didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago.
You mean the time in someone's life when they are most likely to have a family is the time when they have excess cash and time to chase meta? Good grief.
8th was more of the same edition churn (remind me, because I seriously don't remember- was it 17, 18, or 19? There are pretty hefty jumps in each of those years, and if its 'definitely' 8th edition, there shouldn't be). That's what I mean by nothing stands out- there's nothing in any of those years where GW was really doing something different or unusual.
You may think its the prime cause of a big jump, to me it was just business as usual, and there were likely other factors at play.
Hecaton wrote: People saying it's just incompetence, that GW isn't purposefully power creeping their codices are wrong. There's randomness and incompetence, sure, but the power level of a codex is directly linked to how recently it was released.
Drukhari, Thousand Sons, Craftworld Eldar.
Just because there's some randomness in a dataset doesn't mean you can't pull out a trend.
So marines and necrons were unstoppable and Harlequins were trash at the beginning on 9th.
Black Templars...
Dark Angels...
Space Wolves...
Sisters, GK and GSC never broke the bank.
So I guess if your noise is like....half then maybe it's not noise.
Remember when people complained for five seconds about slow ass terminators with transhuman? Those were the days.
Since codexes started dropping for 9th, the most powerful codexes were typically the most recent. Obviously there are exceptions, the trend is not perfectly true, but it's there.
I seem to recall early 9th being dominated by harlequins and daemons for a fair while. Necrons were never "the most powerful" again, most of the books this edition fall into an OK range or power. It's only really drukhari, admech and the last three. That's 5 of 12 I think if you remove the supplements for marines.
Voss wrote: That's what I mean by nothing stands out- there's nothing in any of those years where GW was really doing something different or unusual.
except for killing of Warhammer, starting with a Game that crashed and than make a 180° turn in community interaction by adapting the community made rules for AoS and releasing 8th 40k with a big hype
saying they did like usual just ignores how different GW was acting prior 8th and after
Dudeface wrote: I seem to recall early 9th being dominated by harlequins and daemons for a fair while. Necrons were never "the most powerful" again, most of the books this edition fall into an OK range or power. It's only really drukhari, admech and the last three. That's 5 of 12 I think if you remove the supplements for marines.
Orks and GK had a lot of hype behind them as well, but with how many nerfs there have been it's kind of hard to say exactly what power level each codex has had. Thousand Sons, Sisters, GSC and the first 3 are the only ones that have had healthy releases and even Necrons got nerfed.
Note that their fiscal years end in May, so 9th launching in July 2020 puts the sales into Fiscal 2021. Same goes for the other editions.
WHC launched Nov 2016 and the products and initiatives there ( Magnus and company ) including the teasing of 8th show in the year prior to launch.
You can also see how poorly 6th did by comparison and how 7th just cemented the decline, which likely caused Kirby's retirement.
People very simply just want to be engaged with the lore and miniatures that they love. GW was pretty mum before WHC, so it will be interesting to see if the good will built from communicating will keep them from nose diving.
At this point it's pretty clear they're not going to do anything until the slate, which I suppose is the right thing to do as the more chaos you introduce to the system the worse it becomes. I just hope they can do something meaningful and that CSM and Knights don't start us all over again.
Dudeface wrote: I seem to recall early 9th being dominated by harlequins and daemons for a fair while. Necrons were never "the most powerful" again, most of the books this edition fall into an OK range or power. It's only really drukhari, admech and the last three. That's 5 of 12 I think if you remove the supplements for marines.
Orks and GK had a lot of hype behind them as well, but with how many nerfs there have been it's kind of hard to say exactly what power level each codex has had. Thousand Sons, Sisters, GSC and the first 3 are the only ones that have had healthy releases and even Necrons got nerfed.
About GK and 1ksons one has to remember that they were kicked out of the release schedul. They were to come out in jan last year. Way before the whole DE, Ad Mecha, Orks etc wave. And back then 1ksons would have been considered strong and GK borderline OP, when comparing to stuff like necron, basic marines and DG.
You mean the time in someone's life when they are most likely to have a family is the time when they have excess cash and time to chase meta? Good grief.
How old do you think Siegler is?
Where I live the 30+year olds that play mobile games, table tops etc are almost all unmarried with loads cash to burn. They do stuff like blowing 2-3 avarge salaries , polish ones, on Lost Ark or buy a whole recast army in one go. As I said, I like to frame what I said with a specific english word, because I couldn't find one. And I do understand that stuff is skewed when 1000$ is not the same in all places around the world. To give a perspective of things. Recasting is really popular here, like so popular that some people that started it a long time ago have legit companies making models now. But even recast armies are too expensive for teens here. Specially when the choices are last years gaming tablet now, or a w40k army in 9-12+ months time.
Salt donkey wrote: Raiders: sold less than venoms throughout their lifespan so GW needed to to unload inventory
Based on what data? GW sells 820,000 worth of Raiders in a month right now. How many exactly do you think they needed to sell?
intercessor started out with fine rules when they where new, got OP rules when GW needed to unload inventory
None of the busted Iron Hands lists were using marines. Intercessors were never OP. People just bitched about them endlessly compared to other things.
scout squads similar good than bad
Scouts were never good. They were simply the cheapest option to fill requirements.
vanguard vets same boat
VV never got nerfed and are still used regularly.
Reiver’s likely sold enough due to their design
Again - just absolutely making things up. I would love to have seen people play them, but damn near no one has. Ever with an Army of Reknown made for them.
Venoms where the go to transport option for DE players from 5th-8th. You’d pretty much always see more venoms than raiders in any competitive list, and many used venom exclusively. So GW made raiders better than venoms to get these DE players to buy more/some raiders.
I’m sorry, but what does scouts being OP or not have to do with anything? Tons of people bought and played with them in 8th. That’s all GW cares about regardless of reason.
Vanguard vets weren’t good in 8th, they are good now.
Nightbringer is an old, hard to build model that hasn’t been good for a while (outshined by the deceiver prior to 9th). Plenty of reason for GW to want it use rules to sell him.
Reavers I’m least sure on, but they came in bundle and plenty of SM players have wanted buffs for them so it seems likely they at least sold a good amount. That said I’d bet money next SM iteration will see them get buffed.
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Daedalus81 wrote: Regardless of your beliefs there's enough negative energy in the community ( reddit and facebook included ) that new players are really going to be put off. Continued floundering will only damage GW's future business and that's exactly what happened in 7th when the company faltered.
GW has encountered unprecedented growth with the advent of 8th ( and specialist games ). People didn't run back, because of busted units and GW has a lot to lose in destroying that momentum.
My argument is that these higher sales and game balance degradation are both coming from GW doubling down on using rules to sell models (which started with SM 2.0 IMO). We may want to believe that a better balanced game sell s more than a broken mess, but at least in the beginning this isn’t true. Until the heavily invested whales start quitting from frustration, GW won’t change anything. That said when this starts happening and GW’s sales start stagnating, we’ll see game balance become a priority. This is what happened from 7th to 8th and will likely happen from 9th to 10th, And the cycle will once again repeat itself.
Salt donkey wrote: Venoms where the go to transport option for DE players from 5th-8th. You’d pretty much always see more venoms than raiders in any competitive list, and many used venom exclusively. So GW made raiders better than venoms to get these DE players to buy more/some raiders.
I’m sorry, but what does scouts being OP or not have to do with anything? Tons of people bought and played with them in 8th. That’s all GW cares about regardless of reason.
Vanguard vets weren’t good in 8th, they are good now.
Nightbringer is an old, hard to build model that hasn’t been good for a while (outshined by the deceiver prior to 9th). Plenty of reason for GW to want it use rules to sell him.
Reavers I’m least sure on, but they came in bundle and plenty of SM players have wanted buffs for them so it seems likely they at least sold a good amount. That said I’d bet money next SM iteration will see them get buffed.
If people were using Venoms in 8th it wasn't because they were good. It's because that's what they had, but given the souping situation there was barely any reason to consider DE transports at all.
You just said that Reanimators didn't need to be made good, because they were in a box set. What was in all those box sets with them? Why would they need to make Intercessors good if they were in a boxed set? Why are you then saying Reivers are the same as the Reanimator and not Intercessors? Reivers have been hit multiple times to try and make them good. They have their own AoR. Why wouldn't THAT have been a prime opportunity for GW to sell Reivers when marines are doing poorly?
VV didn't change. The mission set did. People transitioned from strong static shooting to shooting and mobility.
Scouts picked up Outflank and their sniper rifles got an extra AP. Why would GW give them those buffs in exchange for going to Elite? To throw us off their trail?
Again - just absolutely making things up. I would love to have seen people play them, but damn near no one has. Ever with an Army of Reknown made for them.
Dudeface wrote: I seem to recall early 9th being dominated by harlequins and daemons for a fair while. Necrons were never "the most powerful" again, most of the books this edition fall into an OK range or power. It's only really drukhari, admech and the last three. That's 5 of 12 I think if you remove the supplements for marines.
Orks and GK had a lot of hype behind them as well, but with how many nerfs there have been it's kind of hard to say exactly what power level each codex has had. Thousand Sons, Sisters, GSC and the first 3 are the only ones that have had healthy releases and even Necrons got nerfed.
If you lump the armies into categories, Marines, Necrons. Sisters, Ad Mech, Drukhari and Orkz, and then the recent shenanigans it starts to group a little easier. Basically Marines enjoyed a bit of OP time in the sun when going against Necrons, I'll gladly admit they weren't nearly as busted as they were in late 8th.
The second wave, Ad Mech and Drukhari just stood head and shoulders better than SoB and Orkz, but for some reason SoB and Orkz took more nerfs to the face than either Drukhari or Ad Mech...weird. And then the recent release....christ almighty. To put it bluntly, every single army needs to be buffed somewhat heavily in order to even stay on the table against Custards, Tau, Harlies, Eldar and the Nidz.
Harlies are rocking close to an 80% win rate with mirror matches removed. So we can expect an emergency data-slate patch, or perhaps this is a feature and not a bug? Maybe Tyranids will crush them and establish their own >70% win rate? Its a great time to be alive!
Harlies are rocking close to an 80% win rate with mirror matches removed. So we can expect an emergency data-slate patch, or perhaps this is a feature and not a bug? Maybe Tyranids will crush them and establish their own >70% win rate? Its a great time to be alive!
Without fusion spam or haywire Harlequins should be weak against monster.
Harlies are rocking close to an 80% win rate with mirror matches removed. So we can expect an emergency data-slate patch, or perhaps this is a feature and not a bug? Maybe Tyranids will crush them and establish their own >70% win rate? Its a great time to be alive!
Without fusion spam or haywire Harlequins should be weak against monster.
Except those 9 voidweavers come with a 3 shot str 12 D4 gun because reasons.
There's not much point making the same complaint each day - but yes, I think GW have managed to kill "competitive 40k" for the foreseeable future. Just don't play harlequins at your store. (And possibly anyone seriously playing Custodes, Tau, Eldar, Tyranids...)
In practice I expect there will be an emergency FAQ on voidweavers in the next couple of weeks (possibly as soon as next Tuesday) because GW tends to step in when all the professionals are crying together. But they'll probably just push them up 10 points or something. Which will represent a slight nerf, but nowhere near taking them to a sensible point versus most stuff in the game. And Tau/Custodes will still eat anything further down the pecking order etc.
Harlies are rocking close to an 80% win rate with mirror matches removed. So we can expect an emergency data-slate patch, or perhaps this is a feature and not a bug? Maybe Tyranids will crush them and establish their own >70% win rate? Its a great time to be alive!
Without fusion spam or haywire Harlequins should be weak against monster.
You haven't seen the Prismatic Cannon profile, have you?
Slipspace wrote: You haven't seen the Prismatic Cannon profile, have you?
No, I had assumed it was the haywire version that was good since haywire bikes were really good in 8th. It's good to know that if I see more than one prismatic cannon I shouldn't play. I don't really play right now anyway, I teach new players the game and that's pretty much all I'm good for at the moment. Playing against a git using the new Tau crushed my spirit a little bit.
To provide a little bit of devil's advocacy here... Harlequins have one long range weapons platform, the Voidweaver. It's been pants ever since it came out, and the Prismatic Cannon was always way weaker at basically everything when looking at comparable Eldar/Dark Eldar weaponry. I think it's reasonable that it has some teeth now... it's just entirely too cheap, and the ability to squadron should go away. 3 Voidweavers is a plenty. Up the points by... idk, 25? to start with, remove squadroning, and see where we are after that.
Rihgu wrote: I don't think you need to up the points if you're removing squadroning, honestly.
They would still be the best thing in the game for 90 points. I'm not sure "but I can only bring 3" is good logic - even if the impact is obviously reduced over people bringing 6-9.
Its sort of up there "well I can only bring one Trajann".
So for example of proposed changes here:
https://www.goonhammer.com/boons-road-to-adepticon-want-to-know-how-i-got-these-scars/ Increase the cost of the base Troupe member by +2 points per model and grant them CORE
Increase the cost of the base Star/Voidweaver by +5 points per model
Increase the cost of the Prismatic Cannon by +10
Reduce the squad size cap on Voidweavers from 3 to 2
Alter the Luck of the Laughing God mechanic by limiting the application of Luck dice to one success per unit per phase (credit in part to John Lennon)
Change the Mirage Launcher (Sbtar/Voidweaver) ability to only effect shooting phase attacks
Alter the wording to of the Mirror Architect ability so that it only applies to abilities and shooting beyond 12” (credit to Richard Siegler, James ‘Wings’ Grover, and Liam ‘Corrode’ Royle)
Given how GW seem to end up doing a lot of what Goonhammer propose, I imagine they'll end up with something like this.
And to be fair all these chip away. But I'd guess they probably take Harlequins from "the best army in the game bar none" to "Tau, CWE, Custodes" sort of tier." I.E. maybe a 60-65% win rate on average, but in reality still utterly stomping everyone who isn't in the top echelon of factions.
I think the real problem I have with Goonhammer proposals is they always have this sort of weasel words: "First, it’s important to note that any changes to the faction shouldn’t kill them competitively – in an ideal world everyone sits in the A or B tier of factions and can build into other factions to maintain competitive games."
This is why DE dominated the game for the best part of a year. "Sure they shouldn't have a 65% win rate - but nerfing them past 60 is contrary to some divine right of broken codexes to stay broken". Its the logic that a few lucky codexes get the A Tier treatment and should be there forever more (until GW completely resets the scale as they have in the last few months.)
How about instead we have a "they should keep nerfing Harlequins (and Tau and Custodes and...) until they have a 50% win rate into DG and Sisters" metric?
because a voidweaver for 105 would be fine, but 90 is omgwtfbbq broken.
You can make voidweavers 120 points and they will still be the best thing since sliced bread.
I wouldn't even be surprised if the point cost should be closer to 150 before people would stop taking 9 of them.
Since 110-120 points is the cost of a twin las razorback (can't remember it exactly) and the best ork buggies cost 100-115 points I'd definitely up voidweavers to 120 points at least.
Oh and remove squadron too, or giving them the ork buggies solution, aka 0-1 limitation but with the chance of getting a squadron of 3 as single unit.
They'd still be great and lots of players would still max them out, but not game breaking.
Blackie wrote: Since 110-120 points is the cost of a twin las razorback (can't remember it exactly) and the best ork buggies cost 100-115 points I'd definitely up voidweavers to 120 points at least.
Oh and remove squadron too, or giving them the ork buggies solution, aka 0-1 limitation but with the chance of getting a squadron of 3 as single unit.
They'd still be great and lots of players would still max them out, but not game breaking.
leave squadrons, fix pts costs.
the codex options are already anemic, don't force people into the same build all the time.
