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That is true. How many small tweeks did eldar and Inari got since the edition started? If they were any other faction they should be as playable as BA right now. Yet they are still running around top tables. IG with Castellans are probablly the same. There is just no easy or small tweek way to fix them, specially if one also doesn't want to see those armies become unplayable.

I mean a blanket 50% cost rise on everything IG, eldar or Knight would "fix" the meta too. not sure if people like that kind of a fix though.

That's because the winning faction - Ynnari - hasn't been seeing much of any meaningful tweaks compared to Craftworlds. Craftworld has seen tweaks and you don't see them dominating anything unless they are being run as/with Ynnari.

The Ynnari faction trait is a fundamentally broken thing and can't be balanced by tweaking other codexes as it means Ynnari becomes the only playable faction for Aeldari. Ynnari needs to be revisited from the ground up as its own faction and its trait changed along with its own point cost for everything.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
...but more importantly we need to create prices for Relics again

That would certainly help, given that some relics are the equivalent of a 5pt piece of wargear while something like Cawls Wrath is comparable to hanging a whole extra plasma decimator onto the unit.

 Eldarsif wrote:


That's because the winning faction - Ynnari - hasn't been seeing much of any meaningful tweaks compared to Craftworlds. Craftworld has seen tweaks and you don't see them dominating anything unless they are being run as/with Ynnari.

The Ynnari faction trait is a fundamentally broken thing and can't be balanced by tweaking other codexes as it means Ynnari becomes the only playable faction for Aeldari. Ynnari needs to be revisited from the ground up as its own faction and its trait changed along with its own point cost for everything.

Ynnari got hit hard with the nerfhammer early on with a re-write of soulburst, I remember some players complaining how it made the Ynnari faction worthless, their new models useless etc. Clearly it did not work out quite as they said. There was another mini-nerf with the casting cost of Word of the Phoenix but again that turns out not to have been enough.

I have my own thoughts on what needs to be done to fix Ynnari but we may as well just wait it out and see what GW do.

In the meantime I could point out that outside of ITC and using book missions they are a strong faction but nothing like such a dominant one. The combination of missions and terrain rules that play to their strengths is a factor.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:


That's because the winning faction - Ynnari - hasn't been seeing much of any meaningful tweaks compared to Craftworlds. Craftworld has seen tweaks and you don't see them dominating anything unless they are being run as/with Ynnari.

The Ynnari faction trait is a fundamentally broken thing and can't be balanced by tweaking other codexes as it means Ynnari becomes the only playable faction for Aeldari. Ynnari needs to be revisited from the ground up as its own faction and its trait changed along with its own point cost for everything.

Ynnari got hit hard with the nerfhammer early on with a re-write of soulburst, I remember some players complaining how it made the Ynnari faction worthless, their new models useless etc. Clearly it did not work out quite as they said. There was another mini-nerf with the casting cost of Word of the Phoenix but again that turns out not to have been enough.

I have my own thoughts on what needs to be done to fix Ynnari but we may as well just wait it out and see what GW do.

In the meantime I could point out that outside of ITC and using book missions they are a strong faction but nothing like such a dominant one. The combination of missions and terrain rules that play to their strengths is a factor.

I do wonder how much GW are going to change up the actual mechanics of problem rules interactions and how much is just going to be increased CP cost or points making units only playable in certain armies.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

Ynnari got hit hard with the nerfhammer early on with a re-write of soulburst, I remember some players complaining how it made the Ynnari faction worthless, their new models useless etc. Clearly it did not work out quite as they said. There was another mini-nerf with the casting cost of Word of the Phoenix but again that turns out not to have been enough.

It did go from god-like to just OP, but the core problem is that it is potentially a gamebreaking trait that is applied to a side-faction. In short, it uses Craftworld and Drukhari units and points, but is such a wildly differing force multiplier to the CW and D codexes that Ynnari must be point costed to its own context instead of having CW and D suffer nerfing just because some people like playing Ynnari.

I remember those days... Being told by several people that Dire Avengers were worth their 17ppm because Ynnari...

https://www.tinkerapproved.com/post/the_metagame_cycle1

This analysis has merit, specifically the breakdown of Space Marines.

That analysis is on a very small sample size.

And, i'll say it again: the quality of a codex is about potential performance. Codexes have bad options, and people play them. A codex with 1 point models that fire 30 shots without LOS that hit automatically at strength 50, AP-12, 30 damage would be god mode. But, people who don't bring those models would not do as well. It's a silly example but it's hyperbole to hopefully convey a point: There are trap options in the codex, and top tier options that define the quality of an army. We should evaluate the strength of a codex without examining the obvious trap options that can and do show up at big tournaments.

If you bring a detachment of Ynnari guardians, backed up by Dark Eldar Wyches, and Scourges, you're probably going to get fething rolled. Despite the fact that Ynnari are top tier.

It analyzes 1000 armies and 2500 matches. How large of a sample size do you want?

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

The Chaos Castellan doesn't have access to the strats. I feel like this is the worst "gotcha" I've ever seen on here. This is like saying Smash Captains aren't good without the relics or Hive Guard are overpriced if you don't double shoot them. These things are part of the unit.

 Marmatag wrote:
That analysis is on a very small sample size.

And, i'll say it again: the quality of a codex is about potential performance. Codexes have bad options, and people play them. A codex with 1 point models that fire 30 shots without LOS that hit automatically at strength 50, AP-12, 30 damage would be god mode. But, people who don't bring those models would not do as well. It's a silly example but it's hyperbole to hopefully convey a point: There are trap options in the codex, and top tier options that define the quality of an army. We should evaluate the strength of a codex without examining the obvious trap options that can and do show up at big tournaments.

If you bring a detachment of Ynnari guardians, backed up by Dark Eldar Wyches, and Scourges, you're probably going to get fething rolled. Despite the fact that Ynnari are top tier.

It's like how 6th Edition Tyranids were technically competitive despite the absolutely trash codex that was written for them.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

The Chaos Castellan doesn't have access to the strats. I feel like this is the worst "gotcha" I've ever seen on here. This is like saying Smash Captains aren't good without the relics or Hive Guard are overpriced if you don't double shoot them. These things are part of the unit.

Yeah exactly. Plus - A castellan is so expensive that to chose to bring a weaker version of it to bring a chaos army doesn't make any sense. The only time it makes sense is to bring a double gatling knight for heratics with reroll all hits stratagem. Which is a pretty big FU to things like shinning spears and primaris marines.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

Read my post in full and the things I have raised there. I believe I show where some straight incorrect things are said as if fact.

Every faction made it into the top 62 except BA. What they failed to discuss was the frequency of factions compared to their total number of players.

As to what do they have to gain? Well some of the members sit on the balance team so are responsible for where we are now. If they said balance was out of whack (as it is) its admitting they (and GW) have done a poor job.

I think Reece gets it and knows that Orks aren't strong. He's not going to admit that publicly until it is more obvious but reading between the lines of some of the things he says I get the impression he knows this. He always had concerns about Orks performing in the LVO meta and he has acknowledged that CA kicked us in the nuts.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

The Chaos Castellan doesn't have access to the strats. I feel like this is the worst "gotcha" I've ever seen on here. This is like saying Smash Captains aren't good without the relics or Hive Guard are overpriced if you don't double shoot them. These things are part of the unit.

So does the unit need to be re-priced, or does it need it stratagems and relics changed?

 Apple Peel wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

The Chaos Castellan doesn't have access to the strats. I feel like this is the worst "gotcha" I've ever seen on here. This is like saying Smash Captains aren't good without the relics or Hive Guard are overpriced if you don't double shoot them. These things are part of the unit.

So does the unit need to be re-priced, or does it need it stratagems and relics changed?

Actually I would say that the house raven strategum needs to have a questorus and a dominus class knights CP cost as the linked stats above go into some analysis of the imperial soup armies for subfaction mixes and outside of house raven, it actually doesn't matter what you allie to guard you get a 55% win ratio.
That kinda says Guard having no cost acess to allies is probably the underlying issue.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

The Chaos Castellan doesn't have access to the strats. I feel like this is the worst "gotcha" I've ever seen on here. This is like saying Smash Captains aren't good without the relics or Hive Guard are overpriced if you don't double shoot them. These things are part of the unit.