(ork buggies shouldve been fixed with pts too, not that gakky patch rule)
Tyel wrote: I think the real problem I have with Goonhammer proposals is they always have this sort of weasel words: "First, it’s important to note that any changes to the faction shouldn’t kill them competitively – in an ideal world everyone sits in the A or B tier of factions and can build into other factions to maintain competitive games."
This is why DE dominated the game for the best part of a year. "Sure they shouldn't have a 65% win rate - but nerfing them past 60 is contrary to some divine right of broken codexes to stay broken". Its the logic that a few lucky codexes get the A Tier treatment and should be there forever more (until GW completely resets the scale as they have in the last few months.)
Couldn't agree more. Too many delusional elf players writing for them that still can't admit how strong the Craftworlds half of the book is. They also really don't seem to get the concept of 40k players who only own one or two factions. It would have been miserable to own Imperial Guard and Death Guard for example, a brief moment of somewhat playable DG with a chance at tournaments after their codex came out until two months later DE come out. Then a steady decline for DG and a solid bottom of the barrel time for IG for the next 13 months.
the codex options are already anemic, don't force people into the same build all the time.
(ork buggies shouldve been fixed with pts too, not that gakky patch rule)
Even if they were to cost 125pts each. They would still be extremly good. As a matter of perspective 125 is what a dreadnought costs or half an NDK, or you could get 2 void weaver for 1 NDK, and as good as an NDK is, it is no where near as good as two of those gunboats.
In reality the thing is unfixable though. GW can either "fix" harlis, and we never see them again, and harli players are in for some NPE or the changes are inconsequential and we get the same thing we saw with DE or Inari.
The very idea that Eldar got no down sides soup option irks me to no end, specially when in case of books like 1ksons or GK, GWs only material promoted the army with the ability to mix cabals or brotherhoods. And neither army got anything in return for losing that crucial way of building armies.
Tyel wrote: I think the real problem I have with Goonhammer proposals is they always have this sort of weasel words: "First, it’s important to note that any changes to the faction shouldn’t kill them competitively – in an ideal world everyone sits in the A or B tier of factions and can build into other factions to maintain competitive games."
This is why DE dominated the game for the best part of a year. "Sure they shouldn't have a 65% win rate - but nerfing them past 60 is contrary to some divine right of broken codexes to stay broken". Its the logic that a few lucky codexes get the A Tier treatment and should be there forever more (until GW completely resets the scale as they have in the last few months.)
Couldn't agree more. Too many delusional elf players writing for them that still can't admit how strong the Craftworlds half of the book is. They also really don't seem to get the concept of 40k players who only own one or two factions. It would have been miserable to own Imperial Guard and Death Guard for example, a brief moment of somewhat playable DG with a chance at tournaments after their codex came out until two months later DE come out. Then a steady decline for DG and a solid bottom of the barrel time for IG for the next 13 months.
One of these things is not like the others. There is not the same irrefutable proof of brokenness on the CWE side as with Harlequins, or even with Tau/Custodes. Maybe they should catch some nerfs/FAQs now, but lol it's not "the eeeevil Eldar kabal of Goonhammer" acting in some sort of conspiracy theory.
In general I agree with the point though. DE and even Admech were touched with feathers and it wasn't sufficient. I think we forget about that fact with Admech given that GW did eventually bring the sledgehammer to the kneecap there.
The very idea that Eldar got no down sides soup option irks me to no end, specially when in case of books like 1ksons or GK, GWs only material promoted the army with the ability to mix cabals or brotherhoods. And neither army got anything in return for losing that crucial way of building armies.
Totally agree, the way GW has handled soup in 8th/9th is proof that they've been applying lipstick to the same old pig.
Wait, so we have to first wait a few months for a FAQ, while eldar soup in harlis and then we wait another few months, possibly arriving at 10th ed, when they have to be played with just CWE units. And that is an assumption made with a big nerf to voids. if it is just a 10-20pts hike we will see 7 of them instead of 9, or we still see 9, but CWE players will cut some units. Because we already have seen this in 8th ed and it didn't work. by the time GW started nerfing eldar more then half edition was over, the whole thing was warped how super efficient Inari were and pushed all the armies that could in to wierd soup set ups and spaming hyper efficient unit like smash hammers and castellans everywhere. Funniest thing was when GW nerfed the real problem for real, aka Inari, the CWE players already switched to flyer lists.
Even if they were to cost 125pts each. They would still be extremly good. As a matter of perspective 125 is what a dreadnought costs or half an NDK, or you could get 2 void weaver for 1 NDK, and as good as an NDK is, it is no where near as good as two of those gunboats.
In reality the thing is unfixable though. GW can either "fix" harlis, and we never see them again, and harli players are in for some NPE or the changes are inconsequential and we get the same thing we saw with DE or Inari.
The very idea that Eldar got no down sides soup option irks me to no end, specially when in case of books like 1ksons or GK, GWs only material promoted the army with the ability to mix cabals or brotherhoods. And neither army got anything in return for losing that crucial way of building armies.
then make them more expensive than 125pts lol? They're not unfixable at all.
And yeah, soup now is a mess caused by GW overcorrecting the 8th lists. I honestly believe GW couldve let soup be a thing now that detachments cost CP.
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Karol wrote: Wait, so we have to first wait a few months for a FAQ, while eldar soup in harlis and then we wait another few months, possibly arriving at 10th ed, when they have to be played with just CWE units. And that is an assumption made with a big nerf to voids. if it is just a 10-20pts hike we will see 7 of them instead of 9, or we still see 9, but CWE players will cut some units. Because we already have seen this in 8th ed and it didn't work. by the time GW started nerfing eldar more then half edition was over, the whole thing was warped how super efficient Inari were and pushed all the armies that could in to wierd soup set ups and spaming hyper efficient unit like smash hammers and castellans everywhere. Funniest thing was when GW nerfed the real problem for real, aka Inari, the CWE players already switched to flyer lists.
you do realise the oppressive lists are pure harlequins and not soup tho?
And in 8th it was multiple different armies that you're lumping into "eldar"
we had Ynnari at the start of the edition (which got slapped into irrelevance)
then we had Eldar flyers (Craftworlds + Drukhari)
Then we had the venom spam drukhari list which also got nerfed into irrelevance
and its not like those were the only OP armies in 8th either
then make them more expensive than 125pts lol? They're not unfixable at all.
yeah they are GW fixable ala end of 8th ed Inari way of fixing things, or 8th ed salamanders way of fixing that army. I am assuming the army should some what playable. But within the way GW changes rules and at what pace, I don't see them being right for both parties to be happy about it. Of course the biggest problem with it, is that thanks to the harlis being a problem. CWE lists just got 3 to 6 months extra unnerfed time to be played.
I look at some other armies tanks, who are not skimmers, and even at 130pts the void weaver seems a very good option. Small fast moving vehicles that can be spamed with huge offensive output and overlaping protection seem to be a recuring problem in this edition. For harlis they seem to be a problem the second time around, because before DE starting doing drive by shoting with liquifires, it was harlis that were a tier of its own army.
you do realise the oppressive lists are pure harlequins and not soup tho?
They are very good in both lists, and CWE souping in eldar are making it to top tables of big tournaments. Outside of tournaments, I struggle to imagine how running 3-6 of those and a detachment of harlis would not greatly increase the power of a CWE army.
and in 8th it was multiple different armies that you're lumping into "eldar"
we had Ynnari at the start of the edition (which got slapped into irrelevance)
then we had Eldar flyers (Craftworlds + Drukhari)
They were played with the same models, and often double dipped on the same rules like stratagems. And stanard Inari were "slaped" in to irrelevance when the castellan came out, and that was what a year or 9 months in to 8th ed? that is double the time some armies were considered good or passable in 9th. And that is just for events. Outside of tournaments Inari were a scourge of gaming till they got their WD codex or if you happened to play Iron Hands with 2.0 rules.
Also with eldar it seems to be the case that they become a problem each time they get a codex. They are breaking editions just by getting a new book. No other army, including the supposed golden boy of GW marines get to do that. Marine books end up horrible a ton of times. I don't think there was a single time in history of w40k when eldar with a current for the edition book weren't one of the best or litterally the best army in the game.
Rihgu wrote: I don't think you need to up the points if you're removing squadroning, honestly.
90pts for a vehicle that makes Ork Buggies look like utter crap in comparison. Durability wise they are just as durable if not more so thanks to -1 to hit, 4+ invuln and other shenanigans. Dmg potential wise, they are ridiculous, The Prismatic Cannon is better in every way to anything a buggy has and then the cherry on top is the 2 Shuriken cannons.
Yeah no, minimize them to 1 per army and it would still need a points increase just to balance the fact that its arguably 20-30pts under priced MINIMUM.
The Dreaded "Rukkatrukk Squig Buggy" Which caused GW and Tournament meta players alike to have conniption fits averaged 4-5 hits a turn at S5 AP-2 2dmg...that's it. This thing averages 5 hits at S6 -2AP 2dmg just from its Shuriken cannons, its main gun is a whole other story. So yeah, no, points increase is a must.
everyone complains about salvo launcher praetors and Voidweavers litterally do 3 times as much damage at range and are basically just as durable (since everything takes vertus to their 4++).
Combined with the light saedeath shutting off hit rerolls and trans-hit army-wide its just stupid. I do freely admit that they are the crutch making harlies the top dogs atm as the rest of the army is not nearly as oppressive.
Eihnlazer wrote: everyone complains about salvo launcher praetors and Voidweavers litterally do 3 times as much damage at range and are basically just as durable (since everything takes vertus to their 4++).
Combined with the light saedeath shutting off hit rerolls and trans-hit army-wide its just stupid. I do freely admit that they are the crutch making harlies the top dogs atm as the rest of the army is not nearly as oppressive.
tiny correction, the voidweaver natively shuts off hit re-rolls, Its part of the -1 to hit rule it has. Light is just the transhuman for hits.
the codex options are already anemic, don't force people into the same build all the time.
Is it? I though codex aeldari had plenty of options.
Harlequins are not a standalone faction anymore, their units are just regular aeldari now. Playing pure harlequins (hence limited builds) is just a choice now, just like playing pure snaggas or pure gretchins. And litterally no one had more than 3 voidweavers before, it was even illegal to take more than 3. So limiting to max 3 won't hurt anyone, really.
I think you under estimate how fast people wanted to get voids for themselfs. It is like saying that most GK players had only 4 NDKs, because the second HQ was Draigo almost always. The fact that people can get their hands on codex rules a lot sooner then the book hits the store means, some people have armies ready to play day one.
Blackie wrote: Harlequins are not a standalone faction anymore, their units are just regular aeldari now. Playing pure harlequins (hence limited builds) is just a choice now, just like playing pure snaggas or pure gretchins. And litterally no one had more than 3 voidweavers before, it was even illegal to take more than 3. So limiting to max 3 won't hurt anyone, really.
That's not a correct comparison. Harlis have their own rules within the Codex. Harliquens have far more to them than just being part of another list. Beastsnaggaz don't have a whole section of their own strats, relics and secondary objectives. Do Beastsnaggaz have their own purity rule?
Why are Custodes even in a conversation of broken armies that can soup? Custodes literally can't even soup with their own sub factions. You can't mix shadowkeepers with Dread host. And if you mix Custodes with anything not Custodes, they simply become really expensive piles of crap. All their special stuff gets turned off. I know Custodes are slightly on the side of OP right now, but please leave them out of the "Souping is broken" discussion.
the codex options are already anemic, don't force people into the same build all the time.
Is it? I though codex aeldari had plenty of options.
Harlequins are not a standalone faction anymore, their units are just regular aeldari now. Playing pure harlequins (hence limited builds) is just a choice now, just like playing pure snaggas or pure gretchins. And litterally no one had more than 3 voidweavers before, it was even illegal to take more than 3. So limiting to max 3 won't hurt anyone, really.
You know what most Harlequin players I know have?
Plenty of the transport weaver (whatever it's called).
And a bitz box that contains the weapons they'd need to convert them to the gun boat version.
Sure, they may only have 3 dedicated voidweavers.
But for minimal effort & the cost of a pack of magnets....
Its just I see it brought up a lot - but I'm just not sure why, unless its specifically say a Custodes lament? To impact the boats, you need to be BS2+, either base, or 3+ with a +1 to hit. And that's not that common really?
It seems a lot better on the bikes since they don't have a native -1 to hit from shooting. Which will be the inevitably pivot if/when GW cut the boats down to size. But if you have a 9 Voidweaver, 4-5 starweaver list that's kind of different.
Tyel wrote: How annoying is Light's "transhuman for hits"?
Its just I see it brought up a lot - but I'm just not sure why, unless its specifically say a Custodes lament? To impact the boats, you need to be BS2+, either base, or 3+ with a +1 to hit. And that's not that common really?
It seems a lot better on the bikes since they don't have a native -1 to hit from shooting. Which will be the inevitably pivot if/when GW cut the boats down to size. But if you have a 9 Voidweaver, 4-5 starweaver list that's kind of different.
It's pretty good, also because it doubles-up with no-re-rolls.
And +1 to hit or variants of "ignore modifiers" are not that uncommon anymore. Velocity Trackers and the Commander Ability for Tau. Presage and the ignore-modifier Relic for Thousand Sons. Space Marine Techmarine Buff. Crystal Targeting Matrix. Etc., etc..
Also while Custodes have BS 2+ throughout, many armies have it on characters and specific units. Tau Commanders, Nemesis Dreadknight-GMs, etc...
I sympathize with Harlie players who say that nerfing Voidweavers will reduce their options from their already limited codex/book/subfaction, but right now it would seem that the only competitive lists have 9 of them with Light. So you already have only one competitive archetype.
Perhaps there was pressure from the suits to get the book released on time and the developers just kinda crossed their fingers and hoped for the best? I have no inside knowledge, but it would not surprise me to learn that they only really playtested with a single unit of three in a Harlie detachment that was in turn part of an Aeldari Army.
I think that the recent tourney data can now be considered information verging on intelligence. Something needs to be done, but GW is in a quandary. If they do nothing then the howls will continue and they risk fracturing the player base like it was before 9th. If they do something then they have set a trend (perhaps started with Admech, then Ork buggies/flyers, GK Dreadknights) - most books will have broken stuff that will be nerfed shortly after release. This in turn would cause some hesitancy for players to buy stuff from new books. Or not? Maybe this is a feature and not a bug?
So weave on Voidweavers! Enjoy your time in the dark sun! And watch the community page - ask not for whom the bell tolls...
Tyel wrote: How annoying is Light's "transhuman for hits"?
Its just I see it brought up a lot - but I'm just not sure why, unless its specifically say a Custodes lament? To impact the boats, you need to be BS2+, either base, or 3+ with a +1 to hit. And that's not that common really?
It seems a lot better on the bikes since they don't have a native -1 to hit from shooting. Which will be the inevitably pivot if/when GW cut the boats down to size. But if you have a 9 Voidweaver, 4-5 starweaver list that's kind of different.
It's pretty good, also because it doubles-up with no-re-rolls.
And +1 to hit or variants of "ignore modifiers" are not that uncommon anymore. Velocity Trackers and the Commander Ability for Tau. Presage and the ignore-modifier Relic for Thousand Sons. Space Marine Techmarine Buff. Crystal Targeting Matrix. Etc., etc..
Also while Custodes have BS 2+ throughout, many armies have it on characters and specific units. Tau Commanders, Nemesis Dreadknight-GMs, etc...
It looks like Light doesn't do much outside BS2 that the -1 to hit and no rerolls wasn't already covering unless you also have a +1 to hit and then it only matters for BS3.