It has access to like 1 or 2. What it does NOT have is Household benefits and Relics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and Warlord Traits

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It analyzes 1000 armies and 2500 matches. How large of a sample size do you want?

The number of possible combination are too much for this sample size. And players trying to win (as they should) just skews the data (can probably be taken into account though).

For example, the writer conclude that SoB is balanced with 49% win/rate. Which would be true IF the amount of mono SoB armies was higher than 25%... (I can bet most SoB armies comes with allied knights).
Another example, he also conclude that orks are balanced with a 50% win rate overall, but in the matchups matrix, they "underperform" in 2/3 of their matchups. So they probably had more matches against their "good" matchups.
Some factions don't even appear in the matchup matrix because there isn't enough matches too add them.
And some factions are over represented in the data. Look at 15% adeptus astartes (26% if you add heretics !!) vs 3% necron for example. Which makes me realise the 3 most "underperforming" factions represents 30% of the data.

It's interesting data, but drawing definitive conclusions from it is pretty hard, outside of the obvious stuff.

So, I repeat, how large a sample size do you require to make the statistic reliable?

Playing to win skews the data?

FLG is basically the GW Ministry of Truth (the 1984 version, so Ministry of Propaganda). Partly because they have weird ways of determining factions, so they will say that "Blood Angels" are doing well when it's all soup with a Knight and *some* Blood Angels. Yet to them it's a "Blood Angels army" and they push the narrative that things are diverse and balanced. They said there was "lots of diversity" in the Top 10 at LVO when it was essentially all Castellan (ok one guy had a Lancer and 2 Warglaives) and Ynnari soup of various flavors. Two out of 10 were different (a Tau player and I believe some sort of Chaos daemon soup).

But to FLG that's "diversity".

 Kommisar wrote:
Playing to win skews the data?

I've put my thoughts into words wrongly. I just meant that how a faction performs and it's popularity affects how much it will appear in the data, thus you have some stuff more represented than others (1 out of 5 players is primarily using astartes of some sort and 1 out of 5 use either ynnari, knight or am).

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
So, I repeat, how large a sample size do you require to make the statistic reliable?

I don't know and I'm not even sure increasing the sample would give different results anyway (because army distribution between players would probably not change much).
I just think the data displayed in this link doesn't show us much regarding mono faction performance. It has some interesting points though, particularly in the "matchup" summary.
And I'm probably missing something as total primary faction amount of games is closing to 5K games and faction taken as an ally is over 8K, from a set of 2K5 games. (EDIT : Actually it might work out, you have potentially a total of 5K games for primary and 10K for ally if same factions show up both side of the table every match).

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

You mean the Chaos version that does not have access to the same things the IOM does? This is the definition of comparing apples to oranges. Besides both factions have different incentives and soup ingredients.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

You mean the Chaos version that does not have access to the same things the IOM does? This is the definition of comparing apples to oranges. Besides both factions have different incentives and soup ingredients.

and the thing the IoM version has that chaos does not have is the stratigiums. ergo the strats are broken not the unit.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

The Chaos Castellan doesn't have access to the strats. I feel like this is the worst "gotcha" I've ever seen on here. This is like saying Smash Captains aren't good without the relics or Hive Guard are overpriced if you don't double shoot them. These things are part of the unit.

It has access to like 1 or 2. What it does NOT have is Household benefits and Relics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and Warlord Traits

yes those too, i was just being broad.









Anyway, on the topic of balance - FLG is unmistakably correct. The game is the most balanced it's ever been. Almost any codex CAN compete with the right allies. How a codex performs solo is literally irrelevant to balance in this game, because thats simply not the game or a rule anywhere. For example, Knights are one of the strongest dexes in current 40k, but solo they would be one of the worst - you have to pick one or the other when discussing balance, and the only one that makes sense to choose is what is actually allowed. The problem is, while FLG is right about "balance" - this is terrible game design, because for 3 dexes to work together and be balanced against a solo dex, this means some of those dexes themselves suffer when played solo and having the key elements that allow them to compete at the highest level, removed from their dex - E.G. Knights and BA. There is only one real solution to this, and it comes in the form of punishing allies, or rewarding monofaction. These stats don't reflect monofaction balance at all, and why would they? They are not taken from a monofaction environment. In the case of allied balance, they accurately reflect the state of the game.