BS2 with RR1s : 97%
BS2 with RR1s and -1 to hit : 78%
BS2 -1 to hit and no Rerolls : 66%
BS2 -1 to hit, no Rerolls, and Light : 50%
BS3 with RR1s : 77%
BS3 with RR1s and -1 to hit : 58%
BS3 -1 to hit and no Rerolls : 50%
BS3 -1 to hit, no Rerolls, and Light : 50%
BS4 with RR1s : 58%
BS4 with RR1s and -1 to hit : 38%
BS4 -1 to hit and no Rerolls : 33%
BS4 -1 to hit, no Rerolls, and Light : 33%
"Light doesn't do much if you ignore all the best units in the game"
Hot take there.
Before the Eldar codex came out the top 2 armies were Tau and Custodes. Custodes speaks for itself being entirely BS 2+ and Tau's damage comes from their Commanders who are BS 2+ and Crisis units with BS 3+ (cause ML) and access to ignore modifiers.
You don't care that Light doesn't do much against Guard or Space Marines because those armies are not a threat in the first place
Well the "don't worry about DE" sentance was followed by "Ad mecha will balance them out" and "If you think that DE are broken, wait till you see Ad mecha".
I wonder how many GK players would like to be able to buy NDKs in squadrons. An army of 6-7 NDK, plus a master and 30 interceptors dudes to hang on objectives. Could be fun to play.
Moving the shooty boats 22 instead of 16 and firing (and jumping away 6 if somebody tries to hit them) are all important parts of the package.
But generally, I don't think they are soo bad, despite a good first weekend.
Pure efficiency, things Custodes bikes are 1000% more insane. They are basically Voidweavers that pay 10 points less for a +1T, WS/BS +1, 2+ armour, <Core>, count as double on objective and 600% more close combat output upgrade.
If only armies like Custodes / Tau were out there (not poor folks like Marines or so), Voidweaver should probably lose another 20-30 points.
Blackie wrote: Harlequins are not a standalone faction anymore, their units are just regular aeldari now. Playing pure harlequins (hence limited builds) is just a choice now, just like playing pure snaggas or pure gretchins. And litterally no one had more than 3 voidweavers before, it was even illegal to take more than 3. So limiting to max 3 won't hurt anyone, really.
That's not a correct comparison. Harlis have their own rules within the Codex. Harliquens have far more to them than just being part of another list. Beastsnaggaz don't have a whole section of their own strats, relics and secondary objectives. Do Beastsnaggaz have their own purity rule?
Umm...Ironically, yes Snaggaz do in fact have their own Strats and Relics. They don't have their own secondary objectives though
As far as purity? nope, GW is kind of dumb when it comes to orkz. Here is a wonderful example of what I am talking about. The official "Major" klanz of the Orkz are Goff, Evil Sunz, Deffskullz, Badmoonz, Blood Axes, Snakebites and Freebootas. Of those 7, Freebootas are technically not a klan so much as a "kulture" in that they are all the other klanz lumped together to fight as mercenary/Pirates.
So 8th edition, GW releases a special EVIL SUNZ faction! Nope, sorry I said evil sunz, you know the klan that loves to Go fast, paint things red and drive around on warbikes and fast vehicles? No, what I meant to say was "SPEED FREAKZ" Which love to go fast, paint things red, drive around on warbikes and fast vehicles. Totally different from Evil Sunz, so Don't get confused.
Now 9th. GW finally released a Klan specific army! Introducing...SNAKEBITES! Sorry again, I Said Snakebites, the old fashioned orkz who barely believe in gunpowder, ride around on squigs and are incredibly tough. No, these are called BEAST SNAGGAZ! They barely believe in gunpowder, they ride around on squigs and are incredibly tough.
GW literally has no idea WTF they are doing with orkz and hasnt for so long that its astounding they still have a relatively large group of players buying their stuff.
But generally, I don't think they are soo bad, despite a good first weekend.
Take a harli list, give it to another play, and play 10 games vs anything other then tau, custodes and Ad Mecha. If you think they aren't SOO bad. DE weren't SOO bad either. No army that hits a big event, where the best of the best player are, and ends it with almost 80% win rate , including mirrors it gets higher, is not just not SOO bad, it is actually as bad as it looks like. And if we get an army that can easily beat them and all the other armies too, then we are going to be back to the Ad Mecha and DE situation, where everyone else playing all the other factions will wonder what they are doing with their time and money.
But generally, I don't think they are soo bad, despite a good first weekend.
Take a harli list, give it to another play, and play 10 games vs anything other then tau, custodes and Ad Mecha. If you think they aren't SOO bad. DE weren't SOO bad either. No army that hits a big event, where the best of the best player are, and ends it with almost 80% win rate , including mirrors it gets higher, is not just not SOO bad, it is actually as bad as it looks like. And if we get an army that can easily beat them and all the other armies too, then we are going to be back to the Ad Mecha and DE situation, where everyone else playing all the other factions will wonder what they are doing with their time and money.
For a change i am in complete agreement with Karol here. Harlies are broken as all hell. The GT I recently went to was absolutely insanely dominated by Tau, Custards, Eldar and Harlies. Yeah, when you balance something against the most broken elements of the game it doesn't look that bad, but holy christ those 4 armies are in a game of their own atm. It reminds me of 7th a bit. Everyone else plays over here while the top 3-4 armies duke it out for supremacy.
Ordana wrote: "Light doesn't do much if you ignore all the best units in the game"
Hot take there.
Before the Eldar codex came out the top 2 armies were Tau and Custodes. Custodes speaks for itself being entirely BS 2+ and Tau's damage comes from their Commanders who are BS 2+ and Crisis units with BS 3+ (cause ML) and access to ignore modifiers.
You don't care that Light doesn't do much against Guard or Space Marines because those armies are not a threat in the first place
Well, I wasn't making a judgement about the overall impact, which is like a -3 to hit for Custodes, but the rule itself. It's a good approach to hitting elite BS while not penalizing BS4/5, however, the VW platform just makes it a whole other problem.
Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Do you think GW will learn more or are you being childish?
GFdoubles wrote: you will want to bring a plethora of different unit types instead of just spamming three of the most efficient units in the army.
Why? Voidweavers are tough, have high mobility, and respectable shooting. Harlequins are even decent in close combat. What do you think about this new mission would incentivize someone not to take 9 voidweavers? It's still the best and most efficient unit in the book no matter what your objective is unless it's specifically "kill x models in close combat". I doubt there will be enough cards specifically about killing units in melee to make anything else in the Harlequin arsenal more appealing than more voidweavers
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Voss wrote: 8th was more of the same edition churn (remind me, because I seriously don't remember- was it 17, 18, or 19? There are pretty hefty jumps in each of those years, and if its 'definitely' 8th edition, there shouldn't be). That's what I mean by nothing stands out- there's nothing in any of those years where GW was really doing something different or unusual.
You may think its the prime cause of a big jump, to me it was just business as usual, and there were likely other factors at play.
You think the same business model caused them to make less in 2016 than they did in 2009 even without accounting for inflation, and then double their revenue from 2016 to 2018? That absolutely does not happen if you're just doing "business as usual" for that entire time period. When you're investing in a company and doing your DD, you don't notice falling revenue for almost a decade and then doubling revenue in 2 years? It's usually a sign of a new CEO implementing new business strategies. Oh wait, didn't GW replace their CEO during this time? That's like looking out your window one minute and seeing sunshine and everyone jogging in shorts, then an hour later you look out and see snow but you don't think the weather changed.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Do you think GW will learn more or are you being childish?
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Lol, I've actually never seen the community as vindictive and toxic as in the last couple of months and this is a great example.
Tyel wrote: There's not much point making the same complaint each day - but yes, I think GW have managed to kill "competitive 40k" for the foreseeable future. Just don't play harlequins at your store. (And possibly anyone seriously playing Custodes, Tau, Eldar, Tyranids...)
In practice I expect there will be an emergency FAQ on voidweavers in the next couple of weeks (possibly as soon as next Tuesday) because GW tends to step in when all the professionals are crying together. But they'll probably just push them up 10 points or something. Which will represent a slight nerf, but nowhere near taking them to a sensible point versus most stuff in the game. And Tau/Custodes will still eat anything further down the pecking order etc.
Game is fine...if you remove 20% of the factions. How about if someone is new and only has Custodes or Harlequins? I just got back into 40k after taking a break and selling my armies to put a down payment on a house. If I came back and liked Custodes, why shouldn't I get a game? Why should I have to intentionally buy/build/paint models I don't like or that aren't very good compared to the rest of my codex?
Blackie wrote: Since 110-120 points is the cost of a twin las razorback (can't remember it exactly) and the best ork buggies cost 100-115 points I'd definitely up voidweavers to 120 points at least.
Oh and remove squadron too, or giving them the ork buggies solution, aka 0-1 limitation but with the chance of getting a squadron of 3 as single unit.
They'd still be great and lots of players would still max them out, but not game breaking.
leave squadrons, fix pts costs.
the codex options are already anemic, don't force people into the same build all the time.
(ork buggies shouldve been fixed with pts too, not that gakky patch rule)
That's the big problem with limiting any Harlequin unit like that. They have 8 datasheets. Every Harlequin army will look identical if you start limiting them like that. Something needs done to their points and maybe survivability. The amount of shots at any S you have to put into one of those to kill it is way too much for a 100pt model.
Toofast wrote: Game is fine...if you remove 20% of the factions. How about if someone is new and only has Custodes or Harlequins? I just got back into 40k after taking a break and selling my armies to put a down payment on a house. If I came back and liked Custodes, why shouldn't I get a game? Why should I have to intentionally buy/build/paint models I don't like or that aren't very good compared to the rest of my codex?
Because its a 2 player game?
I mean I'm exaggerating a bit. The Eldar Codex is incredibly new. But if someone said "hey, fancy a game tomorrow, I'm bringing 9 voidweavers and 5 starweavers" - its not unreasonable for me to go "no thanks."
Maybe it would be a fun - or educational - experience. Although I don't see how being torn apart by an army I can barely interact with would be that interesting.
But I've lost a few to Custodes over the last 10(?) weeks and... yeah. I don't think there's much I can do about it.
There's some bias. I don't like the army. I don't like their fluff. I don't like their models. I don't really like how they play. I didn't like it when they hid behind a 3++ - and I don't like them abusing transhuman and no rerolls now. I have powerful feelings about Custodes comparable to how I felt about 5th edition GK. If in 10th edition they were thrown into a non-competitive void for the rest of the 2020s, I wouldn't be that upset about it.
(You don't need to post "but but but, I love Custodes" - thats fine. Different people like different things. But again, its a 2 player game. People got sick of my DE and the turn 2 tidalwave of death all through last summer and I wouldn't be surprised if people want a similar fate for them.)
It all depends on your local meta, the Internet and nothing discussed here represents the game as a whole. You can play your custodes or your harlequins or your DE, AD what ever. Just see what your local meta is and if it is not the tournament style just leave some stuff at home, agree on a higher point cost to pay etc.
If you only want to play with 9 Voidweavers, Trajann etc. and your local meta does not like that then you are sadly in the wrong circle for the game you want to play.
Limitations and adjustments to what GW proposes how their game is played is something our group does since the change to 4th edition. And it never came to pages upon pages of adjustments just a couple of tweeks, e.g. wraithknights +100Pts, LOW only after both sides agreed etc.
Just play with 200 fewer points, that'll curb the power level a tonne and you can take your Voidweavers with their protoplasm cannons and Jedi powers and feel good about having found a list that lets you win with no more than 1800 pts.
What if it still beats the other armies. 200pts is a character and a support unit. if most of your armies power comes from 9 weavers and other gunboats, the army woulnd't be losing that much power. Maybe units should have progressive costing on them. 90pts for first, but then if you run 4+ it costs more, and if you run 9 it should be really expensive. And GW could hire playtesters and check how much stuff should be up. 4 rhinos,4x land raiders , 4x10 boys? probably don't require much or any points hike. But if you are starting to buy the 4th NDK it should very much cost more.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Lol. Good way to prove you don't care about balance and just want yourself benefit.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Lol, I've actually never seen the community as vindictive and toxic as in the last couple of months and this is a great example.
There‘s probably never been as toxic and disruptive as Custodes.
Racerguy180 wrote: Or you know, resist the urge(no matter how strong) to not take that 4th NDK...
Oh wait I forgot your hellscape.
Friend. My army has exactly 0 NDKs in it. and 5 interceptors, and I would run 0 if I had other options. GK are in a worse situation then harlis with their unit options. A harli player can soup them up in to CWE or DE, he can run 3-6 or even 0 voids and replace them with options from CWE/DE. A GK player has no such option. A foot GK master or Librarian is a horrible option. having no fast moving moving threat unit with inv/-1D means a GK list can not only try to take and hold mid table, but also makes it impossible for the army to even reach melee. And if GK can not reach melee, then their chance of winning with storm bolter fire is , what I would describe low, specially as the heavy weapon options in squads are, you guessed it, horrible. Now you can of course say that GK can just run razorbacks etc for their heavy weapon/long range support. Only that doesn't even work for cheaper regular marines.
So yeah the "hellscape" I was describing is every GK army, specially the new ones that poped out after the codex dropped.
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Sunny Side Up 803732 11338549 wrote:
There‘s probably never been as toxic and disruptive as Custodes.
No this is classic eldar players. Other factions good, w40k is ending , GW hates eldar players and eldar as a faction, even if they have top armies. Eldar actually break the game with a new codex rules, we start to see , wait and see being said, the meta will adjust, future army X will balance eldar, get gud and its cousin , I never play with the OP units.
SemperMortis wrote: Umm...Ironically, yes Snaggaz do in fact have their own Strats and Relics.
But they're not in their own section. They're not a whole separate mini-Dex within the Ork Codex.
I mean, Hive Fleet Kraken has its own Relic and Strat, but you wouldn't say that playing Kraken is the same as playing Harlis.
SemperMortis wrote: GW literally has no idea WTF they are doing with orkz and hasnt for so long that its astounding they still have a relatively large group of players buying their stuff.
I don't disagree with anything else you said. The sudden inclusion of 'Beastsnaggaz' struck me as really odd, given that all the units just appear have a "Why aren't these just unique Snakebite units?" air to them.
all the latest threads about OPDE,AD,Custodes,Harlequins etc. just illustrate that there is no 40K that is universally played everyone plays their own version dictated by the meta they find themselves in or want to participate in.
I stay clear of any real tournaments because i would curse my life if i would run into one of the top Lists. The truth is for me no one is forcing anyone to play anything. If your regular opponents want to play a different 40K then you would enjoy, there are 4 options:
a) convert them
b) convert yourself
c) change the group
d) stop playing
yes d) is only a last resort but why constantly let yourself be bullied if you can easily avoid it? I would rather stop playing and look for a new hobby then getting frustrated on weekends after work life did that the last 5 days already
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Lol, I've actually never seen the community as vindictive and toxic as in the last couple of months and this is a great example.
There‘s probably never been as toxic and disruptive as Custodes.
is it?
At least I have the feeling while you can turn it into a 2 player game by adding house rules and comps (and saying you are not playing against certain lists is exactly this), it is not made as such by default
is it?
At least I have the feeling while you can turn it into a 2 player game by adding house rules and comps (and saying you are not playing against certain lists is exactly this), it is not made as such by default
Do you think the person on the other side of the table is a robot or something?
is it?
At least I have the feeling while you can turn it into a 2 player game by adding house rules and comps (and saying you are not playing against certain lists is exactly this), it is not made as such by default
Do you think the person on the other side of the table is a robot or something?
Maybe I'm missing the point...but... what?
No, it definitely doesn't make sense. Unless kodos thinks you meant 2 per side?
No this is classic eldar players. Other factions good, w40k is ending , GW hates eldar players and eldar as a faction, even if they have top armies. Eldar actually break the game with a new codex rules, we start to see , wait and see being said, the meta will adjust, future army X will balance eldar, get gud and its cousin , I never play with the OP units.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Lol, I've actually never seen the community as vindictive and toxic as in the last couple of months and this is a great example.
There‘s probably never been as toxic and disruptive as Custodes.
LMAO! Nope, Eldar win that award hands down for their shenanigans from 5th to 8th. Nothing like playing a friendly game and having your opponent plop down 2 wraithknights and 3 mobz of Scatbikes
Or in 6th where they just ran around the entire time spamming their transports which could lash out with their shields. or in 8th where they had a list that had -2 and -3 to hit across the board which made them functionally immune to return fire. Or, god how did i forget this, herohammer in 7th where they ran around with un-targetable death stars and psychic shenanigans.
Nope, Custards are obscenely OP right now, but Eldar have historically been top dog, especially at being toxic about it. Go back through this forum 6-10 years and go read some of the nonsense Eldar players were posting, defending their broken OP units.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Either way. Had to deal with fething Custards for 2 months.
Give Trajan the 300 points tag he should have, for all I care. But Aeldari and Harlequins should have at least as long a window as Custodes (continue to) have before they get hit.
Lol, I've actually never seen the community as vindictive and toxic as in the last couple of months and this is a great example.
There‘s probably never been as toxic and disruptive as Custodes.
LMAO! Nope, Eldar win that award hands down for their shenanigans from 5th to 8th. Nothing like playing a friendly game and having your opponent plop down 2 wraithknights and 3 mobz of Scatbikes
Or in 6th where they just ran around the entire time spamming their transports which could lash out with their shields. or in 8th where they had a list that had -2 and -3 to hit across the board which made them functionally immune to return fire. Or, god how did i forget this, herohammer in 7th where they ran around with un-targetable death stars and psychic shenanigans.
Nope, Custards are obscenely OP right now, but Eldar have historically been top dog, especially at being toxic about it. Go back through this forum 6-10 years and go read some of the nonsense Eldar players were posting, defending their broken OP units.
Eldar players are very entitled. I'd like to that's a stereotype but every forum I've visited AND every Eldar player I've played against has proven me otherwise.
SemperMortis wrote: LMAO! Nope, Eldar win that award hands down for their shenanigans from 5th to 8th. Nothing like playing a friendly game and having your opponent plop down 2 wraithknights and 3 mobz of Scatbikes
That's GW's fault. We know how Wraithknight balancing went - it was dictated to be overpowered by the suits.
I can't comment on your personal experiences, but I'm not sure this is entirely fair.
When I think about marines, it's difficult for me to see any other faction as entitled. I mean, let's say for the sake of argument that eldar have some OP units in every edition, and that the players staunchly defend those units from criticism or even actively revel in the success of those units.
They've still got half the range of marines, and much of that is still resin even after a major release; they occupy less than a tenth of the marine content in video games, comics, WH+ animations, BL books, etc, etc.
And I know that right now, Marines aren't all that on the competitive scene, and I know you're primarily talking about entitlement in terms of power as opposed to representation- from that POV I can see your point. But I think some of what makes non-marine players of any stripe defensive is that all of us know we're all just NPCS in a universe that revolves around marines- whether as allies or enemies or allies so when GW throws us a bone- any kind of bone, we tend to defend it.
Eldar players who for months held the game in a grip of over 60% win rates, went insane as soon as they got replaced by IH as the top army.
Every codex they always get is broken good. Eldar players problems in sports terms can be sumerised as, we only have 4 cold baths, our bus doesn't have nice paint on it and our team shirts are old. We are crushing every competion for the last 30 years, but our year books look wack.
In wargame hobby, which is about playing a wargame, always having at worse very good rules, and not being happy about it 100% of times sound entitled. Take 9th. At start eldar had soups and harlies. Then they had DE to play with, now they have CWE, DE and harlis to play with, and soup up, when everyone else can't soup. They didn't have even a full edition when their rules were bad. Now take someone like csm on the other hand. Last time they were good, in what 4th ed, or was it 5th? They have a reason to be unhappy. GK good for a short time in 5th, then really really bad till end of 9th. Marines, the poster children of w40k, ton of models and most of them are bad, and most don't translate to next editions. Orks jump between good and horrible for years. IG can be great or terrible for entire editions. Eldar are nothing like that, they have rich people problems.
Karol wrote: Eldar players who for months held the game in a grip of over 60% win rates, went insane as soon as they got replaced by IH as the top army.
Every codex they always get is broken good. Eldar players problems in sports terms can be sumerised as, we only have 4 cold baths, our bus doesn't have nice paint on it and our team shirts are old. We are crushing every competion for the last 30 years, but our year books look wack.
In wargame hobby, which is about playing a wargame, always having at worse very good rules, and not being happy about it 100% of times sound entitled. Take 9th. At start eldar had soups and harlies. Then they had DE to play with, now they have CWE, DE and harlis to play with, and soup up, when everyone else can't soup. They didn't have even a full edition when their rules were bad. Now take someone like csm on the other hand. Last time they were good, in what 4th ed, or was it 5th? They have a reason to be unhappy. GK good for a short time in 5th, then really really bad till end of 9th. Marines, the poster children of w40k, ton of models and most of them are bad, and most don't translate to next editions. Orks jump between good and horrible for years. IG can be great or terrible for entire editions. Eldar are nothing like that, they have rich people problems.
Well hey, Karol, you play GK. Just soup in some Black Templars if GK are bad! Or switch to White Scars!
You shouldn't simultaneously say "I play GK, and nothing else!" and "Eldar have it good-they can play as Eldar, DE, or Harlis based on what's good!"
Which is fething lame. But the current product development cycle dictates that those that will lap it up, will & those that dont...don't... lapped. Then the rest of us are left picking up the pieces of the shattered pickup game @ FLGS.
Karol wrote: Eldar players who for months held the game in a grip of over 60% win rates, went insane as soon as they got replaced by IH as the top army.
Every codex they always get is broken good. Eldar players problems in sports terms can be sumerised as, we only have 4 cold baths, our bus doesn't have nice paint on it and our team shirts are old. We are crushing every competion for the last 30 years, but our year books look wack.
In wargame hobby, which is about playing a wargame, always having at worse very good rules, and not being happy about it 100% of times sound entitled. Take 9th. At start eldar had soups and harlies. Then they had DE to play with, now they have CWE, DE and harlis to play with, and soup up, when everyone else can't soup. They didn't have even a full edition when their rules were bad. Now take someone like csm on the other hand. Last time they were good, in what 4th ed, or was it 5th? They have a reason to be unhappy. GK good for a short time in 5th, then really really bad till end of 9th. Marines, the poster children of w40k, ton of models and most of them are bad, and most don't translate to next editions. Orks jump between good and horrible for years. IG can be great or terrible for entire editions. Eldar are nothing like that, they have rich people problems.
Well hey, Karol, you play GK. Just soup in some Black Templars if GK are bad! Or switch to White Scars!
You shouldn't simultaneously say "I play GK, and nothing else!" and "Eldar have it good-they can play as Eldar, DE, or Harlis based on what's good!"
you forget Karol bought a bridge in Brooklyn when they purchased their army from the local hellmonger.
Karol wrote: Eldar players who for months held the game in a grip of over 60% win rates, went insane as soon as they got replaced by IH as the top army.
I mean, the "players" didn't change. When Eldar were the hot stuff in 40K in 8th, people like Nick Nanavati and Mani Cheema were playing them. When IH were the hotness, they won the tournaments with them.
It's not like any long-term, genuine Eldar or IH or later Drukhari or whatever fans got any value or joy or worth out of the tournament crowd taking a turn at "their" army.
Sunny Side Up wrote: I mean, the "players" didn't change. When Eldar were the hot stuff in 40K in 8th, people like Nick Nanavati and Mani Cheema were playing them. When IH were the hotness, they won the tournaments with them.
It's not like any long-term, genuine Eldar or IH or later Drukhari or whatever fans got any value or joy or worth out of the tournament crowd taking a turn at "their" army.
LVO: If you only knew the power of the competitive meta. The Forums never told you what happened to Kaldor Draigo.
Karol : They told me enough! They told me *Eldar* killed him!
LVO: No. *I* abused GK all through late 5th, resulting in GW nerfing them into oblivion.
Karol : No. No. That's not true. That's impossible!
Karol wrote: Eldar players who for months held the game in a grip of over 60% win rates, went insane as soon as they got replaced by IH as the top army.
I mean, the "players" didn't change. When Eldar were the hot stuff in 40K in 8th, people like Nick Nanavati and Mani Cheema were playing them. When IH were the hotness, they won the tournaments with them.
It's not like any long-term, genuine Eldar or IH or later Drukhari or whatever fans got any value or joy or worth out of the tournament crowd taking a turn at "their" army.
yeah, my wraith list in 8th really held the game in a grip of over 60%, Karol truly is as sharp as a marble when it comes to anything related to pointy ears
Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
idk if theyre true but if they are : GOOD.
I don't understand why GW is hellbent on never exceeding T8. USE YOUR fething FRAMEWORK DAMNIT
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
Well, I'd have to actually see these leaks to decide if I believe them or not (source?), but considering how gw reacted to fw making the Legion Super Heavys T9, I seriously doubt it.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
idk if theyre true but if they are : GOOD.
I don't understand why GW is hellbent on never exceeding T8. USE YOUR fething FRAMEWORK DAMNIT
Some Fortifications are 9 iirc. One miiiiight be 10.
But yes, it'd be nice if the occasional other model were higher. Monoliths in particular come to mind.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
idk if theyre true but if they are : GOOD.
I don't understand why GW is hellbent on never exceeding T8. USE YOUR fething FRAMEWORK DAMNIT
Because melta should be vastly superior to autocannons and plasma against tough targets.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
idk if theyre true but if they are : GOOD.
I don't understand why GW is hellbent on never exceeding T8. USE YOUR fething FRAMEWORK DAMNIT
Because melta should be vastly superior to autocannons and plasma against tough targets.
Then they need to re-stat their weapons. Overcharged plasma is pretty close to melta anyway.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
idk if theyre true but if they are : GOOD.
I don't understand why GW is hellbent on never exceeding T8. USE YOUR fething FRAMEWORK DAMNIT
Because melta should be vastly superior to autocannons and plasma against tough targets.
Then they need to re-stat their weapons. Overcharged plasma is pretty close to melta anyway.
Totally an option for 10th, good point. I have been arguing for S10 Heavy 1 MM for a while anyway. The only real danger is S3 becoming too good relative to S4-5 weapons as more vehicles and monsters are changed to T8-10.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
idk if theyre true but if they are : GOOD.
I don't understand why GW is hellbent on never exceeding T8. USE YOUR fething FRAMEWORK DAMNIT
Because melta should be vastly superior to autocannons and plasma against tough targets.
Then they need to re-stat their weapons. Overcharged plasma is pretty close to melta anyway.
Totally an option for 10th, good point. I have been arguing for S10 Heavy 1 MM for a while anyway. The only real danger is S3 becoming too good relative to S4-5 weapons as more vehicles and monsters are changed to T8-10.
Where does this idea keep coming from that people are killing tanks with str 3-4 guns?
It is possible on paper. It doesn't happen in reality.
Daedalus81 wrote: Dataslate coming next week, which of course means Nids will be dodging that bullet...
do we have confirmation that the leaked Nids rules were the final codex version? Because so far it seems people are freaking out about something that still has potential to be changed
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
I don't believe the video mentioned that T9 was across the spectrum, just on the new RDBT, and the person was speculating for BBs and LRBTs.
do we have confirmation that the leaked Nids rules were the final codex version? Because so far it seems people are freaking out about something that still has potential to be changed
Nada, but I would be incredibly surprised if anything did change.
What of the Nids stuff are we thinking should get nerfed though? Maleceptors? I've seen a lot of people freak out about those but I'm not convinced they will truly be that degenerate outside of mathhammer.
Nids seem very strong, but very strong isn't enough to justify an immediate nerf.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: What of the Nids stuff are we thinking should get nerfed though? Maleceptors? I've seen a lot of people freak out about those but I'm not convinced they will truly be that degenerate outside of mathhammer.
Nids seem very strong, but very strong isn't enough to justify an immediate nerf.
I can't say that anything needs it - though I am uncertain of the relevancy of Crusher. It'd just be a damn shame to maybe fix things a bit and then get it stomped on again.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: What of the Nids stuff are we thinking should get nerfed though? Maleceptors? I've seen a lot of people freak out about those but I'm not convinced they will truly be that degenerate outside of mathhammer.
Nids seem very strong, but very strong isn't enough to justify an immediate nerf.
I can't say that anything needs it - though I am uncertain of the relevancy of Crusher. It'd just be a damn shame to maybe fix things a bit and then get it stomped on again.
I agree. I'd love to see an immediate FAQ on day of release that gets rid of Crusher (or in the unlikely event that they keep it, to tell us on the day of release also). I don't think we'll get that though.
If they make the heavy tank, no matter what the name of it is, T9, that basically means they make the Baneblade T10, which is hilarious. Get ready for the pendulum swing boys, we're going to plaid on this return.
You all complained the game was too killy, and now we're gonna pay for it!
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: If they make the heavy tank, no matter what the name of it is, T9, that basically means they make the Baneblade T10, which is hilarious. Get ready for the pendulum swing boys, we're going to plaid on this return.
You all complained the game was too killy, and now we're gonna pay for it!
A Baneblade is currently T8, same as a Leman Russ.
Why would it have to be higher Toughness than the new tank?
Nada, but I would be incredibly surprised if anything did change.
quite a few things were changed in the Craftworlds codex from the leaked version, maybe nids will have a similar fate
Automatically Appended Next Post:
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: If they make the heavy tank, no matter what the name of it is, T9, that basically means they make the Baneblade T10, which is hilarious. Get ready for the pendulum swing boys, we're going to plaid on this return.
You all complained the game was too killy, and now we're gonna pay for it!
we're gonna pay for getting what we want?
buff defensive profiles of vehicles, thats all i want right now.
Weapons like autocannons, missile pods, and heavy bolters sacrifice Strength and Armour Penetration for more Attacks, forcing extra save rolls from your opponent
WITH A PICTURE OF IMPERIAL GUARD!
WTF? do they think an autocannon, with 2 shots hitting on 5s is going to make a difference?
JNAProductions wrote: Well hey, Karol, you play GK. Just soup in some Black Templars if GK are bad! Or switch to White Scars!
You shouldn't simultaneously say "I play GK, and nothing else!" and "Eldar have it good-they can play as Eldar, DE, or Harlis based on what's good!"
Unlike everyone else, eldar are in the gracious situation where their soups, for some reason work no problems. Taking a harli detachment doesn't make you lose most of your rules, just because you have another one of DE or CWE. That is the difference. Can't even counts as GK as anything else, because no other army has melee power weapons and storm bolters on their dudes. Also comparing 3 months of GK being good to litteral years of eldar being good or broken is a bit odd.
Don't understand the WS proposition though. Why would anyone want to soup them in to make their army better? Unless of course you have some in depth knowladge about the changes coming soon.
LVO: If you only knew the power of the competitive meta. The Forums never told you what happened to Kaldor Draigo.
Karol : They told me enough! They told me *Eldar* killed him!
LVO: No. *I* abused GK all through late 5th, resulting in GW nerfing them into oblivion.
Karol : No. No. That's not true. That's impossible!
You know I actually did take a look at how the 5th ed GK looked like back in the past. And the so called Paladin star was a noob stomper list. The tournament winning stuff, was waves of razorbacks with upgraded ammo, 0 GK, maxed out dreadnoughts, an inquisitor that unlocked henchman as troops which made the psychic rhinos extremly cheap, because the henchman unit could be 3 man strong and cost some crazy low points or something.