Wayniac wrote:
FLG is basically the GW Ministry of Truth (the 1984 version, so Ministry of Propaganda). Partly because they have weird ways of determining factions, so they will say that "Blood Angels" are doing well when it's all soup with a Knight and *some* Blood Angels. Yet to them it's a "Blood Angels army" and they push the narrative that things are diverse and balanced. They said there was "lots of diversity" in the Top 10 at LVO when it was essentially all Castellan (ok one guy had a Lancer and 2 Warglaives) and Ynnari soup of various flavors. Two out of 10 were different (a Tau player and I believe some sort of Chaos daemon soup).

But to FLG that's "diversity".

They stated diversity at LVO on the top 62 which represented for the most part armies that went 5/1. They also stated that Ynnari and Castellan needs to be nerfed.

They aren't perfect but some of you are making it look worse than it is.

What Reece does believe is that the armies that are weak, can still do ok. I.e. Space Marines and Necrons (its like his personal philosophy). That doesnt mean these codexs are ok as is but some people are just flat out not trying to make them work with what is available.

BrianDavion wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

You mean the Chaos version that does not have access to the same things the IOM does? This is the definition of comparing apples to oranges. Besides both factions have different incentives and soup ingredients.

and the thing the IoM version has that chaos does not have is the stratigiums. ergo the strats are broken not the unit.

It doesn't matter the reason why a unit is broken, unless GW will change that reason. Whether it's being to cheap on it's own, some weird ally interaction, Strats, CP generation or etc. The IOM version of the Castellan is largely broken to a weird combo of all the above.

 SHUPPET wrote:


Anyway, on the topic of balance - FLG is unmistakably correct. The game is the most balanced it's ever been. Almost any codex CAN compete with the right allies.

Correct balanced does not mean equal opportunities to win at the top table. I dont think they have stated that.

For the lastest podcast they believe if armies can achieve a 50:50 win rate they are "balanced". I think their stats back this up. The problem armies are in the 60s or 70s.

What the stats dont state is that all armies have an equal chance to win a tournament.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Whether it's being to cheap on it's own, some weird ally interaction, Strats, CP generation or etc. The IOM version of the Castellan is largely broken to a weird combo of all the above.

The Castellan must be broken due to the reroll all 1s strat, fire at full BS for 1cp and the 3++ warlord trait. These are what makes it better than a renegade and the reason chaos dont take it at all.

I suspect taking away the ability to 3++ is going to go along way. And making firing at full bs for 2 or 3cp (similar to rotate being 1cp/3cp depending on chassis). The price feels ok.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Reemule wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I don't get how anyone can say with a straight face that the Castellan isn't a problem when huge portions of various codexes are rendered useless by it being around for relative cheap points for what it can do and how quickly it goes from great to beyond auto include once you at in the loyal 32 cheering it on and making it fight much better.

If I recall 3 of the top 8 lists took one and it was incredibly common among imperial players. If something is that much of an auto include then it needs to be tweaked, there should be no brainless options.

Well cause you are wrong....

If the Castellan was a problem it would have been in every Chaos list and a problem there also. It wasn't. You failed to understand balance.

You mean the Chaos version that does not have access to the same things the IOM does? This is the definition of comparing apples to oranges. Besides both factions have different incentives and soup ingredients.

and the thing the IoM version has that chaos does not have is the stratigiums. ergo the strats are broken not the unit.

It doesn't matter the reason why a unit is broken, unless GW will change that reason. Whether it's being to cheap on it's own, some weird ally interaction, Strats, CP generation or etc. The IOM version of the Castellan is largely broken to a weird combo of all the above.

sure except you can't say "X is broken"when the real issue is something else.

 Smirrors wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:


Anyway, on the topic of balance - FLG is unmistakably correct. The game is the most balanced it's ever been. Almost any codex CAN compete with the right allies.

Correct balanced does not mean equal opportunities to win at the top table. I dont think they have stated that.

Cool I didn't state that either