And again GK being good at the end of 5th ed, pales in comperation to years of dominance of eldar in 3ed, 4th, 6th, 7th ,8th and now 9th. But I got used to selecetive memory. It is like half the marine players remembering 8th as if it was sm supplements and sm 2.0 codex on from day one.
I mean, the "players" didn't change.
I was talking about people who are not winning GT. Like eldar players on this forum. I remember the conclusion of one the the threads ending with someone claiming that eldar should have annoying rules which are unfun for opponents, because eldar are like that in the lore. Also oddly large number of proposition from that thread made it in to the codex. Invs on basic troops, upgraded shurikens etc.
Weapons like autocannons, missile pods, and heavy bolters sacrifice Strength and Armour Penetration for more Attacks, forcing extra save rolls from your opponent
WITH A PICTURE OF IMPERIAL GUARD!
WTF? do they think an autocannon, with 2 shots hitting on 5s is going to make a difference?
Racerguy180 803732 11338914 wrote:you forget Karol bought a bridge in Brooklyn when they purchased their army from the local hellmonger.
Starting a game thinking a company wouldn't sell a bad product for that much or that it wouldn't fix it and leave it bad for a long time, was not something I found possible at the age of 13. I have learned a lot since then. And I can to a large degree only blame myself. I really believed the whole stuff GW wrote about new units being playable and the whole play what you like. I still like how GK termintors look like. They are great models. But the army is extremly unfun to play in 9th right now. Thankfuly, but unwillingly I was brought in to the folds of AoS, and the game is much more fun with the army I got there. Even if it ain't no grand tournament clone list. And I play the same people who are suppose to be toxic and evil, yet somehow games are fun. A paradox.
yeah, my wraith list in 8th really held the game in a grip of over 60%, Karol truly is as sharp as a marble when it comes to anything related to pointy ears
yes, because as we all know the games is played vs friends, in houses or flats specially bought to play w40k, on self build tables, where no one ever brings or buys meta armies. And that is why everyone, including the people who claim to never play with them or against them, cry out how broken all armies save theirs are.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone believe the leaks coming out on Imperial Guard tanks? T9 across the Tank Spectrum as base, Baneblades likely higher, and all vehicles can shoot out of combat?
Can we create a new boogeyman? This horse is dead.
It’s not across the spectrum. It’s likely the Rogal Dorn and higher. So likely just the Macharius and Baneblades, as well as anything else on those hulls. The Russ and Malcador I’m almost certain will still be T8.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: If they make the heavy tank, no matter what the name of it is, T9, that basically means they make the Baneblade T10, which is hilarious. Get ready for the pendulum swing boys, we're going to plaid on this return.
You all complained the game was too killy, and now we're gonna pay for it!
A Baneblade is currently T8, same as a Leman Russ.
Why would it have to be higher Toughness than the new tank?
Exactly. Baneblades have always had the same armour profile as Leman Russ: 14/13/12, and the same toughness since the change in 8th. Their added durability has always come from having more "wounds", be it "Structure Points", "Hull Points", or just "wounds". I doubt that would change. Fezzik is just trying to deflect attention from Custodes, again.
VladimirHerzog wrote:we're gonna pay for getting what we want?
buff defensive profiles of vehicles, thats all i want right now.
Except it's gw, so the increase will only apply to vehicles in the new codexes written under the "new paradigm", and won't for vehicles in codexes written before that shift in thinking. So we'll have the weird situation where Guard tanks are tougher than things like Land Raiders and Monoliths. I still won't believe it until I see it though. Gw really hates T9, they proved that in 8th.
Technically, a Baneblade has always had much better armor than the Leman Russ, given that the Russ was Rear 10 and the Baneblade was Rear 12.
The difference between "boltguns can hurt you" and "not even heavy bolters can hurt you" is a big one.
This difference was esp. significant in editions when CC attacks hit rear armor - it made the Baneblade considerably more durable than the Russ and much more resilient to front line combat where CC was likely.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Technically, a Baneblade has always had much better armor than the Leman Russ, given that the Russ was Rear 10 and the Baneblade was Rear 12.
The difference between "boltguns can hurt you" and "not even heavy bolters can hurt you" is a big one.
This difference was esp. significant in editions when CC attacks hit rear armor - it made the Baneblade considerably more durable than the Russ and much more resilient to front line combat where CC was likely.
Whoops. You're right. I forgot that Russes were AV10 on the back. Must've been thinking of Sicarans: 13/12/12. So there is precedent for Baneblades being tougher than a Russ besides in "number of wounds". Not for being tougher than a Fellblade, though.
JNAProductions wrote: Well hey, Karol, you play GK. Just soup in some Black Templars if GK are bad! Or switch to White Scars!
You shouldn't simultaneously say "I play GK, and nothing else!" and "Eldar have it good-they can play as Eldar, DE, or Harlis based on what's good!"
Unlike everyone else, eldar are in the gracious situation where their soups, for some reason work no problems. Taking a harli detachment doesn't make you lose most of your rules, just because you have another one of DE or CWE. That is the difference. Can't even counts as GK as anything else, because no other army has melee power weapons and storm bolters on their dudes. Also comparing 3 months of GK being good to litteral years of eldar being good or broken is a bit odd.
Don't understand the WS proposition though. Why would anyone want to soup them in to make their army better? Unless of course you have some in depth knowladge about the changes coming soon.
LVO: If you only knew the power of the competitive meta. The Forums never told you what happened to Kaldor Draigo.
Karol : They told me enough! They told me *Eldar* killed him!
LVO: No. *I* abused GK all through late 5th, resulting in GW nerfing them into oblivion.
Karol : No. No. That's not true. That's impossible!
You know I actually did take a look at how the 5th ed GK looked like back in the past. And the so called Paladin star was a noob stomper list. The tournament winning stuff, was waves of razorbacks with upgraded ammo, 0 GK, maxed out dreadnoughts, an inquisitor that unlocked henchman as troops which made the psychic rhinos extremly cheap, because the henchman unit could be 3 man strong and cost some crazy low points or something.
And again GK being good at the end of 5th ed, pales in comperation to years of dominance of eldar in 3ed, 4th, 6th, 7th ,8th and now 9th. But I got used to selecetive memory. It is like half the marine players remembering 8th as if it was sm supplements and sm 2.0 codex on from day one.
I mean, the "players" didn't change.
I was talking about people who are not winning GT. Like eldar players on this forum. I remember the conclusion of one the the threads ending with someone claiming that eldar should have annoying rules which are unfun for opponents, because eldar are like that in the lore. Also oddly large number of proposition from that thread made it in to the codex. Invs on basic troops, upgraded shurikens etc.
Dark Eldar can’t soup without losing Power from Pain.
And moreover, if you’re an Eldar player, saying “Play Dark Eldar” doesn’t help a damn thing.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Technically, a Baneblade has always had much better armor than the Leman Russ, given that the Russ was Rear 10 and the Baneblade was Rear 12.
The difference between "boltguns can hurt you" and "not even heavy bolters can hurt you" is a big one.
This difference was esp. significant in editions when CC attacks hit rear armor - it made the Baneblade considerably more durable than the Russ and much more resilient to front line combat where CC was likely.
Whoops. You're right. I forgot that Russes were AV10 on the back. Must've been thinking of Sicarans: 13/12/12. So there is precedent for Baneblades being tougher than a Russ besides in "number of wounds". Not for being tougher than a Fellblade, though.
Ok, now you can apologize. Also, I have three baneblades that I would love to run as a stand alone army, like a triple knight list, if ever given the possibility. Given how 9th is for LOW units, likely it will never happen, but it didn't stop me from buying three and painting them, because I love the basic idea of them.
Also, please show me on the Fluffy Telemon where the bad Custodes kicked in your pee pee. We are OP, you happy? If you run over to the Custodes Tactica, I've been advocating nerfs to Custodes since the Dex revisions dropped.
Trajann needs to cost north of 200 points. They need to make bikes 90+ points again. They need to make terminators 80+. And they need to make the EC army wide a 5+++, not a 4+++. Now please go back to posting Bill O'Reilly book reviews on r/conservative.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Technically, a Baneblade has always had much better armor than the Leman Russ, given that the Russ was Rear 10 and the Baneblade was Rear 12.
The difference between "boltguns can hurt you" and "not even heavy bolters can hurt you" is a big one.
This difference was esp. significant in editions when CC attacks hit rear armor - it made the Baneblade considerably more durable than the Russ and much more resilient to front line combat where CC was likely.
Whoops. You're right. I forgot that Russes were AV10 on the back. Must've been thinking of Sicarans: 13/12/12. So there is precedent for Baneblades being tougher than a Russ besides in "number of wounds". Not for being tougher than a Fellblade, though.
Ok, now you can apologize. Also, I have three baneblades that I would love to run as a stand alone army, like a triple knight list, if ever given the possibility. Given how 9th is for LOW units, likely it will never happen, but it didn't stop me from buying three and painting them, because I love the basic idea of them.
Also, please show me on the Fluffy Telemon where the bad Custodes kicked in your pee pee. We are OP, you happy? If you run over to the Custodes Tactica, I've been advocating nerfs to Custodes since the Dex revisions dropped.
Trajann needs to cost north of 200 points. They need to make bikes 90+ points again. They need to make terminators 80+. And they need to make the EC army wide a 5+++, not a 4+++. Now please go back to posting Bill O'Reilly book reviews on r/conservative.
For getting the old AV stats wrong for Russes? Sure. For pointing out that you've been trying to deflect attention from Custodes? No. Because you have. Glad to have you finally admit that they need nerfs though.
And my only review for any books by that particular author is: don't buy it, it's almost 100% certainly .
With a winner and a loser, so it's inherently competitive rather than cooperative, correct? So why should I handicap myself? When I go golfing, my buddies don't expect me to tee off with a 3 iron just because I'm a longer hitter. When I race someone, I don't have to unplug one of my spark plugs if my car has more power and weighs less. When I shoot a competition, I don't have to take the red dot off and use open sights just because someone else couldn't afford a red dot and a gunsmith. When I play basketball at the rec center, I don't have to leave 1 shoe untied if I'm bigger/faster/stronger than the guy guarding me. This isn't dungeons and dragons, it isn't rogue trader or 2E with an arbitrator. It's a game with a winner and loser just like chess, league of legends, motor racing, basketball, shooting competition, or literally any other hobby/sport/esport I've been involved in. I'm not intentionally buying and painting subpar models to fit someone else's arbitrary definition of fair.
With a winner and a loser, so it's inherently competitive rather than cooperative, correct? So why should I handicap myself? When I go golfing, my buddies don't expect me to tee off with a 3 iron just because I'm a longer hitter. When I race someone, I don't have to unplug one of my spark plugs if my car has more power and weighs less. When I shoot a competition, I don't have to take the red dot off and use open sights just because someone else couldn't afford a red dot and a gunsmith. When I play basketball at the rec center, I don't have to leave 1 shoe untied if I'm bigger/faster/stronger than the guy guarding me. This isn't dungeons and dragons, it isn't rogue trader or 2E with an arbitrator. It's a game with a winner and loser just like chess, league of legends, motor racing, basketball, shooting competition, or literally any other hobby/sport/esport I've been involved in. I'm not intentionally buying and painting subpar models to fit someone else's arbitrary definition of fair.
LMAO, golfing has a handicap system. I play badminton with some people that aren't all in the greatest shape and sometimes I give them a handicap, I suspect I'd never score more than 2/21 points against the most experienced player there if he didn't handicap himself. Then there is warming up where you are intentionally sending the ball in an easy arc to hit, which is just like reminding your opponent that they have reinforcements that might want to enter at the end of their second Movement phase.
Using handicaps in League of Legends is absolutely a valid tactic, let's say I am a gold player playing with my iron friend, my friend will be massively dragging us down and I will be massively dragging us up a huge amount of the time if we are playing against gold players in normal games, but if instead I play sub-optimal builds or characters or roles I am less proficient in then my normal MMR will be worse and we'll play against worse players and I won't steal the spotlight from my bronze friend every game.
You helping your friend on a smurf account in League Of Legends to not steal the spotlight is absolutely the dumbest thing I've read, especially since you're not playing against your friend either.
Ordana wrote: Where does this idea keep coming from that people are killing tanks with str 3-4 guns?
It is possible on paper. It doesn't happen in reality.
I certainly did it a bunch of times with my Devilgaunt bombs. Somewhat frustratingly they were better at killing the T7 3+ Custodes tanks than they were at killing the actual Custodes infantry.
Certainly knocked wounds off tanks with Bolters too. I might have done the last wound on a few tanks since the start of 8th.
The thing is, a Lascannon only averages 1.29 wounds against a T7 3+ vehicle. If a bunch of bolters has a reasonable chance of doing a wound and a tank needs deading, then I'll use the bolters too.
Ordana wrote: Where does this idea keep coming from that people are killing tanks with str 3-4 guns?
It is possible on paper. It doesn't happen in reality.
I certainly did it a bunch of times with my Devilgaunt bombs. Somewhat frustratingly they were better at killing the T7 3+ Custodes tanks than they were at killing the actual Custodes infantry.
Certainly knocked wounds off tanks with Bolters too. I might have done the last wound on a few tanks since the start of 8th.
The thing is, a Lascannon only averages 1.29 wounds against a T7 3+ vehicle. If a bunch of bolters has a reasonable chance of doing a wound and a tank needs deading, then I'll use the bolters too.
Yeah I'd like them to do something similar to Aircraft using the stat profile and keywords... something that makes basic guns almost useless vs the tank/big vehicles, and unable to hit the broadside of a Terminator (but still capable of hitting a tank). Make the Anti-Tank (krak, Las, Melta etc) stuff super strong, but unable to really hit infantry, make the anti-eliteinfantry or hybrid stuff (Grav, Plasma, etc) work for tanks but not very well.
Just reduce the rate of fire (to max 2 shots per gun per turn) and eliminate the tools to enhance basic grunts' weapons. Problem solved.
Chipping the last wound off a tank via lasgun/bolter when there aren't appropriate targets for those weapons ain't an issue. Being able to delete tough units, including tanks, thanks to troops "bombs" is the issue.
Proper anti tank weapons could have a buff against vehicles and mosters, like "add X to the damage characteristic of this weapon if the target is a VEHICLE or MONSTER" maybe, but then also those weapons need to reduce their rate of fire, and the tools to enhance them, or the game becomes even more lethal.
EviscerationPlague wrote: You helping your friend on a smurf account in League Of Legends to not steal the spotlight is absolutely the dumbest thing I've read, especially since you're not playing against your friend either.
It's not a smurf account, just playing normals with an iron friend on an account that is gold in ranked.
Toofast wrote: With a winner and a loser, so it's inherently competitive rather than cooperative, correct? So why should I handicap myself? When I go golfing, my buddies don't expect me to tee off with a 3 iron just because I'm a longer hitter. When I race someone, I don't have to unplug one of my spark plugs if my car has more power and weighs less. When I shoot a competition, I don't have to take the red dot off and use open sights just because someone else couldn't afford a red dot and a gunsmith. When I play basketball at the rec center, I don't have to leave 1 shoe untied if I'm bigger/faster/stronger than the guy guarding me. This isn't dungeons and dragons, it isn't rogue trader or 2E with an arbitrator. It's a game with a winner and loser just like chess, league of legends, motor racing, basketball, shooting competition, or literally any other hobby/sport/esport I've been involved in. I'm not intentionally buying and painting subpar models to fit someone else's arbitrary definition of fair.
Well that's fine until you've crushed everyone in the group a few times, and when next you go "lets have a game" they go "nah, I'm washing my hair". Because playing overwhelmingly one-sided 40k for 2-3 hours isn't a great way to spend an afternoon.
With a winner and a loser, so it's inherently competitive rather than cooperative, correct? So why should I handicap myself? When I go golfing, my buddies don't expect me to tee off with a 3 iron just because I'm a longer hitter. When I race someone, I don't have to unplug one of my spark plugs if my car has more power and weighs less. When I shoot a competition, I don't have to take the red dot off and use open sights just because someone else couldn't afford a red dot and a gunsmith. When I play basketball at the rec center, I don't have to leave 1 shoe untied if I'm bigger/faster/stronger than the guy guarding me. This isn't dungeons and dragons, it isn't rogue trader or 2E with an arbitrator. It's a game with a winner and loser just like chess, league of legends, motor racing, basketball, shooting competition, or literally any other hobby/sport/esport I've been involved in. I'm not intentionally buying and painting subpar models to fit someone else's arbitrary definition of fair.
Golf has a handicap system already, so that's a terrible example.
You're missing the point here anyway. Wargaming is both competitive and social. If I'm at a shooting competition I'm competing against myself as much as my opponent and I can always look to better myself regardless of the performance of my opponent. In a wargame, if it's as unbalanced as 40k, being guaranteed to lose because you chose the "wrong" army a year ago is not an experience that's likely going to encourage me to play more. If the only solution is to buy a new army, rather than try to improve my play with the one I already own, that's not a great solution. If the process of playing the game is just miserable because of the imbalance I'm less likely to want to keep playing. Other people may feel differently and prefer all-out hyper-competitive games, though in that case I wonder why they choose 40k for that purpose. In any case, the kind of massive imbalance we currently have can easily lead to problems.
I've seen it happen before. One guy shows up at a relatively casual group and plays meta lists constantly. The most recent example in my group was someone who was literally unable to comprehend the concept of toning down his list. Everyone played him once or twice. Then very few people wanted to play him again. He was a nice guy - friendly and sociable - but the games were not fun, so people started avoiding playing against him. I've seen that same scenario play out multiple times, sometimes with entire groups, to the point where the groups disappear completely.
I think people are saying the same thing, and then arguing.
Golf has a handicap system? Well, 40k doesn't. (But it should).
Playing with your Iron friend? 40k doesn't rank people that way, so it is impossible to know for a PUG what you are getting into until it is too late. Maybe it should.
The REAL answer to all this isn't "players should do the heavy lifting to balance the game on their own" but rather "players should do a small amount of work - if any - to account for their relative skill an already broadly balanced game"
The difference between armies in 40k isn't really akin to skill at golf. The difference between armies is more like "one person spent 100 man hours and 2000 dollars on a tiny club, and the other spent 100 man hours and 2000 dollars on a driving club". The solution is either have each player own one of every club (spending 100 man hours and 2000 dollars on each!) OR DON'T MAKE THE CLUBS DIFFERENT SIZES IN THE FIRST PLACE - i.e. balance the game.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I think people are saying the same thing, and then arguing.
Golf has a handicap system? Well, 40k doesn't. (But it should).
Playing with your Iron friend? 40k doesn't rank people that way, so it is impossible to know for a PUG what you are getting into until it is too late. Maybe it should.
The REAL answer to all this isn't "players should do the heavy lifting to balance the game on their own" but rather "players should do a small amount of work - if any - to account for their relative skill an already broadly balanced game"
But the point is that most of the times it's not armies or players that are ranked better, it's lists. An Harlequin list with no voidweavers at all is extremely worse than an Harlequins list with 9 of those. When the ork list with 9 squigbuggies and 5 flyers outraged the world it was possible to design lots and lots of garbage tier orks lists, just by bringing average collections of models.
That's why it's impossible to impose an handicap system, outside something that both players agree before playing. Lists that are toned down or up, players that decide who start first to gran an advantage, handicap of X points, a cap on the units' number/size, other house rules, etc... those are handicaps that have always been part of friendly 40k.
In competitive metas I don't think it's a good solution to introduce handicaps, it will just make lots of units disappear because armies that are ranked high will be encouraged to bring their top build, and only that, if they also come with an handicap no matter the list they bring.
I still believe that the best patch for tournaments is that TOs should enforce their own balance dataslates with a bunch of 0-1 limitations on the most powerful units like GW already did with ork buggies, and tournaments always rely on house rules anyway.
People always (conveniently) forget that 40k isn't just a game, like golf or a videogame could be. It's a combination of assembling models, painting them, collecting/displaying them AND playing. Plus reading stuff, watching the series, etc... Primary goal for GW is to sell more products, not to design the best game possible for their products. And a game that is more balanced but reduces the need of buying more models is bad for GW. A compromise is the best thing we can realistically expect, and that implies the existence OP stuff and armies that on average are not on the same level. But thanks to the compromise such OP stuff shouldn't last long, so in real life not many players are able or willing to chase the flavour of the month.
So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
Weapons like autocannons, missile pods, and heavy bolters sacrifice Strength and Armour Penetration for more Attacks, forcing extra save rolls from your opponent
WITH A PICTURE OF IMPERIAL GUARD!
WTF? do they think an autocannon, with 2 shots hitting on 5s is going to make a difference?
The article isn't wrong. It's just a bit tone deaf until the last paragraph.
Leaning on single shot high damage too much makes the swinginess of the harlie 4++ more relevant. And the other problem is some of those AT guns are still comparatively too cheap.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
That's a take.
Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing & play unfun scenarios with crap terrain setups.
But, rather than discussing what you both want from the game.....
And then when fun isn't had you blame the company.
Because you know, neither player could've had any input or influence on what just happened....
DID YOU KNOW THAT... (Cue Bill Nye moment):
OP, unfun things and unfun scenarios only even exist because of bad game design? If the OP, unfun things and unfun scenarios weren't codified in rules, then the players wouldn't play them?
And terrain - well, players have greater responsibility here. But the absurdly bad terrain rules means that even here, GW has completely failed to hold up their end of the stick, as it were.
If there are diamond moments inside a dump truck full of crap, then perhaps the person who owns the dump truck should stop filling it with crap if they expect other people to find the diamonds. It shouldn't be the customer's responsibility to dig through the crap to find the diamonds themselves - that is, if the owner is selling diamonds and not selling crap.
EviscerationPlague wrote: You helping your friend on a smurf account in League Of Legends to not steal the spotlight is absolutely the dumbest thing I've read, especially since you're not playing against your friend either.
It's not a smurf account, just playing normals with an iron friend on an account that is gold in ranked.
You missed the latter part of that, probably on purpose is my guess.
EviscerationPlague wrote: You helping your friend on a smurf account in League Of Legends to not steal the spotlight is absolutely the dumbest thing I've read, especially since you're not playing against your friend either.
It's not a smurf account, just playing normals with an iron friend on an account that is gold in ranked.
You missed the latter part of that, probably on purpose is my guess.
You misunderstood my earlier post so I explained what I meant. Your post is gak and your mom is iron, that's my response to the other half of your earlier post.
Unit1126PLL wrote:So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
That's a take.
If players wanted a balanced game, why on earth would you trust GW to do it? if unbalanced keeps making them $€£¥ hand over fist and players keep slathering it up, what's the impetus to change?
Oh but look they are listening to the community and THIS time they mean it.
Aww look at all the power creep...they said it'll be diff this time
Oh look they're listening & this time....
Lather, rinse, repeat. Ad nauseum ab infinitum
Everyone complaining about GW's balance yet keep throwing $€£¥ at them hasn't worked yet.
I don't care about what's good/not, I buy whichever models I like the looks(irrespective of power)of and I pay GW exactly what their rules are worth, Nada, zilch, zero! I strongly encourage others to do the same.
GW only understands $€£¥ & if they start receiving less of it related to the books, they might catch the drift. Which is hard for them to do.
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
Being vocal is the only mode we really have unless GW decides to nosedive every lever they created to try and make the game better.
Unit1126PLL wrote:So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
That's a take.
If players wanted a balanced game, why on earth would you trust GW to do it? if unbalanced keeps making them $€£¥ hand over fist and players keep slathering it up, what's the impetus to change?
Oh but look they are listening to the community and THIS time they mean it.
Aww look at all the power creep...they said it'll be diff this time
Oh look they're listening & this time....
Lather, rinse, repeat. Ad nauseum ab infinitum
Everyone complaining about GW's balance yet keep throwing $€£¥ at them hasn't worked yet.
I don't care about what's good/not, I buy whichever models I like the looks(irrespective of power)of and I pay GW exactly what their rules are worth, Nada, zilch, zero! I strongly encourage others to do the same.
GW only understands $€£¥ & if they start receiving less of it related to the books, they might catch the drift. Which is hard for them to do.
So what you're saying is, don't buy the books, keep playing with crap balance and buying the models, which tells GW that rules don't sell, but new models do. Drop the rules support further and just become a "miniatures company" again.
Meanwhile the 35th dogturd rules amendment from the community comes out, proceeds to not be much better and is still different from the other store you visit.
Honestly the more they push this as the tournament edition the more egg they're getting on their face for the paper publishing resulting in tone deaf balance attempts. They'll be noticing and it's also why the new balance dataslstes have become a thing, the tournament department are key to marketing but unless they start to align we end up in a mess.
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
Being vocal is the only mode we really have unless GW decides to nosedive every lever they created to try and make the game better.
They're not separate issues. 40k operates quite a lot on its own inertia. That inertia exists as result of the hollistic interactions of models, rules, and lore. Each piece needs each other piece to survive. (Well, the lore could probably keep going on its own. It would just be operating on a very limited budget.)
We don't have to guess at how important rules are. We've seen it. 7th Edition and Launch AoS had terrible rules. The rules were so bad, in fact, that they finally went over the edge of what the majority of people will tolerate. Both games were bleeding players at absurd rates. Even early adopters of Sigmar weren't really buying anything. You couldn't GIVE AoS kits away in those times and it was much the same for any 40k army that wasn't Daemons, Space Marines, or Eldar. This is in spite of some of the best models GW had released up to that point coming out in both games (admech came out in this era).
Sales tanked, share prices tanked, community involvement tanked, event attendence was dipping year by year. GW was on a path that would have eventually run them out of business.
Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.
EviscerationPlague wrote: You helping your friend on a smurf account in League Of Legends to not steal the spotlight is absolutely the dumbest thing I've read, especially since you're not playing against your friend either.
It's not a smurf account, just playing normals with an iron friend on an account that is gold in ranked.
You missed the latter part of that, probably on purpose is my guess.
You misunderstood my earlier post so I explained what I meant. Your post is gak and your mom is iron, that's my response to the other half of your earlier post.
No I understood your post, it's just a garbage defense for GW'S shoddy rules writing and blaming the players.
ERJAK wrote: Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.
Rules absolutely do matter.
This, seriously. My group wants to start a 40k crusade campaign. We've been playing AoS PtG for several months, I go to read the 40k crusade rules and I'm stunned at how bad they are. It's like these design teams live on different planets.
Unit1126PLL wrote:So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
That's a take.
If players wanted a balanced game, why on earth would you trust GW to do it? if unbalanced keeps making them $€£¥ hand over fist and players keep slathering it up, what's the impetus to change?
Oh but look they are listening to the community and THIS time they mean it.
Aww look at all the power creep...they said it'll be diff this time
Oh look they're listening & this time....
Lather, rinse, repeat. Ad nauseum ab infinitum
Everyone complaining about GW's balance yet keep throwing $€£¥ at them hasn't worked yet.
I don't care about what's good/not, I buy whichever models I like the looks(irrespective of power)of and I pay GW exactly what their rules are worth, Nada, zilch, zero! I strongly encourage others to do the same.
GW only understands $€£¥ & if they start receiving less of it related to the books, they might catch the drift. Which is hard for them to do.
So what you're saying is, don't buy the books, keep playing with crap balance and buying the models, which tells GW that rules don't sell, but new models do. Drop the rules support further and just become a "miniatures company" again.
Honestly the more they push this as the tournament edition the more egg they're getting on their face for the paper publishing resulting in tone deaf balance attempts. They'll be noticing and it's also why the new balance dataslstes have become a thing, the tournament department are key to marketing but unless they start to align we end up in a mess.
My group has no problem taking what GW diarrhea's out and having fun. I can understand that it doesn't work for everyone,but the more people buy the rules(which are unbalanced on purpose) the more it incentivizes GW to double down.
Which they have done with basing their sales strategy on players chasing the tourney dragon. Oops you don't play the new hotness, look forward to being abused...until it's your turn at the punch bowl. Or coincidence aside you could start this new faction with ridiculous rules and crush your enemies now...
So what you're saying is, don't buy the books, keep playing with crap balance and buying the models, which tells GW that rules don't sell, but new models do. Drop the rules support further and just become a "miniatures company" again.
this would honestly be the best solution since GW has proved multiple times they don't know how to keep a system clean and balanced.
And we already have 3rd party rules being made (be it OnePageRules' or ProHammer).
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
Being vocal is the only mode we really have unless GW decides to nosedive every lever they created to try and make the game better.
They're not separate issues. 40k operates quite a lot on its own inertia. That inertia exists as result of the hollistic interactions of models, rules, and lore. Each piece needs each other piece to survive. (Well, the lore could probably keep going on its own. It would just be operating on a very limited budget.)
We don't have to guess at how important rules are. We've seen it. 7th Edition and Launch AoS had terrible rules. The rules were so bad, in fact, that they finally went over the edge of what the majority of people will tolerate. Both games were bleeding players at absurd rates. Even early adopters of Sigmar weren't really buying anything. You couldn't GIVE AoS kits away in those times and it was much the same for any 40k army that wasn't Daemons, Space Marines, or Eldar. This is in spite of some of the best models GW had released up to that point coming out in both games (admech came out in this era).
Sales tanked, share prices tanked, community involvement tanked, event attendence was dipping year by year. GW was on a path that would have eventually run them out of business.
Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.
Rules absolutely do matter.
Rules matter to a point, but case in point - 7th, which was the edition of the "pushed" Wraithknight did not pan out. It seems like tampering in favor of sales can be a detractor. Nobody really wanted to buy gakloads of rhinos.
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.
This is very true.
When I have a fun game I'm literally on the bus home shopping for the next thing for that game.
When I have a gak game I'm googling for groups that play other games.
There's a certain extent to which rules churn sells models. Over the years I've bought effectively two 2000pt armies of Space Marines as bits of my first 2000pts army got replaced to "keep up" - all of this occurred despite never having the sort of amazing game that immediately sends me shopping.
So if you're not capable of writing amazing rules, only passable rules, churn is definitely a way to wring out a few sales.
But it's certainly not the most effective way.
I've spent more money after one great evening with one game than I've spent after years of mediocre evenings with another game.
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.
This is very true.
When I have a fun game I'm literally on the bus home shopping for the next thing for that game.
When I have a gak game I'm googling for groups that play other games.
There's a certain extent to which rules churn sells models. Over the years I've bought effectively two 2000pt armies of Space Marines as bits of my first 2000pts army got replaced to "keep up" - all of this occurred despite never having the sort of amazing game that immediately sends me shopping.
So if you're not capable of writing amazing rules, only passable rules, churn is definitely a way to wring out a few sales.
But it's certainly not the most effective way.
I've spent more money after one great evening with one game than I've spent after years of mediocre evenings with another game.
That's nice anecdote, but for every player having fun stomping there's a player who isn't. There's also an upper limit to what you can buy and as Ork players saw there's a legitimate risk to owning too much of a model, which means the only people willing to drop that coin will be the tippy top tournament players.
I know my post might be bit hard to follow, owing to the interchangability of "game" to refer to a system such as 40k or Star Wars Legion or Blood Red Skies or Infinity or whatever, or to an individual evening.
I tried to make a distinction but I'll clarify further.
I don't recall the last time I left a 40k match glowing about how awesome it was and how much I want to buy more.
Every time that's happened it's been another system with more robust, balanced, and interesting rules.
40k's balance has normally left me going home luke warm at best, and ranting about how I'll never touch it again at worst.
Sometimes that's stuck for even up to two years, but 40k is so popular you can't escape.
The only time gameplay has encouraged me to buy more is when my existing units have been either so bad or so OP that I feel obligated to buy that unit I think is "kinda cool but not worth buying as 40k is a meh game anyway".
So in this way poor balance has encouraged me to buy something I wouldn't have done otherwise.
However, if 40k was a fun, interesting, and balanced game I'd be so enamoured with the system I'd have bought that unit plus it's friends months ago.
So imbalance is a net loss for 40k.
EviscerationPlague wrote: If a new game came out with these same rules without the IP backing, nobody would buy into it and would honestly be laughed at. Yes or no?
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
Being vocal is the only mode we really have unless GW decides to nosedive every lever they created to try and make the game better.
They're not separate issues. 40k operates quite a lot on its own inertia. That inertia exists as result of the hollistic interactions of models, rules, and lore. Each piece needs each other piece to survive. (Well, the lore could probably keep going on its own. It would just be operating on a very limited budget.)
We don't have to guess at how important rules are. We've seen it. 7th Edition and Launch AoS had terrible rules. The rules were so bad, in fact, that they finally went over the edge of what the majority of people will tolerate. Both games were bleeding players at absurd rates. Even early adopters of Sigmar weren't really buying anything. You couldn't GIVE AoS kits away in those times and it was much the same for any 40k army that wasn't Daemons, Space Marines, or Eldar. This is in spite of some of the best models GW had released up to that point coming out in both games (admech came out in this era).
Sales tanked, share prices tanked, community involvement tanked, event attendence was dipping year by year. GW was on a path that would have eventually run them out of business.
Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.
Rules absolutely do matter.
Rules matter to a point, but case in point - 7th, which was the edition of the "pushed" Wraithknight did not pan out. It seems like tampering in favor of sales can be a detractor. Nobody really wanted to buy gakloads of rhinos.
Again, that's missing the forest for the trees. WraithKnights and Razorbacks sold like crazy in those times. The problem was that sales were so down across the board from people stepping away from the game/hobby that 'selling like crazy' still wasn't that much.
ALL of GWs sales were down. There were other factors, bad advertisement, 0 community outreach, etc, but the fact that people just...didn't want to deal with 7th edition being the single most powercrept edition 40k has ever had (Non-meta armies would frequently fail to kill a single model of meta armies) was the biggest problem.
There exists a certain maximum level of imbalance that the gaming part of the community can deal with before it starts bleeding out and impacting other areas. Casual Hobbyists and weekend beer and pretzels groups still talk about the game, still play to some extent, and aren't immune to being frustrated by "OP bullgak" just because there's no internet points on the line. Frustrated players both make less purchases AND are likely to be negative enough while speaking about the game/hobby, which can depress other people's purchases. Now, a LOT of that can go on before it has a meaningful impact on something like sales aggregates, but if it keeps progressing and there keeps being legitimate grievances, like there was in 7th, it can eventually hit a breaking point where it DOES start hurting the bottom line.
We're quickly approaching that breakpoint of that with 9th.
Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.
They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.
This is very true.
When I have a fun game I'm literally on the bus home shopping for the next thing for that game.
When I have a gak game I'm googling for groups that play other games.
There's a certain extent to which rules churn sells models. Over the years I've bought effectively two 2000pt armies of Space Marines as bits of my first 2000pts army got replaced to "keep up" - all of this occurred despite never having the sort of amazing game that immediately sends me shopping.
So if you're not capable of writing amazing rules, only passable rules, churn is definitely a way to wring out a few sales.
But it's certainly not the most effective way.
I've spent more money after one great evening with one game than I've spent after years of mediocre evenings with another game.
My own personal anecdote is with Marvel Crisis Protocol.
That game is AWESOME. The rules, while obviously not perfect, are very well balanced and you can play basically anything you want and still feel like you have a fighting chance.
As a result, I've spent almost 400$ in the past 2 months on models I wasn't originally even that interested in. The extremely good deals I've gotten contributed to that number, but not nearly as much as the experience.
I went to adepticon and played 8 games of MCP and came home wanting to try out a bunch of new squads. I went to adepticon and played 2 games of 40k, got sick of it (and was still dealing with leftover CA2022 rage.) and didn't bother finishing out the event I was in.
EviscerationPlague wrote: If a new game came out with these same rules without the IP backing, nobody would buy into it and would honestly be laughed at. Yes or no?
Yes, GW lives and dies on market penetration. The fact you can find someplace where Warhammer is played within driving distance almost anywhere in the world is a major, if not the single biggest factor in GW's success.
I 'bad' game that you get to play is better then a 'great' game but no one to play it with.
ERJAK wrote: Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.
Rules absolutely do matter.
This, seriously. My group wants to start a 40k crusade campaign. We've been playing AoS PtG for several months, I go to read the 40k crusade rules and I'm stunned at how bad they are. It's like these design teams live on different planets.
Yes, the teams have absolutely no collaboration. 8th edition I think it was, both AoS and 40k released their mini rulebook. The AoS one was completely up to date with the latest general handbook. The 40k version was a strait copy of the original, out of date and not faqed, print.
Both teams were told to make a mini rulebook. Then they never talked to each other about what that entails.
Blaming the players for the state of GW's rules might be the last vestige of someone's desperate attempt to assuage their gambler's fallacy/rampant fanboyism. There's a distinct level of reality denying about such an act, like Homer pretending that his BBQ pork is going to be totally fine, when it so clearly isn't. A certain someone who posts here quite often does it all the time. It's quite telling. I'd wish he'd kan that kind of talk, for all our sake's, but he won't.
Anyway, rules are important. As much as sales for a lot of us might be driven by the miniatures themselves (I can't say I've ever bought a unit because of its rules), how the units operate in game is still a big factor in enjoyment.
Chaos Space Marines - specifically the 3.5 Codex - is what got me back into the game during university after an absence during high school (I had left before 3rd Ed hit). Since then Chaos has been gak upon from almost every angle, and the continued cutting/removal of what makes Chaos Chaos appears to continue even into the upcoming book (now they've come for our Cult Troops).
And it's demoralising. It makes past efforts feel wasted. It makes it feel is if they're taking away* My Dudes™ and replacing it with something else.
Beyond that, I agree with what ERJACK has been saying.
*Obviously they're not taking my minis away, so please no one try to make the useless "They're not ackshually stealing your minis, y'know?" argument.
EviscerationPlague wrote: You helping your friend on a smurf account in League Of Legends to not steal the spotlight is absolutely the dumbest thing I've read, especially since you're not playing against your friend either.
It's not a smurf account, just playing normals with an iron friend on an account that is gold in ranked.
You missed the latter part of that, probably on purpose is my guess.
You misunderstood my earlier post so I explained what I meant. Your post is gak and your mom is iron, that's my response to the other half of your earlier post.
No I understood your post, it's just a garbage defense for GW'S shoddy rules writing and blaming the players.
You assumed I was talking about smurfing, now you think I am defending GW, you know nothing.
jeff white wrote: Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…
You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
That's a take.
Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing & play unfun scenarios with crap terrain setups.
But, rather than discussing what you both want from the game.....
And then when fun isn't had you blame the company.
Because you know, neither player could've had any input or influence on what just happened....
A big issue with this though, is you have a lot of armies that dont give you options. Its either feat or famine.
As mentioned with Harlaquins, either you take the OP units, and have a broken list, or your army sucks.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
That's a take.
Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing & play unfun scenarios with crap terrain setups.
But, rather than discussing what you both want from the game.....
And then when fun isn't had you blame the company.
Because you know, neither player could've had any input or influence on what just happened....
A big issue with this though, is you have a lot of armies that dont give you options. Its either feat or famine.
As mentioned with Harlaquins, either you take the OP units, and have a broken list, or your army sucks.
Harlequins without voidweaver spam aren't that oppressive. And only meta chasers can field voidweaver spam since it was illegal to field more than 3 until a few week ago and such models has always been garbage tier.
Any army with a 9th edition codex can manage against harlequins players that are not bandwagoners.
Blackie wrote: Harlequins without voidweaver spam aren't that oppressive.
I think this is a hostage to fortune that will be... clarified in a week or two.
Harlequins may not be 78% win rate faction without voidweaver spam. But I suspect they may still be up there for the best faction in the game (idk, 60-65% win rate). Depending on what (if anything) GW do about Custodes and Tau.
Honestly. I don't have high hopes for this emergency balance patch. Blame their most recent one for that.
All I can see is GW kneecapping Harlies. Then claiming that Tau and Custodes 60 - 65% winrate is well within their balance parameters. With the promises of another round of balances in June prior to the start of the next season.
jeff white wrote: Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…
You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.
*sigh* those were the days.
Back when RTSs were the kings of the gaming world. I should could use a competent SC3 unsullied by Activision.
jeff white wrote: Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…
You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.
*sigh* those were the days.
Back when RTSs were the kings of the gaming world. I should could use a competent SC3 unsullied by Activision.
^Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance Forever.
The absolute king of RTSs, imo. Still being played.
jeff white wrote: Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…
You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.
*sigh* those were the days.
Back when RTSs were the kings of the gaming world. I should could use a competent SC3 unsullied by Activision.
Totally off topic but Microsoft has said that they think there is still a very large untapped market in the RTS world. With buying blizzard there is a very very VERY good chance we will get a fixed warcraft reforged, and a new starcraft.
Just a side bar is all.
Toofast wrote: With a winner and a loser, so it's inherently competitive rather than cooperative, correct? So why should I handicap myself? When I go golfing, my buddies don't expect me to tee off with a 3 iron just because I'm a longer hitter. When I race someone, I don't have to unplug one of my spark plugs if my car has more power and weighs less. When I shoot a competition, I don't have to take the red dot off and use open sights just because someone else couldn't afford a red dot and a gunsmith. When I play basketball at the rec center, I don't have to leave 1 shoe untied if I'm bigger/faster/stronger than the guy guarding me. This isn't dungeons and dragons, it isn't rogue trader or 2E with an arbitrator. It's a game with a winner and loser just like chess, league of legends, motor racing, basketball, shooting competition, or literally any other hobby/sport/esport I've been involved in. I'm not intentionally buying and painting subpar models to fit someone else's arbitrary definition of fair.
Well that's fine until you've crushed everyone in the group a few times, and when next you go "lets have a game" they go "nah, I'm washing my hair". Because playing overwhelmingly one-sided 40k for 2-3 hours isn't a great way to spend an afternoon.
I mostly play in tournaments or practice games for tournaments. If someone doesn't want to play me, as I said before, I'll be happy to go grab a smoke and a cuban sandwich next door. I don't have much to gain by playing someone who refuses because of my list anyway. Even if it was a casual game, I'm not likely to learn very much or make myself a better player by playing in that type of game. I would rather go outside and watch the grass grow than push models around for a couple hours and make laser noises without really caring what happens or who wins.
Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing
Unless you're a new player and just thought crisis suits, voidweavers or vertus praetors looked cool. Then you can either play a small pt game with half your collection or not get a game. That's why "players should just balance it and not take OP stuff" is a stupid argument. Not everyone takes those units because they're broken or OP, they might not have even known that when they bought them. That's like buying a Porsche and saying "well you have to remap the ECU to get it to run because Porsche isn't perfect at tuning". When I'm paying top dollar for a car, I expect it to run when I take delivery, not have to spend 30 mins screwing with it prior to each use to get it to work properly. I extend that logic to any product I purchase.
Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.
Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk
petrov27 wrote: Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.
Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk
The problem with handicaps is that it essentially invalidates all data to determine future balance decisions.
petrov27 wrote: Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.
Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk
The problem with handicaps is that it essentially invalidates all data to determine future balance decisions.
Curious as to why? You would still know that to be balanced in tourneys, a given faction has been handicapped with X penalty/points based off their previous win rates - the data is not thrown out - it would be easy to review it and see oh yeah, after codex dropped faction was 75% win rate totally killing everything, got an immediate handicap the next weekend of X points which stabilzed them at 50% the following weekends. Balance decisions would start with those factions with massive handicaps....
It has the chance to change the list design and mission function. Like say Harlies are given a 1700 points and they do worse. Are they doing worse, because they can't hold objectives as they have fewer models? What list changes occur to accommodate that issue thereby changing the window as to what is strong and what is not?
And how will secondaries interact? Armies that take fewer models are worse targets for some kill secondaries.
petrov27 wrote: Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.
Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk
The problem with handicaps is that it essentially invalidates all data to determine future balance decisions.
Cuz they're doing such a bang up job currently???
Who knows, it might be the catalyst for actual balance....
petrov27 wrote: Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.
Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk
The problem with handicaps is that it essentially invalidates all data to determine future balance decisions.
Curious as to why? You would still know that to be balanced in tourneys, a given faction has been handicapped with X penalty/points based off their previous win rates - the data is not thrown out - it would be easy to review it and see oh yeah, after codex dropped faction was 75% win rate totally killing everything, got an immediate handicap the next weekend of X points which stabilzed them at 50% the following weekends. Balance decisions would start with those factions with massive handicaps....
There's a couple of problems with this idea. One is that points don't have a linear relationship with efficacy. Example, a 55pt handicap gets me another squad of sisters of battle or a buff character. Mediocre benefit. 70pts gets me a squad of Repentia, significant benefit. 80 gets me a squad of Sacresancts, ENORMOUS benefit.
Two: It muddies data for when rules changes actually ARE made. Not that GW uses data for rules changes, but if they did, it would be unhelpful to have such a system in place.
Three: It does nothing for internal balance. Right now, external balance of factions is the most obvious massive issue, but long term INTERNAL balance of units has been a much more consistent bugaboo. For all that people complain about GW releasing OP books and models, it's actually far more common for a units rules to be total garbage.
There are plenty of units in the game that are so terrible they can't even be fixed by points. Far more so than units that super OP.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?
That's a take.
Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing & play unfun scenarios with crap terrain setups.
But, rather than discussing what you both want from the game.....
And then when fun isn't had you blame the company.
Because you know, neither player could've had any input or influence on what just happened....
A big issue with this though, is you have a lot of armies that dont give you options. Its either feat or famine.
As mentioned with Harlaquins, either you take the OP units, and have a broken list, or your army sucks.
Harlequins without voidweaver spam aren't that oppressive. And only meta chasers can field voidweaver spam since it was illegal to field more than 3 until a few week ago and such models has always been garbage tier.
You know that things a duel kit, right? You don't really have to be a meta-chaser to have the option for plenty of Voidweavers.
How many Harlie players out there have 1 or 2 Voidweavers + 3-4 (or more) Starweavers - and the leftover bitz needed to convert some/all of those starweavers to voids?
At my local shops that answer is "all of them". And some have magnetized the guns. The one local guy said something to the effect of "Eh, I'll just run some of my elves on foot for awhile."
Daedalus81 wrote: It has the chance to change the list design and mission function. Like say Harlies are given a 1700 points and they do worse. Are they doing worse, because they can't hold objectives as they have fewer models? What list changes occur to accommodate that issue thereby changing the window as to what is strong and what is not?
And how will secondaries interact? Armies that take fewer models are worse targets for some kill secondaries.
Fair enough, but do we feel the GW balance patches so far have really been based on that level of analysis and have they been really effective? It feels like rather not. The handicap proposal would also help those factions that get absolutely killed by overzealous balance patches too....
Daedalus81 wrote: It has the chance to change the list design and mission function. Like say Harlies are given a 1700 points and they do worse. Are they doing worse, because they can't hold objectives as they have fewer models? What list changes occur to accommodate that issue thereby changing the window as to what is strong and what is not?
And how will secondaries interact? Armies that take fewer models are worse targets for some kill secondaries.
Fair enough, but do we feel the GW balance patches so far have really been based on that level of analysis and have they been really effective? It feels like rather not. The handicap proposal would also help those factions that get absolutely killed by overzealous balance patches too....
Handicap system doesn't fix the broken units. If Voidweavers are that oppressive, it doesn't matter if Harlequins are given a 200 point handicap and have to bring 2 less troops.
Then if they maintained their win rate the handicap gets larger each week until it drops - at some point it has to balance out right? Maybe 200 points they are still bad but 500?
Again just being devil's advocate here - its probably an impractical and unworkable idea to do a handicap system but waiting for good balance from GW seems like is not something that is ever gonna happen so maybe alternatives are needed....
edit; to note I am not saying that GW stops doing balance fixes and adjustments to the crazy broken stuff - that is needed definitely, but again it seems like when "patching" things they tend to either go too far or too little and handcapping in between patches may help with both of those things?
I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.
Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.
Daedalus81 wrote: I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.
Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.
They could like. . . Hire more designers and model their workflows to ensure a more holistic approach.
Daedalus81 wrote: I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.
Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.
They could like. . . Hire more designers and model their workflows to ensure a more holistic approach.
Don't staff to the peak, as it were, but none of that really matters if they would upend everything in 10th anyway. They could certainly use a good project manager though.
Daedalus81 wrote: I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.
Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.
They could like. . . Hire more designers and model their workflows to ensure a more holistic approach.
Don't staff to the peak, as it were, but none of that really matters if they would upend everything in 10th anyway. They could certainly use a good project manager though.
Why "upend everything" though, either? The game needs stability, and stability will get you better data along the way, as well as a better understanding of balance by both designers and players too. If you assume everything will be "upended" for 10th, then everyone has to wait for their damn codex again.
Tune things slowly, bring everything together, stabilize. More designers (who play different styles - competetive/casual) for more playtesting, etc.
Daedalus81 wrote: I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.
So you wouldn't mind if they skipped releasing your armies Codex? Or just took years & years to do it? Or squatted your army outright?
Daedalus81 wrote: I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.
So you wouldn't mind if they skipped releasing your armies Codex? Or just took years & years to do it? Or squatted your army outright?
I'm not saying that, but -- if they had a more deliberate pace the gap might not be so severe. That would have required them to have started dataslates from the beginning of 9th. The horse is out of the barn now and we have to sprint to the finish.
There is, of course, digital rules, which is probably the most unlikely outcome for GW.
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Insectum7 wrote: Why "upend everything" though, either? The game needs stability, and stability will get you better data along the way, as well as a better understanding of balance by both designers and players too. If you assume everything will be "upended" for 10th, then everyone has to wait for their damn codex again.
Tune things slowly, bring everything together, stabilize. More designers (who play different styles - competetive/casual) for more playtesting, etc.
I'm hoping they don't.
If anything we might see some sweep for vehicles and some other tweaks and the ( much slower ) codex cycle begins anew except that other armies catch some updates in the dataslate. That's the most plausible ideal version in my head.
I'm not really seeing why the pace of codex releases matters. This is just classic GW creep which has been a thing for... 20+ years?
At the outset of any edition. X is 100 points.
About 3-6 months in. X+1 is... 100 points.
12 months in. X+2 is 100 points.
About 2 years. "Well we are really thinking about how things will look in the next edition...." X+5 is 100 points.
And then you try playing X into X+5 and find its a one-sided massacre.
I mean it happened in 8th. Happened in 7th. 6th was so bad it imploded ahead of schedule. Happened in 5th.
I don't think this is some grand conspiracy to sell this grey plastic over that grey plastic. But I do think someone at GW knows what they are doing.
Someone could go through all the books and upgrade all the points. Basically what I think people were hoping the most recent CA would be. But clearly GW don't think its worth bothering with.
The seesaw of the past isn't really the same as it is now. IG has what? Four books in it's entire 23 year history ( two in 3rd, one in 6th, one in 8th ). They were able to go three editions with the same book, because the underlying game didn't change all the much. Imbalances stemmed from sloppy base rules, inability to FAQ, and adding models with mechanics that if you possessed no response to placed you at a disadvantage ( among other things ).
Now we're facing layering of rules. You can't precisely point things when people might not use that particular rule. It wouldn't exactly be fair to point Battlesuits as if they have extra AP and full rerolls. You need appropriate restrictions within those items. CORE has been somewhat half baked at times, but that is one lever they at least had the forethought to create at the onset.
Harlequins are the army where points AND layering are out of whack. Stuff like Battlesuits are not wildly cheap - they just stack so much gak they become nuts in addition to being efficient ( and often using a poorly regulated rule - ooLOS shooting ).
Daedalus81 wrote: ...IG has what? Four books in it's entire 23 year history ( two in 3rd, one in 6th, one in 8th )...
Six. 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 5e, 6e, 8e. Possibly more if you count side stuff like Codex:Catachans or Imperial Armor or the campaign Codices, but that's even less relevant to your point.
I loved the 2nd Ed Guard Codex. Had it memorised. Could make lists on a piece of paper without even needing the book in front of me.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Just kill the rules layering. That was exactly the issue the out-of-whack Formation created as well. Just simplify things.
I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.
Most of GW's problems come from their ability to generate fantastic ideas and their inability to execute them effectively.
There's solid gold in every set of overly layered rules. There just needs to be a less complicated way of expressing it, and doing so in a way that doesn't feel oppressive or overwhelming. To put it another way, I'm not convinced that what GW has is bad, more that they've implemented it in a bad manner.
Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing
Unless you're a new player and just thought crisis suits, voidweavers or vertus praetors looked cool. Then you can either play a small pt game with half your collection or not get a game. That's why "players should just balance it and not take OP stuff" is a stupid argument. Not everyone takes those units because they're broken or OP, they might not have even known that when they bought them. That's like buying a Porsche and saying "well you have to remap the ECU to get it to run because Porsche isn't perfect at tuning". When I'm paying top dollar for a car, I expect it to run when I take delivery, not have to spend 30 mins screwing with it prior to each use to get it to work properly. I extend that logic to any product I purchase.
If Porsche sells you a car and you find out the breaking system is faulty you cannot keep driving it, you have to get it to a mechanic or have it returned otherwise you'll end up rear-ending someone or hitting a pedestrian. If you find out Voidweavers are too OP for your casual meta you have to talk to your opponents about how you can have more fun games in the future, maybe you could bring a melee army, maybe fewer points, maybe proxy as haywire. You can also ask on forums how people use Harlequins casually to help inspire something that'll work for you and your community.
Daedalus81 wrote: It has the chance to change the list design and mission function. Like say Harlies are given a 1700 points and they do worse. Are they doing worse, because they can't hold objectives as they have fewer models? What list changes occur to accommodate that issue thereby changing the window as to what is strong and what is not?
And how will secondaries interact? Armies that take fewer models are worse targets for some kill secondaries.
How would this be different from increasing points costs on all Harlequins? I am also questioning when we can say GW has had their chance to make 40k balanced, they are clearly unwilling, it is about time the fans start picking it up. The Ogryn nerf should have been the end of Chapter Approved being bought, why pay for this garbage? The moment GW has something good like the post Knight-nerf meta in 8th they immediately muck it up with SM 2.0.
petrov27 wrote: ...but do we feel the GW balance patches so far have really been based on that level of analysis and have they been really effective?
GW wasn't balancing the game before the community agreed to stop using homebrew mission formats, to me it would be reasonable to assume GW would make more mistakes if they had to deal with more complexity instead of less.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.
Throw Chapter Tactics, Combat Doctrines, Super Doctrines and Angels of Death into the garbage where they belong. Let them inspire new missions and relics.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I loved the 2nd Ed Guard Codex. Had it memorised. Could make lists on a piece of paper without even needing the book in front of me.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Just kill the rules layering. That was exactly the issue the out-of-whack Formation created as well. Just simplify things.
I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.
Most of GW's problems come from their ability to generate fantastic ideas and their inability to execute them effectively.
There's solid gold in every set of overly layered rules. There just needs to be a less complicated way of expressing it, and doing so in a way that doesn't feel oppressive or overwhelming. To put it another way, I'm not convinced that what GW has is bad, more that they've implemented it in a bad manner.
I see this talking point alot. What does "executed poorly" or "implemented bad" truley mean? All I see is bad rules design or good rules design, it seems very binary. I cant fathom how you could have a good rule but then implement it poorly, thats just bad rule. Likewise a bad rule cannot be executed correctly.
This just feels like a word salad bad faith discussion point to obfuscate GWs shoetcomings.
this comes down to putting a simple and good idea into a complex system without considering the effects it will have to the game
like "all units with keyword X are 0-1" might sound good for 1 specific question, but because the rule is not limited to that faction it is executed poorly
Stratagems and Universal Special Rules are the prime example of good rules and bad implementation
Stratagems being a problem in 40k is a specific problem of how those work in 40k and that there are too many around
so the solution is not to remove them or replace them by something else that is executed the same way
Everything GW does. All the time. Forever and ever. Amen.
But in all seriousness...
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I cant fathom how you could have a good rule but then implement it poorly, thats just bad rule. Likewise a bad rule cannot be executed correctly.
Because that's not what's being said.
This isn't about a good rule being implimented poorly. We're talking about concepts vs actualisation. They have good concepts, but they cannot make that leap to rules.
Finally, you think that I would make a bad faith argument to help protectGW? Seriously buddy, look who you're talking to!!!
vict0988 wrote: If Porsche sells you a car and you find out the breaking system is faulty you cannot keep driving it, you have to get it to a mechanic or have it returned otherwise you'll end up rear-ending someone or hitting a pedestrian. If you find out Voidweavers are too OP for your casual meta you have to talk to your opponents about how you can have more fun games in the future, maybe you could bring a melee army, maybe fewer points, maybe proxy as haywire. You can also ask on forums how people use Harlequins casually to help inspire something that'll work for you and your community.
That analogy doesn't really hold up.
If there's a faulty breaking system it's the fault of the manufacture and they should fix it. It's not your job to ensure it gets repaired. It's theirs. That's why recalls happen.
vict0988 wrote: Throw Chapter Tactics, Combat Doctrines, Super Doctrines and Angels of Death into the garbage where they belong.
Why? You want to remove any and all difference from Marine Chapters?
Would not a better solution be to find a way to add flavour to different armies without the inherent complexity that GW has included.
You know that things a duel kit, right? You don't really have to be a meta-chaser to have the option for plenty of Voidweavers.
How many Harlie players out there have 1 or 2 Voidweavers + 3-4 (or more) Starweavers - and the leftover bitz needed to convert some/all of those starweavers to voids?
At my local shops that answer is "all of them". And some have magnetized the guns. The one local guy said something to the effect of "Eh, I'll just run some of my elves on foot for awhile."
I'm aware that they're the same kit but an harlie player needs the transports, he can't just turn all his starweavers into voidweavers. The list posted on Warhammer Community had 13 between star and voidweavers, maxing out the latter. If you magnetize your 6 vehicles into voidweavers you're forced to play the clown on foot then, which isn't optimal. Effective voidweaver spam requires owning more than 10 of those dual kits, which isn't very common.
The problem with handicaps is that it essentially invalidates all data to determine future balance decisions.
The problem with handicaps at tournaments is that not players or factions should get the handicap but lists. A player might be top ranked and decides to bring a non optimized list or even a bottom tier army. Should he get an handicap based on his ranking? An army might be top tier but a player might choose to bring a non optimized list. Should that bad or mid tier list be affected by an handicap just because that faction has the highest WR?
But putting handicaps on lists means that TOs arbitrary decide who's getting the handicap before starting the tournament. IMHO it's the only way to make it work at competitive levels but it requires fair TOs and lots of players would not accept arbitrary decisions.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I loved the 2nd Ed Guard Codex. Had it memorised. Could make lists on a piece of paper without even needing the book in front of me.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Just kill the rules layering. That was exactly the issue the out-of-whack Formation created as well. Just simplify things.
I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.
Throwing out all rules is probably a bad idea, but I think you could probably get rid of 90% no problem. SM used to be fine with just a single special army rule (more or less analogous to Chapter Tactics now) and some small differences in units. I don't see why going back to that would be so problematic. The current Harlequin problem, for example, is directly related to the layering of so many rules all on top of one another. It's not really a songle rule that's the problem, it's all of them combined.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Why? You want to remove any and all difference from Marine Chapters?
Would that really be a problem?
Is the difference between various personalities of super soldier really that significant in a game where regular human Guardsmen, super soldier Astartes, and super-duper soldier Custodes are all 1 stat apart respectively, does it really matter?
In fact, I'd like to not to have doctrines. Sure it's nice to get a little buff for playing your faction the "intended" way, but it's really grating when GW's idea of how your faction plays doesn't align with how you want to play it. It feels like you're getting punished by being denied buffs you should get because GW has arbitrarily pigeon-holed you somewhere you don't agree with.
If we got rid of these traits we would be able to play our armies in way we believe they're meant to be played - not how GW says they're meant to be played.
Is that even a serious question? Do you remember what happend to CSM when they had all their Legions ripped away for several editions?
You really want to see what happens when you make it so a Blood Angel and a Space Wolf are the same?
We've had situations in the past where there were tiny rules differences between Chapters and they still felt unique and characterful. You do not need all the rules we currently have to effectively differentiate various Chapters.
Agree. Tiny rules differences between the chapters are ok, it's unique units and characters that truly differentiate the chapters.
Most SM chapters, those who never had a standalone codex, don't really need to be significantly different from each other in the first place.
Generally speaking I like one maybe two armywide rules that are the same for all chapters from the same faction and a dedicated trait, relic, stratagem for each chapter to differentiate them. Problem with SM is that they have tons of armywide rules, other than the chapter related stuff. How many rules are merged into Angels of death and doctrines alone?
Daedalus81 wrote: Now we're facing layering of rules. You can't precisely point things when people might not use that particular rule. It wouldn't exactly be fair to point Battlesuits as if they have extra AP and full rerolls. You need appropriate restrictions within those items. CORE has been somewhat half baked at times, but that is one lever they at least had the forethought to create at the onset.
Harlequins are the army where points AND layering are out of whack. Stuff like Battlesuits are not wildly cheap - they just stack so much gak they become nuts in addition to being efficient ( and often using a poorly regulated rule - ooLOS shooting ).
Not really convinced you can't price in rules. Its generally a safe assumption that if its there people will use it. If people use it, other people will start using it as everyone learns about it.
This may make for a badly designed codex - because you have to build the way its "designed to" synergy wise. But if you are going to have those rules, you have left yourself no other option.
I agree many of the issues in 40k are due to compounding synergy. Tau probably shouldn't have seen
A) improved datasheets and weapons
B) improved Mont'ka
C) improved markerlights
D) improved chapter tactics, warlord traits, stratagems etc
All at the same time.
But if they were going to, they certainly needed to be dramatically more expensive per point than they are. And any half sensible play test (or someone with 30 minutes in a spreadsheet) should have concluded this.
I know the game isn't just a function of A on B duels. There is more than simple mathhammer. But when such analysis shows units being massively ahead of the rest, they almost always prove to dominate the game. The voidweaver should have been incredibly easy to pick up. (I sort of regret not jumping up and down more when the rules first came out in order to be able to claim more of a "I told you so" here. But I think like many I kind of got bored of the book by the time I reached the Harlequin datasheets. So the reaction was just "that seems a bit good... now onto Ynnari anything interesting there?")
Ok, I'm not one for sudden reactions, but if that's true, then 
.
